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The Politics of Administration: the Reich Interior Ministry and the German Civil Service, 1933–1943

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Jane Caplan
Jane Caplan
Affiliation:
Newnham College, Cambridge
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Extract

There is no longer any excuse for thinking of the Third Reich as a model totalitarian monolith. That simplistic assumption was questioned by some of the earliest observers of the period, and has never been seriously rehabilitated. But the task of examining its actual complexities is much more challenging than a description of any putatively monolithic construct would be, for there will not be a single ‘key‘ to an acknowledged polycratic structure. The challenge is, then, to accept the limitations of a necessarily monographic approach, but to avoid losing sight of the broader perspective - the dynamics of the Nazi regime as a whole.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , September 1977 , pp. 707 - 736
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Broszat, Martin, Der Stoat Hitlers (Munich, 1969)Google Scholar, is a most valuable general survey of the internal structure of the regime. Recent monograph studies include Hans Mommsen, Beamtentum im Dritten Reich (Stuttgart, 1966)Google Scholar; Diehl-Thiele, Peter, Partei und Stoat im Dritten Reich: Untersuchungen zum Verhältnis von NSDAP und allgemeiner innerer Staatsverwaltung (Munich, 1969)Google Scholar; Peterson, E. N., The limits of Hitler's power (Princeton, 1969)Google Scholar; Hüttenberger, Peter, Die Gauleiter: Studie zum Wandel des Machtgefüges in der NSDAP (Stuttgart, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Matzerath, Horst, Nationalsozialismus und kommunale Selbstverwaltung (Stuttgart/Berlin/Cologne/Mainz, 1970).Google Scholar The subject of organizational confusion is touched on in many other policy studies, e.g. Carroll, B. A., Design for total war: arms and economics in the Third Reich (The Hague, 1968)Google Scholar; Mason, T. W., ‘National Socialist policies towards the German working classes’ (D.Phil., Oxford, 1971)Google Scholar

2 There is a wide general literature on these subjects, but still few detailed monographs; see principally Gillis, J. R., The Prussian bureaucracy in crisis 1840–1860: origins of an administrative ethos (Stanford, 1971)Google Scholar; Morsey, Rudolf, Die oberste Reichsverwaltung unter Bismarck (Münster, 1957)Google Scholar; Röhl, J. C. G., ‘Higher civil servants in Germany 1890–1900’, Journal of Contemporary History, 11, 3 (1967), 101–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Muncy, L. W., The Junker in the Prussian administration under William II 1888–1914 (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; Kehr, Eckart, ‘Zur Genesis der preussischen Burokratie und des Rechtsstaats’ and ‘Das soziale System der Reaktion in Preussen unter dem Ministerium Puttkamer’, both in Wehler, Hans-Ulrich (ed.), Der Primal der Innenpolitik (Berlin, 1965).CrossRefGoogle ScholarEmerson, Rupert, State and sovereignty in modern Germany (New Haven, 1928) is a convenient guide to contemporary political theory. The classic works of Gustav Schmoller, Otto Hintze and Fritz Hartung on the history of the civil service remain essential reading.Google Scholar

3 That this idealized picture was a misrepresentation of the reality is effectively demonstrated in a paper by Witt, Peter-Christian, ‘Der preussische Landrat als Steuerbeamte 1891–1918. Bemerkungen zur politischen und sozialen Funktion des deutschen Beamtentums’, in Geiss, I. and Wendt, B. J. (eds.), Deutschland in der Weltpolitik des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Düsseldorf, 1973), pp. 205–19, which reveals the extent to which narrow class solidarity determined the professional practices of Landräte.Google Scholar

4 Das deutsche Berufsbeamtentum und die parlamentarische Demokratie (Berlin/Leipzig, 1928); on pp. 116–17 Köttgen takes up precisely the issue of what constitutes the ‘national idea’, and although he concludes that it is not an absolute or unchanging category, he crucially weakens the political argument by insisting at the same time that the nation possesses an ‘organic unity’.Google Scholar

