Abstract
So much has been said in recent decades about the ‘polycratic’, chaotic, un-bureaucratic and ad hoc nature of the NS regime. This interpretation has had a long academic ancestry dating back to the years of the Second World War. It was Franz Neumann who, in the early 1940s, described the administrative structures and practices of the NS state as a ‘behemoth’ — a network without unity of purpose or direction:
I venture to suggest that we are confronted with a form of society in which the ruling groups control the rest of the population directly, without the mediation of that rational though coercive apparatus hitherto known as the state. This new social form is not yet fully realized, but the trend exists which defines the very essence of the regime … In fact, except for the charismatic power of the Leader, there is no authority that co-ordinates the four powers [party, army, bureaucracy, industry], no place where the compromise between them can be put on a universal valid basis.1
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Notes
F Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1944), 381–4.
E Fraenkel, The Dual. State (New York: Octagon Books, 1969)
G Sorensen, ‘The dual state and fascism’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 2 (2001), 25–40.
For example, J Caplan, ‘Government without Administration. State and Civil Service’, in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 321–81 (esp. 331–2)
J Caplan, ‘National Socialism and the Theory of the State’, in T Childers, J Caplan (eds), Reevaluating the Third Reich (New York/London: Holmes & Meier, 1993), 98–102. In general, see Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship.
I Kershaw, ‘ “Working Towards the Führer”: reflections on the nature of the Hitler Dictatorship’, in I Kershaw, M Lewin (eds), Stalinism and Nazism: Dictatorships in Comparison (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 88–107; T Kirk, A McElligott (eds), Working towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
T Kirk, A McElligott (eds), Working towards the Führer: Essays in Honour of Sir Ian Kershaw (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
C Schmitt, Staat, Bewegung und Volk. Die Dreigliederung der politischen Einheit (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1934), 31 ff.
Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, 187–95. On Weber’s notion of ‘charismatic’ legitimation see M Weber, ‘Politics as vocation’, in Gerth H and C Wright Mills (ed.), Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985)
M R Lepsius, ‘Charismatic leadership: Max Weber’s model and its applicability to the rule of Hitler’, in C F Graumann and S Moscovici (eds), Changing Conceptions of Political Leadership (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1986).
Z A B Zeman, Nazi Propaganda, reprinted in R Jackall (ed.), Propaganda (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 178–9.
O Dietrich, The Hitler I Knew (London: Methuen and Co, 1957), 238.
O Dietrich, 12 Jahre mit Hitler (Munich: Atlas-Verlag, 1955), 154
Martin H-L, Unser Mann bei Goebbels. Verbindungsoffizier des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht beim Reichspropagandaminister 1940–1944 (Neckargemünd: Scharnhorst Buchkameradschaft 1973), 22 ff; Balfour, Propaganda in War 1939–1945, 105.
A Uzulis, Nachrichtenagenturen im Nationalsozialismus. Propagandainstrumente und Mittel der Presselenkung (Frankfurt: P. Lang, 1995), 313, 356–7.
H W Flannery, Assignment to Berlin (London: The Right Book Club, 1943), 31–4.
M Hauner, ‘The professionals and the amateurs in National Socialist foreign policy: revolution and subversion in the Islamic and Indian world’, in G Hirschfeld, L Kettenacker (eds), Der ‘Führerstaat’. Mythos und Realität (Stuttgart: Kett-Cotta, 1981), 316 ff
H-A Jacobsen, Nationalsozialistische Außenpolitik 1933–1945 (Frankfurt: Alfred Metzner Verlag, 1968), 90–160
W Michalka, Ribbentrop und die deutsche Weltpolitik 1933–1940. Außenpolitische Konzeptionen und Entscheidungsprozeße im Dritten Reich (Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1980).
H G Seraphin, Das Politische Tagesbuch Alfred Rosenbergs 1934/5 und 1939/40 (Göttingen, Berlin and Frankfurt, 1956), 22/25.8.1939
R Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race. Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology (London: Bratsford, 1972), 179 ff.
D Orlow, The History of the Nazi Party, 1919–1945, Vol. II: 1933–1945 (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1973), 470.
O Buchbender, Das tönende Erz: Deutsche Propaganda gegen die Rote Armee im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1978), 17–19.
H von Wedel, Die Propagandatruppen der deutschen Wehrmacht (Neckargemünd: Scharnhorst Buchkameradschaft, 1962).
R-D Müller, ‘Albert Speer und die Rüstungspolitik im Totalen Krieg’, Das Deutsche Reich und des Zweite Weltkrieg (DRZW), Vol. 5/2: Organisation und Mobilisierung des deutschen Machtbereichs, Zweiter Halbband: Kriegsverwaltung, Wirtschaft und personelle Ressourcen 1942–1944/45 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1989), 545–693.
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© 2005 Aristotle A. Kallis
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Kallis, A.A. (2005). ‘Polyocracy’ versus ‘Centralisation’: The Multiple ‘Networks’ of NS Propaganda. In: Nazi Propaganda and the Second World War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230511101_3
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