This article examines the state secretaries’ meetings as an instrument of government in Nazi Germany. They are mostly known as the forum at which the infamous Wannsee Conference took place, but here the 20 January 1942 meeting will be situated in a context previously ignored by historians by showing that such gatherings were an increasingly regular occurrence during the ‘Third Reich’, and that a range of policy issues were discussed there – not just mass murder. As such, it will shed new light on how the ‘Hitler state’ functioned at this level by showing that Wannsee was not entirely extraordinary, the format having become established practice long before 1942. Similarly, the article will also show that the jurisdictional conflicts that played out at Wannsee were equally common, with participants generally jockeying for influence and advancing claims to departmental authority. Indeed, although they effectively replaced cabinet meetings, which were formally banned by Hitler in 1938, the state secretaries’ meetings did little to salvage collegial government. To illustrate this, a series of meetings called to coordinate the government's response to a particular issue will be examined – the annexation of ‘Greater German’ territories in Austria, the Sudetenland and Poland. As will be shown throughout, very little was achieved by way of coordination, with the state secretaries only advancing those constitutional designs that served their ministries’ claims to power.

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纳粹宪法设计：国务秘书会议和吞并东中欧

本文探讨了国务秘书会议作为纳粹德国政府工具的情况。它们大多被称为臭名昭著的万湖会议举行的论坛，但在这里，1942 年 1 月 20 日的会议将发生在历史学家先前忽视的背景下，因为表明此类聚会在“第三帝国”期间越来越频繁地发生，会议讨论了一系列政策问题——不仅仅是大规模谋杀。因此，它将通过表明万湖并非完全不同寻常，这种形式早在 1942 年之前就已成为既定惯例，为“希特勒国家”在这一层面上的运作方式提供新的线索。同样，本文还将表明，管辖权冲突在万湖举行的活动同样常见，参与者通常会争夺影响力并提出对部门权威的主张。事实上，尽管国务秘书会议实际上取代了希特勒于 1938 年正式禁止的内阁会议，但国务秘书会议对挽救合议政府几乎没有什么作用。为了说明这一点，将审查为协调政府对某一特定问题的反应而召开的一系列会议——吞并奥地利、苏台德地区和波兰的“大德意志”领土。正如下文将要表明的那样，通过协调几乎没有取得什么成果，国务秘书只是推进那些服务于其各部委权力要求的宪法设计。