Carroll Quigley - Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time

This brings us to the new ruling group, the party. The party was a ruling group only if we restrict the meaning of the term “party” to the relatively small group (a few thousand) of party leaders. The four million party members were not part of the ruling group, but merely a mass assembled to get the leaders in control of the state, but annoying and even dangerous once this was done. Accordingly, the period after 1933 saw a double action, a steady growth of power and influence for the Reichsleiter in respect to the ruled groups, the Quartet, and the ordinary members of the party itself, and, combined with this, a steady decrease in the influence of the party as a whole in respect to the state. In other words, the leaders controlled the state and the state controlled the party.

At the head of the party was the Führer; then came about two score Reichsleiter; below these was the party hierarchy, organized by dividing Germany into 40 districts (Gaue) each under a Gauleiter; each district was subdivided into circles (Kreise) of which there were 808, each under a Kreisleiter; each Kreis was divided into chapters (Ortsgruppen), each under an Ortsgnippenleiter; these chapters were divided into cells (Zellen) and subdivided into blocks under Zellenleiter and Blockleiter. The Blockleiter had to supervise and spy on 40 to 60 families; the Zellenleiter had to supervise 4 to 8 blocks (200 to 400 families); and the Ortsgruppenleiter had to supervise a town or district of up to 1,500 families through his 4 to 6 Zellenleiter.

This party organization became in time a standing threat to the position of the industrialists. The threat became more direct after the outbreak of war in 1939, although, as we have indicated, the issue was suspended for the sake of sharing the booty and for the sake of solidarity in the face of the enemy. The three ruling groups, party, army, and industrialists, remained in precarious balance although secretly struggling for supremacy in the whole period 19 34-1945. In general, there was a slow extension of party superiority, although the party was never able to free itself from dependence on the army and business because of their technical competence.

The army was brought partly under party control in 1934 when Hitler became president and obtained the oath of allegiance; this control was extended in 1938 when Hitler became commander in chief. This resulted in the creation of centers of intrigue within the Officers’ Corps, but this intrigue, although it penetrated to the highest military level, never succeeded in doing more than wound Hitler once out of a dozen efforts to assassinate him. The power of the army was steadily subjected to Hitler. The old officers were removed from control of the fighting troops after their failure in Russia in December 1941, and by 1945 the Officers’ Corps had been so disrupted from within that the army was being guided to defeat after defeat by nothing more tangible than Hitler’s “intuition” in spite of the fact that most army officers objected to subjecting themselves and Germany to the jeopardies of such an unpredictable and unproductive authority.

Business was in a somewhat similar but less extreme position. At first, unity of outlook seemed assured, largely because Hitler’s mind was able to adopt the colors of an industrialist’s mind whenever he made a speech to businessmen. By 1937 businessmen were convinced that armaments were productive, and by 1939 the more unstable elements had even decided that war would be profitable. But once the war began, the urgent need for victory subjected industry to controls which were hardly compatible with the vision of industrial self-government which Hitler had adopted from business. The Four-Year Plan, created as early as 1936, became the entering wedge of outside control. After war began the new Ministry of Munitions under the control of Fritz Todt and Albert Speer (who were Nazis but not businessmen) began to dominate economic life.

Outside its rather specialized area, the organization of the Four-Year Plan, almost completely Nazi, was transformed into a General Economic Council in 1939, and the whole range of economic life was, in 1943, subjected to four Nazis forming the Inner Defense Council. Industry accepted this situation because profits were still protected, promises of material advantages remained bright for years, and the hope did not die that these controls were no more than temporary wartime measures. Thus the precarious balance of power between party, army, and industry, followed in a secondary role by bureaucracy and landlords, drove themselves and the German people to a catastrophe so gigantic that it threatened for a while to destroy completely all the established institutions and relationships of German society.

X BRITAIN: THE BACKGROUND TO APPEASEMENT, 1900-1939

The Social and Constitutional Background

Political History to 1939

The Social and Constitutional Background

In the course of the twentieth century Britain experienced a revolution as profound, and considerably more constructive, than those in Russia or Germany. The magnitude of this revolution cannot be judged by the average American because Britain has been, to most Americans, one of the less familiar countries of Europe. This condition is not based on ignorance so much as on misconceptions. Such misconceptions seem to arise from the belief that the English, speaking a similar language, must have similar ideas. These misconceptions are as prevalent among the better-educated classes of Americans as in less well-informed circles, and, as a result, errors and ignorance about Britain are widespread, even in the better books on the subject. In this section, we shall emphasize the ways in which Britain is different from the United States, especially in its constitution and its social structure.

From this political point of view, the greatest difference between Britain and the United States rests in the fact that the former has no constitution. This is not generally recognized. Instead, the statement is usually made that Britain has an unwritten constitution based on customs and conventions. Such a statement seriously misrepresents the facts. The term “constitution” refers to a body of rules concerned with the structure and functioning of a government, and it clearly implies that this body of rules is superior in its force and is formed by a different process than ordinary statute law. In Britain this is not so. The so-called “constitutional law” of England consists either of statutes which differ in no way (either in method of creation or force) from ordinary statutes or it consists of customs and conventions which are inferior in force to statutes and which must yield to any statute.

The major practices of the “constitution” of Britain are based on convention rather than on law. The distinction between the two reveals at once the inferiority of the former to the latter. “Laws” (based on statutes and judicial decisions) are enforceable in courts, while “conventions” (based on past practices regarded as proper) are not enforceable in any legal way. The precedents of the British system of government are generally in the nature of conventions which cover the most important parts of the system: the Cabinet and the political parties, the monarchy, the two Houses of Parliament, the relationships between these, and the internal discipline and conduct of all five of these agencies.

The conventions of the system have been highly praised, and described as binding on men’s actions. They are largely praiseworthy, but their binding character is much overrated. Certainly they are not sufficiently binding to deserve the name of constitution. This is not to say that a constitution cannot be unwritten. It is perfectly possible to have an unwritten constitution, but no constitution exists unless its unwritten practices are fairly clearly envisaged and are more binding than ordinary law. In Britain neither of these is true. There is no agreement even on fairly clear-cut issues. For example, every textbook asserts that the monarchy no longer has the power to veto legislation because that power has not been used since the reign of Queen Anne. Yet three of the four great authorities on constitutional law in the twentieth century (Sir William Anson, A. V. Dicey, and Arthur Berriedale Keith) were inclined to believe that the royal veto still existed.