Heinrich Himmler : A Life (62 page)

Up to 1939 the SS punished its members exclusively according to formal disciplinary procedures, on the basis of the ‘Disciplinary and Appeals Regulations’, by means of reprimands or, in serious cases, exclusion or ‘expulsion’ of those concerned.
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However, from 1937 onwards there is clear evidence that Himmler had been working towards creating a separate jurisdiction for SS and police, comparable to the military courts.
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In October 1939 he received Hitler’s approval for this, and from then on the
SS had its own courts, which could dispense a whole catalogue of punishments provided for in the military and civil codes, including capital punishment. As we shall see, Himmler was to make this penal system his special province.
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Himmler’s idiosyncratic approach to discipline produced extraordinary successes precisely in the case of SS leaders whose career histories were seriously flawed. In his hands they became willing instruments of his policies. The cases presented here of Oskar Dirlewanger, Curt von Gottberg, and Odilo Globocnik, though extreme, are nevertheless perfect examples of Himmler’s methods.

Born in 1895 and a commando during the First World War, Oskar Dirlewanger was by the end of it ‘a mentally unstable, violent fanatic and alcoholic, who had the habit of erupting into violence under the influence of drugs’.
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The fact that he had succeeded, even after the ceasefire, in fighting his way back from the front in Romania to Germany with his men became for him the defining experience. Henceforth he adopted an unrestrained mode of life, characterized by contempt for the laws and rules of civil society. A student from 1919, he fought in a number of Free Corps units. Yet again, whatever troops he was leading became known for their excessive violence. Disciplined in 1921 by the college of commerce in Mannheim for ‘anti-Semitic incitement’, and with several convictions for possession of firearms, he gained his doctorate in politics the same year. He had an unstable career, in the course of which he lost a number of posts on the grounds of embezzlement, though no charges were brought. Meanwhile he was active in radical right-wing organizations, and in 1922 had become a member of the NSDAP. Promoted to deputy director of the labour exchange in Heilbronn after the Nazi takeover of power, in 1934 he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for indecent behaviour committed against a 14-year-old girl in his official car. When, after his release, he pressed for his case to be reopened, the Gestapo took him into protective custody for several months on the grounds of his ‘disturbing the peace by malicious complaints’. After this he volunteered for service with the Condor legion in Spain, but his conviction again got him into serious difficulties there. Back in Germany he approached Himmler for ‘permission in the
event of mobilization to march with the SS’. Dirlewanger declared that he had actually been convicted ‘as the result of personal and political motives’: ‘I admit that I have done wrong but I have never committed a crime.’
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Himmler hesitated in responding to Dirlewanger’s request, as he wanted to await the outcome of the procedure for reopening the case.
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But in Gottlob Berger Dirlewanger had found a strong ally whose influence was probably responsible for securing his final acquittal.
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And now Himmler gave this man who was on his beam-ends a second chance: he took Dirlewanger into the SS, though in the meantime he had joined the Wehrmacht, and gave him the task of forming a special unit made up of convicted poachers. These men, later known as Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, were particularly known for their extraordinary brutality in combating partisans. First they were deployed in the General Government (German-occupied Polish territories not annexed by Germany)
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and then in Byelorussia; and in 1944 they took part in the suppression of the Warsaw uprising, after which they were used to combat the Slovakian uprising.

Dirlewanger’s leadership of the Sonderkommando was characterized by continued alcohol abuse, looting, sadistic atrocities, rape, and murder—and his mentor Berger tolerated this behaviour, as did Himmler, who so urgently needed men such as the Sonderkommando Dirlewanger in his fight against ‘subhumanity’. It was important to the Reichsführer, however, that the detachments within the Sonderkommando did not belong to the Waffen-SS, but merely served it.
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It was not until 1945 that Dirlewanger succeeded in incorporating his unit, which accepted criminals of every hue and so was growing unstoppably, into the Waffen-SS as the 36th Grenadier Division.

