Lecture Week 5

LECTURE  5:

The Nazi Polycracy & The Making of The Police State

KEY TERMS

  • Trial of the Major War Criminals 
     International Military Tribunal, (Nuremberg, 14 November 1945 – 1 October 1946)

    Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946 (Blue Series)  

  • Trials of the War Criminals 
     Nuremberg Military Tribunal (under Control Council Law No. 10)
    (    Nuremberg October 1946 – April 1949)
    Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1950   (Green Series)

  • Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression

    Office of the United States Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946 (Red Series)

     Nuremberg Military Tribunal Charges

    1. Crimes Against Peace
    2. War Crimes
    3. Crimes Against Humanity
    4. Conspiracy to commit the above

  • Fuhrer and Reichs Chancellor

  • Nazi Party functions on three levels:

    1.     Chain of Command & territorial cadres;
    2.     Party Divisions;
    3.     Affiliated Associations.  

  • Fuhrer Chancellery (Kanzlei des Fuhrers – KdF)
  • Philipp Bouhler (1899– 1945)
  • Martin Bormann (1900 – 1945)

  • Party Chancellery
     

  • “polycracy” “polycratic authoritarianism” “chaotic authoritarianism”
  • functionalists and the intentionalists
  • Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich (1904 – 1942)
  • RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt)
  • Reichsfuhrer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei (RFSSuChDtPol)

  • Gestapo  (Topography of Terror Foundation Website Link)

  • Heinrich Mueller (Müller) 1901 – ?  link

  • Oswald Pohl 

  • Dachau KL

  • Theodor Eicke (1892 – 1943)

  • SS-TV (Totenkompfverbande) –  “Death’s Head Units”

  • Waffen-SS

RECOMMENDED READINGS:

Helmut Krausnick, Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hand Adolf Jacobsen, Anatomy of the SS State (unabridged edition)  
[classic book on the  growth of concentration camps, history of “protective custody”,  SS and Gestapo history]

George H. Stein, The Waffen SS:  Hitler’s Elite Guard at War  1939-1945  
 [standard history of the military Waffen SS units]

Gerald Reitlinger, The SS:  Alibi of a Nation 1922 – 1945 

Peter Padfield, Himmler
 [biography]

George C. Browder, Foundations of the Nazi Police State  
 [history of the Nazi security police system]

Ingo Muller, Hitler’s Justice:  The Courts of the Third Reich 

Reinhard Rurup (ed), Typography of Terror:  Gestapo, SS and Reichssicherheitshauptam on the >>Prinz-Albrecht-Terrain