Akten der Reichskanzlei

If Weimar Germany's coherent system of government found reflection in an ordered repository of documentation, the same cannot be said of the governance and record-keeping of the Third Reich. Friedrich Hartmannsgruber's judicious selection of 287 documents from the files of the Reichskanzlei betrays the declining role of the Cabinet in the process of government as, by 1938, collegial decision-making processes fell into abeyance. Instead, differences were fought out between individual ministries and Nazi party agencies, with Hitler, as often as not, resolving matters informally. The Chancellery still retained sufficient influence for Hartmannsgruber to reconstruct the process of decision-making and governance in the Third Reich from its archive, but only by appending records of a strikingly novel kind. These are the summarised accounts of regular meetings between Hitler and the head of the Reich Chancellery, Heinrich Lammers, at which legislation was ratified, appointments could be made or terminated, situation reports noted

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