Heinrich Himmler : A Life (6 page)

From Easter to autumn 1915 he was a member of the Cadet Corps (
Jugendwehr
), where he and his classmates were given the preliminaries of military training. He was noted as showing ‘commendable enthusiasm’.
⁴⁶
‘To the Cadet Corps in the afternoon. Practice was pretty poor. I was lying for about quarter of an hour in a fairly wet field. It didn’t do me any harm, though,’ he noted in his diary.
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Heinrich began to complain of stomach pains, an ailment he suffered from to the end of his life.
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He tried to overcome his physical weakness through sport. In his diary there is a reference to daily training with dumb-bells.
⁴⁹

In February 1917 he became a member of the Landshut gymnastics club.
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Meanwhile the war began to affect the Himmlers’ everyday life. Restrictions on the supply of food and important commodities became increasingly evident. In November 1916 the government introduced the Patriotic Auxiliary Service, which committed every German male aged between 17 and 60 who was not already in military service to make himself available for important war work. In the same month the news reached the Himmlers that Heinrich’s godfather Prince Heinrich had been killed in Romania; he was only 32 years old. The Himmlers mourned not only a significant family friend but also the fact that their privileged access to the court, which had always held out the most alluring prospects for the three sons’ future, was now irrevocably lost.
⁵¹

In 1917 his elder brother’s year group was called up into the armed forces: Gebhard had been in the Territorials for two years and in May 1917 he
joined the 16th Bavarian Infantry Regiment in Passau, where he completed the first stage of officer training.
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Falk Zipperer also left the grammar school in April 1917 and began officer training.
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Heinrich, who had been continuing his pre-military training since October 1915 in the Landshut Cadet Corps, wanted to take the same course.
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In the summer of 1917, probably as a result of pressure from his son, Himmler’s father began to make extensive efforts to get him accepted as a candidate for officer training with one of the Bavarian regiments. He successfully enlisted the help of the chamberlain to Princess Arnulf, the mother of the dead Prince Heinrich, and amongst other things he intervened to support Heinrich’s application for the exclusive 1st and 2nd Infantry Regiments. His efforts were in vain, however, as the lists of applicants were already too long.
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In the course of his correspondence with the military authorities Himmler’s father was called upon to respond to the question of whether his son was considering becoming a professional army officer. ‘My son Heinrich has a strong desire to be an infantry officer by profession’, was his clear answer.
⁵⁶

Shortly before the start of the new school year—he had spent the usual summer holiday in Bad Tölz—Heinrich surprised everyone by leaving the grammar school. Up to that point he had completed seven years at the school. His last report indicated that he was a good, though not an excellent, pupil.
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His leaving was evidently motivated by his fear of being conscripted while still at school, along with his cohort, before he had succeeded in gaining a post as an officer candidate in a first-class regiment. He was successful in his application to the Regensburg city administration for the patriotic auxiliary service: in October 1917 he was set to work in the war welfare office, an organization for the care of surviving relatives of fallen soldiers. After six weeks he put an end to this interlude and went back to the grammar school, after the schools ministry had made it clear in a directive that his age-group of pupils would not yet be conscripted.
⁵⁸

On 23 December he received the surprising news that the 11th Infantry Regiment would accept him as an officer candidate. Yet again the chamberlain already mentioned had been pulling strings: Himmler’s father’s contacts at court had, after all, finally been effective.
⁵⁹
Heinrich left school and on
2 January began his training with the reserve battalion of the 11th Regiment at a camp near Regensburg.
⁶⁰

He proudly signed one of his first letters to his parents with the Latin tag ‘Miles Heinrich’, Heinrich the soldier, and the brand-new warrior expressed his manliness amongst other things by taking up smoking.
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In contrast to this masculine pose, his almost daily letters to his parents in fact reveal the considerable difficulties he had in adjusting to the world of the military. Heinrich was homesick. He complained about the poor accommodation and wretched food, though on most evenings he could supplement this by going to pubs. He asked constantly for more frequent replies to his letters, for food, clean clothes, and other such things that would make his life in the barracks easier.
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If his requests were not immediately fulfilled (he did after all receive seven parcels from home in the first five weeks of his military career
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) he reacted in a hurt manner: ‘Dearest parents! Today again I have got nothing from you. That’s mean.’
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After a few weeks he got used to the new life and the complaints in his letters became less frequent. Yet the correspondence shows how much he was still reliant on close contact with his parents.
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From the middle of February 1918 he regularly received leave to spend most weekends at home. By contrast, his brother Gebhard was sent in April 1918 to the western front and took part in heavy fighting in which there were severe losses.
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Heinrich, however, became petulant if he got no mail from home for a few days: ‘Dear Mother! Thank you so much for your news (which I did not get). It’s so horrid of you not to write again.’
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When the Regensburg training was coming to an end he hoped that he too would be sent to the front, but to his disappointment he learned that he was to be sent on a further training course. ‘You could have saved your tears’, he wrote to his mother, who had been viewing the prospect of a second son at the front with anxiety. ‘Don’t rejoice too soon, though. Things can change again just as quickly.’
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On 15 June he continued his training just 40 kilometres from Landshut, in Freising. He was still able to spend most weekends at home.
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In his letters he described daily life in the military as before, but he now coped with it considerably better, as his lapidary descriptions show: ‘We are given excellent treatment. This afternoon we bathed. [ . . . ] The food is very good.’
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As before, problems with the food and reports about his changeable health are prominent;
⁷¹
his hunger for the many ‘lovely little parcels’
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from Landshut, for which he always sent a thank-you letter (‘the cake was
terrific!’
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), never seemed to abate. Yet as the correspondence shows, his obvious need for the affection and love of his parents could not really be satisfied. Although he tried, after initial difficulties, to present himself to his parents in a manly, adult, and soldierly light (and he was certainly also impressed by the example of his elder brother, who was, after all, at the very same time in immediate mortal danger at the front), his letters continued to demand their lively participation in his everyday concerns and their permanent support in dealing with them.

