Hitler

The public image was vital. He remained, above all, the propagandist
par excellence
.
    Even had Hitler been far more conscientious and less idiosyncratic and haphazard in his style of leadership, he would have found the highly personalized direction of the complex and varied issues of a modern state beyond him. As it was, the doors were opened wide to mismanagement and corruption on a massive scale. Hitler coupled financial incompetence and disinterest with an entirely exploitative and cavalier usage of public funds. Posts were found for ‘old fighters’. Vast amounts of money were poured into the construction of imposing representative buildings. Architects and builders were lavishly rewarded. For favoured building or artistic projects, money was no object. Leading figures in the regime could draw upon enormous salaries, enjoy tax relief, and benefit further from gifts, donations, and bribes to accommodate their extravagant tastes in palatial homes, fine trappings, works of art, and other material luxuries – including, of course, the inevitable showy limousines.Corruption was rife at all levels of the regime. Hitler was happy to indulge the infinite craving for the material trappings of power and success of his underlings, aware that corruption on a massive scale ensured loyalty as the Third Reich developed into a modern variant of a feudal system resting on personal allegiance rewarded by private fiefdoms. He himself, by now a millionaire on the proceeds of sales of
Mein Kampf
, led his publicly acclaimed spartan lifestyle (as regards his food and clothing) in a context of untold luxury. Alongside his magnificent apartments – his official one in Berlin and his private one in Munich – the initially somewhat modest alpine residence, Haus Wachenfeld on the Obersalzberg, was now converted at vast expense into the grandiose Berghof, suitable for state visits of foreign dignitaries. His restless energy demanded that he and his sizeable entourage were almost constantly on the move within Germany. For that, a special train with eleven coaches containing sleeping compartments, a fleet of limousines, and three aeroplanes stood at his disposal.
    Even more serious than the way corrupt party despots profited from the bonanza of a seemingly unlimited free-for-all with public funds was the corruption of the political system itself. In the increasing absence of any formal procedures for arriving at political decisions, favoured party bosses with access to Hitler were often able, over lunch or at coffee, to put forward some initiative and manipulate a comment of approval to their own advantage. Hitler’s sparse involvement in initiating domestic policy during the mid- and later 1930s and the disintegration of any centralized body for policy formulation meant that there was wide scope for those able to exert pressure for action in areas broadly echoing the aims of nationalization of the masses and exclusion of those deemed not to belong to the ‘national community’. The pressure came above all from two sources: the party (both its central office and its provincial bosses, the Gauleiter) and the élite organization, the SS (now merging into the police to become an ideologically driven state security force of immense power). Using Hitler’s professed (and unlimited) goals of national rebirth and strength through racial purity to legitimate their demands and actions, they ensured that the dynamic unleashed by the takeover of power would not subside.
    Once power had been attained in 1933, the NSDAP, its numbers now rapidly swelling through the intake of hundreds of thousands of opportunists, became in essence a loosely coordinated vehicle of propagandaand social control. After becoming Chancellor, Hitler had taken little interest in the party as an institution. The weak and ineffectual, but devotedly loyal Rudolf Heß was in April made Hitler’s deputy in charge of the party. Since Robert Ley was left running the party’s organizational matters, Heß’s authority was from the outset far from complete. Nor was Heß in a strong position in his dealings with the Gauleiter, most of whom could rely on their long-standing personal bonds with Hitler to uphold their power-base in the provinces. Neither a genuine, hierarchical structure of command at the top of the party, nor a collective body for determining party policy was ever instituted. The ‘Reich Leadership’ of the party remained a group of individuals who never met as