Heinrich Himmler : A Life (51 page)

Ill. 14.
One of Himmler’s pet projects was research into and preservation of the ‘ancestral heritage’ of distant Germanic prehistory. He took part on a number of occasions in inspections of sites and archaeological excavations in order to make detailed observations. Here he is shown with Wiligut in a quarry in the Palatinate thought to contain runes.

Wiligut, whose name in the SS was ‘Weisthor’, was a retired colonel in the Austrian Imperial Army and already 66 years old when Himmler engaged him. We know little about his earlier life, and what we do know is not particularly reliable: one of the most important publications about ‘Himmler’s Rasputin’ originates from the very circles in which Wiligut was admired.
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According to it, Wiligut had frequented völkisch and esoteric circles in Vienna before the First World War and had been involved in journalism along the same lines. In 1903 his book
Seyfried’s Runes
appeared.
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He did not come to prominence as a figure within völkisch occultism until after the First World War, however. Wiligut claimed to be the ‘bearer of the tradition’ of an ancient Gothic clan, the Asa, and furthermore to be the bearer of a secret German kingship. Thanks to the abilities he claimed to have as a medium he was, being childless and the last of his line,
capable of making contact with his ancestors and calling up occult knowledge thousands of years old. Himmler is said to have tried everything to boost the ageing Wiligut-Weisthor’s ability to work, with the help of injections and drugs, and to salvage as much as possible of his store of occult knowledge; according to his biographer Mund, although this treatment certainly did bring about a reactivation of Wiligut’s energies, they manifested themselves above all in over-indulgence in nicotine and alcohol.

Weisthor prepared pieces for Himmler on prehistory and early history and on religious questions, and sent him poems he had written himself.
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Among other things the former colonel suggested that Himmler introduce an ancient Germanic religion in Germany.
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Above all, however, he supplied him with what he claimed to be orally transmitted occult knowledge from the ‘Asa-Uana clan’: for example, the ‘nine commandments of God’, which he ‘had set down in written form’ for the first time ‘since 1200’, as the ‘records on this subject were publicly burned by Louis “the Pious”’. The ninth commandment was: ‘God is beginning without end—the universe. He is perfection in nothingness and yet everything in three times threefold knowledge of all things. He closes the circle [ . . . ] from consciousness to the unconscious so that this may become conscious again.’
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In summer 1936 Himmler read Wiligut’s
Description of Human Development
, which he claimed originated from the ‘occult transmission of our AsaUana clan Uilligotis’:

Mankind, as the highest expression of intelligence and reason in creation on earth at any given time, falls into seven epochs, of which four are complete; the fifth is humanity in the present, and the sixth and seventh are the ages still to come. Each of these four epochs of development now completed was, according to oral occult teaching, brought about by an enormous earth catastrophe that ended with the union of our earth with one of these stars that gravitated towards us. [ . . .] The fragments of humanity remaining on earth assimilated in this process with the intelligent beings who had come ‘from heaven’ (the stars) to ‘Earth’ and were being shaped in a similar way. Thus they formed the new humanity in each particular case, which represented new racial types, as of course such ‘first’ human beings were always to be found at different points of the earth, as it was assuming its new shape.
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In other words, clear evidence for the Cosmic Ice Theory!