5 See Runge, principally Wolfgang, Politik und Beamtentum im Parteienstaat (Stuttgart, 1964)Google Scholar, chs. 5 and 6; Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Die Auflösung der Weimarer Republik (Willingen, 1960), part 1Google Scholar, ch. 7 especially; also Sontheimer, Kurt, Antidemokratisches Denken in der Weimarer Republik (Munich, 1962)Google Scholar, and Jasper, Gotthard, Der Schutz der Republik (Tübingen, 1965)Google Scholar. Hauungs, Peter, Reichspräsident und parlamentarische Kabinettsregierung: Eine Studie zum Regierungssystem der Weimarer Republik in den Jahren 1924 bis 2929 (Cologne/Opladen, 1968) offers some highly suggestive comments on the displacement of politicians by technicians (i.e. ministerial bureaucrats), pp. 264–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 For a general summary of German civil service law see, for example, Anschutz, Gerhard and Thoma, Richard (eds.), Handbuch des Deutschen Staatsrechts (2 vols., Tubingen, 1932), 1, 1–100Google Scholar; or Köttgen, Arnold, Beamtenrecht (Breslau, 1929)Google Scholar. For consideration of the ethical content of civil service status, see Hintze, Otto, Der Beamtenstand (Leipzig, 1911)Google Scholar, and Gerber, Hans, ‘Vom Begriff und Wesen des Beam ten turns’, Archiv des offentlichen Rechts, N. F. XVIII (1930).Google Scholar A comprehensive bibliography on civil service law in Wiese, Walter, Der Staatsdienst in der BundesrepublikDeutschland. Grundlagen: Probleme: Neuordnung (Neuvried/Bherlin, 1972).Google Scholar

7 There were some 900 civil service associations in the Weimar period, the vast majority of them affiliated to one of the five ‘Spitzenorganisationen’ (umbrella groups) recognized for negotiation purposes by the government. These were (1) the Deutscher Beamtenbund, democratic–republican, and with about one million members the largest of the five; (2) the Allgemeiner Deutscher Beamtenbund, social-democratic; (3) the Reichsbund der hoheren Beam ten, conservative, senior civil servantsonly; (4) the Gesamtverband deutscher Beamtenund Staatsangestelltenverbande, Centre; (5) the Gewerkschaftsring, Beamtenabteilung, Hirsch-Dunker.

8 Quotation from a protest letter sent to the chancellor by all Spitzenorganisationen (except the ADB, which wrote separately), 15 Jan. 1924; Bundesarchiv Koblenz (= BA) R 43 1/2612. The retrenchment was effected by the ‘Verordnung zur Herabminderung der Personalausgaben des Reichs’ (cited as Personalabbauverordnung, or PAV), 27 Oct. 1923 (Reichsgesetzblatt (= RGB1) 1923, 1, 999). It sanctioned the compulsory transfer or the temporary suspension (Versttzung in den Wartestand) of civil servants, in the interests of administrative needs – thus attacking civil service rights recently confirmed in the Weimar constitution (Art. 129). Although the PAV also tried to stem the appointment of Angestellten (Art. 5), even this provision did not win the law the favour of the civil service associations. The PAV applied directly to the Reich, and Länder and Gemeinden were obliged to enact similar measures. Most of the law was repealed in 1925, by which time it had affected 396,600 officials (including Arbeiter and Angestellten and in fact in larger numbers than Beamten); many of these Wartestandsbeamten were not finally paid off until 1933, under s. 6 of the Berufsbeamtengesetz (see below pp. 720–1).

9 See documentation in BA R 43 1/2555.

10 See Mommsen, Hans, ‘Die Stellung der Beamtenschaft in Reich, Ländern und Gemeinden in der Ära Brüning’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, XXI (1973), 151–65Google Scholar, and references therein. For the structure and spirit of the civil service salary system, see Volter, H., ‘Die deutsche Beamtenbesoldung’, in Gerloff, W. (ed.), Die Beamtenbesoldung im modernen Stoat (Munich/Leipzig, 1932)Google Scholar; and for the relationship between the Brtining cuts and this structure, Schmitt, Carl, ‘Wohlerworbene Rechte und Gehaltskürzungen’, in his Verfassungsrechtliche Aufsätze (Berlin, 1958), pp. 174–80. The crucial significance of the pay cuts resides in the fact that they were the culmination of the longer-term pressure on the civil service, which had undermined the very qualities – security of tenure, pay and pensions – that set a civil service career apart from most others. In these circumstances, the argument that civil servants still enjoyed a privileged and protected position was hardly convincing.Google Scholar

