In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

162 ARRAYS
and the reference to his wishes. But there were other places in which he
was directly or indirectly treated as a minor employee, hardly visible to
the heads of departments; the writer would try to make an effort "not
to lose sight" of him; his superior was only the mayor, to whom he was
actually responsible; probably his sole colleague would be the village
policeman. These were inconsistencies, no doubt about it. They were
so obvious that they had to be faced. It scarcely occurred to K. that they
might be due to indecision. (23-24)
With similar perspicacity, Adolf Hitler analyzes the crisis in the relations
between the State, the judicial system, and the individual. His main
interest lies in identifying strategies through which the State, in its weakness,
can be overturned. From this angle, Hitler sharply criticizes the
vehmic trials and the execution of "traitors" because this practice endangers,
for the sake of relatively minor political goals, faithful supporters
of the extreme right by exposing them to prosecution by the State.
Distancing his own party as much as possible from all hierarchical
confusion, he chooses to make it visibly distinct from military and paramilitary
units. For Hitler, the public arena is where the collective agency
and strength of his party must be displayed:
In order to prevent the movement from assuming a secret character at
the outset, the very breadth of its membership-in addition to the
uniforms, which had to be immediately recognizable to everyonewould
be a factor in its effectiveness and would make it known to the
public at large ... [It had to] be trained so completely to embody this
idea that from the beginning its horizon would expand, and the individual
would see that his mission was not to eliminate some lesser or
greater scoundrel but to devote himself to establishing a new National
Socialist People's State. By this means, however, the fight against the
current government was removed from the sphere of petty revenge and
plotting and was elevated to a great war of destruction, born of a
determined enmity against Marxism and its creatures. (Hitler, 612)
To announce and to lead "a war of extermination" in the public sphere,
to commit murder in the name of the nation-these options that emerge
from the breakdown of the relation between individual and society. If
the fascination with murder is the most obvious symptom of the disintegration
of order, the role of the charismatic political leader as a syn-