Heinrich Himmler : A Life (30 page)

The only obstacles in Himmler’s path were posed by the two tiny states of Lippe and Schaumburg-Lippe, where he came up against opposition from the Reich Governor, Alfred Meyer. It was not until April 1934 that he managed to take control of the political police in these states.
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Himmler’s position as boss of a terror apparatus that was operating effectively in Bavaria and also as the head of the SS, an organization that covered the whole of Germany, enabled him to act as a counterweight to the SA. This will have played an important part in the decision of the various heads of the state governments to let him take over their political police forces. The growing conflict with the SA was increasingly replacing the combating of political opposition in the scale of priorities. The Reichsführer-SS was evidently believed to be capable of dealing with the SA and of coordinating the political police forces. At the beginning of 1934 Himmler had in fact established a ‘Central Office’ in Munich especially for this purpose.
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It was also crucial that he never challenged the authority of the local party bosses. On the contrary, he swore unconditional loyalty to them.
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And in a number of cases the regional leaders did indeed retain authority, at least during the early years, over ‘their’ political police forces, as can be shown for Baden, Brunswick, Hamburg, Saxony, and Hesse.
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Himmler was not even in total control of the political police in Bavaria. He could not prevent the Munich police chief and high-ranking SA leader August Schneidhuber from removing control over the processing of political offences from the political police and transferring it back to police headquarters.
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If Himmler was already intending to take over the whole of the German police and the Third Reich’s terror apparatus, then he was successful at concealing it. In fact there is no convincing evidence that this was his aim at the time.
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Instead, it is entirely possible that at this point he did not intend to do more than unify the political police forces of the German states under his command and merge them with the SS.

Himmler’s strategy of gradually taking over as commander of the various state political police forces would have had little
political
effect if he had not succeeded in securing control of the political police in what was by far the largest German state, Prussia. For it was only by taking personal control of all the political police forces that he would be in a position to coordinate them, in other words, turn them into a uniform organization and subject them to central direction, as opposed to simply accumulating titles.

Prussia at this time was the scene of a particularly vicious, complex, and opaque struggle among various factions, each of which was bent on acquiring control over the apparatus of repression that was being constructed. For it was clear to all involved that what happened in Prussia would determine who in future would control the political police throughout the Reich. This is not the place to deal with the details of this struggle; what is important in this connection is how Himmler managed to exploit certain openings in order to further his appointment as Inspector of the Secret State Police (Gestapo).

The central figure in this power struggle was Hermann Göring, acting Prussian Minister of the Interior and, since April 1933, also Prussian Prime Minister. Göring did not rely on the traditional agency for controlling the political police, namely the police department in the Prussian Interior Ministry, but instead appointed the leader of SS-Gruppe East, Kurt Daluege (who during the years 1930–3 had played a major part in keeping control of the unruly east German SA) as Commissar z.b.V. (for special assignments) within the ministry. Although formally he had assigned him only minor responsibilities, in fact Göring intended Daluege to play the key role within the Prussian police apparatus.
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His official responsibilities made him relatively independent of SS headquarters in Munich. Thus, despite his high rank in the SS hierarchy, Daluege was not, as one might at first assume, Himmler’s Trojan horse within the ministry, but rather Göring’s man. Indeed, in May 1933 Göring appointed him head of the police department in his ministry and in September gave him command of the Prussian police.
⁸⁰

However, Göring created another instrument for the special purpose of combating political opponents. He removed the political police, which up until then had been part of the criminal police, from the general police organization and subordinated it to a new Secret State Police Office (
Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt
= Gestapa), which came under his direct control. To head this new central state agency he appointed Rudolf Diels, who since 1931 had been responsible within the police department of the Prussian Interior Ministry for combating communism. In fact, this continuity of personnel was typical for this new special police department, which was staffed mainly by officials from the police and judiciary who had served under Weimar. In matters concerning the political police the Gestapa had the right to issue directives to the previous political police sections within the criminal police departments in the Prussian districts, which were now renamed State Police Offices (
Staatspolizeistellen
or
Stapostellen
). This
provided the foundation for the development of the Gestapo (
Geheime Staatspolizei
, ‘Secret State Police’).

In practice it was to become clear that in Prussia, as in the other states led by top Nazis who in the meantime had been appointed as provincial governors (
Oberpräsidenten
), district governors (
Regierungspräsidenten
), and police chiefs, these party functionaries would exercise considerable influence over the regional police organizations. They resisted Göring’s attempts at centralization with some measure of success.
⁸¹
Himmler, therefore, initially focused his attentions on the provinces. As had been the case with the other states, he aimed to infiltrate the Prussian political police by placing some of his men in the Gestapo organization or by appointing senior Gestapo officers to ranks within the SS, thereby securing their loyalty to him personally.
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Apart from utilizing such personal contacts, Himmler could exercise influence above all through the auxiliary police (
Hilfspolizei
), which Göring had established on 22 February 1933.
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Within a few weeks, the 25,000 SA men, who together with 15,000 SS and 10,000 members of the Stahlhelm provided the bulk of the auxiliary police,
⁸⁴
began to pose a problem. Their thuggish and arbitrary behaviour was threatening to undermine the authority of both the party and the state. In this situation Göring and Diels concluded that the SS was the most suitable instrument for keeping control of its old rival the SA, as had repeatedly been the case during the internal party conflicts of the early 1930s. At least it appeared to be the lesser of two evils. According to an edict issued by the Prussian Interior Ministry on 21 April 1933, auxiliary police duties involving the political police would in future be confined to the SS; the role of the SA auxiliary police would be limited to assisting the general police.
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This meant that the Interior Ministry envisaged that the political police and the SS would be amalgamated to a certain extent, whereas the SA would have to restrict itself to duties such as cordoning off streets, providing security for major events, and suchlike.

