Heinrich Himmler : A Life (67 page)

We must teach our men to recognize that they don’t have to marry the first girl they meet out dancing. I see from the requests to marry that our men often marry having no idea what marriage is. Reading the requests I often wonder: my God, does an SS man have to marry this woman of all people, this walking mishap with a bent and sometimes ghastly frame. A little eastern European Jew or a little Mongol can marry her; that’s all a girl like that is good for. In by far the most cases the men in question are radiant and handsome.

Before getting married SS men should ‘have a good look at the sisters, brothers, and parents’ of the bride. If the chosen one is the ‘only acceptable one, while the other family members are dreadful’, it is an exercise in ‘practical racial awareness’ to recognize that the bride’s family has ‘blood that is undesirable’ for the SS man. He was not prepared to accept the excuse that a man might already have become involved in an established relationship before discovering that ‘her brother or uncle was in a lunatic asylum’: ‘No, gentlemen, the man must be so good as to ask beforehand.’

For an unmarried man it was, Himmler said, ‘no disgrace to have a girlfriend. He must, however, be clear in his own mind from the outset:

I shall not marry you because I cannot justify doing so. How he makes the girl accept that is his business; everyone has to be the judge in matters of his own conscience. But SS men must never behave in a way that is not decent but must rather be open and say: I’m sorry, I can’t marry you as there have been too many serious illnesses in your family.’ SS men were to be urged, ‘in many individual conversations’, to take these ideas on board.
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For the rest, he was hopeful, as he confided to the Gruppenführer in 1937, that ‘in the course of a thoroughly reasonable, open, and extremely tactful discussion with the young man or girl their sense of duty and their awareness of the immense responsibility they bear can be boosted to the point where they can both be educated to accept a life without sex up to the age of 18, 19, 20’.
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In 1936 and 1937, whenever Himmler’s topic was sexual politics his ideas always revolved around the same considerations: the threat to young people of homosexuality; the toleration of sexual relations between unmarried young people; acceptance of illegitimacy; early marriage. It is obvious that Himmler had entered a phase in which he was settling accounts with his earlier attitude to the subjects of sexuality and masculinity. In the early 1920s the model before his eyes was that of the celibate, heroic warrior, the figure of the ‘lonely freebooter’. He had already given up this image of himself in 1927–8, when he met his wife and set about founding a family. Now, some ten years later, this blueprint for life was gradually turning out to be flawed. If his prescriptions in matters of sexual politics from the 1936–7 period are read as reflections on his own development, then he clearly reproached himself with not having gained sexual experience earlier and not having married a woman of his own age earlier and founded a family with her. It was obvious to him which institution had caused him these difficulties: the Catholic Church.

