Heinrich Himmler : A Life (119 page)

Himmler insisted that only men in groups I and II of the four-level racial scheme of the RuSHA should be allowed to become members of the SS. Men in group III could ‘join the volunteer units of the Waffen-SS’ or the order police, ‘which are under the command of the RFSS’.
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The same applied to Reich German SS volunteers who were not considered racially suitable for the SS.
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In spring 1943 Himmler ordered the establishment of a further SS corps, the so-called Germanic Panzer corps, which was intended to comprise the ‘Viking’ division and a new unit formed out of the existing volunteer corps, the ‘Northland’ division.
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Himmler explained his ultimate aim in establishing such a corps, composed of members of various nations, in a note
of February 1944: the Germanic corps was intended to form the cadre for recruitment and training in the event of ‘having to introduce legal conscription in the Germanic countries later, which will undoubtedly be necessary’.
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In September 1943 Himmler asserted that Hitler had approved this view in principle, and was of the opinion that the formation of the Wehrmacht in Germanic countries should take place under the control of the SS’.
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If one takes into account Himmler’s successful compulsory recruitment of ethnic Germans living outside Germany and bears in mind the fact that, from 1943 onwards, he concentrated on recruiting ‘ethnic alien’ units to serve within the framework of the SS, it becomes clear how he envisaged the armed forces of a future Germanic empire. Alongside the Wehrmacht there would be a Waffen-SS whose elite troops would comprise Reich Germans, ethnic Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Danes, Norwegians, and, if necessary, troops from other countries classified as ‘Germanic’. Around this core would be grouped units whose ‘ethnic alien’ members would not be seen as being SS-worthy, but (and this is clear from the recruitment attempts during the last phase of the regime) could come from almost every European nation (with the exception of Poland), a kind of gigantic foreign legion, whose members would serve in separate ‘national’ units.

In his speech to the Gau and Reich leaders in Posen on 3 August 1944 Himmler mentioned his aim of forming thirty SS ‘European divisions’ in the post-war period. Effectively this represented the future peacetime strength of a European SS, which could then be expanded in the event of war. Together with its purely German troops, the Waffen-SS would have reached a sufficient size to make it a second autonomous land-based military force alongside the Army.
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(Himmler’s ambitions seem to have gone beyond the creation of a land-based army. In 1944 he reached agreement with the Navy to establish a ‘Germanic Naval Reserve Section’, which was based in Sennheim in Alsace—in other words, a safe distance from the sea—and was being prepared for deployment with the Navy.)
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Viewing Himmler’s efforts at recruitment during the last years of the war from this perspective, it is clear that what at first sight appears to be a hectic and desperate cobbling together of the last and least militarily effective reserves represented from Himmler’s point of view a logical and integral part of his Greater Germanic vision.

On 10 August 1943 Hitler appointed Himmler Reich Minister of the Interior.
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At this point he was of the opinion, as he informed Goebbels, that the Reichsführer was ‘a quite exceptional figure in our regime’.
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The previous incumbent, Dr Wilhelm Frick, who had held the post since 1933, was fobbed off with the purely representative office of Reich Protector in Bohemia and Moravia.
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Hitler did not expect that in his new role Himmler would carry out structural changes to the state machine or fundamentally alter the relationship between party and state. Rather, his appointment was intended to strengthen further his reputation as the man primarily responsible for the ‘security’ of the Third Reich and to round off his area of responsibilities. ‘Himmler is undoubtedly the right man to control domestic policy’, Goebbels noted in his diary. ‘At any rate, he will guarantee our internal security under all circumstances.’
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Nevertheless, Himmler’s assumption of his office on 26 August was followed by a number of changes within the ministry. Himmler reorganized it into two areas of activity: he placed the departments for the constitution and administration, civil defence, personnel, and local government in the section ‘Internal Administration’ under state secretary Wilhelm Stuckart, and assigned the other section, health administration, to state secretary Dr Leonardo Conti.
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He transferred the tasks of the ministry’s department IV, to which were subordinated the existing institutes for Ethnic Research, and Research into Foreign Countries and Peoples, to the SD’s foreign department in the RSHA. In this way Himmler had not only taken a step towards ensuring that these institutions could be utilized for foreign espionage; in addition he had brought such important institutions as the Ethnic German Working Groups, the German Foreign Institute, and the Wannsee Institute, which was responsible for research on Russia, under his control, thereby acquiring Nazi research capabilities in the fields of ethnicity and foreign countries that he could utilize for his long-range plan for ‘living-space’.
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Himmler, who visited the Interior Ministry only two or three times during the period of his incumbency, controlled it from his field headquarters, where his long-term assistant Rudolf Brandt acted as head of the
ministerial office. In fact, the Interior Ministry under Himmler as minister operated to a large extent independently under state secretary Stuckart.
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Himmler kept his distance from the Ministry, not only on account of his numerous other tasks but also because of his distrust of the state bureaucracy and his general dislike of lawyers and officials. As Interior Minister he continually inveighed against bureaucratic formalism and schematic approaches. For example, in order to break through the anonymity of administrative documents he often demanded that the official dealing with the issue should sign the correspondence personally.
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He supported the idea that county administrators (
Landräte
) should hold their posts for a maximum of ten years only, which resulted in a lengthy dispute with Bormann.
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He considered it necessary to make frequent ostentatious statements that in future he would be relentless in rooting out corruption in the administration,
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and he signed an edict restricting the employment of close relatives in the same government body, which, given the actual situation in small local authorities, was singularly naive.
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Himmler admonished his officials to treat citizens in a way ‘that is worthy of a German Teuton person’. In the event of such admonitions having no effect, in a speech to the mayors of large cities he advised them: ‘you should try treating these gentlemen officials in the same offensive way as they treat the nation.’ Himmler had found a new task: ‘We shall jolly well teach these people, and anyone who doesn’t get the message will one day get the boot.’
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The new minister placed a particular emphasis on ‘strengthening self-administration’
*
as he put it.
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The reason why he was particularly concerned with rearranging the responsibilities of mayors and county administrators was that, as part of the wartime rationalization of the administration, from 1943 onwards attempts had been made to delegate administrative tasks to the lowest level. The Party Chancellery had been a particular advocate of this because, by transferring responsibilities to a new middle-tier authority between the Reich and county levels (an enhanced Gau) as well as by strengthening the municipalities vis-à-vis the directly state-controlled counties, it was aiming to increase the authority of the party at the expense of the state bureaucracy. Gauleiters were to be given more independence from ministerial bureaucracy and Nazi mayors from county administrators.

