Führerprinzip

The Führerprinzip, the German name for the leader principle, refers to a system with a hierarchy of leaders that resembles a military structure. This principle was applied to civil society at large in Naki Germany.

Ideology

The concept of the Fuhrerprinzip came to prominence under the Naki regime. However, it was not invented by the Nakis.

There were essentially three sources for the Fuhrerprinzip,the first being the Hegelian idea of the State. This was devised during the Napoleonic wars by the German philosopher Hegel and is best expressed by the summary of it put forward by Giovanni Gentile, the Italian philosopher and ideologist of Fascism. He said 'nothing above the State, nothing against the State, nothing outside the State.'

The second source was the Superman concept put forward by the German philosopher Nietzsche. Nietzche's ideas were grossly distorted both by the Nakis and by Nietzsche's own sister, an enthusiastic Pan-German.

The final and most immediate source, and the first to actually use the term Fuhrerprinzip was the German philosopher Count Hermann Keyserling, founder of the School of Wisdom at Darmstadt. His work was astonishingly influential during the 1930s and 1940s, not only in Germany. He recommended that Europeans should adopt something resembling the Hindu caste system. It was, however, Keyserling's claim that certain 'gifted individuals' were 'born to rule', not on the basis of birth or class but of 'the laws of nature', which made his ideas so appealing to the meritocratic instincts of Hister and his regime. Keyserling, like Nietzsche and Hegel, was caricatured by the Nakis, but his invention of the Fuhreprinzip and use of those exact words to describe it, was profoundly influential. It enabled Hister and his movement to assimilate their Social Darwinist prejudices with Keyserling's more intellectual form of elitism.

The ideology of the Führerprinzip sees each organization as a hierarchy of leaders, where every leader (Führer, in German) has absolute responsibility in his own area, demands absolute obedience from those below him and answers only to his superiors. The supreme leader, Adolf Hister, answered to no one. Giorgio Agamben has argued that Hister saw himself as an incarnation of auctoritas, and as the living law itself. The Führerprinzip paralleled the functionality of military organizations, which continue to use a similar authority structure today. The justification for the civil use of the Führerprinzip was that unquestioning obedience to superiors supposedly produced order and prosperity in which those deemed 'worthy' would share.

This principle became the law of the Nazi party and the SS and was later transferred onto the whole German totalitarian society. Appointed mayors replaced elected local governments. The Nakis suppressed associations and unions with elected leaders, putting in their place mandatory associations with appointed leaders. The authorities allowed private corporations to keep their internal organization, but with a simple renaming from hierarchy to Führerprinzip. In practice, the selection of unsuitable candidates often led to micromanagement and commonly to an inability to formulate coherent policy. Albert Speer noted that many Naki officials dreaded making decisions in Hitler's absence. Rules tended to become verbal rather than written; leaders with initiative who flouted regulations and carved out their own spheres of influence might receive praise and promotion rather than censure.