In August he began to long for the end of the Freising course: ‘The Freising course is getting more and more rotten and strict: oh well, we’ll make a reasonable job of it, even if we’re not brilliant’, he wrote home.
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Even after finishing this course
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he was not, as he expected, sent to the front but had to complete a further course: he was ordered to Bamberg to begin a special two-week training in the use of heavy machine-guns on 15 September.
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Even though it was becoming clear on the western front how critical the German military situation was after the failure of their spring offensive, the German army continued to give its officers extremely thorough training. Or was it that Heinrich’s superiors thought he was simply not mature enough to be sent to the front as an officer cadet?

At the beginning of October the Bamberg course was over, and after a week’s leave he had to go back to Regensburg to help, amongst other things, with the training of recruits.
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Heinrich took a pessimistic view of the general situation: ‘I now see the political future as terribly black, completely black’, he wrote on 16 October to his parents. Like many others, he now regarded revolution as inevitable.
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Even so, Heinrich was determined to prove himself in action, and wrote an enthusiastic letter home saying he had met a lieutenant who had offered to transfer him to the front.
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But that never happened, for in view of the political turbulence that was erupting at the beginning of November the company destined for the front was disbanded. He experienced the overthrow of the political regime and the end of the war in Landshut: on 7 November revolution broke out in Munich and the Bavarian king abdicated. On 9 November the revolutionary Council of the People’s Deputies set itself up in Berlin and Kaiser Wilhelm II fled to Holland. On 11 November the new government signed the armistice, and in so doing conceded the defeat of the German Reich.

At the end of November Heinrich returned to his unit in Regensburg in the hope that the army would complete the training of the cohort of ensigns
born in 1900. At first, however, he worked with his cousin Ludwig Zahler, who had in the meantime been promoted to lieutenant, on the demobbing of the regiment. Both rented rooms in Regensburg.
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Heinrich also began to prepare for his Abitur.
*
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In Regensburg he became a sympathizer of the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP), which had been founded in November 1918 by leading politicians of the Bavarian Centre Party. Heinrich contacted one of Gebhard’s former classmates who was now active in the local Regensburg BVP party organization, and also called on his father to work for the new party.
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His brother Gebhard, meanwhile promoted to lieutenant and decorated with the Iron Cross, had returned uninjured from the front at the beginning of December. Heinrich, on the other hand, was forced to recognize a little while later that there was no longer any chance that he could continue his military career. In December 1918 he learned that all ensigns of his cohort were to be discharged from the army.
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On 18 December he was demobbed and returned to Landshut.
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The fact that he neither saw action at the front nor became an officer was to him a serious failure. Throughout his life he was to hold to the view that he had been prevented from following his true calling, that of an officer.

Back in Landshut Himmler’s first priority was to finish his grammar-school education. Up to that point he had successfully completed seven years; thanks to a special ruling he could make up the remaining time required for his school-leaving certificate by joining a special class for those who had done war service. The teacher in charge of this programme turned out to be none other than Himmler’s father, who treated the group with his habitual strictness and pedantry, showing no favouritism at all towards his son.
¹

Heinrich’s closest friend at this time was Falk Zipperer, who had come back from the war and also joined the special class. The two friends spent a great deal of time writing poems. Whereas Zipperer was talented and even published a series of verses, Himmler’s were on the clumsy side.
²

Meanwhile political conditions in Bavaria were becoming more tense. On 21 February Kurt Eisner, the leader of the German Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) in Bavaria, who as a result of the revolution had become Prime Minister, was shot by an extreme right-wing officer. In the following weeks an increasingly sharp polarization emerged between the coalition government elected by the state assembly under the new Prime Minister Johannes Hoffmann and the radical left-wing soviet movement, which was particularly strong in Munich. Finally, in Munich on 7 April the Left proclaimed the creation of a soviet republic and Hoffmann’s government fled from the city and retreated to Bamberg. The USPD left the Bavarian government. In northern Bavaria Reich army units and Free Corps (armed groups of volunteers made up of anti-revolutionary and anti-democratic returning soldiers) prepared to capture the capital of the new Bavarian republic.
³

Heinrich again gave practical support to the Bavarian People’s Party, if only for a short time, as his correspondence with the Regensburg party
office shows.
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At the end of April he joined the Landshut Free Corps and also the reserve company of the Oberland Free Corps. This Free Corps had only just been founded by Rudolf von Sebottendorf, chairman of the extreme right-wing Thule Society, and came into being with the support of Hoffmann’s government in order to defeat the Munich soviet republic. Heinrich does not, however, seem to have taken part in the bloody battles that took place at the beginning of May.
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Even so he remained a further two months in the Oberland Free Corps, taking a post in the supplementary company
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and hoping still to be able to make a career as an officer. At any rate, the government had opened up the prospect of members of the Free Corps being taken into the Reichswehr. But when in August Free Corps units were adopted into the Reichswehr Oberland was not amongst them.