To control his camp at Dachau, Himmler established a volunteer formation of S.S. men willing to undertake long-term service as camp guards. This central formation was called the Death’s Head (Totenkopf) unit and granted the special insignia of the skull and crossbones; the officer put in command of this and other Death’s Head units was Theodor Eicke, a former Army officer and veteran of the First World War, who was one of Himmler’s most trusted adherents on racial matters. One of Eicke’s guards at Dachau was an Austrian, Adolf Eichmann; another in 1934 was Rudolf Hoess, later to take charge of extermination of the Jews at Auschwitz.
Hoess — another man, like Goebbels and Heydrich, at one time intended for the Catholic priesthood — had been a soldier during the 1914 — 18 war, and later joined the Free Corps.14 He had been involved in a brutal political murder and imprisoned for six years before becoming a Nazi after his release and joining the S.S. This extraordinary man, so dutiful and even intelligently moralizing in his attitude, wrote his memoirs in confinement after the Hitler war and explained in great detail his relations with Himmler. He had belonged to the idealistic agricultural organization called the Artamanen, a nationalist youth movement which was dedicated to the cultivation of the soil and the avoidance of city life. It was through this that he claims he first came to know Himmler, who, in June 1934 at an S.S. review in Stettin, invited him to join the staff in Dachau, where in December he held the rank of corporal in the Death’s Head Guards.
Dachau, Himmler’s experimental concentration camp, was established by an order signed by him as Police President of Munich on 21 March, and authorized by the Catholic supporter of the Nazis, Heinrich Held, the Prime Minister of Bavaria, a few days before his forcible expulsion by the S.A. The order, which appeared in the Munich Neueste Nachrichten on the day it was signed, read:
‘On Wednesday 22 March, the first concentration camp will be opened near Dachau. It will accommodate 5,000 prisoners. Planning on such a scale, we refused to be influenced by any petty objection, since we are convinced this will reassure all those who have regard for the nation and serve their interests.
Heinrich Himmler
Acting Police President of the City of Munich’
Dachau, which was situated about twelve miles north-west of Munich, became a permanent centre of sanction by the Nazis against the German people and all those whom Hitler was later to subject. In the first unbridled period of power, the seizure of men and women for interrogation, often under torture, by the S.S. and the S.A. grew out of hand, and by Christmas 1933 Hitler found it necessary to announce an amnesty for 27,000 prisoners. No one now knows how many were in fact freed, and Himmler was later to boast that he succeeded in persuading Hitler to omit any prisoners in Dachau from the amnesty.
The order for protective custody was as brief as the order establishing Dachau; it read: ‘Based on Article I of the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State of February 28 1933, you are taken into protective custody in the interest of public security and order. Reason: suspicion of activities inimical to the State.’
Goring was quite open about the reason for establishing the camps: ‘We had to deal ruthlessly with these enemies of the State… Thus the Concentration Camps were created to which we had to send first thousands of functionaries of the Communist and Social Democratic parties.’ Frick was later to define protective custody as ‘a coercive measure of the Secret State Police… in order to counter all aspirations of enemies of the people and the State.’15
Goring’s barbarous vigour was one aspect of Nazi cruelty; Himmler’s attention to the details of brutality was another. Almost twenty years separate us from the full exposure of what happened in the concentration camps, and no documentation could be more complete, ranging from the testimony given by thousands of persecuted men and women who managed to survive, to the detailed witness of such men as Hoess and Eichmann, Himmler’s agents in the most fearful record of torture, destruction and despair that human history has ever compiled in such thorough and horrifying detail. While Goring as a man was no more brutal than many other oppressors in the evolutionary struggle of modern Europe, the coldly punitive administration of sadism by Himmler challenges comprehension. Yet it is necessary to understand him, not least because there will always exist human beings who, once they are given a similar power over others and have similar convictions of superiority, may be tempted to act as he did.
Himmler had learned to live and work by regulations, and on 1 November 1933, the rules governing life and death in Dachau were completed by Eicke under Himmler’s exacting direction. The legalistic phrasing, the comfortable work of men sitting at desks as Himmler so often sat, covers with a bureaucratic gloss the acts of terrorism which the careful rules incite. For example:
‘The term commitment to a concentration camp is to be openly announced as “until further notice”… In certain cases the Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police will order flogging in addition to detention in a concentration camp… In this case, too, there is no objection to spreading the rumour of this increased punishment… to add to the deterrent effect. Naturally, particularly suitable and reliable people are to be chosen for spreading of such news.
‘The following offenders, considered as agitators will be hanged: anyone who… makes inciting speeches and holds meetings, forms cliques, loiters around with others; who for the purpose of supplying the propaganda of the opposition with atrocity stories, collects true or false information about the concentration camp…’16
Himmler’s secret pursuit of power began outside Prussia, where he realized Goring was omnipotent. Roehm, watchful of the situation, realized that Himmler and Heydrich formed a powerful team and would not be content with the minor place in the Nazi state which had been allotted to them; he decided it might be wise not to alienate the leaders of the S.S. By the summer Göring’s initial energy was spent, and his pleasure-loving nature, combined with the desire to accumulate other positions of importance under Hitler, led him to slacken his control over his subordinates, who were more directly involved in the struggle for supremacy developing between the S.A., the S.S. and the Gestapo. Daluege, Göring’s Chief of Police, had by now decided to keep in touch with Munich.
