Heinrich Himmler : A Life (36 page)

The fact that Himmler had succeeded in making protective custody, a form of imprisonment that had emerged at the time of the takeover of power and was by its very nature indeterminate and not subject to any legal supervision, into a permanent institution and to do so despite the protests of the Reich Ministries of the Interior and Justice, provided the real foundation for his position of power within the dictatorship. In the person of Himmler, an arbitrary prerogative state had succeeded in replacing a state that had operated according to the law and was bound by norms. However, for Himmler this turning-point represented merely the first stage in his career in the Third Reich.

Himmler’s attempts to free the political police from all irksome legal bonds, to make it more independent, and to protect it from outside interference coincided with a public campaign which Himmler’s deputy, Heydrich, had launched in May 1935 with a series of articles in the SS journal,
Das Schwarze Korps
, with the title ‘Phases in Our Struggle’.
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The basic idea for the series was that, following the destruction of all opposition organizations, the enemies of Nazism had by no means been defeated. The Nazi movement was, it was claimed, far too little aware of the fact that the real threat came from ‘intellectual forces’ who were maintaining the struggle against Nazism with undiminished energy. The ‘driving forces behind this opposition [were] always the same: World Jewry, World Freemasonry, and a to a large extent politicized official priesthood’ (Heydrich corrected himself in the next issue of
Das Schwarze Korps
to the effect that ‘Freemasonry’ was really simply ‘a front organization for Jewry’). These forces, it was further claimed, generally operated in ‘disguise’ against Nazism, with so-called specialists within the state machine, who had allowed themselves to be ‘coordinated’ only for appearances’ sake, playing a key role. This represented a massive attack on Himmler’s opponents within the state administration, who were simply being labelled as enemies of Nazism. In this scenario ‘Bolshevism’, which had hitherto always been rated enemy number one, now appeared merely as a superficial phenomenon behind which the ‘real’ opponents were hiding. The state police, it was said, were incapable of dealing with these on their own. Instead, in this ‘ideological struggle’ the SS, as ‘the ideological shock troops’ of the Nazi movement,
were called upon to play a role in the vanguard. In any event, the struggle would be fought without quarter given: ‘If we are to look after our people we must treat our opponents harshly, even at the risk of sometimes hurting an individual opponent and of possibly being vilified by some, no doubt well-meaning, people as wild brutes.’

This series of articles marked the Gestapo’s transition from the policy of destroying the communist underground organization to a much broader conception of pursuing ‘its intellectual originators’ and ‘the brains behind the operation’. The four articles were directly linked to the systematic persecution of Catholic priests and lay brothers as well as with the so-called second anti-Semitic wave, which the party launched in the spring of 1935 and finally led to the issuing of the Nuremberg Laws in September of the same year.

In 1936 high-ranking SS functionaries repeatedly took up Heydrich’s ideas and expanded on them.
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Four points in particular were emphasized: first, in order to achieve success the struggle against their political enemies—Jews, Freemasons, politically active priests—must be pursued with foresight, comprehensively, and above all preventively;
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secondly, the work of the political police must not be limited by legal restrictions;
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thirdly, the Gestapo, the SD, and the General SS must be merged to form a ‘State Protection Corps’;
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and fourthly, uncompromising harshness and ruthlessness were required in pursuit of these goals, a point to which Himmler kept returning.
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As early as in his speech to the German Peasants’ Rally in Goslar, which was intended as a fundamental statement of his views, Himmler had emphasized that the SS would ensure ‘that never again can a Jewish-Bolshevist revolution of subhumanity be initiated in Germany, the very heart of Europe, either from within or by outside emissaries. We shall act as a merciless sword of judgement on all these forces, of whose existence and activities we are well aware, on the day that they make even the slightest attempt—whether today, in decades, or in millennia.’
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In a speech on 5 March 1936 to the Prussian State Council, a body that Göring had created in 1933 as a replacement for the organization representing the Prussian provinces, which had been dissolved, Himmler emphasized once again his determination above all to be merciless and ruthless. At first he referred to the past dispute about the creation of an autonomous secret police, without disguising his satisfaction at having emerged as the victor of this conflict: ‘And so in the course of 1934 we came to the point where,
with German decency but—and I believe I’m entitled to make this comment—totally underestimating our opponents, we almost completely cleared the concentration camps and even contemplated whether we couldn’t dissolve the political police and integrate it completely into the rest of the police, the criminal police, and into the general administration.’ At the time he himself had taken the ‘opposite view’ and ‘urgently warned against such ideas’. For ‘the idea that the political struggle against our opponents: Jewry, Bolshevism, Jewified world Freemasonry, and all the forces that do not want a new, revived Germany is over, is in my view a grave error, for Germany is right at the beginning of what may be a centuries-long struggle, perhaps the decisive world struggle with these forces of organized subhumanity.’

