Hanns and Rudolf

by Thomas Harding

  It was at this farm that he first met Hedwig Hensel, a twenty-one-year-old who had grown up in Neukirch, a small town in southeast Germany. Hedwig had arrived a few months earlier with her brother Fritz. Like Rudolf, she was captivated by the league’s ideals and committed to living a rural lifestyle. Hedwig was a stocky woman with an oval face and a body built for hard work and, at the time that Rudolf arrived, was working as a household assistant for the estate owner.

  Rudolf knew immediately that they “were made for each other.” They shared the same views, were inspired by the same ideals, and “found ourselves harmoniously united in confidence and understanding, as if we had lived together all our lives.”

  Rudolf and Hedwig married on August 17, 1929, after only three months of courtship, in a small ceremony on the farm. After the ceremony the newlyweds posed for a photograph: they looked handsome standing next to each other in front of a disheveled tree, their bodies separated by a slice of sky, he posing rather formally, with his hands behind his back, she with one arm dangling and the other through his. Closed-mouthed and determined, Hedwig was dressed in a plain white frock, her braided hair falling in loops upon her shoulders in the style of a German country maid; he, smiling widely, wore a wide-collared white shirt under a dark jacket and trousers. They appeared young, happy, carefree, and calm; a tranquil moment captured in rich sepia.

  What is not evident in the photograph is that Hedwig was already pregnant at the time of the wedding. She had conceived three months before, almost immediately after she had met Rudolf.

  Did Rudolf marry Hedwig out of duty, to do the right thing by her? Or perhaps to cover up having had sex out of wedlock, a transgression forbidden by the Artamanen League’s strict puritanical creed? Or perhaps he indeed honored the vow he had made back in Palestine, and now found in Hedwig the woman with whom he wished to spend the rest of his life. Or maybe, above all things, Rudolf valued loyalty, and it was to Hedwig that he now pledged himself.

  Despite his decision to marry Hedwig, Rudolf felt unable to share his feelings with his wife: “One thing has always grieved her: I had to deal with all that moved me most deeply on my own, and could not reveal it even to her.”

  With a child on the way, and a demanding yet rewarding job, Rudolf set about building a life for his new family, as model members of the Artamanen League. But while he cherished the tranquillity of farm life, he missed the discipline and rigor of the army: the structure, the hierarchy, the sense of purpose. Nor, since his time with General Rossbach, had he found a man he could look up to, to whom he could swear allegiance, to whom he could offer fealty.

  Such a person would soon arrive.

  *

  In January 1929, Hitler appointed a new leader to run his personal bodyguard, the Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS. The new Reichsführer-SS, or leader of the SS, was Heinrich Himmler, a twenty-nine-year-old from Munich who had been a member of the party since 1923 and had previously served in the Freikorps. At this time the SS was made up of only a few hundred men, and its job was to provide protection to Hitler and the other Nazi leaders as they traveled around the country. Hitler asked Himmler to build the SS into an elite, racially pure fighting force that could assist in the rise of the party. This seemed like an ambitious plan, given Germany’s calm political landscape.

  This all changed when, on October 29, 1929, the American stock market crashed. The effect on the German economy was both immediate and catastrophic. The American loans that Germany had relied on to rebuild its economy, still fragile after the First World War reparations, came to an immediate stop. International trade fell to 50 percent of its level the year before, crop prices fell 60 percent, and unemployment rose to 14 percent of the working age population, which amounted to some 3.2 million people.

  Suddenly, the National Socialists had a powerful issue to rally around: they campaigned for an end to reparations and for a stronger Germany. The impact could be seen in the next local elections. The Nazis quadrupled their vote in Berlin to 5.8 percent; in Baden they won 7 percent; and in the state of Thuringia, they won 11.35 percent—the first time that they had broken the 10 percent barrier in any election.

  As unemployment levels continued to rise in early 1930, Hitler saw his opportunity. The Social Democratic–led government coalition of Hermann Müller collapsed in March 1930 and, after the minority government of centrist Heinrich Brüning fell in July, President Hindenburg called for elections in September.

