Heinrich Himmler : A Life (148 page)

29
. Ibid. 101 ff.

30
. BAB, R 2/12 1172a; see Schulte,
Zwangsarbeit
, 98 ff., and Kaienburg,
Wirtschaft
,123 ff. and 137 ff.

31
. For the most detailed account of these enterprises see Kaienburg,
Wirtschaft
, 159 ff. and 185 ff. On the early SS businesses see also Allen,
Business
, 31 ff.; Enno Georg,
Die wirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen der SS
(Stuttgart, 1963), 12; and Schulte,
Zwangsarbeit
, 93 f.

32
. These were Franz Nagy, the sculptor Theodor Kärner, and Bruno Galke, who was the man responsible in the Personal Staff for, among other things, the SS businesses. Albert Knoll, ‘Die Porzellanmanufaktur München-Allach. Das Lieblingskind von Heinrich Himmler’, in
KZ-Auβenlager. Geschichte und Erinnerung
, Dachauer Hefte 15 (Dachau, 1999), 116–33; Gabriele Huber,
Die Porzellan-Manufaktur Allach-München GmbH. Eine ‘Wirtschaftsunternehmung’ der SS zum Schutz der‘deutschen Seele’
(Marburg, 1992), 12 ff.

33
. Huber,
Porzellan-Manufaktur
, 46.

34
. Ibid. 27, in 1940.

35
. Knoll, ‘Porzellanmanufaktur’, 120.

36
. Himmler to Pohl, 26 September 1939, published in Heinrich Himmler,
Reichsführer! . . . Briefe an und von Himmler
, ed. and intr. by Helmut Heiber (Stuttgart, 1968), no. 52.

37
. Huber,
Porzellan-Manufaktur
, 44 ff.

38
. Ibid. 51 ff.

39
. On the course in national politics see doc. PS-1992 (A), in
IMT
, vol. 29, pp. 206 ff. It took place from 15 to 23 January 1937. For the speech to the Gruppenführer see BAB, NS 19/4005, 8 November 1938, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 25 ff.

40
.
Schutzstaffel
, 3. In his speech of January 1937 he said that the coming decades would mean a ‘battle to the point of annihilation of those subhuman enemies I have mentioned throughout the world against Germany as the core nation of the Nordic race, against Germany as the core nation of the Germanic nation, against Germany as the bearer of culture for humanity. They will mean the to be or not to be of white men, of which we are the leading nation’ (
IMT
, vol. 29, pp. 206 ff., quotation 234).

41
. In his speech at the Reich Peasants’ Rally of 1935 Himmler had asserted that ‘our common and eternal enemy, the Jew’ was responsible for the violent Christianization of the Saxons, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts, and the outbreak of the Thirty Years War (
Schutzstaffel
, 5).

42
. BAB, NS 19/4012, speech to the conference of Reich chief propaganda officials, 26 January 1944.

43
. BAB, NS 19/4009, speech in the Haus der Flieger, 9 June 1942, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 145 ff., here 147. On the battle between Asia and Europe see also NS 19/4009, speech at the SS officers’ training college (Junkerschule) at Bad Tölz, 23 November 1942, and NS 19/4014, speech to representatives of the German judiciary in Kochem, 25 May 1944; ibid. speech in Sonthofen, 21 June 1944.

44
. ‘This struggle is a conflict […] of two leader classes or leadership classes, on the one hand the leadership of the subhumans: Jews, commissars and politruks, who are convinced to their core of their ideology, fanatical supporters of this doctrine of destruction, for this idea of an Asian empire, and in reality prepared to use ultimate and brutal means for the sake of this conviction. [ . . . ] This is a battle of ideologies, as was the battle with the Huns at the time of the migrations, as was the battle throughout the Middle Ages with Islam, where not only religion was at stake but also a battle of the races.’ BAB, NS 19/4014, speech to the Oberabschnittsführer and chief officers in the Haus der Flieger, 9 June 1942, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 145 ff., quotation 150. For the term ‘politruk’, see below Ch. 12, n. 92.

45
. BAB, NS 19/4014, speech in Sonthofen, 21 June 1944.

46
. Ibid. speech in Sonthofen, 24 May 1944. In his Vienna speech of 1939 he had already spoken of the ‘unfortunate doctrine of an Asianized Christianity’ (BAB, NS 19/3666, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 51). On 16 September
1942, in a speech made in his headquarters at Hegewald, he imputed to the church typically ‘oriental’ concepts (NS 19/4009).

