Heinrich Himmler : A Life (63 page)

And Globocnik was to keep his word. In the following months he became the driving force in the ‘Final Solution’ in the General Government. Since the end of 1939 he had already set up camps on a large scale for Jewish forced labour in Lublin. The major raids he organized to seize Jewish workers led, however, to considerable economic problems and brought him into conflict with the civil administration.
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In October 1941 he appears on his own initiative to have obtained Himmler’s permission to build an extermination camp in the Lublin district to murder the Jewish civilian population that could not be deployed as forced labour. As a result of these preparations he was charged by Himmler with implementing Aktion Reinhardt, the systematic murder of the Jews in the General Government. In July 1941 Himmler also appointed Globocnik to set up the SS and police bases in the new eastern territories. We shall return to look in detail at all these measures taken by Globocnik; our focus here is the personality of this mass murderer and his personal relationship with Himmler.
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In August 1942, at the height of Aktion Reinhardt, Globocnik once more turned to Himmler concerning a private matter: an anonymous denunciation had been made about his fiancée. In view of the concerns that Himmler had already expressed about his engagement, Globocnik now asked him whether he should break it off. Himmler, who had received a negative report about the behaviour of Globocnik’s fiancée in a pub, said he should, and Globocnik duly obeyed.
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It is clear from an appraisal of Globocnik from May 1943 that his superiors recognized that his hyperactivism was problematic, but tolerated it in the interests of ‘the cause’:

A full-blooded character with a typical mixture of positive and negative sides. Careless about externals, fanatically committed to the task in hand, engaged in it up to the hilt without concern for his health or public acknowledgment. One of the best and most vigorous pioneers in the General Government, responsible, courageous, a man of action. His daredevilry often causes him to overstep the boundaries, but not from personal ambition but for the sake of the cause. His achievements definitely speak in his favour.

However, there was a note of warning: ‘It is important for SS-Gruf. Globocnik to get married soon in order to counteract the restless, pioneering life he is leading, and which is getting him down, with the calming influence of a wife and a home. This would undoubtedly help SS-Gruf. Globocnik to conserve his energies in order to prepare him for the major tasks which he is undoubtedly capable of carrying out.’
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In the summer of 1943 Himmler decided to recall Globocnik from Lublin because of his repeated clashes with the civilian administration.
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In August 1944 Globocnik, who in the meantime had become Higher SS and Police Leader in the Adriatic coastal region, where he was not only ruthlessly pursuing partisans but also energetically organizing Jewish deportations, once again approached the Reichsführer-SS concerning an affair of the heart. He believed, so he informed Himmler, he had ‘found the girl whom you, Reichsführer, would give me permission to marry’. Himmler agreed in principle to become Globocnik’s best man. When the marriage, which was arranged by Globocnik’s crony Friedrich Rainer, took place in August 1944, Himmler was unable to attend because of a prior engagement but sent the Globocniks a gift of a twelve-piece ‘dinner and tea service’.
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It will have become apparent that Globocnik was entirely dependent on Himmler and showed him a positively doglike devotion. This total subordination manifested itself not only in the fact that he permitted the Reichsführer-SS to make decisions concerning his private life, but above all in his attempt to prove to Himmler that he was more or less permanently ready for action. Yet his exceptional commitment, impulsive and ruthless style of leadership, as well as his consequent inability to carry on a private life that conformed to SS requirements inevitably kept getting him into difficulties, and only one person was able to get him out of them: Reichsführer Himmler.

The SS is a National Socialist order of soldiers of Nordic race and a community of their clans bound together by oath. [ . . . ] Fiancées and wives, as well as their husbands, also belong, according to our laws, to this community, this order. [ . . . ] Let us be very clear about this: it would make no sense to collect together good blood from the whole of Germany and establish it here with a serious purpose, while at the same time allowing it through marriage to flow into families at will. Rather, what we want for Germany is a ruling class destined to last for centuries and the product of repeated selection, a new aristocracy continuously renewed from the best of the sons and daughters of our nation, a nobility that never ages, stretching back into distant epochs in its traditions, where these are valuable, and representing eternal youth for our nation.
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This exposition by Himmler, dating from 1937, makes it plain that, from the point of view of its Reichsführer, the SS had moved a long way from the idea of a purely male league. Instead, it was the ‘clan’ and its ‘nurture’ that were becoming ever more prominent.

Himmler had presented these ideas to Hitler as early as 1 November 1935 and noted his ‘complete agreement and approval’. Himmler had gone into the details of his plans: ‘half or ⅔ of all new admissions should be sons of SS families, in order to sift out imperfect material, and at least ⅓ must come from non-SS families, so that good blood of those outside the SS and destined to lead others should not be left untapped in the nation.’ He had made sure he got precise confirmation from Hitler of every word of the progammatic formulation that the SS was ‘an order of soldiers of Nordic race and a community of their clans bound together by oath’—a typical procedure of Himmler’s to back up his decisions that makes clear how much he had built his own position and that of the SS on absolute loyalty to the ‘Führer’.
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The SS, as Himmler stated on another occasion, was ‘nation, tribe, clan, community’, an ‘order of knights that no one who, by virtue of his blood,
has been accepted into can ever leave; he belongs to it body and soul as long as his earthly life shall last’.
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Wives of SS men, Himmler explained in 1943 at a conference of naval commanders, ‘also belong to this SS order, both during their husbands’ lifetime and after their husbands’ death. Wives and widows of SS men will never be excluded. After one year they become members of the SS and after ten years their children also become members, and they enjoy all the protection and care that we offer our clan.’
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It goes without saying that the SS remained first and foremost a male organization.
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Nevertheless, the distinction Himmler drew between the SS and the typical purely male league (his warning of 1937 against a too pronounced ‘masculinization of the Nazi movement’, which would undoubtedly lead to homosexuality, should be borne in mind) resulted in the wives of SS members participating, at least peripherally, in the SS world: they were not only congratulated and sent a gift on the birth of their third child by the Reichsführer himself, but were also exposed to his solicitude and surveillance in a wide variety of ways.
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As leader of the ‘clan order’ of the Schutzstaffel, Himmler set great store by the ‘correct’ choice of a wife, by which was meant someone who satisfied his ‘racial’ criteria. This notion can be traced back to a very early stage in his plans. He had already established the basis for turning it into reality by issuing the Engagement and Marriage Order of 31 December 1931.

