Was Hitler a weak dictator?

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Jean Paul Hart                5/2/2007

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Was Hitler a weak dictator?

The Third Reich, for Hitler, was supposed to have lasted 1000 years minimum, but it only lasted 12 years and four months. Many historians blame this on an individual that’s Hitler himself. The argument is based on Hitler being actually a weak dictator that wasn’t able to unite Germany as a new Fuhrer should had, also he didn’t create the basis of a strong empire but hurried everything up putting on risk everything he had accomplished. As Germany 1918 to 1945 states ‘The inconsistency and contradiction in Nazi Government arose entirely from the Fuhrer’s weaknesses’.

When Hitler establishes his control over Germany in 1933, his power was by no means absolute as Stephen Lee states.

For example he never had emergency powers from Hindenburg’s, this still gave the Weimar Republic a chance to control him.

However, Hitler used the Weimar State’s own political element, democracy, to destroy it.  He strengthened the influence of the NSDPA to later put as many seats in the Reichstag as possible, he controlled meetings of other parties, and passed several laws (he had vast majority in the parliament) to grant him absolute powers over Germany.

        

Nazi Germany definitely didn’t have a head that controlled, ordered and imposed every action to be taken in the German territorylike Italy or Russia had. As an article published by the University of Wales states, ‘it was a chaotic collection of individuals and organizations, all of which competed for power and influence’. The final idea here is that power was too spread all over different jurisdictions, and Hitler had delegated so many jobs to be done that sometimes different groups found them doing the same job. This created difficulties like opposition in the party itself and struggle for influence.

A case of this is the roles that the SS and the Ministry of Propaganda played during Nazi Germany. In one side the ministry of Propaganda intended to show how well the Nazi regime was working and the benefits of it, on the other the SS continued torturing and kidnapping people to spread fear among population. Both organizations couldn’t work together like this as none of them achieved the goals they were intended to.

Many organizations came back from the past Weimar Republic like the businesses or the army, and new organizations were being created that 1) were replacing them, 2) were a threat to their interests and 3) some of these opposed to Hitler’s mandates. Also struggle among these started and the objective was to achieve Hitler’s good will in order for them to survive.

The case of the army putting pressure on Hitler in order to make him turn against his SA members was a clear case of this. In some way the army controlled Hitler, they may had offered him revolution towards his regime if he didn’t do so and as well Hitler needed a strong and loyal army by is side.

Hitler had created several police forces that had major power and influence in Germany, these were the SS, the Gestapo (secret police) and the SD. All these were in charge of looking for groups of revolutionaries, to eliminate opposition and to spy Nazi regime’s politicians.

However after The Waffen SS, these police forces’ influences expanded to a major extend. They were given influence over the army and concentration camps; also the SS was given substantial economic and political resources which aided them in their activities.

It’s clear that their influence was to be taken into account. Leaders like Goering and Bormann stood aside of this groups and opposed entirely to their role and expanding influence.

Another great dictator that lasted for many years over the control of Soviet Russia was Stalin. He is considered by historians as a very  strong dictator, and in some ways almost a brutal one.

First of all the way Stalin controlled organizations such as the army or propaganda organization was extreme. Any charge that gave an individual too much power was eliminated, and the ones that played important roles in the different powers of the state were accused of treason, judged for false charges, and even murdered in order to get rid of any possible threat to the regime.

Hitler, on the other hand, trusted very much his organizations and its leaders were indeed loyal to him. Except by 1933 when he was consolidating power, his actions against leaders of organizations weren’t brutal as Stalin’s purges.

‘Leading Nazi officials were not just puppets of Hitler but exercised real power and were able to influence developments.’ Hitler really trusted his commanders, and politicians as he actually gave them the power to control Germany, Hitler wasn’t the head of everything like Stalin or Mussolini were. The major case here was the assassination of Trotsky, leader of the Red Army,  by Soviet intelligence, Stalin didn’t trust no one but himself and Trotsky was gaining too much power. Hitler was a contrast, he gave his Luftwaffe leader Goering full control over this organism of the army until the end of WWII.

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The article of the University of Wales sees a very important point of Hitler and Stalin as individuals. They state that Stalin worked much more than Hitler, as Hitler enjoyed his position as leader by taken cruises or waking up late in the morning, he even could cancel meetings. This could be viewed as a live trauma as Stalin’s origins were more of a higher-middle class, compared to Hitler’s which were poor and much suffered.

Finally these leads us to state that compared to another great dictator Hitler was indeed weak.

The argument of the chaotic organization of the ...

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