Abstract
This article examines the state secretaries’ meetings as an instrument of government in Nazi Germany. They are mostly known as the forum at which the infamous Wannsee Conference took place, but here the 20 January 1942 meeting will be situated in a context previously ignored by historians by showing that such gatherings were an increasingly regular occurrence during the ‘Third Reich’, and that a range of policy issues were discussed there – not just mass murder. As such, it will shed new light on how the ‘Hitler state’ functioned at this level by showing that Wannsee was not entirely extraordinary, the format having become established practice long before 1942. Similarly, the article will also show that the jurisdictional conflicts that played out at Wannsee were equally common, with participants generally jockeying for influence and advancing claims to departmental authority. Indeed, although they effectively replaced cabinet meetings, which were formally banned by Hitler in 1938, the state secretaries’ meetings did little to salvage collegial government. To illustrate this, a series of meetings called to coordinate the government's response to a particular issue will be examined – the annexation of ‘Greater German’ territories in Austria, the Sudetenland and Poland. As will be shown throughout, very little was achieved by way of coordination, with the state secretaries only advancing those constitutional designs that served their ministries’ claims to power.
On 20 January 1942, 15 representatives of the Nazi Party, the SS and police agencies, and the German state congregated in a plush villa on the western shore of Lake Wannsee, just outside Berlin. Called after the original meeting had been cancelled the previous month, 1 the Wannsee Conference, as it came to be known, is arguably the most infamous gathering of the twentieth century. For it was here that the ‘Final Solution to the Jewish Question’, which would culminate in the murder of roughly six million Jewish people, was openly discussed over breakfast, as functionaries of roughly equal rank – that of State Secretary (Staatssekretär) – discussed who was going to be deported to the East, when, and from where. 2
The subject matter notwithstanding, these state secretaries’ meetings (Staatssekretärsbesprechungen), as they were officially known, were a regular occurrence during the Nazi period. Before the war, they were called to discuss topics as diverse as putting students to work on agricultural projects and the establishment of a German protectorate in ‘Bohemia and Moravia’; while in May 1941, seven months before the Wannsee Conference, the plan to forcibly starve tens of millions of Soviet citizens was debated at another such meeting in Berlin. 3 In 1936, one was called to accelerate Jewish emigration from Germany, while in 1940 the seizure of foreign investors’ assets in German-controlled territory was discussed at another. 4 Practically all government matters were discussed there, in fact, especially after Hitler formally abolished cabinet meetings in 1938. 5 For collegial government was now supposed to be a thing of the past, and the state secretaries’ meetings, as a result, were one of the few ways of achieving the necessary coordination between government departments. 6
And yet, beyond the fact that genocide was discussed at one of them, we still know very little about these meetings. The literature on the Wannsee Conference, unsurprisingly, tells us most about them, particularly the books by Mark Roseman, Steven Lehrer and Peter Longerich, each of which situates Wannsee in the context of what was discussed there: anti-Jewish policy. 7 All three do an excellent job in charting the origins and evolution of what later became known as the Holocaust, as well as providing detailed accounts of the meeting, and even histories of the house in which it took place. None of them, however, has much to say about the wider context of the meeting itself – neither about how similar meetings had long become a regular and important feature of government under Nazism, nor how they usually followed a similar pattern, with participants, as they had at Wannsee, generally looking to advance the agendas of the institutions they represented. Hans-Christian Jasch and Christoph Kreutzmüller's The Participants, similarly, tells us much about those who attended Wannsee – their careers, beliefs and positions within the Nazi murder apparatus – but nothing about what they were attending, while Norbert Kempe and Peter Klein's The Wannsee Conference covers everything from the infamous Wannsee protocol to how the meeting has been interpreted by historians and taught in schools. The state secretaries’ meetings as a forum of government, on the other hand, receives no attention. 8 Not even Alex Kay's ‘The German Staatssekretäre’, which skilfully examines the May 1941 meeting on mass starvation, talks about the meetings as an instrument of government. 9 What we are left with is an image of the state secretaries’ meetings as something entirely out of the ordinary at which only the regime's must heinous crimes were discussed, when in fact Wannsee and the 2 May meeting were just two of hundreds of such gatherings convened to debate almost every facet of the ‘Third Reich's’ policy agenda.
