Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
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tive tasks. Moreover, in the long run this mentality could not be
reconciled with any governmental continuity and coordination.
However, after the seizure of power and the Gleichschaltung ('coor-
dination') of public and private institutions, the NSDAP did not change
its specific political approach which had emerged from the organisa-
tional patterns of the 'time of struggle' and was primarily characterised
by the absolute dominance of the leadership principle on all levels.
Hitler strongly supported the relative autonomy of the subleaders while
securing their unrestricted personal loyalty. During the election cam-
paigns before 1933 that system of combining charisma and factionalism
increased the dynamism of Nazi politics. After 1933, extended to the
entire political system, it necessarily contributed to widespread antag-
onism and rivalry within the party.15
The virtual absence of any interest representation within the party
organisation intensified conflict and inefficiency. The informal leader-
ship structure was retained after the seizure of power and transferred to
the political system as a whole. Already during the Weimar era party
rallies had been reduced to merely propagandistic mass meetings
without any exchange of opinion of discussion and programmatic
issues. During the early years of the regime, they became gigantic
celebrations of the party's growth and the omnipotence of the Fiihrer,
symbolising the complete aesthetisation of politics.16
Nor did the Reich Leadership (Reichsleitung), founded in 1932, ever
function as a steering body, remaining purely decorative and confined
to propaganda functions. Despite repeated promises by Hitler, the Party
Senate, which could have been the counterpart of the Fascist Grand
Council that deposed Mussolini in July 1943, never came into being
(though a Senate Hall was created for it in the 'Brown House': in
Munich). Initiatives by Wilhelm Frick or Alfred Rosenberg, aimed at
establishing at the very least a body responsible for selecting the future
leader after Hitler's death, did not find the Dictator's approval. The rare
meetings of the Gauleiter or, in the first years, of the Reichsstatthalter
(Reich Governors), were not institutionalised, and in any case were
largely confined to a forum for a speech by Hitler but without any
platform for political consultation.17 The increasing informality of
political decision-making in the Third Reich was for Hitler first and
foremost a matter of personal convenience which exonerated him from
15
CF. Wolfgang Horn, Fiihrerideologie und Parteiorganisation in der NSDAP (1919-1933)
(Diisseldorf 1972), pp. 220 ff.: Joseph Nyomarkay, Charisma and Factionalism in the Nazi
Party (Minneapolis 1967), pp. 76 ff.
16
See Hamilton T. Burden, The Nuremberg Party Rallies 1933-1939 (London 1967).
17
See Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers. Grundlegung und Entwicklung seiner inneren
Verfassung (Munich 1969), p. 262: Dieter Rebentisch, Fuhrerstaat und Verwaltung im
Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart 1989), pp. 422-3.
80
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STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP
nent and wanted to postpone any decision on this until the 'final
victory'.22 This attitude implied a dramatic over-extension of the
available economic and manpower resources, leading ultimately to
military defeat.
The progressive fragmentation of the Nazi political system was
closely connected with territorial expansion. In the annexed and
occupied territories, party and SS representatives were able to shrug off
any restraint by public law and administrative regulation and exercise
an arbitrary rule that attempted to enforce the total compliance of the
subjugated population through repeated use of violence and terror.
Hitler expressly welcomed the new type of leadership, characterised by
harshness and unbureaucratic methods, that was emerging in the
East.23
The arbitrary power structures which developed in the former Soviet
territory and the General-Gouvernement were taken by Hitler as a
model for a future German Reich. Robert Koehl coined the term
'Neo-Feudalism' to describe the conditions in the occupied eastern
territories which led to a total personalisation of the politics and gave
the local commanders unrestricted power.24 Consequently, growing
corruption emerged within their entourage, preventing efficient admin-
istration. When the Wehrmacht was eventually forced to retreat and the
now superfluous civil administrators withdrew from the occupied
territories, the atavistic political style which they represented was
transferred to the 'Old Reich'.
To what extent this decay of modern statehood had a parallel in the
Soviet Union is an open question. Unlike the Stalinist system, the Nazi
regime did not try to enlarge its political base through the restoration of
its former alliance with the traditional elites, as Stalin attempted to do by
proclaiming the 'Great Patriotic War'.25 Though exploiting conserva-
tive-Prussian traditions and invoking their nationalistic elements to the
very end, the Nazi leadership, confronted with pending defeat, cut all
its ties to the conservative elites and returned to its socio-revolutionary
origins and aims, which for tactical reasons had been pushed aside after
the seizure of power.
From now on, the party deplored the fact that it had ended the
revolutionary process in 1933 and had accepted a compromise with the
conservative elites and the higher civil service. In 1944, the so-called
'Gitter-Aktion' ('Iron Bars Action') led to the arrest of several thousand
22
Hans Werner Neulen, Europa und das 3. Reich. Einigungsbestrebungen im deutschen
Machtbereich 1939-45 (Munich 1987), p. 163.
23
Rebentisch, Fuhrerstaat und Verwaltung, pp. 26-7 and 312.
24
Robert Koehl, 'Feudal Aspects of National Socialism', in Nazism and the Third Reich, ed.
Henry Turner (New York 1972), pp. 151-74.
25
See Ronald Suny, 'Stalin and his Stalinism', in this volume pp. 26-52.
