Heinrich Himmler : A Life (47 page)

The porcelain manufactory’s range stretched in total to 240 models, all bearing the double
Sig
rune, the emblem of the SS—a grandiose collection of SS kitsch. ‘Emblematic figures of the movement’ such as the ‘SS flag-bearer’, as well as figurines of historical soldiers and of animals (‘alsatian’, ‘rutting stag’, ‘young hare’), were available in porcelain, while the compulsory bust of the Führer, the Yule light (candle-holder) indispensable to the SS family, and ‘Germanic’ utensils such as vases and dishes could be obtained in pottery. In addition, and increasingly during the war, Allach produced everyday items for the Waffen-SS.
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Although an ideology specific to the SS was to become the means of binding the organization together, before the outbreak of the Second World War statements from Himmler concerning the future goals of the SS were relatively rare. Apart from his programmatic speech at the NS Leaders Conference of 1931 there are in fact only three speeches in which he discussed the role of the SS in a future ‘Third Reich’ and fundamental ideological questions: his speech at the Reich Peasants’ Rally of November 1935, which was also published under the title
The SS as an Anti-Bolshevik Fighting Force
; his lecture to a Wehrmacht course on national politics in January 1937; and finally, his speech of November 1938 to the SS-Gruppenführer.
³⁹
There are also indications to be found in the indoctrination material over which Himmler exercised control, such as the
SS Guidance Booklets
.

If these speeches and materials are analysed more closely, it appears that an idea fundamental to Himmler’s ideological outlook was that there existed a superior Nordic or Germanic race, which, as the leader of the ‘white races’ and thus also representative of humanity as a whole, was engaged in a millennia-long struggle with racially inferior opponents. The endpoint of this conflict would be a final clash between the racially superior—in other words the ‘Germanic’—peoples, and their opponents, the inferior races, or
to put it in drastic terms, a ‘struggle between humans and subhumans’.
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The rise of National Socialism under the leadership of the genius Hitler, the idea runs, opened up the historically unique opportunity to win this battle. If they should lose, the inexorable consequence would be the destruction of the Germanic—in other words, the white—race.

In public presentations of this idea Himmler identified Freemasons, communists, and Jews as dangerous enemies; within the SS he made it clear that he considered Christianity to be at least as dangerous. The Jews, who in Himmler’s programmatic speech of 1931 had not even been mentioned, appeared in the changing guise of both string-pullers and the intellectual gurus of the enemy camp. Jews were both Freemasons and communists, and somehow or other they were also behind the intrigues of Christianity.
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Because, however, the Jews were to blame for everything, they remained, even in Himmler’s tirades, curiously insipid. By contrast, his rhetoric took flight when he was speaking against communists, homosexuals, and above all against Christianity.

At the beginning of the 1940s Himmler’s concept of the enemy was decisively extended. He now favoured the view that the Teutons were engaged in a perpetual struggle with forces repeatedly thrusting forth from Asia to conquer Europe and destroy the Teutons: ‘inevitably, like the swing of the pendulum.’
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Himmler traced a line beginning with the Huns and stretching via the Magyars, the Mongols, Turks, and Tartars to the Soviet communists. In the final analysis it was the ‘conflict between a Germanic Reich and subhumans’.
⁴³

In the process he was to stress again and again the alleged close symbiosis of communists and Jews, and develop the idea that ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ was attempting to mobilize the masses of the Asian continent against the ‘Teutons’.
⁴⁴
The fact that he repeatedly placed this Jewish-Bolshevik threat in a ‘historical’ context and presented it as the most recent manifestation of ‘Asiatic’ imperialism indicates an important shift in his vision of the world: the original arch-enemy ‘the Jews’ (whom he had always named in the 1930s in the same breath as the communists, Freemasons, and Jesuits), was now replaced by a much more encompassing enemy, the ‘Asians’. It goes without saying that this vision of the enemy included ‘the Jew’; as Himmler emphasized, the war was a racial war against ‘Jewry and Asians’.
⁴⁵
The change in Himmler’s conception of the enemy is shown also by the fact that he no longer designated another important ideological enemy, Christianity, as the product of ‘Jewish’ influence, as he had done in the 1930s,
but rather as a religion infected by ‘Asian’ elements. In 1944 these came together in the formulation ‘purely Near Eastern Christianity, relayed by Jews’.
⁴⁶
Himmler’s anti-Semitism was therefore always an integral part of a colourful collage of hostile images.

