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The Third Reich

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There have been a lot of controversies about Hitler being the master of the third Reich after the Second World War. The intentionalist historians, such as, Richard Evans and Eberhard Jackel have argued Hitler was a strong dictator, and thus an interventionist. They focus on Hitler’s nature of dictatorship and argued was the prime mover of domestic and foreign policy, again indicating he was an interventionist. However, the structionalist historians challenge this idea of Hitler being an omnipotent figure and argues Hitler’s state of government was polycratic and chaotic. They argued Hitler was a merely puppet, a figurehead ‘non-interventionist’, although his ideas were central to Nazism, they were empowered by others. The historian Lan Kershaw came up with this argument of working towards the Fuhrer, arguably making him a non-interventionist dictator as others knew what he wanted, example the Fuhrer Befehl therefore he didn’t have to get involved in the day-day running of government.
It has been argued that Hitler’s image of a powerful dictator made his a ‘non-interventionist’. Structuralist historian, such as Lan Kershaw argued in source 4 Hitler was a ‘non-interventionist dictator’, his image of being erratic was in fact a myth. As a result, his ‘party officials, more often than not, tended to view the will of the Fuhrer’, as suggested by source 5. Ultimately Hitler was weak in that he relied on, albeit a very powerful propangda machinery by Goebbels, to provide a myth. In order to uphold his image created a ‘rival organisation’, as shown in source 5. In fact, he stood aloof from the intrigue of different power groups, example the night of the long knives eliminating the SA. He was prepared to allow other institutions as the SS to emerge and develop their power to the point that they will act as a rival to the state. He was a ‘non-interventionist’ dictator which

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