There are as many different interpretations of
the political system advanced and practiced by the Nazi Party as there are
systems of political theory and views of German culture and history. Over
the years the notion has been introduced that Nazism was
1. a salvage operation of bourgeois capitalism;
2. a victory for conservative, racist and militaristic nationalism;
3. the triumph of amoral, bureaucratic technocracy;
4. a revolution of lower, middle-class resentment and avarice;
5. an unprecedented, collective explosion of the diseased, racist German psyche;
6. an expression of anarchic mass democracy in a postindustrial mass society;
7. a modern experiment in totalitarian rule- along with fascism and communism.
I leave it for you to decide which of these interpretations has prevailing
merit. I also leave it for you to decide what my interpretation is and how
much validity it contains in the light of your own knowledge and
understanding. I suspect that one's assessment of the Nazi movement and
regime depends on whether one takes a philosophical, historical, social or
more traditional political approach to the problem.
I. Ministerial Bureaucracy
The ministerial bureaucracy was considerably increased under Hitler. He
followed the basic bureaucratic principle that you never eliminate any
position or program but simply add new offices and positions to effect
change, which becomes thereby less and less likely. There was a real social
antagonism between the academic and non-academic sections of the ministerial
bureaucracy under Hitler as well as under the Weimar Republic. The upper
civil servants regarded the state as a business undertaking, to be run
efficiently and expeditiously. Success was of greater value than right or
social justice. Efficient and incorruptible in the ordinary sense, the
ministerial bureaucracy was the center of every anti-democratic movement in
Weimar Germany.
In the Nazi ministries most of the same old bureaucrats were still there,
since Hitler could not run the state without them and since many of them had
helped him come to power. Only one Secretary of State, Ronald Freisler, was
new. Meissner, Lammers and others were holdovers from the old regime.
Meissner, in fact, had served Ebert, Hindenburg and Hitler with equal
neutrality. There was a complete change in the Economics Ministry, in terms
of personnel, but this did not really mean a substantial change in policy. A
comparison of the the bureaucracy of 1931 and 1936 shows a remarkable
continuity: from the academic bureaucracy to the heads of provincial and
local finance organizations, to members of provincial and local financial
tribunals, to civil and criminal advocates and a large percentage of the
domestic administrative staffs. Among the many exceptions to this general
rule was the province of Prussia, where considerable personnel changes took
place.
The ministerial bureaucracy was a closed caste, particularly in Germany,
with its long history of bureaucratic efficiency, dating back to Frederick
the Great. This much respected social elite had never shown any peculiar
tendency towards social reform. As the socialists would say, it never tried
to betray capitalism. It was the most important agency in the formation of
policy, especially as it related to economic financial, social and
agricultural matters.
However, this bureaucracy was not unlimited. It had to respond to Hitler's
wishes, since he had popular support. And it had to compete with three civil
bureaucracies, those of the party, the Army and industry. In a sense, you
could say that the Nazi system was an intricate maze of competing, multiple
bureaucracies, which had a tendency to overlap, conflict and occasionally
cancel each other out, thus inhibiting the Führer's wishes and directives.
The system was much less totalitarian than has usually been assumed. It was
much less a Führer-state than the Nazis said it was and naive observers
believed it to be.
II. Party Hierarchy
The ruling group consisted of Hitler, his deputy Bormann, the Reichsleiter,
Goering, the Gauleiter, cabinet ministers and the secretaries of state. The
influence of the Reichsleiter in most instances was the decisive one. The 33
district leaders, or Gauleiter, were assuming more and more influence in the
late thirties, although during the war their influence declined. During the
war men like Himmler, Goebbel's and Speer, along with the central
bureaucracy, assumed more and more power.
Before the war, a party hierarchy of about 120 men composed the core of the
ruling group. The central administration was in Munich, although a special
center in Berlin, under Bormann, exercised a decisive lever on party policy.
Rudolf Hess lost his power and influence long before the war and the
quixotic flight to England. Attached to the Berlin Party Center were a
series of offices which maintained close contact with the state ministries.
These offices were usually headed by ministerial bureaucrats or other
ranking civil servants. For instance, foreign policy matters were handled by
Bohle, who was also a secretary of state in the foreign office. Technology
was under Fritz Todt, largely responsible for the building of the Autobahn.
