46: "Working Toward the Führer"

On 21 February 1934, the State Secretary in the Prussian Agricultural Ministry gave a speech in which he argued that it was the "duty" of every single German "to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work towards him. Anyone making mistakes will come to notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly towards the Führer along his lines and towards his aim will in future as previously have the finest reward of one day suddenly attaining the legal confirmation of his work."

After quoting this, Ian Kershaw writes:

"These comments, made in a routine speech, hold a key to how the Third Reich operated. Between Hindenburg's death at the beginning of August 1934 and the Blomberg-Fritsch crisis in late January and early February 1938, the Führer state took shape. These were the 'normal' years of the Third Reich that lived in the memories of many contemporaries as the 'good' years (though they were scarcely that for the already growing numbers of victims of Nazism). But they were also years in which the 'cumulative radicalization' so characteristic of the Nazi regime began to gather pace.

"One feature of this process was the fragmentation of government as Hitler's form of personalized rule distorted the machinery of administration and called into being a panoply of overlapping and competing agencies dependent in differing ways upon the "will of the Führer.' At the same time, the racial and expansionist goals at the heart of Hitler's own Weltanschauung [a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group] began in these years gradually to come more sharply into focus, though by no means always as a direct consequence of Hitler's own actions. Not least, these were the years in which Hitler's prestige and power, institutionally unchallengeable after the summer of 1934, expanded to the point where it was absolute.

"These three tendencies -- erosion of collective government, emergence of clearer ideological goals, and Führer absolutism -- were closely interrelated. Hitler's personal actions, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, were certainly vital to the development. But the decisive component was that unwittingly singled out in his speech by Werner Willikens [the State Secretary in the Prussian Agricultural Ministry]. Hitler's personalized form of rule invited radical initiatives from below and offered such initiatives backing, so long as they were in line with his broadly defined goals. This promoted ferocious competition at all levels of the regime, among competing agencies, and among individuals within those agencies.

"In the Darwinist jungle of the Third Reich, the way to power and advancement was through anticipating the 'Führer will,' and, without waiting for directives, taking initiatives to promote what were presumed to be Hitler's aims and wishes. For party functionaries and ideologues and for SS 'technocrats of power,' 'working towards the Führer' could have a literal meaning. But, metaphorically, ordinary citizens denouncing neighbors to the Gestapo, often turning personal animosity or resentment to their advantage through political slur, businessmen happy to exploit anti-Jewish legislation to rid themselves of competitors, and the many others whose daily forms of minor cooperation with the regime took place at the cost of others, were -- whatever their motives -- indirectly 'working towards the Führer.' They were as a consequence helping drive on an unstoppable radicalization which saw the gradual emergence in concrete shape of policy objectives embodied in the 'mission of the Führer.

"Through 'working towards the Führer,' initiatives were taken, pressures created, legislations instigated -- all in ways which fell into line with what were taken to be Hitler's aims, and without the Dictator necessarily having to dictate. The result was continuing radicalization of policy in a direction which brought Hitler's own biological imperatives more plainly into view as practicable policy options. The disintegration of the formal machinery of government and the accompanying ideological radicalization resulted then directly and inexorably from the specific form of personalized rule under Hitler. Conversely, both decisively shaped the process by which Hitler's personalized power was able to free itself from all institutional constraints and become absolute."

Kershaw adds:

"Hitler's style of leadership functioned precisely because of the readiness of all his subordinates to accept his unique standing in the party, and their belief that such eccentricities of behavior had simply to be taken on board in someone they saw as a political genius. 'He always needs people who can translate his ideologies into reality so that they can be implemented,' [Franz Pfeffer von Salomon] is reported as stating. Hitler's way was, in fact, not to hand out streams of orders to shape important political decisions. Where possible, he avoided decisions. Rather, he laid out -- often in his diffuse and opinionated fashion -- his ideas at length and repeatedly. These provided general guidelines and direction for policy-making. Others had interpret from his comments how they thought he wanted them to act and 'work towards' his distant objectives.

