Decision-making in Nazi Germany

Summary of the main views

Intentionalists see Hitler as the principle author of decisions in the Third Reich, and his
ideology as the key to policy making.
Structuralists (aka functionalists) stress the absence of a single source of policy in the
Third Reich. They emphasise the uncoordinated competition and power struggles between
feudal warlords (Gring, Himmler etc) and the areas under their control. Decision-making
was not simply passed down from the Fhrer on high, but often emerged from
contradictory personalities and interests. These rivalries pushed policy in every more
extreme directions (cumulative radicalisation).
Kershaw synthesises the intentionalist and structuralist view. He agrees with the
structuralists emphasis on rivalries and conflict among Hitlers lieutenants. However, he
argues that these conflicts enhanced Hitlers personal power, rather than undermining it
as the structuralists argue. This was because the underlings were seeking to fulfil Hitlers
aims and wishes, rather than to implement opposing policies. Hitler only needed to
establish the general aims and direction of policy; his subordinates would carry it out.
Thus Kershaw reinstates the importance of ideology in decision-making in the Third Reich.
Evidence and opinions
Read the evidence and note whether in your opinion it supports the intentionalist view, the
structuralist view or Kershaw. Explain why. Some evidence may support more than 1 view.
A) By the late 1930s, Hitlers power seemed almost
total. He was the undisputed leader of the only political
party in the Reich, and all other Nazi organisations
owed allegiance to him as Reichsfhrer. From 1934 he
was Head of State. He also became Commander in Chief
of the Armed Forces, whose members had to swear an
oath of personal loyalty to him
B) One of the Third Reich most infamous anti-Jewish
measures Kristallnacht (9-10 November 1938) was not
Hitlers idea. There was growing anti-Semitic violence
on the streets, especially in Berlin where Goebbels
encouraged it. On 8 November, the assassination of a
Nazi official in Paris by a Jew was used as an excuse to
extend the violence. The next day Goebbels suggested
to Hitler that they should encourage such measures;
Hitler agreed. As a result thousands of Jewish
businesses were attacked, synagogues burned and 91
Jew murdered.

Example: This supports the

intentionalist view, because
Hitlers huge constitutional
power suggests that he was in
control in the Third Reich.

C) Hitler applied the ideas of Social Darwinism to his

relations with his subordinates. He believed in the
principle of survival of the strongest, likening himself
to a gardener who leaves his plants to fight each other
for a place in the sun. He didnt intervene to solve
conflicts between his subordinates.
D) Hitler was often uninterested in the routine
business of state. He preferred to work at the
Berghof, his villa in Obersalzberg, rather the
Chancellory in Berlin. According to his adjutant, Hitler
would often rise at 2 and go for a long walk always
downhill. His driver would pick him up and drive him
back up the hill. In the evening, Hitler often watched
his favourite film Lives of a Bengal Lancer in which a
few white Britons controlled thousands of Indians.
When women were staying, which was often, Hitler
refused to allow politics to be discussed at all.
E) The policies pursued by the Nazi regime mirrored
many of the aims that Hitler had set out in Mein
Kampf. For example, he removal of parliamentary
democracy, the suppression of socialism, the reconquest of territories lost as a result of the Treaty
of Versailles, waging a war in the East to destroy
Bolshevism and gain Lebensraum, the creation of a
racially pure Volksgemeinschaft and a solution to the
Jewish problem.
F) Although Hitler set the general direction of policy,
his subordinates translated his wishes in very different
ways. For example, after the occupation of Poland,
Hitler stated that he wished to see significant areas of
Poland Germanised within the next ten years. The
Gauleiter of the Warthegau, Greiser, forcibly
transported large numbers of Poles out of the
Warthegau. By contrast, the Gauleiter of Danzig-West
Prussia, Forster, issued Germanisation to virtually any
Pole who requested them. When Geiser complained to
Himmler, and Himmler to Hitler, that Forster was too
soft, Hitler took no action.
G) Hitler was often weak and indecisive. During the
economic crisis of 1935-6, he refused to make
important decisions for six months, despite pressure
from the ecomomics ministry and the Wehrmacht. He
also dithered on the less important issue of whether to
allow horseracing to continue during the war, issuing a
series of contradictory decrees, before eventually
leaving the decision up to local Gauleiters.

