Heinrich Himmler : A Life (21 page)

From the start the relationship between the two had its difficulties: ‘Love without pain and worry is something I can’t imagine’, she wrote.
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And: ‘You have no idea how utterly miserable I am. [ . . . ] Do you doubt my love? I can say with certainty that no other woman will love you as I love you.’ And she added: ‘You may understand me, you will understand me, if—no, because—you love me.’
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He spent the holiday with his parents; he clearly used the stay amongst other things to give his father a lecture on the tactics of street-fighting. ‘What a good and “loving” son you are’, she wrote back. ‘People at home have most definitely not noticed any “submissiveness”. You horrid boy. How can you do such a thing.’
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Her political position tended to be moderate. She had little sympathy for his radicalism: ‘Why do you reach for the dagger in such a bloodthirsty way?’ she asked him. ‘Being a conservative is after all a nice thing to be.’
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And was the party not exploiting him? ‘I can’t understand how you can let the party get you down so much that you can’t even write a letter. I’ll bet the other esteemed gentlemen don’t allow themselves to be so used. And I’m sure you’re not getting any sleep any more [ . . . ] and the result is that you’re getting ill and wretched. I’d like to know who gets any benefit from you then.’
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Even to her he clearly made use of the claim of permanent overwork, which he always carried before him like a shield.

During the early months of 1928 the two met a number of times, for example in Bavaria in mid-January
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and then in Berlin at the beginning of February,
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at Easter in Berlin, and at Whitsun in Munich.
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On several occasions in the days before they were due to meet she reminded him to bring with him the books of puzzles he loved so much—after all, they did not want to get bored!
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Her letters are full of doubts about the possibilities of a future together. Without further explanation, for example, she wrote to him that a friend had ‘advised her against marrying a man 7 years younger.’
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Nevertheless she finally renounced her independence, though it was patently not easy for her, even if she tried to disguise the emerging conflicts somewhat through the mock-sulking, mischievous style of her letters. ‘This poor little rascal of a woman is very sad because the wicked man won’t allow her any work of her own. She wants to argue back and if she can’t she’ll look for pastures new.’
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Conversely, she made it clear to him that the freedom of his bachelor existence would soon end: ‘Cinema, theatre, you’re a pleasure-loving man. Sweetheart, there’ll be very little of that after we’re married.

Ill. 5.
Margarete Boden and Heinrich Himmler in the year they married. From the start they faced difficulties in establishing a life together.