"'If they could all work this way,' Hitler was reported as stating from time to time, 'if they could all strive with firm, conscious tenacity towards a common, distant goal, then the ultimate goal must one day be achieved. That mistakes will be made is human. It is a pity. But that will be overcome if a common goal is constantly adopted as a guideline.'

"This instinctive way of operating, embedded in Hitler's social-Darwinist approach, not only unleashed ferocious competition among those in the party -- later in the state -- trying to reach the 'correct' interpretation of Hitler's intentions. It also meant that Hitler, the unchallenged fount of ideological orthodoxy by this time, could always side with those who had come out on top in the relentless struggle going on below him, with those who had best proven that they were following the 'right guidelines.' And since only Hitler could determine this, his power position was massively enhanced.

"Inaccessibility, sporadic and impulsive interventions, unpredictability, lack of a regular working pattern, administrative disinterest, and ready resort to long-winded monologues instead of attention to detail were all hallmarks of Hitler's style as party leader. They were compatible -- at least in the short term -- with a 'leader party' whose exclusive middle-range goal was getting power. After 1933, the same features would become hallmarks of Hitler's style as dictator with supreme power over the German state. They would be incompatible with the bureaucratic regulation of a sophisticated state apparatus and would become the guarantee of escalating governmental disorder."

Later in his book, Kershaw writes about the SS:

"The most important, and ideologically radical, new plenipotentiary institution, directly dependent on Hitler, was the combined SS-police apparatus which had fully emerged by mid-1936. Already before the 'Röhm-Putsch,' Himmler had extended his initial power-base in Bavaria to gain control over the police in one state after another. After the SS had played such a key part in breaking the power of the SA leadership at the end of June, Himmler had been able to push home his advantage until Göring conceded full control over the security police in the largest of the states, Prussia. Attempts by Reich Minister of the Interior Frick and Justice Minister Gürtner to curb autonomous police power, expanding through the unrestricted use of 'protective custody' and control of the growing domain of the concentration camps, also ended in predictable failure. Where legal restrictions on the power of the police were mooted, Himmler could invariably reckon with Hitler's backing.

"On 17 June, Hitler's decree created a unified Reich police under Himmler's command. The most powerful agency of repression thus merges with the most dynamic ideological force in the Nazi movement. Himmler's subordination to Frick through the office he had just taken up as Chief of the German Police existed only on paper. As head of the SS, Himmler was personally subordinate only to Hitler himself. With the politicization of conventional 'criminal' actions through the blending of the criminal and political police in the newly-formed 'security police' a week later, the ideological power-house of the Third Reich and executive organ of the 'Führer will' had essentially taken shape.

"The instrument had been forged which saw the realization of the Führer's Weltanschauung as its central aim. Intensification of radicalism was built into the nature of such a police force which combined ruthlessness and efficiency of persecution with ideological purpose and dynamism. Directions and dictates from Hitler were not needed. The SS and police had individuals and departments more than capable of ensuring that the discrimination kept spiraling.

"The rise of Adolf Eichmann from an insignificant figure collecting information on Zionism, but located in what would rapidly emerge as a key department -- the SD's 'Jewish Desk' in Berlin -- to 'manager' of the 'Final Solution' showed how initiative and readiness to grasp opportunities not only brought its rewards in power and aggrandizement to the individual concerned, but also pushed on the process of radicalization precisely in those areas most closely connected with Hitler's own ideological fixations.

"In the mid-1930s this process was still in its early stages. But pressures for action from the party in ideological concerns regarded as central to National Socialism, and the instrumentalization of those concerns through the expanding repressive apparatus of the police, meant that there was no sagging ideological momentum once power had been consolidated. And as initiatives formulated at different levels and by different agencies of the regime attempted to accommodate the ideological drive, the 'idea' of National Socialism, located in the person of the Führer, thus gradually became translated from utopian 'vision' into realizable policy objectives."

Source:

Kershaw, I. (2008). Hitler: A Biography. London: W. W. Norton and Company.