H) In the field of foreign policy, it was Hitler who

made the decisions to re-occupy the Rhineland, annex
Austria and Czechoslovakia, invade Poland and invade
Russia. During the Second World War, he repeatedly
intervened in military matters.
I) Hitler sometimes intervened to prop up his personal
popularity. For example, he intervened to stop an edict
by the Reich Chamber of Hairdressers that mens hair
should not be longer than a certain length. He also
personally intervened to prevent the full mobilisation
of women for war work until 1943. One reason for
Hitlers popularity was that he was seen as above party
struggles.
J) The 1935 Nuremburg Laws, excluding Jews from
German citizenship, were the result of pressure on
Hitler from below. In 1935, there was a wave of
attacks on Jews by the SA, who wanted to enact the
NSDAPs 1920 programme and remove Jews from
citizenship . Other leading official saw the attacks as
bad publicity and wanted to regularise the situation.
Hitler intervened at the last minute. The night before
his speech to the Reichstag meeting in Nuremburg, he
ordered civil servants to draw up the anti-Jewish laws
and switched the topic of his speech from foreign
policy to anti-Semitism.
K) Sometimes Hitler signed important documents
without reading them for example, a decree setting
up a centralised bureaucracy. The Gauleiters were so
furious that the project was quietly dropped.
L) According to the National Socialist Fhrerprinzip,
only the Fhrer represented the undivided will of the
German people. Between 1936 and 1942, Hitler enjoyed
enormous personal popularity, unlike the NSDAP and
most of its leaders.
M) Nazi institutions coexisted with the traditional
state bureaucracy. Sometimes Nazi party institutions
overlapped with each other. In some cases e.g.
education and propaganda, several party and state
institutions competed with each other. There was also
competition between central organisations and the
Gauleiter, who had direct access to Hitler. There was
no hierarchy of institutions, no clearly separated area
of responsibility and no cabinet to coordinate policy.

N) Everyone who has had the opportunity to observe it

knows that the Fuhrer can hardly dictate from above
everything he intends to achieve Everyone worth a
post in the new Germany has worked best when he has,
so to speak, worked towards the Fhrer. ...Anyone who
really works towards the Fhrer along his lines and
towards his goals will certainly have the finest reward
in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his
work.
From a 1934 speech by Werner Wilkins, secretary in
German food ministry
O) Hitlers popularity sustained the frenetic and
increasingly dangerous momentum of Nazi rule. Most
important of all, Hitlers huge platform of popularity
made his own power position ever more unassailable,
and made possible the process by which his personal
obsessions became translated into attainable reality.
Kershaw the Hitler Myth 1984.
P) Mommsen to Kershaw: Why are you writing a
biography of Hitler? He is of no interest as a person.
(Attributed)
Q) Bracher: The omnipotent power of the Fhrer,
abrogating all state and legal norms and sanctioning all
deeds, was the basic law of the Third Reich.
R) Rich: The point cannot be stressed too strongly:
Hitler was master in the Third Reich.
S) Mommsen: [Hitler was] unwilling to take decisions,
frequently uncertain, exclusively concerned with
upholding his prestige and personal authority,
influenced in the strongest fashion by his current
entourage, in some respects a weak dictator.
T) Peterson: This view of Hitler the man who does
not decide would help explain the eternal confusion of
the men working for him, a literal anthill of aspiring and
fearing people trying to please the great one. The
result was the division of domination into thousands of
little empires of ambitious men, domains that were
largely unchecked by law [for this] had been replaced
by Hitlers will, which was largely a mirage.