The aim of this article is to add some important context to our understanding of the Wannsee Conference; context that is entirely missing from the otherwise excellent scholarship on the topic. In doing so, however, it will also contribute to our understanding of the Nazi state more broadly, showing how the state secretaries’ meetings served as an important instrument of National Socialist rule. Based on previously untapped sources – the meetings’ protocols – it will draw attention to a government forum that rarely appears in the literature; one that sheds new light on how the civil service functioned at this level, and how the peculiarities of Hitler's government saw conventional hierarchies between ministers and state secretaries become inversed. 10 By highlighting the intra-state rivalries between traditional government ministries, moreover, it will show that the older, though now often overlooked literature on the ‘Hitler state’ was right to view it as a site of ‘polycratic’ anarchy. 11 Mommsen was correct to point to the state secretaries’ meetings as one of the few means of achieving coordination between government departments. 12 But they rarely did so in practice. Just like the cabinet meetings they replaced, the state secretaries’ meetings also became an expression of jurisdictional conflict within a fragmented ‘polycracy’ of competing government departments, serving as mere fora for advancing claims to departmental authority. 13 In other words, the bureaucratic wrangling between Heydrich and Stuckart at Wannsee over who was responsible for ‘mixed-race’ Jews and Jews in ‘mixed marriages’ was far from unique. It was a defining feature of the state secretaries’ meetings. Contrary to the ‘classical’ image presented at Wannsee, which appears to lend credence to Ernst Fraenkel's idea of a ‘dual state’, 14 it will be shown here that jurisdictional conflict was not only a function of rivalries between Party and state agencies and officials. As the literature has long since shown, the latter, too, jockeyed among themselves for influence. 15 The state broadly proved more than willing to eat itself. 16
In short, the article will show how policy-making worked (and didn’t work) at this forgotten level of Hitler's government. For thematic coherence, it will focus on one set of policy discussions – those relating to the establishment of German rule in the newly annexed Austrian, Czech and Polish territories. At their core, these were about where executive authority should lie in the new parts of ‘Greater Germany’. Should the central Reich government be allowed to extend its domain there, as most of the ministries believed? Or should regional Nazi Party bosses be given a freer rein to rule with only limited recourse to Berlin, as the Office of the Deputy Führer (StdF), Hitler and, chiefly, the Interior Ministry wanted? All parties to the debate advanced constitutional designs that promoted their own jurisdictional aggrandizement, and, as will be shown below, they used the state secretaries’ meetings to do so.
In order to make sense of what was discussed there, however, we must first situate the meetings in their wider context. For they concerned a matter that predated German expansion prior to World War II and even Nazism itself – the relationship between Berlin and the federal states, and where exactly executive authority should lie. As a federation of formerly sovereign states, Germany had been debating this issue since its founding in 1871, the thorny issue of ‘reforming the Reich’ (Reichsreform) being defined largely, though not exclusively, by Berlin's urge towards centralization and the federal states’ desire to delegate upwards only those powers that suited them. 17 In theory, the Nazi Party favoured the former, with calls to strengthen central authority enshrined in its 1920 party programme. 18 At the same time, by 1933 its strength had become overwhelmingly concentrated in the regions. 19 So after Hitler became Chancellor his regime pursued a confusing dual strategy – on one hand, formally abolishing and extending Berlin's control over the federal states, and on the other, appointing Regional Party Leaders (Gauleiter) as Reich Governors (Reichsstatthalter) to oversee the implementation of Reich policies there.
Another feature of Nazi governance, this fusion of Party and state offices was meant to overcome the divisions between the two and nurture the idea that the former were in control. Instead, it merely led to confusion on the ground, as Reich Governors persistently ignored and even challenged the Reich ministries’ authority in the states. 20 Darwinian power struggles were increasingly defining the regime, with both Party and state agencies taking advantage of the new opportunities to aggrandize their domains. But such obstinance was less indicative of the Reich Governors’ strength and more of their weakness, at least early on. Berlin had undoubtedly emerged as the biggest winner from the regime's early centralization efforts. Most ministries expanded their mandates considerably upon the acquisition of federal state portfolios, with each state's administrative agencies – such as finance, justice, transport, etc. – being subordinated to the respective ministries in Berlin. 21
Controlling these agencies – known collectively as ‘special administrations’ (Sonderverwaltungen) – would soon become the objective of an institutional tug-of-war, as representatives of both Party and state looked for ways to execute policy on the ground. For not everyone was happy with the concentration of administrative authority in the Reich bureaucracy's hands. Hitler, for one, despised bureaucracy as he understood it, 22 while the StdF was also an avowed opponent of its centralizing tendencies. 23 But there was also opposition from within the bureaucracy itself. As one of the few ministries not to have benefited from the abolition of the states, the Interior Ministry felt that the proliferation of special administrations there and in the municipalities, far from centralizing administration, was in fact symptomatic of its fragmentation. 24 For the Interior Minister, Wilhelm Frick, the specialist Reich ministries were displaying a dangerous ‘departmental particularism’ (Ressortpartikularismus), which, he argued, was actually hindering administrative cohesion. 25
With so many unhappy with the new constitutional arrangement, it is unsurprising that different plans soon emerged. Building on similar proposals by Hermann Göring and Fritz Sauckel, the Interior Ministry, for one, suggested using the Reich Governors as the Reich's intermediate-level administrative agencies (Reichsmittelinstanz), effectively making them one-man federal state governments, and placing them under its own supervision. 26 Frick's nominal authority over the Reich Governors had already been secured by previous legislation, according to which they were given the rather vague task of ensuring the Reich Chancellor's political directives were being followed. 27 What this plan proposed, however, vested them with the authority to issue legally binding directives to the special administrations in the states, which would have obstructed the Berlin ministries’ control over them. 28