Artur Nebe was the principal S.S. man among the many working in the Gestapo; Diels claims Nebe was spying on him for Heydrich, and that Karl Ernst, Roehm’s Chief of Staff of the Berlin S.A., was actually threatening his life until Roehm ordered him to desist and suggested to Diels he had better join the S.S. for his own self-protection. The opportunity to do so came after an S.S. raid on Diels’s flat had led to an open breach between Goring and Himmler, which they had the good sense to heal at a meeting in Berlin. Diels was placated with an honorary commission in the S.S. But this did not save him from having to escape in October from threatened arrest by the S.S. on an order, he claimed, issued by Goring himself. This happened after Goring had been shown evidence prepared by Heydrich of Diels’s anti-Nazi activities before his adoption by Göring.
Whether Diels was telling the truth or not, his story is important because it reveals the gradual growth in stature of Heydrich and Himmler in the eyes of the men in Berlin. Germany consisted of many semi-autonomous states both large and small, of which Bavaria, where Hitler’s Nazi faction had originated, was now second only to Prussia in importance. Himmler knew as well as Goring that Hitler wanted to unify the control of Germany, and as a reward for his supreme efficiency in Bavaria he asked the Führer to extend his powers in the remaining states of Germany. In the race to build single police-states, Goring had made a powerful initial spurt, but he lacked the staying-power to win. From October, Himmler began to gather for himself the offices of Chief of the Political Police in the remaining states of Germany, completing the process by March in the following year.17
This assimilation of special powers in the German states through acquiring the office of Commander of Political Police was illegal because Frick, the Nazi Minister of the Interior,
was never consulted, in spite of the fact that the provincial governments were responsible to the Ministry of the Interior for their police administration. To cover his activities, Himmler always declared himself the servant of the provincial governments when, after parading the local S.S. formations in order to intimidate the officials, he assumed his new command on their behalf. Frick, in the face of Hitler’s policy of the gradual centralization of power, was all but helpless to defend his own rights as Minister against these obvious encroachments by Himmler into his area of responsibility. According to the anti-Nazi Gisevius, he roused himself to forbid the states to create further offices without his direct consent, but Himmler circumvented this by forcing the finance ministers of the provincial governments to subsidize his S.S. formations and the concentration camps in their area. In one way or another, Himmler built up the network of his powers until the web spread over the whole of Germany with the exception of Goring’s Prussia.
At the same time, during the autumn of 1933, Heydrich had established in Berlin, in open defiance of Goring, a section of the S.D. at premises in Eichen-Allee, and in November Gregor Strasser, who had once been Himmler’s employer, made his celebrated pun in a note sent to Hans Frank: ‘Hitler seems to be entirely in the hands of his Himmlers and Anhimmlers (adorers).’ Nevertheless, it was Roehm who received official promotion to Hitler’s Cabinet in December 1933, a step which so alarmed Goring that it made him carefully reconsider his future relationship with Himmler.
Gisevius, at that time still an official in the Gestapo, has described how he became involved in the intrigues between Daluege, Diels and Heydrich. In February 1934 he was invited, to use a polite term, to attend a conference at the barracks of the S.S. Leibstandarte in Lichterfelde along with Nebe. They went, thinking their last hour had come; to their surprise, they were greeted by Dietrich, Commandant of the Leibstandarte, with flattering messages from Himmler and Heydrich. Their stand against corruption in the Gestapo was specially commended, and they were invited to sit down there and then and write a report of their ‘grievances’, as Dietrich put it. They did so, recording many instances of ‘extortion, torture and killing’. As Gisevius puts it: ‘It was always a favourite S.S. tactic to appear in the guise of respectable citizens and to condemn vigorously all excesses, lies or infringements of the law. Himmler, when talking to a small group, sounded like the stoutest crusader for decency, cleanliness, and justice.’ Undoubtedly Himmler believed in his mission, like a strict schoolmaster, while Heydrich went on filling his files for the final assault on the citadel of Prussia.
To emphasize the need for the co-ordination of the political police under a single authority, Heydrich made use of a report from one of his agents that a Communist plot was forming, quite unknown to Goring’s Gestapo, to murder Goring. Arrests were made before either Goring or Hitler was informed, and Himmler used the plot to press the Führer to place the whole police force of Germany under the control of the S.S. After some hesitation, Hitler agreed, and with Goring’s consent the Prussian Ministry of the Interior was merged with the Reich Ministry of the Interior, and its political police, including the Gestapo, placed under Himmler as the new head of the national secret police force. To soften the transfer of power, Goring as Prime Minister of Prussia remained nominally responsible, but on 10 April he addressed the assembled Gestapo in the presence of Himmler and Heydrich, explaining to them that Himmler would in future take charge of their work as his deputy. He ordered them to support Himmler in the struggle against the enemies of the State, while Himmler in his turn protested his loyalty and gratitude in an excess of delighted subservience. ‘I shall forever remain loyal to you. Never will you have anything to fear from me’, he declared. On 20 April 1934 Himmler formally took over the Gestapo, with Heydrich as his deputy. The links in the chain of office were now complete.
