Werner Willikens was a German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 politician with the Nazi Party. His phrase "working towards the Fuehrer", as used in a 1934 speech, has become a well used description of Nazi bureaucracy in the literature.

Biography

Willikens enrolled in the German Imperial Army in 1912 and served in World War I

World War I

World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...

 as a battery commander.

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

Reichstag (Weimar Republic)

The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...

, first being elected in 1928 and retaining his seat until the fall of the Third Reich. In 1930 he was appointed deputy chairman of Agrarpolitischer Apparat, Agricultural Affairs Bureau of the NSDAP and also chaired the Agrarian League. After Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

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

Working Towards the Fuehrer

Ian Kershaw

Ian Kershaw

Sir Ian Kershaw is a British historian of 20th-century Germany whose work has chiefly focused on the period of the Third Reich...

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

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

. 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

Adolf Eichmann

Adolf Otto Eichmann was a German Nazi and SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organizers of the Holocaust...

's rise from minor functionary to a leading role in the SS was built on this principle of working towards the Fuehrer". Indeed such was Kershaw's use of Willikens' phrase that his tribute book even bore this as a title. The speech itself was made in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

on 21 February 1934 to representatives of the regional agriculture ministries.