is derived from the authority of the Fuehrer.  We must speak not of the state’s authority but of the Fuehrer’s authority if we wish to designate the character of the political authority within the Reich correctly.  The state does not hold political authority as an impersonal unit but receives it from the Fuehrer as the executor of the national will.  The authority of the Fuehrer is complete and all-embracing; it unites in itself all the means of political direction; it extends into all fields of national life; it embraces the entire people, which is bound to the Fuehrer in loyalty and obedience.  The authority of the Fuehrer is not limited by checks and controls, by special autonomous bodies or individual rights, but it is free and independent, all-inclusive and unlimited.  It is not, however, self-seeking or arbitrary and its ties are within itself.  It is derived from the people; that is, it is entrusted to the Fuehrer by the people.  It exists for the people and has its justification in the people; it is free of all outward ties because it is in its innermost nature firmly bound up with the fate, the welfare, the mission, and the honor of the people.[50]

Neesse, in his The National Socialist German Workers Party—­An Attempt at Legal Interpretation, emphasizes the importance of complete control by the party leadership over all branches of the government.  He says there must be no division of power in the Nazi state to interfere with the leader’s freedom of action.  Thus the Fuehrer becomes the administrative head, the lawgiver, and the highest authority of justice in one person.  This does not mean that he stands above the law.  “The Fuehrer may be outwardly independent, but inwardly he obeys the same laws as those he leads."[51]

The leadership (Fuehrung) in the Nazi state is not to be compared with the government or administration in a democracy: 

Fuehrung is not, like government, the highest organ of the state, which has grown out of the order of the state, but it receives its legitimation, its call, and its mission from the people ...[52]

The people cannot as a rule announce its will by means of majority votes but only through its embodiment in one man, or in a few men.  The principle of the identity of the ruler and those who are ruled, of the government and those who are governed has been very forcibly represented as the principle of democracy.  But this identity ... becomes mechanistic and superficial if one seeks to establish it in the theory that the people are at once the governors and the governed ...  A true organic identity is only possible when the great mass of the people recognizes its embodiment in one man and feels itself to be one nature with him ...  Most of the people will never exercise their governing powers but only wish to be governed justly and well ...  National Socialist Fuehrung sees no value in trying to please a majority of the