Heinrich Himmler : A Life (29 page)

During the first months of 1933 it was above all communists and Social Democrats who were arrested, several thousand people in all.
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In June 1933, however, Himmler launched a special action directed against the conservative Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), which involved the arrest of all the party’s Reichstag and state parliamentary deputies with the exception of Count Eugen von Quadt, Economics Minister in the state government, and which was designed to force the party to dissolve itself.
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After this had occurred and the BVP functionaries had been released, in August 1933 there were exactly 3,965 persons in protective custody in Bavaria, 2,420 of them in Dachau. Faced with von Epp’s demand that he curb the use of protective custody, Himmler continually reduced the numbers. In June 1934 there were 2,204, of whom 1,517 were in Dachau camp.
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Himmler had needed only a year in which to construct a closed system consisting of the political police, the SS deployed as auxiliaries, and Dachau concentration camp, which he was able to seal off from any interference by the Bavarian state authorities. Towards the end of this year, a year that had been so successful for him, he began to focus on the political police in the other German states. To begin with, however, he cleverly gave a wide berth to the biggest state, Prussia, where the political police was directly subordinate to its powerful Prime Minister, Hermann Göring.

Considering his clumsy behaviour in his previous party posts, Himmler displayed a surprising degree of diplomatic and political skill in the way in which he approached the expansion of his power basis outside Bavaria. In particular, his strategy of placing people he could trust in key positions or
winning the loyalty of such persons by conferring on them SS rank proved successful. Himmler succeeded in creating the impression among the regional party bosses that by transferring the political police to the SS, which took the form of appointing Himmler as commander of the political police in the individual states, they were not giving up a decisive power base but rather securing the support of the SS. There was, however, another reason why the Nazi bosses in the federal states were so amenable to Himmler, namely, the continuing lack of discipline of the SA, even after Hitler had officially declared an end to the revolution in June 1933. Its demand for a ‘second revolution’, and the tensions with the political wing of the NSDAP that resulted from it, persuaded the new rulers in the states that it was in their interest to look for an ally. The fact that in recent years the SS had acquired the reputation of being a disciplined elite organization that was invariably loyal to the party leadership and at the same time completely ruthless in dealing with the enemies of Nazism played an important part in their decision. Its recent ‘successes’ in dealing with its opponents could be observed in the way Himmler had handled matters in Bavaria.
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The fact that the SS had an organization that spanned the Reich and operated relatively effectively with its own intelligence service, the SD (
Sicherheitsdienst
), was an additional point in its favour. The SD provided Himmler with an intelligence operation controlling local informants and, by recruiting members of the political police into the SD, he created his own network. In fact, as we shall see, the SD was temporarily involved in a crisis in the summer of 1933. However, by the autumn, when Himmler began to be appointed chief of the political police in the various states, his intelligence service had begun to restore its position.

Himmler also benefited from the fact that in March 1933 the SS was in a position to establish, albeit only to a limited extent, armed units based in barracks. The first of these was a special ‘staff guard’ for the Führer’s personal protection. This was established on 17 March on Hitler’s orders by the head of his personal bodyguard, Sepp Dietrich, who had played an important role in the development of the SS in both north and south Germany. The unit, consisting of 120 men, was composed of members of the SA and SS and wore SS uniform. In the spring of 1933 it was assigned to the Prussian state police as an auxiliary police unit, renamed ‘Sonderkommando Berlin z.b.V.’ (for special assignments), and considerably enlarged. The Wehrmacht took over the military training of what had now become an 800-strong force. This was effectively a small private army which had
been created unconstitutionally and illegally, made solely responsible to the Führer, and renamed ‘Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler’ (‘Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard’) during the party rally in September. Its special position was underlined when, on 9 November, it swore allegiance to Hitler personally. Although Dietrich always emphasized the independence of his force from the Reich leadership of the SS, the Sonderkommando z.b.V. was not only used to protect the dictator but was also deployed to combat political opponents, and thereby contributed towards strengthening the position of the SS and its Reichsführer in the power struggle for control of the instruments of repression in the Reich capital.
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In the spring of 1934, in view of the impending conflict with the SA, Himmler succeeded in effectively integrating the force into the SS hierarchy.
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In 1933 and 1934 further armed ‘political units’ were created on the initiative of the SS-Oberabschnitte in Munich, Ellwangen, Arolsen, Hamburg, and Wolterdingen.

