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Modern History

Home > Modern History > National Studies > C Germany 1918-1939 > Germany 1918 - 1939: Fuhrer worship

Hitler out for a stroll in Danzig.
Photograph courtesy of the Treu family

 

Outcomes

• Explain forces and ideas and access their significance in contributing to change and continuity during the twentieth century (H2.1)
• Locates, selects and organises relevant information from different types of sources (H3.2)

Extract from Modern History Stage 6 Syllabus © Board of Studies NSW 2004.

Key features and issues:

• the nature and impacts of Nazism

From this tutorial you will learn about Hitler's role in the Nazi state as Führer and about Nazism as totalitarianism.

Some notes follow from Grunberger, R 1974, A Social History of the Third Reich, Penguin, on the phenomenon of Führer worship in the Third Reich.

Führer worship

"The relationship between the German people and its leaders was quite different from the situation that generally existed in other countries in the West" (Grunberger). Hitler had come to believe that he was a "world-historical individual" (Hegel) and that he was above the morals of ordinary human beings. This belief ran through nineteenth century German philosophy, the belief in a superman. He saw himself, as William Shirer puts it, as "a genius with a mission". In Germany ever since Bismarck, leaders had been seen as some sort of superhuman being. Bismarck, Kaiser William II and Hindenberg were all seen as larger than life.

During the Third Reich, Hitler was worshipped as a deity and was surrounded by Nazi rituals such as the German salute (Heil Hitler!). This salute was one of the most potent forms of totalitarian conditioning. His position as Führer demanded unconditional obedience from every German; hence his rapid movement to establish a totalitarian state after 1933.

Hitler was variously characterised as:

• having amazing capacity for hard work. "I never sleep" (Hitler). Hitler made three long speeches in one evening. He maintained a rigid saluting stance during a four-hour military parade.
• controlling the weather, cloudless sky was said to be "Führer weather".
• being a classless military man. Hitler was a corporal and Supreme Commander.
• a watercolourist and architect
• a medium between the German people and Providence.

Rudolf Hess described Hitler as pure reason in human form. Goebbels said Hitler was the greatest general. Himmler described Hitler as the greatest man of all time. It was all of these views in the end that led Germans to believe that he had the power of life and death over them and that as long as he lived they could not be defeated. Grunberger says that "there was little evidence that the German people felt any hatred for him, even in the midst of destruction" after the war. Rumours persisted that he had not died in the bunker and that he might still rise phoenix-like from the ashes of defeat. Such was the control the Führer had on German society during the Third Reich.