Heinrich Himmler : A Life (17 page)

His speaking activities were, of course, given extensive coverage in the
Kurier von Niederbayern
, the party newspaper edited by Himmler. In his role as an energetic rural agitator he dealt mainly with day-to-day political issues: he attacked the Dawes Plan (the 1924 adjustment by the Germans and the Allies of the reparations imposed by the Versailles Treaty),
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justified the Nazis’ support for compensation for the former royal families,
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and strongly criticized the Treaty of Locarno.
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However, his comments on day-to-day politics were saturated with völkisch ideology and implied more general political positions. Anti-Semitism formed a leitmotif in his speeches; he expatiated on ‘dark Jewish conspiracies’, spoke on the theme of ‘Jews and Bolshevism’ and on the ‘Dangers posed by Jewry’.
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On 9 October 1924 he published a rabidly anti-Semitic article in his party newspaper. ‘Newspapers, the telegraph and the telephone, inventions of the German and Aryan spirit,’ were now, he explained to his readers, being used ‘in the service of the Jewish drive for world supremacy’. And now ‘the newest invention [ . . . ] the wireless transmitter’, which as ‘radio entertainment could be a means of education for the improvement of a whole nation and as such of huge benefit to the state and the nation’, was ‘without exception in the hands of Jewish businesses’. As a result ‘of course only purely Jewish Talmudic productions of trite pseudo-culture or shamelessly corrupted products of the German spirit are broadcast to the world’. In May and June 1925, seemingly prompted by having just read an exposé (‘a marvellous book’), he concentrated in particular on Freemasonry, or rather on the alleged close relationship between Freemasons and Jews. Moreover, in the book he had come across a historical elite which in his opinion represented a model, the warrior caste of the Hindus: ‘we must be the Kshatriya caste. That will be our salvation.’
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But those were private thoughts which he did not reveal to the Lower Bavarian peasants. However, in his speeches he did admit that as a model of organization the hated Freemasons were not to be despised. Thus, in a speech in Dingolfing in May 1925, ‘On the Character and Goals of the Freeemasons’, he ‘repeatedly emphasized that we National Socialists could learn much from this organization, each part of which is highly efficient, and so long as we fail to
awaken the same sense of duty in ourselves we shall never achieve our goal’.
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Himmler also repeatedly dealt with agricultural issues in this predominantly agrarian district of Lower Bavaria, these being only too obvious given the agrarian crisis that began in 1925–6. Many peasants had become heavily indebted during the preceding years and now found themselves faced with falling prices. On 15 April 1926, for example, the
Kurier
reported on a meeting of the Plattling NSDAP local branch in which ‘Herr Dipl.-Ag. Party comrade Himmler from Landshut spoke about the collapse of German agriculture’. According to the
Kurier
, numerous farmers had attended from the surrounding villages, who ‘listened with bated breath to the speaker’s clear and lively observations’. Himmler had larded his thoroughly anti-Semitic speech with numerous references to agrarian issues, which were intended to demonstrate his expertise in the subject. He related ‘the terrible suffering of our nation since 1918’, he described ‘the systematic stifling and muzzling of every profession, and now their last representative, the peasantry, was about to succumb to international stock-exchange Jewry’. Mercilessly he castigated ‘the so-called peasant leadership, whether they are called Heim or Kühler, Schlittenbauer or Gandorfer, since they’re all slaves of Jewish loan capital’. The former employee of the Schleissheim nitrogen-fertilizer plant referred to the ‘disastrous influence of the artificial fertilizer syndicates’ as well as the no less fateful role of the grain exchange, ‘which dictates prices to the peasant so that, despite the heavy burdens and taxes, he can hardly recoup the costs of production, with the result that he is forced to sell plots of land at knock-down prices or to take on loans from Jewish banks on crippling conditions’. According to Himmler, the only salvation lay in ‘at last getting to know who our real common enemy is, and in the indomitable will to take on this enemy together’; all ‘those of German stock must join together in a socially aware national community with the election slogan “the common weal before self-interest” and establish a new state based on National Socialism under the banner of the swastika’.
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At the same time Himmler published a piece in the
Nationalsozialistische Briefe