In short, the Interior Ministry sought to extend its own authority vis-à-vis the other Reich ministries by utilizing its nominal authority over regional Nazi Party bosses, whose power Hitler and others also wished to extend. But Frick and his bureaucrats were in no doubt about the dangers involved. Seeing themselves as subordinate only to Hitler, the Reich Governors were never likely to follow the Interior Ministry's directives. 29 So later versions of its plan proposed creating administrative agencies to serve under the Reich Governors, and that these be staffed with mid-level provincial administrators that were already on the Interior Ministry's payroll – the District Presidents (Regierungspräsidenten). 30 Other versions even proposed endowing the County Councillors (Landräte), who were also part of the Interior Ministry's field administration, with the power to issue legal directives to special administrations in the municipalities. 31 The Interior Ministry's strategy to centralize the administration, in other words, was two-pronged – on the one hand, endowing the Reich Governors with vast administrative competencies currently held by the specialist Reich ministries, and on the other, giving itself a more direct say in administration by further delegating those competencies to its own administrative agencies. 32 ‘The Reich Governors’, Frick later told colleagues, ‘should be freed from day-to-day administration. [They should] lead the administration, but not administrate themselves’. 33
Unsurprisingly, the specialist Reich ministries resisted these efforts. The plan ultimately foundered, however, on the Reich Governors’ refusal to subordinate themselves to anyone but Hitler – their ability to do so because of their status as Regional Party Leaders, in fact, allowing them to circumvent their nominal subordination to Frick. 34 A peculiar balancing act that involved using the regional autonomy of the Nazi Party to weaken central state authority, only then to try and reassert the latter through the deployment of the Interior Ministry's own administrative agencies, was always going to be difficult to pull off. But the ambiguities of their plan were clear to the Interior Ministry's bureaucrats from the start. For all their talk of integrating Party and state, and thus of overcoming the tensions between the two, 35 the Reich Governors had shown little interest in working meaningfully with Berlin. Still, Frick and his bureaucrats pushed ahead with their reform agenda, just as the specialist ministries continued to resist them. And as the Reich began to expand its borders, as Germany became ‘Greater Germany’, the power struggles became more pronounced, the specialist ministries looking to replicate the status quo in Austria, the Sudetenland and Western Poland, and the Interior Ministry to create a blueprint that could later be applied across Germany as a whole. 36 A solution would be sought at a series of state secretaries’ meetings from 1938. But as with so much else, the matter would be resolved elsewhere.
German expansion did not begin with the march into Austria, of course. The first territories annexed by the ‘Third Reich’ were German in all but name, the Saarland being repatriated in 1935 after 15 years under a League of Nations mandate. 37 It was here that the first elements of the Interior Ministry's plan came to fruition, even if Josef Bürckel, the Regional Nazi Party Leader appointed to oversee the Saarland's annexation, was the principle driving force on the ground. 38 The Saarland was not incorporated into any of Germany's pre-existing regional administrative structures – such as Bavaria or Prussia – which would have meant, for example, subordinating its justice and finance administrations to the Reich Justice and Finance Ministries respectively. Instead, it was to become a separate administrative unit under Bürckel's leadership. 39
What that meant in practice was never formally resolved. Bürckel was nominally integrated into the Interior Ministry's administrative hierarchy, first as a Senior District President (Oberpräsident) – though with the duties of a District President – before his eventual appointment as Reich Governor, a role he also held briefly in Vienna. 40 But his authority vis-à-vis the special administrations in the Saarland was a bone of contention from the start, his plans to unify all administrative branches under his own leadership going far beyond what even the Interior Ministry was prepared to tolerate. 41 Still, enough progress was made in the Saarland that Wilhelm Stuckart and Hans Pfundtner, both the state secretaries in the Interior Ministry, labelled it ‘an important step towards reforming the Reich’. 42
Further steps, it was hoped, would be taken in Austria, which was formally annexed to the Reich on 13 March 1938. 43 Stuckart and Pfundtner made renewed attempts throughout the summer to empower the Reich Governors and their own field administrators vis-à-vis the special administrations across Germany as a whole, only to back down upon the stubborn resistance of the specialist Reich ministries. 44 But Austria, again, presented a chance to break that resistance precisely because there was no status quo there to defend. The administrative structures in what was to become ‘Greater Germany’ would have to be built anew, the Interior Ministry argued; a view shared by the StdF, Hitler and, of course, the Reich Governors, who all wished to right the wrongs of earlier centralization efforts by empowering the Party over the state in the incorporated territories. 45
Such wishes found expression in the Interior Ministry's Draft Law concerning the Administrative Structure in Austria, which was discussed at a series of state secretaries’ meetings throughout September and proposed compartmentalizing the formerly Austrian territories into compact administrative units (Gaue), each to be led by a Reich Governor directly answerable to Frick. 46 This was Reichsreform in the truest sense of the word for the Interior Ministry, in that it proposed both organizational and territorial changes. 47 But it was rejected on 10 September 1938 by the representatives of the Agriculture, Finance, Labour, Transport, Postal and Economics Ministries, who were loath to grant the Reich Governors authority over the special administrations in their Gaue. For, in stark contrast to the situation in the Altreich, the draft proposed that the Reich Governors in Austria finally be granted the power to issue legal directives (Anweisungsbefugnis) to the special administrations in their Gaue, which would have effectively nullified the specialist Reich ministries’ authority there. 48
Stuckart was nothing if not determined, however, calling another meeting to discuss his draft the following week.