The dualism of party and government had a double function: the bureaucracy
was not disturbed and remained fully responsible for the administration. The
influence of the party was secured through the liaison officers, holding
positions in both party and state. The official propaganda made a big to do
about these dual positions, calling them a kind of "melting station" (Schmelzstelle)
of party and state. This mystical, largely inexplicable conception was to
demonstrate the unique quality of the Nazi system, believed to be a mystical
yet practical political expression of the dynamic, organic state.
But the party hierarchy really was not very well integrated. Cabals and
intrigue inevitably produced in a closed, hierarchic group, clustered around
a leader, prevented that kind of homogeneity which is the prerequisite of
popular rule. Strangely enough, that infighting and conflict also prevented
the formation of a solid, monolithic, totalitarian structure which the Nazis
wanted to create.
III. Civil Service and Party
It may come as a surprise to you that teachers in Germany have always been
civil servants. Under Hitler the elementary teachers organization was
completely under Nazi control. Some 160,000 party political functionaries,
in 1936-1937, came from the teaching profession, mostly those engaged in
elementary education. This meant that some 22% of 700,000 political leaders
came from the teaching profession. Their participation in the National
Socialist regime demonstrated the complete deterioration of German
philosophical idealism, as officially taught. It symbolized a decline of
Kant's legal and political philosophy. By banishing the idea of law into the
sphere of transcendence, Kant left actual law and actual morals at the mercy
of empiricism and the blind forces of tradition.
The elementary teachers were separated from high school teachers, with their
university education, by a deep social gulf. Their income was low and their
social status close to that of the proletariat. Under the Empire they used
Army service as a means of social elevation. But under the pacifist Weimar
Republic they were "forced" to join the SS and SA to get some recognition.
The pseudo-equality of National Socialism, and its private Army of
paramilitary troops, thus provided an outlet for massive resentments
accumulated during the Weimar years.
Beside the teachers, the party used three methods of infiltrating the
traditional civil service:
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the revolutionary act of 1933, which expelled non-Aryans and unreliables in the service; |
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the systematic indoctrination of the existing personnel; and |
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the party monopolization of new openings. |
By using these methods effectively the new civil
service moved in two directions: social differences were destroyed to some
extent and a new elite was gradually formed within the civil service. But it
was false democratization, since status and power remained completely
unchanged even in the lower ranks of the civil service.
As we have seen, the upper civil service or ministerial bureaucracy,
remained largely free from old party members. It related to the Nazi regime
via liaison officers or by the assignment of state tasks directly to party
officials. A good example of the latter process are the police (under
Himmler's SS), the youth (under Schirach's Hitler-Jugend) and propaganda
(under Goebbels).
In the middle and lower civil service hierarchies, key positions were held
by party men, while the non-party majority was terrorized and indoctrinated
through party cells. The submergence of the civil service in the party was
in full swing by the beginning of the war, since promotions and new
positions were in party control. However, this process was somewhat reversed
during the war, when military demands depleted the civil service and allowed
the older bureaucrats to reassert their authority.
IV. Army and Party
The Army alone knew how to keep itself organizationally free from party
interference. Its complicity in Hitler's appointment as chancellor gave it
greater independence vis-a-vis the party than other institutions. This
independence was further enhanced in 1934, when the Army literally forced
Hitler to eliminate the SA as a rival military group, in order to buy
further Army support. Since Hitler's foreign policy could not possibly be
achieved without the support of the old professionals in the Army, he always
treated the Army with unusual deference. It is noteworthy that among all the
various segments in society only the Army made serious attempts to depose
Hitler, particularly in 1938 and 1944.
For that matter, the Army essentially agreed with Hitler that the frontiers
of 1914 should be restored and colonies should be re-acquired. Close
contacts with industry tended to make the German Army the most powerful arm
of imperialist expansion. Thus, despite its organizational independence, the
Army kowtowed to Hitler like it never did to the Weimar Republic. But the
Army was also out to preserve its existence, its social and political status
within society. Only total defeat finally removed the Army as the
predominant force in German society. So Hitler, finally, did by accident
what the Revolution of 1918 failed to do by intent.
