Heinrich Himmler

by Roger Manvell

  Various glimpses we get of Langbehn’s contacts and relationships with Himmler reveal little more of Himmler’s intentions. The woman Gestapo agent responsible for investigating Haushofer’s connections with Britain became his friend and retailed some gossip to him just prior to Heydrich’s assassination in May 1942, to the effect that Heydrich hoped to supplant Himmler. Haushofer thought this information might be useful in gaining Himmler’s confidence, and Langbehn passed it on to the Reichsführer, who thanked him formally and then had the woman agent arrested for spreading false rumours. Also early in 1943, Himmler warned Langbehn to keep clear of taking any legal part in a spy trial in which he might find himself supporting the interests of Ribbentrop against those of the Reichsführer S.S.

  By the middle of 1942, Schellenberg felt he had risen sufficiently in Himmler’s confidence to risk discussion of the possibilities of achieving some form of negotiated peace. With Goring ‘more or less in disgrace’, Himmler in Schellenberg’s estimation ‘was, and remained to the very end, the most powerful man in the regime’. He considered a total victory was now no longer possible, and in August 1942 he had a preliminary conversation at Zhitomir with Kersten (who, on Himmler’s recommendation, was treating him for nervous strain), about the best way to broach the matter with Himmler. He discovered that he had an ally in Kersten, and the following day he asked Himmler for a special appointment to discuss ‘a matter that involves a most important and difficult decision’. Sometime after lunch, at which Himmler ‘changed from being the cool executive to being an amusing and pleasant host’, Schellenberg secured his interview. He made an elliptical approach to the difficult subject in order to prepare the ground; he began by quoting precedents for the wisdom of considering alternative solutions to every kind of problem, and then asked Himmler directly if he had in mind any alternative solutions for bringing the war to an end. After a full minute’s silence, Himmler gave way to surprise and indignation, but after a while he began to listen to Schellenberg’s argument that the rulers of Germany would be better advised to strike a good bargain from the vantage-ground of their present strength than wait until Germany had become so weakened by war on all fronts that her present advantages were lost. Then he joined in the argument himself:

  ‘In my present position I might have some chance of influencing Hitler. I might even get him to drop Ribbentrop if I could be sure of Bormann’s support. But we could never let Bormann know about our plans. He’d wreck the whole scheme, or else he’d twist it round into a compromise with Stalin. And we must never let that happen.

  ‘He spoke almost as if to himself, at one moment nibbling his thumbnail, then twisting his snake ring round and round — sure signs that he was really concentrating. He looked at me questioningly, and said, “Would you be able to start the whole thing moving right away — without our enemies interpreting it as a sign of weakness on our part?”

  ‘I assured him that I could.

  ‘“Very well. But how do you know that the whole business won’t act as a boomerang? What if it should strengthen the Western Powers’ determination to achieve unity with the East?”

  ‘“On the contrary, Reichsführer”, I said. “If the negotiations are started in the right way, it will prevent just that contingency.”

  ‘“All right,” said Himmler, “then exactly how would you proceed?”’

  Schellenberg explained that very tentative negotiations should be conducted ‘through the political sector of the Secret Service’. Himmler, he said, must appoint an agent who had real authority behind him, and meanwhile himself work on Hitler to remove Ribbentrop and appoint a more tractable Foreign Minister. Then they looked at a map of Europe and agreed that, with certain exceptions, Germany might well have to relinquish the greater part of the territory she had occupied since September 1939 in order to retain full rights within all those areas that could be rightfully regarded as German. According to Schellenberg, when they parted in the small hours of the morning, ‘Himmler had given me full authority to act… and had given me his word of honour that by Christmas Ribbentrop would no longer be at his post.’

