Heinrich Himmler : A Life (124 page)

Himmler’s idea of using the Jews as hostages with which to blackmail the western powers was not new: he had recommended this strategy before the so-called ‘Kristallnacht’ (‘Night of Broken Glass’), and the mass arrests of Jews during this November 1938 pogrom—accompanied by simultaneous international negotiations to improve the opportunities for emigration—fitted into this scenario. Holding Jews hostage in order to prevent the
Americans from entering the war seems to have figured both in the Madagascar plans of 1940 and in the commencement of the deportation of German Jews in the autumn of 1941, and since 1942 the SS leadership had repeatedly allowed individual prominent Jews to emigrate to a neutral country in exchange for large amounts of foreign currency.
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Himmler had obtained Hitler’s express permission to do this in December 1942, and in this connection had ordered that about 10,000 Jews should be held back in a special camp as ‘valuable hostages’.
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The ‘holding camp’ of Bergen-Belsen was established in spring 1943 with this in mind.
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And again in 1942, Dieter Wisliceny, Himmler’s adviser on Jewish matters in Slovakia, accepted a large sum in dollars from Jews, though it is not clear whether the halt called to deportations from Slovakia was actually related to this payment or whether the SS had in any case notified the end of deportations from Slovakia because German policy towards the Jews was meeting with increasingly strong resistance from the Slovak government.
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Whatever the case, when Wisliceny came to Budapest as part of the Sonderkommando Eichmann, representatives of the Zionist Support and Rescue Committee (Vaada) in Budapest contacted him in order to negotiate the emigration of a large number of Hungarian Jews in exchange for foreign currency or goods. The SS’s desire for 10,000 lorries soon emerged as the key element in the talks. The Jewish side paid several large sums in dollars in advance. Two emissaries from Vaada travelled to Istanbul to obtain assurances from the Allies to support the envisaged agreement with Eichmann. Should Himmler have had hopes of making indirect contact with the Allies via Jewish representatives, these were quickly dashed. The British had the two Vaada representatives arrested.
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Finally, two concrete agreements were reached in Budapest between the SS and Vaada. First of all, at the end of June 15,000 Hungarian Jews were deported as forced labour to Austria instead of to Auschwitz, so that, according to Eichmann’s assurances, they could be held in readiness for further exchange negotiations. But this was not a concession of any kind on the part of SS, for its intention was in any case to deploy Hungarian Jews as forced labour in the Vienna area. In the second place, agreement was reached to move 1,684 Hungarian Jews, also at the end of June, by special transport to the holding camp of Bergen-Belsen. From there they emigrated in two groups in August and December to Switzerland. The material quid pro quo was negotiated by Kurt Becher, director of the equipment staff at the HSSPF office in Hungary, first with Vaada
representatives and then, from August 1944, also with the representative of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in Switzerland, Saly Mayer. Up to January 1945 there were further talks on Swiss soil between representatives of the SS and Jewish organizations about feasible exchange deals: Jews for goods or money or—according to Himmler’s instructions to Becher at the end of 1944—for Romanian ethnic Germans who in the meantime had been cut off behind the German–Soviet front. When, at the end of November, a representative of the American War Refugee Board took part in one of these Zurich meetings it was the first time that Becher had had contact with an American government office. Yet if this raised in Himmler the hope of being able to advance to possible peace explorations, he was again disappointed, for in this respect the talks were completely fruitless.
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In parallel with this, in October 1944 in Vienna and in January 1945 in Wildbad in the Black Forest Himmler himself was conducting negotiations with Jean-Marie Musy, the former President of the Swiss Confederation, over the release of Jews. As a result, 1,200 people were allowed to travel from Theresienstadt to Switzerland.
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Himmler was to refer to these exchange projects in the final phase of the war when making a last attempt to establish contact with the Allies.

