Heinrich Himmler : A Life (33 page)

Naturally, the Austrian Nazis were not operating on their own. On 22 July they had their plans approved by Hitler, as is clear from a note in his diary by Goebbels, who was present at the meeting: ‘Austrian question. Will it succeed? I’m very sceptical.’
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The success of the plan depended very much on the effectiveness of a Viennese SS unit, the SS-Standarte 89. This ‘military Standarte’, originally an SA formation, which consisted of active soldiers and police or those who had been dismissed for their political activities, had subordinated itself to Himmler in the spring of 1934 without the permission of the SA leadership, thereby creating much bad blood within the Austrian SA.
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This action was now to come home to roost.

On 25 July a unit of the Standarte 89 occupied the Federal Chancellery on the Ballhausplatz, where the cabinet was meeting. However, since the plot
had been betrayed, most of the ministers had managed to leave the building beforehand. A squad under the leadership of a former NCO of the Federal Army, Otto Planetta, was nevertheless able to seize the Federal Chancellor, Dollfuss. In circumstances that have never been explained, in the course of a struggle he was, however, seriously injured by two gunshot wounds and died three hours later, without receiving either the medical attention or spiritual support that he had requested.
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The circumstances of the murder of Dollfuss in particular were to confirm the international image of the SS as an utterly inhumane and ruthless organization: SS members had violently, and under degrading conditions, brought about the agonizing death of the head of a sovereign state. Dollfuss, a controversial and decidedly right-wing politician, had become a martyr murdered by the SS.
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During the course of 25 July it became apparent that the security forces did not support the intended change of regime. The police, army, and paramilitary Heimwehr besieged the Chancellery, and that evening the putschists surrendered on the basis of an assurance that they could travel unhindered to Germany. In view of the murder of Dollfuss, however, the Austrian government did not feel itself bound by that assurance. Seven putschists, including Planetta, were condemned to death and executed.
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Nevertheless, numerous Nazis in the Austrian provinces, particularly in Carinthia and Styria, interpreted the events in Vienna as the signal for a general uprising. In a number of places fights broke out between SA, SS, other Nazi militias and the police and army, as well as the Heimwehr, which was called up as a ‘defence force’. By the end of the month the forces of the state had managed to emerge as victors. A detailed analysis of these events has shown that one reason for the failure of the putsch was that the Nazis did not proceed in a coordinated fashion under a united leadership.
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Hitler distanced himself from the affair and ordered the dissolution of the Austrian NSDAP.

The abortive coup had repercussions for years in the form of intrigues and mutual recriminations.
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The mistrust between SS and SA that had turned into enmity as a result of the events of 30 June had contributed to the failure of the operation. Although the Austrian SA had promised the plotters its support in principle, the Viennese SA had failed to come to the assistance of their unpopular SS comrades, while for their part the putschists had ignored the SA in their preparations because its involvement would have undermined the autonomy of their actions.
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A case was brought against Georg Reschny, the leader of the Austrian SA, before the Supreme Party
Court on the grounds of his alleged betrayal of the putsch, but was dropped at Himmler’s request for fear of implicating other high-ranking party leaders.
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It was not until four years later, in April 1938, directly after the Anschluss with Austria, that Himmler ordered a thoroughgoing investigation of these events. The ‘Reichsführer-SS’s Historical Commission Concerning the Uprising of the Austrian National Socialists in July 1934’, which was chaired by Heydrich, finally concluded that the SA leadership had regarded the takeover of the Standarte by the SS as ‘a betrayal of the SA’.
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‘The tension between a section of the SA leadership and the SS, which then emerged into the open in the Reich on 30 June 1934, also became evident in Austria. This also explains the attitude the SA leadership in Austria later adopted towards the plans for the uprising.’
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However, the extent to which the SA bore actual blame for the collapse of the putsch attempt was understandably not discussed in detail in the report, and nor was it in the end assessed. Instead, betrayal, technical mistakes, and cock-ups were blamed for the failure. Significantly, the exact circumstances of Dollfuss’s murder could also not (or were not intended to) be clarified.

It was to take until the autumn of 1935 before Himmler had secured control over the whole of the German police. During this second stage of his accretion of power he benefited from the relatively unstable situation in which the Nazi regime found itself at this time.

In the first place, there was the international situation. As a result of the abortive putsch in Austria, Germany had provoked the enmity of Mussolini, and the announcement of the introduction of national military service in March 1935, as well as the military occupation of the Rhineland the following year, both of which were clear breaches of the Versailles treaty, inevitably prompted fears of foreign intervention. And yet the Third Reich was not yet prepared for such conflicts. In addition, there were domestic uncertainties. The year 1935 saw the regime involved in serious conflicts with conservative elements and with the churches and, moreover, the communist underground movement was still active. Thus, the Nazi leadership was concerned that its ambitious foreign-policy plans could be torpedoed by a collapse of the ‘home front’. The ‘1918 complex’, the fear of a ‘stab in the back’, was deeply rooted.
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It was against this background that, after a lot of to-ing and fro-ing, Himmler was able to succeed in pushing through his policy of establishing a uniform and permanent terror system that was outside the law and covered the whole of the Reich. Himmler operated at various levels. In the first place, he built up the armed SS units; secondly, he brought the whole of the concentration camp system under his control and unified it; thirdly, he strengthened and unified the Gestapo and introduced new
elements into the programme for combating political enemies; fourthly, he developed this programme into a comprehensive scheme for providing a ‘general preventive anti-subversion system’ (
Generalprevention
) covering the whole of society, thereby persuading Hitler to appoint him Chief of the German Police.