With this speech Himmler had for the first time discovered the useful formula with which in future he was repeatedly to describe the conglomeration of enemies the SS saw itself confronted with. And in this context he referred to his favourite topic of ‘decency’ (
Anständigkeit
), which he now used in a most interesting way. The Reichsführer-SS considered it

as one of the greatest tasks of the German people to reassert the decency that is fundamental to us in the way in which we conduct our struggles, and that our conflicts, not only the physical and intellectual ones, but also those relating to rational, human, official, departmental, and world political issues, whether in the most mundane or in the most significant spheres, are pursued in an exemplary manner. We must cultivate these values in all areas of life at home and outside Germany vis-à-vis all those opponents who are worthy of this way of proceeding.

This did not apply, however, to the most dangerous opponents, to whom he once again specifically denied the status of human beings with equal rights:

But it would be mad to apply this chivalrous attitude to Jewry and Bolshevism, whose political methods involve amorality, deception, and mendacity and who, in accordance with typical Jewish principles, consider the failure to destroy an opponent as weakness. Also to adopt a chivalrous form of combat towards a Jesuit, who is engaged in a struggle for earthly power and who justifies lying in a way that is incomprehensible to us through the theory of the ‘reservatio mentalis’, would be virtually the equivalent of surrender [ . . . ] All in all, I should like to say that we Germans must at last learn not to regard the Jews and Jewish-influenced organizations as human beings who are members of our species and as people who share our way of thinking.

The Gestapo, Himmler continued, must ‘combine the two elements’ through which Germany had become great: ‘the military and the civil
service.’
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However, what sounds like a peace-offering to the state bureaucracy was perhaps intended only to disguise the fact that at this point the political scene had been set for the realization of a programme that interpreted the concept of ‘state protection’ far more extensively than was suggested by the public statements of leading SS functionaries during the years 1935–6. The Reichsführer-SS was aiming to take over the whole of the German police and thereby to realize a concept of preventive repression, in which the struggle against political enemies was to go hand in hand with the elimination of the allegedly ‘biological’ roots of criminality.

In June 1935 Hitler approved Himmler’s proposal to form the concentration camp guards into a military unit.
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On 18 October 1935 Himmler then managed to persuade Hitler that the German police needed to be reorganized, and secured the latter’s agreement that he should take over the whole of the police. However, Himmler’s appointment as ‘Chief of the German Police’ occurred only nine months after this decisive meeting, as before then lengthy negotiations had to take place with the Interior Ministry. In fact, from September 1935 Frick had been pursuing his own plans to establish a Reich police force and to reintegrate the Gestapo into the general police organization.
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One can reconstruct Himmler’s line of argument from the notes he made of his meeting with Hitler on 18 October 1935.
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At first he talked about the pursuit of political opponents, which at that time had already passed its peak. (‘1. Treatment of the communists’). Then, under ‘2. Abortion’, he discussed the dangers this allegedly posed for ‘the whole nation’ and the requisite police counter-measures. He used ‘3. Asocial elements’ to consider how the traditional range of police tasks could be expanded in the Third Reich. Finally, he dealt with the topic ‘4. Guard units’, and under ‘5. Gestapo edict’, opposed the attempts of Reich Interior Minister Frick to establish a Reich police force and reintegrate the Gestapo into the general police organization.
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Himmler achieved more in his meeting with Hitler than the takeover of the police. As is clear from a note that he made on the same day, Hitler also agreed to the creation of SS leadership colleges and discussed with him the possibility of ‘internal unrest’ and, in this context, the expansion of the armed SS units (
SS-Verfügungstruppe
).
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Thus, the aim of amalgamating the SS and the police and their deployment under the auspices of a security concept that went far beyond conventional police tasks was beginning to emerge in outline. What this involved in detail Himmler would clarify only
after his appointment to the new post of Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police.