11 As sources for NSDAP propaganda, see the Nationalsozialistische Beamten-Zeitung (published from 1932); Frick, Wilhelm (ed.), Die TätigkeitderNationalsozialistenim Reichstag 1924–31 (Munich, 1934; also earlier editions)Google Scholar; Mitteilungsblatt der Nationalsozialislen in den Parlamenten und gemeindlichen Vertretungskörperschaften (Munich, n.d.)Google Scholar; also NSDAP pamphlets, e.g. Quo Vadis Deutsches Berufsbeamtentum? (Frankfurt, 1932). A highly selective set of extracts from speeches and publications was compiled by Klotz, Helmut, Nationalsozialismus und Beamtentum (Berlin, 1931); Klotz was an ex–member of the NSDAP.Google Scholar

12 Membership figures taken from the NSDAP Partei-Statistik (2 vols., Berlin, 1935), 1, 53, 70.Google Scholar Alleged total of sympathizers from Mursinsky, E. and Brill, J., Die Organisation der nationalsozialistischen Beamten (Berlin, 1940), p. 4Google Scholar, and cf. a note on ‘Anhänger’ in a communication from the NSDAP Hauptamt für Beamte to the Reichsorganisationsleitung, 25 June 1935, BA NS 22/346. Further details on the pre–1933 organizational activities of the party can be found in the Almanach der Deutschen Beamten published by the NSDAP's Reichsbund der Deutschen Beamten (Berlin, 1934), pp. 54–77Google Scholar; and in miscellaneous documentation in BA NS 22/361, and BA Sammlung Schumacher, File 218. For vetoes on civil servants' membership of the NSDAP (and KPD), see Jasper, principally, Der Schutz der Republik, pp. 218–27.Google Scholar

13 Of the large Reich administrations (posts, finance and social insurance), the two former were singled out as being notable recruitment grounds for the NSDAP; cf. remarks by Schatzel (post minister) in the cabinet of 19 Dec. 1930, BA R 43 1/2682; and 13 April, BA R 43 1/2684; finance minister Dietrich admitted at the latter meeting that ‘the civil service of the customs administration is wholly National Socialist [total nationalsozialistisch eingestellt]’. Inter-ministerial exchanges in 1931–2 confirm the particular anxiety of these two ministries at the situation among their staffs; cf. documentation in BA R 43 1/2557.

14 The German civil service was divided hierarchically into three grades: the senior (höherer), intermediate (mittlerer) and lower (unterer). Civil servants referred to in this article as ‘higher’ or ‘senior’ fall within the first of these grades, which roughly corresponded to the then English ‘administrative’ grade. NSDAP membership appears to have been commonest among the two lesser grades before 1933, and exceptional among senior civil servants. However, candidates for admission to this grade during the high professional unemployment of the early 1930s, educated at university but unable to find service traineeships, were drawn to the NSDAP along with many of their fellow students; these formed a reservoir of potential Nazi support which would be tapped when the civil service expanded after 1933.

15 The Berlin Document Center (BDC) contains information filed under name for these (and other) officials; and see also for Pfundtner BA R 18/5314, 5330 and 5331; and for Stuckart BA NS 16/96.

16 The NSDAP did have its ‘Innenpolitische Abteilung’, run by Helmut Nicolai and Ernst von der Heydebrand und der Lasa, who drafted various schemes.of administrative reform in the expectation that these would become a future Nazi government's policy. Nicolai was not popular in the party, though he held an important interior ministry post for a year (1934–5) before finally losing favour; his schemes never came to fruition. For his work, see Schulz, Gerhard, ‘Die Anfänge des totalitären Massnahmenstaates’, in Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Sauer, Wolfgang and Schulz, Gerhard, Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung (Cologne/Opladen, 1962), pp. 411–13, 592–7.Google Scholar

17 Sources for this information are as numerous as the various instruments for the conduct of government business – internal memoranda, marginalia, reports of inter- and intra-ministerial discussions, off-the-record exchanges between individuals, etc. A useful source in general are the records of the chancellery (Reischskanzlei), which basically ran cabinet business after 1933. It kept a watching brief on many aspects of policy, and was often consulted by individual ministers or officials; moreover, because it enjoyed the luxury of having no direct administrative responsibilities, its officials could afford to develop often critical and independent views. Leo Killy, its expert on civil service matters, was especially notable as the author of many valuable memoranda, crisply written and often highly critical. (The records of the Reichskanzlei are the much-cited BA R 43 1 and R 43 11; much interesting material for Killy in his private papers, BA Kl.Erw.234.)

