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Social and Psychological Aspects of the Fuhrer’s Rule

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Aspects of the Third Reich

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Abstract

The well-known phenomenon of psychological suppression has been named Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or ‘overcoming of one’s past’, when describing the reluctance of the German people to acknowledge and come to terms with the crimes committed in their name by the Nazi regime. Questionable as it may be to speak of collective guilt, nevertheless the responsibility of a society for its most recent past is undeniable. It is not without reason that Alexander Mitscherlich laments the ‘inability’ of the Germans to ‘mourn’, which he explains as their disillusioned love for the Führer, who post bellum et mortem is now attributed with the sole guilt for everything.1 Despite a considerable amount of research, historiography has been unable to convince the public, beyond an enlightened few, that it should change its mind. For the most part this is the result of difficulties in communication between the ‘researchers’ and the ‘consumers’ of historical knowledge, and not least of an increasing obsession with the theory2 of a subject whose most important aspects have already been widely researched. More important is the impression that is probably given, that the process of psychological suppression did not stop with mere historiography.

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Notes and References

  1. Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, Die Unfähigkeit zu trauern (Munich, 1968), pp. 27ff., 71ff.

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  2. Recent review of literature in Klaus Hildebrand, Das Dritte Reich (Munich and Vienna, 1979), p. 202f.; see also Wolfgang Wippermann, Faschismustheorien (Darmstadt, 1976); Richard Saage, Faschismustheorien (Munich, 1976); Manfred Clemenz, Gesellschaftliche Ursprünge des Faschismus (Frankfurt, 1976); Renzo de Felice, Interpretations of Fascism, trans. from the Italian (Harvard UP, 1977); Reinhard Kühnl (ed.), Texte zur Faschismusdiskussion (Hamburg, 1974); Helga Grebing, Aktuelle Theorien über Faschismus und Konservatismus. Eine Kritik (Stuttgart, 1974). No end can be seen to this debate, which is far too abstract, for instance, in its handling of historical truth.

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  3. See the chapter ‘Das System plebiszitärer Akklamation’ in Karl Dietrich Bracher (ed.), Stufen der Machtergreifung (Frankfurt, 1974), pp. 472–98, which for the most part deals with coercion, terrorism and manipulation, to convey a somewhat distorted picture of the events after the seizure of power.

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  4. From a contribution by T. Mason at the conference of the German Historical Institute, London.

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  5. This is true especially of the biography, so successful in my opinion, by Joachim Fest, Hitler (Frankfurt, 1973) and the discerning observations of Sebastian Haffner, Anmerkungen zu Hitler (Cologne, 1978).

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  6. Review of the existing social-psychological research in Wippermann, Faschismustheorien, pp. 56–63 and also De Felice, Interpretations, pp. 78–87. Also the most recent ‘psycho-historical’ examination by Rudolph Binion, Das ihr mich gefunden habt. Hitler und die Deutschen (Stuttgart, 1978) does not contain what the book jacket promises. It deals with psycho-analytical impressions and speculation, which scarcely do justice to the complex historical reality and especially the political culture of Germany.

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  7. Wilhelm Reich, Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus (Frankfurt, 1979), p. 58.

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  8. It was this concept, ‘the horrible word “re-education” ‘, which was, moreover, repudiated by the experts of the military government (Education Branch), and not the culture of the occupied land. In addition, see Robert Birley, ‘British Policy in Retrospect’, in Arthur Hearnden (ed.), The British in Germany. Educational Reconstruction after 1945 (London, 1978), p. 46.

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  9. Cf. the two volumes by Annedore Leber, edited in co-operation with Willy Brand and Karl Dietrich Bracher, Das Gewissen entscheidet and Das Gewissen steht auf (Berlin, 1959 and 1960).

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  10. For early, contemporary indications, see Hildebrand, Das Dritte Reich, pp. 123ff. and also Wippermann, Faschismustheorien, pp. 11–55. For arguments dealing with present theories see Grebing, Aktuelle Theorien and also Heinrich August Winkler, Revolution, Staat, Faschismus (Göttingen, 1978), pp. 65–117.