Only a few days later, on 21 October 1935, Hitler rejected Frick’s proposal to take over the Reich Security Service, in other words, the small special unit responsible for the personal protection of the dictator and senior politicians of the regime. Hitler informed Frick that Himmler was formally responsible for the Reich Security Service; but in fact Hitler was himself in command, and in particular retained for himself the selection of its personnel. Frick’s move could thus be interpreted as an attempt to restrict the dictator’s room for manoeuvre in a sensitive area, an exceptionally clumsy one, given his ambitions vis-à-vis the police.
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Himmler, on the other hand, continued to exploit his advantage. On 1 November 1935 he had another meeting with Hitler. The Reich Justice Ministry had submitted complaints about the arbitrary nature of protective custody and the terror exercised in the concentration camps. Himmler succeeded in rebutting the accusations, and could subsequently curtly inform the Justice Minister that Hitler had expressly forbidden the employment of lawyers in cases of protective custody and, apart from that, saw no reason to intervene after being presented with a list of deaths in the concentration camps produced by the Justice Ministry. This was unnecessary in view of the ‘exceptionally conscientious management of the concentration camps’.
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In March 1936 the Justice Minister did manage to secure Himmler’s agreement in principle to permit particular lawyers, who would be appointed in agreement with the Gestapo, to represent concentration camp prisoners. However, in the event the Gestapo prevented the implementation of this regulation by systematic stalling.
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It is clear that for Himmler it was a matter of principle: prisoners in protective custody should on no account be able to claim the protection of the law. It was precisely the arbitrary character of concentration camp imprisonment that produced its deterrent effect, and it was on this fear that, in the final analysis, Himmler’s power was based.

On 17 June 1936 Hitler finally appointed Himmler ‘Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police within the Reich Ministry of the Interior’.
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The formula ‘within the Reich Ministry of the Interior’ proved in practice to be just as meaningless as the statement in the same law that Himmler was ‘personally and directly’ subordinate to the Reich Interior Minister. What was decisive was the fact that Frick had proved unable to integrate Himmler effectively into his ministry. In fact the opposite occurred; Himmler
removed the police from the internal administration and took over the responsibility for it himself. What proved decisive was the linking together of the police and the SS. As Reichsführer-SS, Himmler was already directly subordinate to Hitler and, therefore, could always receive his orders directly from his ‘Führer’. As Chief of the German Police, Himmler carefully evaded the Reich Interior Ministry by immediately creating two new Main Departments: the Security Police, comprising the Gestapo and the Criminal Police (Kripo) under Heydrich, and the Order Police under Daluege. These were hybrid organizations that anticipated the intended amalgamation of SS and police.
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On 20 September 1936 the Reich and Prussian Minister of the Interior issued an edict delegating to the Gestapa the duties of the political police commanders of the federal states, These were the duties that Himmler had hitherto carried out via the headquarters of the Police Commander based within the Gestapa. From now on they were to be exercised directly by the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa) itself.
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This meant that the centralized secret Reich police force, which the Nazi leaders in the individual states had hoped to prevent, had finally come about. They now had to accept that their influence on the political police was minimal.
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