We can see from the minutes that territorial thinking and bureaucratic infighting started straight away, above all from the German Foreign Ministry, which thought it was privileged in the work to finally solve the Jewish problem Historians such as Hans Mommsen and Ian Kershaw have used Max Weber to coin a framework that can shed light on this bureaucratic tangle and how it worked. The Nazi state was built up of competing, overlapping civil services and organizations at the intersection of state and party. The Nazi state then had both a conventional Foreign Ministry AA and its own East Ministry with unclear competence boundaries.
They competed. Hitler was partly aware of this. Such a structure was dependent on an appeal to the Driver for clarification of final decisions. This, in turn, resulted in constant appeals to the Leader for authority figures. Since everyone knew that Hitler always advocated the most radical measures, they agreed to the most extreme measures. They overcompensated and drove policy making in a more and more extreme whatsapp mobile number list direction. In particular, Hans Frank in the General Government was a master at this when he wanted support in the work to get as many Jews as possible sent out of the ghettos there. So This intense competition for Hitler s favour, in the absence of democratic pluralism and freedom of expression, led to a cumulative accumulating radicalization of politics.
The various ministries played up to the Leader with one sharp presentation after another which took the policy to extremes to gain Hitler s favor. The Wannse conference is an example of this, and the period afterwards with rapid follow up meetings, the first just days after January where the question of victim definitions came into play confirms these tendencies and mechanisms. Wannsee was thus about who should have the leading role in the mass murders, but also about who should be singled out as the victim and with what methods. We have a detailed report Besprechungsprotoll from this gentlemen s company. The minutes, written by Eichmann, were drawn up in copies and were to be kept secret.