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  11. In the last, partly free elections on 5 March 1933, the NSDAP obtained 17,277,180 votes (43-9%). See Statistisches Jahrbuch für das Deutsche Reich, Year 52 (Berlin, 1933), p. 540. For a current interpretation then see Hildebrand, Das Dritte Reich, p. 5: ‘They, [the NSDAP] have never, therefore, ever been elected by a majority of the German people’.

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  12. On taking over the office of Reichspräsident after the death of Hindenburg, the concept of the Führer gained official validity through the law of 1 August 1934, a decisive step in the process of ensuring the autonomy of the executive. See Martin Broszat, Der Staat Hitlers (Munich, 1969). For ‘Hitler’s emancipation from the State’, see also Peter Diehl-Thiele, Partei und Staat im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1971), pp. 21ff.

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  13. In addition see the two prefaces by Heinz Boberach (ed.), Meldungen aus dem Reich, a selection from the secret situational reports of the security service of the SS, 1939–1944 (Neuwied and Berlin, 1965), and also reports of the SD and the Gestapo on churches and church people in Germany, 1934–1944 (Mainz, 1971).

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  14. See in addition Ian Kershaw, Der Hitler-Mythos Volksmeinung und Propaganda im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, 1980).

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  15. This historical concept, which has been afforded academic recognition for the early part of modern times by Peter Blickle Die Revolution von 1525 (Munich and Vienna, 1975), pp. 177ff., is also applicable in my opinion to research into the attitudes of mind of later centuries.

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  16. Martin Broszat,’ soziale Motivation und Führer-Bindung des NS’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), NS-Aussenpolitik (Darmstadt, 1978), pp. 92–116. In addition see also J. P. Stern, Hitler. The Führer and the People (London, 1975).

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  17. Heinrich August Winkler, ’Der entbehrliche Stand. On the politics of the middle classes in the Third Reich’, AfS, 17 (1977), 1–40. In another place Winkler emphasises quite rightly the ‘deferment of concrete, economic interests in favour of rather vague class interests’, most noticeable among the white-collar worker class. (‘Extremism of the centre? Social-historical aspects of the NS seizure of power’, now in: Liberalismus und Antiliberalismus (Göttingen, 1979), p. 212.)

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  18. Cf. also Albrecht Tyrell (ed.), Führer befiehl. Selbstzeugnisse aus der Kampfzeit (Düsseldorf, 1969), pp. 307ff.

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  19. To my knowledge this concept was first used by J. P. Stern, Hitler (pp. 9–22): ‘One is struck by the representativeness of the public and private figures alike, by his grasp of most aspects (other than literature) of the “culture” of his day’ (p. 20).

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  20. Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (Munich, 1966), pp. 431–47 (Democracy and Society in Germany, London, 1968); David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution. Class and Status in Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (London, 1967).

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  21. Karl Griewank, Der neuzeitliche Revolutionsbegriff (Frankfurt, 1973), pp. 21f.

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  22. Theodor Schieder, ‘Stichwort “Revolution”’, Sowjetsystem und Demokratische Gesellschaft, Vol. 5 (Freiburg, 1972), p. 697.

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  23. In addition see, more recently, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, ‘Die deutsche Revolution 1918–1920. Politische Revolution und soziale Protestbewegung’, in Geschicte und Gesellschaft (1978), 372–91.

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  24. Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie, p. 432.

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  25. Thus in the Statistisches Jahrbuch des Deutschen Reiches, Year 52 (Berlin, 1933), p. 539.