Wiligut enjoyed several promotions, and in 1936, as an expression of his special esteem, Himmler bestowed on him the rank of SS-Brigadeführer.
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At the beginning of 1939, however, Himmler broke with Weisthor. One
reason was that Hitler had made a public statement opposing occultism, and another was the discovery that Himmler’s adviser on the occult had spent three years in a Salzburg institution for the mentally ill and in 1925 had been legally incapacitated.
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Himmler did not, however, give up the relationship entirely. Significantly, the Reichsführer kept Wiligut’s death’s-head ring, which he had had to give back when he left the SS, in his own strongroom.
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And he still called on Wiligut for advice, for example in the summer of 1940, when he was having an emblem designed for the graves of fallen SS men. Wiligut agreed with Himmler’s suggestion that in place of the ‘Christian cross the cross with bars of equal length can be used to accord with our ancient German religion’, as it signifies ‘God as spirit, God as strength, and God as matter in eternal change’; the Reichsführer gave orders for this to be carried out.
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Finally, Himmler’s office diary for November 1941 indicates a lunch with ‘Colonel Wiligut’ in Berlin.
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The following general picture emerges from all of this. Central to Himmler’s vision of the world was the restoration of a de-Christianized, Germanic environment, which with the help of the myths of Atlantis and Tibet was to be linked to long-lost examples of sophisticated cultures, and via the Cosmic Ice Theory/astrology/astronomy to the history of the cosmos. Just as Himmler supposed that, with the help of his adviser Weisthor, he could penetrate directly to the world of the Germanic ancestors, so he believed he could be ‘reincarnated’ in his own bloodline—his vision therefore most certainly reached into eternity. Through the mixture of history, historical myth, Teutonic cult, astrology and astronomy, theories of how the earth came to be and how reincarnation is possible, a real substitute religion was created, possibly interwoven with notions of a primitive Germanic religion.

This construct admittedly suffered from the fact that, to put it mildly, it was not yet coherent. Himmler was aware of this, and for that reason spent a significant amount of his time—and this during the war—collecting ‘evidence’ to support his ideas. Tellingly, his view of the world can be reconstructed only from original sources, for he clearly never expounded it as a coherent whole.

It was not, however, only the incoherence and the protests from the academic world he anticipated that prevented Himmler from propounding his theory of the world to the public. His realization that the great majority of his fellow men would be unable—as yet—to recognize the intellectual
consistency of his vision, and in particular that he would meet with vigorous opposition from Hitler should he, as one of the most important leaders of the NSDAP and Chief of the German Police, cause a stir by founding a substitute religion, made him cautious.

What was taught inside the SS and police under the heading of ideological indoctrination reflected, therefore, only in part Himmler’s much more far-reaching beliefs: topics such as the Cosmic Ice Theory, Tibet myth, and Atlantis were excluded from the start, and overly aggressive attacks on Christianity also had to be avoided. It is therefore no surprise that Himmler did not design the ideological aspect of indoctrination (about which more will be said later) as a complete system of thought based on written texts. Rather, he tried to emphasize the communication of concrete role-models and heroic stories. Indoctrination was geared to affect the disposition rather than the intellect. Precisely because of its imprecise and mythical nature, the ideology he espoused could be turned into ‘indoctrination’ to only a limited degree, and other ways of getting it across had to be found: he considered gifts with symbolic meanings, ceremonies, and special ‘holy’ places to be particularly suitable for this.

By means of ‘the things that are conferred, ceremonies, all the inner life that has been reawakened here’, the SS had, in Himmler’s opinion in 1938,

perhaps done something more important [ . . . ] for Germany than the SS can do by means, let’s say, of exemplary organization or a regiment that can march faultlessly or fine sporting successes. I believe that these inner things connected with the heart, with honour, and with a mind filled with the most real and deep vision of the world are truly in the last analysis the things that give us strength, strength for today, and that will give us strength for every conflict and every hour of destiny that will confront Germany, and perhaps us personally, in the next thirty, fifty, 100 years.
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By ‘the things that are conferred’ Himmler was referring to a series of gifts, heavy with symbolism, that he used to distribute within the SS.