V. Industrial Leadership
The point could be made that private capitalism and bureaucratization of the
economy are essentially incompatible. If this is true, then Hitler's regime
should have begun the process of destroying capitalism in Germany. But this
did not happen, despite the fact that a radical element in the Nazi Party
wanted to do exactly that. But that radical element, led by Otto Strasser,
was already effectively eliminated before Hitler's seizure of power. What
actually developed after 1933 was an interesting demonstration of how well
capitalism and bureaucratization complement each other.
National Socialism was not feudalistic in its economic policy, as some
scholars have suggested, since that would have meant direct human relations,
without the mediation of a market in the economic mechanism. In reality
depersonalization promoted by bureaucratization serves to conceal the seat
of economic power. The real economic rulers operate behind a plethora of
organizations surrounding private property. This fact is responsible for the
false interpretation of bureaucratization of the economy as the
disappearance of private ownership.
But industrial leadership, under the Nazis, differed from the Weimar model
in certain respects. Commercial capital was no longer represented. In other
words, free trade did not exist. Commercial capital had lost its predominant
position, and heavy industry was restricted to some degree-at least to the
extent that it could not interfere with the overall objectives of the regime
in foreign and domestic policy. So, industrial leadership, under the Nazi
regime, was smaller and much more integrated than it had been in the Weimar
period.
In a sense, the whole Nazi economy was under the rule of certain monopoly
producers, who made a deal with the political rulers. Although, I hasten to
add, that this does not mean that the Marxists are right in saying that the
Nazi party represented a capitalist plot to save itself from disintegration.
The Nazi movement was much more than a mere salvage operation of monopoly
capitalism. Hitler used the capitalists as much as they used him.
VI. Agrarian Leadership
The economic problems of the East-Elbian Junkers was a persistent issue in
the late Weimar Republic. The Osthilfe, a kind of welfare system for
bankrupt landowners, introduced in 1931, was a device to preserve the social
and economic status of the Junkers. There were obvious irregularities in
this scheme, which led Schleicher to call for an investigation of the
Osthilfe. He lost the support of the Junkers for this reason, as well as for
the attempt to get the support of the trade unions. He was vigorously
denounced by the Junkers, as an agrarian Bolshevik, and consequently fell
from power.
Hitler's appointment, then, was followed by the revival of political power
for the Junkers. The National Socialists, therefore, did nothing to check
the centralization of agriculture. Instead, the Nazis concentrated on the
deliberate creation of a reliable elite of wealthy peasants, at the expense
of small farmers. They tried to form a solid corps of some 700,000
hereditary peasants, whose estates could not be encumbered, who could extent
their holdings without restriction, and whose products received price
protection. The Nazis then repaid the Junkers for going along with this, by
applying the Hereditary Estates Act to the feudal lords as well. Thus two
anachronism existed side by side: a Junker class and the hereditary
peasants, one was the remnant of a dying class and the other an elite among
independent peasants.
Thus the political system of the Nazi regime was characterized by profits,
power, prestige, and above all, fear. Devoid of the common loyalty, and
concerned solely with the preservation of their own interests, the ruling
groups were bound to break apart as soon as the miracle-working Führer met a
worthy opponent. Since political leadership became more and more a monopoly
of the party, constant efforts had to be made to renew the ruling class.
Thus every youth was compelled to become a member of the Hitler Youth
organization after 1936-1939. Schools became increasingly under party
control and more than 90% of college students were organized in the National
Socialist Student Association.
VII. The Führerprinzip or Principle of Leadership
At the top of the political pyramid stood the living embodiment of Weber's
charismatic leadership-Adolf Hitler. He was really more than a classical
tyrant or a traditional dictator. The Nazis themselves called their system a
Führer-state. The implication of this statement was that the ramshackle
structure really would not survive the life of the current leader. He alone
gave it life and breath. This is the way it turned out. It is doubtful that
the system could have been perpetuated, even if the war had not been lost
under a Goering, Goebbels or Himmler. None of them possessed the kind of
magnetic appeal that Hitler had.