47
. BAB, NS 19/4005, speech at the Gruppenführer meeting in Munich, 8 November 1938, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 25 ff., here 9. In the same speech, however, Himmler also spoke of the future ‘Germanic’ Reich (ibid. 38 f.). The topos of the ‘Greater Germanic state’ can be found in a speech he made at the end of 1940 (NS 19/4007, undated). ‘Greater Germania’ was then invoked above all in his speech in Posen on 24 October 1943 (NS 19/4011), as well as in Sonthofen on 24 May 1944 (NS 19/4014). Cf. Frank-Lothar Kroll,
Utopie als Ideologie. Geschichtsdenken und politisches Handeln im Dritten Reich
(Paderborn, 1998), 217 ff.

48
. BAB, NS 19/4012, speech on the occasion of the conference of Reich chief propaganda officials, 26 January 1944.

49
. BAB, NS 19/4009.

50
. BAB, NS 19/4007, speech to the Gauleiters, 29 February 1940, also published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 116 ff., quotation 125.

51
. BAB, NS 19/4013, speech in Sonthofen, 5 May 1944: ‘Out of countless millions of possibilities, two who share in the inheritance of the blood came together in some kind of embrace which reunited the few drops of Aryan blood so copiously lost in this territory of Russia–Eastern Europe–Asia, as much of this genetic material, which alone is capable of organizing and giving organized leadership, as is needed to produce a dangerous Attila or Genghis Khan or Stalin or Lenin from a brutal Asian unrestrained by any moral feeling. Woe to the European, Germanic, Aryan human beings every time that over there such a one has emerged, capable of organizing and leading armies and powerful forces made up of this mass of subhumanity.’

52
. As in his speech in Posen on 4 October 1943 (BAB, NS 19/4010), also published as doc. PS-1919 in
IMT
, vol. 29, pp. 110 ff., esp. pp. 145 f.; also his speech in Posen of 6 October 1943 (ibid.), published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 162 ff., esp. 169.

53
. For this reason I consider Kroll’s attempt (
Utopie
, 209 ff.) to interpret this vision of the world as a more or less coherent whole and largely independent of its timing as not entirely convincing, as this necessarily involves disregarding changes over time and smoothing over blatant contradictions. Kroll’s correct observation that, for example, Himmler’s ideology of a Greater Germanic Reich contains ‘a considerable measure of pragmatic political calculation’ (p. 219) should have led, in my opinion, to a deconstruction of these texts, whereas Kroll’s analysis is directed towards reconstructing a vision of the world that probably never existed in such a clear and abstract form as this.

54
. See above, pp. 218 ff.

55
. See above, p. 220.

56
. BAB, NS 19/4011, 16 December 1943. On Waralda see also the speech of 26 July 1944, published in Himmler,
Geheimreden
, 215 ff., 217.

57
. NARA, T 580/150/229, RFSS to Wüst, 28 May 1940.

58
. BAB, NS 19/3670 (undated).

59
. BAB, NS 19/4013, 26 November 1944.

60
. Himmler to Pohl and Müller, quoted from the report ‘Tätigkeit der Zeugen Jehovas in der Neuzeit: Deutschland’,
Jahrbuch der Zeugen Jehovas
(1974), 66–253, here 196 f.

61
. On 6 January 1943 Himmler ordered that Jehovah’s Witnesses under arrest should be made to work in SS households (Garbe,
Widerstand
, 451). He offered ‘Bible students’ to, among others, his old friend Rehrl and also to a farmer in Valepp, where he owned an alpine hut; see Mühldorfer, ‘Fridolfing’; Johannes Wrobel, ‘Valepp/Schliersee (Bauer Marx)’, in Wolfgang Benz and Barbara Distel (eds),
Der Ort des Terrors. Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager
, vol. 2:
Frühe Lager, Dachau, Emslandlager
(Munich, 2005), 522 f. From March 1944 to April 1945 Himmler had a work detail of twenty prisoners carry out construction work on air-raid shelters on his property in Gmund. Margarete Himmler observed the progress of the work and complained about the prisoners’ poor performance; one of them died while at work. See Hans-Günter Richardi, ‘Der gerade Weg. Der Dachauer Häftling Karl Wagner’, in
Dachauer Hefte
7, 52–101, esp. 52 ff. Wagner worked there from March to April 1944.