The fact that Himmler gave voice to views on matters of sexual politics in 1936–7 in a manner that can be read as a critical commentary on his own previous life, and the fact that he showed himself so liberal with regard to extramarital sex and illegitimate births, most certainly had roots in his private experience. In autumn 1937 the Himmlers spent a relatively harmonious holiday together in Italy, and yet a precise reading of the entries in Margarete’s diary, something she began to keep during this holiday, reveals deep dissatisfaction. After the seizure of power the Himmlers were certainly in a position to cultivate a lifestyle in keeping with their membership of the country’s political elite: first of all they moved from Waldtrudering to a flat
in the exclusive Möhlstrasse in Munich, which they moved out of again in 1934 to live near Lake Tegern, where in 1936 Himmler bought a village house (Lindenfycht) from the renowned singer Alois Burgstaller, extending it in 1937.
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In addition, Himmler immediately rented a lakeside house,
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as well as a hunting lodge in the mountains nearby.
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In Berlin too he had comfortable accommodation, at first in a flat in Tiergartenstrasse 6a and from November 1934 in Hagenstrasse 22,
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before he finally moved into a spacious house befitting the position he had in the meantime attained, Dohnenstieg 10 in the exclusive suburb of Dahlem. It had fourteen rooms,
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and as his official residence was provided for him free of charge.
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The financial worries of the first years of marriage were therefore over, and Margarete’s diary entries certainly convey her pride in Himmler’s professional successes. At the same time, it is impossible to overlook her complaints that he is almost permanently away from home,
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her doubts about whether his commitment to his work is really being adequately rewarded and whether it is all worth it.
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On their tenth anniversary she wrote: ‘In spite of the happiness marriage brings, I have had to do without many things in my marriage for H. is almost never there and his life is all work.’
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After attaining considerable social status as Himmler’s wife, her lack of social confidence grew into a contempt for others, with undertones of aggression. She seems above all to have taken out her frustration on her domestic staff: there was constant annoyance in the Himmler household because the servants were ‘insolent and lazy’.
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In one diary entry, occasioned by just such an episode, she vented her resentment and fury: ‘Why are these people not put under lock and key and made to work until they die. Sometimes I wonder if I live with human beings or not.’
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In March 1939 two further employees left, and she complained: ‘The notion of duty and service doesn’t exist any more.’
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She had additional troubles on account of her foster-child Gerhard, whom the Himmlers had taken in. The son of a dead SS man, he was a year older than their daughter Gudrun. The complaints pile up in Margarete’s diary: the boy is a ‘criminal type’, has stolen money, and ‘is an appalling liar’, she writes.
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His natural mother was not prepared to have her wayward son back under these circumstances either, thereby displaying an attitude that, as Margarete confided to her diary, did nothing to ‘unsettle’ her ‘opinion about human beings’.
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In March 1939 Gerhard passed the
entrance examination for a National Socialist educational establishment—these schools, designed to train up the future National Socialist elite, had in the meantime also become part of Himmler’s empire—but in October he was forced to leave again.
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In the light of these entries the Himmlers’ domestic situation at the end of the 1930s can hardly be described as harmonious.

