Overstrained and incapable to construct a civil administration, the German Army High Command willingly put these tasks to the CdZ. In the capacity as Reichsstatthalter governor, the office was under the authority of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, but operationally CdZ was under the commander-in-chief of the German Army and ultimately of Adolf Hitler as supreme commander. Hitler generally interfered in the domestic policies of the occupied territories, giving unrestricted powers to Sicherheitsdienst and SS squadrons under the command of Heinrich Himmler.