Heinrich Himmler

by Roger Manvell

  Not that Bormann was unfriendly to Himmler’s face; he merely placed himself firmly between the Führer and Himmler, whose field headquarters in Birkenwald, East Prussia, were some thirty miles distant from the Wolf’s Lair. To Bormann (whose father had once been a bandsman who, according to Ribbentrop, had often performed on the bandstands on English sea-fronts in the years before 1914), Himmler was always ‘Uncle Heinrich’. As Party Chancellor, controlling the whole national Party machine, Bormann could do much in a quiet way to frustrate the influence of men as uniquely powerful as Goebbels and Himmler were to become between 1943 and the end of the war.

  Himmler meanwhile built up a vast bureaucracy of his own; in addition to the Waffen S.S. in the field, some 40,000 men were employed by the S.S. leadership office, while the Reich Main Security Office had a strength of over 60,000. When S.S. General Heinz Guderian, the expert on armoured warfare who had been reinstated by Hitler after temporary dismissal and made Chief Inspector for Panzer Troops, met Himmler on 11 April at Berchtesgaden, he found him completely opposed to any integration of the new S.S. armoured divisions with the Army. Neither Hitler nor Himmler wanted to see the S.S., the personal army of the leadership, merged with the armed forces of the Reich. Nor could he persuade Himmler to influence Hitler in the direction of delegating more power to the Army; he ‘received an impression of such impenetrable obliquity’ that he gave up any thought of ‘discussing a limitation of Hitler’s power with him’.

  Parallel with his extension of the Waffen S.S., Himmler turned his eyes in another direction that might assist his future powers. In April 1943 he visited the rocket establishment at Peenemünde for the first time, and met the scientist and soldier in charge of the research and development of liquid-propellant rockets, Major-General Walter Dornberger. The first experimental rocket of the pattern later known as the V2 had been successfully launched as early as October 1942, and Himmler was anxious to know more of this carefully-guarded secret weapon, for the development of which Hitler had not yet given full priority.24 Dornberger describes Himmler’s manner and appearance:

  ‘He looked to me like an intelligent elementary school teacher, certainly not a man of violence… Under a brow of average height two grey-blue eyes looked at me, behind glittering pince-nez, with an air of peaceful interrogation. The trimmed moustache below the straight, well-shaped nose traced a dark line on his unhealthy pale features. The lips were colourless and very thin. Only the inconspicuous receding chin surprised me. The skin of his neck was flaccid and wrinkled. With a broadening of his constant set smile, faintly mocking and sometimes contemptuous about the corners of the mouth, two rows of excellent white teeth appeared between the thin lips. His slender, pale and almost girlishly soft hands, covered with veins, lay motionless on the table throughout our conversation.’

  Dornberger soon discovered the nature of Himmler’s interest.

  ‘I am here to protect you against sabotage and treason’, he said. Peenemünde was too much in the limelight; its security had become of national importance, and not merely the concern of the Army, under which its activities were formally placed. As he left, Himmler promised Dornberger that he would come back for further private discussions.

  ‘I am extremely interested in your work’, he said. ‘I may be able to help you.’

  The infiltration of the S.S. into the work at Peenemünde followed immediately on this meeting. Dornberger’s Station Commander, Colonel Zanssen, an experienced man who had been at Peenemünde for some years, was suddenly dismissed without any reference to the Army departments concerned. This was done by order of Himmler on the most trivial charges, which the S.S. refused to authenticate. Dornberger managed to have Zanssen reinstated with the support of General Fromm, the Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army under whose command Peenemünde was placed. After the war, Dornberger learned that Professor von Braun, who was then one of the senior research officers at the establishment, had under an oath of secrecy been offered by Himmler full scope to develop Peenemünde if the S.S. ever took over. Von Braun had rejected the offer.

