Hitlers control and organization of the Nazi State was less successful than is commonly believed. To what extent do you agree with this statement?

IB History HL Mr. Cooke Vienna International School Pablo del Pino

“Hitler’s control and organization of the Nazi State was less successful than is commonly believed.” To what extent do you agree with this statement?

There are two opinion groups when it comes to Hitler’s control over the Nazi State from 1933 to 1945. Firstly, the intentionalists who believe that Hitler was a very strong leader ruling under his Fuhrerprinzip. They also believe that his use of Social Darwinism helped him to control Nazi Germany. Secondly, the structuralists who believe that Hitler ruled through his accessories and collaborators. They stress on the polycratic nature of the Nazi system stating that Nazi Germany was ruled in chaos and that Hitler was simply one element of an entire chaotic structure. In this essay I will evaluate Hitler’s control and organization of the Nazi State analyzing areas of interest such as: the economy, culture, law and order, the army, propaganda and religion.

I will first of all start by describing the foundation and base on which Nazi Germany was built upon.

When Hitler was handed over Chancellorship in 1933, he started a process towards dictatorship and the establishment of a totalitarian state. In German, this process is called Gleichshaltung. Hitler was to pass a handful of policies, which would enable him to reach his goal: to control every single aspect of German people’s lives.

The most important amongst these policies are the following:

1) The Decree for the protection of the people and the state (27th Feb 1933) which was a response to the burning of the Reichstag. It enabled Hitler to imprison any opposition member without a trial and to declare the state of emergency in Germany;

2) The Enabling Act (March 24th 1933) which gave Hitler emergency powers for 4 years;

3) The Night of the Long Knives or Operation Hummingbird (30th June 1934) where Hitler got rid of all his potential opposition such as Ernst Rohm (leader of the SA) along with other SA leaders and the left wing within the Nazi party (Strasser and Schliecher). Official Nazi documents state that only 10 people were executed. However, Richard J Evans claims that 87 were murdered and 1000 men were arrested. Historians argue that the Night of the Long Knives and President Hindenburg’s death was the beginning of a totalitarian dictatorship in Germany where according to the Furherprinzip, Hitler was the sole leader of the Great German Reich and that everyone should show pay total obedience to the Führer. This and Volksgemeinshaft were the principles on which the German Third Reich was built upon. But, how effective was Hitler’s control and organization over the Nazi State?

This is a preview of the whole essay

The biggest and most successful Nazi tool was propaganda. Josef Goebbels, minister for National Enlightenment and propaganda was in control of the mass media and the arts. The Nazis had several methods to transmit their ideals to the German people. They had their own newspaper, the Volkische Beobachter, through which it criticized the opposition. Hitler’s voice was also heard through the People’s receiver, a small and cheap radio (76 marks) where people could hear Hitler’s nationalist and anti-Semitic speeches. By 1941, two thirds of Germans owned a radio. Goebbels also succeeded in controlling the film industry where anything anti-Nazi was strictly forbidden. Some of the most famous movies produced under the Nazi regime were Olympia (1938) and Triumph of the will (1934) both directed by Hitler’s favorite film director, Leni Riefenstahl. Other events, which propagandized Hitler’s image, were the annual Nuremberg rallies and the Nazi festivals. The Nazi propaganda machine was incredibly effective at its task of creating a god-like image of Hitler and imposing Nazi ideals through the mass media. The total control of the press was imposed from July 1933 onwards. A prime example of the effectiveness and influence of the Nazi propaganda machine was the campaign conducted by the authorities called the Burning of the Books (10th May 1933) by which all book which did not correspond with Nazi ideology were burned in many German cities.

One of Hitler’s biggest successes was the total control over the lives of Germany’s youth. Hitler aimed at creating the future of Germany, the generation that was to fight for lebensraum. The Hitler Youth was a Nazi paramilitary organization. Boys from 10 to 14 joined the Deutsches Jungvolk. The older ones, from 14 to 18 joined the Hitlerjugend where they would take part in summer camps and sporting activities to stay fit. The children loved it. It was therefore a perfect chance for Hitler to brainwash them with his ideals. In 1930, the Hitler Youth consisted of 25.000 young men. In 1934, the organization counted one million members. By 1936, other youth groups were banned and in 1939 membership was compulsory for all boys from 14 to 18. Girls over 14 were sent to the Bund Deutscher Mädel (BDM), the girls youth organization, where they were to be taught: 1) how to become good wives and mothers and 2) to have as many children as possible for the sake of repopulation. Nazis were also in charge of the control of woman’s fashion (hairstyle and clothing), banning provocative vestment. Mothers with four children would have their marriage paid off and would receive a bronze motherhood honor cross; mothers with six children would receive a silver medal and mothers with eight children would receive a gold medal. Women were to be in the kitchen, with their children and in church. Hence the 3K’s : Kinder, Kirche und Kuche. In school, teachers had to be of pure Aryan blood. They shaped the minds of their students with new and adapted subjects such as Science of the races (promoting anti-Semitism). Students were disciplined in Physical Education (15% of school time) which served as a pre-war training. Gifted students were sent to the Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalten (NPEA) boarding schools, as they were to be the future leaders of the Third Reich. Even though Hitler had the youth in the palm of his hand, there was some minor opposition. The Edelweiss Pirates was a youth group from children aged 14 to 18, which opposed Nazi ideals, especially the Hitler Youth. The Swing Kids was another group of middle and upper class young adults, which enjoyed Jazz/ Swing music and idealized the American way of life.