  Seizing his chance, Hitler traveled the country, tirelessly promoting his party and his ideas. He gave twenty speeches in the final six weeks of the election, including one at the Berlin Sportpalast to more than 16,000 people. He blamed the Jews for the economic collapse; he accused the Weimar Republic of failing to solve the unemployment problems; and he called for the expansion of Germany to solve the population’s need for more living space.

  In the midst of that summer’s election campaign, Rudolf traveled south to a league convention being held in an east German school. The league had grown over the previous few years, and hundreds of young people from across the country attended the meeting. It was at this conference that Rudolf spent considerable time with Heinrich Himmler, who participated as the leader of the Bavarian region’s Artamanen League.

  Almost exactly the same age as Rudolf, and a mere two inches taller, Himmler was a trim-looking man with a triangular mustache, pursed lips, and round wire-rimmed glasses. The two men had first met back in 1921, at the home of General Ludendorff, one of the Freikorps’ leaders. Like Rudolf, Himmler had been actively involved in the right-wing paramilitary groups’ campaigns after the First World War, and like Rudolf, Himmler was also passionate about farming, having studied agriculture at university.

  Standing in the school’s main hall, Rudolf told Himmler that he supported the policy of breaking up Germany’s large feudal estates in order to create smaller parcels of land which young people could farm, in the process solving their country’s chronic unemployment. Himmler agreed, but countered saying that, given the limited amount of space in Germany, they would have to conquer new territory, using force if necessary, seizing the fertile lands then held by the Slavs. The discussion ranged back and forth, with the two thirty-year-olds spending hours talking about the economy and the radical policies needed to fix it.

  While Rudolf did not agree with Himmler’s goals—they were “new to us all,” they were “aiming too high,” and “we did not see how it could be put into practice in the foreseeable future”—he was impressed by the man: his confident analysis, his passion for farming, his unwillingness to compromise, and his unshakeable vision. Most of all he was attracted to his devotion, for Himmler was “Adolf Hitler’s most faithful and by far his most unselfish follower.”

  A few days after Rudolf’s return to the Pomeranian estate, the national elections were held. On September 14, 1930, the National Socialists’ share of the vote increased dramatically from 2.6 percent and twelve seats to 18.3 percent and 107 seats, making it the Reichstag’s second biggest party after the Social Democrats. Hitler and the Nazis suddenly had everyone’s attention.

  Unaffected by the happenings on the national stage, Rudolf refocused his energies on developing the estate and building a family with Hedwig. Their first child, Klaus, had been born a few months earlier, on February 6, 1930. They quickly had two more children, a daughter whom they named Heideraud, born on April 9, 1932, and another daughter, Inge-Brigit, also known as Brigitte, who was born on August 18, 1933.

  This calm life, away from the power struggles in the German cities, suited the couple and their family. To Rudolf it was a “hard life, that we had chosen voluntarily, and out of our most fervent convictions.” He realized that by living off the land it would be a “long, difficult, laborious way ahead,” but vowed “nothing was to make us swerve from it.” Despite the hardships, the extended hours, the physical toil, the lack of luxury, they were “happy and content,” no more so than when they “won over new believers to our way o
f thinking.” They were even promised that, sometime in the future, a parcel of land would be given to them. Rudolf would then be able to fulfill his dream of owning a farmstead and bringing up his family in the countryside, surrounded by animals and nature.

  This, then, was a joyful time for the growing Höss family, and in future years, Rudolf would look back on this period as a golden age.

  *

  As Rudolf dedicated himself to his new family and to farming, Germany continued to undergo profound political changes. During the national elections in July 1932, no single German party had won a majority of seats, nor during the November election that followed, in which the National Socialist Party won 33 percent of the votes. In the absence of any alternative, Germany’s president, Paul von Hindenburg, reluctantly appointed Adolf Hitler as Chancellor on January 30, 1933.