  Himmler’s second visit came on 29 June; he arrived driving his own small armoured car. As usual, he made a better impression in private than he did in public. Dornberger describes him at a meeting with the senior research workers:

  ‘Himmler possessed the rare gift of attentive listening. Sitting back with legs crossed, he wore throughout the same amiable and interested expression. His questions showed that he unerringly grasped what the technicians told him out of the wealth of their knowledge. The talk turned to the war and the important questions in all our minds. He answered without hesitation, calmly and candidly. It was only at rare moments that, sitting with his elbows resting on the arms of the chair, he emphasized his words by tapping the tips of his fingers together. He was a man of quiet, unemotional gestures. A man without nerves.’

  He seemed happy to talk politics in this group of men whose interests were absorbed in science and engineering. He spoke of Europe as a social and economic unit controlled by a racially-sound Germany which had come to an understanding with Britain, whose main interests lay overseas and with America. The Slav block was the great danger to Europe, and that was why Hitler had gone to war with Russia before the Slav nations had been welded into one invincible group under Russian domination. He compared the Western European worker, with his demand for leisure and a high standard of living, with the Russian worker, dedicated entirely to his factory’s output and ready in time to flood world markets with cheap goods. The war was therefore just as much an economic struggle as it was military and political. They argued about the German occupation of Poland — ‘Himmler’s glasses glittered. Was I mistaken,’ wrote Dornberger, ‘or had his imperturbable, impenetrable mask of amiability fallen a little?’ Poland was needed for German colonization, he said. The birth-rate of the Poles would have to be reduced until the German settlers grew sufficient in numbers to take over the territory. ‘We shall arrange for the young German peasants to marry Ukrainian girls of good farming stock and found a healthy new generation adapted to conditions out there… We must practice a rigid state-planned economy both with men and material throughout conquered territory’, he added.

  Dornberger and his colleagues sat both fascinated and revolted by Himmler’s manner of presenting his policy, which he expressed so ‘concisely, simply and naturally’. ‘I shuddered at the everyday manner in which the stuff was related. But even as I did so I admired Himmler’s gift for expounding difficult problems in a few words which could be understood by anyone and went straight to the heart of the matter.’

  Himmler then went on to praise Stalin who, he said, Hitler considered to be his only really great adversary, and Genghis Khan, who had tried in his period to consolidate Mongol supremacy in Asia and whose blood survived in the modern ruler of Russia. They could only be conquered by the methods they understood — those practised by Genghis Khan.

  They talked until four o’clock in the morning. Himmler knew the calibre of the men he was with, and that he could best appeal to them by intellectual discussion. This was conquest by the spoken word.

  The following afternoon Himmler saw a successful launching of a ‘V2’ rocket, and he went away determined to win control of Peenemünde from the Army.

  Meanwhile, in August 1943 Langbehn consented to bring a key member of one section of the German resistance movement to see Himmler. This was Dr Johannes Popitz, a scholar and an intellectual belonging to Hassell’s circle, and a man of whom Goebbels was to record his grave suspicion less than a month later. ‘Hitler’, wrote Goebbels in his diary, ‘is absolutely convinced that Popitz is our enemy. He is already having him watched so as to have incriminating material about him ready; the moment Popitz gives himself away, he will close in on him.’

  In tracing the devious relations between Himmler, Langbehn and Popitz, it is impossible to know every aspect of Himmler’s motives, though it is, of course, easy to speculate about them. Schellenberg, whom, as we ha
ve seen, Himmler had instructed to put out peace feelers to the Allies through Langbehn, makes no mention of Popitz in his published memoirs. Although Hassell was always doubtful about the usefulness of Himmler in any conspiracy directed solely against Hitler, there was a period when Popitz, as a member of Hassell’s aristocratic circle of conspirators, managed to convince them that a risk should be taken to sound out Himmler’s loyalty. In this he was encouraged by his friend Langbehn.

  It must be remembered that the conspirators were by 1943 in a state of considerable frustration; no progress seemed to have been made to bring in the Army and the generals. There had since 1941 been desultory discussion of the idea of stimulating a ‘palace revolution’, at first through Goring and then later through Himmler, either of whom could at a later stage be removed from power once he had fulfilled his initial task in assisting with the removal of Hitler.

