Heinrich Himmler : A Life (114 page)

For, on 16 December 1942, the former leader of the Romanian Iron Guard, Horia Sima, who with 260 followers had escaped to Germany after
his unsuccessful coup of January 1941, had fled German internment to Rome, despite having given his word of honour that he would stay. This flight was extremely embarrassing for Himmler. He had never been able completely to free himself from the suspicion that he had personally approved the 1941 coup, which had been supported by members of the SD. And now it appeared as if, by tolerating the flight, he had once again tried to sabotage the German policy vis-à-vis Romania of supporting the Antonescu regime. What made it worse was the fact that he had not immediately reported the flight to Hitler, so that the latter did not hear of it until days later. A serious crisis developed in relations with Romania when, on 26 December, Marshall Antonescu demanded Sima’s extradition. Hitler was extremely annoyed about Himmler’s behaviour with regard to Sima and demanded that the latter keep him continually informed about the progress of the hunt for him. Finally, after considerable efforts, Sima was arrested in Rome and brought back to Germany. Hitler revoked his original order to execute him, and instead he and his followers were put in concentration camps.
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Oberg not only survived the Marseilles affair but continued to oppose Himmler’s radical policy, despite repeated admonitions from the Reichsführer. Oberg controlled over 200 security police throughout France, in other words, a relatively widely spaced network, whose members, mostly unqualified and not able to speak French, were basically unable to cope with the increasing activities of the resistance.
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Thus, contrary to Himmler’s wishes, Oberg considered it inadvisable to attempt to become the overlord of the French police, but preferred rather to adopt a policy of cooperation. He delayed the transfer of French politicians and American journalists from French internment to German concentration camps long enough until, in April 1943, after a conversation with the French police chief Bouquet, Himmler reluctantly came to agree with him.
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At the end of 1943, however, Himmler put an end to the cooperation of Oberg and Bousquet. He ordered Oberg to request Prime Minister Laval to dismiss Bouquet (the previous month Oberg had vigorously opposed such a step)
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and to appoint Joseph Darnand, chief of the French militia, the Vichy regime’s special force, as his successor. This appointment was clearly
intended to bring about the amalgamation of the militia and the police along German lines. Moreover, Darnand was an Obersturmführer in the French Waffen-SS.
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In February 1944 a quarrel broke out between Berger, the head of the Main Office, and Oberg. ‘On the express orders of the Reichsführer SS’, Berger wanted to establish an Einsatzkommando of the Waffen-SS for France and to amalgamate the French right-wing paramilitary leagues in order to provide a counterweight to the Free French army in the event of an Allied landing. Berger concluded his missive with an argument that was hard to refute: ‘German mothers won’t be weeping for foreigners who get killed. And I’m saying that on the anniversary of my son’s death.’
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Oberg, who was primarily concerned to prevent anything that threatened to disturb French domestic politics, opposed this policy and did so with a very ingenious argument. ‘In accordance with the Führer’s directives, while on the surface we should be following a policy of cooperation,’ nevertheless we should ‘never [lose] sight of the fact that our aim is to destroy France once and for all.’ The ‘creation of such a unified, French national organization, or something similar, with the aid of the SS would, however, provide the basis for a truly national reconstruction of France, in other words be contrary to the Führer’s directives’. And the ‘creation of such a unified organization’ would remove ‘the possibility, when the time comes, of playing off the various political forces in France, including Darnand’s militia, against one another’.
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Himmler informed Berger that he must drop his plans for the time being, but he wanted to discuss the matter thoroughly with him.
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In fact, the right-wing leagues in France were not amalgamated into a unified militia, nor did Berger achieve his aim of establishing a recruiting office for the Waffen-SS in France. Once again Oberg had succeeded in imposing his relatively careful approach and in using delaying tactics to block Himmler’s radical policy.