49
This time he was supported by Walther Sommer from the StdF, which supported the Interior Ministry's plan because, just like Frick and Stuckart, it too saw the Reich Governors as a vehicle for implementing its own agenda.
50
Among the others present were the representatives of the Agriculture, Finance and Labour Ministries, who, again, spoke out against empowering the Reich Governors. But Stuckart was firm, arguing that a change in their constitutional position was fundamentally important for political reasons: The present legal situation has led to dangerous tensions between the Regional Party Leaders and the state administrations. Because the Regional Party Leaders, in their capacity as Reich Governors, have no role in the state administrative apparatus, they attempt to overcome their perceived grievances in the state administration with recourse to the Party, which can lead to difficult conflicts between the state and Party offices on the ground. This dangerous tension can only be resolved if the Reich Governors are integrated into the state apparatus, so that their interventions can occur in a legal way if necessary. Should differences of opinions with the supreme Reich authorities still emerge, said authorities would then be able to iron these out with the Reich Governors themselves.
51
Concluding his argument, Stuckart promised that the Reich Governors had no intention of involving themselves too much in the affairs of the special administrations. But as the ‘Führer's trusted representatives’, they should be able to involve themselves in administrative matters if they thought it necessary. 52
Here, again, we can see how the Interior Ministry's efforts to unify the Party and the state intersected with its broader efforts to empower itself. For those present were also informed of Stuckart's intention to expand the authority of the District Presidents, who were to serve as the Reich Governors’ agents in Austria, so that the latter could be ‘freed from day-to-day administration to focus on their political tasks’. 53 The problem, however, was that few Reich Governors were interested in such an outcome. Right from the beginning of Nazi rule, it was precisely their lack of administrative authority that frustrated them. 54 Even the Reich Governors who served in Austria after it was carved up into seven new Reichsgaue – mostly local functionaries for whom the grievances of their counterparts in the Altreich were presumably less of an issue – demanded that authority over the different administrative branches be concentrated in their hands. 55 The StdF wanted the same, of course, though not because it wanted to empower the Interior Ministry. It also wanted to exercise power on the ground through the Reich Governors, who in turn saw themselves as subordinate to nobody other than Hitler. Despite seeking the same outcome, in other words, all three were pursuing their own power-political agendas; each contributing to the administration's progressive fragmentation, and further exploiting the special opportunities the Nazi state created for engaging in Darwinian power struggles.
But the specialist Reich ministries played their part too, by resisting every attempt to disempower them in the soon-to-be annexed territories. As the 15 September 1938 meeting drew to a close, they insisted that the Interior Ministry and its subordinate agencies only be allowed to issue directives to the special administrations after securing agreement from the relevant Reich departments.
56
For example, if a directive concerned taxation, the Interior Ministry would first need to consult the finance minister before issuing it. Indicative of the confidence he displayed throughout the meeting, Stuckart told the others that the Interior Minister will obviously involve the departments in those measures where their interests are affected. He cannot, however, make himself dependent on their agreement under all circumstances because, failing such an agreement … it is to be feared that the necessary measures might not be affected, or at least not on time.
57
Similar arguments were made by the representatives of the Justice, Education and Labour Ministries, while Werner Willikens from the Agriculture Ministry suggested that if the Reich Governors were to be empowered to issue directives, then the specialist Reich ministries should be able to veto them – a proposition that ran counter to the idea of granting them the right to issue those directives in the first place. 60 Faced with such stiff resistance, and with no agreement in sight, Stuckart adjourned the meeting, telling his colleagues that all outstanding issues would be revisited at a later date. 61 When, exactly, he did not say. But with the Sudeten crisis reaching boiling point, it would not be long before the state secretaries were back around the table championing their competing visions of a centralized administration.
The next meeting was called on 8 October 1938, only this time the geographical focus had shifted away from Austria to the Sudetenland, despite the situation in Austria remaining unresolved. 62 Eight days earlier, after the Munich Agreement was signed and Hitler's designs on formerly Czech territories partially satisfied, the German Army crossed the border into the Sudetenland, which was officially annexed by Germany on 10 October 1938. 63 Similar to the Interior Ministry's plan for Austria, here a Reich Commissioner (Reichskommissar) was to be given total control for a period of transition, after which the Sudetenland was to be governed by a Reich Governor directly answerable to Frick, with day-to-day administration, again, being delegated to Frick's District Presidents. 64 As with the meetings that preceded it, few could agree on how much authority those officials should be given.