  Schellenberg’s calculations, however, were made without sufficient regard for Himmler’s extraordinary caution. He played as little part as possible in the machinations of the other leaders, and quietly resisted the open intrigues of such men as Goebbels. He preferred, as always, the secret road to power, the back way up. He was, however, according to Schellenberg, ‘very discreetly striving to create a new leadership for the Reich, naturally with Hitler’s approval. This policy was to ensure that all those who held leading posts in the Reich ministries, in industry, commerce and trade, in science and culture… should be members of the S.S.’ Meanwhile he sank himself in work, absorbed himself in details, the clerk in high office hidden behind a pyramid of files. The result was that at the end of the year he refused to take advantage of the notorious memorandum on the mental instability of Ribbentrop compiled by Martin Luther, an under-secretary at the Foreign Office, who had formerly been Ribbentrop’s confidant, but partly through the intrigues of Schellenberg had turned violently against him.

  The time chosen by Luther to produce his report was indeed an unfortunate one; Himmler fell back into one of his moods of indecision because at that particular moment he believed Hitler’s confidence in him had been shaken. In the struggle for power in Rumania, Hitler on Ribbentrop’s advice had chosen to support Antonescu, whereas Himmler and Heydrich had favoured Horia Sima, Leader of the Iron Guard who, encouraged by Heydrich, had been responsible for an unsuccessful putsch against Antonescu in January 1941 at a time when Hitler wanted to strengthen his relations with Rumania before the coming invasion of Russia. By agreement with Antonescu, Sima had been kept a prisoner by the S.D., who managed to let him escape. Mueller did not dare to inform Himmler of the escape for a fortnight, and it was some while before the fugitive was captured. Hitler was led by Ribbentrop to believe that Himmler had known of the escape all along and was attempting through him to stir up further trouble in Rumania. If there was one thing Himmler could not bear it was the criticism or ill-will of the Führer; in any case Himmler disliked Luther, who tended to be loud-mouthed and over-familiar. While Wolff stood on one side of him warning him against Luther, Schellenberg, with his plan to depose Ribbentrop firmly in mind, stood on the other urging him not to reach a hasty decision. Himmler as usual postponed making up his mind but, as he always did when he was in any doubt, he finally took the line that offered the least risk to himself. Luther was arrested and interrogated, and Ribbentrop’s face was saved.

  Himmler had lacked the courage to act against Ribbentrop. He feared Hitler’s admiration for the man he regarded as second only to Bismarck, exceeded the Führer’s confidence in himself. Schellenberg’s carefully contrived advantage was therefore discarded, and Himmler fell temporarily out of favour. In a private letter to his wife dated 16 January 1943, Bormann comments at some length on Himmler, who, he says, is ‘deeply offended… He feels unjustly treated by the Chief’. Bormann claims that he tried to calm Himmler, whose criticism of the treatment he had received was ‘very bitter, and at times acid’. Himmler, he thought, was suffering from ‘nervous strain.’ Later Schellenberg, to his disgust, found that Himmler wanted to discuss the whole matter openly with Ribbentrop showing, as Schellenberg put it, ‘a cowardly lack of decision’. He agreed, however, that any future attempts to negotiate peace must be conducted through a neutral country. ‘I don’t wish to know all these details’, he added. ‘That’s your responsibility.’ Throughout this period Himmler impressed on Schellenberg that he should keep in contact with Langbehn, and it seems clear that at some stage Langbehn was being used as an agent by Schellenberg to make contact with Allied representatives in Switzerland. For instance, in December Hassell noted in his diary, ‘Langbehn has had some talks with an English official in Zurich (12 December) and an American official (Hopper) in Stockholm, with the approval of the S.D.’ The talks, as always, were inconclusive because
the Allies required the unconditional surrender of Germany and the complete overthrow of the Nazi regime.

  Meanwhile Kersten, who still had Finnish nationality, had moved with his family to Stockholm at the end of September 1943, where he was introduced to an American, Abram Stevens Hewitt, who was visiting Sweden as a special envoy from Roosevelt. Kersten soon found that Hewitt, who had become his patient, shared his view that the war should be brought to an end as soon as possible through peace negotiations, more especially as the threat from Russia was becoming so strong. Kersten offered to discuss the matter with Himmler, and on 24 October sent him a letter through the Finnish diplomatic bag.