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  26. Cf. also Hans Mommsen, ‘On the limiting of traditional and fascist leading groups in Germany during the transition from the movement-to the system-phase’, in Wolfgang Schieder (ed.), Faschismus als soziale Bewegung. Deutschland und Italien im Vergleich (Hamburg, 1976), pp. 157–81; Fritz Fischer, Bündnis der Eliten, on the continuity of the power structures in Germany 1871–1945 (Düsseldorf, 1979) and also the contributions of Wolfgang Wette and Wilhelm Deist, in Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik, edited by the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt Freiburg (Stuttgart, 1979).

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  27. See Renzo de Felice, Der Faschismus. Ein Interview mit Michael A. Ledeen, with an epilogue by Jens Petersen (Stuttgart, 1977), p. 54: ‘The real problem which must be solved if one wishes to understand the seizure of power of fascism, does not lie in the attitude which the economy adopted towards it, but in the behaviour of the masses who supported fascism in the years 1921–22, both the committed supporters and also the broader reaches of public opinion.’

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  28. See in addition, Paul Kluke, ‘Der Fall Potempa. Eine Dokumentation’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschicte (1957), 279–97.

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  29. Fest, Hitler, p. 976.

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  30. According to Adolf Heusinger, Befehl im Widerstreit (Tübingen, 1950), p. 367.

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  31. The reaction of the German people to the seizure of power does not exactly fall among the popular topics of research. The reports in the not yet fully integrated press cannot all be due to manipulation. See the documentation of, among others, Joachim Kuropka (ed.) on Die Machtergreifung der Nationalsozialisten, dealing with the example of the town of Münster (Münster, 1979), which was a completely bourgeois town, loyal to the Centre.

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  32. Quotation from Philipp W. Fabry, Mutmassungen über Hitler. Urteile von Zeitgenossen (Düsseldorf, 1969), p. 153.

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  33. See also the pitiful end of the only combative group within the Weimar coalition: Karl Rohe, Das Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold (Düsseldorf, 1966), pp. 110ff.; also Karl Dietrich Bracher, Die Deutsche Diktatur (Cologne, 1969), pp. 235ff.

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  34. Barbara Marshall, ‘German Attitudes to British Military Government 1945–1947’, in Journal of Contemporary History (1980/81). In most of the prisoner-of-war camps a militant Nazi spirit existed right up to the end of the war, as Barry Sullivan found out, see his Threshold of Peace. Four Hundred Thousand German Prisoners and the People of Britain (London, 1979), pp. 86–112. The British Camp Guard teams could not prevent political dissidents from being ‘executed’ by fanatical Nazis. The interrogating officers had to prove that the POWs supported National Socialism mainly because of its apparent social and economic achievements, but especially also because of the policy of removal of class barriers which it pursued (p. 95).

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  35. Ibid.

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  36. Party Statistics (in the IfZ), edited by the Reichsorganisations Chief of the NSDAP (Robert Ley), Vol. 1 (Munich, 1935), p. 70.

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  37. Statistical Yearbook of the German Reich, Year 52 (Berlin, 1933), p. 19 and also Party Statistics, Vol. 2, p. 164.

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  38. Michael H. Kater,’ sozialer Wandel in der NSDAP im Zuge der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung’, in Schieder (ed.) Faschismus als soziale Bewegung, p. 53.

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  39. See also especially Seymour Martin Lipset, ‘Fascism, Left, Right and Center’, in Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (Garden City, 1960), pp. 217–79. The theories of Seymour M. Lipset and Reinhard Bendix on the body of electors of the NSDAP in the light of more recent results of research, are found in Peter Steinbach (ed.), Partizipation als Mittel der politischen Modernisierung (Stuttgart, 1980).

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  40. See also especially the work of Jürgen Kocka, Klassengesellschaft im Krieg 1914–1918 (Göttingen, 1973), Heinrich August Winkler, Mittelstand, Demokratie und Nationalsozialismus (Cologne, 1972) and Arthur Schweitzer, Die Nazifizierung des Mittelstands (Stuttgart, 1970) on the development of the old and the new middle classes from the First to the Second World War, the composition of which is, without exception, governed most strongly by socio-economic questions and thereby suggests that the economic situation was the all-important factor.