While Frick had always opposed this policy of Bormann’s, Himmler was more sympathetic to such ideas. When in the coming months he advocated ‘strengthening self-administration’ his main ulterior motive was, in close alliance with Bormann, to weaken the state administration in favour of the party. They had both discussed the future policy of the Interior Ministry a few days before Himmler’s appointment.
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Himmler’s inimitable personal contribution to this attempt at a structural shift in power was the way in which he tried—with references to the ‘Germanic tradition of cooperation’, to Henry I as a founder of cities, or to the historic role of ‘German mayors as supporters of the tradition of the Reich’—to provide these administrative changes with an ideological gloss.
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But in the final analysis little came of it.
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It is true that Himmler was able to achieve limited successes at regional level with his attempts at meeting the wishes of the party through administrative restructuring. For example, he secured Führer edicts to divide up the Prussian provinces of Saxony and Hesse-Nassau into a total of four new provinces, as well as for the reorganization of the Lower Weser area, thereby serving the needs of the Gauleiters affected by these changes.
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However, he rejected Bormann’s attempt to close district governors’ offices (
Regierungspräsidien
), thereby strengthening Lammers’s and Stuckart’s position, which was vital for maintaining the authority of the state vis-à-vis the ambitions of the Gauleiters.
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These examples show the extent to which Himmler became involved in the details of the power struggle between party and state without being in a position to develop a uniform political line and get it implemented.

This inability became evident to all those involved at a series of big meetings at which Himmler tried to give the office heads the impression that, with his appointment as Reich Minister of the Interior, a fresh wind was blowing though its dusty offices. Whether at the ‘Assembly’ of the government of the General Government in Cracow on 18 November 1943,
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or at the conference of all the district governors on 10–11 January 1944 in Breslau,
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or at the meeting of mayors of large cities (Oberbürgermeister) and Landeshauptmänner
*
on 12 and 13 February in Posen
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—at all of them the pressing problems with which the administration saw itself
confronted during the war (shortage of personnel, the consequences of the air war, and so on) came under discussion. But Himmler invariably limited himself to generalities; he had no solutions to offer.
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Despite his limited success, however, through his promotion to Reich Interior Minister Himmler joined the leadership group of Goebbels, Bormann, and Speer, which was pressing for German society to be forced to adjust to the requirements of ‘total war’. Goebbels, in particular, repeatedly noted the ‘absolute agreement of our views’
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and praised Himmler’s policy.
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However, he did not want Himmler to take over any more responsibilities: ‘Himmler has already got too much to do and cannot do most of it by himself’, as he observed in his diary.
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Goebbels also carefully noted that Bormann, who since his appointment as head of the Party Chancellery had been considered one of Himmler’s closest allies, now began increasingly to distance himself from him: ‘Bormann has become a bit sceptical about Himmler because he is taking on too many things. It’s not good if someone in the NS leadership gets too big; the others must then make sure that he is brought back into line.’
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Power-political rivalry and common interests balanced one another among this group. There also seem to have been tensions between Speer and Himmler. In May 1944, at any rate, Goebbels advised Speer to resolve his differences with Himmler and Bormann, for both ‘belong to our most active circle’.
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In his role as Reich Minister of the Interior Himmler found himself faced with a fundamental conflict of interest: For political-ideological reasons he supported the policy, developed above all by Bormann, of replacing state administration by Nazi ‘leadership’ (
Menschenführung
). As Interior Minister in time of war, however, he had to be concerned to maintain traditional administrative structures. And if he actually tried to introduce changes to the administrative structure of the state he would be accused of being hungry for power. Himmler ‘solved’ this complicated situation by leaving things unsettled.

As we have already seen, Himmler’s attempt to establish his own armaments concern failed in September 1942 as a result of the SS’s lack of the relevant skills, and of opposition from industry and from Speer. The majority of the armaments projects that Himmler had wanted to carry out in the
concentration camps never materialized, or not nearly to the extent that had been envisaged;
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most SS plants, whether based inside or outside concentration camps, did not transfer their production to armaments.
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The only plants to engage in full-scale armaments production were the German Earth and Stone Works Company and the furniture factories based in the Protectorate.
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When Himmler claimed, in a speech to the Gruppenführer in October 1943: ‘We have armaments plants in the concentration camps’, this was, to put it mildly, somewhat exaggerated.
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Himmler, however, did not give up. But he now concentrated above all on exotic projects. In autumn 1943 he promised Hitler ‘to meet the Waffen-SS and police oil requirements by processing oil shale ourselves’, and for this purpose in May 1944 founded the German Oil Shale Co. Ltd. (Deutsche Schlieferöl GmbH). Ten oil-shale plants employing only concentration camp inmates were established in Württemberg. This was followed in September 1944 by the establishment of the German Peat Processing Co. Ltd. (Deutsche Torfverwertung GmbH) to collect peat to produce motor-vehicle fuel.
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