Curt von Gottberg, born in 1896, was discharged in 1919 as a lieutenant after five years’ military service. At first he joined the Ehrhardt brigade, and with it took part in the failed Hitler putsch of 1923.
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He tried various lines of work; in 1932, having meanwhile become a property developer in East Prussia, he was involved in a financial scandal leading to a one-year ban on holding office in the NSDAP. In spite of this, in October 1933 Himmler entrusted to him the leadership of the political action squad in Ellwangen, in other words, of an armed SS unit.
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Himmler was, however, to relieve him of this task because he ‘behaved like a common freebooter’.
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Like so many SS leaders, von Gottberg had a massive alcohol problem. At the beginning of 1936 he lost a foot in a serious car accident for which he
was to blame.
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Though he insisted that he had drunk no more than two glasses of beer and a corn schnapps,
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he was forced, after Himmler’s intervention, to make a declaration on his word of honour (to Jeckeln, of all people, the leader of the Oberabschnitt responsible for him) ‘that for three years beginning from today I shall desist from the consumption of alcohol in any form’.
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A vigorous man, von Gottberg restored his mobility to an astonishing extent with the help of an artificial leg. On 1 July 1937 he took on a new job as head of the Settlement Office within the Race and Settlement Main Office. In 1938, however, while out riding he suffered a serious heart attack, apparently the result of damage to the heart muscle that had occurred while he was ill. Von Gottberg ignored the warning signals. The supposed heart attack was not diagnosed until February 1939, when, on Himmler’s instructions, von Gottberg was forced to report to Dr Fahrenkamp for a through examination. The report Fahrenkamp wrote for Himmler depicts an old warrior distinctly the worse for wear. In addition to the battered heart and amputated foot, the doctor noted old war wounds (bullet lodged in the stomach, bullet wound to the thigh, stab wound in the right upper arm). At the age of 27 von Gottberg had also accidentally lost two fingers while working a threshing machine.

Fahrenkamp summed up the result of his diagnosis as follows: ‘Up to now he has made extraordinary demands on his body and has expended much energy disregarding accidents, war injuries, and illnesses.’ Von Gottberg was, he reported, almost ‘a textbook example of what even a seriously impaired body can do if the mind is strong’. Now he was in a psychological state in which medical help of the normally recognized kind would be of no use. ‘Medical treatment in the usual sense is not appropriate for this patient. There are people a doctor cannot help. [ . . . ] As far as his state of mind in general is concerned, so many unresolved issues have accumulated that mental relief is more important than treatment of the body. For this patient a frank discussion with his boss would provide psychological relief.’ ‘Medical considerations’, therefore prompted him, Fahrenkamp, to refer this request to Himmler.

Whether Himmler granted this ‘psychological relief’ in the following months cannot be established from the files. At the end of 1939 von Gottberg suffered another heavy blow: only six months after Himmler had appointed him acting head of the Land Office in Prague, thereby placing responsibility for settlement policy in the Protectorate in his
hands, Günther Pancke, head of the Race and Settlement Main Office, ordered him to report sick immediately and to give up all his posts.
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Pancke’s explanation for this was that von Gottberg had claimed that Walter Darré, Agriculture Minister and, up to 1938, head of the Race and Settlement Main Office, was ‘of Jewish extraction’; in addition, ‘while in a fairly drunken state’ he had made megalomaniacal statements in front of quite a large number of people’, treated his colleagues ‘in a humiliating fashion’, and had deliberately misinformed him, Pancke. Pancke threatened KZ detention if von Gottberg continued spreading rumours. In fact the reasons for von Gottberg’s demotion were more complicated: he had been involved in a dubious financial affair and was possibly also the victim of an intrigue initiated by Darré.
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Himmler gave instructions that, until the accusations were finally cleared up, von Gottberg was to be deployed as steward of an estate in the east and ‘strictly to avoid any political involvement’.
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Four months later he felt compelled to call von Gottberg, who was still in the Protectorate, to order after his two sons had caused a roof to catch fire: ‘I do not believe that the unfortunate action of your two unsupervised children has increased respect for Germany or for the SS in the Protectorate. Six- to eight-year-olds should not be allowed to play with matches.’
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But in July 1940 Himmler rehabilitated von Gottberg and moved him to the SS Main Office, where, in October, the latter took over the recruitment department. At the close of the investigation the charges against him were declared to be unfounded and it was Pancke who received a sharp reprimand from Himmler.
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In November 1942 von Gottberg became SS and Police Leader in White Ruthenia and, as we shall see, made rapid career progress in the war against the partisans as head of the ‘Gottberg combat group’.