18 Before 1933 the Reich interior ministry had no subordinate field machinery of its own, since internal administration (‘allgemeine und innere Verwaltung’) was the prerogative of the Länder, hence the characterization of the ministry as ‘a head without a body’, and the ambition to establish formal corporeal unity. With the abolition of Länder sovereignty after 1933, the interior ministry become the supreme authority for the internal administration of Germany. Through the union of the Reich and Prussian ministries in 1934/5, the ministry acquired direct control of the massive Prussian field system; elsewhere, control was exercized through the rump Länder governments, now degraded to the level of subordinate executive agencies. (For a brief technical summary of the interior ministry's development, see Medicus, F. A., Das Reichsministerium des Innern (Berlin, 1940)Google Scholar; also von Schönfeldt, J., Die allgemeine und innere Verwaltung (Berlin, 1943).) The foregoing is no more than a crudely compressed resume of what was in fact a lengthy, complex and half–completed process, with many other aspects, e.g. the change in the effective legislative authority of the Reich ministries, or the unassimUated position of the Reichstatthalter from 1935. The point to be borne in mind here is that it was this unprecedented acquisition of a vast but jumbled administrative network that provided the background for the interior ministry's policies.Google Scholar

19 For Frick's career, see Fabricius, Hans, Dr Frick. Ein Lebensbild des Reichsministers des Innern (Berlin, 1938)Google Scholar. Peterson, , The limits of Hitler's power, pp. 78–81, summarizes various reports into a character sketch.Google Scholar

20 The progress of constitutional and administrative reform has not so far been studied monographically, though information on some aspects can be found in a wide variety of works. Schulz, Gerhard, in Die nationalsozialistische Machtergreifung, pp. 579–626Google Scholar, gives a detailed handling of some archival sources up to 1934, and Broszat, , Der Staat Hitlers, takes a broader view of developments up to 1939.Google ScholarBaum, Walter, ‘Reichsreform im Dritten Reich’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, III (1955)Google Scholar, can stand as a preliminary introduction, as also the relevant parts of Jacob, Herbert, German administration since Bismarck (New Haven, 1963).Google Scholar Some contemporary reports by political scientists are also useful as far as they go, e.g. Boerner, A. V., ‘Towards Reichsreform – the Reichsgaus’, American Political Science Review, XXXIII (1939)Google Scholar; A. Lepawsky, ‘The Nazis reform the Reich’, ibid. XXX (1936); also Marx, Fritz Morstein, Government in the Third Reich (New York, 1937)Google Scholar; and Pollock, J. K., The government of Greater Germany (New York, 1938)Google Scholar. Contemporary handbooks such as Johanny, C. and Redelberger, O., Volk, Partei, Reich (Berlin/Leipzig/Vienna, 1943)Google Scholar, or Huber, E. R., Bau und Gefüge des Reichs (Hamburg, 1941)Google Scholar help with tile identification of the main elements of the structure. Stuckart, Wilhelm, ‘Zentralgewalt, Dezentralisation und Verwaltungseinheit’, in Festgabe für Heinrich Himmler (Berlin, 1941), is an interesting critical review of administrative problems. Of these various works, Broszat’s is perhaps the most generally useful.Google Scholar

21 The components in this list of objectives are compiled from sources drawn from the files of the Prussian interior ministry (Geheimes Staatsarchiv, Berlin (= GStA) Rep. 77) and the Reich interior ministry (BA R 18). Frick's views were constantly reiterated both in public and in private, e.g. see the speech drafted for him by Franz Medicus for the March 1934 conference of Länder prime ministers, in BA R 18/5436. See also Broszat, , Der Stoat Hitters, pp. 151–61.Google Scholar

22 Frick to Lammers, 5 Dec. 1938, BA R 43 11/703 (a request for interior ministry overlordship in the Austrian administration, to prevent a repetition of these problems there).

23 The phrase is take from a letter to Krosigk, the finance minister, 2 Mar. 1939, BA R 43 11/432 b (one of a long series of exchanges on salary questions 1937–9; see below pp. 726–8).

