Why could Hitler only have happened in a modern society?
For his ideas to be put into operation in the terrible way they were required the bureaucracy of a modern state with numerous resources and real military strength. With a weak bureaucracy, poor economy, and nondescript army, none of this would have been possible.
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Yet you see Nazi Germany as quasi-chaotic.
The monolithic image portrayed in propaganda—a nation of 60 million goosestepping in unison—is a myth. There was considerable systematic disorder in the administration and government. Now, we shouldn’t misunderstand that. There were areas that were well ordered, well run, and very powerful, like the SS, which was very effective at repression and killing people. But the overall nature of the system was administrative disorder, because Hitler’s charismatic, highly personalized domination inevitably had arbitrary elements, which undercut bureaucratic regulation and created systemic disorder.
Why?
Hitler tended not to intervene in his underlings’ intense infighting. That was partly his personal predilection: a narcissist, he was really not interested in many things. But it was more because, as a charismatic figure, he couldn’t afford to be dragged into it. Hitler usually stayed aloof from infighting until it was plain who’d won, and usually sided with the winner. So there was an immanent structurelessness to the running of the state.
Hence your concept of “working toward the führer.”
I stumbled across this in a Nazi document, which opened my eyes to how the Nazi system could function without Hitler having to shout out streams of diktats. People second-guessed or anticipated what he wanted.
For example?
Take the notion that the Jews should be removed. In his very first political statement in 1919 he says this should be the aim of any national government. But when he comes to power, he doesn’t instigate a set of policies to lead to that objective. Rather, he stands for it, and others seek to implement it in myriad different ways. In so doing, they push along the dynamic of radicalization and anti-Semitism without Hitler having to do very much except at crucial moments, like the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 or the pogroms of 1938. So he intervenes where his authorization is necessary. He himself said, “On the Jewish question, I have been forced to remain inactive.” Yet the radicalization carried on.
How?
If you have a shop, and your rival next door is a Jew, you can use his Jewishness to break a competitor. You are not asking, “What would Hitler want me to do?” and then doing it. You are exploiting something for your own advantage. But it has the functional effect of pushing along the radicalization. You can see this in all walks of German life.
What was its effect on Nazi conquests?
For Hitler, the removal and later on extermination of the Jews was the start of an immense empire. Thirty-one million Slavs would be moved out or reduced to slaves and replaced by German Ubermenschen. Now, Hitler especially admired the
British Raj in India, without knowing or caring much about its elaborate bureaucracy. So some people said, “If we treat the Ukrainians halfway decently, we’ve got a strongly anti-Stalinist population.” But Hitler and some of his most trusted underlings favored only the most ruthless repression of Slav Untermenschen, so they turned the Ukraine completely anti-Nazi. Unlike the British, they didn’t want to make use of clients or client states.
So the Nazis built the great anti-Nazi coalition?
It was a gamble for world power which knew no limits, predicated on a showdown with the USA. In his unpublished second tract, Hitler made this clear, but thought it was coming long after his lifetime. In realistic terms, Germany’s gamble was enormous. Hitler brought together the unbelievable manpower of the Soviet Union, the material might of the U.S., and the force of the British Empire—an unholy alliance in coalition against him. The chances of Germany winning against that were truly remote. Nazi ideology outstripped the realistic possibilities of success. You could say Hitler had the courage of his delusions.
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