You’d better take advantage of the opportunity while you can.’
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When he sent her a letter setting out various matters in a numbered list, as was his custom, she rejected this manner of writing: ‘Never again write 1.) 2.) 3.) like a typical bureaucrat.’
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She also feared she would be rejected by his parents.
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She was simply unable to write them a letter: ‘Sweetheart, I simply cannot write to them myself. My love, what heartache your relationship with me will bring you. I am so fearful of new people.’
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In the eyes of the Himmler family she must be a terrible disappointment, she said: ‘Sweetheart, how disappointed your sister-in-law will be by me. The fact is I’m so mistrustful and can never accept that people are well disposed towards me.’
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At the latest after their meeting in February 1928 it is clear that Heinrich Himmler and Margarete Boden had decided to marry.
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She began the process of leaving the private clinic and asked for reimbursement of her share. The sum agreed upon was 12,000 Reich marks;
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yet she obviously felt she had been fleeced by the director of the clinic: ‘A Jew is always a
Jew! And the others are no better.’
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More problems arose, however, when they established their joint household. They decided on a relatively inexpensive prefabricated wooden house, for which they acquired a plot of land in Waldtrudering near Munich.
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They had to buy furniture and household goods, and Himmler planned to buy a car. At first he thought he could obtain a mortgage, but when he stopped responding to her constant requests for information
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it was clear that this plan would not be realized. They now had to make do with Marga’s 12,000 marks; she repeatedly complained that his demands were too great and that he spent too much.
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In the end the house was entered under her name in the land register.
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The car she favoured buying was the Hanomag and not the more expensive Dixi that he wanted: ‘The cheapest Dixi costs 2,595 marks from Eisenach, which will certainly bring it up to 3,000 marks. Sweetheart, that’s too expensive. I wish we would settle for the Hanomag.’
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Himmler got his way, however: they bought a Dixi, although in fact he had no driving licence. She constantly impressed on him that he must get one: ‘Sweetheart, why do we want a car if nobody can drive.’
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He actually passed the test on 27 June 1928.
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They were married on 3 July.
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The newlyweds planned to supplement the meagre salary Himmler earned as a party functionary by selling agricultural products: they intended to make use of the garden and to begin some small-scale animal breeding. They got a dog. Himmler had, after all, a diploma in agriculture and was the agriculture specialist for the NSDAP. But production never really got properly under way. Himmler was constantly travelling, though Margarete kept him up to date about progress. The news was, however, mostly bad: ‘The hens are not laying yet. The dog has been having its litter all day. The pig is eating.’
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‘On Sunday the chicks arrived. Only 23 and 10 are dead already [ . . . ] They weren’t hatched. I’ll never do that again. The incubator is not working properly and uses too much oil. The turkeys and hens are laying well. Oh my dear, what is happening to me. The rabbits are not doing anything yet [ . . . ]
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—11 trees are completely dead. 8 pears and 3 apples.’
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—‘The hens are laying really badly. 2 eggs a day. It makes me so cross when I think we were intending to live off them and even start saving at Whitsun. Always bad luck. I am so careful, but the money is gone again right away.’
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On 8 August their only child was born. The little girl was baptized a Protestant and named Gudrun.
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The enlargement of the family did not
make the situation easier, as Margarete’s complaints to him demonstrate: ‘That awful dog Töhle keeps on barking, and so the baby can’t sleep either.’
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Nor were the animals thriving: ‘The hens are laying very badly.’
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During this period Himmler also experienced a number of changes in his professional life. His appointment as ‘Deputy Reichsführer-SS’ in September 1927 was almost certainly largely due to the fact that he organized meetings for prominent party speakers. Since 1925 the party had been establishing a number of ‘protection squads’ (
Schutzstaffeln
) in its main centres of support and using the title SS. These were small groups of party activists who were primarily responsible for protecting big meetings and the public appearances of prominent party figures. Himmler’s activity in the Reich propaganda headquarters involved responsibility for deploying ‘individual SS units when planning public meetings’. To perform this role he was obliged to exercise certain command functions, that were now given formal recognition with his appointment as deputy Reichsführer-SS (under Erhart Heiden). In addition there was the fact that Himmler already had SS experience: he had been in command of the Lower Bavarian SS since 1926.
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In 1927 the SS was a very small formation. It had been founded in spring 1925. At that time Hitler had given his old supporter Julius Schreck the task of setting up a personal bodyguard, a ‘staff-guard’, which after a few weeks was renamed ‘protection squad’. Similar formations had existed before the 1923 putsch. Hitler had already founded a staff-guard in March 1923, which had been replaced in May by a ‘Stosstrupp [assault-group] Adolf Hitler’ under Joseph Berchtold; almost all the members of the protection squad, including Schreck, had belonged to the Stosstrupp.
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The uniforms of the new protection squads were borrowed from those of the old staff-guard or the Stosstrupp: in addition to the windcheaters worn by the SA, the members of these former organizations had worn black ski caps with a silver death’s-head badge and swastika armbands edged with black. The protection squads continued this tradition: while they too wore brown shirts, which in the meantime had been adopted by the party, they also wore a black tie, a black cap with a death’s head, a black, white, and red cockade, riding breeches, and swastika armbands.
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Ill. 6.
Before the NSDAP achieved its breakthrough in September 1930 Himmler’s role at Party Headquarters was more that of a faceless bureaucrat than anything else. Here he can be seen in a group of leading Nazis who had met together on 22 September in the Saxon spa town of Bad Elster. State elections were taking place on the same day.

In September 1925 Schreck had sent a circular to all Gau headquarters and independent local branches of the NSDAP requesting them to establish protection squads.
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The ‘function’ of the protection squads, which was outlined in guidelines specially issued for the purpose, was to be ‘the protection of the local meetings’ of the NSDAP as well as to ‘strengthen the personal protection of our leader Adolf Hitler in the event of his
speaking there or in the neighbourhood of the local branch concerned’. The protection squads were to be ‘neither a paramilitary organization nor a bunch of hangers-on, but rather small groups of men on whom our movement and our leader can rely. They must be people who are in a position to protect our meetings from troublemakers and our movement from “professional grousers”. For members of the protection squad there must be no ifs and buts; they must observe our party discipline.’ In addition they had the task of ‘canvassing for and winning over’ new members as well as subscribers and advertisers for the party newspaper, the
Völkischer Beobachter
.

Moreover, Schreck decreed in the same circular that the only people permitted to join the protection squads were party members between 23 and 25 years of age, who were fit and ‘powerfully built’. ‘They must be comrades who stand for the old motto, “all for one and one for all”.’ A protection squad should be composed of a leader and ten men or, in larger places, there could be more than ten men. They were to be subordinated to a high command to be established in party headquarters, and would ‘finance themselves by collecting contributions’. Another version of the directives composed in a still more martial tone included further organizational details and emphasized the autonomy of the protection squads vis-à-vis other party organizations: ‘Neither the local branch nor the Gau headquarters has the right to interfere in the internal organization of the local SS.’ The protection squads were not ‘a subsection of the SA, but are of equal status’.
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However, at this point an SA did not exist; banned following the putsch attempt, Hitler delayed re-founding it until the end of 1926, since before doing so he wanted to secure the party’s control over its strong-arm squad.
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