rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

244 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHaffairs.Such was the government of the Third Reich, administered from top to bottomon the so-called leadership principle by a vast and sprawling bureaucracy,having little of the efficiency usually credited to the Germans, poisoned by graft,beset by constant confusion and cutthroat rivalries augmented by the muddlinginterference of party potentates and often rendered impotent by the terror ofthe S.S.-Gestapo.At the top of the swarming heap stood the onetime Austrian vagabond,now become, with the exception of Stalin, the most powerful dictator on earth.As Dr. Hans Frank reminded a convention of lawyers in the spring of 1936,”There is in Germany today only one authority, and that is the authority of theFuehrer.” 222With that authority Hitler had quickly destroyed those who opposed him,unified and Nazified the State, regimented the country’s institutions and culture,suppressed individual freedom, abolished unemployment and set the wheels ofindustry and commerce humming – no small achievement after only three orfour years in office. Now he turned – in fact, he already had turned – to thetwo chief passions of his life: the shaping of Germany’s foreign policy towardwar and conquest and the creation of a mighty military machine which wouldenable him to achieve his goal.It is time now to turn to the story, more fully documented than that of anyother in modern history, of how this extraordinary man, at the head of so greatand powerful a nation, set out to attain his ends.