Nazi leaders framed their rule as popular leadership resting on loyalty, not dictatorship.
Evidence
In the isolated instances in which Hitler concerned himself with this question at all, he used to emphasize: “Incidentally, I am not the head of a state in the sense of a dictator or monarch, but I am a leader of the German people” (see Altsgewählte Reden des Führers, 1939, p. 114).—Hans Frank expresses himself in the same spirit: “The National Socialist Reich is not a dictatorial, let alone an arbitrary, regime. Rather, the National Socialist Reich rests on the mutual loyalty of the Führer and the people” (in Recht und Verwaltung, Munich, 1939, p. 15). — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2633
Categorization
- DEFINE: The FĂĽhrer-principle reframes absolute power as reciprocal loyalty between leader and people, a key rhetorical move in totalitarian self-legitimation.