Hitler

by Peter Longerich

  In the light of all this activity, it is easy to appreciate the extent to which everyday life for people in the Third Reich, in the sense of the dictum Hitler propounded in 1938, came within the purview of the Party and its satellite organizations. The NSDAP was capable of covering the entire country with numerous overlapping and, in the main, dense networks that monitored and educated the population in line with NS ideology, selecting those ‘national comrades’ worthy of advancement while systematically excluding ‘community aliens’ from support and disciplining them.54 An important aspect of this wide-ranging ‘supervision’ consisted in the various charitable and social benefits provided, the numerous leisure, further education, and other opportunities offered to ‘national comrades’ by the various Nazi organizations, which were in part a replacement for the many clubs and associations the Nazis had either closed down or coordinated. Individuals had a wide range of motives for joining the organizations mentioned above, such as obedience to a regime whose aim was as far as possible to organize the whole population; determination to take advantage of the available opportunities; the desire to play an active role in the creation of the new ‘national community’; the attempt to gain recognition by taking on tasks in the neighbourhood, and, last but not least, to work one’s way up the Party as a volunteer and so put oneself in line for a salaried post.

  The massive expansion of the Party organization meant that it increasingly assumed the duties of the state. Party functionaries took on posts in the state, often carrying them out in conjunction with their Party functions or propelling themselves into positions of control over the state administration. Examples of people who combined state and Party functions at Reich level were Goebbels (Head of the Party’s Reich Propaganda/Reich Minister of Propaganda), Darré (Head of the Party’s Agriculture Office/Reich Minister of Agriculture), Himmler (Chief of the German Police/Reichsführer SS), and Hess (‘Führer’s’ Deputy/Party Minister).

  Of the total of thirty Gauleiters in the Reich55 the majority also held state offices in their particular region. In 1933 ten Gauleiters had been given supervisory powers over the states in their office as Reich governors, and two were also state prime ministers. In 1935 six Gauleiters were Oberpräsidenten, in other words simultaneously heads of the administration in Prussian provinces, while two were also heads of Bavarian government districts, and Josef Bürckel, Gauleiter of the Palatinate, also held the post of Reich Commissar in the Saarland.56 When the German Local Government Law came into force in January 1935 the NSDAP district leaders were appointed ‘representatives’ of the Party in local councils who ‘took part in’ the appointment of mayors and local councillors.57

  Historians have regarded these developments in the main as representing the ‘usurpation’ of state functions by the Party. Viewed from this perspective, the well-organized state apparatus, bound by laws and by the established practices of administration and directed by staff with appropriate professional qualifications, was plundered by a clique of power-hungry, fanatical, and often corrupt functionaries. The result was a ‘progressive undermining of hitherto binding legal norms’, a ‘dissolution of the fabric of the state’.58 These findings illuminate only one aspect of the relationship between Party and state in the Third Reich, however. It is important to recognize that the prevalent conflation of state and Party functions was the means by which to ensure that the system as a whole had the necessary cohesion. This admittedly happened in a largely arbitrary manner, with the result that the relationship between the Party and state apparatus remained in a sort of limbo.59 Although it was quite normal for one person to hold Party and state offices simultaneously, this state of affairs was never openly acknowledged as being a matter of policy and on occasions it was even expressly prohibited.

  Hitler’s attitude to the issue of a comprehensive reform of the administrative structure of the Reich and states and the associated problem of finally clarifying the relationship between Party and state provides a typical example of his tactical procrastination over matters to do with the formal organization of his regime. The administrative experts, most prominently Interior Minister, Frick, were agreed that a ‘Reich reform’ was urgently called for. Crucial issues were the extension of the powers of the Reich and the reorganization of its states into around fifteen to twenty administrative units of roughly the same size, which would have led to the dissolution of Prussia into its component provinces and the abolition of small states, and rested on the assumption that the boundaries of the state administration would be coterminous with the Party Gaus. This would have meant that all Gauleiters were integrated into a clear Reich structure. At first Hitler seemed open to such plans, but at the beginning of 1935 he put them on the back burner.60 The lack of clarity in the existing structure of power – in which the old states (of extremely varying sizes) continued to exist, Reich governors were in place alongside state governments, and the Party was made up of Gaus and districts covering geographical areas that did not correspond to those of the state apparatus – was much more congenial to him. For the provisional nature of his regime helped to stoke rivalries and in the end offered him more opportunities to intervene than any ‘reformed’ Reich as recommended by the administrative experts.

  Intervening and directing

  Thus far, we can now draw a clear conclusion: Whereas under Hitler’s regime the government dissolved as a collective body, with individual ministries gaining greater autonomy, at the same time Hitler as dictator dispensed with any coherent control over a Party apparatus that was proliferating more and more and trespassing on state territory. Even if this attitude can be attributed to the ‘Führer’, who was in any case removed from the everyday matters of government, being reluctant to involve himself in internal disputes, his unwillingness to make decisions inevitably led in the end to rivalries and open hostilities emerging about issues of responsibilities and powers. Hitler as the ultimate source of authority was increasingly faced with these situations.