Thus Himmler was fully prepared to give up fairly small groups of Jewish prisoners if thereby he could achieve concrete returns and had the chance of establishing politically useful connections with the enemy. He also seems to have been willing to pursue serious negotiations for the release of larger groups of Jews if that would prolong the life of the Third Reich. Himmler was too strongly focused on utilitarian considerations to support the maxim of dragging as many ‘enemies’ as possible down to destruction with him. Instead, human lives were ruthlessly used as bargaining-chips. If exchanging them promised to bring advantages, he was as ready to take such a step as he was to commit mass murder. Having acted in close consultation with Hitler on the question of the exchange of Jewish prisoners at the end of 1942, what is not clear is up to what point in time and with what particulars Himmler kept Hitler informed about these negotiations. Although Himmler asserted that Hitler had found out about the release of the 1,684 and 1,200 Jews only after the event and had been highly indignant, this may have been a trick to show himself in a better light to his negotiating partners.
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Himmler’s idea of holding talks with the Allies about the exchange of Jewish prisoners rested, however, on the assumption that he would retain control over the prisoners up to the last possible moment. For this reason
(and because the working prisoners were, from the perspective of the SS, valuable capital, who furthermore were not to be left to the enemy as witnesses to the horrors of the concentration camps) Himmler decreed that the concentration camps were to be vacated and ‘evacuated’.

As early as 17 June 1944 Himmler had transferred the command of the concentration camps to the Higher SS and Police Leaders in the event of so-called ‘Situation A’ arising (defined at first as an uprising (A
ufstand
) on the part of the prisoners and then principally as the approach (A
nnäherung
) of enemy troops).
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The process of clearing and evacuation was to result in renewed selection of the prisoners: as a rule, the guards murdered weak and ill prisoners before the evacuation; in a number of concentration camps German prisoners were released. The prisoners were normally made to march on foot, mainly in winter weather and in catastrophic conditions. Anyone who got left behind was killed by the accompanying guards, and in many cases with local assistance. Concentration camps located further inside the Reich were the destination of these death marches from the main camps. The process of collecting a large number of prisoners in a decreasing number of camps resulted frequently in an almost complete breakdown in provisioning. Living conditions that were in any case disastrous became even more wretched.
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First of all the former ghettos and camps for Jewish forced workers in the Baltic States, which on Himmler’s instructions had been redesignated as concentration camps, had been cleared since the summer of 1944. Prisoners from the Kaiserwald camp complex close to Riga, from the Kowno concentration camp, and from Vaivara were deported by the SS mainly to Stutthof but also to Auschwitz.
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From September 1944 onwards a large number of prisoners were killed in two improvised gas chambers with Zyklon B.
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At the end of the year the first rail transports of prisoners left the main Stutthof camp and in January eleven columns were formed, each with a thousand prisoners, who were supposed to march on foot to Lauenburg (Leębork), 140 kilometres away. Only about one-third of the prisoners reached the city.
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From the summer of 1944 onwards Auschwitz was also being gradually cleared. At that time the camp still held some 130,000 prisoners, half of whom were now being moved to other concentration camps.
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The evacuation of the remaining 67,000 prisoners began in the middle of January 1945: the prisoners were marched westwards in columns; guards shot around a quarter of them during the march. Part of the marching columns
reached Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Lower Silesia, which became a transit camp for the camps and prisons in the east that had been cleared.
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Finally, 44,000 prisoners from the Rosen concentration-camp complex were taken in rail transports to camps situated further westwards.

Even if one of the motives behind Himmler’s evacuation of the camps was to retain as long as he could a large number of prisoners as potential objects of exchange, treatment continued to be harsh. The fact that the evacuation resulted in the death or murder of many prisoners was clearly not contrary to his intentions. The supposed humanitarian pose that Himmler adopted in conducting negotiations towards the end of the war for the release of Jews must be viewed against the background of this brutal and cynical evacuation process.

