from the standpoint of the “pluralistic-party state.”  It does not represent a dictatorship of one party and a suppression of all others but rather an expression of the will and the character of the whole national community in and through one great party which has resolved all internal discords and oppositions within itself.  The Fuehrer of this great movement is at once the leader and the expression of the national will.  Freed from the enervating effects of internal strife, the movement under the guiding hand of the Fuehrer can bring the whole of the national community to its fullest expression and highest development.

The highest authority, however, Hitler himself, has left no doubt as to the nature of Nazi Party leaders.  In a speech delivered at the Sportpalast in Berlin on April 8, 1933, he said: 

When our opponents say:  “It is easy for you:  you are a dictator”—­We answer them, “No, gentlemen, you are wrong; there is no single dictator, but ten thousand, each in his own place.”  And even the highest authority in the hierarchy has itself only one wish, never to transgress against the supreme authority to which it, too, is responsible.  We have in our movement developed this loyalty in following the leader, this blind obedience of which all the others know nothing and which gave to us the power to surmount everything.[58]

As has been indicated above, the Fuehrer principle applies not only to the Fuehrer of the Reich, Adolf Hitler, but to all the subordinate leaders of the party and the government apparatus.  With respect to this aspect of the Fuehrer principle, Huber (document 1, post p. 155), says: 

The ranks of the public services are regarded as forces organized on the living principle of leadership and following:  The authority of command exercised in the labor service, the military service, and the civil service is Fuehrer-authority ...  It has been said of the military and civil services that true leadership is not represented in their organization on the principles of command and obedience.  In reality there can be no political leadership which does not have recourse to command and force as the means for the accomplishment of its ends.  Command and force do not, of course, constitute the true nature of leadership, but as a means they are indispensable elements of every fully developed Fuehrer-order.[59]

The Fuehrer principle is officially recognized by the party, and the party interpretation thereof is set forth in the Party Organization Book (document 7 and charts 1 and 1-A, post pp. 186, 488, 489).

There are also included herein, as charts 2 and 2-A and 3 and 3-A (post pp. 490, 491, 492, 493), photostatic copies and translations of two charts from Der nationalsozialistische Staat (The National Socialist State) by Dr. Walther Gehl, published in 1935.  These charts clearly show the concentration of authority in the Fuehrer and the subordinate relation of the minor leaders in both the state and the party.