Heinrich Himmler : A Life (54 page)

This ‘soldierly’ image was something he was to cultivate throughout his life; the corresponding habitus was essential to his leadership style. In order to lend credibility to this self-stylization he had no qualms about slight enhancements to his biography. Thus, for example, at the summer solstice of 1936 he spoke out about drunkenness in the SS, though, adopting the pose of the old soldier, he made certain allowances for this vice: ‘Those of us
who have been to war and come from that generation [ . . . ] have learned to booze and to fight as front-line soldiers. I tell you, if you are in battle and don’t know if you’ll survive the next few hours, you’re hungry and haven’t eaten for days, then it’s easy to get used to smoking and boozing.’
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Speaking to Wehrmacht generals in May 1944: ‘in 1917 I became an ensign and as a young ensign I experienced the Revolution.’
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Similarly, he failed to correct biographical details released to the press that stated that he had been a soldier at the front.
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In fact he did not join the army until January 1918 and, as we know, because of this late call-up he had never seen active service and spent the Revolution at his parents’ home on leave.

Himmler hoped to conceal his awkwardness and lack of confidence with others behind military ‘objectivity’ and ‘sobriety’, and to transform them into positive virtues conditioned by his profession. This was true in his private life as well as in the professional sphere. ‘Do not take it amiss’, he wrote to a publisher in 1933, ‘if I ask you not to publish a biography of me at the moment. [ . . . ] when you get to know me you will understand that for the time being I have an absolute aversion to being photographed or interviewed, and to biographies and intrusive questions.’
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And when, in 1942, his friend the Nazi writer Hanns Johst advised him against sending an actress a crate of fruit-juice as a token of his admiration—his motives might be misinterpreted—Himmler thanked him, saying that in the world of the theatre such things were ‘understood and judged quite differently from how we down-to-earth soldiers intend them’.
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In personal matters Himmler set great store by being seen as very correct. Thus, he insisted that he be billed for the cigars he smoked in the Berlin SS mess
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and refused to accept invitations from business-people trying to make a splash.
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Nor was he willing to charge the SS bureaucracy for the cost of private journeys.
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But another feature of Himmler’s pernickety way of dealing with personal expenditure was that he claimed the generous tips he gave out on his travels as expenses.
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In his dealings with his staff, with visitors, or—when travelling—with his hosts he took pains to observe the formalities, and behaved in a friendly and genial, easygoing, good-natured, and polite manner. As far as food, drink, and personal comfort were concerned, his demands were modest. ‘As a human being,’ according to a typical statement by his bodyguard Josef Kiermaier, ‘the Reichsführer-SS was naturally frank, friendly, and polite to everyone,’ though only ‘as long as he was sure that friendliness was not inappropriate’.
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Then his demeanour could easily change, and Himmler
became, as Otto Wagener, one of the leading party functionaries of the ‘time of struggle’ remembered, ‘ironic, sarcastic, cynical’.
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According to Albert Speer’s description, he was ‘correct in a friendly, slightly forced way’, but ‘never warm’.
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This rather artificial correctness and excessively schematic participation in the lives of others was also demonstrated by the way that Himmler maintained his extensive present-giving with the aid of an elaborate set of records: a specially created card-index system made it possible at any time to establish who had received what presents from the Reichsführer-SS and when.
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At first the fundamental requirement for acceptance into the SS was to be at least 1.70 metres tall—at 174.5 centimetres (measured by himself and, as he noted, ‘in stockinged feet’), Himmler, incidentally, fulfilled this criterion.
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From 1933 onwards candidates for membership (and not only SS members wishing to marry and their future wives) were also checked for their ‘hereditary health’ and ‘Aryan descent’. Gradually even the old SS men had to submit retrospectively to this procedure. A genealogy stretching back at least to 1750 was required, in which there was to be no evidence of ‘non-Aryan’ ancestors. Himmler would have liked to put the relevant date for all SS applicants back to 1650, as he declared in 1936 at the celebration of the summer solstice on the Brocken mountain, but it seems that because of the expense this ruling was applied only to SS leaders.