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  41. Theodor Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung des deutschen Volkes. Sozio graphischer Versuch auf statistischer Grundlage (Stuttgart, 1932).

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  42. Hans Speier, Die Angestellten vor dem Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen, 1977). Speier is looking for answers to the question: ‘The class theory explains the middle-class alignment of the bourgeois white-collar groups as “false awareness”. How, though, does it explain this false awareness?’ (p. 87).

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  43. Rainer Lepsius, Extremer Nationalismus. Strukturbedingungen vor der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung (Stuttgart, 1966).

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  44. Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung, p. 77.

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  45. Cf. to a certain extent Reich, Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, pp. 40ff.

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  46. Geiger, Die soziale Schichtung, p. 78.

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  47. Speier, Die Angestellten, p. 120.

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  48. Lepsius, Extremer Nationalismus, pp. 13ff.

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  49. The highest number of votes for the NSDAP were in the rural areas of the Eastern provinces, mainly in East Prussia (56.5%) and Pomerania (56.3%). But also in the constituencies of Chemnitz-Zwickau (50.0%) and Breslau (50.2%) half of all valid votes fell to the Hitler movement. Statistisches Jahrbuch des Deutschen Reiches (Berlin, 1933), p. 540.

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  50. Party Statistics, Vol. 1, p. 56.

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  51. Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler (Zürich, 1940), p. 181. Cf. also Hitler’s speeches on May Day, especially on 1 May 1933, shortly before he dissolved the trade unions (Max Domarus (ed.), Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen, Vol. 1 (Munich, 1962), pp. 259ff.).

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  52. Haffner, Ammerkungen zu Hitler, pp. 50f.

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  53. In the sphere of law the connection between Hitler and the ‘purity of national sentiment’ was most clearly to be seen. This was mentioned in an SD report on the mood of the populace after Hitler had become indignant on 26 April 1942 about the ‘formal concepts in the law’, and it was stated that ‘with his words on justice and officialdom the Führer had expressed the opinion of a large proportion of the people’, Boberach, Meldungen, p. 259. For Hitler’s criticism of the administration of justice in the courts see also Henry Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche im Führerhauptquartier (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 103f. and also Martin Broszat, ‘Zur Perversion der Strafjustiz im Dritten Reich’ (Dokumentation) in VjhZG (1958), 390–443.

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  54. It was even on cigarette cards, for which there was an album, that Hitler’s closest colleagues reported about their wonderful boss. See for example, Adolf Hitler. Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers, edited by Cigaretten-Bilderdienst (Hamburg-Bahrenfeld, 1936), especially the chapter by his driver Julius Schreck, ‘Der Führer auf Reisen’, pp. 9ff.

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  55. See in addition the catchword Vorsehung (Providence) in the index in Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 11, p. 2290.

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  56. Cf. also the speech at the conference of the NS Women’s Movement of 5 September 1934 in Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 1, pp. 449ff. On the NS Women’s policy generally, Dörte Winkler, Frauenarbeit im ‘Dritten Reich’ (Hamburg, 1977).

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  57. Speech before the Hitler Youth on 14 September 1935, in which were uttered the words so often quoted later, ‘German boys were as fleet as greyhounds, as tough as leather and as hard as Krupp steel’; Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 1, pp. 532f.

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  58. The embodiment of the intellectual in politics was, for Hitler, Reichskanzler von Bethmann-Hollweg. According to his opinion it was ‘a disaster that our people had to fight out its very battle for existence under the Reichschancellorship of a philosophising weakling’, instead of having ‘a more robust man of the people as their leader/Führer’ (Mein Kampf, 241/245, Munich 1937 edn, p. 481). See also the countless references to the catchword ‘Intellektuelle’ in Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 11, p. 2283 (‘root out’, ‘inferior types’, ‘rabble of the nation’).

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  59. Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 1, p. 116.

