[On 7 March 1936, Hitler ordered Wehrmacht] troops to enter the Rhineland, the industrial heartland of Germany on the French border. This seemingly simple act of moving troops into another part of German territory was actually [Berlin’s] then-greatest defiance of the post-First World War international system. The Treaty of Versailles and Locarno Treaties, a series of agreements between Germany and other European states that somewhat normalized relations, had both explicitly forbidden Germany from remilitarizing the Rhineland.

With this decision, [Berlin] took a huge gamble. Because a demilitarized Rhine was so crucial to the Third Republic’s defense plan, many expected France to respond with a preemptive attack on the Third Reich.¹⁸⁸ When no such invasion came, Hitler declared that he would ask the German people what they thought about his decision through a referendum on 29 March. Although it followed one of Hitler’s boldest actions, historians have written the least about the 1936 referendum.

[…]

Hitler returned in 1936 to the strategy that had won him success in 1933: attacking the international system of the Treaty of Versailles. As he had a few years earlier, he demanded that the international community treat Germany as an “equal,” not as a vassal state. Instead of referring directly to Poland, as he had before, he spoke more generally, probably with the great powers as his intended audience.¹⁹⁰ In his “incessant propaganda,” he declared that his régime would no longer accept Germany’s second-class treatment.¹⁹¹

On 29 March, after a tense three-week standoff, the German people gave Hitler his then-biggest diplomatic victory, with about 98.8 percent of voters approving of the remilitarization of the Rhine. Just as he had gambled in remilitarizing the Rhineland, Hitler had gambled in holding another referendum, the last of which had proven too unpredictable to serve the régime. Again, his gamble paid off, as he received the greatest electoral success of his career.

The victory was so overwhelming that many journalists, even though they knew how thoroughly the Third Reich coerced voters, conceded that this referendum had proven the German people’s support for the Third Reich. The editor of The Kansas City Star wrote, “An electorate ridden by incessant propaganda, shut off by propaganda and subjected to a psychology of fear from secret police activities cannot be said in the ordinary sense to cast a significant ballot. On the other hand, there can be no reasonable doubt of the widespread popularity of the Nazi dictatorship and its policies today in Germany.”¹⁹²

By returning to the messaging that had produced victory in 1933, [Berlin] created an even greater success in 1936.

(Emphasis added.)

As with the plesbiscite of 1933, there was some tampering that skewed the results, such as the exclusion of Jews, Roma, and Sinti from voting, but even so one should be careful not to fall into the trap of presuming that an unrigged referendum would have necessarily produced the opposite of an overwhelming victory.

Most of the Third Reich’s white, gentile, anticommunist citizens probably at least accepted if not outright supported Fascist rule, and 1936 is still a little early in the Third Reich’s life cycle; these naïve voters had not seen the worst of things yet. Besides, surely an ordinary voter can see the appeal in getting a new spot to inhabit or visit, and the Wehrmacht earned civilians’ respect with its spectacles and employment opportunities.

Now, do not misunderstand me: none of this is to excuse the Fascists’ imperialism, but underestimating the enemy can be a very dangerous mistake, too. Keeping imperialist successes like these in mind is crucial to understanding why so many European adults accepted or saw appeal in Fascism for as long as they did. It is because of miseducation, white privilege, and the Wehrmacht’s ostensible benefits—all of which are ultimately toxic to the lower classes, however subtly—that the Fascist bourgeoisie could successfully manufacture consent to its imperialist endeavours.