Werner Willikens (8 February 1893 in

Vienenburg Vienenburg is a borough of Goslar, capital of the Goslar district, in Lower Saxony, Germany. The former independent municipality was incorporated in Goslar on 1 January 2014. Geography It is situated in the north of the Harz mountain range and eas ...

– 25 October 1961 in

Wolfenbüttel Wolfenbüttel (; nds, Wulfenbüddel) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, the administrative capital of Wolfenbüttel District. It is best known as the location of the internationally renowned Herzog August Library and for having the largest ...

) was a German politician with the

Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...

. His phrase "working towards the Führer", which he used in a 1934 speech, has become a common description of Nazi bureaucracy in literature.

Biography

Willikens enrolled in the

German Imperial Army The Imperial German Army (1871–1919), officially referred to as the German Army (german: Deutsches Heer), was the unified ground and air force of the German Empire. It was established in 1871 with the political unification of Germany under the ...

in 1912 and served in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

as a battery commander.Detlef Mühlberger, ''Hitler's Voice: The Völkischer Beobachter, 1920-1933. Organisation & Development of the Nazi Party, Volume 1'', Peter Lang, 2004, p. 252 An early Nazi Party member, he was farmer by profession and organised the first training course for Nazi farmers in 1926. Willikens was a member of the '' Reichstag'' from electoral constituency 16 (South Hanover-Brunswick), elected as one of the first 12 Nazi deputies in

1928 Events January * January – British bacteriologist Frederick Griffith reports the results of Griffith's experiment, indirectly proving the existence of DNA. * January 1 – Eastern Bloc emigration and defection: Boris Bazhan ...

and retaining his seat until the fall of the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

. In 1930, Willikens was appointed deputy chairman of ''Agrarpolitischer Apparat'', Agricultural Affairs Bureau of the NSDAP and also chaired the Agrarian League. His appointment to the national executive of the '' Reichslandbund'' in 1930 was the first time that the highly conservative group - up to that point firmly linked to the

German National People's Party The German National People's Party (german: Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP) was a national-conservative party in Germany during the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the Nazi Party, it was the major conservative and nationalist party in Wei ...

- had given a position of influence to a Nazi. After

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

came to power Willikens was appointed as a State Secretary in the

Agriculture Ministry Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people ...

Ian Kershaw Sir Ian Kershaw (born 29 April 1943) is an English historian whose work has chiefly focused on the social history of 20th-century Germany. He is regarded by many as one of the world's leading experts on Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and is pa ...

has argued that a speech made by Willikens in 1934, in particular his use of the phrase "working towards the Führer", was important in laying the framework for

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. Kershaw argued that the speech recognised the aloofness of Hitler's charismatic leadership and thus encouraged officials to second-guess Hitler's wishes and act accordingly. Kershaw suggests that Adolf Eichmann's rise from minor functionary to a leading role in the SS was built on this principle of "working towards the Führer". Indeed, such was Kershaw's use of Willikens' phrase that his tribute book even bore it as a title. The speech itself was made in

Berlin Berlin ( , ) is the capital and List of cities in Germany by population, largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3.7 million inhabitants make it the European Union's List of cities in the European Union by population within ci ...

on 21 February 1934 to representatives of the regional agriculture ministries.Ian Kershaw, ''Hitler 1889-1936: Hubris'', Penguin Books, 1999, p. 529

References

External links

* 1893 births 1961 deaths People from Goslar (district) Nazi Party politicians Members of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic Members of the Reichstag of Nazi Germany German farmers German Army personnel of World War I {{Nazi-stub