The Nazi Government (1934-39) Flashcards
What were 2 ways that Hitler dealt with the existing bureaucracy?
- He purged his opponents and Jews from it in 1933
- Hitler kept some ministers who weren’t Nazis, since they gave the people a sense of continuity
List 5 defining aspects of the Nazi government.
- Führerprinzip
- ‘Working towards the Führer’
- Polyarchy
- Personal rivalries
- Terror
What was Führerprinzip? Give 3 details.
- The ‘leadership principle’
- The idea of a strict hierarchical order
- It meant that Hitler had absolute power
- It also meant that leaders gave orders which were instantly followed (contrary to a democracy, where there would be discussion and consultation)
What other idea did the Nazis use to support Führerprinzip?
- The idea of Volksgemeinschaft; that the whole nation would work together for the common good rather than for their own good
What was ‘working towards the Führer’, and why did it exist?
- The Nazis implemented policies that they thought would please Hitler, as they did not have their own party programme, but rather were aware of what Hitler roughly wanted
- This would then give them more responsibility and power
How was ‘working towards the Führer’ justified by the Nazis?
- Through the idea that Hitler perfectly represented the will of all Germans
What was the issue that Nazi officials faced with ‘working towards the Führer’? Give 3 details.
- Hitler rarely set out his views clearly, but tended to say them in long monologues about various other topics
- Therefore, access to Hitler was the way to gain power
- However, access to Hitler was controlled by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, Hans Heinrich Lammers and later Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary
- This made Bormann more powerful than his own superior, Rudolf Hess, who was deputy Führer
What 3 types of bodies existed within the government by 1936? Give one or two examples of each.
- Ministries: Hitler kept many of the traditional ones from Weimar, and created new ones such as the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
- Nazi Party departments: the party itself had departments that were intended to develop policies in certain areas, such as a department of economics
- Supreme Reich authorities: special agencies created by Hitler that came from neither the party nor the state, such as the Office of the Four Year Plan and the DAF
What was the problem with the existence of these different bodies? Give an example.
- They overlapped, which made the regime polycratic (it had many centres of power)
- The economy; before 1933, the ministries of economics, agriculture and labour all played a role in economic policy
- In 1936, Hitler created the Office of the 4 Year Plan for the purpose of creating a new economic policy
- It had the power to organise labour, industrial production and even transport, which therefore interfered with the work of several other industries
What were 4 reasons why Hitler ultimately created a polycratic regime, although it was chaotic?
- To create competition, which would cause ministers to want to please him and remember that they were dependent on him
- He even stopped groups from working on policies to prevent the formation of opposition
- He believed that this competition would lead to the creation of a better government (social Darwinism)
- Officials would ultimately have to come to him to solve disputes
Describe 4 aspects of a personal rivalry that affected the Nazi government.
- Himmler and Göring fought over control of the political (/secret) police after they purged Röhm
- From mid-1934, Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich (head of the SD) wanted to remove Göring’s influence from the Gestapo
- The dispute was taken to Hitler in 1936, and Göring no longer had control over the Gestapo
- Himmler’s power base grew as a result, and he expanded the Gestapo to monitor the whole of Germany
What happened to political opposition under the Nazis?
- The Gestapo found any opposition
- Political prisoners were sent to concentration camps ran by the Gestapo
What was Hitler’s lifestyle like as Führer?
- He spent a lot of time away from central government at his villa, the Berghof
- He was rarely awake before lunch, had irregular sleep patterns and spent most of his time doing leisure activities
In what 7 ways did Hitler play an important role in the government?
- His will was the basis of the regime instead of the law
- He allowed the Nazi Party to play a bigger role in government
- He created new agencies
- He disliked being involved in the day-to-day affairs of government, unless it was foreign policy
- He used his authority to end disputes between senior Nazis
- His style of government caused the regime to be increasingly radical as Nazis came up with more extreme ideas to please him
- His presence actually made the regime more organised
What proof is there that Hitler did not want to take part in the government’s daily affairs?
- While the cabinet had met 72 times in 1933, it only met 4 times in 1936
- It met for the final time in 1938