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If a non-Aryan forebear was found in anyone’s family tree the person concerned was excluded from the SS on principle.
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The actual ‘racial examination’, which always included a medical examination, involved an assessment of the applicant’s overall appearance, according to the criteria of ‘physical build’ and ‘racial evaluation’, and both were graded under the combined heading of ‘appearance’. Negative ‘racial’ characteristics could be compensated for by means of ‘overall appearance’ and ‘mental attitude’.
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An intelligence test and sports test rounded off the general evaluation of the candidate.
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In cases where, although the ‘certified proof of descent’ was fully in order, the ‘overall appearance’ nevertheless aroused ‘strong suspicion of traces of alien blood’, Himmler decreed that a special ‘racial-biological examination’ be carried out.
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Himmler intervened repeatedly in the recruitment process. In 1938, for example, he ruled that a ‘considerably more lenient standard’ was to be used when judging eye defects. Problem cases, such as where an otherwise ‘eligible candidate’ had lost an eye in an accident, were to be referred to him personally.
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In the case of the Security Service also, Himmler took the view in May 1935 that, as far as the physical examination was concerned, ‘full eligibility for SS membership’ was not necessary. If, however, a ‘racial examination gives rise to doubt or suggests ineligibility, every individual case is to be referred to me for a decision’. This ruling was designed above all with Gestapo members in mind, who, when admitted to the SS, were assigned to the SD.
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In 1937 Himmler asserted in a speech to Wehrmacht officers that only 10 to 15 per cent of candidates were accepted into the SS.
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In actual fact the SS was much less choosy: in the SS-Oberabschnitt Elbe, for example, in the years 1935 and 1936 the available figures on applicants rejected on ‘racial’, physical, or age grounds show that 75 to 80 per cent of candidates were accepted.
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Nevertheless, candidates for membership continued to be examined thoroughly even after the outbreak of war; indeed, Himmler refined the process in December 1939 by ordering the introduction of a special ‘race chart’.
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It provided those conducting examinations with those ‘characteristics that occur primarily when blood from another race is present’, for example, ‘jet-black hair’ or a ‘hooked’ nose (by that was meant the ‘Near-Eastern’ or distinctly ‘Jewish’ nose). By particular request of the Reichsführer-SS, the ‘Greek nose’ (‘no or only a slight indentation at the root of the nose’) was included in order to avoid mix-ups. When the head of the SS Race Office, Bruno Kurt Schultz, wanted, in view of wartime conditions, to limit the ‘proof of ancestry’ to six generations and to make a decision about any ‘compromised’ SS members by means of a racial and character assessment, Himmler was outraged. Schultz, he declared, was unsuitable to be head of the Race Office.
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Early in 1935, at an SS leaders’ conference for Oberabschnitt Silesia, Himmler set out his view of the career of the normal SS member: ‘In future a member of the SS will first of all be selected according to the most rigorous principles, which will get more rigorous from year to year. At 18 he will join us as a cadet. For eighteen months he will train with us as a cadet. He will be on duty for long periods, four times a week and on two or three Sundays a month. Above all, during this time and while he is still young and can
develop and be educated he will be ideologically trained.’ At 19 he would have a further six months’ labour service and then he was to serve for a year ‘in a state organization’. When national service was introduced two months after this speech it naturally replaced the latter service.

Thereafter, Himmler continued, the young man would return to the SS in order to train for a further fifteen months as a cadet, before he was officially ‘recognized as an SS man’. From this point up to his twenty-fifth birthday he would belong to the active General SS. ‘In these years the following service is required: twice a week and two to three Sundays a month.’ After that he was to be transferred to Reserve 1, then, aged 35 to 40, to Reserve II, and at 45 to the division of permanent members. ‘It is impossible to leave the SS on the grounds of age.’
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Anyone who had placed himself under the authority of the Reichsführer-SS was to remain under it until death.