What Frick and his bureaucrats hoped to achieve was outlined in the Second Ordinance to the Führer Decree concerning the Administration of the Sudeten-German Territories. 65 The original Hitler Decree, released only a week earlier, had guaranteed the specialist Reich ministries’ authority over their special administrations by not placing them under the supervision of the newly appointed Reich Commissioner, Konrad Henlein. 66 Nor did the Second Decree, as discussed at the meeting, change this situation, at least not straight away. As Stuckart made clear, ‘The institution of a Reich Commissioner is only a temporary measure. It will soon be replaced by a Reich Governor [also Henlein] whose job it is to administer the [soon-to-be-established] Reichsgau’. 67 On its own, there was little here for the other state secretaries to disagree with. The incorporation of ‘ethnically German’ lands into the Reich was one of the regime's foremost objectives. Given the Interior Ministry's underlying aim, however, Reinhardt and the Labour Ministry's Johannes Krohn had Stuckart confirm that ‘there was no objection to removing the special administrations from the office of the Reich Commissioner [in the future]’. 68 Without much resistance he agreed, the concessions finding their way into an amended law issued that same evening. Perhaps reflecting the specialist ministries’ combined strength, the bulk of the special administrations were to remain subordinated to their respective ministries for a period of transition. 69
But the Interior Ministry was soon able to push through some of its reform agenda. Indeed, the laws regulating the permanent administrative arrangements in the Sudetenland and Austria, both passed in April 1939, formally recognized the District Presidents as the Reich Governors’ deputies in the annexed territories. 70 They may not have been permitted to issue legal directives, as Stuckart and Frick had hoped, but the deployment of seven in Austria and four in the Sudetenland helps explain why both men saw the arrangement as a step in the right direction. 71 More importantly, the Interior Ministry's plan to unite all administrative branches under the Reich Governors was achieved in all but a few cases. Only the special administrations of the Reich Justice, Finance, Transport and Postal Ministries – that is the regional courts, public prosecutors, finance, railway and post offices – were not added to the Reich Governors’ growing administrative repertoire in the Austrian and Sudeten Gaue. As attention turned to western Poland, these administrative agencies would become the objects of the next jurisdictional conflicts. For the time being, though, their respective ministries had reason to believe that they, too, had prevailed, not least because their ability to veto the Reich Governors’ directives was enshrined in law. Despite the wishes of Stuckart, Frick, the StdF and Hitler himself, large sections of the Reich ministerial bureaucracy had managed to extend their influence into the conquered territories. But with the invasion of Poland nearing, the matter was far from resolved.
Unlike in Austria and the Sudetenland, the establishment of civilian administrations in Poland followed a brief but intense military campaign, during which so-called Chiefs of Civilian Administration, attached to different army groups, were responsible for all branches of the internal administration in their respective zones. Some of these, such as the District Presidents Harry von Craushaar and Hans Rüdiger, were Interior Ministry officials, 72 and it was their job specifically to ‘reconstruct the administration and economy of formerly enemy territory in accordance with military provisions’. 73 Others, however, were Party functionaries, with the likes of Albert Forster – the Regional Party Leader in Danzig – actively thwarting the Interior Ministry's plans in Poland, ruling instead in accordance with the personal mandate granted to him by Hitler. 74 This was merely the beginning of a much broader power struggle between Berlin and the Regional Party Leaders in the annexed Polish territories as the number of competing government institutions proliferated. But as the military campaign drew to a close, Frick and his bureaucrats still believed they could harness Party functionaries as tools of administrative reform, ignoring the fact that Hitler wanted to keep not only the specialist ministries but also the Interior Ministry out of Poland. 75
Seeking to build on the gains made in Austria and the Sudetenland, the Interior Ministry's constitutional designs for western Poland, as usual, came in the form of two pieces of draft legislation, which were both discussed at a state secretaries’ meeting on 5 October 1939, one day before the war with Poland officially ended. Sadly, the minutes of the meeting have not survived. Only a brief summary by the Reich Chancellery's Friedrich-Wilhelm Kritzinger and the two draft laws remain in the archives, both suggesting that Stuckart, who chaired the meeting and prepared the drafts, intended to use Frick's appointment as the leader of the Central Office for the Occupied Territories to push through his vision of a centralized administration once and for all. 76 For they reveal that two parts of western Poland – named Danzig West-Prussia and Eastern Upper Silesia – were to be taken over by the Reich, and numerous administrative branches transferred to a Reich Commissioner in the case of the former, and a Senior District President in the latter. 77 Again, both were intended as temporary measures. But it is indicative of the pace at which things moved in Nazi Germany that another note from Kritzinger, dated 6 October 1939 – one day after Stuckart presented the original drafts – shows that Hitler rejected these decrees because ‘he wishes to see the entire area to be unified with Germany simultaneously integrated into the Reich’. 78 Both formal annexation and administrative realignment, in other words, were to be carried out immediately. This essentially meant that further debate over the authority of the Reich Governors vis-à-vis the special administrations was a foregone conclusion, particularly those under the Justice and Finance Ministries, which became the prime target of the Interior Ministry in the annexed Polish territories. But it also meant considerably more work for Stuckart, who, having received the order from Hitler, was to come up with a new draft decree establishing a civilian administration in those parts of Poland, which was duly provided and signed by Hitler 24 hours later. 79
In draft form, the Führer Decree concerning the Organization and Administration of the Eastern Territories foresaw the creation of two new Reichsgaue. As in Austria and the Sudetenland, they were to be led by Reich Governors 80 – Danzig West-Prussia under Albert Forster, and Posen (later named Reichsgau Wartheland) under Arthur Greiser, both of whom had been active in Danzig politics before the war and served as Chiefs of the Civilian Administration during the military campaign. 81 Section 3 also stipulated that the structure of these administrations was to follow the provisions laid out in the Sudetengaugesetz, which, as was shown above, extended the authority of the Reich Finance and Justice Ministries into the Sudetenland by not subordinating their special administrations to the Reich Governors. In its original form, therefore, the first Führer Decree appeared to reflect the compromises reached at the state secretaries’ meetings throughout September 1938.
