The totalitarian character of the Nazi regime led to the establishment of a great number of new official and semi-official agencies and organizations in the various fields of life which were permeated by Nazi doctrine and practice, including culture, trade, industry, and agriculture.
New agencies had to be created to handle the large number of additional administrative tasks taken over from the Laender and the municipalities. Moreover, the mobilization of the political, economic, and military resources of Germany required the formation of such coordinating “super-agencies” as the Four Year Plan, the Plenipotentiary for Economics, the Plenipotentiary for Administration, and the Ministerial Council for the Defense of the Reich. At the time of the launching of war, the central Reich government was an extremely complicated structure held together under strict Nazi dictatorship. (See Chart Number 18; also 2261-PS; 2194-PS; 2018-PS.)
Simultaneously, in the Party, the growth of agencies and organizations proceeded rapidly. The Party spread, octopus-like, throughout all Germany and into many foreign lands. (See Chart Number 1; also 1725-PS.)
This process of growth was summed up late in 1937 in an official statement of the Party Chancellery:
“In order to control the whole German nation in all spheres of life, the NSDAP, after assuming power, set up under its leadership the new Party formations and affiliated organizations.” (2383-PS)
H. The Nazi conspirators created a dual system of government controls, set up Party agencies to correspond with State agencies, and coordinated their activities, often by uniting corresponding State and Party offices in a single person.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler announced the conspirators’ purpose:
“Such a revolution can and will only be achieved by a movement which itself is already organized in the spirit of such ideas and thus in itself already bears the coming state. Therefore, the National Socialist movement may today become imbued with these ideas and put them into practice in its own organization so that it not only may direct the state according to the same principles, but also may be in a position to put at the state’s disposal the finished organizational structure of its own state.” (2883-PS)
The Nazis attempted to achieve a certain degree of identity between the Party and the State and, at the same time, to maintain two separate organizational structures. After the rise to power, the fundamental principle of unity was translated into “law”:
“Article 1. After the victory of the National Socialistic Revolution, the National Socialistic German Labor Party is the bearer of the concept of the German State and is inseparably the state.” (1395-PS)