  Langbehn was the obvious man through whom Popitz could be introduced to Himmler. According to the evidence in the indictment used at their trial in 1944, they had first met during the winter of 1941-2, shortly after Langbehn had joined the circle round Hassell. Popitz is another curious figure whose actual position it is difficult to determine; he was not a member of the Nazi Party but remained from 1933 until his arrest in 1944 Prussian Minister of State and Finance under Goring. He had been a friend of Schleicher, and it was probably at the time of Schleicher’s murder by the Nazis in 1934 that he began to entertain the doubts that eventually made him one of the more ardent members of the resistance. The fact that he had once been a supporter of the Nazis and as late as 1937 accepted the golden badge of the Party from Hitler made him suspect in the eyes of many members of the resistance. Also he was politically very right-wing and favoured a return of the monarchy. But Hassell trusted him as a friend and fellow-conspirator, and it was decided by May 1943 that Langbehn should seek an appointment for Popitz with Himmler through the agency of Wolff. The arrangements were delayed owing to Wolff’s illness during the summer, but eventually the meeting took place in Himmler’s new office at the Ministry of the Interior on 26 August 1943.

  Neither Wolff nor Langbehn was actually present at the interview, of which two accounts survive. The first is that given in the subsequent indictment of Langbehn and Popitz, and is therefore strictly slanted to conceal Himmler’s part in the matter; only Popitz’s very vague statements are given and no word is included of what Himmler may have said. Popitz, according to the terms of the indictment, expressed his anxiety at the corruption in high places, the inefficiency of the administration, and the impossibility of winning the war so long as Hitler, though admittedly a genius, remained in absolute power. The chances of promoting a negotiated peace should be explored, but this was not possible unless the Führer was ‘surrounded by men with whom negotiations could be undertaken’. Such conditions would definitely exclude Ribbentrop. Popitz then mentioned the kind of persons he had in mind for the leadership of the Army and the Foreign Office. It was left that another conversation should be arranged at a later date. Meanwhile, in the ante-room, Langbehn expressed his fears to Wolff that Popitz would not be sufficiently outspoken to Himmler, and said that on the next occasion he wanted to be present himself. The other account of this meeting was that given by Popitz himself to a friend called Zahler a few days later. Himmler had said little, he told Zahler, but had not opposed the suggestion of negotiations being conducted without Hitler’s knowledge.25

  Langbehn then left for Switzerland to pass on the good news to his contacts in neutral territory. It was then, at this moment of cautious optimism, that the sword of Damocles overhanging every conspirator against Hitler, fell on the neck of Langbehn. As Schellenberg put it: ‘A radio message about Dr Langbehn’s negotiations with Allied representatives in Switzerland was intercepted, and the fact that Dr Langbehn had my blessing in this completely unofficial undertaking was mentioned, as well as Kersten’s part in furthering these negotiations. Kaltenbrunner and Mueller immediately arranged for a secret investigation, but Kersten’s influence with Himmler saved me from disaster.’

  The interception of this radio message (which, according to Dulles, was neither British nor American in origin) meant that Himmler and Schellenberg were forced to sacrifice Langbehn, though Popitz, strangely enough, remained free until after the attempt on Hitler’s life the following year. However, it seems that Langbehn was able to secure a meeting with Himmler before his arrest by the Gestapo following his return from Switzerland. Evidence for this meeting, which must have taken place before Schellenberg and Himmler had learned about the interception of the message, rests solely on Langbehn himself, who told his friend the sculptress Puppi Sarre ‘that he had touched on the elimination of Hitler only in passing, that Himmler had been quite serious, had asked factual questions, but had not tried to find out any names’. But Himmler could do nothing now but protect himself and Schellenberg, whom Kaltenbrunner and Mueller were now only too ready to denounce as a British agent. Langbehn was arrested, along with his wife and Puppi Sarre.

