1 August—92 years ago today, Der Führer was created. Here’s how it happened:

In March 1933, shortly after President Paul von Hinderburg had reluctantly appointed him chancellor, Adolf Hitler forced the Reichstag—the German parliament at the time—to effectively dump the legitimate Weimar Constitution in order to enable him to succeed the deeply beloved 85-year-old military hero and political leader, whom he likely was prepared to murder if age and cancer didn’t get him (although there’s no proof of that).

Hitler was able to subvert the Reichstag and the parliamentary process by extrajudicially (of course) having his Nazi goons arrest 107 Communist Party and Social Democrat members so they couldn’t attend and stationing other Nazi goons outside the voting venue (not the Reichstag, because that had been heavily damaged by probably-Nazi arson) to intimidate members who could and did attend. Hitler thus got his notorious Enabling Act with a 441 to 94 vote. One may wonder about the fate of the 94 parliamentarians who voted the wrong way.

The Enabling Act of 1933 overrode and violated the Weimar Constitution by, among other things, canceling basic civil rights and banning rival political factions as well as bypassing both the president and the parliament—and checks and balances—in the legislative process by empowering the cabinet under the iron hand of Chancellor Hitler to issue laws. At the time, Hitler hadn’t handpicked the cabinet, but he wasn’t worried. (Don’t even think about executive orders.)

So on 1 August 1934, with 86-year-old President Paul von Hindenburg on his death bed, totally dissing the Weimar Constitution, Chancellor Adolf Hitler had the compliant German cabinet enact a succession law that combined the powers of president and chancellor into one absolute dictator. Das heißt, der Führer wurde geboren.

After Hindenburg died on 2 August (of lung cancer and old age—probably), rather than assuming the title of President (out of respect for Hindenburg, he claimed), Hitler became the Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Chancellor) and absolute dictator of Germany, combining the powers of president and chancellor into one unquestionably omnipotent office—and making himself commander-in-chief of the armed forces in the bargain.

Two weeks later, Hitler held a plebiscite, a fake referendum (i.e., non-secret voting, Nazi goon surveillance, rigged counts, all the usual stuff), to get the official approval of the public. No surprise that he got 90 percent approval out of some 46 million votes cast.

No surprise, either, that populist demagogue Hitler was quite popular with much of the benighted public—just as he was feared by the enlightened much. It’s hard to gauge his popularity based on a plebiscite, but he certainly was more popular than Donald Trump is now.

Not that there’s any comparison, to be sure . . .