The fact that in June 1933 the SA chief, Röhm, was appointed Commissar of the auxiliary police in Prussia, whereas Himmler was appointed Commissar of the auxiliary political police, was a further indication of the way things were going.
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In fact Diels then informed Daluege that in future only applicants to the Gestapo who were members of the SS would be accepted, thereby overriding the formal provisions for Gestapo appointments.
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Göring gave his retrospective approval for this.
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Moreover, as the commander of the auxiliary police attached to the Gestapo, Himmler had his own liaison officer in the Gestapa in the shape of Untersturmführer Walter Sohst,
⁸⁹
and
he and Heydrich were able to place a number of other contacts in the Gestapo headquarters.
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On 2 August 1933, in the aftermath of Hitler’s announcement of the end of the ‘National Socialist revolution’, Göring dissolved the auxiliary police and, on 1 October, Diels organized the SS auxiliaries who had been discharged into an SS Commando Gestapo under SS-Brigadeführer Max Henze. The commando took over the notorious informal prison in Columbia House and established its base there, physically separated from Gestapo headquarters in Prince Albrecht Palace. This provided Himmler with a unit within the Gestapo that could operate largely independently, and which, moreover, controlled a concentration camp that, while officially remaining under the authority of the state, was in fact completely subject to the arbitrary behaviour of the SS.
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On the same day Himmler dismissed Daluege from his post as SS-Gruppenführer East, and appointed him head of a staff to be deployed for special assignments. Daluege had become tied in to Göring’s police organization, and this step had the effect of removing his influence within the SS and, in particular, the possibility of his taking control of the SS personnel in Berlin.
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There was another unit operating independently in Berlin as auxiliary police with the task of combating political opponents and competitors. This was the so-called SS-Sonderkommando Berlin for special assignments, which consisted of members of the unit that Sepp Dietrich had formed to ensure Hitler’s personal protection and which in September 1933 was to be transformed into the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler.
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Although Dietrich always stressed his complete independence vis-à-vis the SS Reich headquarters, in practice this force strengthened Himmler’s position in the Reich capital.

By contrast, it soon became clear that the activities of the SD in Berlin were not particularly helpful. Although Heydrich had moved SD headquarters from Munich to Berlin following the Nazi takeover of power, in practice his new tasks in Bavaria prevented him from operating effectively. Moreover, the party’s intelligence service, which at this stage may have had some thirty to forty members throughout the whole of the Reich, was still in its infancy. Above all, however, in the summer of 1933 the SD became involved in a serious crisis because, in the wake of its disputes with the party leadership in Hamburg and Brunswick referred to above, it was accused by leading party figures of interfering with the party’s internal affairs. In response, during that same summer Heydrich moved SD headquarters back to Munich and reorganized it.
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Himmler now strengthened Heydrich’s position by promoting him in July from chief of staff of the SD to head the service.
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He also provided him with support by negotiating a deal with Rudolf Hess in the autumn by which in future the SD would intervene in internal party matters only with the latter’s permission.
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In return, Hess issued a party instruction on 13 November which announced that Hitler had expressly ordered that the SD should continue to operate, thereby refuting rumours to the contrary.
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Four days earlier, on 9 November 1933, Himmler had raised the SD to the status of an Office (
Amt
) within the SS and promoted Heydrich to the rank of Brigadeführer.
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Finally, Heydrich restructured the SD by establishing three operational departments—Home, Foreign, and Freemasons
⁹⁹
—which by the beginning of 1934 were represented in all seven of the regional Oberabschnitte.
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On 9 June 1934 Hess, acting in his role as the Führer’s Deputy for party affairs, announced that in future the SD was to be the NSDAP’s official intelligence service.
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The SD was far too much involved in its own problems, however, to be of any assistance to Himmler in Prussia. Moreover, Himmler suffered another setback. In the autumn of 1933 the Prussian Interior Ministry ordered the dissolution of the unauthorized SA camps. Himmler was, however, thwarted in his attempt to ensure that the prisoners released as a result should be handed over to the SS. Indeed, the numerous cases of mistreatment, murder, and assaults on the local population by SS guards in the big camps on the moors of the Emsland prompted the Interior Ministry to replace them with police. Yet paradoxically this ultimately turned out to work in favour of Himmler’s Prussian ambitions. By having to replace the SS guards, the Prussian Interior Ministry had shown that its original concept of placing the SS concentration camp guards under state supervision was not viable. The lesson to be learnt from this episode was that one could not use SS terror in the camps as a deterrent while at the same time ensuring effective state supervision. Himmler’s Bavarian model, which combined the political police and the concentration camps in the hands of the SS, appeared preferable.
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Himmler was able to benefit from the temporary breach between Göring and Diels that occurred in the autumn of 1933. Evidently prompted by Daluege, who considered Diels a traitor, Göring began a move against Diels, who promptly fled to Czechoslovakia. Göring fairly soon realized that he needed Diels’s help in the struggle against the SA, particularly in view of the fact that the latter’s successor, Paul Hinkler, proved completely
incompetent in the post,
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and so he persuaded him to return from exile. However, after taking up his post again in Berlin, Diels began to seek the support of the SD. In fact, even before his return Himmler had appointed him an SS-Standartenführer.
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