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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
THE individual in the twentieth century finds himself dwarfed by two giant institutions which decide his political destiny: the state, with its efficient bureaucrat methodically signing papers that may mean success or failure, life or death, for everyman and his world; the other is the political party, which aspires to control the state by mobilizing the masses. Nineteenth-century bureaucracy tended to be rigid and authoritarian, yet unrelated to popular support and limited in its impact on daily life. The nineteenth- century liberal, suspicious of the state, attempted to protect the individual by further limiting the bureaucrat; the twentiethcentury liberal hopes to use the bureaucrat to limit the privately powerful, whereas the totalitarian party hopes to dominate the state and therewith to dominate everyman. When a monopolistic party controls a monolithic state, the individual seems to have no choice but to flee, to obey or to disappear into a concentration camp. Overt individual resistance appears senseless; overt group resistance extremely dangerous and almost certainly doomed to failure.
1 von Borch, Herbert, Obrigkeit und Widerstand (Tubingen, 1954), p. viGoogle Scholar.
2 DrDror, Yehezkel, Beamtenpolitik of the Third Reich (Munich, 1953–1954)Google Scholar.
3 Ibid., p. 40.
4 Ibid.See also Neesse, Gottfried, Staatsdienst und Staatschicksal (Hamburg, 1955), p. 47Google Scholar. This veteran student of the bureaucracy affirmed that the Party never reached the first stage, Party commanding the state, much less the announced second stage, “Party and state are one.”
5 Captured German Documents, T81, Roll 185, frame 335537.
6 Burin, Frederic, “Bureaucracy and National Socialism,” in Merton, Robert, Reader in Bureaucracy (Glencoe, 1952), p. 42Google Scholar, lists 10 devices used by the Party to dominate the bureaucracy: 1. Transfer of state functions to “the living organization,” the Party; 2. Personal union of offices; 3. Parallelism, creating a parallel Party organization; 4. Nazification at the top; 5. Permeation; 6. Conversion to N.S.; 7. Dismissal; 8. Transfer; 9. Enforced compliance; 10. Replacement of law by discretion.
7 Bundes Archiv, Document R43 II/494. Sauckel is speaking for an Gauleiter dissatisfied with their powerlessness. See “Epp file” on Capt. Ger. Doc. T580, Roll 339.
8 Bundes Archives, Document R43 II/494, 1.
9 Ibid., 3.
10 Ibid., 7.
11 Ibid., 17.
12 Ibid., 22 See also Bracher-Sauer-Schulz, , Die National Sozialistische Machtergreifung (Köln, 1960), p. 501Google Scholar.
13 Bundes Archiv, Document R43 II/494, 24.
14 Ibid., 27.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 30.
17 Baum, Walter, “Die Reichsreform im Dritten Reich,” Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte, III (1955), 36–55Google Scholar, concludes, “in practice nothing in administrative organization was changed.” This centralization, although considered dangerous by such local tyrants as Sauckel, has also been overemphasized in much of the literature. The Gauleiter, jealous of their powers, had allied themselves with the older provincialism. Where their elbows were sharp enough or their contracts with Hitler good enough, they behaved as feudal princes, restrained only in part by the Reich ministries. Probably the only significant centralization came with Himmler as chief of the national police (1936); the oddity was that his achievement was made over the opposition of his supposed superior, Frick, Characteristically in the administrative hodgepodge, he was in the Ministry of Interior, but not subject to Frick, whose influence as more bureaucrat than member was limited.
18 Baum, , op. cit., p. 50Google Scholar.
19 Bundes Archiv, Document R43 II/703a.
20 Bundes Archiv, Document R43 II/703.
21 Ibid., January 13, 1940.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Bundes Archiv R43 II/703a.
27 Bundes Archiv R43 II/707a.
28 Bundes Archiv R43 II/707.
29 Captured German Documents, Series 81, Roll 7, 1449ff, incorrectly referred to in the catalogue as “the Bormann analysis.”
30 Ibid., 14509.
31 Ibid., 14511.
32 Ibid., 14514.
33 Ibid., 14524.
34 Ibid., 14520.
35 Ibid., 14529ff.
36 Ibid., 14533.
37 Ibid., 14579.
38 Ibid., 14600.
39 Ibid., 14602.
40 Ibid., 14737.
41 Bundes Archiv, NS/vorl 1181a.
42 Ibid., June 26, 1943.
43 Ibid., May 15, 1943, p. 5.
44 Hitler's Secret Conversations, 1941–44, ed. Roper, Trevor (New York, 1933)Google Scholar.
45 Ibid., p. 25.
46 Ibid., p. 106.
47 Ibid., p. 120.
48 Ibid., p. 194.
49 Ibid., p. 210.
50 Ibid., p. 420.
51 Ibid., p. 306.
52 Ibid.
53 Ibid., p. 432.
54 Ibid.
55 The Kersten Memoirs: 1940–43 (New York, 1957), pp. 104–105Google Scholar.
56 Ibid., p. 107.
57 Vialon, Friedrich, “Die Stellung des Finanzministers,” Vierteljahresheft für Zeitgeschichte, II (1954), 136Google Scholar.
58 Captured German Documents, T175, Roll 229, 7506.
59 Bundes Archiv, Reichkanzlei Document 421.
60 Bundes Archiv, Reichkanzlei Document 426.
61 Capt. Ger. Doc. T81, Roll 185, 335537ff.
62 Bundes Archiv, Reichkanzlei Document 421.
63 Ibid., Hess to Lammers, March 6, 1940.
64 Ibid., April 3, 1940.
65 Schäfer, Wolfgang, NSDAP, Entwicklung und Struktur (Hannover, 1957)Google Scholar.
66 Ibid., pp. 26–28.
67 Ibid., p. 29.
68 Ibid., p, 48.
69 Geheime Sitzung des Stadtrats Nürnberg, January 25, 1939.