But neither Stuckart, the StdF, the Reich Governors, nor Hitler wanted to replicate in Poland the situation that prevailed in the Sudetenland. Particularly for the latter three, Poland was something different, more like a laboratory in which National Socialist rule in its purest form could be practised, which meant keeping Berlin out of the Polish Reichsgaue. 82 So, on 10 October 1939, Stuckart sent a letter to Hans Lammers in the Reich Chancellery, asking him to approve and sign the law, adding somewhat elliptically at the end that, ‘at the request of the StdF, § 3 has received an additional subsection 2, the contents of which the Führer is supposed to have approved already’. 83 Because Hitler had not yet seen the precise wording of the subsection he had apparently approved, Stuckart left it up to Lammers whether it should be submitted to him again. These secret additions, perhaps added at the last minute so that they could be squeezed through without controversy, were a radical departure from the Sudetengaugesetz. Whereas in the Sudetengau the Reich Governor only had the right to be briefed by the special administrations, and to issue directives only within the framework of those already issued by the supreme Reich Authorities, which could then be overturned by said authorities, in Poland all special administrations were to be directly subordinated to the Reich Governors and, it seems, bound by his directives. Even at the county level (Kreisstufe), special administrations like the finance offices and courts, and the railway and postal authorities were to be placed under the County Councillors, 84 field administrators already answerable to Frick. 85 In stark contrast to the Sudetengaugesetz, in other words, these secret additions foresaw no role whatsoever for the specialist Reich ministries in the annexed Polish territories.
To achieve these ends without obstruction, each of the ministries which stood to lose out if the law was passed was kept out of the drafting process. The draft that was sent to the ministries for approval was missing the secret subsection Hitler had apparently approved without seeing. 86 This only appeared in the version published in the Reich Law Gazette on 8 October 1939. 87 So Kritzinger was right when he wrote, two days later, that this was ‘a very drastic and possibly displeasing measure for the leaders of the special administrations’. 88 And in order to deal with the fallout, Pfundtner sent a letter to the specialist ministries, inviting them to another state secretaries’ meeting on 23 October 1939. 89
After first outlining Hitler's wishes regarding the expulsion and treatment of the native populations, Stuckart told those in attendance that while the Sudetengaugesetz did, indeed, provide the framework for the administrative structure in the eastern territories, ‘In consideration of the special tasks [to be carried out in Poland] the Reich Governors must be made more independent. Therefore, all administrative departments must be transferred to them.’ 90 In the East, at least, Stuckart maintained that they could not begin with the splitting-off (Abspaltung) of the special administrations from the Reich Governors; an argument with which Reinhardt and the Justice Ministry's Franz Schlegelberger vehemently disagreed. And whereas the latter demanded the complete removal of the justice administrations from the Reich Governors’ purview, Reinhardt was more tactical. Fully aware of Stuckart's aim to empower the District Presidents, he let it be known that he would be willing to tolerate an independent finance administration operating out of the Reich Governor's office if there were no District Presidents involved. But in its current form, neither he nor Schlegelberger could accept it. Likely confident of the outcome already, however, Stuckart concluded the meeting by telling his colleagues that he would submit the issue to Hitler for consultation.
Meanwhile, the Reich Chancellery – which still controlled access to Hitler at the time – was inundated with letters from the Finance and Justice Ministries protesting against the measure. Finance Minister von Krosigk even promised Hitler that independent finance authorities would assist in all special questions, not least the huge resettlement programme that was discussed at the meeting. 91 A letter from Schlegelberger, by contrast, was more measured, merely highlighting that neither the Reich Governors nor the County Councillors were qualified to issue directives to experienced lawyers and judges. 92
After much back and forth, and no ruling from Hitler one way or another, the issue was the subject of another meeting on 27 October 1939. Frustratingly, all that remains in the archive is a brief summary, which tells us that Stuckart, Schlegelberger, Kritzinger and Walther Sommer were among those present. Presumably because of the importance of the situation, the Finance Minister himself also attended in place of State Secretary Reinhardt. 93 But it also tells us that the measure eventually pushed through favoured the Interior Ministry's position. The mid-level finance and justice administrations were to be merely ‘assigned’ to the Reich Governors while the Gau was being established. In other words, the regional finance offices, courts and public prosecutors would carry out their work at the office of the Reich Governor, which, as has been rightly noted, effectively meant their subordination to him. 94 It was also agreed that, in the districts, the special administrations would be supervised by the County Councillors, and therefore by the Interior Ministry directly. It was stipulated, to be sure, that the County Councillors could only issue directives to the special administrations in ‘exceptional circumstances’. 95 But this was too vague a clause to have any real meaning. What mattered most to the Interior Ministry was that it finally had a foothold in the finance, justice and other special administrations at both the district and Gau levels.