Law and order in the Nazi Regime was developed as a policy of intimidation. The German police (controlled by Heinrich Himmler) ensured that nobody went against Nazi ideal and those who did were to pay the price. In Nazi Germany, the police were allowed to arrest people without a trail. Moreover, the Gestapo Law stated that it was “to be free from any review by courts of law”. This gave the police even more power to the point were it became law itself. “You had less than three minutes to pack clothing and say your goodbyes. Once arrested, you were sent to the nearest police cell…later you were sent to a concentration camp” Before 1939, executions in concentration camps did exist but were not as numerous as from 1941 to 1945. Detentions were partially used to ensure that the people did not speak out against the Fuhrer and kept their ideas to themselves because if they didn’t, Dachau awaited him/her. I see Law and order in the Nazi regime as Hitler’s way to control the adult population. The Hitlerjugend was Hitler’s way of having the youth under control. Because it is harder to persuade the adult population with your ideals, the best way is through terror and intimidation. And even though there was some notable overlapping duties between the SS and the Gestapo. Nevertheless, the Gestapo (previously under the authority of the Ministry of interior) ended up being absorbed by the SS. Generally, Law was abided by and Order was maintained. However, their efficiency is still put into doubt.

The Nazi Regime also controlled most aspects in religion. The protestant and Catholic Church’s power was diminished as the clergy was prohibited to take part in political activities. The Reich church was set up in 1936 to shadow other churches. Mein Kampf became the equivalent to the Bible and the Swastika replaced the Holy Cross. Hitler pressured the German people to leave their protestant or catholic beliefs by telling them “one is either Christian or German”. Any church representative that talked openly against the Reich Church was sent to a concentration camp. Hitler was successful at crippling the church. However, he did not completely put it out of the picture. Even though any opposition to the Reich church was repressed, the opposition did exist. Martin Niemoller and the Confessional church opposed the Nazification of the protestant church. However, he was subsequently imprisoned at Dachau concentration camp, hence the failure of opposition against the Reich church.

When Germany became a one-party-totalitarian-state and Hitler started to control every single aspect of German people’s lives, the only institution that remained independent, was the German army. It was “a state within the state”. It remained independent until 1937 when soldiers swore allegiance to Hitler personally. The German army was to, as Layton says “serve its new master”. The new control over the army gave Hitler great success in his aggressive stance on foreign affairs. Examples of this are: the remilitarization of the Rhineland (1938) and the Sudeten Crisis (1938). His control over the army was reinforced when war minister Bloomberg and the army commander in chief, Chief von Fritsch, resigned. These powers were handed to Hitler personally in implementation of the Fuhrerprinzip.

Hitler´s economic policies were no doubt successful at achieving a war-prepared economy but his control over the economy is somewhat controversial. Its first goal was to reduce unemployment by spending on public works with the creation of the Nazi Labour Front and the Reich Labour Service that replaced all trade unions. Even though these organizations had overlapping duties (this encourages us to favour the structuralists), they did indeed create many jobs. Robert Ley, the creator of the Nazi Labour Front also created the Strength through Joy program in which 180.000 German workers were sent on cruiser holidays to the Madeira island or the Norwegian fjords and helped to extend Hitler’s control over the people. National socialist party also created the Winterhilfswerk which aimed at providing “food, clothing, coal, and other items to the less fortunate during the inclement months” By 1937 unemployment had decreased from 6.000.000 to 1.000.000. Another measure set by the regime was the introduction of the 4-year plan (1936) which aimed to specifically eliminate public unemployment and attempted to control and put at its disposal all industries and farms. It also introduced the production of artificial substitutes to essential materials (petrol from coal and coffee from acorns) for the preparation of war, as it would have to prepare for self-sufficiency. In brief, as Goering put it at the time, Germany’s aim was to create “guns not butter”. The plan ended up being rather unsuccessful because of overproduction and its nature of disorder. “The Nazi economic program did not have the characteristics of a complete dictatorial economy such as the Soviet one but neither did it have a capitalist system relying on private enterprises”. It was on an uncertain midpoint.

Even though the Nazi system had several flaws and in the end it did not have a complete totalitarian nature, Hitler did indeed succeed at controlling most aspects of German society. It is probable that his initial intention was not of a completely passive German society (leisure activities) because part of his success came from the immense support and involvement from the German people itself. That is why I would have to lean on to the structuralist theory as Hitler’s policies did indeed bring him great success. I therefore disagree with the essay question as Hitler had Germany fairly under control.