Heinrich Himmler : A Life (18 page)

Apart from the politically ambitious Strasser and the SA chief von Pfeffer, who was politically aware and, in seeing the SA as a paramilitary league, wanted as far as possible to maintain its autonomy, the party leadership was largely composed of people with limited leadership potential who as a rule concentrated on their specific tasks. In doing so, however, they could, as was the case with Himmler, work largely independently, covered by the authority of the party leader; the individual heads of department were authorized by Hitler to act in his name vis-à-vis the party organizations in their particular spheres of operation.

This arrangement reflected Hitler’s style of leadership and his aim, if possible, to avoid getting involved in the numerous arguments, struggles over competence, and rivalries which went on within the party and instead to await their conclusion from afar. In this way he succeeded in avoiding having his leadership aura, the Führer principle, degraded by the day-to-day conflicts within the party. Moreover, Hitler, who during these years was travelling extensively in order to win support for the party, spent comparatively little time at party headquarters and was difficult to reach, even for his closest colleagues.
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His correspondence was mainly dealt with by his faithful private secretary Rudolf Hess, who was, however, regarded by many as a strange person.

Since Himmler and the other functionaries in the party headquarters always used Hitler’s authority to back their instructions, they did everything they could to secure his position vis-à-vis the party comrades outside. This was clearly, from Hitler’s point of view, a further positive aspect of his working methods. Himmler had exceptional freedom of action because the
propaganda chief, Strasser, was frequently engaged in party activities elsewhere through the responsibilities imposed by his seat in the Reichstag and as one of the foremost party agitators.
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When Strasser was appointed head of the Reich Party Organization in January 1928 and Hitler provisionally, though in fact only nominally, took over the role of Reich Propaganda Chief himself, Himmler increased his freedom of action still further.

Himmler was mainly concerned with organizational matters: he conducted the correspondence with the local branches, sent them propaganda material, assessed propaganda suggestions from party comrades, requested reports, and so on. In the process he endeavoured above all to unify the party’s various propaganda activities and to bring them under the control of party headquarters. For this purpose, from 1926 onwards a series of numbered ‘Instructions and Announcements’
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appeared in party newspapers which unmistakably bore Himmler’s signature, as did the pamphlet
Propaganda
issued in spring 1928, in which practical suggestions were given for the organization of the party’s propaganda.
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In addition, he was responsible, together with the various Gau headquarters, for coordinating the deployment of party speakers throughout the Reich. Naturally, he paid particular attention to the preparation of the—as he put it in his correspondence—‘Hitler meetings’, which were still the most important means of propaganda for the party. While he was often not in a position to meet the requests of the local branches for Hitler to come and speak, particularly since the latter was careful only to make a limited number of speeches, nevertheless he could not resist sending out to the local branches ‘Directives for Meetings involving the Party Leader’ and also questionnaires for the preparation of the, often long-awaited, speech.
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The demand of local party organizations for other speakers could often not be met because of a lack of attractive party speakers capable of being deployed outside their home territory.

In particular, Himmler endeavoured to use his role as deputy Reich Propaganda Chief to construct a comprehensive, internal party reporting service. Over two full sides of the pamphlet he listed thirteen different types of report which had to be regularly sent in by the local branches, insisting that ‘failure to keep to the deadlines will result in a stern warning and, where necessary, be reported to the Führer’.
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Among the things to report were: ‘all Jews living in the area of the local branch or Gau, including if possible Jews who have been baptized, with exact details of name, age, occupation, and domicile. This report is necessary for us to be able at last to produce an
accurate statistical breakdown of the number of Jews in the population.’ Also, they were to provide details of all Freemasons, the names of the locally ‘most vicious opponents’, all ‘the known addresses of Germans living abroad’, all cases of the ‘mistreatment of, attacks on, and terrorist acts against party comrades that have been committed by opponents in the respective district or Gau since the founding of the party’, and ‘all sentences of imprisonment or fines imposed on party comrades on the basis of political interrogations or charges’. Finally, ‘where necessary’ further reports on other topics should be submitted, which Himmler did not omit to list in detail. The pamphlet documents Himmler’s pedantry and his obsessive need to exercise control, as well as his megalomania, for such a reporting and data system—had the Gaus and local branches actually obeyed his instructions—would have swamped the Reich headquarters’s ability to cope.

Apart from his other activities, Himmler was continually on the move. His office diaries from this period show that he not only visited Upper Bavaria and the Gau of Lower Bavaria, but made numerous trips to other parts of Germany. In January 1927, for example, he spent some time in Thuringia, where a state election was due; at the beginning of February he travelled to Westphalia and at the end of April to the Ruhr; in May he spent time in Mecklenburg because of the state election there; and on the way back he stopped off in Potsdam and in Chemnitz; in the second half of June he was in various parts of north Germany, on 14 July in Vienna, in mid-October in Hesse, and so it went on uninterrupted.
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In the course of these journeys he played an active role as a party speaker; on average he spoke more than once a week at internal party meetings or made public speeches. In doing so he continued to use the anti-capitalist rhetoric of his mentor Strasser, as is clear from a speech in Potsdam on 13 October 1926: ‘In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system.’ He went on to outline the alleged alternation of ‘socialist’ and ‘capitalist’ phases of German history. He placed the Peasant Wars, the epoch of Frederick the Great, as well as the reforms of Freiherr vom Stein under the heading of ‘socialism’; again and again such attempts at reform had been blocked by capitalism:

Capitalism has once again taken over the throne. Nowadays people are no longer interested in whether someone’s an honest chap, but just in how much money he has. People don’t ask where the money has come from, but whether he’s got it.
Capitalism seizes control of machinery, the most noble invention of mankind, and uses it to enslave people. This causes people to long for freedom and this longing for freedom expresses itself in the workers’ class struggle. The German bourgeoisie don’t understand that and so we get the Socialists’ struggle going on till 1918.