At Christmas, which Himmler intended to change into the festival of the winter solstice, or Yuletide, he gave so-called Yule lights. These candle-holders, which were about 20 centimetres tall and had on them images that were supposed to commemorate the Germanic past, held two candles. Their significance and function Himmler explained as follows: ‘The small light at
the bottom of the candle-holder is to burn as a symbol of the last hour of the year that is ending: the big light is to burst into flame in the first moment the new year begins. There is a deep wisdom in the old custom. May each SS man see the small flame of the old year burn out with a pure and upright heart and be able to ignite the light of the new year with an exalted will.’
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The Reichsführer wished the family of every married SS man to have a Yule light. ‘The wife in particular, when she loses the myth of the church, will want to have something else to fill her mind and the mind and heart of her child’, Himmler told the Gruppenführer in November 1936. He would, therefore, this year again give away a larger number of Yule lights.
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In 1937 it was 8,000
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and in 1939 it was already over 52,000.
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In 1939 Himmler hit on the idea of having an additional ‘solstice light’ made, but he did not like the design. As, in the meantime, war had broken out he set the matter aside.
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During the war newborn babies of SS families received ‘life lights’.
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Himmler continued this custom until the spring of 1945, though the recipients were informed that in the circumstances the gift could not be sent until after the war.
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All SS men with a membership number less that 2,000, as well as all SS leaders after they had been members for several years, received the death’s-head ring.
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Himmler committed this circle of SS leaders ‘to wear the ring permanently on the ring finger of the left hand [ . . . ] The conferral of the ring is the external sign of inner worth, gained through struggle and duty, and of a community, tried and tested through the years, of loyalty to the Führer and to his vision.’

Those distinguished by receiving the death’s-head ring were sent a lengthy letter by Himmler making them aware of the significance of the ring and how it should be treated. According to this, the death’s-head ring was a

sign of our loyalty to the Führer, of our unchanging obedience towards our superiors, and of our unshakeable solidarity and comradeship. The death’s head admonishes us to be ready at any time to commit our individual life for the life of the whole community. The runes on the opposite side of the death’s head are the sacred symbols of our past, with which we are reconnected through the ideology of National Socialism [ . . . ] The ring is garlanded with leaves from the oak, the ancient German tree.

He goes on to say that the ring ‘cannot be purchased’, must never be allowed ‘to fall into the hands of outsiders’, and will revert to the Reichsführer-SS after ‘you leave the SS or this world’. There was even an instruction that the
making of ‘illustrations and copies’ was an offence, ‘and you are to prevent this’.
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Lastly, Himmler presented selected SS leaders with swords of honour: ‘I confer on you the sword of the SS. Never draw it without need! Never sheath it without honour! Preserve your own honour as unconditionally as you are committed to respecting the honour of others and to acting chivalrously to defend the defenceless!’ By contrast with the ring, the sword was allowed ‘to remain in your clan, if you have carried it for a lifetime without blame’. If not, the Reichsführer demanded it back.
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In 1936 Himmler announced the introduction of a brooch that every SS man should present to his wife on her becoming a mother, and which could be worn only by SS wives who were mothers.
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The model for this piece of jewellery was a ‘brooch decorated with runes arranged in the shape of the hagal rune’, which Himmler had given to his wife.
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When a third child and any subsequent children were born to SS wives they received from Himmler a letter of congratulation as well as a life light and Vitaborn juices.
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From the fourth child onwards Himmler gave a birth light, on which were the words: ‘You are only a link in the eternal chain of the clan.’
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In the course of time Himmler also developed diverse ceremonies, from birth and marriage ceremonies to burial rites. His stipulations for these were very detailed. A set of instructions dating from 1937, from the Race and Settlement Main Office’s indoctrination section, for the ‘ceremony of marriage of members of the party and its component organizations’ makes clear how such a ceremony was envisaged. At its heart is the abolition of the division introduced by Christianity between the public ceremony of marriage and the private celebration; the intention was to return to what was allegedly the Germanic form of marriage ceremony.

The ceremony was introduced by music, though the document was obliged to confirm, with regret, that ‘wedding music appropriate to our times is not yet available’. Then, to open the proceedings, sayings should be read out, preferably ‘quotations from the Führer’s speeches and book’, followed by Nietzsche quotations from ‘Child and Marriage’ (
Thus Spake Zarathustra
) and an address by an SS leader. After a musical interlude the registrar concluded the marriage formally, whereupon the bride and groom were to light a candle ‘as a sign of the commencement of a new Germanic blood-line’. Salt and bread were given to them and the couple committed—
by handshake—‘to a shared life and shared work for the nation’. If the bridegroom was an SS man, the SS leader had the task of explaining to the young woman the fact that she would be received into the SS and of handing over the SS clan book or a certificate. The ceremony closed with everyone singing the ‘SS anthem of loyalty’.
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