The essential medium of Hitler's power over audiences-and his own
temperament-was speech. Words and facts were only devices for the
manipulation of emotions. He hated intellectuals and practitioners of reason
and argument, while revealing an instinctive sensitivity to the moods of the
crowd. He made an extraordinary impression of force, an immediacy of
passion, an intensity of fury, and conveyed menace by the sound of his
voice. His was the magnetism of a hypnotist, combined with the role of the
visionary and the prophet. He wanted to breed a new biological elite by
reducing whole nations to slavery in order to form an empire. Hitler was
always close to the irrational. As long as he deliberately exploited the
irrational side of human nature, he was brilliantly successful. It was when
he began to believe in his own magic, and accepted the myth of himself as
true, that his flair faltered. He was essentially a mixture of calculation
and fanaticism.
His capacity for self-dramatization revealed itself particularly in the
device of always putting himself on the defensive, making himself into a
kind of political martyr. Yet at the same time he gave the impression of
concentrated will power and superhuman intelligence. He was a consummate
actor, a great politician who saw the weaknesses of his opponents. He had a
keen sense of opportunity and timing. He knew how to wait for the right
moment, as in 1932. Surprise was a favorite gambit of his. Above all, he was
the master of mass emotion. No regime in history has ever paid such careful
attention to psychological factors in politics. He used a method of
intoxication with himself and his audiences. Universal distrust
characterized his every move, which was always devoid of any scruples or
inhibitions. All was the result of cold calculation. Divide and rule-the
dualism of party and state-were all deliberate devices to maintain his
power. He particularly distrusted the experts, and acted on the assumption
that force and threat of force would solve all problems.
He had a deep craving to dominate and hence a constant need for praise. His
cynicism finally stopped with his own person. "I go were Providence dictates
with the assurance of a sleepwalker," he said. But repeated success was
fatal-he came to believe in his own infallibility. So, failure came from the
same gift for self-dramatization that brought earlier success. Hitler was a
modern example, perhaps even a modern perversion, of what the Greeks used to
call hubris, overweening pride. Among the few things he liked was baroque
architecture, which led him to hate all art from the impressionists to
modern art.
He knew few pleasures and predicted a vegetarian future. He was only
impressed by power. Consequently, he liked the organization of the Roman
Catholic Church, but had nothing but contempt for the Protestant clergy. In
religion, he was a rationalist and materialist, although he opposed the
establishment of pagan rites and made fun of Himmler's silly moves to
surround the SS with primitive pagan symbolism. In practice, he was somewhat
restrained in his anticlericalism for political reasons and even allowed the
formation of a Protestant counter-church, the so-called German Christians.
He had a naive 19th century faith in science, but no understanding of the
spiritual and profoundly emotional side of human nature. Emotion was only
the raw material of power. Perhaps a symptom of his underworld origins, was
his persistent distrust of those who came from the bourgeois world.
His whole cast of mind was historical and his sense of mission derived from
his sense of history. He was dogmatic and intolerant in his simplistic
beliefs. There was an innate vulgarity and coarseness of spirit that
constituted the essential Hitler. A crude belief in Darwinism compelled him
to interpret struggle as the father of all things. This is the key to his
racist mania, since virtue was to be found only in blood and leadership.
With this principle in mind, even in Germany, only part of the population
could be considered to be purely Aryan. Since race justified everything, it
was more important than equality. The superior claims of the racially pure
Volk, in Hitler's view, had prevail over personal liberty. Hence, inferior
races and ethnic groups were disposable, as so much human waste material.
Hitler saw the state as an instrument of power, in which the qualities to be
valued were discipline, unity and sacrifice. His was a plebiscitary and
popular dictatorship, a democratic Caesarism. In fact, his state was based
on popular support to a degree that few people care to admit, particularly
today, when the horrors of the Nazi regime recede into the oblivion of
universal historical myopia. The Führerprinzip, the role of the elites, the
personality in history, these were the simplistic constants of his political
theory. The Kampfzeit, or time of struggle, was a process of natural
selection, which created the elite of the party. That party was held in
reserve, to safeguard the Volk, if the state should fail. The party was the
link between Führer andVolk, an agent for the education of the people in the
Nazi Weltanschauung. He had contempt for liberalism but hostility to
Marxism, because it was a viable rival. His antisemitism was the one most
consistent theme of his career.
There was nothing original in Hitler's political system, or in his basic
ideas. There was, however, something quite new in Hitler's literal
translation of these ideas into reality, and in his grasp of the means to do
so.