  Kersten began his letter by saying it concerned ‘proposals which might have the greatest significance for Germany, for Europe, even for the entire world. What I offer is the possibility of an honourable peace.’ He then went on to describe Hewitt’s influential position with the American Government and the proposals for peace talks that Hewitt considered possible, but depending on conditions which were very drastic and included the abolition of Hitler’s dictatorship and the Nazi Party and the appearance of the leading Nazis before a court to answer for their war crimes. ‘I beg you not to throw this letter into your wastepaper basket, Herr Reichsführer,’ he wrote, ‘but receive it with the humanity which resides in the heart of Heinrich Himmler.’ He suggested that Schellenberg be sent to Stockholm to meet Hewitt. In every paragraph he appealed to Himmler’s vanity, and concluded with the challenge: ‘Fate and history itself have placed it in your hands to bring an end to this terrible war.’

  Kersten was also involved in encouraging the Finnish Government to retire from the war, in which they had become the unwilling allies of Nazi Germany because of their struggle with Russia. After a short period in Helsinki, Kersten returned to Stockholm, where he anxiously waited for some reply from Himmler. Schellenberg arrived in Stockholm on 9 November and met Hewitt with whom, according to Kersten, he got on well.21 But, as usual, nothing happened when Himmler was pressed to take action.

  Kersten met Himmler on 4 December at Hochwaldt, his headquarters in East Prussia. He pressed him for a decision. ‘Don’t torment me’, he reports Himmler as saying, ‘give me time. I can’t get rid of the Führer, to whom I owe everything.’

  Kersten played every trick he knew to inflate Himmler’s vanity as ‘a great Germanic leader’.

  ‘In Stockholm Mr Hewitt is waiting for your decision’, he said, ‘so that he can take it to Roosevelt.’

  Himmler found the conditions for the peace talks ‘hair-raising’. He could not conceive of a Germany without the Nazi regime.

  ‘How can I take the responsibility,’ he said, ‘when faced with the leaders of the Party?’

  ‘You will have no responsibility towards them’, Kersten pointed out. ‘They will have ceased to exist.’

  Himmler seemed most perturbed about the suggestion that there must be a court to try those responsible for war crimes, since he knew that the annihilation of the Jews was necessarily regarded by the Allies as the worst of the many crimes the Nazis had committed. This was not a crime at all, Himmler argued to Kersten, since it was decreed by law.

  ‘The Führer ordered the annihilation of the Jews in Breslau in 1941. The Führer’s orders are the supreme law in Germany. I’ve never acted on my own initiative; I’ve only carried out the Führer’s orders. So neither I nor the S.S. can accept any responsibility.’

  The removal of Hitler he regarded as ‘cutting the ground from under my own feet’; the withdrawal of the German Army was an invitation to Russia or America to dominate Europe.

  In the end he avoided making any decision by saying he was too tired to think. He agreed, however, that the war should be stopped, but that the conditions suggested by Hewitt were very hard.

  ‘Your proposals aren’t unacceptable to me,’ he said, according to Kersten, ‘except for the one about responsibility for alleged war crimes.’

  In subsequent discussions on 9 and 13 December, Kersten claims that he went on pressing Himmler to make up his mind. He argued that Hitler was a sick man whose orders were bringing Europe nearer and nearer disaster. Eventually Himmler agreed to send Schellenberg to Stockholm to bring Hewitt secretly into Germany to discuss the negotiations with him.

  But by the time Schellenberg eventually reached Stockholm, the time-limit for discussions set by Hewitt had elapsed; he had gone back to America. A remote chance to bring about peace had been thrown away; how far deliberately, how far through Himmler’s chronic procrastination it is now impossible to determine.

