Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich

The Council of Ministers for Defense of the Reich (German: Ministerrat für die Reichsverteidigung) was a Nazi German office created immediately before the beginning of World War II by Adolf Hitler on 30 August 1939, with the purpose of granting far-reaching powers to the defense administration and making it closer to the Nazi government.[1]

The Council of Ministers was given the right to issue decrees "with the force of law" for the whole period "of the current foreign policy tension".[1] Immediately after the outbreak of the war, they appointed 15 Gauleiters to the position of Reich defense commissioner (Reichsverteidigungskommissar) in each of the military districts (Wehrkreis) to organize civil defense and mobilization.[2]

Members

The members of the Council were Hermann Göring, who served as its chairman; Rudolf Hess, as the representative of the Nazi Party; Wilhelm Frick, as the general representative (Generalbevollmächtigter) of the Reich administration; Walther Funk, as the general representative of the Reich Ministry of Economic Affairs (Reichswirtschaftsministerium); Wilhelm Keitel, as the Chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht; and Hans Lammers, as the head of the Reich Chancellery. [1]

References
  1. Mertens, Bernd (2009). Rechtsetzung im Nationalsozialismus (in German). Mohr Siebeck. pp. 20–22. ISBN 978-3-16-150103-6.
  2. Baranowski, Shelley; Nolzen, Armin; Szejnmann, Claus-Christian W. (2018). A Companion to Nazi Germany. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-118-93690-0.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.