83
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STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP
the reserve army, which in 1944 stood under the command of Heinrich
Himmler, but the Party Chancellery under Martin Bormann which bore
the responsibility for the Volkssturm - conceived as a representation of
the true 'people's community' and as 'the unified deployment of the
entire people united in the idea of National Socialism'.28
Even before the creation of the Volkssturm, the Party Chancellery had
won Hitler's approval for the introduction of the National Socialist
'Leadership Officer' (Fiihrungsoffizier), a direct copy of the much
disdained Soviet politruk. In the long run, this was directed at the
complete nazification of the army after the war - an ambition that had
been the primary goal of Ernst Rohm in 1934.29 To this extent, the party
returned to its very origins, promulgating total ideological fanatisation
as a pledge for final victory, and believing in the 'cult of the will' which
would ultimately force Germany's enemies to retreat in the face of the
superior principle of National Socialism.30
These deliberations show that, while the party's active elements
underwent a process of continuous radicalisation, the Nazi regime
entered an irreversible phase of internal decay which ultimately
destroyed its very foundations. Attempts by the Ministry of the Interior,
by Goebbels, and by others, to restore the unity of government, either by
reactivating the Reich Defence Council under the authority of Goring or
by establishing new institutions such as the 'Three Men's Committee'
(Dreierausschufi), were of limited success, while the installation of
Goebbels as 'Plenipotentiary for Total War Mobilisation' was also a
failure. In the depths of the bunker below the Reich Chancellery, Hitler
was in the final phase no longer able to keep the reins of government in
his hands. But no one among his entourage - with the possible exception
of Albert Speer - dared confront him with military and economic reality.
There were numerous similarities and parallels between the Stalinist
and Hitler dictatorships - not least in each case the mounting loss of any
sense of reality. Both Hitler and Stalin constantly ignored unwelcome
truth and lived in an increasingly fictitious world. Both tended to turn
night into day, and to prefer informal advisers to competent profes-
sionals in government departments. The deep distrust of their subordi-
nates felt by both dictators induced them repeatedly to dismiss their
military leaders.
But there were also obvious differences which emerged from con-
trasting political backgrounds and structures. Despite the progressive
28
Zeitschriftendienst/Deutscher Wochendienst, ed. by Reichsministerium fur Volksauf-
klarung und Propaganda, vol. 154 (Berlin 20 October 1944).
29
See Volker Berghahn, 'NSDAP und "geistige Fiihrung" der Wehrmacht 1939-1944',
Vierteljahreshefte fiir Zeitgeschichte 17, 1969; Arne W. G. Zoepf, Wehrmacht zwischen
Tradition und Ideologic Der NS-Fuhrungsoffizier im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Frankfurt 1987).
30
Cf. J. P. Stern, The Ftihrer and the People (London 1975).
85
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HANS MOMMSEN
'partification', the internal splits within the Nazi regime, and the
virtually complete elimination of any administrative unity, the system
inclined towards an ever-increasing political anomie that ended in the
complete collapse which accompanied military defeat. The inability,
too, to end an already lost war, as well as the emerging mass terror now
directed at the German population itself, signified this process of
dissolution. In comparison, the Soviet system preserved its ability to
adapt itself to shifting challenges and changing situations, revealing a
higher level of stability despite also relying on escalating terror.31
The NSDAP differed structurally from Communist parties through
the predominance of the leadership principle and the exclusion of any
political discourse within the party apparatus. Above all, the National
Socialists failed to create new and lasting foundations of rule capable of
transcending the continuous indoctrination, terror, and the relentless
improvisation and dynamic that kept the population in line and
prevented it from recognising the myths of Nazi propaganda. In this
respect, the Nazi Movement differed from the Soviet Communist Party
since, instead of revolutionising the inherited state and German society,
it restricted itself to a mere simulation of social change. It effectively
exploited the potential for protest of sectors of German society which, in
Ernst Bloch's terms, had 'non-synchronised' (nicht gleichzeitigen) -
partly modern, partly pre-modern - interests, in order to create a mass
base.
Nazi politics unleashed an unbridled political, economic, and mili-
tary dynamic with unprecedented destructive energy, while proving
incapable of creating lasting political structures. Significant for the
primarily destructive character of the Nazi regime is the fact that the
quasi-revolutionary goal of reshaping the ethnic map of great parts of
Europe in conjunction with the so-called 'General Plan for the East'
(Generalplan-Ost), while only partially accomplished, was indeed at-
tained in anti-Jewish policy, culminating in the deaths of around five
million people.32 All the related aims, especially the huge settlement
projects in eastern Europe, of which the genocide against the Jews was
but a part, remained unfulfilled.
The assumption that the Thousand-Year-Reich was anything more
than a facade of modernity, that it achieved a real modernisation of
Germany, takes the results of destruction as positive values and
31
For post-war developments in Germany see Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die amerikanische
Besetzung Deutschlands (Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, Bd. 27, Munich,
1995), pp. 78 ff.
32
Cf. Gotz Aly, "Endlosung". Volkerverschiebung und der Mord an den europaischen Juden
(Frankfurt 1995), pp. 397-8. Gotz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung.
Auschwitz und die deutschen Plane fur eine europaische Ordnung (Hamburg 1991), pp.
121-2, 485 ff.
86
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STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF THE NAZI DICTATORSHIP
overlooks the regime's basic political sterility.33 The very essence of the
Nazi regime lay in its parasitical character, its purely destructive nature,
that excluded any ability to create a positive future for the German
people, let alone for the millions of repressed and exploited citizens of
the occupied or aligned countries. It seems to me that this essential
substance of Nazism does not match the Stalinist system, whatever the
latter's totalitarian and terroristic traits.
33
For the recent debate on Modernisation see my article on 'Nationalsozialismus und
Modernisierung', in Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 21 (1995), pp. 391^02.
87
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