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.
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.
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.
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:
- the revolutionary act of 1933, which expelled non-Aryans and unreliables in the service;
- the systematic indoctrination of the existing personnel; and
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.