These changes to the power-political positions of the Reich Governors and, nominally at least, the Interior Ministry, found legal expression in the Second Ordinance for the Implementation of the Führer Decree concerning the Organization and Administration of the Eastern Territories, passed on 4 November 1939. 96 The long-time Party stalwarts Forster and Greiser were now chiefs of the finance, justice and other special administrations in their Gaue, and each was to be represented by a District President. A few weeks later, the Interior Ministry defined the relationship between the two in more concrete terms: it was the latter's responsibility to implement the directives of the former, who should keep their heads clear for the great political, economic and völkisch problems that came with building up a new Gau. 97 From an Interior Ministry perspective at least, the Reich Governors could issue policy, but its implementation should lie squarely in the hands of the administrative professionals directly answerable to Frick.
Although the second implementing decree governing the eastern territories was introduced on the statute books in early November 1939, just like the original decree it must have been pushed through without being submitted to the relevant ministries for discussion. We can infer this because a barrage of letters from the Justice and Finance Ministers to both Frick and Lammers indicate that neither man was happy with the decree in its current form – both complaining that it in no way reflected the agreements reached at the meeting on 27 October 1939, upon which the implementing order was supposed to have been based, and that they had not been given the opportunity to comment on the amended drafts. 98 All that remains of this meeting in the archive is a summary of the results, written by Stuckart, which contains no information as to who said what or whether agreement was ever reached. 99 But if the contents can be believed, there are few substantive differences between the implementing order and what was discussed at the meeting. Kritzinger himself said as much on 13 November 1939, and he had little to gain from supporting the Interior Ministry's position. 100 Perhaps Schlegelberger and von Krosigk heard what they wanted to hear at the meeting, or their protests represented a last-ditch effort to sway the debate back in their favour. Either way, the Interior Ministry appeared to have got what it wanted. Having secured formal authority over the special administrations, its subordinate administrative agencies – the Reich Governors, followed by the District Presidents and the County Councillors – now reigned supreme in the annexed Polish territories. Its image of a centralized administration was now a reality in parts of the country. Frick, Stuckart and their colleagues surely thought that it was only a matter of time before it would be applied in Germany as a whole.
But it soon proved to be a chimeric victory. The Interior Ministry was unable to assert its authority at all levels of the administration. In the districts, for one, the special administrations did not always follow the directives of the County Councillors. 101 The District Presidents – both those who served as deputy to the Reich Governors and those who led the administrative sub-districts into which the Polish Gaue were split (Regierungsbezirke) – were often Party functionaries or devotees of Greiser and Forster. They may have nominally belonged to the Interior Ministry's field administration, but their loyalty to Frick was contingent at best. 102 Beyond that, however, the Interior Ministry's plan hinged above all on the Reich Governors subordinating themselves to Frick, and this was never likely given their antipathy towards central government and their direct subordination to Hitler as Regional Party Leaders. Indeed, it was precisely because they were Party functionaries that they were able to avoid being integrated into the state apparatus, whose directives they largely ignored. 103 The Interior Ministry's delicate plan to fuse party and state authority in the regions and subordinate these hybrid administrative agencies to Wilhelm Frick had failed. Stuckart conceded as much at a state secretaries’ meeting on 24 February 1941, telling those present that a reorganization of the Reich Governors’ office was necessary because, in its present form, it had led to ‘insurmountable difficulties’. 104 However, nothing practical ever came of this or other efforts to dismantle what he had helped create. 105 Frustrated, he spent the rest of the war campaigning against the proliferation of what he saw as superfluous administrative agencies, and he even lobbied the SS and Heinrich Himmler, who replaced Frick as Interior Minister in 1943, to support ‘administrative simplification’. 106 But nothing practical ever came of this either. Just like the specialist Reich ministries whose authority it had tried to curtail, the Interior Ministry was also increasingly pushed aside in the annexed territories.
None of this is to say that Berlin was completely excluded from administration in Austria, the Sudetenland or western Poland. As Reich territories, the ministries theoretically exercised the same control there as they did in the Altreich, with field agencies and administrators continuing to work on their behalf, playing important roles in, for example, the persecution and murder of the Jews and other ‘Germanization’ measures. 107 Rebentisch has even gone so far as to argue that Berlin continued to provide ‘technical direction’ in the annexed territories. 108 At the same time, perhaps the most detailed study on the topic to date has shown how ‘both racial struggle and Germanization had been removed from the preserve of the administration, being declared instead issues “involving the leadership and guidance of the people”, that is, a matter for the Party (and the police)’. 109 And if we look at how things played out on the ground, we can see that Berlin's ability to actually direct policy, as opposed to providing ex post facto justification for what had already happened, was limited at best.
