Hitler Oath

During the Weimar era, the oath of allegiance, sworn by the , required soldiers to swear loyalty to the Constitution and its lawful institutions. Following Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in 1933, the military oath changed, the troops now swearing loyalty to volk and fatherland. On the day of the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, the oath was changed again, as part of the Nazification of the country; it was no longer one of allegiance to the constitution or its institutions, but one of binding loyalty to Hitler himself. Although the popular view is that Hitler drafted the oath himself and imposed it on the military, the oath was the initiative of Reichswehr Minister General Werner von Blomberg and General Walter von Reichenau, the chief of the Ministerial Office. The intention of Blomberg and Reichenau in having the military swear an oath to Hitler was to create a personal special bond between him and the military, which was intended to tie Hitler more tightly towards the military and away from the Nazi Party. Years later, Blomberg admitted that he did not think through the full implications of the oath at the time. On 20 August 1934, the cabinet decreed the "Law On The Allegiance of Civil Servants and Soldiers of the Armed Forces", which superseded the original oaths. The new law decreed that both members of the armed forces and civil servants had to swear an oath of loyalty to Hitler personally. ==History==

Previous oaths Reichswehr oath From 1919 until 1935, the Weimar Republic's armed forces were called the (). The original oath called the came into effect on 14 August 1919, shortly after Friedrich Ebert had signed the Weimar Constitution for the German Reich. The Treaty of Versailles limited the to a total of 100,000 men. From 1919 to December 1933 In January 1933, when Adolf Hitler was appointed and the Enabling Act and came into effect, the military oath changed again. From 2 December 1933 to 2 August 1934 After the death of German President Paul von Hindenburg on 2 August 1934, Hitler merged the offices of and , and declared himself . Blomberg issued a new wording of the oath which became known as the (). From that point on, all military personnel swore an oath of allegiance and binding loyalty to Hitler himself. Führer oath Wehrmacht oath On 16 March 1935 the German government renamed the as the Wehrmacht () When the oath became law in July 1935, civilian officials would swear a similar oath. Civil servant oath Oathtakers then sang the first of the national anthem, followed by the Nazi anthem . ==Public figures who refused to take the oath==

Thousands of military officers reportedly claimed to be ill to avoid taking the oath but were forced to do so after returning to duty. == See also ==