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  60. More information about radio as a political medium in Heinz Pohle, Der Rundfunk als Instrument der Politik (Hamburg, 1955), pp. 252–72, where there are also some reviews of topics and statistics of numbers of listeners (p. 328ff.). See also Willi A. Boelcke, Die Macht des Radios. Weltpolitik und Auslandsfunk, 1924–1976 (Frankfurt, 1977), on the power struggles in Berlin about foreign broadcast propaganda which was mainly directed at German minorities abroad.

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  61. Cf. Hans-Joachim Giese, Die Film-Wochenschau im Dienste der Politik (Dresden, 1940), pp. 49ff.; on the film in general: Erwin Leiser, Deutschland Erwache. Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches (Hamburg (rororo), 1968); Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik, a sociological examination of feature films of the Third Reich (Stuttgart, 1969) and also from the Marxist point of view Wolfgang Becker, Film und Herrschaft (Berlin, 1973) and, not least, Walter Hagemann, Publizistik im Dritten Reich. Ein Beitrag zur Methodik der Massenführung (Hamburg, 1948), pp. 61ff.

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  62. See now, in addition, the filmstrips available from the Bundesarchiv (Filmarchiv: Findbuch, Vol. 8, Koblenz 1977) on the Nürnberg Party Rallies before 1933. In addition see also the commentary by Haffner, Ammerkungen zu Hitler (pp. 35f.) on the NS election machine compared to the more commonplace functions of other parties.

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  63. John W. Wheeler-Bennett, Hindenburg. The Wooden Titan (London, 1936).

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  64. On the very distinct nature of court ceremonial of the German princely houses right up to the turn of the century, see Helmut Reichold, Bismarcks Zaunkönige. Duodez im 20. Jahrhundert (Paderborn, 1977), pp. 130–57.

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  65. Cf. Elizabeth Fehrenbach, Wandlungen des Kaisergedankens, 1871–1918 (Munich, 1969), pp. 216f.

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  66. Lepsius, Extremer Nationalismus, p. 4.

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  67. Cf. in addition Marlis G. Steinert, Hitlers Krieg und die Deutschen. Stimmung und Haltung der deutschen Bevölkerung im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Düsseldorf, 1970), pp. 91f.

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  68. Broszat,’ soziale Motivation’, pp. 103f.

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  69. T. W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft (Opladen, 1977). Even Mason concedes that the DAF were concerned with improving the economic and social position of the workers.

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  70. Jürgen W. Falter, ‘Wer verhalf der NSDAP zum Sieg?’, in Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, supplement to the weekly Das Parlament (1979), B28/29, p. 19.

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  71. See in addition Henry A. Turner, ‘Hitlers Einstellung zu Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft’, in GG (1976), 1, 89–117.

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  72. For statistics on legal wrangles (which did not return to zero, but nevertheless were reduced by half between 1932 and 1935 (from 371,000 to 188,900), see Willy Müller, Das soziale Leben im neuen Deutschland unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der DAF (Berlin, 1938), p. 153.

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  73. Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. 1, pp. 350f. (27 January 1943).

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  74. Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution, p. 107.

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  75. Wolfgang Buchholz, Die nationalsozialistische Gemeinschaft ‘Kraft durch Freude’. Freizeitgestaltung und Arbeiterschaft im Dritten Reich, Dissertation (Munich, 1976), p. 398.

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  76. Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie, pp. 447f.

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  77. Party Statistics, Vol. 1, p. 53. Of all workers 5.1% belonged to the NSDAP, as against 12.0% of all white-collar workers, 15*2% of all self-employed persons and no less than 20.7% of all civil servants. Within the party the three last-named groups, with 53.8%, held the absolute majority.

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  78. The farmers made up 20.7% of the working population (workers/artisans: 46.3%), and accounted for 10.7% (workers/artisans: 32.1%) of party members and 14.7% (workers/artisans: 23.0%) of political activists. See Party Statistics, Vol. 2, p. 157.