‘I have reserved for myself matters to do with our conduct and all ethical questions and shall deal with them myself’, Himmler declared in November 1938 to the head of the Indoctrination Office, when the latter reported to him; that is to say, ‘questions of the relationship of the individual to the clan, family, the nation, and the state’.
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In order to make these ‘ethical questions’ clear once and for all, Himmler in numerous speeches to SS members worked his way through a positive ‘catalogue of SS virtues’. Central to it were the concepts of loyalty, obedience, and comradeship, and he frequently emphasized bravery, honesty, hard work, and fulfilment of duty. But he demanded repeatedly, and above all, one thing from his SS men—decency!
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Let us examine more closely the virtues Himmler proclaimed.

For Himmler loyalty meant voluntary and total submission to a leader. Loyalty was a question of race and could be genuinely shown only by people of ‘Germanic blood’. In the final analysis loyalty could not be rationally based, but rather it was an emotional tie, a ‘matter of the heart’, as Himmler put it.
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It was a fundamental attitude that produced a reliable, extremely stable basis for the relationship between subordinate and leader.
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The SS was naturally loyal above all to Adolf Hitler. ‘The political creed of the SS is Adolf Hitler’, wrote the writer Hanns Johst, a friend of Himmler
and at that time an SS-Oberführer, in
SS Guidance Booklets
in 1937: ‘This order’s concept of honour is pledged to this man firmly and irrevocably through the magic power of loyalty. The order serves and this service guarantees the immortality of Adolf Hitler and his will.’
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Or to quote Himmler himself: ‘The Führer is always right, whether the subject is evening dress, bunkers, or the Reich motorways.’
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Loyalty was lauded in the ‘SS anthem to loyalty’.
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It was strengthened towards Hitler by the oath sworn by every SS member. ‘I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Führer and Chancellor of the German Reich, that I will be loyal and brave. I pledge obedience unto death to you and to those you appoint to lead. So help me God.’
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On being appointed by Himmler, the SS-Gruppenführer were committed by a further oath to adhere strictly to his specifications when accepting candidates, even if ‘it means rejecting my own children or the children of my clan [ . . . ] I swear by Adolf Hitler and by the honour of my ancestors—so help me God.’
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There was a positively ritual quality to the way loyalty was maintained, for example in the letters that Himmler regularly exchanged with SS leaders. Congratulations he sent on promotions, birthdays, and births, letters of condolence on the deaths of close family members, greetings at New Year and ‘Yuletide’ were normally acknowledged by a personal letter of thanks, which frequently culminated in renewed vows of loyalty. Himmler’s birthday was in turn the occasion for personally written letters from his close associates to the Reichsführer-SS.
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This correspondence reveals an almost limitless repertoire of formulae expressing loyalty. On Himmler’s thirty-seventh birthday he was, for example, congratulated by Theodor Eicke, leader of the SS Death’s Head regiments, as follows: ‘I have only one aim, that of welding together the men entrusted to me into a fighting unit resolute to the death, in the spirit of the SS and in loyalty to our symbol. All our strength belongs to you and thus to the Führer. Devotion to duty and loyalty are and will remain the morning prayer of the SS Death’s Head units.’
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Gruppenführer Wilhelm Rediess, who received the gift of a Yule light from Himmler in 1935, sent his thanks: ‘In its light I renew, along with my family, the vow of loyalty I made to the Führer and to you. I wish you, Reichsführer, a long life for the sake of the nation and therefore for all our sakes until your actions and aims have become irrevocable laws shaping the life of the whole German nation. These are my wishes for the New Year, to which I add hearty greetings from my clan to yours.’
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During the war the vows of loyalty became even more intense. As Ruth Bettina Birn has already indicated, many SS leaders were no longer satisfied with assuring Himmler of their loyalty in general terms, but reinforced their vow with the promise of the utmost commitment to duty and service.
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Now it really was a case of loyalty unto death. Thus, in October 1944 Obergruppenführer Benno Martin sent thanks for his promotion to this rank by ‘announcing’ to Himmler that ‘I will carry out my duty to you and to the idea of the SS to my last breath. Reichsführer, you can be equally certain of the commitment of my leaders and of the SS men and police under my command.’
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