in which he expressed very similar views: ‘the monopolistic position of the artificial fertilizer concerns’ allegedly bore the primary responsibility for the high production costs which, together with cheap imports, the high price of credit, and ‘Jewish’ speculation in land, would lead to the collapse of
German agriculture.
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He repeated the same arguments in an article which appeared in the
Kurier von Niederbayern
in July 1926.
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Himmler was also fond of impressing his listeners with wide-ranging historical observations. In a speech in Geisenhausen on 12 September 1925, for example, he explained ‘the more significant links between the paths taken by German and Jewish politics’. He began, according to the
Kurier
, ‘with, so to speak, the earliest years of German history [ . . . ] then briefly touched on the intellectual characteristics of our neighbouring states [ . . . ] then discussed the Jesuits, the Reformation, the peasantry [ . . . ] and explained the more profound causes of the Thirty Years War’, and then finally, in dealing with ‘the noble and far-sighted policies of Bismarck’, reached the climax of his speech.
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On 19 November 1925 in Landshut, ‘in a speech lasting two hours [ . . . ] he described the paths followed by Jewish politics in Spain, France, England, and Germany from the Middle Ages until today’.
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It can also be shown that, from autumn 1925 onwards, Himmler increasingly referred to the idea of ‘National Socialism’, in other words the political slogan of his mentor, Gregor Strasser.
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Sometimes these rhetorical efforts met with immediate success. According to a report in the
Kurier
, ‘following a short speech by party comrade Himmler on 20 November 1924 in the village of Astorf, a new local branch of the Völkisch Bloc was founded and joined by all twenty-four of the men present’. A local branch was also founded in Malgersdorf at the end of November after Himmler had spoken about ‘The Coming Reichstag Elections’.
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On 9 March 1926, according to a party member from Dingolfing, ‘Party comrade Himmler’ had ‘once again agreed to favour us with a talk’. The remark of the reporter to the effect that Himmler ‘had developed [
sic
] into an excellent speaker with a profound intellect, wide knowledge, and logical eloquence’ suggests that he may have felt less ‘gratified’ on the occasion of previous talks by Himmler.
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In any event, the reports in the
Kurier
show that the frequency of his speeches increased sharply after the spring of 1925, that the individual branches requested his presence more often, and that he now also increasingly spoke outside the Gau area. ‘Party comrade Himmler made a major impression’, according to a
Kurier
report on a speech he gave in Siegen at the beginning of April 1925. According to the article, the trip to southern Westphalia was a real triumph: ‘His success was even greater in Niederscheiden, Weidenau, and Eisern, where Party comrade Himmler also spoke. Let’s hope we shall soon see the return of this fresh and ardent canvasser for our great ideas. Hail!’
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One topic was noticeable for its absence from all these speeches: Adolf Hitler. That is all the more remarkable given that, during the years 1925–6, and based on his reputation as a ‘martyr’ of the failed putsch, Hitler was busy constructing a real Führer cult round himself and using this systematically to create a dictatorial position for himself within the NSDAP and to enlarge the mass basis of the party. Himmler’s more matter-of-fact and somewhat distanced approach to Hitler was probably influenced by his mentor Strasser, who saw in Hitler primarily a useful front-man for ‘National Socialism’, but was by no means prepared to let himself be carried away by the wave of Führer worship. After Himmler had gradually waded through the first volume of
Mein Kampf
during the course of 1925–7, he noted rather tersely: ‘There is a lot of truth in it.’ But he also commented critically: ‘The first chapters on his youth contain a number of weaknesses.’
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He read the second volume of Hitler’s work in December 1927, and agreed above all with the passages concerning ‘the difference in value between the various human races’. He mentioned Hitler’s comment, referring to Socialist functionaries whom he considered responsible for Germany’s defeat, that ‘twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the nation ought to have been gassed’ during the war.
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There is no evidence, however, that he was at all enthusiastic about the book; the second volume does not even appear in his reading-list, which he otherwise kept very carefully. Himmler does not appear to have had the typical revivalist type experience that would have drawn him into a charismatic relationship with Hitler.

