Heinrich Himmler : A Life (60 page)

There was, however, to be no fundamental change to his maladies. Two years later a specialist characterized his condition as follows: ‘Irregular bowel movements’, ‘Constipation and weak anal muscles’, ‘very sensitive rectal mucosa’. ‘The Gruppenführer lacks the concentration required to strengthen the sphincter. Given that we are dealing with an already highly strung disposition such as the Gruppenführer’s, I attribute this failure to the fact that in the field there is limited hygiene, such as bathing facilities and suchlike, and thus the abovementioned complaints are made worse.’
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Alongside Fahrenkamp, Himmler’s old schoolfriend Karl Gebhardt, now professor of medicine and director of the Hohenlychen sanatorium in the Uckermark in Brandenburg, played a key role in Himmler’s efforts to maintain the health of his men.
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Himmler’s mistress Hedwig Potthast was to give birth to their first child at Hohenlychen in 1942, and Karl Wolff, head of the Personal Staff, recovered there in 1943 from a breakdown, Himmler giving Gebhardt a gift of a dinner service for twelve in gratitude.
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The sanatorium was also open to prominent figures who were not members of the SS. Thus, Gebhardt performed a knee operation in June 1938 on Lieutenant-General Walter von Reichenau, who played a significant political role among the generals, and sent Himmler a detailed report of the operation when the work was done.
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Gebhardt sent a stream of reports about the treatment of famous patients, including members of the higher echelons of the European nobility.
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When he repaired the ruptured Achilles tendon of Himmler’s friend Darré in August 1938, he also let his old schoolfriend know about it.
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After the assassination attempt on Heydrich in 1942 Himmler sent Gebhardt to Prague. After even Gebhardt was unable to prevent Heydrich’s death, Himmler thanked him ‘for being such a brave comrade and good friend to our dear Heydrich in his last days and hours’.
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When, in 1936, Himmler’s father developed cancer Gebhardt had again been on hand with advice: he made discreet investigations into the history of the illness and advised against an operation. Himmler followed his counsel.
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Even in more trivial matters Himmler turned to Gebhardt for his opinion. In January 1938 he sent him an ‘old remedy for tuberculosis that has been passed down several generations of a family I know’: ‘a pinch (1 gram) each of lungwort, liverwort, ribwort plantain, centaurium, coltsfoot, Iceland moss, Irish moss, sweet flag, hibiscus, salad burnet, speedwell, rhubarb root, ground and mixed well into one old measure (
c
. a kilo) of honey. The honey must be warmed beforehand [ . . . ] If diarrhoea should set in, then stop taking for 2 days.’ Gebhardt’s answer was, however, a disappointment to Himmler: no remedial effect in the case of tuberculosis could be expected, and in addition this tea mixture was already long familar from folk medicine.
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Himmler’s intensive efforts to secure the physical well-being of his men stretched even to making suggestions about their diet. When, in 1942, Sturmbannführer Ernst Günther Schenk, Waffen-SS Nutrition Inspector, sent in a memorandum on the improvement of the troops’ rations in the SS,

Himmler reacted with comments in a twenty-two-point list—a veritable explosion of ideas—which he passed on to Pohl: ‘The attention of all units must be drawn most vigorously to the toasting of bread. In all circumstances, even in marshland, bread can be sliced, warmed, and toasted on an open fire as on a hunt, and in the form of rusks would be an easily digested diet for those with intestinal problems.’ After the war, he continued, the SS would have to create its own sources of food, if only for use in the east and for specific types of food:

It is only the specific types of food that influence our species that we must provide for ourselves: fruit and in particular pomaceous fruit, nuts (limitless supplies, especially for the winter), mineral water from natural springs, fruit juices, oat flakes, and oil for cooking [ . . . ]. Exaggerated stockpiling inside the borders of the Reich, as practised by the church in the Middle Ages, must absolutely be avoided. It is, however, our task, by promoting hand-operated mills in some of our own bakeries and in manual bakeries in the areas where we live, to influence and determine the preparation of these foodstuffs.