  Himmler, however, won a victory elsewhere. This was the final collapse early in 1944 of Canaris’s department for military Intelligence in foreign countries, the Abwehr. It came as a direct result of the arrest of another anti-Nazi group centred round the widow of Dr Wilhelm Solf, a former German ambassador in Japan and a man of liberal, as distinct from right-wing, outlook. Solf, who hated the Nazis and did not fear to say so, had died in 1936 and his wife, Frau Hanna Solf, and her daughter, the Countess Ballestrem, maintained this independent outlook and were active helpers of those persecuted by the regime. They formed an intellectual circle of distinguished people, but on 10 September a Gestapo spy called Dr Reckse, who they believed to be a Swiss medical student prepared to take messages to Switzerland, was introduced at a tea-party given by Frau Solf for members of this group. Three months were allowed to elapse before the mass arrest of over seventy anti-Nazis belonging to the liberal wing of the resistance, including Otto Kiep, formerly of the German Foreign Office, and Helmuth von Moltke, who belonged to the legal section of the Abwehr. Attempts were also made to inveigle two other Abwehr agents, Erich and Elizabeth Vermehren, who were close friends of Kiep in Berlin, to return from their base in Istanbul for interrogation. Knowing of Otto Kiep’s arrest, they sought asylum with the British, and were flown to Cairo.26

  Hitler was now strongly advised by Himmler to dispense with the Abwehr, since it seemed so persistently to be staffed by intellectuals who were opposed to the regime. On 18 February 1944 Hitler broke up the organization and announced that the German Intelligence Service was to be unified. Later in the year the various sections of the Abwehr came finally under the authority of the Gestapo and the S.D., and in May Himmler gave one of his standardized speeches at Salzburg to the principals of Canaris’s former department. He derided the very term Abwehr as defensive, whereas a truly German Intelligence service, he said, should obviously be aggressive. The inspiration of the Führer made defeatism impossible; Himmler even went so far as to welcome the idea of invasion because it would enable Hitler’s armies to drown the invaders ‘in the seas of their own blood’. D-Day came two weeks later.

  Canaris was not immediately disgraced by the collapse of the Abwehr. He was transferred and made chief of the Office for Commercial and Economic Warfare, a suitably remote position for a man who was too involved in well-meaning personal intrigue to be an efficient master either of spies for the Nazis or agents for the resistance. The Abwehr had been a failure, staffed by amateurs and used as a convenient cover by a number of members of the resistance, such as the Pastors Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Bethge, Hans Bernd Gisevius, Otto John and Josef Müller. ‘His subordinates were able to twist him round their little finger’, wrote Schellenberg of Canaris, whose company he always enjoyed in spite of their dubious official relationship. A vast dossier against Canaris had been built up over the years against the time when Himmler should decide on the destruction of this man he professed to admire. The long delay in taking act
ion led Schellenberg, the expert in suspicion, to sense that Canaris had some secret hold over Himmler. He was allowed to continue unassailed until after the attempt on Hitler’s life in July, when Schellenberg was sent to arrest him.

  Langbehn remained imprisoned without trial until after the attempt on Hitler’s life the following year; he was the subject of speculation alike by the Nazis and the members of the resistance. Popitz’s attempt to enquire after his fate from Himmler met with no success, and Popitz himself was regarded with suspicion by many members of the resistance who knew in any case that he was dangerous because he was being closely watched. Interrogation recurred month after month, duly noted by Hassell, but it was in Himmler’s interest to keep the enquiries as obscure as possible. At least at this stage Langbehn was not tortured, and this could only have been the result of orders from Himmler.

  Early in November 1943, Himmler had a long conversation with Goebbels in which they agreed that Ribbentrop’s inflexible foreign policy was deplorable, and they joined in the usual diatribe against the High Command. Then Himmler began to whitewash his own position with regard to the resistance; he told Goebbels all about the existence of a group of enemies of the State, among whom were Halder and possibly also Popitz. This circle, he said, would like to contact England, by-passing the Führer. Himmler must have aquitted himself well: ‘Himmler will see to it that these gentlemen do no major damage with their cowardly defeatism’, wrote Goebbels. ‘I certainly have the impression that the domestic security of the country is in good hands with Himmler.’