“Staff Rosenberg” in the State System of the Third Reich: Ideology in Action

Abstract

Purpose: to outline the problem of researching the personnel policy of Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg using the example of his immediate environment, as his group of associates, a holistic community that included employees of the state structures created by Rosenberg, both in the NSDAP and outside it. The methodology is based on the principles of historicism and impartiality. The study uses a wide range of methods, namely problem-thematic, comparative, chronological, and analytical-synthetic methods, involving source and archival studies, as well as special historical disciplines, primarily prosopography. Novelty: the problem is highlighted for the first time as necessary in a historical and prosopographic context, the focus of which is the study of a stable group of employees of the structures created or headed by A. Rosenberg — services within the NSDAP and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories of the Third Reich. Until now, the subject of several scientific publications has mainly been the activities of individual institutions, and the problem of personnel policy has been studied only in a fragmentary manner, at the level of individual biographies. Main results: Employees of Rosenberg’s services in the NSDAP and the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories were connected not only by their place of work but also by several other criteria: origin, education, previous experience, and similar values and views. They were mainly representatives of the intelligentsia; most of them belonged to the same generation and shared similar life experiences, such as Germans who emigrated from the former Russian Empire and the Baltic countries, of which Rosenberg himself was one. This contributed to the fact that they supported Rosenberg’s ideological concept, disseminated it in party training, scientific publications, and the media, and thereby participated in the formation of the practical basis of the idea of the future occupation of other European countries, which Rosenberg tried to introduce into the administrative management of the occupied territories of the USSR. Most of them accompanied Rosenberg throughout his political career as a party and state figure, sharing his views and participating in the propaganda of his ideology and the implementation of its principles in state management in the Third Reich. Some of these individuals were considered experts on Eastern European countries, so they held key positions in several structures headed by Rosenberg, primarily in the Foreign Policy Department of the NSDAP, the Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories, and the Rosenberg Operational Headquarters.