Since the SS continued to grow and its tasks continued to expand, it became necessary to carry out various organizational changes, and in fact, with his order of 14 December 1934, Himmler carried out a complete reorganization of the SS. In future the SS was divided into three sections: the SS-Verfügungstruppe, consisting of the armed political squads including the Leibstandarte; the SS concentration camp guards; and the General SS, to which all other members of the SS belonged.
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The deployment of armed SS units to neutralize the SA leadership on 30 June 1934 had been in the interests of the Reichswehr leadership and had met with their approval. A further, albeit limited, expansion of the number of these units had also met with the approval of the military, provided that the monopoly of the Reichswehr as the ‘nation’s sole bearer of arms’ was not seriously threatened. Thus, on 24 September 1934 the Reichswehr Ministry issued guidelines for the SS-Verfügungstruppe with reference to an order from Hitler. These agreed to the establishment of armed units—three regiments and an intelligence section—although initially only one battalion (the Leibstandarte) was to be created. Additional units with the aim of establishing a full division were established, but significantly only with the permission of the Reichswehr Ministry.

The edict demonstrates the Wehrmacht’s intention of keeping the military ambitions of the SS within bounds. Basically, the SS was to be unarmed; the establishment of armed SS units was to be an exception and was intended to enable the SS to carry out certain domestic political tasks that the Führer might assign to it. The force would be under the command of the Reichsführer-SS; in wartime it would be at the disposal of the Wehrmacht.
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The Wehrmacht endeavoured to restrict the training of the SS units and their wartime mobilization to such an extent that in any future war they would be able to play only a subordinate military role.
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However, of the total of three leadership academies that were planned, two were envisaged as officer academies, each with 250 training places. And the number of officer recruits to be trained in eight-month courses far exceeded the requirements of the Verfügungstruppe as laid down in the edict of 24 September.
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If one also takes into account the fact that Himmler requested the Wehrmacht to give priority in its conscription programme to SS members who had not yet served in the armed services, and his declared intention of accepting only men into the SS who had done their military service, then it begins to become clear that in the long term Himmler wished to build up the General SS into a reserve troop for a much larger SS army.
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Himmler tried to defuse immediate concerns that the Wehrmacht’s monopoly of arms might be being undermined in private talks with the Reichswehr Minister, Werner von Blomberg, and his Chief of Staff, Ludwig Beck, which took place in October 1934.
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Himmler insisted that the SS was not pursuing military goals like the SA; it was not intended to develop into a ‘military organization alongside the Wehrmacht’. The SS’s military training and organization were simply intended to underline its elite character. It is clear from the surviving records of the army leadership that these statements met with disbelief.
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Beck’s guidelines for the cooperation of the army with the SS dated 18 December 1934 show that the Reichswehr leadership was trying as far as possible to establish control over the SS units. Thus, although it permitted the creation of two further units (Sappers and Intelligence), Himmler’s pressing demand for the SS to have its own artillery was refused. In other words, the creation of a fully equipped division was to be delayed for as long as possible. And initially this negotiating strategy worked.
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On 2 February 1935 Hitler decided that the Verfügungstruppe should be expanded and equipped to full division strength only in time of war.
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The new tasks and the reorganization involved considerably more work for SS headquarters. In January 1935, therefore, Himmler raised the three departments that he had established the previous year (SS Office, SD Office, and Race and Settlement Office) to the rank of Main Offices. The ‘Staff of the Reichsführer-SS’ remained as his personal instrument for exercising leadership.
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On 1 June 1935, a few months after this reorganization, Himmler appointed Oswald Pohl, the head of the Administration office within the SD Main Office, to be ‘Head of the SS Administration’. This meant that Pohl took over the supervision of the administrative department of the SD Main Office as well as that of the Race and Settlement Main
Office in addition to his existing job. In later years Pohl was to develop these responsibilities into a position of real power.
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However, Himmler’s main focus during this period was on his struggle to retain and extend his control over the concentration camp system and the German police.

In May 1934, immediately after his appointment as Inspector of the Gestapa, Himmler had assigned the Dachau commandant, Eicke, the task of reorganizing the state concentration camps in Prussia. Even before the end of the month, Eicke had taken over the Lichtenburg camp in the Prussian province of Saxony and begun to reorganize it along the lines of Dachau. On 20 June he was officially appointed Inspector of Concentration Camps. Although he was formally subordinated to the SS Office, in practice he reported directly to Himmler.
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At the beginning of July 1934 Eicke, who had played a leading role in the murders of 30 June, took over the Oranienburg camp, which was under the authority of the SA, and closed it. A number of smaller camps were also closed.
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Following on from this, he reorganized the Esterwegen camp, which Himmler had already taken over ‘personally’ on 20 June, along the lines of Dachau, replacing the SA guards with SS.
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He followed the same course of action with the Sachsenburg camp in the federal state of Saxony, which was taken over in August.
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Columbia House in Berlin, the ‘house prison’ of the Gestapa, which was run by an SS squad, was transferred to him in December 1934, and the small Sulza camp in Thuringia in April 1936.
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During 1935 Himmler was exceptionally successful, as will be shown in the next section, in countering all the attacks by the Interior and Justice Ministers on the brutal way in which protective custody was carried out in the camps. In the course of these disputes Himmler persuaded Hitler on 20 June to transform the concentration camp guards into a military force and to finance the camps and guards with Reich funds.
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This meant that the first stage in the reorganization of the camps had been completed by mid-1935. At the same time, the number of prisoners had reached its lowest-ever level of around 3,000.