The Leader Class

The new archetype that will emerge this century is the Leader Ideal. No more will men dream of becoming savvy businessmen or competent government officials, but rather socialists. That is, Leaders of their people…

The leadership structure was central to the government of the state, and the organizational principle of the Nazi party was applied to the whole nation: the leader and followers were the poles around which the public life of Germany was to be organized—and as there was to be no division between public and private life, this took in all aspects of human endeavor. The Third Reich sought to create a new hierarchy, once more a part of the urge to substitute fixed personal relationships for the fluidities in human life which industrialization had brought about. 

But this hierarchy was not the traditional one of nobility, bourgeois, and working class. The Nazis hated the old nobility and thought that the bourgeoisie had failed. Leadership was to be based on that personality, regardless of background which had the will and power to actualize the Volksstaat(the state of the Volk). In Hitler’s view, man’s progress had not derived from the activities of the majority, but was the product of the individual personality, its genius and will to action. The “new men” were the leaders, and as they had led the party to victory so they must now lead the state. Hitler envisioned the government of the Reich as a hierarchy of leadership; from the local leaders up to himself as the Fuhrer of all the people. In reality, the Third Reich was network of rival leaders, each with his own followers and his own patronage. Hitler kept them competing against one another and in this was able to control the whole leadership structure. 

The rejection of majority rule meant that all leaders were appointed by those who were above them in the hierarchy and, in the last resort, by the highest leader of the all, the Fuhrer himself. A government of this type has the appearance of being imposed upon the people: they had no say in its making and no control over its activities. Schmitt’s stress upon the Artgleicheit(equality in kind) between leader and Volk is meant to answer this criticism. For the Nazi system was not to be a mere dictatorship from above but was supposed to be based upon a truly democratic principle of government.

The worldview is basic once again to an understanding to the Nazi meaning of democracy. Fuhrer and Volk were equal in kind because they share the same race and blood; the human nature of each individual German and that of his leaders was thought to be identical. Therefore, their aims must be identical as well. As both wanted to fulfill themselves by bringing about the true Germanic state. Leader and led were a part of the same organic Volk. What distinguished the leader from the masses was his ability to make them conscious of their peoplehood and to lead them toward its fulfillment. He had all the attributes of those heroes whom we mentioned earlier. 

-Excerpted from “Nazi Culture” by George Mosse (1966)