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  79. See ibid. Even if middle-class socialism, as it had seemed to promise before 1933, did not succeed (cf. Winkler, Mittelstand, Demokratie und Nationalsozialismus, note 17 and Schweitzer, Die Nazifizierung des Mittelstands, pp. 100–36), nevertheless, white-collar workers, the self-employed and civil servants (including teachers) were noticeably dominant within the party. Although their proportion of the working population was only 26.8%, they formed 53.8% of all party members and no less than 59.7% of all political activists.

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  80. For the social-democratic club-life and its effect, see George L. Mosse, Die Nationalisierung der Massen (Frankfurt, 1976), pp. 190–212. In addition, see also Reich, Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, p. 80: ‘The lower middle-class bedroom which the “prole” procured for himself as soon as he had the means and, even if he was otherwise revolutionary minded, the closely associated suppression of the wife, even if he was a communist, the “proper” clothing on Sundays, the stiff-backed dances he liked and a thousand other trifling details, when taken to extremes of effect, had incomparably more reactionary influence than thousands of revolutionary rally speeches and hand-outs could ever have achieved’.

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  81. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, edited by Johannes Winkelmann, vol. 1 (Tübingen, 1976), p. 141.

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  82. See note 19 above.

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  83. Broszat,’ soziale Motivation’, pp. 106f.

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  84. Eberhard Jäckel, Hitlers Weltanschauung. Entwurf einer Herrschaft (Tübingen, 1969).

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  85. Strassburger Neueste Nachrichten, 10 February 1941. Further examples in Binion, Das ihr mich gefunden habt, pp. 166f. Fest quotes the first devotional address of the young Goebbels to Hitler imprisoned at Landsberg: ‘God gave us you to tell of our suffering. You transformed our torment into words of salvation’ (p. 288).

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  86. Fritz Stern, Kulturpessimismus als politische Gefahr (Stuttgart and Vienna, 1963), pp. 190ff. (The Politics of Cultural Despair, New York, 1959).

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  87. Cf. the cultural speeches, especially those given in Munich and Nürnberg; references in Domarus (ed.), Hitler, Vol. II, p. 2284. See also Arne Fryksen, ‘Hitlers Reden zur Kultur. Kunstpolitische Taktik oder Ideologie’, in Probleme deutscher Zeitgeschichte (Läromedelsförlagen, 1970), pp. 235–66; further Hildegard Brenner, Die Kunstpolitik des Nationalsozialismus (Hamburg, (rororo) 1963), pp. 82ff.

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  88. One exception were the commanders of the Reichswehr to whom Hitler outlined his far-reaching plans as early as 1 February 1933. Cf. Wolfram Wettes’ contribution in: ‘Ursachen und Voraussetzungen der deutschen Kriegspolitik’, Vol. 1 of the series Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, edited by the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (Stuttgart, 1979), pp. 121f.

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  89. Karl Dietrich Bracher, Zeitgeschichtliche Kontroversen um Faschismus, Totalitarisme, Demokratie (Munich, 1976), p. 81.

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  90. See note 32 above.

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  91. Thus Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 122. For Hitler and his philosophy of will-power, cf. Stern, Kulturpessimismus, pp. 56ff.

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  92. On Hitler’s rhetoric see the splendid description of atmosphere in Fest, Hitler, pp. 448ff.

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  93. Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 369ff.

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  94. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, p. 189.

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  95. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 22.

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  96. Cf. Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 61 (1 August 1941). These were Hitler’s words directed against any uniformity of Reich legislation. Frequently he meant the civil servants whenever he cut loose against the lawyers.

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  97. See note 49 above.

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  98. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, p. 58.

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  99. Cf. Fest, Hitler, p. 615, who reports that, even as Reichskanzler, Hitler had found the time to immerse himself again in most volumes of this youthful literature.

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  100. In addition, Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, pp. 168f. His sister and half-sister were to receive sufficient from his legacy to maintain a lower-middle-class living.