At the beginning of September Hitler gave his commander of the Reserve Army the task of preventing troop units from retreating from those occupied territories the Germans still held but which were outside the actual theatre of operations, and of setting up combat units in the rear area.
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In a speech on 21 September to the commanders of the military districts and those in charge of training, Himmler reported proudly how in the previous weeks he had criss-crossed the areas under threat (‘down the whole of the western front from Trier to Mühlhausen (Mulhouse), Colmar, Metz’), spoken with ‘thousands of soldiers’, and wherever he considered necessary had intervened, taking to task the negligent commander of a troop transport and personally demoting the incompetent commanding officer in Trier. ‘Brutal action against signs of indiscipline in the rear area’ was what he recommended to the officers present.
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The fact that in his entire military career Himmler himself had never made it beyond precisely this rear area (and never would do) did not seem to trouble him.

In Hitler’s eyes, however, Himmler’s stance as a merciless enforcer and fanatical driver of men clearly qualified him for further military responsibilities. In September he entrusted to him the task of creating a home guard (
Volkssturm
). The idea for a militia that would take on security responsibilities as the need arose was something Himmler had been considering for years. Back in January 1942 he had created the rural guard (
Landwacht
), and in December this was extended to be a rural and urban guard. In line with
an agreement reached between Himmler and Bormann, members of the SA, SS, and Nazi Party who had had not been called up for military service were the preferred source of recruits. This force was deployed, for example, to supervise forced workers or recapture escaped prisoners.
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Since June 1944 the Nazi leadership had been contemplating some kind of home guard in the event of a direct threat to Reich territory by enemy forces.
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In the middle of September Bormann, Himmler, and Keitel agreed that a home defence force (
Volkswehr
) should be set up. On 26 September Hitler signed the ‘Decree Concerning the Formation of the German “Volkssturm”’—that sounded distinctly more martial and historically significant. The decree stated that all men capable of bearing arms between the ages of 16 and 60 would be called up to the Volkssturm; ‘establishment and leadership’ would be the responsibility of the Gauleiters, while Himmler, in his capacity as commander of the Reserve Army, would be responsible for ‘military organization, training, equipment, and supplies for the German Volkssturm’. Even ‘combat operations’, Hitler’s decree read, were, ‘in line with my instructions’, placed under Himmler’s control.
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Himmler had already announced the creation of a home guard to commanders of the military districts and commanders in charge of training on 21 September,
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and the official notification came on 18 October in Königsberg at a roll-call of the Volkssturm there. For his speech, which was broadcast on the radio, Himmler had chosen a heavily symbolic date. This day, 18 October, he reminded his listeners, was the 131st anniversary of the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, an ideal opportunity to make reference to the Volkssturm of 1813 and its role in the Wars of Liberation. Himmler tried to bolster the people’s courage: back then an improvised militia had succeeded, in a military situation judged to be hopeless, in making an important contribution to the victory over Napoleon. A similar role was to be reserved for the present Volkssturm: ‘Our enemies must be taught to understand that every kilometre they advance into our country will cost them rivers of their own blood. Every building in the town, every village, every farm, every forest will be defended by men, young and old, and—if necessary—by girls and women too.’
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On 12 November, in all Gaus, at least as far as the conditions of war permitted, the Volkssturm guard was ceremoniously sworn in.
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Himmler appointed Berger as Chief of Staff of the Volkssturm, and the latter gathered a suitable team. A dynamic character, Berger soon exceeded his powers, which in fact were entirely confined to the military side of the Volkssturm’s creation, and this led Bormann to complain to Himmler.
Although Himmler admonished Berger to ‘stick to his proper task’, in the end the two of them had their way over Bormann.
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On 16 October Berger issued training instructions for the Volkssturm, which required ‘ideological activation’ in particular, as well as weapons training and field exercises.
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In theory 6 million men were potentially available, more than were in the regular army.
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The military quality of this final call to arms was, however, more than inadequate: for their ‘service’ in the Volkssturm (exercises in the evenings and at weekends) people wore worn-out civilian clothing or uniforms belonging to any and every military and non-military organization. An armband was the sign identifying the wearer as a combatant as defined by international laws of war.
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The Volkssturm had few weapons at its disposal, and its firearms, collected from all sorts of places, were mostly of doubtful value. Military training as a rule was limited to a superficial orientation.
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