Heinrich Himmler : A Life (71 page)

On 4 December the Himmlers flew to Libya and, on the following day, visited the archaeological sites in Leptis Magna, a city which, Margarete noted, ‘the Romans had built with infinite greatness, richness, and nobility’. ‘I keep thinking,’ she asked herself, ‘why are these people now so poor? Perhaps because there are no longer any slaves.’ In view of the pomp with which his host, the governor Italo Balbo, celebrated their visit, Himmler’s
tourist garb was somewhat inappropriate. For he was wearing a ‘ridiculous young person’s hiking-type knickerbocker suit’, as Dollmann disapprovingly noted.
⁷⁴

On 6 December the Himmlers visited a Tuareg camp and on the following evening they were invited to dine with the Balbos. Beforehand the Himmlers had visited a mosque and the Jewish quarter. Margarete described her impressions: ‘Awfully dirty and the smell! The Arabs are much cleaner.’

On 9 December the Himmlers flew to Naples, on the following day visited Paestum and the National Museum, and on the eleventh were taken to Rome by car. That evening, after dining with the German ambassador to the Vatican, von Bergen, Himmler once again felt ‘very bad. Immediately said it was the lobster.’ But the following day he had recovered enough to be able to accept an invitation from Bocchini, and on the thirteenth they returned to Berlin by train.
⁷⁵

On 10 December, while still in Naples, Himmler had summarized some of his impressions of the trip in a letter to Walther Wüst, the head of the Ahnenerbe, and had drafted a substantial research project. He wrote that, while visiting Italian museums and archaeological sites, he had kept coming across ‘evidence of Germanic remains’: references to runes in a Latin inscription in the Roman forum, the swastikas in Pompeii and Herculaneum, and other things. Wüst was therefore instructed ‘to create a department in the Ahnenerbe with the task of studying Italy and Greece in the light of their Indo-Germanic-Aryan associations’. Himmler fully recognized that this was naturally a ‘very big’ task. But he expressed himself confident that ‘we shall thereby achieve our main goal of coming closer to proving that the Aryan and Nordic people have spread outwards from the centre of Germany and the Baltic basin to almost all parts of the earth, and that now at least we are coming closer to providing evidence for the intellectual dominance of the world by the Aryan Teutons’.
⁷⁶

Their trip, with its little difficulties, had shown that the Himmlers had not yet quite achieved this high aspiration in their private lives.

At the end of 1937 Hitler made an important change in the policy of the Third Reich: he embarked on a policy that was openly expansionist. On 5
November 1937, in an address to the Reich Minister of War, Werner von Blomberg, the Reich Foreign Minister, Konstantin von Neurath, and the commanders-in-chief of the army, navy, and Luftwaffe, he justified the need for military expansion in order to acquire for Germany the ‘living-space’ that was necessary to secure its future as a great power.
⁷⁷

Hitler then went into the details of when and how, and suggested two possible scenarios. In the first place, he told his audience that he was determined to conduct a major war at the latest by 1943 to 1945 in order to solve ‘Germany’s space problem’. Their opponents would be France and Great Britain. Secondly, he elucidated possible situations in which Germany might be able to act before these dates. If, for domestic or diplomatic reasons, France should prove incapable of intervening then he wanted to use the opportunity to attack and annex Austria and Czechoslovakia.

The concerns and the criticism expressed by the military chiefs and Neurath about his military plans following his talk helped to convince Hitler that the transition to a more aggressive foreign policy would be possible only if he replaced the conservatives, who were filling leading positions within the state apparatus, with more biddable followers.

By chance, a few months later the Reich War Minister’s involvement in a marriage scandal provided the opportunity for a major reshuffle along the lines Hitler was seeking. In January 1938 Blomberg married a much younger woman, who, it was revealed shortly after the wedding, had several convictions for ‘immoral behaviour’ and was registered with the police as a prostitute. The affair—an affair of state, since Hitler and Göring had acted as witnesses at the wedding—led to Blomberg’s retirement.
⁷⁸
At the end of January 1938 Göring, who regarded himself as the obvious successor to Blomberg and had personally informed Hitler of the marriage scandal, unexpectedly presented Hitler with material that compromised his most important rival for the post, the Commander-in-Chief of the army, Werner von Fritsch. Himmler’s Gestapo had provided him with the material and Göring gave Hitler a file which appeared to show that Fritsch was homosexual.