The Free and Hansa City of Hamburg was the first state to offer to hand over its political police to Himmler. The details of how this happened provide remarkable insights into his tactics.
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During the course of their seizure of power in Hamburg the Nazis had been unsuccessful in establishing a uniform apparatus of repression. Indeed, the opposite was true. As in many other places, there was strong rivalry among various individuals and cliques for control of the terror being exercised against political opponents. Control over the political police, which had been removed from the general police organization, changed hands several times. In addition, there was a Commando z.b.V. directly subordinate to the head of the uniformed police, which had been strengthened by SA auxiliary police, and which carried out arrests and raids to a large extent independently. It was notorious for its numerous illegal acts and bloody excesses. Political opponents were held in two camps, which were subordinate to the judiciary or rather the regular police. The Hamburg SD had been effectively neutralized by the Gauleiter, Karl Kaufmann.
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However, Himmler had a good relationship with Gauleiter Kaufmann; they had known each other since 1927 and used the familiar ‘du’ form of address. In 1933 Himmler made several visits to Hamburg, not only in order to strengthen his ties with Kaufmann but also presumably to make further contacts. Thus, from the start he had supported the appointment of Carl Vincent Krogmann as the senior mayor of Hamburg,
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and some time
during the summer of 1933 he offered Hans Nieland, who had been acting police chief since March 1933 and then became a senator, a high SS rank.
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After Nieland moved to his Senate post he was replaced as police chief in May 1933 by Wilhelm Boltz, the leader of the Hamburg Naval SA. Boltz, who had the reputation within the SA of being elitist and ostentatiously distanced himself from the proletarian behaviour of the other brown-shirts, was another of Himmler’s long-standing acquaintances.
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More important, however, was the fact that in October the Nazi leadership in Hamburg decided to appoint Bruno Streckenbach as chief of the political police. He was a member of the SS and another of Himmler’s intimates.
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Gauleiter Kaufmann received the rank of SS-Oberführer,
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and his close associate, Georg Friedrich Ahrens, was admitted to the SS as a Standartenführer and made head of the local SD.
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Streckenbach was also admitted to the SD.
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As a result of these appointments, such a close-knit relationship between party leadership and SS had been established in Hamburg that the local party leadership could assume that the formal takeover of the political police by the SS on 24 November 1933 did not involve ceding any authority in this important area. Indeed, from now on the use of SS personnel for tasks of the local political police would be covered by the highest authority of the SS.

One of Streckenbach’s first acts as Hamburg police chief was an official trip to Munich to study the Bavarian model.
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It did not take him long to apply the example of a uniform system of repression developed there to Hamburg. Fuhlsbüttel prison, where political prisoners were incarcerated and where an SS unit imposed a frightful regime of sadistic brutality, was subordinated to the political police. The final responsibilities remaining with the prison authorities were removed in the summer of 1934.
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Himmler had achieved his goal through a combination of building up personal contacts, the wooing of important party figures by assigning them high SS ranks, and the targeted placing of SS members in key positions. He had even made use of the undisciplined behaviour of individual SS men or of whole units (as with the Hamburg SD or the SS Sturm deployed in Fuhlsbüttel) to create the impression that it was through his personal intervention and his appointment of the right people that ‘orderly conditions’ had been restored.

