Heinrich Himmler : A Life (32 page)

On 28 February 1934 Hitler made an announcement to the leadership of the SA and the Wehrmacht in which he rejected the SA’s extensive military ambitions; he ordered it to reach an agreement with the Reichswehr that would restrict the SA to auxiliary military functions. Although Röhm signed the agreement, immediately after this event he made it clear to his leadership corps that he was by no means prepared to abide by it. And these statements were passed on to Hess.
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Meanwhile, conservatives were hoping that the conflict with the SA could be utilized to win back lost ground from the Nazis in the governing coalition and conceivably to reintroduce the monarchy following the
anticipated demise of Hindenburg, who was 86 years old. These opponents were banking primarily on the Vice-Chancellor, von Papen.

At the beginning of 1934, the opponents of the SA—party, Gestapa, and Reichswehr—began to mobilize. Rudolf Diels, the head of the Prussian Gestapa, claimed in his memoirs to have been given the task by Hitler of collecting material against the SA. At the beginning of February the leadership of the Reichswehr gave identical instructions to their subordinates.
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After Himmler and Heydrich had taken over the Gestapa in April the search for compromising material was evidently intensified.
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The Reichswehr also began a propaganda campaign in April in which the army was proclaimed as the nation’s ‘sole bearer of arms’, an obvious affront to the SA.
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In May the military agencies were once more instructed to report on breaches by the SA of the agreement reached in February.
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In the same month the Gestapo and the Intelligence Department in the War Ministry began a loose cooperation, exchanging information about the SA.
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Werner Best, who had been appointed head of the SD’s organization in March, also concentrated on acquiring information about the SA in addition to his task of reorganizing and building up the SD headquarters, which at that time was still based in Munich.
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At the same time, Röhm, who was not oblivious to these activities, gave instructions to collect material concerning ‘activities hostile to the SA’.
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At the beginning of June a new situation began to emerge: Hindenburg, who was seriously ill, withdrew to his estate in East Prussia. This meant that the most important ally of the conservatives had become more or less incapable of action. On 11 May the NSDAP had already begun a major propaganda campaign against ‘grumblers and carpers’, which was now significantly intensified. The target was obvious: the party was focusing on its critics among the bourgeoisie. However, at the beginning of June a lengthy personal conversation had taken place between Hitler and Röhm, which the latter at least is likely to have taken as a sign of an easing of tension. He went off to a spa for a cure and ordered the SA to go ‘on leave’ for the month of July.
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The fact that nevertheless, in the middle of June, the situation became critical was not so much down to Röhm but was due rather to an initiative by von Papen. On 17 June he made a widely reported speech at the University of Marburg in which he sharply criticized the Nazis’ arbitrary and terroristic rule. When the Propaganda Ministry blocked the distribution of the speech von Papen threatened Hitler that he would offer his resignation to the Reich
President. This had the effect of transforming his actions into a government crisis. For von Papen’s resignation would have threatened the continuation of the coalition between the Nazis and the conservatives, and this might have prompted Hindenburg to galvanize himself and dismiss Hitler as Reich Chancellor. The regime was not yet sufficiently stable, however, to survive such a step without suffering damage.

Hitler solved the crisis by directing his actions not primarily against the conservatives but rather against the SA. He calculated that by neutralizing the SA leadership he would solve the combination of domestic political problems at one stroke: the mass of discontented SA men would lose their spokesmen, the threat of a ‘second revolution’ would have been removed, the issue of control over the armed forces would be resolved, the majority of the population would be relieved by the elimination of this source of trouble, and the alliance between the Nazis and the conservative elites would emerge strengthened from these events. Insofar as it could be portrayed as the crushing of an alleged coup, the conservatives would be prepared to tolerate the exclusion or even liquidation of a few conservative critics.

Thus, at the end of June 1934 the trap was closing on the SA leadership. Practical preparations for its elimination had already been made at the beginning of the month. Theodor Eicke, the commandant of Dachau, had carried out a practice deployment of SS troops in the Munich area. At the end of June the SS and SD Oberabschnitt commanders assembled in the Bavarian capital, where Himmler and Heydrich informed them that an SA revolt was about to happen; appropriate ‘counter-measures’ were then set in train.
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There is evidence that the Reichswehr was making similar preparations to deal with this scenario.
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On 30 June Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders were arrested at Bad Wiessee, where Röhm was staying on holiday. Similar arrests occurred in Silesia, Berlin, and other places. Around 150 to 200 people were executed: apart from numerous SA leaders, there were conservative politicians, notably the former Reich Chancellor, General von Schleicher, Vice-Chancellor von Papen’s associates Herbert von Bose and Edgar Jung, as well as the former head of the police department in the Prussian Interior Ministry and leading representative of the Catholic lay organization Catholic Action, Erich Klausener. Moreover, a number of old scores were settled. Gustav Ritter von Kahr, who, while acting as Bavarian State Commissar, had prevented the Hitler putsch in November 1923; the
publisher Fritz Gerlich, who was a strong critic of the Nazis; and Gregor Strasser, who had not been forgiven for his behind-the-scenes contacts with Schleicher in December 1932—all fell victim to the SS execution squads. There was at least one case of mistaken identity, namely the Munich music critic Eduard Schmidt, murdered because he was confused with someone with the same name.

In this conflict between the party, the party’s army, the regular army, and the conservative elites Himmler, who as Reichsführer-SS was still subordinate to Röhm, had succeeded in joining the right side in time without compromising himself in any way. He had played a not-insignificant part in carrying out the ‘action’, without appearing to have intrigued against Röhm and his associates.