III. The Élite
During the period he was gradually increasing the range of his power and influence, Himmler had realized it was no longer either proper or practical for him to continue as a farmer. The small-holding in Waldtrudering had been sold, and he had removed his wife and family, who now included an adopted boy called Gerhard as well as his five-year-old daughter Gudrun, to Lindenfycht at Gmund at the head of the beautiful lake of Tegernsee, some twenty-five miles from Munich.1 When he took control of the Gestapo in April 1934, he moved his official residence to Berlin and settled in a villa at Dahlem, a fashionable suburb where Ribbentrop also lived. His headquarters in Berlin were at the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, where Goring had established the Gestapo; Heydrich’s headquarters were set up near-by in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Himmler’s domestic life was meagre. He had no strong feeling for the woman he had married; his passionate devotion was to his work in Berlin, and this led to a gradual separation which, although it was never made formal, was none the less real.2 Marga stayed in Gmund, and this remained to the end of Himmler’s life his solidly bourgeois family home. Marga’s frequent letters, no longer sentimental as they once were, are full of domestic chatter about the weather, her husband’s clothes, the losses and gains in the vegetable and fruit garden and complaints of his infrequent visits: ‘We look forward to your visit… Don’t bring along so many files and other things to read. We want a bit of your attention too.’ From as early as 1931, she began to address him in her letters as ‘Mein Lieber Guter’, and when he is away she seldom fails to remind him, as always, that the housekeeping money is due. Marga was undoubtedly a good and frugal housewife, scraping the last penny of value out of the money her husband gave her, but her husband’s long absences hardened her. Her social station in life did not rise with his, since she could not come to town and share it with him. As early as October 1931 she writes naively about the good news for the Nazis, adding, ‘How I’d like to be present at all these great events.’ But Himmler kept her as firmly as possible in the background. She was, nevertheless, very conscious of being the Herr Reichsführer’s wife, and dealt with the local tradespeople on those terms, driving as hard a bargain as she could in the process. They much preferred to deal with Himmler, who, when they encountered him during one of his visits, seemed to them far more human and less socially pretentious. He loved his daughter Gudrun, and it was to see her rather than Marga that he came to Gmund.
Marga had two sisters, Lydia and Bertha; Bertha on 19 April 1936 received an official letter from her brother-in-law which began:
‘I am told that you’ve been in our office again making tactless and bloody silly (saudumne) remarks. I herewith forbid you (i) to enter my office; (ii) to telephone anyone in my office except myself or S.S. Brigadeführer Wolff… Henceforth you are to refrain from any remarks about S.S. matters and personalities. All departmental chiefs have been acquainted with this letter. Heil Hitler!’
He accused Bertha of making adverse remarks about Heydrich and saying that when he, Himmler, was absent from Berlin she had to run the office for him.
Himmler’s relations with his parents during their final years were friendly and correct. He set his father the task of research into the family ancestry, and a letter about this, sent by the old man from Munich in February 1935, begins: ‘My dear Heinrich, this time your father does not come to you with a request but to give you something’, while his mother scribbles a postscript saying how proud she feels to see her son’s name and picture so often in the papers. But, she adds, he should not work too hard; he must look after himself, and come and see them soon in Munich.
Himmler called to see his parents whenever he could and sent them for drives in his official car, carefully noting that the cost of the fuel should be deducted from his salary.
Himmler’s removal to Berlin preceded by barely a month Hitler’s sudden and savage assault on Roehm and his associates at the head of the S.A. We know that the decision to undertake this purge was not taken lightly, for Roehm, in spite of his threatening ambitions and his moral corruption, was a man towards whom Hitler still felt loyalty and even friendship. It is possible that
he was afraid of him. At this early stage in his career as dictator he disliked taking any violent, widespread and public action which might lead to consequences he could not wholly foresee and which he feared he might be unable to control. But Himmler and Goring were determined to be rid of Roehm and break the influence of the S.A., and they joined together in the common cause to persuade Hitler that the commander of the S.A. and his dissatisfied forces were planning a coup d’état.
Roehm had made difficulties for himself by using the place he had won in Hitler’s Cabinet to urge that the S.A. (which now numbered 3 million men) and the regular Army should be merged under a single command that he clearly wanted to assume himself. Hitler, who had his own eye fixed on Hindenburg’s Presidency now that the old man was within a few months of his death, had struck a secret bargain with the High Command of the Army and Navy, agreeing that he would disband the S.A. if they would acquiesce to his becoming President. The S.A., in fact, was no longer of use to him, and its unruly presence in the state was a constant embarrassment now that the campaigns in the streets were won and the sureties of power lay in gaining final control of the armed forces themselves. He had in any case promised Sir John Simon and Anthony Eden, when they had visited Germany on 21 February as Ministers of State, that he would demobilize two-thirds of the S.A. and permit an Allied inspection of the rest.
Heinrich Himmler Page 6
