The Nazi State: Machine or Morass?

Competing interests as much as ideology fuelled the functioning of the Third Reich, augmented by forced labour and the plunder of Occupied Europe. The vices which despotism engenders are precisely those which equality fosters. These two things mutually and perniciously complete and assist each other. Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder: the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow-creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of virtue. Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is most particularly to be feared in democratic ages. Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (vol. II, chapter iv).

Unfettered competition is one of the least understood features of the National Socialist regime, although it is one of the most discussed. Political historians have long debunked the myth of the National Socialist state as a totalitarian and rationally organised modern Leviathan. More recently, historians have been fascinated by the rampant competition, even chaos, of Nazi institutions. At the same time, social historians have come to regard as a major aspect of the National Socialist regime not the ideological infiltration of Nazi doctrine among the German people as though it were a new catechism, but the increasing pressures of competitive behaviour among social groups and individuals that reshaped private and public life, within the family no less than on the shop floor.

National Socialism replaced the hard driving, entrepreneurial, 'economic man' - with a new breed of compradores who craftily exploited the chances of improvement and upward mobility provided by an expanding Third Reich. Their main pursuits were not economic or productive but 'political', using the powers of domination and subjugation that were provided by the state - starting with the repression of trade unions and the seizure of their property and the exclusion of Jews from public life and continuing in the wars of plunder and extortion which reached their zenith in the war against the Soviet Union.

All this has been fairly well described, but little understood. Historians, like most people, prefer to keep state and society, men and women, production and destruction neatly apart, and have very distinct ideas about what should and should not be considered modern. German and English historians both stop short of the notion of a state's institutions as the main arena of competition, although their reasons differ. The Germans imagine a well-organised and smooth-functioning state machine in which institutions not only Fit together but, by functioning so well, also further the common good. English historians on the other hand, come from a tradition that views the state or, more generally, the political sphere as an arena where a ruling class constitutes itself by establishing its claims to dominate through the consent of the subordinated classes.

Whichever way we approach it, the sprawling Nazi state with its many and diffuse institutions was different. Very clearly it became the site of pervasive competition between individuals and institutions for control over this power to dominate others; in turn this became the pre-requisite for the wealth and the status of an institution. This competition increased in leaps and bounds with Nazi conquest. Those institutions and individuals who had the licence to plunder - and all too often the right to kill as well - ruled supreme. The SS and its sprawling empire under Himmler was the prime example of this kind of activity. This is what makes the Nazi regime so extraordinary and, at the same time, so difficult to understand. The Nazi state and the emerging Nazi society were not centred around production and maintaining its conditions, but around the ability to prey on other people and whole societies, much as industry preys on nature.

The consequence of this slash- and-burn approach to state activities was the collapse of the rule of law and of the rationality of bureaucratically organised domination. At the same time, the sphere of the state and the number of those who were employed by the state directly or indirectly expanded dramatically. This expansion, it should be noted, occurred in tandem with the intensification of terror and domination, beginning in 1933. At the zenith of the Second World War, in 1941, a state system had emerged in which literally hundreds of institutions were engaged in the project of dominating the defeated and occupied countries.

We are only slowly beginning to uncover the cumulative impact of these institutions, which fought each other tooth and nail. While we have a good sense of the plunder by the big 'machines' - the SS, the military, and industry - we still need to uncover the little privileges of 'Germans' over other 'races'. Thus we know a great deal about forced labour in Germany, but we know next to nothing about the behaviour of, for example, the administrators in the East - or about the increasingly inter-ethnic master- servant relations in the German countryside during the war. By the same token, a great deal is known about the 'Aryanisation' of industry and trade, but what happened to all the Jewish offices and houses, and to the property of Jewish families in Germany and Europe, say in Hamburg, Krakow, or Vienna? We really do not know.

However, a recent study on Passau has shown that even in the staunchly Catholic backwoods of Germany where Nazism never took a firm hold, the Third Reich could unleash a creed which broke through the old solidarities of the community and destroyed tolerance among people. Of all its vices, the ability of the National Socialist regime to separate and set human beings against one another in competition over plunder was the worst.

