I have a casual interest in WWII and Nazi Germany and while I've read a few books on both subjects they've never really been what I would consider "Primary" source material. Mostly salacious "nightstand" books or coffee table books. But my wife posited the question of whether or not Hitler was a "puppet" and might have had someone (or a group of someones) maybe manipulating him from behind the scenes.
This is a pretty compelling subject but in all of the documentaries and books I've read I've never come across anyone claiming that there was someone "behind the throne" so to speak. I know there were elements in the German army between WWI and the rise of the Nazi party who were happy to give some unspoken support to the Nazis but I've never heard of anything more or less "formal" like some cabal of businessmen and industrialists, or something like that, acting behind the scenes.
Is there anything in the historical record to shed even a little light on this? Or was Hitler sort of the "Top Dog" who was more or less calling all the shots? I get that there were more than likely elements within his government that he didn't know about but my question is at the end of the day did the buck stop with him?
EDIT someone responded with a now deleted comment but I kept part of my response and I'm putting it here to sort of better illustrate where I'm coming from with this question:
Though it is no secret that the industrial complex of the time provided their support in the fascist regime
This is more what I was wondering about. Where these people maybe manipulating Hitler in any way in order to fulfill their own agenda? Or where they simply "along for the ride" and took advantage of Nazi policies rather than trying to shape those policies themselves for their own gain? Personally I feel like it's the latter because I have no reason to believe it was the former. But I'm extremely curious.-
Whether Hitler was really in charge of the Third Reich/responsible for the Holocaust is a great controversy. Dozens, nay, hundreds of books have been written on this topic. The fact that Hitler may not have picked which fuzzy dice went in what gas van or what brand of shovels were used to dig mass graves on the Eastern Front doesn't mean there was a hidden group "pulling his strings"* or that he wasn't in charge. No single human can kill six million others on his own, but it can still be the dictator's fault.
EDIT: The easiest way to interpret the Holocaust is that Hitler the Evil Mastermind directed other Bad People to do Bad Things -- that's why all those people were killed. Nazis were racist, they wanted Jews and Roma wiped from the planet because Nazis are the worst. If the Nazis didn't like you or your kind, you died. But then think about all those other people who were involved in the Holocaust who weren't fervent believers in the Nazi cause, just people doing a job. It becomes harder to dismiss the Holocaust as an historical anomaly. It means that everyday people are culpable, not just the skinheads. People chose to be complicit in genocide, looked the other way. Knowing that those people live on your block, work at your office, teach in your child's schools, and attend your church on Sundays is very, very uncomfortable. The challenge with the "people behind Hitler" is not just identifying who they are, but that there were so many.
Here is some of what /u/commiespaceinvader has written/said on this topic:
See also What was Hitler's stake in the Holocaust? answered by a now-anonymous redditor.
*I confess that when people interested in Hitler talk about secret string-pullers and hidden cabals, it raises my hackles. This imagery was strongly associated with antisemitism way before the birth of Hitler.