24 See the documentation in BA R 43 11/429 b.

25 The problem of regulating the shared responsibilities of the two ministries was an old one: see, for instance, a complaint from the interior ministry about finance ministry intervention in moves to draft a new civil service law, 7 July 1930, BA R 43 1/2555. But friction of this kind ripened into open dispute under the specific pressures of the post-1933 situation. A climax of sorts was reached in 1942, with the interior ministry allegedly trying to assume exclusive powers in civil service matters, and the finance ministry (backed in this case by the Reichskanzlei) defending its overriding financial interest. Killy, in a memo on the affair in June, observed pointedly that the aim of administration should be co-operation, not the pedantic defence of sectional competences, and went on to say that ‘In any case, the Reich interior minister has not always taken such a convincing line in civil–service questions that one would wish to see his competences extended’; this and other documentation in BA R 43 11/143.

26 Finance ministry (Abteilung I), 24 Apr. 1942; BA 2/21856.

27 See especially the moves 1924–32 to draft a new Reich civil service law, documented in BA R 431/2553 to 2556 The wider context of administrative reform is examined in detail in Schulz, Gerhard, Zwischen Demokratie und Diktatur: Verfassungspolitik und Reichsreform in der Weimarer Republik (Berlin, 1969), which also examines its connexion with anti–democratic political tendencies, e.g. the DNVP's 1927 administrative programme, pp. 580–2.Google Scholar

28 See principally Diehl-Thiele, , Partei und Stoat, pp. 37–73.Google Scholar By the time ‘Reichsreform’ was brought to a provisional end in 1935, on Hitler's instructions, the interior ministry was broadly speaking in the position of having wide administrative responsibilities, with little political authority.29 ‘Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums’ (BBG), 7 Apr. 1933 (RGB1 1933, 1, 175). Drafting and application discussed in detail in Mommsen, , BeamUntum, pp. 39–61.Google Scholar

29 ‘Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums’ (BBG), 7 Apr. 1933 (RGB1 1933, 1, 175). Drafting and application discussed in detail in Mommsen, , Beamtentum, pp. 39–61.Google Scholar

30 Quoted in Schütze, E., ‘Beamtenpolitik im 3. Reich’, in Pfundtner, Hans (ed.), Dr. Wilhelm Frick und sein Ministerium (Berlin, 1937)Google Scholar. No single comprehensive analysis of the purge's effects was made at the time, but its general impact can be assessed from scattered archival and printed information on a number of branches of the civil service; cf. Mommsen, ibid.

31 See materal in BA R 2/22539 t o 22547.

32 In this sense, the BBG was comparable to the PAV, a measure much execrated by the NSDAP – see for example Frick, , Die Nationalsozialisten im Reichstag, pp. 56–7, 60.Google Scholar

33 The BBG had originally been given six months’ validity. The initiation of cases under ss. 2–4 took place with remarkable speed, but not their processing; hence amending legislation in 1934 (RGB1 1934,1,203) extended the final date for any favourable amendment to decisions (racial cases excluded).

34 Sixth amendment, 26 Sept. 1934 (RGB1 1934, 1, 845).

35 German civil service law before 1933 was far from uniform. The 1873 Reich civil service law (reissued 1907) covered Reich civil servants only, while Lander had a variety of laws, or none at all. The Weimar Constitution had foreseen a new law (Art. 128), but none was issued: see references in note 27 above. Discussions on some aspects had, however, reached an advanced stage, allowing the enactment of a statute on 30 June 1933 (the ‘Gesetz zur Anderung von Vorschriften auf dem Gebiete des allgemeinen Beamten–, des Besoldungsund des Versorgungsrechts’ (BRÄndG), RGB1 1933,1, 433), which dealt with some of the most urgent needs, old as well as new, e.g. establishing a comprehensive legal definition of the Beamte, applying racial and political restrictions on appointments, plus a mass of detailed financial and organizational provisions. Parts of the law were made to apply directly to all civil servants throughout Germany (the BBG had been the first such universally applicable statute); documentation on the drafting of this law (mainly in the Reich finance ministry) in BA R 43 1/2555 and R 43 11/422, and see also the semi–official commentary by Seel, Hanns, Die Neuordnung des Beamtenrechts (Berlin, 1933).Google Scholar Apart from the BRÄndG, other steps in the standardization of civil service law were the ‘Reichs grundsätze über Einstellung, Anstellung und Beförderung’ (RGS) (RGB1 1936, 1, 893), which established strict technical criteria for appointment and promotion (replacing Reich rules dating from 1921), and successfully defended the traditional standards of training, seniority and experience against pressures for a more political approach. There were also general training guidelines (1939), and laws on the training of senior officials in the judicial (1934) and interior (1937) administrations. The ‘Reichsbürgergesetz’ (1935) and subsequent instructions denned racial eligibility for civil service appointment, more stringently than in earlier legislation. Salary and pensions law defied attempts at rationalization. (A convenient collection of the major statutes etc. in force in 1937 in the Handbuch des Beamtenrechts, ed. Stuckart, Wilhelm and Hoffmann, Horst (Berlin/Leipzig, 1938).)Google Scholar