Hitler immediately seized on the accusation, arranging a confrontation in the Reich Chancellery between von Fritsch and the sole witness, a man who had previous convictions for blackmailing his sexual partners. The witness claimed to recognize Fritsch as a previous customer, an accusation that Fritsch strenuously denied. The Gestapo was assigned to investigate the matter further. It was a scandal that, during the following days, threatened to
plunge the regime into a crisis. On 4 February, however, Hitler took control of the situation by dismissing both von Blomberg and von Fritsch, by taking over the supreme command of the Wehrmacht himself without replacing the War Minister, and by appointing Walther von Brauchitsch as the new Commander-in-Chief of the army. At a stroke the whole structure of the military leadership had been transformed.

The reconstruction of the leadership of the Wehrmacht was followed by extensive changes in personnel. During the first days of February twelve generals were removed and fifty-one other posts in the military hierarchy had new incumbents. The Foreign Ministry was also affected: Foreign Minister von Neurath was promoted ‘upstairs’ to chair the Secret Cabinet Council (which never met), and was replaced as Foreign Minister by Hitler’s slippery ‘special ambassador’, Joachim von Ribbentrop, who appointed Ernst von Weizsäcker, the head of the Political Department (in the Foreign Ministry), to be his state secretary. The ambassadors in Rome, Tokyo, London, and Vienna were replaced. Finally, Hjalmar Schacht was replaced as Reich Economics Minister by Walter Funk, a former business journalist and hitherto a state secretary in the Propaganda Ministry.
⁷⁹

In the meantime the Gestapo was investigating Fritsch, who had to appear before the Reich Military Court in March. In fact the court had begun its own investigation into the affair and—by contrast with the Gestapo investigation—evidence had also been sought that might exonerate Fritsch; and indeed, such evidence had been found. The main hearing, which was conducted by Göring personally, ended with a sensation: the prosecution witness was forced to confess that he had confused General von Fritsch with a retired cavalry officer named Frisch. Fritsch was pronounced innocent and officially rehabilitated.
⁸⁰

Fritsch considered Himmler primarily responsible for his fall. He made serious accusations against the ‘main villain’: ‘Your whole attitude in this affair shows [. . .] that you were determined in a biased manner to portray me as the guilty one.’ Fritsch even contemplated challenging Himmler to a duel.
⁸¹
In fact Himmler had been convinced of Fritsch’s guilt from the start, and he ensured that the investigation would be carried out one-sidedly. It is possible—and we shall come back to this—that he thought that he would boost his career by exposing the scandal. However, he certainly did not, as Fritsch assumed, intentionally fabricate and initiate the affair. In the light of the homophobic horror scenarios that Himmler painted in 1936–7, he may well have actually believed that the plague of homosexuality had already
infected the highest ranks of the Wehrmacht. Goebbels noted at the height of the crisis, at the beginning of January, that the fact that the Gestapo could not come up with the required results made Himmler ‘very depressed. Fritsch has still not confessed.’
⁸²

Himmler’s depression may well have increased when it became clear that the accusations against Fritsch made by him were completely groundless. Goebbels noted of a meeting with Hitler in March: ‘The trial of von Fritsch is going very badly. The whole thing seems to be based on a case of mistaken identity. Very bad news, particularly for Himmler. He is too quick to act and also too prejudiced. The Führer is very annoyed.’
⁸³

Hitler’s annoyance hit Himmler hard, and the blow was deserved. The Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police had completely failed in a highly embarrassing affair of state. As late as August, at the time of von Fritsch’s final rehabilitation, Goebbels noted: ‘Terrible defeat for Himmler.’
⁸⁴
Himmler’s position in the Fritsch affair was made particularly awkward because he was simultaneously facing the accusation that the uncompromising pursuer of homosexuals was all the time tolerating one in a key position within the SS. For, in February 1938, he was compelled to suspend Gruppenführer Kurt Wittje, until 1935 head of the SS Main Office, because of rumours of his alleged homosexuality. Himmler instructed the ‘Reichsführer-SS’s Great Court of Arbitration’ to conduct an investigation, which, however, produced no concrete evidence to support the allegations. Himmler, though, was not satisfied. He produced a seven-page response to the court’s report, subjecting it to a detailed and devastating critique, then conducted his own meticulous examination of the Wittje case and ordered his dismissal from the SS on the grounds that his homosexuality had been ‘definitely’ proved. He then sent the whole file back to the court with the comment that they should consider the affair as a ‘classic example’ of how such cases should be dealt with in the future. He could not resist teaching the court a lesson, and did so in great detail.
⁸⁵