In 1934–5 the process for gaining approval for marriages was formalized. SS members who wished to marry had to produce family trees for themselves and their fiancées stretching back to 1800 and complete a questionnaire and a handwritten curriculum vitae, which they submitted at first to the Race Office and from 1935 onwards to the Clan Office of the Race and Settlement Main Office. In addition, they had to provide statements from two sponsors, full-length photographs showing ‘the applicant and his future bride standing side by side’, as well as pictures of the families of both partners. Both had to be examined by an SS doctor, who then completed a questionnaire on their hereditary health and on the results of the medical.
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The process was protracted and expensive. The very time the procedure took made it almost impossible for engagements to be dependent on obtaining approval. Even though Himmler took exception to it, in many
cases applications were received from SS men who had already got engaged.
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If in the course of the approval process the bride-to-be turned out not to conform to SS requirements—if, in other words, she was racially ‘unsuitable’, had a hereditary illness, or was infertile—and if the applicant refused to terminate the relationship, he was obliged to leave the SS. In doubtful cases ‘leave to marry’ was granted on the couple’s ‘own responsibility’, which meant that the family was excluded from the ‘SS clan community’, which was to be catalogued in a special ‘SS clan book’. This differential treatment of SS members with a view to creating a ‘new aristocracy’ had, however, a fundamental shortcoming: Himmler could never bring himself to set down in detail how the clan book was to be established.
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In the end the remodelling of the male order into a ‘clan community’ remained purely rhetorical, for no systematic biological ‘selection’ took place.

Significantly, the Marriage Order came to be repeatedly disregarded, so that Himmler was continually obliged, on threat of punishment, to remind his men that it was still in force.
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In March 1936 he complained of many instances of SS members ‘applying to get engaged and married only when the bride-to-be was eight or nine months pregnant’.
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Approvals were in general granted in a relatively relaxed way. In April 1935 the Reichsführer had already told his office heads that the ‘criteria for approving brides-to-be of SS men cannot yet be very strict, as we have as yet hardly made any progress towards instructing people about what we want and what we don’t want’. At any rate, long-standing relationships, where there might already be children, were to be respected.
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In July 1935 Himmler extended the existing racial criteria by adding the provision that all full-time SS leaders, sub-leaders, and team members under 25 could marry only if they were able to show evidence of being in a position to support their future family (SS pay on its own did not enable them to do so).
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If a young SS man had already fathered a child, Himmler allowed the marriage if his relatives undertook to allow the bride-to-be ‘to stay in their home and to provide for her’.
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In August 1935 he demanded that prospective wives should have taken a course in motherhood.
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In the autumn he instructed that all SS members submitting applications for marriages to be approved must as a first step have obtained the permission of their superior officer.
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In 1937 he required that fiancées of SS men should obtain the Reich Sport Badge.
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On principle Himmler had the final word on particular requests: all marriage applications from SS leaders, all refusals, and all requests to marry women who were not German nationals had to be referred to him.
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During the war he ruled that he wanted to see all applications involving marriage to ethnic Germans who had formerly had Polish nationality,
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to those belonging to ‘Germanic’ nations,
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and to women of ‘alien ethnic background’.
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This was the theory. In practice the Clan Office was simply incapable of meeting the heavy demands of this procedure. The Race and Settlement Main Office complained repeatedly about considerable ‘backlogs’ in processing requests. As early as 1936 Himmler was forced by lack of staff in the Clan Office to suspend until further notice the requirement for SS applicants to produce their family tree and to disregard marriage requests.
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In May 1937 20,000 marriage applications were already awaiting processing.
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Himmler had no alternative but to relax the strict rules in the case of long-standing SS members, who if necessary had to obtain permission to marry after the event.
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In June 1937 he gave the instruction that future infringements of the Marriage Order were not to be punished.
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At that point at least 308 SS members had been excluded in the first six months of 1937 alone for this very reason.
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At the end of 1940 he deferred the decision on how to punish infringements of the Marriage Order until the end of the war. In line with this instruction, during the following years no steps were taken against SS men for ignoring the order.
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Himmler even went as far as to allow former SS members who had been excluded for this reason to be received back into the SS in certain circumstances.
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Regardless of the fact that the approval process could not be implemented in the rigorous manner desired, Himmler repeatedly intervened in an attempt to perfect it. On 18 May 1937 he issued the following directive: ‘My wish is that SS members will found racially superior and healthy German families. For that reason the highest standards must be demanded of prospective wives with regard to appearance, health, and hereditary soundness.’ The required gynaecological examination was to take the following form:

Be thorough but treat women sensitively! The ability to bear children should be assessed with reference to general appearance, the external measurement of the pelvis, and above all a tactfully conducted but nevertheless searching medical history (previous gynaecological illnesses or haemorrhages, discharges, menstruation, inflammations, abortions, etc.). There is reason to conduct an internal examination—which in some
circumstances need only be carried out rectally—only if the medical history or findings are equivocal. If the external pelvic measurements give rise to doubts, the internal measurement can, if necessary, be carried out gently and precisely by means of an X-ray.
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