36 The steps in Hess's formal acquisition of governmental authority were as follows: appointed minister without portfolio, with seat in cabinet, 1 Dec. 1933 (RGB11933,1, 1016); accorded status of ‘minister to be consulted’ in drafting of legislation, 27 July 1934 (copy of Führererlass in BA R 43 11/1213); the latter power was extended to cover any enactment published in the Reichsgesetzblatt, 6 Apr. 1935 (copy of Führererlass in BA R 43 11/1213); on these powers, cf. Diehl–Thiele, , Partei und Stoat, pp. 231–2. From September 1935 Hess also enjoyed a formal right of consultation in senior civil service appointments, amounting in practice to a right of veto (Führererlass, 24 Sept. 1935; RGB1 1935, 1, 1203). For his other miscellaneous rights, see list dated 14 May 1941 in BA R 43 11/1213a.Google Scholar

37 Reported to Frick by Pfundtner, , 8 Nov. 1934, BA R 18/5524.Google Scholar

38 Draft in GStA Rep. 90/3329 (subsequent drafts also in this file, and in 2330; further main documentation in BA R 43 11/419, 419a, 420, 420a).

39 For these points, see Mommsen, , Beamtentum, pp. 97–106.Google Scholar

40 Ibid. pp. 104–6.

41 For a classic example of this, see the narrative in Carroll, , Design for total war, chs. 9–13, which describes the accumulation of ill–defined and overlapping powers in the economic sphere. Wartime administrative rationalization and manpower mobilization generally offered fertile conditions for similar rivalries to flourish: for an interesting example, see Lammers's successful deflexion of an initiative made by Göring in January 1942 to secure sweeping powers as chairman of the ‘Ministerrat für die Reichsverteidigung’, documented in BA R 43 11/706 a.Google Scholar

42 Thus by the end of 1939 the Reichsstatthalter held various different positions, depending upon whether their appointment was (a) in a Land of the Altreich, or (b) in one of the seven Reichsgaue established in Austria, or (c) in the Reichsgaue Sudetenland Danzig-Westpreussen, and Wartheland. The point here is not that a non-uniform administrative system must by definition lead to chaos, but rather that this will be the result if the inconsistencies are judged to be deleterious and hence in need of reform, or if they are taken as (mutually contradictory) precedents for the establishment of a uniform system by one or more interested parties. Both these trajectories were visible in the Third Reich.

43 See Flick's note to Lammers, 5 Dec. 1938, cited in note 22 above.

44 Reichskanzlei note, 31 Jan. 1942, BA R 43 11/706.

45 Note that this uncompromising critique was originally made in a lecture given by Stuckart, and then published – and not just once but twice. See Stuckart, , ‘Zentralgewalt, Dezentralisation und Verwaltungseinheit’, p. 24Google Scholar; republished as ‘Die Probleme der inneren Gestaltung des Grosseren Reiches’ in Wien, V. A. (ed.), Das Grössere Reich (Berlin, 1943), pp. 139–68. Stuckart did point out that a degree of competition was healthy – but not the degree he saw around him.Google Scholar

46 I.e. the ‘Reichsgrundsätze’, referred to in note 35 above, which stuck to fixed rules on experience and seniority, and were an important index of stability. Among the worst offenders against them were the foreign office, the propaganda ministry, and the police departments: see for example the frequent battles between Daluege (head of the Ordnungspolizei) and Krosigk after 1936, in BA R 19/360, 423, and 433; and an important test case of a foreign office official in July 1941, BA R 43 11/458. The rules were flouted either in order to secure the appointment or promotion of a politically desirable candidate, or more broadly to elevate the prestige of a ministry by inflating its complement of high–ranking officials.

