Read Online Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning by Timothy Snyder - Free Book Online
Authors: Timothy Snyder
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clear-sighted representative—as he saw matters—of a race doomed to bloody struggle until eternity. The apostle of nature had to accommodate traditional institutions to his own vision of the future, which meant transforming them before he made war. Beginning from the legal position of chancellor within a faltering republic, inheriting a host of institutions, Hitler and the Nazis created something new.
The theoretical reconciliation between the old and the new Germany was the
party-state
. Such a synthesis had been pioneered by Lenin in the Soviet Union a decade earlier. The Soviet state was present in every way a state might be: with an administration, a parliament, a judiciary, a government, an executive, even a constitution. In fact, the Soviet state was subordinate to the communist party, which was itself supposed to represent the workers and their interests. The communist party, in turn, was run by a central committee, which was run by a politburo of a few men and indeed usually dominated by a single man. Lenin had the advantages and disadvantages of revolution; Hitler’s party did not. Thus the Nazi assimilation of state to party, the
Gleichschaltung
, took place gradually.
In 1934, Hitler was officially titled “
Führer
and Reich Chancellor.” This vague designation indicated that Hitler was the head of a racial body as well as the head of government. Hitler was a racial colonialist in theory and an opponent of the Weimar Republic in practice. In the name of racial consolidation he destroyed the republic’s basic freedoms and mocked its constitution. And yet its bureaucrats generally considered Hitler’s rule as a legitimate continuity of administration.
—
Of course, the very notion of a party-state was self-contradictory. The Nazi party was founded on the assumption of endless racial conflict, whereas any traditional state asserts the right to control and limit violence. Conflict had to be maintained but at the same time channeled. The existence of the party-state depended, therefore, on Hitler’s second innovation, the
entrepreneurship of violence
.
The classic definition of the state, provided by the German sociologist Max Weber, is the institution that seeks to monopolize legitimate violence. In the 1920s and the early 1930s, Hitler sought to discredit the Weimar Republic by demonstrating that it could not, in fact, do this. His armed guards, known as the SA and SS, functioned before his takeover of 1933 as de-monopolizers of violence. When they beat opponents or started brawls, they were demonstrating the weakness of the existing system. Following the example of Benito Mussolini after his rise to power in Italy, Hitler kept his paramilitaries after he himself had won power. Often after a revolution the professional miscreants are subordinated to the state and become servants of order rather than its violators. But the SA and SS remained party organizations even after the state had been won. Although their members wore uniforms and had ranks, these did not indicate a particular place in a state hierarchy. The SA and SS were organizations of power, but not of a power confined by a conventional state. Their final authority was the good of the race, as defined by their
Führer
. After the takeover of 1933, they became entrepreneurs of violence, looking for ways and means of murder that would serve the larger project of racial empire even as the German state came under Nazi control.
—
Yet this innovation, in its turn, posed a basic problem: How could the entrepreneurs propagate violence in Germany when what Hitler needed was a foreign war, and thus the strength within Germany to fight? How much blood could be shed in the very country that Hitler needed as his base for his global war in the name of race? If people accustomed to violence were to be trained in violence, where would that training be put to use? The rulers of the Soviet Union had earlier faced the same problems, and solved them elegantly.
The theoretical reconciliation between the old and the new Germany was the
party-state
. Such a synthesis had been pioneered by Lenin in the Soviet Union a decade earlier. The Soviet state was present in every way a state might be: with an administration, a parliament, a judiciary, a government, an executive, even a constitution. In fact, the Soviet state was subordinate to the communist party, which was itself supposed to represent the workers and their interests. The communist party, in turn, was run by a central committee, which was run by a politburo of a few men and indeed usually dominated by a single man. Lenin had the advantages and disadvantages of revolution; Hitler’s party did not. Thus the Nazi assimilation of state to party, the
Gleichschaltung
, took place gradually.
In 1934, Hitler was officially titled “
Führer
and Reich Chancellor.” This vague designation indicated that Hitler was the head of a racial body as well as the head of government. Hitler was a racial colonialist in theory and an opponent of the Weimar Republic in practice. In the name of racial consolidation he destroyed the republic’s basic freedoms and mocked its constitution. And yet its bureaucrats generally considered Hitler’s rule as a legitimate continuity of administration.
—
Of course, the very notion of a party-state was self-contradictory. The Nazi party was founded on the assumption of endless racial conflict, whereas any traditional state asserts the right to control and limit violence. Conflict had to be maintained but at the same time channeled. The existence of the party-state depended, therefore, on Hitler’s second innovation, the
entrepreneurship of violence
.
The classic definition of the state, provided by the German sociologist Max Weber, is the institution that seeks to monopolize legitimate violence. In the 1920s and the early 1930s, Hitler sought to discredit the Weimar Republic by demonstrating that it could not, in fact, do this. His armed guards, known as the SA and SS, functioned before his takeover of 1933 as de-monopolizers of violence. When they beat opponents or started brawls, they were demonstrating the weakness of the existing system. Following the example of Benito Mussolini after his rise to power in Italy, Hitler kept his paramilitaries after he himself had won power. Often after a revolution the professional miscreants are subordinated to the state and become servants of order rather than its violators. But the SA and SS remained party organizations even after the state had been won. Although their members wore uniforms and had ranks, these did not indicate a particular place in a state hierarchy. The SA and SS were organizations of power, but not of a power confined by a conventional state. Their final authority was the good of the race, as defined by their
Führer
. After the takeover of 1933, they became entrepreneurs of violence, looking for ways and means of murder that would serve the larger project of racial empire even as the German state came under Nazi control.
—
Yet this innovation, in its turn, posed a basic problem: How could the entrepreneurs propagate violence in Germany when what Hitler needed was a foreign war, and thus the strength within Germany to fight? How much blood could be shed in the very country that Hitler needed as his base for his global war in the name of race? If people accustomed to violence were to be trained in violence, where would that training be put to use? The rulers of the Soviet Union had earlier faced the same problems, and solved them elegantly.
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