“On Sunday I voted ‘No’ in the plebiscite, and I also wrote ‘No’ on the Reichstag ballot paper. Eva left both slips empty. That was almost a brave deed, because the whole world expects the secrecy of the ballot to be violated. I do not believe that it was really infringed. It was anyway unnecessary for two reasons: (1) It is enough that everyone believed in the violation and was therefore afraid; (2) the correctness of the result as announced was already guaranteed, since the Party dominates everything without opposition. I must also acknowledge that millions were made drunk by the weeks of boundless and boundlessly mendacious ‘propaganda for peace’, which was countered by not a single printed or spoken word.
For all that: when the triumph was published yesterday: 93 percent vote for Hitler! 40 1/2 million ‘yes’, 2 million ‘No’– 39 1/2 million for the Reichstag, 3 1/2 million ‘invalid’– I as laid low, I almost believed the figures and held them to be the truth. And since then we have been told in every possible key: this ‘election’ is recognized abroad, ‘all of Germany’ is seen to be behind Hitler, [the foreign powers] admire Germany’s unity, will be conciliatory toward it, etc., etc. Now all of it makes me drunk, I too am beginning to believe in the power and permanency of Hitler. It is dreadful.
— On top of everything else ‘London says’: What especially commanded admiration was that even in the concentration camps most had voted ‘Yes’. But that is undoubtedly either a matter of falsification or compulsion. But what good is the rational ‘undoubtedly’? If I have no choice but to read and hear something everywhere, it is forced upon me. And if I can hardly guard against believing it — how shall millions of naive people guard against it? And if they believe, then they are indeed won by Hitler and the power and the glory are really his.
Gusti Wieghardt told me recently that an advertising brochure for some electrical goods or other had been sent to her. In the middle of the advertisement text there had been a Communist article … But what good do such pinpricks do? Less than none. Because all Germany prefers Hitler to the Communists. And I see no difference between either of the two movements; both are materialistic and lead to slavery.”
— November 14, 1933
