The Functioning of the Nazi Regime: State and Society



The Functioning of the Nazi Regime: State and Society

The Nazi State: strong dictatorship or polycratic chaos?

The intentionalist position has tended to see the Third Reich above all as a dictatorship of Hitler, whereas the functionalist position has emphasised chaos in the government and the improvisatory character of Nazi decision-making. The intentionalists argued that almost all of Nazi propaganda centred on Hitler, that his personal popularity always was much higher than the prestige of his party, the army, or any other person or institution. Given his popularity, Hitler’s position was unassailable, all the more so, since the Nazi party had been founded on a strict “leadership principle” of absolute obedience to the leader. The regime soon tried to impose this personal loyalty and blind obedience on the army, the judiciary, the civil service, and all other areas of public (and even private) life. The intentionalists further pointed to Hitler’s impressive range of power: in 1934, after Hindenburg’s death, Hitler usurped the power of the state president, and in 1941 he seized the supreme command of the army, which he had strongly influenced already before. The SS carried out his racial visions, and the whole state apparatus worked to support them. The Führer’s will was the highest level of reference.

The functionalists dismissed the role of the dictator, arguing that a single man could not run all offices alone. They paid more attention to the structure of the Nazi state, focusing on four major power blocs that functioned partly independently from each other and often competed with each other: the Nazi party with all its organizations (including the SS), the state apparatus, the economy, and the army. Given this rather decentralised structure and its often chaotic overlapping, the functionalists saw Hitler as a weak dictator and explain the history of the Third Reich less as an outcome of Hitler’s will rather than as a dynamic of diverse power centres.

According to historians Bracher and Jäckel, Hitler derived much of his strength from the rivalry and the overlapping responsibilities of state and party institutions. He thus could assume the role of a mediator. Single offices competed to win him over to their policies.

Whether Hitler deliberately applied the principle “divide and rule” or simply made use of the chaos of responsibilities existing since his appointment in 1933 is unclear. The very constitutional vagueness of the Third Reich (the Weimar Constitution remained in place but was largely ignored) gave the will of the leader more and more authoritative and legitimising power. Undoubtedly the balance between the main rivalling institutions changed during the Third Reich: Hitler’s control of the military and economy increased; the independence of the state apparatus and the economy diminished as the SS assumed nearly total control toward the end. The army was placed under Hitler’s command in 1941 but (due to its essential role in the war) preserved a little more independence than other institutions.

After 1936 rearmament and state control intensified. The government drafted a four-year plan that should prepare Germany for war by 1940. The plan’s insistence on autarky and rapid rearmament sometimes contradicted industrialist interest, and the pace of war preparation raised concerns about the future of the economy. Despite occasional tensions, however, business relations to the government remained good, and the Nazis still tried to placate the entrepreneurs’ concerns. With party-directed educational and leisure programmes (Strength through Joy), the regime reconciled the workers with low wages and long hours.

The army, another pillar of the “polycratic chaos” seen by the functionalists, at first was eager to comply with the regime. The army did not want to be taken over by the SA, appreciated the more rapid rearmament after 1933, and credited the Hitler government with increasing freedom from the limitations of Versailles. After Hitler’s sacrifice of the SA in 1934, the party continued to exert relatively little control over the army. The army’s relative independence prevailed until December 1941.

The state apparatus retained some autonomy at least until 1938, when Hitler appointed several Nazis to key offices, such as the foreign ministry. Even after that, bureaucracy remained relatively independent. Not everybody serving in high office was a Nazi or had to be a party member. The party did much in local government, as Germany was divided into new administrative units, the Gaue with a Nazi Gauleiter as governor. With its specific organisations for every German citizen, the party did much to ensure loyalty to the regime and to instil the people with Nazi propaganda. The success of the Hitler Youth (HJ) and its sister organisation for girls, the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), was decisive in ensuring ideological loyalty amongst most of the young.

The peculiar characteristic of the Third Reich’s functioning indeed is its apparent chaos of overlapping competencies. Foreign policy, for example, was conducted by the foreign ministry, by a committee of the SS, by Hitler, by Göring (the chief of the air force), by the army, and occasionally by other institutions as well. In this chaos of overlapping competencies, Hitler often appeared as the mediator in conflicts, and he could reward a successful policy of one institution by listening more to it than to another.

(abridged & taken from: )

Your tasks:

1) Explain the difference between the functionalists’ and the intentionalists’ interpretation of the Third Reich.

2) Would you agree that Hitler was a “weak dictator”? Explain your answer.

3) Be prepared to explain in more detail aspects that are underlined in the text.

⇨ Check your schoolbook (Kitson) for help, esp. pp. 165-173, 215-225, 230-231.

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