All in all, he placed great emphasis on accustoming the SS man and his family ‘to our natural food in national-political training centres, in barracks, officer-training colleges and team houses, and in Lebensborn homes’, ‘so that later the boy will never eat anything else’. ‘Slowly, imperceptibly, and in a sensible manner’, the ‘consumption of meat’ was to be ‘restricted for future generations’. Himmler’s wish was ‘a steady growth into a better future after centuries of aberrations and false starts. Only when meat and sausages are replaced imperceptibly by equally tasty foods that satisfy the palate as well as the body can there be any hope of success. Moral sermons are of no use here. We know ourselves that only good, cheap mineral water and excellent fruit juices, as well as good cheap milk can displace alcohol.’

In peacetime he intended, furthermore, ‘to design and order the provisioning of the entire SS and police and their families, first for five years and then for all time’. It might be possible also to consider setting up ‘nutrition supervisors’ in the SS units, though the possibility that some kind of soldiers’ council or commissar might emerge from this institution, even if only in the distant future, was to be avoided.
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Standard menus were, in addition, to be planned for the SS: ‘These menus must contain hot meals, in the form of soup, jacket potatoes, and a cold side-dish, at least three times a week and five times in the winter. A good herbal tea must be provided every evening. [ . . . ] Boiled and salted potatoes are to be strictly avoided.’
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Himmler carried on a lively correspondence with senior SS leaders, using it again and again to dispense praise, blame, advice, and criticism in professional and personal matters. To old comrades-in-arms the Reichsführer sent personally written letters of encouragement. Thus, in a letter of January 1943 he thanked Theodor Eicke, whose division was facing immediate further deployment on the eastern front, for the ‘loyal wishes for this difficult new year [ . . . ] As far as you are concerned I have only one wish: stay well and uninjured, for the SS and I need you as a loyal, brave and resolute old soldier, so that if the going gets tough we can do everything the Führer and the Reich expect of us.’ His concern turned out to be justified: a little more than five weeks later Eicke was dead. His plane was shot down during a reconnaissance flight.
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Himmler’s former adjutant Ludolf von Alvensleben received an express letter from Himmler in November 1943, when he was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer and Lieutenant-General of the police. In it Himmler pronounced the ‘firm expectation that in the Crimea you will be a pillar of faith, confidence, strong action, and will never yield. Take care that even the last SS soldier or member of the police always keeps calm and is there when vigorous action and fighting are required.’ Himmler signed off using the formula: ‘In sincere and long-standing solidarity, Faithfully yours.’
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Other standard forms were: ‘I shake your hand sincerely’ or ‘My greetings in sincerest friendship’.
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Himmler sent Waffen-SS Major-General and Brigadeführer Walter Krüger a personal letter when the latter was taking over command of a police division fighting on the eastern front. Its confidential nature was underlined by Himmler’s request to ‘leave it in Germany’. Himmler exhorted Krüger ‘to supervise or set in motion a good many things that would usually be passed on simply as commands’. Krüger was to be guided always by the principle that war was ‘the best teacher of war itself’. Himmler concluded with the request that Krüger ‘be sustained by faith in our SS men, that means therefore by faith in the good blood we have here and faith in these inspiring hearts, capable of sacrifice. I require you to eliminate any trace of defeatism. Reports from Unterführer, leaders, company commanders, or commanders that their unit is not ready to attack are to be answered with a
court martial ending in a death sentence. A squad is ready to attack until it has suffered 80 per cent losses, definitely not before then.’
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But Himmler was also not slow to lecture and criticize. Friedrich Karl von Eberstein, Himmler’s Higher SS and Police Leader in Munich, was forced in October 1942 to put up with Himmler reminding him in clear terms of his duties. Himmler accused Eberstein of being too ‘phlegmatic’, for the latter had communicated a decision of Himmler’s in a tricky personnel matter by letter to the treasurer of the NSDAP and not, as Himmler expected, personally and ‘in a nice manner’. Himmler admonished him:

It is not the task of a Higher SS and Police Leader to rule from his desk. I can just as well put an official behind a desk. Similarly, I am not [ . . . ] satisfied with the work of the fire police and the police after the air raid on Munich. After air raids and bomb damage you must be on the move day and night until the last German lying under the rubble has been recovered. The recovery of people within 5 days is imperative. Imagine if your child had lain beneath the rubble. I must ask you to regard your work not as being a ministerial quill-and-desk job but rather, as in the time of struggle, as requiring you to be highly active and mobile, working alongside the people and the troops. That is what I want from my Higher SS and Police Leaders, who are of course my representatives.
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Emil Mazuw, the Higher SS and Police Leader for the Baltic Region, was also reproached in December 1944 for inadequate activity: ‘If I had wanted to have the Higher SS and Police Leaders as offices for passing on complaints or as letter-writing centres I would have indicated this, and in place of an SS-Obergruppenführer and General I would have appointed an administrator and secretary. In future you will do your duty better. Apart from that you are a representative of the SS and not that of the local mayor or of the local party offices working against the SS. You are to take special note of this last point.’
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In August 1942 the SS Police Leader for Estonia, Hinrich Möller, was also accused of being phlegmatic and overweight. After a visit to Reval (Talinn), Himmler wrote to Möller that he expected him ‘to be on duty 6 evenings a week out of 7 with the squad and the men [ . . . ] I regard it as unheard of that a man of 36 is so phlegmatic, fat, and complacent. It is in your interests to change this as quickly as possible.’
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When Erhard Kroeger, who was the leader from June to December 1942 of an Einsatzkommando in the Ukraine and after that in the SD Main Office, betrayed signs of being less than happy about being moved to the
Waffen-SS, Himmler wrote to him in no uncertain terms: ‘This ability to obey without comment is a characteristic you have yet to acquire. Only then will you be a proper SS man and come up to what I have always wanted you to be. Be assured that at the proper time you will be placed where you can be fully effective. I wish you every success for the fight.’
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SS-Obergruppenführer Hermann Höfle, Higher SS and Police Leader and German commander-in-chief in Slovakia, received an irate letter from his Reichsführer on 14 January 1945. Himmler reproached Höfle with ‘softness, dependence, and lack of self-reliance with regard to your colleagues and staff’. He went on:

I can only request you to be firm, to understand finally that you are the commander and your chief of staff as well as your Ia [1st General staff officer] are your colleagues. They are not there to be your brain. Remember the basic concept of obedience, according to which we were both brought up, even if people around you try to talk you round. If I had had any notion how much this command I entrusted to you and which you took up with such hesitation overstrains your psychological reserves I would never have moved you there, to spare you and me this distress. This is the last time I shall express the hope that things will change and that in 1945 you will avoid the errors of 1944 and no longer commit them.
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In March 1943 the head of the Race and Settlement Main Office, Otto Hofmann, was given to understand in unmistakable terms that, as a result of a series of events, Himmler considered that he was not performing adequately in his job. By contrast with others, Hofmann had apparently been spending too little time at his desk. Himmler concluded his letter with a serious, if not quite syntactically correct, admonition:

Gruppenführer Hofmann, to establish a Main Office on a sound footing requires ceaseless application, skill, and serious work that does not neglect even the smallest details, until these things have become second nature to your subordinates. It is my wish that you refrain from so much work-related travel and from being constantly out of the office in order to make appearances as a great commander and general. All in all I am obliged to say that as the weeks go by I like your Main Office less and less.
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In April 1943 Hofmann was replaced as head of the Race and Settlement Main Office. Himmler recorded in a note that he had formed the impression that ‘Hofmann lacks the calm and serenity required of one who has to remain in the background with the Race and Settlement Main Office during the war’. He assured Hofmann, however, ‘that I have in no way, either
personally or professionally, lost my confidence in him and he still retains it completely.’
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Yet even in his new position as Higher SS and Police Leader for the South-West Hofmann brought upon himself the wrath of his Reichsführer. He had taken decisions in an area that Himmler regarded as exclusively his own: ideological training. Himmler rebuked him ‘for starting a competitor to the
SS Guidance Booklets
in the form of army postal service letters.’ The