There are three major schools of thought on the nature of Nazi government are thus:
- Intentionalist - the idea that the Nazi government was thoroughly well organised by Hitler himself, conforming to previous plans and following a discernable route. Popular immediatly post-war
- Structuralist - the idea that the Nazi state had no clear intentions whatsoever and was reactionary in its organisation and policy. Historians such as Mommsen endorse this view.
- The 'Working Towards the Fuhrer' Concept - forwarded by Ian Kershaw, it mostly embraces the Structuralist viewpoint, however rejects the fact that Hitler was simply a figurehead, and also endorses a mild form of the polycratic idea (that the Nazi government consisted of many different statesman with their seperate spheres of influence and their specific 'empires', e.g. Himmler and the SS).
Intentionalist Thinking
The Immediate post-war view of the idea that Hitler had been a 'strong dictator', obsessively controlling everything around him appears to be a natural post-war reaction, based on little evidence but an outside viewpoint. The Intentionalist viewpoint suggests that Hitler had a full plan, almost blueprint-like, for the Final Solution, and the structure of his government reflected this, with a clearly ordered system of command.
Structuralist Thinking
Structuralists proposed that Hitler had very little to do with the day to day running of the Nazi State, except for encouragements and abstract ideological and anti-semitic musings. Structuralists state that the set-up of the Nazi state worked like a triangle, that Hitler was at the very top, and underneath were one or two figures, such as Himmler or Borman, who had their own degrees of power and personal 'empires', and below them more figures of varying importance, and so on. Similar to the feudal system. There is a lot of credence with these ideas: Hitler's personnel wrote that, whilst in his mountainous retreat, Hitler got out of bed late, watched films for most of the day, and would often make decisions on matters of state without seeing the relevant file. Mommsen even went as far to suggest that the only input Hitler would have had to the Final Solution was simply a nod of the head.
Modern Theories
More up to date historians would suggest that somewhere in between the two is more accurate, that whilst Hitler had no clear idea what he wanted to happen in terms of the mass-murders, (nor, in fact, exactly who he wanted to murder, Mein Kampf reads like a kind of deranged pseudo-political ramble, more abstract than scientific), however there was no way that such escalation in the treatment of those at the concentration camps could have happened without some kind of acknowledgement from the very top.
Sources:
German Studies Review, Vol. 10, No. 2 (May, 1987), pp. 374-376 published by: German Studies Association
Michael FitzGerald - 20th Century History