  To guarantee the effectiveness of his regime, Hitler resorted to a number of strategies through which to intervene in and direct events.

  First of all, in critical areas Hitler repeatedly appointed special commissioners (also called general inspectors, commissars, plenipotentiaries), equipping them with extraordinary powers. Although the use of such appointees to solve specific problems that could be dealt with more expeditiously outside the routine business of the state bureaucracy was certainly part of the tradition of administration in Germany, it had up to that point happened mainly on a temporary basis and within the constraints of the constitution. Under the permanent state of emergency with regard to the constitution that prevailed in the Third Reich and in view of the decline of collective government, special commissioners acquired particular significance. This practice was above all in line with Hitler’s anti-bureaucratic maxim of not tackling problems by bringing in the experts, but instead by investing powers to do so in men he trusted and who were personally responsible to him.

  Special commissioners were, for example, given responsibility to direct large-scale projects that threatened to burst the confines of existing structures. The appointment of Fritz Todt as General Inspector of German Roads was a case in point, and the appointment of Speer early in 1937 as General Building Inspector for the Reich Capital was another. Hitler, however, invested special powers in people in particular to gain some measure of control over the economic and social crises arising from the rapid pace of rearmament. This was true of the appointment of Goerdeler as Reich Prices Commissioner in autumn 1934 and of the special powers given to Göring that culminated in summer 1936 in the Four-Year Plan. Schirach’s appointment as Youth Leader of the German Reich was linked to a special commission from Hitler to ensure that the Hitler Youth would supervise youth organizations in their entirety.61 Joachim von Ribbentrop was active in foreign affairs as a special commissioner; from 1934 onwards he was foreign policy adviser and the Reich government representative for disarmament matters as well as being th
e representative for foreign policy matters within the office of the ‘Führer’s’ Deputy. As a result of this dual task, the foreign affairs office he set up to deal with these responsibilities (the Ribbentrop Bureau) was a curious hybrid creation existing between the state and the Party apparatus.62 Josef Bürckel’s task from 1935 as Reich Commissioner for the Reincorporation of the Saarland served as a pilot for later special powers granted in connection with annexations and the establishment of occupation regimes.

  At least until the outbreak of war, however, the number of special commissioners directly responsible to Hitler remained limited; they were used deliberately to cope with particular urgent issues and it would be wrong to assume that in the 1930s his style of government was determined by an impenetrable tangle of special powers. It is telling that the ambitions of those who aspired to be ‘empowered by the Führer’ were not always realized. For example, Konstantin Hierl, the Commissioner for the Labour Service, who in 1933 was appointed director of the state Labour Service within the Reich Ministry of Labour, failed in his attempt to make this function into a Supreme Reich Authority as a result of opposition from the Reich Interior Ministry. In July 1934 Hierl became Reich Commissioner for the Labour Service but under the Reich Interior Minister.63 Most commissioners were attached to a ministry or were appointed by Göring after 1936 to help him deliver the Four-Year Plan and therefore did not enjoy the privilege of being answerable ‘directly to the Führer’.

  Special commissioners allowed Hitler to focus on specific political issues quickly and with the minimum of red tape and to coordinate tasks that were spread over a number of different ministries. He could use this strategy to intervene in the existing administrative structure without making any fundamental changes to that structure. As the special commissioners directly answerable to Hitler were carrying out ‘commissions from the Führer’, their success was dependent on Hitler’s support and this dependence enabled the dictator to give effective and clearly visible expression to his desire to shape political developments. This created the impression of a supreme leader who tackled problems vigorously and decisively.64

  Secondly: Hitler’s personalized leadership style, his tendency to allocate responsibilities not according to people’s qualifications to do the job but according to whether he considered them loyal, led to a situation where individual senior functionaries were charged with a whole series of tasks. These could be state matters, Party matters, or other kinds of ‘special tasks’ assigned by Hitler and could well involve several political areas. Thus during the first years of the dictatorship two extensive and very heterogeneous empires arose under the aegis of Göring and Himmler. In addition to his powers as Prime Minister of Prussia, Prussian Minister of the Interior (up to 1934), Reich Minister of Aviation and Supreme Commander of the Luftwaffe, Göring had been given not only responsibility for the whole of forestry (including hunting), but in particular in 1936 the special task of implementing the Four-Year Plan. On top of all that he also had a special role in Third Reich foreign policy.65 Reichsführer SS Himmler had gradually succeeded in placing the entire police apparatus under his command as a centralized Reich police force and putting himself in charge of all the concentration camps. He was working on uniting the SS and the police to form a single ‘state protection corps’. Since 1936/37 Himmler had also been intervening decisively in the regime’s policies towards ethnic Germans, for in his view German ethnic minorities abroad represented important outposts for a future ‘Greater Germanic’ policy.66

  Other Nazi functionaries also combined several offices: Darré, the Reich Agriculture Minister, was not only Reich head of the Party’s Agriculture Office but also head of the ‘Reich Food Estate’ (the ‘corporate’ organization that regulated the production and marketing of agricultural products) and head of the SS Race and Settlement Main Office. Goebbels was not only Reich Minister of Propaganda and head of propaganda for the Party but also President of the Chamber of Culture as well as Gauleiter of Berlin. Robert Ley was not only head of the Party’s Reich organization but also head of the German Labour Front and, from 1940 onwards, Reich Commissar for Social Housing Construction. As a result, power blocs arose that, as the individual political spheres involved often had little in common or were at odds with each other, were held together only by the men who headed them and whose power resided chiefly in the personal regard Hitler bestowed on them.