  With Hitler’s rise to power Heinrich Himmler was appointed commander of the Bavarian political police. Almost immediately Himmler began brutally suppressing his opponents. In March 1933, only fifty-five days after Hitler’s election as Chancellor, Himmler rounded up hundreds of Communists, Social Democrats, and Catholic priests, housing them in an old munitions factory on the outskirts of Munich in the small town of Dachau. He called this facility for political prisoners a “concentration camp.”

  Despite holding only a regional political position, Himmler had retained his title of head of the national SS, and while it was still inferior in size and power compared to the original Nazi paramilitary force, the Sturmabteilung, or the SA, with Hitler now Chancellor the SS had been made into a state organization. More crucial to its growth, the SS was controlled by Hitler, through the loyal Himmler, whereas the SA was controlled by one of his rivals; as such the SS quickly morphed from Hitler’s personal bodyguard into a sizeable paramilitary organization and bureaucracy. At the end of 1932 the SS had over 52,000 members; by the end of 1933 it had over 200,000 members. Applications were intensively screened according to race and lineage, particularly for Nordic and Aryan qualities. In Himmler’s own words: “We took our lead from the principles of plant selection. Like a nursery gardener trying to reproduce a strain which had been corrupted, we proceeded to weed out all the men whom we did not think we would need for building up the SS.”

  As a growing government-sponsored military force, the SS now had a need for thousands of horses and the means to pay for them. Realizing the commercial and political opportunity that this presented, and fully aware of Rudolf’s cavalry experience, Rudolf’s supervisor suggested that they should establish an SS stable on the Pomeranian farm. Rudolf readily accepted.

  Yet, to manage an SS stable one had to belong to the SS. On September 20, 1933, Rudolf applied to join. To do this, he had to complete a lengthy application form, and supply a passport photograph as well as references. The SS officer reviewing this application studied his photograph, looking for any trace of Slav or non-Aryan features, and checked Rudolf’s family background to make sure that he was from the correct milieu. Finally he had to meet the criteria of an SS soldier: he had to be over twenty-three years old and at least five feet six and a half inches tall. Rudolf was thirty-two, and a good half an inch taller than the requirement.

  Seven months after submission, Rudolf’s application was accepted; he was allotted SS number 193616. As part of his induction, he had to swear allegiance to the SS and the Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler. Most critically, he had to swear an oath of silence.

  On June 11, 1934, the new SS recruits were gathered for a general inspection by the Reichsführer in Stettin, the largest seaport on the Baltic Sea in Pomerania. Rudolf wore the standard uniform of the SS: brown shirt, black trousers, black hat with a death’s-head emblem, SS armband, black shoes, and a black belt. As with all members of the SS, his arm bore a tattoo marking his blood type, information that might become important in case of an injury.

  Himmler was surprised to see Rudolf standing in line with the other new recruits, and asked what he was doing there. Rudolf explained that he had only just been accepted, and was now in charge of an SS stable in Pomerania. Himmler said that he understood and indeed shared Rudolf’s passion for farming, and was excited that he and Hedwig wanted to build a family, but made clear that this was not the time to pursue the utopian dream. Instead, Himmler told Rudolf that it was time to become a soldier again, suggesting that he train as a supervisor in the political prisoner camp that Himmler had established in Dachau.

  Back at the estate, Rudolf struggled with the decision. Should he remain on the farm that he and his wife loved so much, or answer the patriotic call that moved him so deeply? Hedwig at first argued against a return to military life, but eventually she came around to the idea. After all, they didn’t have the funds to purchase a farm of their own, and the military would provide the means to help them on their way. Yet it was a hard decision. There was no guarantee how quickly they could resume their idyllic rural lifestyle or how this new life would affect their close-knit family:

  The prospect of making swift progress, that is to say promotion, with the financial advantages that it entailed, familiarized me with the idea that I would indeed have to deviate from the path I had so far trodden, but I could still cling to the aim of our lives. That aim, the farm as our home, a place for us and our children, was irrevocably fixed in our minds, even in later years. We never deviated from that. I was planning to leave active service after the war, and work on the farm. After long consideration and much doubt, weighing up the pros and cons, I decided to join the active SS.