  During 1943 Himmler began to extend his military ambitions. The fall of Stalingrad followed by reverses in North Africa led Hitler to revoke his ban on the expansion of the Waffen S.S. His total losses in Russia and Africa amounted to over half a million men. After Khahov was recaptured by the Germans in the spring, Himmler, as we have seen, spoke there in the University about the foreign recruits his S.S. men would soon find fighting beside them. Eight new divisions were formed during 1943, half of them recruited from East Europeans of whom by no means all were of German racial origin. All Rumanians of German origin were subject to conscription, to the resentment of the Rumanian Army; many of them were sent to replenish S.S. divisions elsewhere in Europe, where they were not popular. Even Bosnian Moslems were recruited, and in May Himmler made the Mufti Hajji Iman an honorary S.S. Lieutenant-General. Obviously all former S.S. standards had gone by the board, and in the same month recruitment began for an S.S. division made up of anti-Bolshevist Ukrainians, who formed part of the vast body of men numbering over half a million who had been former subjects of the Soviet Union and whom the Germans persuaded to serve in their own armies. Himmler still endeavoured to maintain his racial prejudice in the face of this rapid expansion of his forces, since he regarded all Slavs as inferior, but he welcomed into his ranks the Asiatic stock he associated with Genghis Khan. Other divisions were formed in Latvia and Estonia. By the end of the war, the number of S.S. divisions was to increase to thirty-five, representing some half a million fighting men. Allowing for losses, the numbers involved were some 900,000; of these less than half came from Germany itself, and some 150,000 were men whose racial origins were not Germanic.22

  Although the eight months from January to 25 August 1943, when Himmler became Reich Minister of the Interior following the downfall of Mussolini and the defection of Italy, represent a period during which he had to regain the confidence of Hitler after the misunderstanding over the escape of Horia Sima — ‘a considerable time’, says Schellenberg — they were months in which Himmler’s powers outside Hitler’s court considerably increased. Although, according to Reitlinger, Himmler had no direct access to Hitler, who was spending the greater part of his time at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters at Rastenburg, this does not mean he was out of touch with him. There was, however, a continuous struggle between him and Bormann for influence over Hitler, though each of them knew better than to bring the fight into the open. According to Schellenberg, who hated Bormann — ‘the contrast between him and Himmler is really grotesque; if I thought of Himmler as a stork in a lily-pond, Bormann seemed to me like a pig in a potato-field’ — Himmler made many tactical errors in his dealings with Bormann, which the latter merely exploited at Himmler’s expense; one of these errors was the secret loan through Bormann of 80,000 marks from Party funds to help provide for the needs of his mistress Hedwig and their children.

  After April 1943, when he was appointed Hitler’s personal secretary, Bormann increasingly governed Hitler’s daily life; he became an indispensable companion, sharing his worries, soothing his nerves, using his ‘cast-iron memory’ to clarify the growing complexity of Hitler’s war situation and guide his decisions. As Himmler said to Schellenberg:

  ‘The Führer has become so accustomed to Bormann that it’s very difficult indeed to lessen his influence. Again and again I have had to come to terms with him, though it’s really my duty to get him out. I hope I can succeed in out-manoeuvri
ng him without having to get rid of him. He’s been responsible for many of the Führer’s misguided decisions; in fact, he’s not only confirmed his uncompromising attitude, he’s stiffened it.’23

  Schellenberg positively enjoyed embarrassing his master, and continued throughout 1943 to remind him of his promise to remove Ribbentrop:

  ‘Because of the reflection of Himmler’s glasses, I could scarcely ever see his eyes… I had therefore made a habit of always staring at his forehead, just above the bridge of his nose, and this seemed to make him strangely uneasy after a few minutes. He would start to make notes or look into the drawer of his desk in order to escape my glance. On this occasion… he said, “I can only remove Ribbentrop with Bormann’s help, and the result would be an even more radical policy.”’

  Goebbels, who had personal discussions with Goring in March 1943 in the hope that some sort of group representation of the old leaders could be formed to counteract the bad influence of Bormann, Ribbentrop, Lammers and Keitel, regarded Himmler as at least a potential ally; the theory was that Goring, roused from his lassitude, should reconvene the pre-war Council of Ministers, of which he was President, and through this set up an opposing factor with Goebbels, Himmler, Speer and Ley. In May Goebbels preens himself in his diary about the praise Himmler had given to his department and agrees with his stringent criticisms of Frick, the Minister of the Interior, whose lack of leadership he deplored. On the other hand, Semmler, Goebbels’s aide who kept his own diary at this time, recorded in March that Goebbels was equally suspicious of Himmler and Bormann — ‘not one of those three trusts the others out of his sight’.