Führer

Before the takeover

In the beginning, the Führer was the leader of the parliamentary Groupe of the party, the true political director of the party, and that which, in the event of electoral victory, was the natural candidate with the direction of the new government. It is not obligatorily the president or the general secretary of the party, of the primarily administrative functions.

The term and the set of themes of the “ Guide ” are present of long time in mobility Völkisch (nationalist and populist) and especially Nazie. The Führerprinzip is omnipresent in the sales leaflet Nazi as of the years 1920. According to Adolf Hitler, the Führerprinzip initially was the means of marking concretely and of registering in the statutes of the party its virulent antiparliamentarianism. It will result in to place the Propagande above the administration and by imposing the preeminence of its director there on the party.

Hitler is elected Führer NSDAP as of its creation in 1921 with the Congrès of Salzburg, after the fusion of several parties of close inspiration (nationalist, racist and populist). He becomes about it president a few months later during the renewal of the management committee while being made in addition allot the “dictatorial capacities” for the “administrative office” of the party to his “Directorate of Political Affairs”, which was not especially in the German tradition. In practice, the administrative office will be entrusted to “substitutes near the presidency for the party”, Rudolf Hess, then Martin Bormann.

In 1925, at the time of the legal recasting of NSDAP after consecutive prohibition with the Putsch of the brewery, Hitler is re-elected president of the party (the mandates are three years, the president is elected by the Congress on a proposal from the management committee) and Oberstführer (supreme guide) of NSDAP and SA. It is also Führer of all the movement national-Socialist, i.e. party of which he is already the president, of SA of which he is the supreme commander, but also of all the organizations attached to the party and autonomous administratively (trade unions, movements of young people, the mothers and even of the female leagues, etc) In practice, he delegates to lieutenants the direction of all these organizations, reserving the general policy of the movement.

Hitler becomes the object of true a Culte of the personality as of the years 1925 - 1926. It reinforces its ascending on the party thanks to its first media successes, then electoral. His/her collaborators address themselves to him by saying Mein Führer , i.e. “My guide, my boss”. In his monumental Biography, the historian Ian Kershaw quotes thus Luise Solmitz, a teacher of Hamburg which assisted the April 23rd 1932 with an electoral meeting of NSDAP:

“ Nobody said “Hitler”, but always simply “Führer”. “said Führer”, “Führer want”, and what he said and wanted appeared beautiful and good. ”

A political poster at the time of the Anschluss in 1938) proclaims thus Ein Volk ein Reich ein Führer (“people, a " empire" , a chief”).

After 1933

After the liquidation of the competitor political parties, then the vote of the law instituting the unit of the Party and the State, Hitler, already federal Chancellor ( Reichskanzler ) and Führer of the party becomes de facto the führer of the State and the German people.

As a chancellor, chief of a cabinet of national concentration where the Nazis will be always minority, it is made delegate by the Reichstag renewable special powers every four years, and normally at the origin reserved to the president of the Weimar Republic by the constitution of 1919 who will remain always in force, amended in the direction of the National-socialisme, until September 1945, official date of the dissolution of Reich by the allied military authorities.

By the Gleichschaltung, it transforms the Reich into a unit state (the Länder lose their statute of federate states; the central government is represented there by a governor ( Statthalter )), but decentralized (broad capacities of the minister-presidents). The Gauleiter are only the local directors of the left, charged with supervising the administration of the Land, but in practice, they are always, either the Statthalter , or the local minister-president.

Died of the president Hindenburg, Hitler provides the functions of Head of the State after authorization of the the Council of Ministers, with the modest title of Führer of Reich by diverting an article of the constitution of Weimar which entrusts the presidential interim to the chancellor after having refused to be made elect president of Reich “by respect” towards Hindenburg. After the Referendum of August 1934, where it obtains 89% of the voices, Hitler becomes thus, in fact and in right, the chief of the Germany as much as the chief of the government.

It is the Führerstaat : Hitler concentrates on its person the functions always distinct in theory from chief of the government, the State, the sole party and the army. For this reason, it even obtains that the soldiers lend to him a personal oath with the manner of the Roman Emperors which it openly took as a starting point besides. It was in its youth a large reader of the historian Theodor Mommsen (reference?).

In practice however, he delegates his dictatorial powers “sovereign” (because by delegation of the people and his representatives: double direct suffrage and indirect) with “police chiefs” within the framework of an administrative, geographical department or of a given mission: it is the Führerprinzip , system which was inspired to him by its military experiment and the reading of the treaty of the constitutionnalist Carl Schmitt on the dictatorship (1922).

The protocolar and honorary functions of the Head of the State are often reserved for Hermann Göring, second character of the State as a president of the Reichstag (and thus vice-president of the Republic) and with his wife Emma, “First Lady of Reich”, Hitler not being married, and those of the chancellor with Joseph Goebbels, vice-chancellor as from 1934 and with his wife Madgalena.

skilful Dictator, Hitler is always arranged so that none of its lieutenants is able to supplant it without joining other important chiefs of the party, S and army, and it maintains between those reciprocal hatreds, competitions, monitorings and denouncements.

Lastly, it personally takes the wallet of the war in 1938 and obtains the capacity to constitute an international personal army in 1939 (the Waffen-SS) inside even of the Wehrmacht (10% of manpower of this one in 1944).

As of 1939, it gives up the title of chancellor (but not the functions) and in 1941, with the four-year renewal of its capacities, it is made allot by the Reichstag the functions of “supreme judge” with the right of life or of died on the citizens of Reich and the possibility of legislating by secret ordinances (i.e. not promulgated, and thus not published - to see Ordre of Führer). It has thus from now on the completely free hands juridically to massively eliminate secretly and its political adversaries, racial or different.

Right before its suicide, the April 30th 1945, Hitler transfers its presidential capacities to the admiral Karl Dönitz. The marshal of Reich Hermann Göring and his rival, the Minister of Interior Department, the general Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the S, are relieved, excluded from the party and are condemned to died on his orders for “high treason”. Its capacities of chancellor are transmitted to the vice-chancellor Goebbels and the presidency of the party to Martin Bormann, hitherto chief of the Chancellery of the party. After the suicide of Goebbels and the escape of Bormann which also transferred their respective capacities to him, Dönitz takes the title of president of Reich by interim, names a new chancellor by interim, and dissolves the NSDAP which does not have any more a raison d'être because of failure of its historical mission (the revenge of Germany on the countries of the Agreement of 1914-1918).

The Guide in other countries

the nickname of “Duce of Fascism” that the partisans of Benito Mussolini used, president of the fascistic national Party, in is an Italian equivalent in .
the title of “Spanish Caudillo” in has a consonance definitely more military and even nun.
the Mexican president Plutarco Elías Calles was described as “Jefe Maximo” during its dictatorship in fact, the “maximat”.
Argentinian the Juan Peron preferred the more fascistic nickname of “conductor”, taken again by…
the Rumanian dictators, the fascist Ion Antonescu, and the Communist Nicolae Ceauşescu in the local form “conducator”.
Mao Zedong was also readily described as “Great helmsman”,
Stalin of “supreme leader” - although communist propaganda made also him " the small father of the people " ,
Fidel Castro is made call “Líder Maximo”.

Cinema

the film the Dictator (of Charlie Chaplin) parodying Hitler is called in German " DER große Diktator " (the large dictator)
the German film Mein Führer - Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler is also a discussed parody.

References

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