In the cases of Ernst Röhm and Gregor Strasser, Himmler had authorized the murder by his subordinates of the two men who had laid the foundations of his career and with whom he had had good personal relations. If Himmler had needed to demonstrate his absolute loyalty to Hitler, he had surely done so with his actions on 30 June 1934.
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The neutralization of the SA leadership represented a huge increase in Himmler’s power. As Ulrich Herbert put it, his SS had emerged ‘as a new power centre within the regime and as the real victor’ of the ‘Röhm affair’.
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This was the main result of the sudden alteration that had occurred in the overall balance of power within the regime. Himmler’s enormous political gain from the 30 June was in marked contrast to the subordinate role he had played in the power struggle that preceded the upheaval. Himmler’s new role was evident above all in the changes that then occurred.

On 15 July the regulation that had already been issued by the Führer’s Deputy, according to which the SD was declared the sole authorized intelligence service for the Party, came into effect. On 20 July Hitler ordered that the SS be removed from the SA’s organization and that in future it should be autonomous, and he justified this move with specific reference to the ‘great services’ rendered by the SS ‘in connection with the events of 30 June’.
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From June 1934 onwards the Leibstandarte and the armed political action squads (
politische Bereitschaften
) developed into the SS-Verfügungstruppe or Armed SS, the predecessor of the Waffen-SS. Eicke, who had been appointed Inspector of Concentration Camps and commander of the guard units on 4 July, was made responsible for supervising all the concentration camps throughout the Reich, and began to create a second armed force (the Death’s Head units) from the guards. A central office for coordinating the political police commanders of the federal states had already been created within the Gestapa in May, an important step towards the unification of the political police under Himmler. It could now begin to be developed into an effective instrument.
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Ill. 10.
Himmler enjoyed visiting the concentration camps he controlled, as in this case where he is photographed visiting Dachau in May 1935. Such visits also enabled him to convince groups of high-ranking visitors that the inmates were being subjected to a strict but fair regime. But in fact he was well informed about the reality of the prisoners’ inhumane treatment and the numerous murders.

Himmler’s position was still not unchallenged, however. Frick continued to hold the view that the new instruments of repression, which the so-called Third Reich had created and transferred to Himmler—the autonomous Gestapo, the concentration camps that had been subordinated to it immediately after 30 June, as well as the practice of protective custody—were merely temporary phenomena which, after a general normalization of the
situation had occurred, should once again be strictly subordinated to the state administration.
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Coming immediately after the emasculation of the SA, however, the timing for a move against this emerging concentration of power in Himmler’s hands was exceptionally unfavourable, and Göring soon put an end to it. When Frick instructed the state governments no longer to cooperate with ‘unofficial persons’, that is to say, the SD, Göring immediately and brusquely rejected this as far as the sphere of the Gestapo was concerned, in other words for Prussia, and in doing so referred explicitly to the events of 30 June.
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Himmler responded more cautiously and cooperatively. He issued an order restricting the cooperation of the SD with the Gestapo to the passing on of information. Moreover, the SD was forbidden to perform executive functions.
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Göring, for his part, began a move against Frick. In a message to the heads of the Stapo offices, the provincial governors, and district governors of 6 July 1934 he emphasized that the Gestapo was to remain ‘an autonomous part of the internal administration’ that he considered ‘of great importance for the stability of the new state’. The heads of the Gestapo offices should operate closely with the district governors, but obey their directives only if there were no instructions to the contrary from the Gestapa or from him.
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Frick, acting in his capacity as Reich Interior Minister, then responded by ordering that all state governments, as well as all provincial governors and district governors in Prussia, should send in monthly reports on the political situation, since the creation of a ‘special political police’ had by no means absolved them of their political responsibilities.
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Göring conceded the point, and a few days later Frick too back-pedalled. He agreed to Göring’s regulation of 6 July, since the latter had explained to him that it was a temporary measure.
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This meant that the Gestapo had succeeded in maintaining its position as an autonomous agency in the state of Prussia, while the district governors, as heads of the internal administration, were still permitted to send political situation reports to the Interior Ministry, so that in certain circumstances there could be a counterbalance to the reports of the Gestapo. It was only in 1936, after his appointment as Chief of the German Police, that Himmler was able to put an end to this dual system.

The 30 June 1934 was, however, also the starting-point for a painful defeat for the SS: the abortive Nazi putsch in Austria of July 1934, in which the SS played a major role.
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From the spring of 1933 onwards there had been tension between the authoritarian clerical regime of the Austrian Chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, and Nazi Germany. In May the Reich introduced the ‘thousand-mark barrier’, a fee of a thousand marks for a visa for those wishing to visit Austria. The following month Dollfuss banned the Austrian NSDAP. The response was a wave of terror attacks by Austrian Nazis, supported by Germany.

In July 1934 a group of Austrian Nazis, including the ‘State Inspector’ of the Austrian NSDAP, Theodor Habicht, and the leader of the local SA, Hermann Reschny, organized a putsch.
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The aim was to arrest the members of the Dollfuss government during a cabinet meeting and to replace them with a new cabinet under a Nazi member, Anton Rintelen. Since the Dollfuss government had suspended parliament in 1933 and had issued a new constitution the following year, the putschists hoped that his government would not be regarded as legitimate, so that substantial sections of the police (who to a considerable extent had been infiltrated by the Nazis) and of the army would switch sides. The new cabinet would then secure Anschluss (unification) with the Reich.