ABSTRACT
The outbreak of war brought no sudden fundamental changes to the Third Reich. Since 1933, Nazi Germany had existed in a state of emergency; the war merely intensified that state. For economy and society at large, the war brought home a situation which had long been prepared for: as seen, for example, in the militaristic training of the Hitler Youth, the drive for raw material self-sufficiency and, more widely, in rearmament. In the eyes of the Nazi leadership, moreover, the First World War had never been resolved to German satisfaction. As the war progressed, though, as the tactics of 'Blitzkrieg' faltered, cracks appeared in the Third Reich's preparedness. In response, there was a steady extension in the power and jurisdiction of particular central authorities - in labour, in armaments, in raw material supply and in other sectors critical to the more rigorous conduct of the war. Yet, at the same time, often in contradiction, the authority of regional Nazi Party leaders, Gauleiters especially, was reinforced. The pattern was most acutely expressed in the eastern occupied lands where Party strongmen were quick to exploit the administrative vacuums which were presented following the turnover from military to civilian control. But the congruent state and Party administrative structures (Reichsgaue) created for Austria, western Poland and the Sudetenland in 1939/40 greatly augmented Party authority within the Greater German Reich, as did the practice of allocating the administration of contiguous western occupied zones (such as AlsaceLorraine) to the Gauleiters of adjacent Gaue (Fig. 6.1).