  On December 1, 1934, Rudolf arrived in Munich, where he boarded a train heading northwest, to Dachau station. From there it was a twenty-minute walk, through a quiet residential neighborhood of narrow streets and one-story houses, to the camp’s entrance.

  Dachau was the first concentration camp established by the Nazis, and its purpose was to house political prisoners. The prisoners were accommodated in the existing buildings of the Dachau Royal Gunpowder and Munitions Factory, which occupied only one of the five acres that made up the site. The camp held 4,800 prisoners, almost all opponents of the Nazi regime. Dachau was praised for its order and efficiency, with photographic reports featured in German propaganda publications such as Illustrierter Beobachter.

  Hedwig and the children arrived at Dachau shortly after Rudolf. Klaus, their eldest child, was then four, Heideraud was two, and Brigitte only one year old. The family was assigned an officer’s house just outside the camp’s walls.

  Robert Ley and Theodor Eicke, Dachau, 1936

  Dachau’s Kommandant, or commanding officer of the entire prison, was Theodor Eicke, a school dropout, failed policeman, and professional informant. He had fought in the First World War and earned the Iron Cross in the process. After the war’s end he had led a group of resistance fighters against the French occupiers of the Rhine. Having been sentenced by the French in absentia, he had fled to Italy, where he had remained until 1928, when he had returned to Germany and joined the Nazi Party. In 1933, Himmler had appointed him as the Kommandant of the camp.

  According to Rudolf, Theodor Eicke was a man from the old streetfighting days of the 1920s, who considered every prisoner an “enemy of the state” who must be killed if he resisted. Eicke taught his officers to develop an antipathy towards the prisoners. “Attitude of hatred” was the term that Rudolf used to describe this philosophy. Eicke instructed that prisoners must be whipped for even the slightest infraction, and that such beatings should take place in front of all the guards to toughen up the men, particularly those who had recently joined the SS.

  It was Eicke’s view that “there was no room for weaklings in his ranks” and that “he could do only with hard, determined men who obeyed all orders regardless of personal feelings.” Furthermore, “any sympathy with ‘enemies of the state’ was unworthy of an SS man.” Eicke was also unforgiving to his own guards’ mistakes. The worst wrongdoers were demoted, made to wear prisoner uniforms, and whipped in front of their fellow guards. Eicke even
ordered that his own cousin suffer this fate. And anyone who showed compassion to enemies of the state must disappear from the ranks.

  Rudolf disapproved of Eicke’s approach, viewing it as simplistic. Yet there was another side to Eicke that Rudolf admired. For the Kommandant spent many evenings with the guards, talking with them, asking about their lives, showing interest in their problems. In this way, the guards came to call him “Papa Eicke” and they would do anything he asked.

  *

  After a year at Dachau, Rudolf was promoted to company commander, or “block leader.” This was a relatively junior position, with no participation in camp policy or administration, and little interaction with the Kommandant. Yet he was now responsible for the day-to-day lives of 270 prisoners. In his new role, Rudolf checked the names during roll call each evening, assessed whether any prisoners were suitable for release, and ensured that discipline was maintained at all times. His prisoners slept in a block containing fifty-two double-tiered rough wooden bunks with five men billeted to each bunk. Each prisoner was allocated a stool and a small cupboard. The building also contained a day room with four tables, and a large stove located in the center of the barracks.

  With his promotion, Rudolf’s doubts about leaving the Pomeranian farm began to grow. For the first time he became exposed to the disciplining of prisoners. On one occasion, a political prisoner was called for punishment for having stolen cigarettes from the canteen. This burly man was told to lie down on a flogging table in front of the guards, who surrounded him in a U-shaped formation. Then, as his arms and legs were held, two guards struck him twenty-five times with the cane. Rudolf was appalled by this treatment.