HIST2125
Hitler’s Germany
Lecture 7:
Hitler and the Führer State
11 October 2012
Historiography on Hitler
• Who makes history? Individuals OR
structures?
• Who was Hitler? A strong OR
a weak dictator?
→ Intentionalist, programmatist, Hitlerist
school/approach/interpretation
≠
→ Structuralist, functionalist
school/approach/interpretation
Schools & Studies (1)
Intentionalist,
programmatist, Hitlerist
school/approach:
• Structuralist,
functionalist
school/approach:
• A. Bullock (Hitler, 1952)
• J.C. Fest (Hitler, 1973)
• S. Haffner (The Meaning
of Hitler, 1979)
• K.D. Bracher (The
German Dictatorship,
1970)
• M. Broszat (The Hitler
State, 1969)
• H. Mommsen
(Beamtentum im Dritten
Reich, 1966)
• I. Kershaw (The Hitler
Myth, 1987)
Schools & Studies (2)
Integrated school/approach/interpretation:
Ian Kershaw (Hitler, 1998)
= Merge of intentionalist + structuralist
approaches
Hitler’s style of government
•
•
•
•
•
•
Showing image of statesman & Führer
Disregarding government & bureaucracy
Opposing daily routine work
Expressing Bohemian work + life style
Permitting only limited direct access to him
Issuing dictatorial orders (Führerbefehle)
= No master-plan: Mostly intuitive actions
Dualism of State and Party (1)
Consolidation/coordination of NS power in
Germany’s federal States (1933):
• Sandwiched: SA terror + NS pressure
• Police forces partly taken over by SS
• Dismissal of elected States’ governments
• Appointment of special Commissioners
(Reichsstatthalter = NSDAP district Gau leaders)
Dualism of State and Party (2)
→ Dominant position of NSDAP district Gau leaders
in States
→ Permanent conflicts: States’ bureaucracies ≠
regional/local NSDAP branches
→ Growing rivalry in better ‘working for Hitler’
►
Dualism of State + NSDAP
= First Step into Polycracy
Polycratic system (1)
Rivalling Power groups:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
NSDAP: ‘The Party’ (Die Partei)
SA (Sturmabteilung): Storm Detachment
SS (Schutzstaffel): Defence Unit/Elite Guard
SD (Sicherheitsdienst): Security Service
Army (Wehrmacht)
Big Business
Higher levels of government offices
Polycratic system (2)
Gradual power shift of rivalling groups:
• SA ☻→ SS ☺ + Army ☺ (1934)
• Bureaucracy ☻→ NS Special
Administrations ☺
• Judiciary + Police ☻→ SS ☺
• Big Business: peace years ☺ → war ☻
Polycracy: Reasons (1)
Intentionalist school:
Structuralist school:
• A pure chance
• The inevitable result
of H’s government
style
• A consequence of H’s
‘divide and rule’
strategy
• H’s unwillingness +
inability to regulate
systematically power
relations
Polycracy: Reasons (2)
Integrated school/approach:
I. Kershaw (Hitler, 1998):
• H’s chaotic style of government
• H’s dialectic interplay with structures
• H’s responsibility for creating ‘political
climate’ of NS dynamic-destructive actions
Conclusion
• NS propaganda slogan ‘unity of party and state’
≠ Dualism / Polycracy
→ Improvisation, conflict, bureaucratic chaos
→ Forms of ‘survival of the fittest’ (Social Darwinism)
→ Hitler not mediating but issuing dictatorial orders
→ NS constitution never realized
= Strong unified Führer State: Only propaganda !