First in 1938, but above all in the 1940s, a further change in his terminology can be observed: the future Reich that was to be established was no longer simply ‘Germanic’ but ‘Greater Germanic’ (
grossgermanisch
), in other words, it was to include ‘related blood’ from various European states and ethnic German minorities, take possession of extensive territories in eastern Europe, and, by expelling or exterminating the indigenous population, ‘Germanize’ them. Himmler conceived of this Greater Germanic Reich not as a Greater Germany extended by a few provinces but as an entirely new kind of supranational state organization created on a racial basis.
⁴⁷
The historical analogy in his mind was that of the foundation of the Reich or Empire of 1871: just as Prussia had become a part of the German Empire, so the Greater German Reich would be absorbed into the Greater Germanic Reich.
⁴⁸

His vision of a final conflict with the Asian powers is probably to be found most distinctly in a speech he made on 16 September 1942 to the leaders of the SS at his Ukrainian headquarters at Hegewald. He warned his audience that, just as ‘an Attila was born in this seething mass of millions of subhumans, in the same way suddenly in some coupling of two people the spark can be ignited’ by means of which ‘an Attila, a Genghis Khan, a Tamberlaine, a Stalin can emerge from lost traces of Nordic-Germanic-Aryan blood that is floating in this mass and which alone can give rise to powers of leadership and organization’. If, however, ‘such a genius, such a dictator, such a Genghis Khan is born and simultaneously on the other side no Adolf Hitler is born’, then ‘things may turn out very badly for the white race’. There was only one way of successfully meeting this challenge: ‘If you encounter any example of good blood somewhere in the east—and this is the first principle you must take note of—you can either win it over to your side or you must kill it. To leave it, on the other hand, so that tomorrow another leader emerges, whether of small, great, or indifferent stature, would be a crime against us all, for in the end only our own blood can defeat us.’
⁴⁹

Here a new idea comes into play: The greatest threat, in Himmler’s view, no longer comes from an Asian–Bolshevik bloc under Jewish leadership but from Asian masses subordinated to strong leader figures, whose sudden emergence he could explain to himself only by positing the accidental
breeding back of ‘lost’ ‘Germanic’ genes. On another occasion he claimed fancifully: ‘Originally what probably happened was that we had a Germanic–Nordic ruling class who—and this is reported even by academic historians—had assumed the position of lords or princes over some peoples in the east, in part at their request. They probably said, “Send us somebody for we cannot control ourselves and we want somebody to keep us in order”.’
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The more the Soviet Union proved itself to be at least a match for National Socialist Germany in the Second World War, the more clearly this idea crystallized in Himmler’s utterances: Genghis Khan, Lenin, and Stalin became leaders with ‘Aryan’ roots.
⁵¹
Simultaneously—in 1942 Himmler had embarked on the ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish question on a European scale—the Jews receded more and more as the principal enemy; in 1943 he was already referring to the Jewish question in the past tense.
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It has no doubt already become obvious that Himmler’s politico-historical ideology was a construct of the imagination that is almost impossible to analyse in detail on the basis of intellectual history. Not only was it inconsistent within itself and terminologically extremely vague, but in the course of time it also underwent significant changes that called into question its own foundations. The definition of the Germanic collective was dependent on a capriciously applied concept of race, and the hated enemies, the opponent, were described so imprecisely and were so closely linked that they were practically interchangeable and could be blamed for anything. At the end the Teutons were fighting a hostile leader class that was their own mirror-image. Himmler asked the Reich Peasants’ Rally of 1935 to focus more on the ‘line of argument as a totality’, and that is the procedure that must be followed here if these ideas are to acquire any coherent meaning.

That does not, however, mean that there were no constants in his outlook. The restoration of some kind of ‘Germanic’ Reich that would colonize the east was without doubt one of them, as was his deep hostility towards the peoples settled in this east, towards Christianity, and towards the Jews. Yet these constants could be translated in very diverse ways into programmes of imperialist conquest and campaigns of annihilation.