It is clear from Himmler’s statement that the case was particularly awkward because Hitler had already informed him in 1934 that he had been told by the War Minister, Blomberg, that Wittje, a former officer, had been dismissed from the Reichswehr on the grounds of suspected homosexuality. Himmler must have considered this information particularly alarming because the elimination of the SA leadership in 1934 had been justified primarily on the grounds of Röhm’s and his followers’ homosexuality. Had the rumour been confirmed, the SS’s opponents would have been
able to claim that the SS leadership was also involved in the homosexual conspiracy allegedly led by Röhm.

Himmler’s detailed statement on the Wittje case from 1938 is thus also a piece of self-justification, comprehensive proof that, at that time, he himself had carefully examined the accusations but had been
forced
to consider them baseless. As far as Himmler was concerned, the case was particularly tricky because, after the removal of Fritsch with the aid of a fictitious scandal, now he himself was in danger of being confronted with the accusation that he had tolerated a homosexual and former officer in the ranks of the SS. He was thus concerned to prevent any suspicion of this arising.

Himmler told the court that the detailed examination of the affair that was carried out at that time had not given rise to any suspicion on which one could act. According to Wittje’s personal file, the only evidence was that on two occasions during his Reichswehr service, when drunk, he had, as Himmler indignantly noted, ‘put his arms round, hugged, and kissed a subordinate’. As a result Wiitje had been requested by his superiors to hand in his resignation. At the time, Himmler noted in 1938, he had come to the conclusion that Wittje’s behaviour was the result of his excessive alcohol consumption. He had thus warned him to avoid ‘getting drunk’, a warning that unfortunately Wittje had not heeded. In May 1935 Himmler had relieved Wittje of his post as head of the Main Office at his own request, ‘on health grounds’, but had let him keep his rank of Gruppenführer. In 1937 there had been a further complaint from Wittje’s former driver, which in Himmler’s view was quite clear: ‘Hugging, kissing, touching.’ However, the driver had withdrawn his accusation.

In fact there was more evidence against Wittje. He had gone on holiday with a young SS man. As far as Himmler was concerned, the case was clear. ‘In my eyes it is completely abnormal for a man of 43 to offer to use the familiar “du” form with a young chap of 25 after only a few weeks and then to go on holiday not with his wife and children, who were going to East Prussia, but with this young man to Kreuth and Salzburg and then, despite the fact that Wittje has recently been in financial trouble, to pay for his trip.’ The trip with this young man, instead of with his family, was ‘outrageous and could be attributable only to abnormality’. Wittje and his companion were therefore to be dismissed from the SS, even if there is ‘a danger that I’m being unjust to someone’, since ‘I would prefer to be too strict in this area rather than allow the plague of homosexuality to enter the SS’.
⁸⁶

In November 1938 Himmler returned to the case at a meeting of Gruppenführer, and justified Wittje’s dismissal, since ‘there must be a reasonable question as to whether he has not seriously incriminated himself under §175 [of the Penal Code]’.
⁸⁷
However, Himmler did not continue to hold this affair against Wittje. In 1942 he helped him to find another career.
⁸⁸

The Blomberg–Fritsch affair, or rather the Blomberg–Fritsch–Wittje affair, is reflected in Margarete Himmler’s diaries: ‘H has a lot of worries and even more work’, she wrote on 26 January, not without compassion for the focus of Himmler’s hard work: ‘I feel really sorry for poor old Blomberg.’ On 30 January she noted: ‘Day after day H hasn’t been getting back from work before midnight. I don’t know how he can put up with it.’ And on 4 February she noted: ‘Big news. The Führer has taken over the Wehrmacht himself. Ribbentrop has become Foreign Minister. Many changes. H is very tense. Has had to work on it night and day and yet hasn’t been promoted himself.’ Thus, presumably Himmler had thought he had a chance of being promoted to minister, possibly to Minister of Police.
⁸⁹