Himmler even went so far as to suggest there was broad agreement between the Nazi and communist visions of the future: ‘The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment. Why, is not the issue today. So, there’s still a longing for Socialism.’
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This link that was emerging between Himmler’s anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic rhetoric was evident in other speeches. Thus, in a speech made in the Munich district of Neuhausen in October 1926 he was quoted by the police report as saying: ‘It’s not true when people claim that the Jews manage to get on in the world because they’re clever. If the NSDAP committed perjury and behaved as ruthlessly and brutally as the Jews do then it would have made more progress long ago.’
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In April 1927 the police reported on a speech he made to the Nazi branch in Regensburg as follows:

The Jews have used capitalism for their own ends and in their struggle for power they understand very well how to play off ‘Internationalism’ against the nations. Internationalism neutralizes the importance of the individual nations and aims at enslaving all the workers of the world. There’s only one way of avoiding this fate: to unite all the German workers on the basis of nationalism in order to introduce a socialist regime. Our aim is to establish a powerful, nationalist, socialist, German workers’ party.
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A few weeks after Himmler had taken up his new post there were state elections in Saxony in which, with a vote of 1.6 per cent, the NSDAP fared much worse than its followers had expected; a few months before, in June, it had gained only 1.7 per cent in the state election in Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Party comrades blamed this lack of electoral success on the incompetence of party headquarters; this represented a challenge for the recently appointed deputy Propaganda Chief. At the end of 1926 the hopes of the membership were focused on the Thuringian state elections to be held in January 1927. A certain Fritz Schusnus, who was appointed campaign manager by the Thuringian party leadership, wrote to Munich in October: ‘If the organization of the election campaign in Mecklenburg and Saxony had been handled differently the result wouldn’t have been so disappointing. We would never recover if we had an election result in
Thuringia like those in Saxony and Mecklenburg. I would, therefore, like to request Reich headquarters to move heaven and earth to make sure that we don’t have the same confusion and lack of direction here as they had in Saxony.’
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However, Himmler could not do much to help; he told Schusnus that they did not possess substantial sums of money and that there was no point in launching a major campaign in December.
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In the event, the party could consider the 3.5 per cent that the NSDAP won in the state election in January as only a very modest success.

Appointed campaign manager for the next state election in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, which took place on 22 May 1927, Himmler approached the task systematically, as was his wont. He saw his main task as being to cover the state with a dense net of meetings with Nazi speakers. The available sources show that his methodical approach ended up being rather schematic: ‘I class speakers’ spoke at total of sixty-three meetings, ‘II class speakers’ at fifty, ‘those of III class quality’ had to cover around 300 meetings in smaller locations.
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However, his splendid plan was in danger of collapsing because Himmler was prepared to launch the campaign only when the Mecklenburg membership had proved that they had fulfilled the official requirements for participation in the election. One month before the election Himmler demanded ‘a report’ from the party members in the north within a few days, to the effect that they had paid the obligatory deposit of 3,000 Reich marks officially required for permission to submit a party list and that the requisite list supported by 3,000 signatures had been officially certified. Himmler insisted categorically that, in the event that these had not occurred within the deadline, ‘we shall not participate in the election’.
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The Gau leadership in Mecklenburg-Lübeck was somewhat put out by this curt tone. Those responsible insisted on starting the campaign without waiting for a green light from Munich.
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One of the leading Mecklenburg party members wrote to Himmler that his idea of limiting the campaign to the last fourteen days was ‘nonsense’. It would be much more sensible to extend the campaign to cover the last three weeks, although that was no longer feasible. But that was the fault of party headquarters in Munich, namely Himmler’s. The party officials in Parchim in Mecklenburg were on edge: ‘It would have been possible if the Munich headquarters hadn’t adopted such an absurdly bureaucratic attitude. Forgive me the harsh words, but it’s the truth. What on earth does Reich headquarters think of the Mecklenburg Gau leader? In my view, if the Gau leader reports that he’s
collected the 3,000 Reich marks and 3,000 signatures then party headquarters ought to believe him! After all, the Gau leader isn’t a fool or a misbehaving child who is telling a lie! For Reich headquarters to demand official police confirmation for the Gau leader’s statements just shows the most incredible lack of trust.’ They told him they had got in touch with Hitler’s secretary, Hess, directly and arranged not to make the start of the election campaign dependent on the official confirmation of the handing in of the election list.
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Himmler, who had been bypassed in this manner, was not prepared to accept these accusations. With a mixture of self-opinionatedness and patronizing irony, and referring to the highest authority in the party, he responded in point eighteen of a long letter concerning the deployment of speakers in Mecklenburg:

It is not a revelation to me that it would be more sensible to carry out propaganda long before the start of an election campaign, indeed I am well aware of the fact. However, if I am responsible for something then I have to take other matters into consideration. The Gau can just about manage an election campaign of fourteen days’ duration. We all know very well what would be nice and ideal. But we have to deal with what is. We are going to stick with a propaganda campaign during the last fourteen days. I should like to add that I have discussed this ‘nonsense’ with Herr Hitler and Herr Hitler has approved this ‘nonsense’.

Moreover, he pointed out that his request for a report on the signatures and the deposit had been prompted by ‘Herr Hitler himself’. If, for example, some of the signatures had not been recognized by the authorities, then ‘a vast apparatus involving huge costs would have been set in motion for nothing. It is right and proper that you should be thinking of the interests of your Gau. But it is also right and proper that those outside the Gau should take a broader view. This should not be seen in any way as a lack of trust.’
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