443WorkingTowardtheFuehrer

“Working Toward the Führer”

On 21 February 1934, a State Secretary in the Prussian Agriculture Ministry named Werner Willikens made the following remarks in a speech to a gathering of colleagues from state-level agriculture ministries throughout Germany:

Everyone with opportunity to observe it knows that the Führer can only with great difficulty order…everything that he intends to carry out sooner or later. On the contrary, until now everyone has best worked in his place in the new Germany if, so to speak, he works toward the Führer.
Very often, and in many places, it has been the case that individuals, already in previous years, have waited for commands and orders [before acting]. Unfortunately, that will probably also so be so in future. Rather, however, it is the duty of every single person to attempt, in the spirit of the Führer, to work toward him. Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough. But the one who works correctly toward the Führer along his lines and toward his aim will in future as previously have the finest reward of one day suddenly attaining legal confirmation of his work.

Willikens' comments seem to contradict the conventional image of Nazi Germany as a political system that served mainly to translate the leader's will into policy and action. He is describing a radically different scenario: in his presentation of the new order in Germany, initiative comes from below as much as from above; decrees confirm these initiatives after the fact, rather than setting the machinery of government in motion; rather that authorizing policy, law legitimated policies retroactively.

According to historian Ian Kershaw, Willikens' comments hold a key to how the Third Reich operated during the period between the death of President Hindenburg in August 1934 and February 1938, when Hitler took personal command of the German military. As Kershaw sees it, the distinction between totalitarianism and polycracy becomes meaningless if we bear in mind how charisma worked in the National Socialist system of rule.

1) After the consolidation of dictatorial power but before the radicalization of the late 1930s, three tendencies gave structure to Hitler's regime and his position in it:

Perhaps the primary characteristic of this period was the increasing fragmentation of power: the splintering of government and the Party into separate and self-interested agencies with competing and overlapping jurisdictions, each of them dependent to Hitler's individual will as Führer.

During these years as well, Hitler's racial and expansionist goals—present in various forms from his earliest days of political activity—acquire sharper focus than before.

At the same time, Hitler became both increasingly withdrawn from domestic politics and intolerant of differing opinions, even coming from his closest associates.

Finally, these were the years when Hitler's personal prestige expanded to the point where his will could not be challenged—to a point, in other words, where Hitler's will was absolute.
Image: from an unofficial pamphlet commemorating Hitler's appointment as chancellor. In the rear stands the new Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick. The caption reads, "Hitler greets the President on Memorial Day" (12 March 1933). Source: Wilhelm Köhler, Die nationale Revolution in Deutschland: Ein Gedenkbuch in Bildern (Minden: Köhler, 1933); German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.

Image: "Youth Serves the Führer." Source: German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College. 2) These tendencies were interrelated. As Kershaw writes:
"Hitler's personal actions...were vital to the development. But the decisive component was that unwittingly singled out in his speech by Werner Willikens. 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 Darwinian 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."

3) Hitler was, therefore, at one and the same time the absolutely indispensable fulcrum of the entire regime, and yet largely detached from any formal machinery of government. This enables us to explain Hitler's paradoxical ability to remain aloof from much practical decision-making and to increase his personal power in the process:

Through the dynamics of “working toward the Führer”, initiatives were taken and policies adopted in ways that fell in line with Hitler's aims, but without the dictator necessarily having to dictate.

Image: from a pamphlet of photographs taken by Heinrich Hoffmann entitled The Hitler No One Knows [Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt] (Berlin: Zeitgeschichte Verlag, 1932). Source: German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.

Hitler reviews a parade at the 1938 Party Rally at Nürnberg--the last of its kind before the outbreak of war terminated the annual event. Source: Hanns Kerrl, Reichstagung in Nürnberg 1938 (Berlin: C. M. Weller, 1939), German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College. 4) The result, perhaps inevitably, was a high level of governmental and administrative disorder. More ominously, competition encouraged the continuous, cumulative radicalization of policy in the direction of making realities out of Hitler's own ideological obsessions. This process also swelled Hitler's already immense ego, magnifying his already strong megalomaniac tendencies, deepening his contempt for caution, even as his successes in foreign and domestic policy made effective resistance to his regime less and less viable.

Sources:

Ian Kershaw, “Working toward the Führer: Reflections on the Nature of Hitler's Dictatorship,” Contemporary European History 2/2 (1993): 103-118.
——, Hitler: Hubris 1889-1936 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 529-591.

1) After the consolidation of dictatorial power but before the radicalization of the late 1930s, three tendencies gave structure to Hitler's regime and his position in it: Perhaps the primary characteristic of this period was the increasing fragmentation of power: the splintering of government and the Party into separate and self-interested agencies with competing and overlapping jurisdictions, each of them dependent to Hitler's individual will as Führer. During these years as well, Hitler's racial and expansionist goals—present in various forms from his earliest days of political activity—acquire sharper focus than before. At the same time, Hitler became both increasingly withdrawn from domestic politics and intolerant of differing opinions, even coming from his closest associates. Finally, these were the years when Hitler's personal prestige expanded to the point where his will could not be challenged—to a point, in other words, where Hitler's will was absolute.	Image: from an unofficial pamphlet commemorating Hitler's appointment as chancellor. In the rear stands the new Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick. The caption reads, "Hitler greets the President on Memorial Day" (12 March 1933). Source: Wilhelm Köhler, Die nationale Revolution in Deutschland: Ein Gedenkbuch in Bildern (Minden: Köhler, 1933); German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.
Image: "Youth Serves the Führer." Source: German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.	2) These tendencies were interrelated. As Kershaw writes: "Hitler's personal actions...were vital to the development. But the decisive component was that unwittingly singled out in his speech by Werner Willikens. 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 Darwinian 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."
3) Hitler was, therefore, at one and the same time the absolutely indispensable fulcrum of the entire regime, and yet largely detached from any formal machinery of government. This enables us to explain Hitler's paradoxical ability to remain aloof from much practical decision-making and to increase his personal power in the process: Through the dynamics of “working toward the Führer”, initiatives were taken and policies adopted in ways that fell in line with Hitler's aims, but without the dictator necessarily having to dictate.	Image: from a pamphlet of photographs taken by Heinrich Hoffmann entitled The Hitler No One Knows [Hitler wie ihn keiner kennt] (Berlin: Zeitgeschichte Verlag, 1932). Source: German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.
Hitler reviews a parade at the 1938 Party Rally at Nürnberg--the last of its kind before the outbreak of war terminated the annual event. Source: Hanns Kerrl, Reichstagung in Nürnberg 1938 (Berlin: C. M. Weller, 1939), German Propaganda Archive at Calvin College.	4) The result, perhaps inevitably, was a high level of governmental and administrative disorder. More ominously, competition encouraged the *continuous, cumulative radicalization of policy* in the direction of making realities out of Hitler's own ideological obsessions. This process also swelled Hitler's already immense ego, magnifying his already strong megalomaniac tendencies, deepening his contempt for caution, even as his successes in foreign and domestic policy made effective resistance to his regime less and less viable.