Friday 16th November

We started this lesson by finding out "What happened to the traditional power structures" ( H&H P193)

Following the idea of Nazis as gangsters, we found out how they gained power over the original government.

The exercise on p193 explained how the Nazis took over each section of the government legally (apparently) so as not to arouse any suspicion that they might not be law-abiding:

The Reichstag lost its role in government, since Hitler created decrees, rather than voting on new laws in the Reichstag. After 1933 it rarely met, and only contained Nazis.

The Cabinet was kept by the Nazis, but fell into disuse. it was mostly made up of Nazis, but not completely. this showed how unimportant Hitler thought it was, since he did not make it entirely Nazi.

Local Government Hitler promised not to abolish them, but they were taken over by centrally appointed officials.

Civil Service was made up of conservative, anti parliamentary beaurocrats, who eventually had to convert to the Nazi party.

The Foreign Office was initially kept by the Nazis, but Hitler bypassed it, and the staff were eventually replaced with Nazis.

The Courts & Legal System had been independent, but any Judges who opposed Nazi rulings were bypassed and the rest had to act according to Hitler's beliefs & policies.

The Army had originally been a threat to Hitler, and he did not attempt to reorganise it until he was securely in power in 1938.

The Reich Chancellery was essentialy a beaurocratic machine, dealing with the masses of paperwork necessary to keep a dictator in power...

One key question is "Who had the most power?" (H&H P206)

Which policies became law largely depended on who had access to Hitler, since he would approve them and make them decrees. Ths meant that Lammers had a lot of power since he controlled access to Hitler.

P206 Discusses how best to describe the Nazi government:

Polycratic means that there were many overlapping bodies. Hitler would often make a new body to deal with a particular problem, or to bypass an existing one.

Feudal could describe the Nazis, with dominant leaders at the head of different agencies. They were all loyal to Hitler, but would often argue among themselves.

Chaotic could also describe the Nazi government. the multiple overlapping agencies caused chaos where there was doubt over which had authority.

There are conflicting interpretations of the government at this time:

Intentionalists say that significant events occurred because of the will of the powerful leaders such as Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini.

Structuralists claim that the circumstances at the time, such as the state of the economy, determined how events occurred.

In this lesson we also watched a video: Chaos & Consent.

This documentary explained how the Nazis were obsessed with order, as shown by their well organised parades. However, behind the scenes there was very little order - the governmet was in chaos.
The film also contained details of how Rohm attempted to integrate the SA into the Army, and to gain control of the Army. Hitler wanted to curb the power of Rohm and the SA, and to appease the Army. So, obviously he had Rohm killed, then made the soldiers swear an oath of loyalty to him.
We also saw how the will of Hitler was of paramount importance. Witnesses interviewed in the film said how people would overhear Hitler saying something, then they would enforce it as the will of Hitler, corrupting the government further.
The film explained that Hitler focussed the economy on rearmament, in order to bring Germany into a more powerful position, rather than focusing on consumer goods.