In Austria, for example, the finance authorities subordinate to the Reich Finance Ministry were rarely in control of the expropriation measures enacted against Jews, operating instead both under and in competition with Adolf Eichmann's Central Office for Jewish Emigration and the so-called Property Transfer Office (Vermögensverkehrsstelle) under Walter Rafelsberger. Even after Austria was formally annexed by Germany, and the Finance Ministry made responsible for the administration and valuation of expropriated goods, which functions were then to be delegated to its Gau finance offices, such tasks remained largely in the hands of the Reich Governors or the Gestapo. 110 The finance authorities did, for a time, exert greater control over expropriation measures in the Sudetenland. But this was because the bulk of the region's Jews had already left by the time the Germans arrived. And when the deportations of those who remained began in 1941, the finance authorities’ jurisdiction in this domain was largely usurped by the SS and police. 111 As with most Reich ministries in the annexed territories, in other words, the Finance Ministry's ability to direct administration was persistently challenged by quasi and extra-state institutions, which ultimately managed to overcome Berlin's claims to administrative leadership because of the personal mandates granted to them by Hitler.
Another factor impeding the ministries’ authority in the annexed territories was the confused and overlapping administrative hierarchies that emerged there, with field administrators often operating in more than one. In Danzig West-Prussia and the Reichsgau Wartheland, for example, the District Presidents, County Councillors, state prosecutors, appeal court judges, and even the presidents of the regional finance offices, were generally appointed by Forster and Greiser, or at least appointed with their express approval. 112 Despite being under the formal supervision of the Interior, Justice and Finance Ministries, therefore, these officials could not always be expected to follow their directives, especially if they contradicted the wishes of the Reich Governors. 113 The same was also true of the Interior Ministry officials co-opted by Heinrich Himmler to implement his resettlement programme. 114 All of this compromised the ministries’ policy implementation channels. With their ability to affect policy thus hindered, many of them simply withdrew their claims to authority on such issues, or limited themselves to passing measures confirming what had already happened. 115 This all lay in the future, however. When the state secretaries’ meetings were taking place, the Berlin ministries still believed that a leadership role, in one form or another, awaited them in the annexed territories.
Speaking at his trial in Nuremberg in 1949, nearly two years after the discovery of the ‘Wannsee Protocol’, Nazi Germany's most senior civil servant, Hans Lammers (the head of the Reich Chancellery), told prosecutors that the ‘state secretaries’ meetings … in the last months of the war … were taking place almost every day’. With ministers no longer permitted to meet formally, he told prosecutors, they were convened so often ‘because otherwise there would have been no contact at all [between the ministries]’. But this appears to have angered Hitler for some reason, and he soon had Martin Bormann inform Lammers ‘that these state secretaries’ conferences must no longer take place’. 116 According to the military judge Ralf Lehmann, in fact, Hitler even ‘banned the custom for the State Secretaries … to meet [informally] once or twice a month in the evening for a glass of wine and to discuss … matters of mutual concern’. 117 For both men, this was part of a divide and conquer strategy – an effort by Hitler to ensure that the ministries only knew that which concerned them, and to prevent alternative coalitions forming.
If this was the case, then Hitler need not have worried. Despite being one of the few ways to achieve coordination between government departments, the state secretaries’ meetings, as this article has shown, did little to salvage collegial government under National Socialism. Like the cabinet meetings they effectively replaced, they too served as mere fora for advancing claims to departmental authority, as government descended into an almost Darwinian, polycratic struggle. In that sense, the jurisdictional conflicts on display at Wannsee were far from unique – though, unlike Wannsee, those that played out at the meetings called to discuss the annexation of ‘Greater German’ territory did not originate in a dispute between Party and state agencies. The StdF and the Reich Governors were party to the debate, to be sure. But this was primarily a dispute between traditional government ministries and their representatives, and as such it stands as another counter-example to ‘classical’ understandings of Nazi polycracy. Primarily, this article has shed new light on how the ‘Hitler state functioned’ by showing that the Wannsee Conference was a far from unique occurrence. By January 1942, what could be called the ‘Wannsee format’ had become established practice – an important instrument of government used to coordinate responses to a range of policy issues, only one of which was mass murder. This is not to downplay the significance of what was discussed there. Until now, historians have rightly situated Wannsee in the context of its subject matter, namely anti-Jewish policy. But if we are to truly understand this all-important gathering, we need to situate the format, the state secretaries’ meeting, in its historical context, as well.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Many thanks are owed to Marcus Colla, Richard Evans, Thomas Clausen and Mahon Murphy for reading various drafts of the article, and to all of the anonymous reviewers. It is far better for your comments and criticisms.
