ABSTRACT
The German occupation of the Soviet Union cast into sharp relief central features of the Third Reich, in particular the administrative chaos that gave the regime a peculiarly Hobbesian character. Whereas in the 'old Reich' the Nazi movement confronted a powerful bureaucratic state with a proud tradition of efficiency and a complex legal framework, in the east Nazi agencies created a clean slate. The fits and starts of Nazi policy in the occupied east reflected the inconsistencies and self-delusions of the ideas and attitudes Nazism represented. If Hitler's Mein Kamjrf served as the Nazi gospel, Rosenberg provided the Pauline letters. If the civil administration in the east offers us a laboratory for the study of the Nazi regime, the benches have not been crowded with working scientists. Within the occupation regime, German civil administration was simply swept aside. Racialism so extreme ultimately makes civil administration impossible.