By destroying bonds of solidarity, by fostering the egotism of both individuals and institutions, and by applauding as strong and healthy those 'who have no sympathy for any but themselves' (de Tocqueville), the National Socialist regime proceeded to create a state and a society which 'placed men side by side, unconnected by any common ties' (de Tocqueville). This competition did not centre around production or markets, but around terror and force, the capacity to impose one's will on others by means or physical coercion.

War was the natural extension of this violent system, and war in the National Socialist context took on a very special meaning. It has been appropriately called a Weltanschauungskrieg, an ideological war. This kind of war happened not only to be Hitler's main and ultimate goal; it was also the centrepiece of the reconstruction of German society and the German state around domination. Ideological war was the product neither of old-fashioned interest- politics nor of atavistic sentiments. Rather it was fought in order to create and maintain a state and a society in which German individuals and institutions could share in the domination of others.

If we consider war, and ideological war at that, as the focus of the National Socialist state, this may shed some light on the initial observation about the chaotic and competitive nature of Nazi rule. It is true that the business of governing in the Third Reich was trans-formed into competitive interaction between powerholders and their institutions. There was no coherent system of government. Every institution carved out its own niche in an increasingly vicious struggle for influence and resources. Looking at the endless squabbles between them, it might indeed be surmised that the Nazi state was chaotic.

Even worse, the sharp divisions between state, economy, and society became lost under the impact of the competition. Industrial groups gained quasi-state authority and the difference between private and public ownership (one may think of the Hermann Goering Werke or of the holdings of German files in the occupied countries), became blurred. By the same token, the SS combined state institutions like the police with party institutions like the SD information service under one roof. Thus, a National Socialist state emerged that lacked a coherent centre and expanded beyond traditional boundaries to encompass parts of society and the economy.

Yet, as competitive as this system of National Socialist politics and as blurred the line between state, society, and economy were, this entity did not lack direction. To step back from the infighting and look at the system as a whole is to discover that the momentum of competition led in the direction of war. Many attribute this to Hitler personally, but this view is too simplistic an explanation for a modern despotic regime. Hitler's stature in the Third Reich did indeed rise and he was increasingly able to impose his 'goals', but his rise to predominance was a result rather than a precondition of the pervasive struggles over power, influence, and resources. A state system, built on plunder, could not but move in the direction of war - or it had to be thoroughly rebuilt.

However, we cannot leave it there; for National Socialist (and Hitler's) politics were not exhausted in following an institutional drive towards war. They wanted war and strove towards it. War was the means to reconstruct German society and the German state on the basis of con- quest, subjugation, and annihilation. War was the goal of a process of social reconstruction that began with racial purification as the core of Wiederwehrhaftmachung (military preparedness) and was supposed to reach its climax with the anticipated domination of the Germans over other 'races'. This was the ideological programme. It was guided by the promise of domination for every German as part of a new 'master race' in a racist empire. While the big 'machines' fought it out among themselves, the Nazi leadership, and especially Hitler, never lost their populist touch. Both trajectories pointed towards war, and a racist war at that.

Competition over domination formed the material practice of' the Third Reich. As de Tocqueville put it, 'a despot easily forgives his subjects for not loving him, provided they do not love each other'. The latter - love, trust, solidarity - indeed were in short supply among the Germans, and solidarity with the dominated became treason. Equality for all Germans in a new Volksgemeinschaft; freedom as participation in domination; egotism in the interest o f the 'common good' - these were the ideological essentials of the Nazi state, which did not require that everyone become a Nazi as long as the National Socialist leadership could convince Germans of the benefits of racist rule.

Ideological politics were thus the promise of participation in the domination of others for one's own and the common German benefit. It was thus a peculiarly perverted system of participation; for while the Germans were not allowed to govern themselves, they were encouraged to dominate others. This was the National Socialist 'social contract' on which the state, with its competitive and predatory institutions, rested. It is easy to be confused by the convenient 'mix-up' between Nazi propaganda and Nazi ideology. However, National Socialist ideology consisted neither of the bad political habits of the 'masses' nor the dreams produced in Dr Goebbels' celluloid factories. The special quality of National Socialist ideology consisted in its increasing concreteness with the approach and the conduct of war. Its very core, racist domination and annihilation, was its least debated and propagandised aspect, but it comprised the essence and the practice of politics in the Third Reich.

