[The Nazis], being Social Darwinists to the core, applied the military principle of Auftragstaktik to civilian life. “Mission-oriented” tactics means that the overall commanders leave as much as possible to the on-the-spot commanders, be they officers or noncoms, on the theory that properly-trained leaders will have a much better understanding of what needs to be done, and how to do it, than some general back at HQ. It’s the main reason the Wehrmacht could keep fighting so well, for so long, in the face of overwhelming opposition — tasks that would fall to an American company, or a Russian regiment, were often undertaken by a Wehrmacht platoon under the command of a senior corporal.
Obviously civilian life isn’t as goal-directed as the military in wartime, but a similar principle applied — given a vague set of generalized objectives from the top (Kershaw’s famous “working towards the Führer” thesis), everyone at every level was encouraged to move the ball downfield as he saw fit … with the added twist that, in the absence of a clearly defined, military-style chain of command, the various “subordinates” would ruthlessly battle it out with each other, Darwin-style, for bureaucratic supremacy.
Thus the Nazis’ infamous plate-of-spaghetti org charts. I’m not an expert, but I’m pretty sure there were more than a few guys who held wildly different ranks in various different organizations simultaneously. He might be a mere patrolman in the Order Police, but an officer in the SS, a noncom in the SA (you could be in both, at least in the early days), and so forth. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was more than one guy who technically reported to himself, somewhere deep in the bowels of the RHSA [Reich Security Main Office]. You could spend a lifetime trying to sort this stuff out …
Severian, “The Crisis of the Third Decade”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-03-18.
November 5, 2023
QotD: The Auftragstaktik principle of the Third Reich
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