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  101. Mosse, Die Nationalisierung der Massen, pp. 213–39.

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  102. Jochen Thies, Architekt der Weltherrschaft. Die Endziele Hitlers (Düsseldorf, 1976), pp. 70ff.

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  103. Domarus (ed.) Hitler, Vol. 1, p. 613 (27 March 1936).

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  104. See in addition Klaus Schwabe, Wissenschaft und Kriegsmoral. Die deutschen Hochschullehrer und die Grundfragen des Ersten Weltkriegs (Göttingen, 1969), pp. 21ff. Cf. also Thomas Mann, ‘Gedanken im Kriege’, in Politische Schriften und Reden, Vol. 2 (Frankfurt, 1968), pp. 7–20.

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  105. For the Vaterlandspartei which is indicated here, see Dirk Stegmann, Die Erben Bismarcks. Parteien und Verbände in der Spätphase des Wilhelminischen Reiches (Cologne, 1970), pp. 497–519.

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  106. For the connection between experience of war and social criticism, see Rudolf Vierhaus, ‘Faschistisches Führertum’, Historische Zeitschrift (1964), 614–39.

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  107. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, p. 44.

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  108. See in addition, Rohe, Reichsbanner, pp. 110ff. as well as Peter H. Merkl, Political Violence under the Swastika (Princeton, 1975), pp. 138ff.; also Kurt Sontheimer, Anti-demokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 1962), pp.115-39.

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  109. Hitler, Mein Kampf, p. 270.

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  110. See Lothar Kettenacker, Nationalsozialistische Volkstumspolitik im Elsass (Stuttgart, 1973), p. 34.

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  111. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, p. 79.

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  112. See also the comments on the theme ‘Justiz im Krieg’ in Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 103 (8 February 1942); also Stern, Kulturpessimismus, pp. 116–29, who reports on the introduction of the death penalty for motorway robbery which found great acclaim among the ordinary people and which was introduced, in fact, by Hitler himself in one set of summary proceedings.

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  113. Cf. Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler, p. 25.

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  114. Title of a book which appeared anonymously before 1914 by Heinrich Class (Daniel Frymann), the director of the Alldeutsche Verband.

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  115. Robert Koehl, ‘Feudal Aspects of National Socialism’, in American Political Science Review (1962), 921ff.

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  116. Robert Coulborn (ed.), Feudalism in History (Princeton, 1956).

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  117. Robert L. Koehl, RKFDV. German Resettlement and Population Policy 1939–1945 (Harvard, 1957).

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  118. In addition, see Horst Gies, R. Walther Darré und die nationalsozialistische Bauernpolitik 1930–1933, Dissertation (Frankfurt, 1965).

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  119. Cf. Josef Ackermann, Heinrich Himmler als Ideologe (Göttingen, 1970).

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  120. Koehl, ‘Feudal Aspects’, p. 921.

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  121. Cf. Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 463 (26 July 1942).

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  122. This aspect has been emphasised especially by Hans Mommsen, as in the article: ‘Ausnahmezustand als Herrschaftstechnik des NS-Regimes’, in Manfred Funke (ed.), Hitler, Deutschland und die Mächte (Düsseldorf, 1978), pp. 30–45.

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  123. Picker, Hitlers Tischgespräche, p. 285 (12 May 1942).

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  124. Ibid., p. 62 (1 August 1941).

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  125. Ibid., p. 381 (23 June 1942).

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  126. Ibid., pp. 247 (27 April 1942) and 440 (18 July 1942).

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  127. See Wippermann, Faschismus theorien, p. 147.

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  1. German Historical Institute, London, UK

    Lothar Kettenacker (Assistant Director)

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  1. Lothar Kettenacker
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H. W. Koch

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© 1985 L. Kettenacker

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Kettenacker, L. (1985). Social and Psychological Aspects of the Fuhrer’s Rule. In: Koch, H.W. (eds) Aspects of the Third Reich. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17891-9_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17891-9_4

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