The Nazi Party: A Social Profile of Members and Leaders 1919-1945 by Kater Michael H

Author:Kater,Michael H
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-09-25T23:00:00+00:00

8 — PEACETIME

JANUARY 1933 TO SEPTEMBER 1939

With Hitler’s assumption of the chancellorship on January 30, 1933, the NSDAP became the official state party, wielding clearly monopolistic powers. It underwent a multifaceted metamorphosis that affected the status of its common members and especially of its professional and semi-professional functionaries. These changes came in the wake of expansion, which was needed in order to deal with the welter of new administrative problems that had to be solved in the Reich. By the end of 1934 the party apparatus increased its strength from a few hundred full-time workers to nearly three quarters of a million dedicated zealots (full-time and part-time). Less than five years later — shortly before the war — the party included 1.7 million officers, counting everybody from the regionally organized core leadership cadres to the various ancillary and adjunct organizations. This expansion resulted mainly from the creation and subsequent growth of two new types of Nazi “leaders” at the grass-roots level, below the Ortsgruppenleiters: Blockleiter (block leaders) and Zellenleiter (cell leaders).[679] These positions, established in 1933 to ensure closer contact with party members at large in everyday situations, were filled in 1934-35 by 204,359 block leaders and 54,976 cell leaders. By January 1939 there were 463,048 block and 89,378 cell leaders — increases of 126 and 62 percent respectively — while the ranks of Ortsgruppenleiter and Stützpunktleiter (outpost leader) together grew only from 20,724 to 28,376, representing a gain of only 37 percent.[680] The ranks above Ortsgruppenleiter increased even less spectacularly.[681]

A better understanding of the enlarged Nazi hierarchy after 1933 requires a more thorough explanation. After his assumption of power, Hitler, with the aid of Dr. Robert Ley (head of the party’s organizational section), along with Rudolf Hess and Martin Bormann, covered Germany with a network of party administrative units. These units were organized according to much tighter hierarchical principles than those that had prevailed during the Time of Struggle.[682] The Führerprinzip (leadership principle), which required the delegation of authority from the supreme party leader down to the lowliest Blockleiter, was strictly followed. Hitler dealt directly with the Reichsleiter (Reich leaders) at the peak of the NSDAP’s hierarchy, most of whom had been his personal friends and loyal cronies from the earliest days. Although the Reichsleiters worked from a central pivot (either Munich or Berlin), had specific tasks to perform, and were, by virtue of their rank as well as their ready access to the Führer, nominally superior to the regional party representatives, the Gauleiters, they exercised no jurisdiction over the Gauleiters in either a “constitutional” or a technical sense. In practice, the Gauleiters reported only to Hitler, with Hess or his chief aide, Bormann, acting not as superiors but merely as liaison officers. The Gauleiters, however, whose regions often coincided with the provinces and states, directly commanded the Kreisleiters (district leaders) within their regions. The Kreisleiters in turn gave orders to the Ortsgruppenleiters (chapter leaders), and the Ortsgruppenleiters gave orders to the Zellenleiters. By 1936 an Ortsgruppe encompassed about 1,500 households or family units.

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