Totalitarian rule deliberately keeps the actual seat of power a mystery by constant redivision

Evidence

Technically speaking, the movement within the apparatus of totalitarian domination derives its mobility from the fact that the leadership constantly shifts the actual center of power, often to other organizations, but without dissolving or even publicly exposing the groups that have thus been deprived of their power. In the early period of the Nazi regime, immediately after the Reichstag fire, the SA was the real authority and the party the ostensible one; power then shifted from the SA to the SS and finally from the SS to the Security Service. The point is that none of the organs of power was ever deprived of its right to pretend that it embodied the will of the Leader. But not only was the will of the Leader so unstable that compared with it the whims of Oriental despots are a shining example of steadfastness; the consistent and ever-changing division between real secret authority and ostensible open representation made the actual seat of power a mystery by definition, and this to such an extent that the members of the ruling clique themselves could never be absolutely sure of their own position in the secret power hierarchy. Alfred Rosenberg, for instance, despite his long career in the party and his impressive accumulation of ostensible power and offices in the party hierarchy, still talked about the creation of a series of Eastern European States as a security wall against Moscow at a time when those invested with real power had already decided that no state structure would succeed the defeat of the Soviet Union and that the population of the Eastern occupied territories had become definitely stateless and could therefore be exterminated. In other words, since knowledge of whom to obey and a comparatively permanent settlement of hierarchy would introduce an element of stability which is essentially absent from totalitarian rule, the Nazis constantly disavowed real authority whenever it had come into the open and created new instances of government compared with which the former became a shadow government—a game which obviously could go indefinitely. One of the most important technical differences between the Soviet and the National Socialist system is that Stalin, whenever he shifted the power emphasis within his own movement from one apparatus to another, had the tendency to liquidate the apparatus together with its staff, while Hitler, in spite of his contemptuous comments on people who “are unable to leap across their own shadows,” was perfectly willing to continue using these shadows even though in another function. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 910

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘movement within the apparatus’ — how totalitarianism generates mobility by shifting real power between shadow and ostensible organs.
• DEEPTHINKING: This passage articulates a genuinely paradigm-shifting insight: totalitarian instability is not dysfunction but the essence of rule — permanent hierarchy would introduce stability that totalitarian domination structurally excludes. The Rosenberg example makes the cruelty concretely legible.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reading purpose — this is a mechanism of how mass exclusion (making populations ‘definitely stateless’ so they could be exterminated) is administered through deliberately obscured chains of command.