Considering Himmler’s extensive speechifying and travel, it is not surprising that he rather neglected his bureaucratic duties in the Landshut party office. He was probably happy to put up with this failing: dealing with matters on the spot and keeping in constant contact with the people ‘outside’ seemed to him more important. Moreover, he needed time for his paramilitary activities, which he still kept up in Landshut. This time the organization was called the ‘William Tell Shooting and Hiking League’, a successor organization to the Landshut Free Corps, founded in 1919, of which he had already been a member in that year.

In January 1926 the Tell Shooting and Hiking League aroused the interest of the police. The Nazi Party office in Landshut, Himmler’s place of work, was under observation and, when he left the building around midday on 12 January, the criminal police waiting outside requested him to accompany them to the police-station for an interrogation.

According to Himmler’s statement to the police, the purpose of the Tell League was ‘the physical and mental training and further education of young people through hiking and rifle shooting’. They did not possess military weapons. The subsequent search of Himmler’s lodgings and the lodgings of a retired Major Mahler produced written material belonging to the latter indicating that the previous summer the League had held exercises in which members had been armed with infantry weapons. However, Himmler brazenly maintained that weapons had not been used and that the assumption was ‘pure speculation’ on the part of the police. A Reichswehr first lieutenant turned up, who confirmed this statement.
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The investigations appear not to have been pursued; the authorities evidently had no interest in investigating paramilitary activities backed by the Reichswehr.

Himmler was now 26 years of age and, despite his largely independent activity in Landshut, was generally regarded in the party as the ‘young man’ who worked for Gregor Strasser. In April 1926 a visitor arrived from the Rhineland. Party comrade Joseph Goebbels made a series of speeches in Lower Bavaria accompanied by Himmler. ‘In Landshut: Himmler: a good chap, very intelligent’, Goebbels noted patronizingly in his diary.
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In September 1926 Gregor Strasser became propaganda chief of the NSDAP. This appointment was evidently part of an internal party arrangement to resolve finally the conflict between the Party headquarters and the more ‘left’-inclined ‘Working Group of North-West German Gauleiters of the NSDAP’ that had been going on since 1925. The most important representatives of the ‘north-west German’ line were given significant posts in the party and were thereby neutralized as a potential core of internal opposition. This was after they had been outmanoeuvred by Hitler at a meeting of party leaders in Bamberg in February 1926. Apart from Strasser, who may be regarded as the mentor of the working group, Joseph Goebbels, who went to Berlin as Gauleiter in October 1926, and Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, who took over the leadership of the storm troopers (SA) on 1 November and soon renamed himself Franz von Pfeffer, were also rewarded in this way.
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Himmler accompanied Strasser to Munich as his deputy.
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At the end of January 1927 Strasser informed the party leadership that he had also appointed Himmler his deputy as Gauleiter of Lower Bavaria.
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In the first years after its re-founding the NSDAP was a small and politically insignificant splinter group of right-wing radicals on the furthest edge of the political spectrum and received fewer votes in elections than the Nazis had achieved under other names during 1924. However, the Nazi Party was the only right-radical group that operated throughout the Reich and, unlike the others, had a more or less unified organizational structure.

In addition to propaganda, the Munich headquarters, which Himmler joined in the summer of 1926, had a number of departments. There was the Reich Management Department headed by the then 27-year-old Philipp Bouhler, a First World War officer and failed German literature student.
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However, Bouhler increasingly had to relinquish responsibilities to the Reich Organization Department, which was set up in July 1926 under the
retired Lieutenant-General Bruno Heinemann, who was also head of the party’s Investigation and Conciliation Committee. Gregor Strasser was to replace Heinemann as head of the Reich Organization in 1928. As Reich Treasurer, Franz Xaver Schwarz had been responsible for the party’s finances since 1925. Schwarz, who was considered honest and efficient, was to retain this position until the end of the so-called Third Reich in 1945. To begin with, a trainee schoolteacher, Hermann Schneider, acted as Party Secretary until he was replaced by Karl Fiehler, a low-ranking local government official.
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And, finally, as chief of the SA, Franz von Pfeffer was a member of the party leadership from the end of 1926.
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Max Amann, with whom Himmler had crossed swords the previous year, was closely linked with the party leadership; Hitler’s former sergeant from his Regiment No. 12 was responsible for the party’s publishing house, the Eher Verlag.