During these decisive months Himmler was continually on the move in order to find out what was going on in the various state capitals. In December 1933, a few weeks after his success in Hamburg, he was
appointed political police chief in Lübeck and Mecklenburg. The exact circumstances of his appointment are not entirely clear. However, the assignment of the rank of SS-Brigadeführer to Friedrich Hildebrandt, the Reich Governor of the two states, in November 1933, together with the fact that Ludwig Obdach, who took over the Mecklenburg political police in November, had been received into the SS shortly beforehand, suggest that Himmler had followed the same tactics in these two northern states as he had in Hamburg.
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In Württemberg
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Himmler had managed to persuade the Reich Governor, Wilhelm Murr, of the need to maintain a section of the SS auxiliary police as an armed force to be deployed for political purposes, in other words, as an armed unit housed in barracks. The fact that the Reich had promised to pay for this played a decisive part in Murr’s decision.
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The presence of this unit provided Himmler with an important power base in Württemberg. His contact man there was Walter Stahlecker, who had been appointed deputy political police chief in May 1933. However, in November he was transferred because he was permanently at odds with his superior, Hermann Mattheiss, who was a strong supporter of the SA.

On 9 December 1933 Himmler was appointed commander of the political police in Württemberg. The decisive reason for this is likely to have been his good relationship with Reich Governor Murr and the latter’s desire to rationalize the expensive apparatus of the political police.
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The fact that, from autumn 1933 onwards, the SS-Oberabschnitt South-West was being run by a dynamic individual based in Stuttgart, in the shape of Werner Best, is also likely to have played a role.
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However, Himmler was able to secure complete control only in May 1934, when Stahlecker replaced his old boss, Mattheiss, as chief of the political police. Mattheiss was to fall victim to the so-called Röhm putsch on 30 June 1934; Stahlecker made his career in the security police, and in 1941 was appointed commander of Einsatzgruppe A operating in the Baltic states. Murr was granted the rank of SS-Gruppenführer on 9 September 1934.
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On 18 December 1933 Himmler took over the political police in Baden.
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This move was supported not only by Hess in the name of Hitler, but also by the Gauleiter of Baden, Robert Wagner, and by the Baden Interior Minister, Karl Pflaumer, who was a member of the SS. Both of these men appear to have assumed that this would strengthen the position of the Baden political police vis-à-vis attempts by the Reich government to take it over.
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In Bremen, where Himmler had first got to know the leading party officials in May 1933, a major conflict erupted in November between the police chief, Theodor Laue, and the local SA, which was notorious for its thuggish behaviour. As a result of this disagreement, Röhm expelled Laue, who was an old SA member, from the brown-shirts, whereupon Laue sought Himmler’s support. In fact, Himmler already had an important ally in Bremen in the shape of the chief of the local Gestapo, Erwin Schulz. Schulz had been a member of the political police before 1933 and had already served the SS as an informant. Having prepared the ground in Bremen, Himmler was able to secure his appointment as commander of the political police on 22 December, following brief negotiations with Reich Governor Carl Röver and the mayor Richard Markert.
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On 5 January 1934 he was appointed commander of the political police in Oldenburg, of which Röver was also the Reich Governor,
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and between the end of 1933 and the beginning of 1934 Himmler was equally successful in taking over the political police in Anhalt,
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Hesse,
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Thuringia,
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and Saxony.
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Brunswick is another case in which it appears that Himmler managed to win over influential officials by assigning them ranks in the SS. His appointment as chief of the political police on 27 January by the Prime Minister, Dietrich Klagges, had the full support of the Reich Governor, Wilhelm Loeper. Loeper had already informed Himmler in December of his wish to be given a rank in the SS appropriate to his position; he was appointed SSGruppenführer in February 1934.
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Klagges was appointed SS-Gruppenführer on the same day as Himmler’s appointment as chief of the political police.
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Himmler’s appointment in Brunswick was particularly important because in the summer of 1933 there had been a major clash between Klagges and the SD. Himmler had resolved the issue through a ‘tactical retreat’,
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and thereby avoided further tension with the Brunswick party leadership. In April 1934 the political police in Brunswick was taken over by the leader of the SS-Gruppe North-West and head of the Brunswick State Police Office, Friedrich Jeckeln, who enjoyed the confidence of both Himmler and Klagges.
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