The Nazi State: Machine or Morass?
Competing interests as much as ideology fuelled the functioning of the Third Reich, augmented by forced labour and the plunder of Occupied Europe.
The vices which despotism engenders are precisely those which equality fosters. These two things mutually and perniciously complete and assist each other. Equality places men side by side, unconnected by any common tie; despotism raises barriers to keep them asunder: the former predisposes them not to consider their fellow-creatures, the latter makes general indifference a sort of virtue. Despotism then, which is at all times dangerous, is most particularly to be feared in democratic ages. Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (vol. II, chapter iv)
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