It would therefore be wrong to assume that it was Himmler’s priority to translate an ideological fixed programme into reality. Rather, he was first and foremost a highly flexible and adaptable politician who knew how to legitimize whatever policy he adopted by dressing it up with appropriate
ideology. Or to put it another way, Himmler the politician wished to avoid being too hemmed in by Himmler the ideologue.
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In order to arm them for the forthcoming epochal conflict between ‘humans and subhumans’ Himmler wanted to direct the SS to one task above all: it was to act as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a ‘Germanic’ way of living. As he understood it, this was the actual mission of his Schutzstaffel; it was to this task that it owed its identity and the justification for its existence.

Christianity seemed to him so dangerous because its sexual morality stood in opposition to the biological revolution he planned, and because the principle of Christian mercy contradicted his demand for unwavering severity in dealing with ‘subhumans’.
⁵⁴
Replacing Christian principles with ‘Germanic’ virtues was the precondition if they were to prevail against the ‘subhumans’ and secure the future.

In Himmler’s concept the dual process of ‘de-Christianization’ and ‘Germanization’ was to impact on all aspects of life: custom and moral behaviour, in particular sexual morality; the legal system; the entire realm of culture; and the social order. This general revision of outdated values that Himmler aimed for corresponded strikingly to his own personal development. Not only did he blame the ‘homosexual male order’ of the Catholic Church and the prudery rooted in his Catholic upbringing for his own delayed sexual development and for what he subsequently was to call with shock the ‘threat’ of homosexual temptations. In the face of his gradually waning enthusiasm for his wife after ten years of marriage, towards the end of the 1930s, he also felt limited in his private needs by the dominant morality of Christian marriage. ‘Germanic generosity’ could be of use here. His reorientation towards ‘Germanic’ values also enabled him to create a moral system by which he could reject the humanitarian values he had grown up with, and which had obstructed the development of a ruthless policy of expanding living-space.

There is no doubt about Himmler’s anti-communism and anti-Semitism, and he sought to destroy both groups without mercy. Yet he was basically much more interested in Christianity: the conflict with the Christian world in which he had grown up had truly existential significance for him, and by
linking opposition to Christians with the idea of restoring the lost Germanic world he had set himself the overriding challenge of his life. A political consideration was also important: anti-Semitism and anti-communism were fundamental to National Socialism, both ideologically and in its political practice. The SS would be hard put to establish a distinctive profile in these areas. By linking de-Christianization with re-Germanization, Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all its own.

We have already seen that, in spite of his rejection of Christianity, Himmler set immense store by the fact that his men and he himself ‘believed in God’.
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What he said about his own ‘belief in God’ was, however, vague. In his speeches he occasionally referred to ‘Waralda, the ancient (
das Uralte
)’, but without deriving from that a concept of divinity to which he or the SS were committed. For example, in a speech to senior naval officers in 1943 he propounded the view that those who observed and understood the process of natural selection were ‘believers in their innermost being’. ‘They are believers because they recognize that above us is an infinite wisdom. The Teutons had a beautiful expression for it: Waralda, the ancient. We may dispute how it can be revered and how in earthly terms it can be broken down into cults and varieties.’
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Himmler was not willing to profess belief in public in Wotan or other Germanic deities. In secret, however, he thought about the question of whether it might not be possible to decipher such ‘Germanic’ ideas of divinity. In May 1940 he turned to Walter Wüst, the head of the Ahnenerbe, and asked him ‘to research where in all of North-Germanic Aryan culture the concept of the lightning flash, the thunderbolt, Thor’s hammer, or the hammer thrown or flying through the air appears. Also, where there are sculptures of a god holding an axe and appearing in a flash of lightning.’ He requested him to collect ‘all such evidence, whether in pictures, sculpture, writing, or legend’, because he was convinced that in this case it was ‘not natural thunder and lightning but rather a case of an earlier, highly developed weapon our forefathers had, possessed of course by only a few, namely by the Aesir, the gods, and presuming an extraordinary knowledge of electricity’.
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The final remark about electricity indicates that Himmler believed this weapon had actually existed and had really been in the hands of god or godlike beings; had he been interested only in the depiction of the phenomenon of the thunderbolt he would not have needed to bother about the construction of the alleged weapon, and could have left it entirely to the imagination of the artist. Or had his enthusiasm made his thoughts run away
with him? The fact that Wiligut (of whom we will hear more later), his adviser in all Germanic and occult questions, presented him with a plan to introduce a primitive Germanic religion in place of Christianity does indeed lend strength to the supposition that among his intimate associates Himmler pursued these ideas seriously.
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