62
. BAB, NS 19/3947, 21 July 1944, published in Ackermann,
Himmler
, 305 f.

63
. BAB, NS 19/4003, speech at the Gruppenführer meeting in Dachau, 8 November 1936. On ancestor worship cf. Ackermann,
Himmler
, 64 ff.

64
. BAB, NS 19/4003, speech at the Gruppenführer meeting in Dachau, 8 November 1936.

65
. BAB, NS 19/4004, speech at the Gruppenführer meeting in Bad Tölz, 18 February 1937. On this matter see also Ackermann,
Himmler
, 68 ff.

66
. BAB, NS 19/2241, 25 February 1937.

67
. Karl August Eckhardt,
Irdische Unsterblichkeit. Germanischer Glaube an die Wiederverkörperung in der Sippe
(Weimar, 1937). Himmler had at first reversed his original agreement to have a special edition of the book printed for the SS, upon which Eckhardt, deeply offended, withdrew his suggestion to found an institute; Eckhardt to Wolff, 9 December 1937. Himmler and Eckhardt discussed the matter, however, after which the plans for the institute were realized (see also the correspondence in the same file).

68
. On Himmler’s view of history as ‘eternal recurrence’ see Kroll,
Utopie
, 245 ff.

69
. See Klaus von See,
Deutsche Germanenideologie. Vom Humanismus bis zur Gegenwart
(Frankfurt a. M., 1970); Rainer Kipper,
Der Germanenmythos im Deutschen Kaiserreich. Formen und Funktionen historischer Selbstthematisierung
(Göttingen, 2002); Joachim Heinzle,
Die Nibelungen. Lied und Sage
(Darmstadt, 2005).

70
. Published in Ackermann,
Himmler
, doc. no. 8, 253 ff. (undated).

71
. See Michael H. Kater,
Das ‘Ahnenerbe’ der SS 1935–1945. Ein Beitrag zur Kulturpolitik des Dritten Reiches
, 4th extended edn. (Munich, 2006), 95 f. and 108 f.

72
. As Kroll notes (
Utopie
, 236 f.).

73
. On Himmler’s re-Germanization of the early Middle Ages see in particular ibid. 237 ff.

74
. BAB, NS 19/4004, speech in Bad Tölz, 18 February 1937.

75
. BAB, NS 19/4003, speech by Himmler in Quedlinburg cathedral, 2 July 1936; Himmler,
Schutzstaffel
, 5.

76
. Himmler,
Schutzstaffel
, 12.

77
. Hitler did not, however, name Charlemagne but rather praised ‘those great German emperors […] who with a merciless sword and disregarding the fates of the individual tribes strove to bring more German people together’ (
Parteitag der Freiheit. Reden des Führers und ausgewählte Kongressreden am Reichsparteitag der NSDAP 1935
(Munich, 1935), 123, closing address). On Hitler’s vigorous rejection of criticism of Charlemagne see
Tagebücher Goebbels
, 15 November 1936.

78
. H. W. Scheidt, ‘Die Christianisierung Germaniens im Lichte nationalsozialistischer Geschichtsbetrachtung’,
SS
-
Leitheft
, 3/5 (1937), 58–62, quotation 60.

79
. BAB, NS 19/4014, speech to Wehrmacht officers in Sonthofen, 24 May 1944. Similar comments are to be found in his speech at a conference of Oberbürgermeister and senior local government officials that took place on 12 and 13 February 1944 in Posen: Charlemagne was, he said, the first ‘great uniter of the Reich’ (BAB, NS 19/4012). See also the ideological training materials issued by the Reichsführer-SS: In the booklet entitled
Rassenpolitik
(‘Racial Policy’) issued by the SS Main Office (Berlin, 1943) there is on p. 42 the still somewhat ambivalent statement: ‘And however much we reject Charlemagne’s methods of compulsion in individual cases, we must acknowledge that he made the Europe of his day into a powerful unit.’
Erzählte Geschichte
, Part 3 (Berlin, no date), the textbook for German lessons intended for SS members of German ethnic groups and Germanic units, did not make heavy weather of it, celebrating Charlemagne as ‘the uniter of Europe’ (29 ff.).