  Thirdly: In order to guarantee a minimum of coherence within his regime, Hitler, as in the ‘time of struggle’, summoned the Party’s Reichsleiters and Gauleiters to meetings, sometimes separately and sometimes all together. Between 1933 and the outbreak of war alone he did so twenty-seven times. These meetings sometimes lasted several days and as a rule focused on specific subjects. There was an agenda for the day, with presentations and discussions. Up to the beginning of the war they were regularly chaired by Hitler, who delivered lengthy addresses to ‘give clear direction’ to the Party elite. The speeches and content of discussions were confidential. Their purpose was to give senior Party figures essential information about the policies of the leadership and to bring them into line. In addition, these meetings offered an important opportunity to pass on information, informally as well as formally. As numerous Reichsleiters and Gauleiters were simultaneously in state posts these meetings extended far beyond the confines of the Party. Yet according to everything we know about these occasions there remained one taboo, namely any open questioning of Hitler’s policies or putting him under pressure to justify them.67 And the most crucial aspect: no decisions were made here. Even within the sphere of the Party, Hitler was therefore careful not to make himself dependent on any supreme body.

  In addition, Hitler met ten of the Gauleiters as part of their state functions at Reich governor (Reichstatthalter) conferences, which were held a number of times in the early years of the regime in order as far as possible to achieve consistency in the way policy was directed in the various states.68 There were also regular conferences of functionaries, consultation exercises, and the like at all levels of the Party hierarchy, quite apart from informal exchanges of information, which frequently took place at social gatherings. The ‘decline’ and ‘dissolution’ of the Party and state apparatus therefore went hand in hand with redoubled efforts to create opportunities to exchange information and opinions.69

  It was therefore characteristic of Hitler’s regime that, on the one hand, the dictator allowed established organizational structures and hierarchies to wither away or where possible prevented them from developing, while, on the other, he created strategies to make it easier for him to intervene directly in individual parts of the power structure. He accepted the lack of clear direction, clarity, and consistency, also the conflicts over areas of responsibility and the rivalries. For the increasing lack of structure to his regime, the ‘chaos of offices’ frequently cited by historians, strengthened his personal position. In other words, Hitler had discovered the form of government that allowed him (by means of special commissions, the concentration of several roles in a few loyal followers, targeting information, or disinformation, at appropriate functionaries, as well as the dual system of Party and state) to enforce his political will directly as an autocratic dictator.

  This form of government was also consonant with his own life-style and work-style, in which, by contrast with prevalent theories of rule, there was no clear separation between office and private sphere.

  Although during his first months as Chancellor he had submitted to a disciplined work-style and a regular daily routine, read files, and arrived at cabinet meetings well prepared, he then discarded these habits the more he grew into his position as omnipotent dictator. As far as possible he avoided being incorporated into the working routine of the apparatus of power; instead he retreated from the requirements of discharging his responsibilities according to a regular timetable, and expected those in the political leadership to adapt to his largely unstructured rhythm. Hitler’s day at the Reich Chancellery has frequen
tly been described as positively indolent.70 He would not arrive in his office suite until the late morning, would then often make his guests – a varying group of two or three dozen office holders, who would turn up each day – wait a long time for lunch, which in turn would be extended until late in the afternoon as a result of long, rambling conversations. This was often followed by confidential discussions with individuals. In the evening there was a meal, at which discussion of political matters was frowned upon, often followed by a film (mostly a piece of light entertainment) and ending as a rule with a smaller circle of people such as adjutants, colleagues, and guests, whom Hitler liked to treat to his monologues far into the night.

  Another aspect of his life were his frequent absences from Berlin. He lived for several weeks a year on the Obersalzberg and was relatively often in Munich, which as the ‘capital of the Movement’ remained the seat of the huge and expanding Party headquarters and where he still kept his private apartment. In addition, there were the annual lengthy stays in Bayreuth at the Wagner Festival and in Nuremberg for the Party Rally. Hitler also liked to travel about the country, in part to enjoy seeing it as a tourist. Even for ministers and important functionaries, therefore, direct access to him was a distinct privilege that he handed out via an opaque camarilla of adjutants. Hitler preferred confidential meetings with individuals, which often arose spontaneously out of conversations at the lunch table, in the comparatively relaxed atmosphere on the Obersalzberg or somewhere on one of his journeys, to big work sessions or regular meetings of committees and boards. His life-style thus created an almost perfect environment for his personalized style of leadership.