The National Socialist state system of competitive centres of power and a racist 'social contract' did not emerge overnight and it always remained tenuous, dependent both on the state's ability to reconcile the political interests of the institutional centres of power and the ability to create a new social contract through war. The National Socialist state was not the inevitable outcome of the seizure of power; nor did the Third Reich simply follow a path mapped out by Hitler. Rather, the conditions for ideological war and for the foundation of a new social contract were established in a series of struggles. There is, in other words, no linear progression in National Socialist rule, but a series of contested choices that made the Nazi state.

Conflicts over priorities were built into the coalition government that came to power in 1933. Least important in this coalition were the few conservative-bourgeois politicians who were quickly ousted or side- stepped. What counted was the power of industry and the military on the one hand, and of society mobilised in the National Socialist movement on the other. Not the parties which were quickly co-opted, but the autonomous powerblocks of industry and the military were the initial counterweights, but also the partners of the National Socialists. National Socialist leaders depended on industry in combatting unemployment and on the military to wage war, just as the latter depended on the National Socialist capacity to mobilise (and terrorise) people. As a result of the Nazi takeover, the powers of industry and the military expanded dramatically during 1933. But all attempts to fuse the National Socialist movement with the interests of industry and the military - as was tried in 1933 with the SA and the Wehrmacht and with the Mittelstand and industry - were frustrated, and failed. Both the attempt to bring together middle-class and industrial politics in the formation of a new corporate economy and the attempt to fuse para-military mobilisation with rearmament in a new hybrid military came to naught.

In fact the two sides came to a head-on collision in 1934 which the para-military and middle-class ideologies in the National Socialist movement lost. The Reichswehr became the dominant military force against and over the storm troopers just as industry pushed back Mittelstand demands. While the former demanded the sub- ordination of the whole nation under the yoke of rearmament, the latter strove for efficiency and managerial control over the workforce. Both aims were as total in their scope as those of the National Socialists. They wanted to reorganise society in their own right to assure the smooth functioning of production and destruction. Even if the military and industry never fully succeeded, this constituted a most threatening challenge for the National Socialist leadership. In effect, they had to negate their past and the interests of their most dedicated followers in order to maintain their alliance with the military and industry on whom they depended in their short-term struggle against unemployment and their long-term objectives of waging war. The National Socialist leadership entered a most critical phase - and yet it survived and emerged stronger than before.

Nazi leaders all acted differently in this situation. The opportunistic Goering seized the first opportunity to join industry and the military as a third force through the Four Year Plan, although he and the Plan remained unwelcome among the tycoons of the Ruhr. Nevertheless, Goering established his own power- base, centred around a military- industrial complex that linked the air- force with aeroplane manufacturers and chemical (especially synthetic petrol) industries, mainly IG Farben. Himmler concentrated on building his own apparatus of domination, which was the first in the Third Reich that lived entirely off the domination of others. In a series of crafty manoeuvres against his own National Socialist comrades (Roehm, Goering, Goebbels) and against state bureaucracies, he not only centralised policing, but also reforged the whole complex of 'domestic security' into a proselytising centre for ideological politics. Himmler's powerblock thus not only contained the political police, the Gestapo, but also the Race and Settlement Office which championed the reconstruction of German society along racist lines. It also developed its own 'resource' base by exploiting the victims of the Third Reich (concentration camp labour) and by seizing and controlling the property of those who were expelled from Germany. However, the survival of the Nazi leadership as a whole, and of Hitler in particular, was due to other factors.

Hitler's ideological base had always been somewhere else, and it was the clever preservation of this base by Goebbels which propelled Hitler to the centre of the stage without his having to make the decisions that industry and the military expected him to make. He was never a good mediator in the competition between his own leaders and between the institutions of the state and, from what is known, he did not care to perform well in this particular field. However, Hitler always retained his close ties with a German society which adored him despite the blunders of his entourage. While the party lost in credibility, Hitler's star rose thanks to the ceaseless propaganda campaigns of Goebbels. These bonds of loyalty and adoration that linked Hitler to society proved to be exceedingly important. While Hitler and the National Socialist regime did not fare very well in guiding the competition within the Nazi state, they continued to guarantee the conditions of production and destruction both internally and externally. In this capacity of establishing and maintaining a social contract, Hitler was desperately needed. The organisation of society for war or, for that matter, for production, could not have taken place without a growing Hitler myth without Hitler's 'peace' initiatives or, without the dose of terror against those who did not opt for the emerging community of the Third Reich.

