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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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In two fields, that of foreign policy and that of
military affairs, Hitler after consultation and reflection decided for himself.
It is less certain that he was as decisive in other fields, such as the
maintenance of order and "purge" operations.
High ranking personalities
of the Hitlerian regime have left accounts in their memoirs of the way in which
measures referring to an Order of the Führer were often taken.
Hans Frank, who from the time of the creation of the Party was active
at Hitler's side, and who was finally named Chief of the General Government
(Polish territories not annexed to the Reich), wrote in his memoirs: (70)
"Himmler and Bormann transformed the
remarks that the Führer sometimes dropped at table into "great secret
missions" or else obtained on this occasion authorizations for their action.
The history of the Third Reich is in its later period full of such procurations
of the Führer. However, he was himself, in these cases, generally too weak
to revoke (zurückpfeifen) these exaggerations..." Diels,
Chief of the Gestapo under Goering until April 1934, gave the same impression
on the formation of decisions at Hitler's level:
(71)
"All these initiators and executants acted
as a medium by which the outgrowths (Ausartungen) of the Hitlerian vitality
were intensified to the maximum. In their milieu were born the grotesque ideas
(skurille Ideen) which transformed themselves in his head into totalitarian
final solutions... Bormann with Himmler raised the inoffensive proposals
(harmlose Aeusserungen) of Hitler, as in a cult, to the level of "Orders of the
Führer" endowed with the strictest legal force. When the circle was
closed, they soon exceeded the wishes and even the dreams of the demi-god."
O. Dietrich, Press Chief of the Government, President of the
Chamber of the Press of the Reich, wrote: (72)
"Hitler almost never gave his orders in
writing... Sometimes, orders that Hitler had given casually, during a
discussion, had not been recognized as such by his interlocutor and so had not
been executed; whence conflicts between different military offices and others.
Rather often, people that he received for reasons that had nothing to do with
politics, simply because it pleased him to see them, took advantage of the
occasion to attain their ends; Hitler then made them promises privately or
approved what they proposed; after, they acted as if what Hitler had told them
was an "Order of the Führer" and that did not fail to produce great
confusion, for there already existed an "Order of the Fuhrer" diametrically
opposed..." An attentive observer like H. Picker, at the time a
young jurist attached from March to July 1942 by the Ministry of the Interior
to the Headquarters of the Führer, noted for M. Bormann the remarks that
Hitler made in the circle of his guests. Picker wrote in the foreword of the
published version of these notes: (73)
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 36 |
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