Various party leaders were appointed as Reichsminister; the governors of the provinces were national leaders or Gauleiter of the party, such as General von Epp; the Prussian government officials are as a rule Gauleiter of the party; the Prussian police chiefs are mostly high-ranking SA leaders.  By this system of a union of the personnel of the party and state offices the unity of party and state was achieved.[85]

The culmination of this development was reached in the “Law To Safeguard the Unity of Party and State,” of December 1, 1933 (document 11-IV, post p. 221), which proclaimed the NSDAP “the bearer of the German state-idea and indissolubly joined to the state.”  In order to guarantee the complete cooperation of the party and SA with the public officials, the Fuehrer’s Deputy and the Chief of Staff of the SA were made members of the Cabinet.

With regard to the relation between the party and the state, Neesse writes: 

The NSDAP is not a structure which stands under direct state control, to which single tasks of public administration are entrusted by the state, but it holds and maintains is claim to totality as the “bearer of the German state-idea” in all fields relating to the community—­regardless of how various single functions are divided between the organization of the party and the organization of the state.[86]

To maintain cooperation between the party and state organizations, the highest state offices are given to the men holding the corresponding party offices.  Gauweiler (document 8, post p. 204) attributes to the party supreme leadership in all phases of national life.  Thus the state becomes merely an administrative machine which the party has set up in accordance with and for the accomplishment of its aims: 

As the responsible bearer and shaper of the destiny of the whole German nation the party has created an entirely new state, for that which sought to foist itself upon her as a state was simply the product of a deep human confusion.  The state of the past and its political ideal had never satisfied the longing of the German people.  The National Socialist movement already carried its state within itself at the time of its early struggles.  It was able to place the completely formed body of its own state at the disposal of the state which it had taken over.[87]

The official party interpretation of the relation between party and state, as set forth in the Party Organization Book for 1940, appears in the Appendix as document 7 (post p. 186).

Goebbels in his lecture on The Nature and Form of National Socialism (document 2, post p. 170) stressed the importance of Gleichschaltung or the penetration of Nazi ideology into all fields of national life.  This to his mind must be the result of the National Socialist revolution.  The same aims, ideals, and standards must be applied to economics and to politics, to cultural and social development, to education and religion, and to foreign and domestic relations.