47 Quoted in report of the conference by an official of the justice ministry, 20 June 1941, BA R 22/4438.

48 Across-the-board comparisons of income levels or wage rates are tricky at all times, and particularly in this period, when there were marked disparities between official and actual wage/price levels, and between different trades; the evidence is reviewed in Bry, Gerhard, Wages in Germany 1871–1945 (Princeton, 1966), pp. 233–65Google Scholar, and Mason, T. W., ‘National Socialist policies’, pp. 166–200.Google Scholar

49 Summary of the evidence in a memorandum drafted by Killy, 25 Nov. 1937, based on a confidential finance ministry report to a member of Hess's staff, BA R 43 11/43 ib. Further evidence in the labour ministry's quarterly report on wage movements (3rd quarter 1937), summarized in the Reickskanzlei, 22 Apr. 1938, BA R 43 11/541.

50 Regierungspräsident Sommer to interior ministry, 31 Mar. 1938; copy in BA R 4311/432.

51 (1) Regierungspräsident in Magdeburg to interior ministry, 10 June 1938; copy in BAR 43 11/432. (2) Regierungspräsident in Düsseldorf to interior ministry, 21 July 1938; copy in BA R 43 11/432b.

52 Interior ministry to finance ministry, 20 Apr. 1938; copy in BA R 43 11/432.

53 By secret Führererlass, dated 5 July 1939; copy in B A R 4311/432 b. The amount by which the Briming cuts were reduced was 6 per cent. A further reduction was made in December 1940 (copy of finance ministry circular in BA R 18/5561), leaving civil servants with 94 per cent of their official pay rates. The full rates were not restored until 1951.

54 The amount and rate of growth is extremely hard to measure accurately, owing to the varying methods of enumerating civil servants, e.g. including/excluding teachers, armed forces, etc. The evidence is examined in Cullity, John P., ‘The growth of governmental employment in Germany 1882–1950’, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Staatswissenschaft, CXXXIII (1967), 201–17Google Scholar; see also Mason, T. W., ‘National Socialist policies’, pp. 426–7, 634 f.Google Scholar

55 These were the three senior ministerial ranks; cf. a note on this development in the files of the finance ministry, in BA R 2/11664; and see also a series of moves 1937–9 in the interior ministry to obtain extra appointments, documented in BA R 18/5288. Other ministries, of course, were being set up and staffed from scratch after 1933, e.g. Propaganda, Air.

56 Information collected for the justice ministry in 1944 (see note 57 below) revealed that the number of students registering in university law faculties (law being the main qualifying course for entry into the senior grade) fell from a peak of 22,000 in 1928, to 14,373 in 1933, 6,237 in 1938, and 2,306 in 1941; the latest figure, for 1943, was 2,495. Although all faculties suffered a decline in registrations over the same period, the fall-off in law was worse than the average. Other evidence showed a decline in the number of law graduates opting for the civil service rather than the free professions; cf. report of the first conference of the justice ministry's ‘Amt für Nachwuchsfragen’ (Office for Recruitment Questions), 8–10 June 1944, in BA R 22/4453.

57 The justice ministry set up its‘ Amt fiir Nachwuchsfragen’ in 1944 (see documentation in BA R 22/4447); two major conferences were held under its auspices, and much investigation sponsored. The interior ministry had called the conference on recruitment in June 1941, referred to in note 47 above; official report in BA R 18/5817. Its work on a new training scheme (see p. 734 below) was partly stimulated by recruitment problems. A lone dissenting voice on the personnel situation came from the head of the interior ministry's personnel department (1941–4), Hans von Helms (who had worked on Hess's staff 1935–41): in a speech to a conference of Regierungspräsidenten in 1944 he claimed that a recent study showed that there would be no manpower problem in the senior administrative service after the war. Since von Helms did not give full figures in his speech, the accuracy of his claim cannot be judged, though his crude figures do not appear to take account of problems such as the eventual post–war departure of civil servants eligible for retirement, who had continued to work in wartime; copy of speech in BA R 43 n/1516b.

