The greatest scope for the Party was in the occupied territories. We noted in the previous chapter the wide powers that Hitler bestowed upon Gauleiter Forster and Greiser in the incorporated areas of Poland. Building on the model already developed in Austria and the Sudetenland, the Party leaders were at the same time heads of the civil administration in their capacity as Reich Governors. This afforded the Party a far more decisive input in such areas than in the ‘Old Reich’.197 Hitler expressly emphasized in September 1940 that his Gauleiter in the east were ‘alone responsible for carrying out the tasks required of them’, and were not to be hemmed in by legal restrictions as in the Reich itself.198 After the western offensive, the same special status was granted to the Chiefs of the Civilian Administration in Alsace, Lorraine, and Luxemburg. But the ambitions of Gauleiter Josef Bürckel to head a new Reichsgau Westmark through the addition of Lorraine (where he was Chief of Civilian Administration) to his Party Gau Saar-Palatinate were unfulfilled. His powers as Party boss in his Gau continued to exist side by side (and frequently conflicting) with those of the civil authorities in Lorraine.199
Even in the East, where the Party-State dualism appeared resolved, there was no lessening of power struggles and organizational conflict.200 Here, any tension between government ministries in the Reich and Hitler’s appointees to run the occupied territories could only have one outcome. But the Party bosses, and Hans Frank as Governor General, had to reckon with the near-unconfined power of the SS running alongside their own fiefdoms. Arthur Greiser, Reich Governor of the Wartheland, was on good terms with Himmler, as he was with the Higher SS and Police Leader in Posen, Wilhelm Koppe. A member of the SS himself, Greiser was fully committed to the most radical lines of ‘ethnic struggle’ advanced by Himmler (for whom, in his new capacity as Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of Germandom, presiding over the brutal resettlement programme in the East, the ‘War-thegau’ was the most important province). The conflicts in Greiser’s area were, therefore, minimal. In the neighbouring Gau of Danzig-Westprussia Albert Forster, no less keen than Greiser in his backing for Hitler’s racial programme, was less compliant in his relations with Göring, Goebbels, Bormann, and, not least the Reichsführer-SS (of whom he is reported to have said: ‘If I had a face like Himmler, I wouldn’t speak of race at all’).201 And in the General Government, Hans Frank had increasing difficulties with the SS, especially the Higher SS and Police Leader there, Wilhelm Krüger, who could in the early years of the occupation always count upon the superior backing of Himmler, and, through him if necessary, Hitler himself.202
The clashes in the occupied territories of Poland, as the cases of Forster and Frank illustrate, were not about conflicting ideological aims. However bitter the rivalries, all those involved could have recourse to the ‘wishes of the Führer’, and claim they were working towards the fulfilment of his ‘vision’. At stake were not aims, but methods — and, above all, realms of power. The very nature of the loose mandate given to Hitler’s paladins, the scope they were given to build and extend their own empires, and the unclarity of the divisions of competence, guaranteed continued struggle and institutional anarchy. At the same time, it ensured the unfolding of ceaseless energy to drive on the ideological radicalization. Governmental disorder and ‘cumulative radicalization’ were two sides of the same coin.
Radicalization of the National Socialist ‘programme’, vague as it was, could not possibly subside. The ways different power-groups and important individuals in positions of influence interpreted the ideological imperative represented by Hitler saw to it that the dream of the new society to be created through war, struggle, conquest, and racial purification was kept in full view. At the grass-roots level, banal — though for the individuals concerned certainly not unimportant — material considerations like the chronic housing shortage, the growing scarcity and increasing cost of consumer goods, or an acute shortage of farm labourers could produce resentments easily channelled towards disparaged minorities and fuelled by petty greed at the prospect of acquiring goods or property belonging to Jews. The flames of such social antagonisms were fanned by the hate-filled messages of propaganda. The mentalities that were fostered offered an open door to the fanaticism of the believers. The internal competition built into the regime ensured that the radical drive was not only sustained, but intensified as fresh opportunities were provided by the war. And as victory seemed imminent, new breathtaking vistas for rooting out racial enemies, displacing inferior populations, and building the ‘brave new world’ opened up.
