61: The Zenith of Power

Adolf Hitler was at the zenith of his power in 1940, but he did not have enough power to bring the war to the conclusion he wanted. Within Germany he was powerless to prevent the governance of the Reich from slipping increasingly out of control. The tendencies already evident before the war - unresolved Party-State dualism, unclear or overlapping spheres of competence, proliferation of ad hoc establishment of improvised "special authorities" in specific policy areas, administrative anarchy - were now sharply magnified. It was not that Hitler was a weak dictator, his power was recognized and acknowledged on all fronts, and nothing of significance was undertaken in contradiction to his known wishes. His power was immense, opponents were demoralized and without hope, and there was no conceivable challenge that could be mounted.

The slippage from control did not mean a decline in Hitler's authority, but it did mean that the very nature of that authority had built into it the erosion and undermining of regular patterns of government and, at the same time, the inability to keep in view all aspects of rule of an increasingly expanding and complex Reich. Even someone more able, energetic, and industrious when it came to administration than Hitler could not have done it, and during the first months of the war the Führer was for lengthy stretches away from Berlin and overwhelmingly preoccupied with military events. It was impossible for him to say completely in touch with and be competently involved in the running of the Reich, but in the absence of any organ of collective government to replace the cabinet, which had not met since February 1938, or any genuine delegation of powers, which Hitler constantly shied away from, the disintegration of anything resembling a coherent system of administration inevitably accelerated.

Far from diminishing Hitler's power, the continued erosion of any semblance of collective government actually enhanced it. Since, however, this disintegration went hand in hand - part cause, part effect - with the Darwinian struggle carried out through recourse to Hitler's ideological goals, the radicalization entailed in the process of "working towards the Führer" equally inevitably accelerated.

The ideological drive of National Socialism was inextricable from the endemic conflict within the regime. Without this ideological drive, embodied in Hitler's "mission" - as perceived by his more fanatical followers - the break-up of government into the near-anarchy of competing fiefdoms and internecine rivalries is inexplicable. But internal radicalization went beyond the Führer's personal involvement. "Working towards" his "vision" was the key to success in the internal war of the regime.

However bitter the rivalries, all those involved could have recourse to the "wishes of the Führer," and claim they were working towards the fulfilment of his "vision." At stake were not aims, but methods - and, above all, realms of power. The very nature of the loose mandate given to Hitler's paladins, the scope they were given to build and extend their own empires, and the unclarity of the divisions of competence, guaranteed continued struggle and institutional anarchy. At the same time, it ensured the unfolding of ceaseless energy to drive on the ideological radicalization. Governmental disorder and "cumulative radicalization" were two sides of the same coin.

Radicalization of the National Socialist "program," vague as it was, could not possibly subside. The ways different power groups and important individuals in positions of influence interpreted the ideological imperative represented by Hitler saw to it that the dream of the new society to be created through war, struggle, conquest, and racial purification was kept in full view. At the grass-roots level, banal - though for the individuals concerned certainly not unimportant - material considerations like the chronic housing shortage, the growing scarcity and increasing cost of consumer goods, or an acute shortage of farm laborers could produce resentments easily and channeled towards disparaged minorities and fueled by petty greed at the prospect of acquiring goods or property belonging to Jews.

The flames of such social antagonisms were fanned by the hate-filled messages of propaganda. The mentalities that were fostered offered an open door to the fanaticism of the believers. The internal competition built into the regime ensured that the radical drive was not only sustained but intensified as fresh opportunities were provided by the war. As victory seemed imminent, new breathtaking vistas for rooting out racial enemies, displacing inferior populations, and building the "brave new world" opened up.

With scarcely any direct involvement by Hitler, racial policy unfolded its own dynamic. Within the Reich, pressured to rid Germany of its Jews once and for all increased. In the asylums, the killing of the mentally ill inmates was in full swing. The security mania of the nation at war, threatened by enemies on all sides and within, coupled with the heightened demands for national unity, encouraged the search for new "outsider" target groups. "Foreign workers," especially those from Poland, were in the front link of the intensified persecution. The real crucible, however, was Poland. Here, racial megalomania had carte blanche, but it was precisely the absence of any systematic planning in the free-for-all of unlimited power that produced the unforeseen logistical problems and administrative cul-de-sacs of "ethnic cleansing" which in turn evoked ever more radical, genocidal approaches.

Those who enjoyed positions of power and influence saw the occupation of Poland as an opportunity to "solve the Jewish Question" - despite the fact that now more Jews than ever had fallen within the clutches of the Third Reich. For the SS, entirely new perspectives had emerged. Among party leaders, all the Gauleiter wanted to be rid of "their" Jews and not saw possibilities of doing so, these were starting points. At the same time, for those ruling the parts of former Poland which had been incorporated into the Reich, the expulsion of the Jews from their territories was only part of the wider aim of Germanization, to be achieved as rapidly as possible. This meant also tackling the "Polish Question," removing thousands of Poles to make room for ethnic Germans from the Baltic and other areas, classifying the "better elements" as German, and reducing the rest to uneducated helots available to serve the German masters. "Ethnic cleansing" to produce the required Germanization through resettlement was intrinsically connected with the radicalization of thinking on the "Jewish Question."

Source:

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