58 Copy of draft in BA R 4311/424; reprinted in Mommsen, , Beamtentum, pp. 200–2. (The appeal remained at draft stage, and was never submitted to Hitler.)Google Scholar

59 Some information on the early history of the department in Diehl-Thiele, , Partei und Stoat, pp. 216–24Google Scholar, and in Orlow, Dietrich, The History of the Nazi party: 1933–1945 (Pittsburgh, 1973), pp. 130, 139–43. The staffing and financing of the department are far from clear. Orlow, for example, is not correct in stating that ‘the personnel were… largely indigenous to the StdF, that is, they had no career alternatives but the office of the StdF’ (p. 142). In fact in this department at any rate, precisely the opposite was true, for its leading officials were civil servants on secondment from various branches of the administration, as diverse as the Reich justice ministry, the Mecklenburg ministry of state and the Thuringian interior ministry. This secondment was the normal way of providing staff for any minister without portfolio, as Hess was – and note that it was in this capacity that he built up his political staff. However, Hess and Bormann were anxious to establish an independent staff structure to replace the miscellaneous provisional secondments, and arranged in 1935 that Hess's staff would appear under separate title (Kap. 1. Tit. 1) on the interior ministry budget plan (Einzelplan V) – but the funds for salaries were not provided out of the budget, and their origin is obscure. It may appear puzzling and paradoxical that Hess's office was not only staffed by civil servants, but was even nominally a part of the interior ministry; however, it was only by employing civil servants that Hess could effectively carry out his work of monitoring legislation (see note 36 above), and experienced men could not be secured from outside of the service, especially as conditions of work in the NSDAP were not at first attractive. (Much information on these points in a finance ministry file, BA R 2/11903, which contains correspondence on organizational questions between the ministry and the staff office, confirming Bormann's leading role.)Google Scholar

60 Much detail on the work of Bormann in Schmier, L. E., ’Martin Bormann and the Nazi party 1941–1945‘ (Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1968).Google Scholar

61 Lammers had resisted a plan to incorporate the then StdF Stab in the Reichskanzlei budget when the question first arose in 1935 (see note 59 above). The 1943 transfer is documented in BA R 2/11903. Bormann's intention of establishing an independent staff system was noted by Gündel, assistant to state secretary Reinhardt in the finance ministry, 22 Sept. 1941; BA R 2/11664. (Reinhardt was a party member of long standing, ex-Gauleiter and NSDAP financial expert; his 1933 appointment to the finance ministry facilitated the diversion of state funds to the NSDAP.)

62 A summary of such rulings in Rudolf Echterhölter, Das öffentliche Recht im nationalsozialistischen Stoat (Stuttgart, 1970), pp. 198–207Google Scholar; see also Schoenbaum, David, Hitler's social revolution (New York, 1966), pp. 228–9.Google Scholar

63 Echterhölter, ibid., gives examples of the legal consequences suffered by civil servants who offended against expected standards of behaviour. Note also that the 1937 civil–service law made ‘comradeliness’ a statutory duty for the first time (s. 3 (1)); breaches of this catch-all obligation rendered a civil servant liable to disciplinary penalties.

64 For the question of Personahmion, see Diehl-Thiele, , Partei und Stoat, pp, 173Google Scholar ff.; Mommsen, , Beamtentum, pp. 108–16. Intermittent rulings against the system continued to the end of the regime – what was doubtless the final one was issued by Bormann on 16 Feb. 1945; copy in BA R 18/2003.Google Scholar

65 This and other documentation in BA R 43 11/421a.

66 Principal documentation on this in BA R 18/5567.

67 Cf. state secretary Klopfer of the Partei-Kanzlei to justice ministry, 3 May 1943; copy in BA R 18/5567 (i.e. interior ministry files). By this date, it was the university law syllabus (the course taken by most prospective candidates for the senior civil service) that was under discussion.

68 An interesting study of the legal context of this concept is Stolleis, Michael, Gemeinwohlformeln im nationalsozialistischen Recht (Berlin, 1974)Google Scholar. Some specific legal effects of the theory are taken up in Rüthers, Bernd, Die unbegrenzte AusUgung: Zwn Wandel der Privatrechtsordnung im Nationalsozialismus (Frankfurt, 1968).Google Scholar

69 In a letter criticizing current attempts at administrative simplification, 30 Jan. 1942; copy in BA R 43 11/706.