Hitler claimed responsibility for murders he didn’t commit to cement leader-people loyalty

Evidence

Thus Hitler personally cabled his responsibility for the Potempa murder to the SA assassins in 1932, although presumably he had nothing whatever to do with it. What mattered here was establishing a principle of identification, or, in the language of the Nazis, “the mutual loyalty of the Leader and the people” on which “the Reich rests” (Hans Frank, op. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2675

Categorization

• SEED: The inverse of ordinary political accountability — a leader deliberately absorbing guilt to bind followers — is a striking essay angle on how responsibility operates as a tool of allegiance rather than of law.
• XREF: Directly builds the toolkit concept of the leader-follower bond that totalitarian theory uses; resonates with readings on how identification with authority works in exclusionary movements.