Early in 1936 a young woman named Hedwig Potthast took up a post as Himmler’s private secretary. The two gradually became close, and at the end of 1938, it is believed, confessed to each other that they had fallen in love; they could not have started a relationship earlier than 1940, however. There is little point in speculating whether Himmler’s rather barren domestic situation prompted his relationship with Hedwig Potthast, or whether his growing interest in the young woman created the backdrop against which Margarete’s frustration must be viewed. As is usual in human relationships, both aspects most probably reinforced each other. Nevertheless, Himmler’s statements of June 1937 to the Expert Advisory Panel on Population Policy reveal clearly the explosive potential he saw in his growing private conflict: in his view, he explained, it was ‘absolutely clear, that the German nation is in absolute disarray on sexual matters, that as a nation we have the greatest possible tensions in this area, and we must face up to the fact that, if a nation is not living in accord with its most fundamental natural laws, then that is dynamite for the whole nation’.
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If SS members wanted to get divorced, Himmler in principle had no reservations. The Reichsführer declared openly to the Gruppenführer in 1937 that if the couple had grown apart he had ‘complete sympathy’ with their wish to divorce. At the same time, he set a condition: ‘I require the guiding principle of the SS leadership corps to be that whatever fate decrees must happen in this area of life should be carried through in a way that is ordered, decent, and extremely generous on the part of the individual concerned.’
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Generosity was something Himmler himself inclined to: if in the course of disciplinary or criminal proceedings ‘marital lapses’ came to light, it was Himmler’s policy for the wife not to be informed, ‘in the interests of upholding the marriage’.
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The requirement to be ‘decent’ and ‘chivalrous’
was not infringed, therefore, as long as the marital lapse did not come out into the open. In 1944 Himmler even approached the Reich Minister of Justice in an individual case to remove the legal ruling according to which adultery was to be regarded as an ‘impediment to marriage’.
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If proceedings were initiated in SS or police courts on the grounds of adultery, Himmler reserved for himself the decision on how they should be handled. In such cases he wished to be comprehensively briefed; amongst other things, photographs of all those involved (in particular, of any children) had to be included.
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The privilege of a ‘second marriage’ was something Himmler by no means took advantage of only for himself. His study of Germanic prehistory had convinced him of the existence of the ‘second or Friedel-Ehe,
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which the free Teuton of good race could enter into’,
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and he also permitted his men to enter into such an arrangement, on condition that they intended to have children. Thus, in 1944 Himmler allowed a married Obersturmbannführer, who on account of his wife’s ‘nervous condition’ was unwilling to leave her, to cohabit with another woman. That was, however, with the proviso that the new relationship produced children.
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On a visit to the acting Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, Obergruppenführer Schlessmann, Himmler advised him that in view of his marital problems he should look for ‘a loving woman’, who ‘would be prepared to give children to the German nation with me [Schlessmann]’. Some time after this conversation Schlessmann ‘reported’ to Himmler that he had now found ‘this loving woman’, who was his secretary and was now three months pregnant with his child. No stranger to this type of relationship himself, Himmler was very pleased, granted the second wife accommodation, and promised ‘complete secrecy’.
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In spite of all these efforts the number of marriages among SS members was, in Himmler’s view, still too low, and the lack of children produced when the war was causing many losses became a problem that threatened the future viability of the SS. In June 1942 he explained to the leadership corps
of the SS-Division ‘Das Reich’ ‘that the number of children does not replace even half of those who have fallen [ . . . ] A terrible loss, much more terrible than the death of the men themselves.’
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Specific challenges had to be issued.
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In December 1944 Himmler requested the commandant on Obersalzberg, Obersturmführer Frank, to ‘enquire’ of the unmarried leaders and Unterführer under his command ‘what they had done so far to put an end to their unmarried state or what they were intending to do in the foreseeable future’.
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In 1943 Himmler had his ‘acute displeasure’ conveyed to one Hauptsturmführer Schwarz for ‘still being unmarried at the age of 44’; if this were still the case by the end of the war, he would be dismissed from the SS.
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If all cajoling and admonitions produced no results, in particularly extreme cases Himmler ordered his men to marry. Hauptsturmführer Arnold, for example, received such a letter from his Reichsführer in June 1943:

Dear Arnold!

As far as I am aware, you are your parents’ only son. In my opinion you are under an obligation to marry and ensure that the Arnold clan does not die out.

I expect an answer to this letter.
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To make doubly sure, Himmler sent a letter the same day to Arnold senior, suggesting it would be good if the latter ‘were to influence him in the same direction’.
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Fritz Bauer, a sports teacher at the SS sanatorium in Hohenlychen, reported as early as October 1936 that he had carried out just such an order from his Reichsführer: ‘With regard to your order to marry by 30 January 1937, I am pleased to report that I intend to obey the order on 12 December 1936.’
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Himmler was delighted, and donated 500 Reich marks for the wedding.
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The case of SS-Hauptsturmführer Feierlein was somewhat more complicated. At first he received an unequivocal instruction from Himmler: marry by 20 April 1938—the Führer’s birthday! When the date passed, nothing had happened and Wolff sent him a reminder, Feierlein attempted to wriggle out of it by saying he had not understood Himmler’s instruction to be an order. The Chief of the Personal Staff did not, however, accept this ‘lazy excuse’, and passed on to him a formal order from the Reichsführer that Feierlein ‘had until 31. 12. 38 to report the execution of your order to marry’.
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When, however, a short time later a suspicion arose that Feierlein might be involved in a corruption scandal in Vienna, Wolff informed him
that the order had been suspended and he was forbidden ‘to get engaged or married without receiving further communications’.
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In May the following year Feierlein asked for his marriage prohibition to be suspended, as in the meantime he had met ‘a girl’; his wish was granted, and in June he ‘gave notice’ of his impending marriage.
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