Von Gottberg is an almost perfect example of an SS leader whose dependence on Himmler was virtually total and existential. A physical wreck, alcohol-dependent, and burdened with a variety of transgressions and accusations, he developed an immensely strong need to prove himself and achieve psychological release, which only Himmler could provide. And Himmler bent von Gottberg to his will, through criticism and demotion, by overlooking misdemeanours and, on a number of occasions, by giving him the chance to redeem himself.

When, in November 1939, a retired lieutenant-colonel named Michner complained to the Führer that the former Gauleiter of Vienna, Odilo
Globocnik, had, without warning, broken off his engagement to Michner’s daughter, Friedrich Rainer, the Gauleiter of Salzburg, rushed to the defence of his old comrade-in-arms. Rainer appealed for leniency to be shown towards Globocnik on the grounds of the latter’s varied career in the service of the party and the movement. He claimed it was necessary to bear in mind that

from the start of the struggle in the Ostmark this man has been continuously in the most prominent and dangerous position, [ . . . ] endured over a year’s detention with a number of interruptions during the time of struggle, for whole periods was absolutely penniless and survived only through handouts from good comrades, endured illnesses as a result of overexertion, and then after the liberation of the Ostmark he plunged without a break into preparations for the referendum and reestablishment of the party; then, again without a break, he took over the extremely difficult Gau of Vienna; then, when threatened with dismissal, he fought desperately for his achievements to be acknowledged and to defend his personal honour, while also weighed down by the constant anguish of a private concern, with the Michner family insisting ever more urgently on the engagement and on his keeping his word.
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In fact Globocnik had been removed from office as Gauleiter of Vienna in January 1939 because of his self-willed style of leadership; on top of that, during this time a financial audit by the punctilious Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, Franz Xaver Schwarz, prompted by a number of murky financial deals, was hanging over him. This audit was not concluded until the spring of 1941, with Schwarz levelling massive criticism at Globocnik for his actions at the time in question.
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If Himmler had not shielded Globocnik, Schwarz would hardly have been so obliging. Himmler, who in spite of this affair had appointed Globocnik SS and Police Leader in Lublin in November 1939, wrote to Schwarz that Globocnik would have to admit ‘quite candidly’ that ‘in this financial matter I have behaved foolishly and in the revolutionary period I behaved thoughtlessly’. Though his behaviour was not ‘excusable’, ‘I am convinced that Globocnik has in no instance behaved in a way that was not decent’.
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Meanwhile, Globocnik was highly active in the district of Lublin.
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The Lublin auxiliary unit (
Selbstschutz
) subordinate to him, the leadership of which was assumed in spring 1940 by the former West Prussian Selbstschutz leader Ludolf von Alvensleben, committed such acts of cruelty in the course of the so-called AB Action, the systematic murder of members of the Polish
elites, that even the Governor-General Hans Frank spoke of the ‘band of murderers of the SS and Police Leader for Lublin’.
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In April 1941—the Viennese audit had just been completed—Globocnik approached Himmler about a personal matter: he had a new girlfriend, he joyfully told his Reichsführer (his engagement from the Vienna period had in the meantime finally been broken off), and in July he asked Himmler for permission to get engaged. Himmler reminded him gently of the prescribed marriage application procedure and said he ‘confidently’ hoped he would soon be able to give permission.
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In August 1941 Himmler helped Globocnik by forwarding him the sum of 8,000 Reich marks so that the latter could settle the ‘Michner matter’—clearly he had incurred debts with his former prospective father-in-law. Globocnik thanked Himmler for the non-repayable ‘assistance’, and assured him: ‘I shall do all I can to deserve your support, Reichsführer.’
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