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Himmler’s brutal orders for the suppression of all opposition provoked resistance from his own people in the other occupied territories as well. The regional German police authorities, most of which were dependent on the cooperation of local forces, frequently modified Himmler’s draconian orders. It became apparent that the Higher SS and Police Leaders and commanders of the security police did not simply represent Himmler in the occupied territories, but increasingly the reverse—namely, the interests of the area for which they were responsible, as they understood them, vis-à-vis Himmler. In fact he himself must, in the meantime, have reached the
conclusion that the indiscriminate shooting of hostages, which had been the norm in 1941, was not necessarily conducive to keeping the resistance at bay. Thus, despite his verbal advocacy of shootings, in practice he tended to support mass arrests and deportations to German concentration camps, particularly as he had an increasing need for slave labour. His policy of repression was, therefore, clearly contradictory: his brutal announcements and extreme orders cannot disguise the fact that he lacked a strategy to cope with the complex demands of the European resistance movements. Thus his approach varied from country to country, as will become clear from the following examples.

In the Protectorate, as already mentioned, the retaliatory excesses of June 1942 were followed by a certain degree of calm. In 1943, however, Himmler demanded a tougher policy. On 3 July, against the background of increasing Czech hostility to the Germans, he ordered the acting Reich Protector, Daluege, ‘immediately to take into protective custody and send to a concentration camp all those officials and employees of the Czech authorities who have shown a lack of commitment to their service or work’, and also, as a ‘preventative and deterrent measure’, ‘immediately to take 500 Czechs into protective custody and transfer them to a concentration camp’.
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In fact this no longer meant Auschwitz, because two months before he had instructed the Gestapo not to send any more Czechs there as the President of the Protectorate, Emil Hácha, had expressed concern about the ‘high death-rate’ in the camp.
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In September 1943 Himmler authorized his HSSPF Karl Frank, ‘for the purpose of restoring order as quickly as possible [ . . . ] to have Czech troublemakers and saboteurs hanged on the spot’. According to his own statements, Frank ensured that around 100 death sentences were passed each month, but these were announced only locally in order to play down the importance of the resistance movement.
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In Denmark too Himmler followed a comparatively cautious policy during the first half of 1943. He received first-hand information about the country from Werner Best, who had been appointed Reich Plenipotentiary in November 1942 and with whom his relationship had improved somewhat since the latter had left the RSHA in 1940. The former administrative chief of the Gestapo was answerable to the Foreign Ministry, but also supplied Himmler with his regular assessments of the situation.
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In return Himmler initially supported Best’s political line of continuing the low-key and cooperative policy as practised hitherto. The Reich Plenipotentiary limited himself to submitting ‘recommendations’ to the Danish government,
which was substantially independent. Even the relatively small Jewish minority in the country and refugees from other countries were left in peace.
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In July 1943 Himmler informed Best that he had told Hitler that, ‘from a purely security and sabotage point of view’, Denmark was ‘at the moment the best country’.
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Only a few weeks later, however, Himmler was to judge the situation very differently. During the summer of 1943 more and more acts of sabotage, strikes, and disturbances took place, and at the end of August Hitler responded by imposing a military state of emergency. And in this critical phase of German occupation policy the Danish Jews were also no longer going to be protected. Despite the state of emergency the acts of resistance increased. Finally, in December 1943 Himmler appointed a Higher SS and Police Leader in Denmark in the shape of Günther Pancke, a clear denigration of Reich Plenipotentiary Best and a critique of his lowkey policy towards the Danes, since he was thereby deprived of his control over the German police in the country. Himmler had good reason to tell Best, in a personal letter in October, ‘not to be sad’ about the appointment of his rival.
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The Reich Plenipotentiary responded by altering his policy: at the end of 1943 he subordinated Danish civilians to SS and police jurisdiction by creating a ‘Police Field Court’, and in January 1944 had this measure sanctioned by Hitler. During the following period this court repeatedly sentenced members of the resistance movement to death.
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In the occupied Netherlands the Higher SS and Police Leader, Hanns Rauter, had long been taking a hard line with the local resistance movement. In February 1943 he proposed to his Reichsführer responding to an act of sabotage that had just taken place by arresting 5,000 students (‘sons of plutocrats’) who belonged to the ‘reactionary camp’, returning all former NCOs of the Dutch armed forces to prisoner-of-war camp, and shooting fifty hostages. Himmler agreed, but advised: ‘I would not shoot the hostages if we are going simultaneously to arrest the five thousand.’