Had the Third Reich been an ordinary despotic regime, nothing further would have happened. The myth would have given way to disappointment and the dynamism of the regime would have petered out. There was the possibility of this kind of development all along, despite Goebbels efforts. Yet at the first possible chance the National Socialist leadership proved that it was not an ordinary regime and that it was not ready to leave the social contract to propaganda and goodwill. This chance arose in 1937-38 for complex reasons. Both the military and industry had over-extended, while neither of them had reached their goal. The military was still unable to fight a war, and industry continued to fear for profitability. They were in a genuine impasse, in which one side had to give, The military wanted more rearmament, industry a course of stability and profitability, and both were ready to pass the costs on to society. Hitler resisted this choice by pursuing a third, his own course. He drove towards a quick, even premature war - and not just any war, but ideological war. He used the impasse of 1937-38 to give the National Socialist social contract a substantive base through wars of exploitation and domination. He revived the quest for Volksgemeinschaft and Lebensraum. In 1938 the Nazi leadership succeeded in establishing the primacy of ideological politics. This was a most important change, for it shaped the quality of the wars to be fought. They were not simply fought in order to consolidate and to placate interests. They were fought as social wars in order to facilitate the reconstruction of German society.

This kind of war reached its apogee with the war against the Soviet Union in 1941, For that war linked the key aspects of ideological rule: exterminism and genocide and the reconstruction of German society as the superior 'race' over the subjugated peoples and nations came together in the planning and the implementation of 'Operation Barbarossa'. This campaign was ideology transformed into political, social, and military practice. In summer 194I, when the Soviet Union seemed to be defeated, a vision emerged of a German society, a National Socialist state, and a prosperous industry preying on subordinated peoples and resources, being protected by the SS against the resistance from within and by the Wehrmachf against the dangers from without. In 1941-42 the high watermark of the establishment of a racist social contract was reached. It is only appropriate that exactly at this point the preparations for a 'final solution', the annihilation of the Jewish people in occupied Europe, took shape.

However, this vision was destroyed in the very same winter by the tenacity of the Red Army. The ending of Blitzkrieg initiated a last phase in the development of a Nazi state. By 1941 the pendulum had begun to swing back to a more instrumental and functional organisation of society in the interests of production and destruction, while ideological politics were cramped into the annihilation campaign against Jews that escalated to its heights in 1941-42. Speer, and with him a corporate solution for the mobilisation of resources, gained the upper hand as far as the Germans were concerned. However, the main costs of the re-emergence of corporate power within the Nazi state and the reassertion of the imperatives of production in total war were still not paid by the Germans, but by forced labour, plunder, and starvation in occupied countries. This was and is Speer's legacy.

Underneath the pressures of war production organised in Speer's Ministry, alternatives were debated which proved to be more palatable in Germany and to the Germans. Many (like the future Minister of Economic Affairs and Chancellor Ludwig Ehrhard, but, intriguingly also the SS leader Ohlendorf who never gave up the vision of the reconstruction of German society) retained their dislike for Speer's corporatism with its quest for a clean and functional organisation of society in subordination to big industry. After all hopes for domination vanished in 1943, they began to debate alternative ways of mapping out a social contract - no longer on the basis of violence, but built around new economic policies. They aimed at achieving, in due course, high employment and a high standard of living as well as the creation of a European 'co-prosperity sphere', that is a zone of influence in which Ger- many would predominate, though not by force and violence, but due to its economic strength. They envisaged a new social contract, based not on the domination of others, but on a share in consumption in a revitalised and prospering European economy. Thus the basis for post-war reconstruction was laid during the war in response to the failure of the National Socialist state to establish a new and racist German order through war. However, the National Socialist state could not be reformed from within as some of the proponents of Volkskapitalismus had thought. The National Socialist regime had to be destroyed before a new social contract could be negotiated.

Author: Geyer, Michael

© History Today

Related articles

Wehrmacht: myths of