Der Fuehrer - Hitler's Rise to Power (1944) - Heiden

HITLER VERSUS NATIONAL SOCIALISM 629part; it was his appreciation of the inevitable. As long as he was fightingfor power, his task, in his own words, was to incline the existinginstitutions to his purposes; now, after his seizure of power, he had tomake them serve him. As long as they had a spark of power or utility inthem, they must not be destroyed. Obeying this eternal law of politicalwisdom, the National Socialists again trampled one of their politicalideals, embodied in point 25 of their party program. They abandonedthe idea of giving Germany political unity. Hitler, who otherwiseappreciated the power of existing institutions, struggled against thisnecessity; but it was a necessity, and it was stronger than ever. For thewheels and levers of the administrative apparatus were not in the Reich,but in the separate states; here were the central switches, here was thepower over the public life of the nation. And for this reason nothing wassmashed or altered; the apparatuses were taken over as they were; andGoring, as Premier of Prussia, attempted to make Prussia even stronger.In place of the provincial diet, which had lost all power, he gave hisstate a chamber of leaders; in the process he had, in the good NationalSocialist fashion, to crush a rival. Up till then a council consisting ofhigher officials and mayors, the so-called Staatsrat, had carried on arather inconspicuous existence in the Prussian state administration; Leyhad hit on the idea of 'coordinating' this body, of making himself itspresident, and from this vantage-point governing Prussia as Hitler's'chief of staff.' This occurred at the end of April. Goring tolerated thisstate of affairs for two months, then he threw Ley out — it was Goringwho made the laws in Prussia — and transformed the shadowy councilof officials into an areopagus of powerful and celebrated names.From now on party functionaries formed the core of the Staatsrat: thetop leaders of the S.A. and the S.S., their group leaders and chief groupleaders; and the Prussian gauleiters of the party. Up till then the partygaus in Prussia had more or less coincided with the provinces, thecomparatively large administrative districts of which the Prussian statewas composed. One of the shrewdest tricks employed by the NationalSocialists in their seizure of power was now to appoint many of thegauleiters presidents of these provinces; where this could not be done,the gauleiters became at least state