Hitler. 1936-1945: Nemesis

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, as we have seen, Hitler was for lengthy stretches away from Berlin and overwhelmingly preoccupied with military events. It was impossible for him to stay 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, seeing it as a potentially dangerous dilution of his authority), 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 Fuhrer’ equally inevitably accelerated.¹⁸²

Little systematic planning for the practicalities of Reich government during a war had been carried out before the invasion of Poland in September 1939. As usual, much was improvised.¹⁸³ Arising as a type of ‘standing committee’ from the Reich Defence Council (Reichsverteidigungsrat), established in 1938 (which had met on only two occasions, each time to hear lengthy speeches by Goring), a Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich (Ministerrat fur die Reichsverteidigung) was set up at the end of August 1939. This seems to have been Goring’s idea, on the look-out, as always, for power aggrandizement. Hitler, for his part, was ready to make what amounted in practice to no great concession of power in order to offload some of his own administrative burden and speedily push through legislation necessary for the war effort. Not least, by pandering to the vanity of his designated successor and compensating him at the same time for his known objections to the war with Britain, he could at the same time deepen Goring’s sense of loyalty and thereby invest in a small insurance policy. No preparations had been made for such a body when Hitler gave out verbal instructions, which civil servants from the Reich Chancellery turned into a decree within a couple of hours. The head of the glaringly pointless Constitutional Department (Verfassungsabteilung) in the Reich Ministry of the Interior learnt of the existence of the new body from the newspapers. No one in his Department had been consulted.

The six permanent members of the Ministerial Council comprised Goring (as chairman), Frick (as Plenipotentiary for Administration), Funk (Plenipotentiary for the Economy), Lammers (head of the Reich Chancellery), Keitel (head of the High Command of the Wehrmacht), and He? (Hitler’s deputy as leader of the Party). The Council was given the right to promulgate decrees on internal matters with the power of law. But it was not intended to be a ‘War Cabinet’. Neither the Foreign nor Propaganda Ministers were members. In the main the decrees were signed by Goring, Frick, and Lammers, but did not have to go to Hitler, as conventional laws did. Hitler was nevertheless careful to place restrictions on the Council which protected his own rights to overrule it if necessary. His own powers were delegated to, not replaced by, the Council.

In practice, the Council met only on a handful of occasions, for the last time in mid-November 1939. Most of the decrees it promulgated concerned relatively routine administrative and economic matters, and were brought about by the circulation of draft legislation rather than by collective deliberation. The number of ministerial representatives demanding a presence soon turned the few Council meetings that did take place into large and unwieldy affairs — precisely what it had been the intention to avoid. Goring himself lost interest. Hitler was quite happy to see the new body wither on the vine. An attempt to speed up the legislative process through a ‘Three-Man Collective’ (Dreierkollegium) of Frick, Funk, and Keitel proved no more successful. In fact, the triad never met a single time. Draft legislation was merely cleared with the other two agencies. And overlaps or clashes in competence were never resolved.

The half-hearted attempt to resurrect some form of collective government had not got off the ground. Partly, Goring’s own autocratic style, combined with an administrative incompetence arising from his belief that ‘will’ was all that mattered, meant that any collective body under his command was certain to atrophy. His own contempt for bureaucracy meant that, like Hitler, he rode roughshod over it, favouring the elimination during the war of all legislation not absolutely necessary for the defence of the Reich.¹⁸⁴ Even more important, Hitler’s own sharp antennae towards any restriction on his power, any limitation to the principles of his untrammelled personalized rule, vitiated from the outset the possibility of a true delegation of the head of government’s role to Goring and erection of a genuine ‘war cabinet’. Such was Hitler’s sensitivity to anything which might impose limits on his own freedom of action, or constitute a possible internal threat to his position, that he would block Lammers’s feeble attempts to reinstate cabinet meetings in 1942, and even refuse permission for ministers to gather occasionally for an evening around a beer table.¹⁸⁵

Hitler was now largely removed from the day-to-day running of the Reich. But no individual, let alone any collective body, had filled the vacuum. The administrative disorder could only grow.

Ministers, or their State Secretaries, met from time to time in Chefbesprechungen (discussions of departmental heads) to try to resolve intractable conflicts or hammer out some compromise through horse-trading. But such meetings were no substitute for governmental coordination through a cabinet. And as the war progressed they turned more and more into mass assemblies, deflecting from any possible purpose that might have been served through bargaining to balance ministerial interests.¹⁸⁶ In any case, powerful ministers like Goebbels, with privileged access to Hitler, had little need of such a body. If their interests were not met they could take the matter to the top and usually obtain the authorization they wanted. The empire-building of Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, along with the power-ambitions of the ‘Special Authorities’ like Goring’s Four-Year Plan Organization, Ley’s commissariat for housing, or Himmler’s SS, ensured that conflict was both endemic and inimical to any sense of coordinated government.¹⁸⁷

Other than for the privileged, the only link between government ministers and Hitler was through Lammers. Hitler insisted, soon after the start of the war, that he only be approached on any issue needing resolution once all heads of government departments had made their positions clear. With the exception of purely military matters, issues were to be presented to Hitler only by Lammers.¹⁸⁸ Any dispute was, therefore, contained at a level below Hitler. And, from his Olympian heights, he was able to side with the victors of the Darwinian struggle. It was less part of a carefully conceived ‘divide-and-rule’ strategy, than a necessary and inevitable consequence of protecting his leadership position from being dragged into the mire of the conflicts which his form of leadership — and the ideological dynamism which it incorporated — had inexorably spawned.¹⁸⁹

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. Other fascist-style regimes, including Mussolini’s, did not show anything like the same pronounced tendencies towards governmental disintegration. The ‘cumulative radicalization’ in the Third Reich had its driving-force in the ‘vision’ of racial purification and empire represented by Hitler.¹⁹⁰ The beginning of the war, as we have already seen in the context of the lurch into outright barbarism in Poland and the launching of the ‘euthanasia action’ within Germany, had sharply intensified Hitler’s own commitment to the fulfilment of long-standing ideological goals.¹⁹¹ But internal radicalization went beyond Hitler’s personal involvement. ‘Working towards’ his ‘vision’ was the key to success in the internal war of the regime.

Those ‘working towards the Fuhrer’ in a quite literal sense were above all to be found in the Party and its main affiliations, especially the SS. The Party — a bureaucratic organization whose inner coherence was destroyed by its own non-bureaucratic aims of ‘leadership’ in the interests of long-term ideological goals — found itself in the war with extended and new tasks, mainly revolving around propaganda, control, and mobilization. The handing over to the Gauleiter, in their new capacity as Reich Defence Commissars, of extensive powers over civil administration at the regional level was one significant step in this direction.¹⁹² The aim was to galvanize the civil administration and mobilize the population with the same spirit that had characterized the Party itself in its ‘time of struggle’. The consequence was, however, a further inpenetrable level of administrative overlap, confusion, conflict, and chaos.

Hitler was keen to preserve his base of loyalty among the Gauleiter. Especially the senior figures among them were still given privileged access. And from time to time meetings of Reichsleiter and Gauleiter were addressed by Hitler, naturally to sustain loyalty among some of the most trusted ‘Old Fighters’ and to convey guidelines for action, which then often fed into the state bureaucracy.¹⁹³ But the meetings were scarcely more than morale-boosting pep-talks. There was no formal discussion. And, as with his government