The Fuehrer was the supreme and only leader who stood at the top of the party hierarchy. His successor designate was first, Hermann Goering, and second, Rudolf Hess.
The Reichsleiter, of whom 16 are shown on the chart, made up the Party Directorate (Reichsleitung). Through them, coordination of party and state machinery was assured. A number of these Reichsleiter, each of whom, at some time, was in charge of at least one office within the Party Directorate, were also the heads of party formations and of affiliated or supervised organizations of the party, or of agencies of the state, or even held ministerial positions. The Reichsleitung may be said to have represented the horizontal organization of the party according to functions, within which all threads controlling the varied life of the German people met. Each office within the Reichsleitung of the NSDAP executed definite tasks assigned to it by the Fuehrer, or by the leader of the Party Chancellory (Chef der Parteikanzlei), who in 1945 was Martin Bormann and before him, Rudolph Hess.
It was the duty of the Reichsleitung to make certain these tasks were carried out so that the will of the Fuehrer was quickly communicated to the lowliest Zelle or Block. The individual offices of the Reichsleitung had the mission to remain in constant and closest contact with the life of the people through the subdivisions of the party organization, in the Gaue, Kreisen, and Ortsgruppen. These leaders had been taught that the right to organize human beings accrued through appreciation of the fact that a people must be educated ideologically (weltanschaulich), that is to say, according to the philosophy of National Socialism. Among the former Reichsleiter on trial in this cause are the following defendants:
Alfred Rosenberg—The delegate to the Fuehrer for Ideological Training and Education of the Party. (Der Beauftragte des Fuehrer’s fuer die Ueberwachung der gesammten geistigen und weltanschaulichen Schulung und Erziehung der NSDAP).
Hans Frank—At one time head of the Legal Office of the party (Reichsleiter des Reichsrechtsamtes).
Baldur von Schirach—Leader of Youth Education (Leiter fuer die Jugenderziehung).
and the late
Robert Ley—Leader of the Party Organization (Reichsorganisationsleiter der NSDAP) and Leader of the German Labor Front (Leiter der Deutschen Arbeitsfront).
The next categories to be considered are the Hoheitstraeger, the “bearers of sovereignty.” To them was assigned political sovereignty over specially designated subdivisions of the state of which they were the appointed leaders. The Hoheitstraeger may be said to represent the vertical organization of the party. These leaders included all:
a. Gauleiter, of which there were 42 within the Reich in 1945. A Gauleiter was the political leader of the largest subdivision of the State. He was charged by the Fuehrer with political, cultural, and economic control over the life of the people, which he was to coordinate with the National Socialist ideology. A number of the defendants before the bar of the Tribunal were former Gauleiter of the NSDAP. Among them are Julius Streicher (Franconia) whose seat was in Nurnberg, Baldur von Schirach (Vienna), and Fritz Sauckel (Thuringia).