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After a further attack a few days later, however, he wanted the number of ‘sons of plutocrats’ increased. Moreover, in ‘most cases’ the fathers ought to be arrested at the same time. Civil servants who could be shown to have given false information ‘also belonged in the KZ, but they should be put in the quarry’. And ‘there mustn’t be any climb-downs. The emigration of the Jews must be kept going.’
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When, on the following day, a member of Mussert’s militia was murdered, Himmler informed Rauter that the previous day Hitler had reiterated
that ‘there must be absolutely no concessions; the toughest possible action must be taken’. Not only must the 5,000 ‘sons of plutocrats’ and their fathers be arrested, but, in addition to the NCOs, the ‘prominent pro-English reserve officers’ should also be interned.
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A few weeks later a doctors’ strike broke out, and once again Himmler told Rauter: ‘I’m in favour of taking really tough action.’ Three or four hundred strike leaders should be arrested and deported straight away to concentration camps in the Reich.
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At the beginning of May there was another strike, and this time almost a million Dutch people took part. Rauter broke it in the most brutal fashion, among other things by carrying out a hundred summary executions. His Reichsführer was full of praise for Rauter’s ‘vigorous action’.
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In September 1943 Rauter suggested establishing police courts martial. Himmler approved, and added that offenders’ families should also be punished by ‘confiscating their property, furniture and other effects, in fact everything’.
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At the same time Rauter worked out how one could deal with the resistance without becoming obviously involved in the role of the occupying power. As ‘retribution’ for an attack they should not be content with ‘locking up 100 well-known agitators’ from the province concerned in a concentration camp; rather, they could use ‘suitable men from the ‘Germanic SS’ ‘to carry out a reprisal under the leadership of our people and finish off three of the leading agitators’.
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Once again Himmler approved the plan, and Rauter lost no time in carrying it out. The very same month the Germanic SS went into action, and a total of fifty-five people fell victim to the so-called ‘Operation Silver Pine’.
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This represented the birth of a new concept of ‘counter-terror’ for combating the European resistance movements. In retaliation for attacks by the resistance, prominent persons who were known to be opponents of the Nazis were, where possible, ambushed and murdered, with the identities and motives of those involved remaining a mystery. The aim was to leave it uncertain as to whether the attacks were carried out by the occupation authorities themselves or on their instructions, or whether indigenous right-wing forces acting on their own initiative were responsible. The counter-terror was thus used in the first instance in the ‘Germanic countries’ in which the Nazi regime claimed that, because of ‘blood ties’, there was a broad basis for collaboration with the Reich; and in fact in a number of cases indigenous ‘comrades’ supported the SS’s counter-terror.

On 30 December 1943 Hitler summoned Best, Pancke, and the commander of Wehrmacht troops in Denmark and ordered them to engage in counter-terror. The whole operation was organized by Alfred Naujocks, who had been responsible for the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station in 1939. At the beginning of 1944 he brought a commando to Denmark, which the SS sabotage expert, Otto Skorzeny, had placed at his disposal. Danish Nazis who had joined the Schalburg corps, a unit not unlike the SS, participated in the preparation of the attacks. During the following weeks numerous individuals engaged in Danish public life were murdered in the street or in their own homes, and public buildings were blown up.
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In the summer of 1944 the counter-terror was extended to Norway and Belgium. In Oslo, during the course of ‘Operation Flower Picking’, a commando of the German security police murdered around two-dozen people who were suspected of supporting the resistance movement.
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In Brussels the ‘Jungklaus Office’, which had supposedly been established to recruit volunteers for the Waffen-SS, but in fact was the control centre for all the activities of the SS and SD in Belgium, became involved in the preparations. The attacks, to which Himmler gave his express approval on 4 June 1944 and for which he issued detailed guidelines, were carried out with the aid of Belgian fascists and were largely directed at well-known figures who had been prominent opponents of collaboration.
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