Heinrich Himmler : A Life (74 page)

Although Darré had emphasized, in a speech in January 1936, that the future of German peasant settlement lay in eastern Europe up to the Urals,
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his RuSHA had not made any significant preparations for this future project. In 1937, however, Hermann Reischle, the head of the staff
office of the Reich Food Estate, for which Darré was also responsible, had given instructions to start secretly planning the settlement of Czechoslovakia. Reischle insisted that he was not prepared to put up with the ‘absurd situation’ that in Nazi Germany ‘nobody was thinking [how] in practice’ the central demand of Nazism for ‘new space’ could be realized. The strict secrecy of these drafts prevented Reischle, who was also head of the Race Office of the Race and Settlement Main Office, from involving the SS in these plans. Indeed, it may well be the case that, in his function as head of the Race Office, he wished as far as possible to prevent the SS from developing their own settlement plans and so providing unwelcome competition.
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SS settlement activity only really got going in 1938, utilizing settlement land in the annexed Sudeten territory and in Austria. In June 1938 the German Settlement Society (Deutsche Ansiedlungsgesellschaft = DAG), which was controlled by the RuSHA,
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was given the task of buying land in Austria for a Wehrmacht training area and resettling the residents in ‘aryanized’ property. This was followed by three more such contracts for military training areas. In all it involved a total of 35,000 hectares.
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The fact that DAG ran ‘a precise, punctual and smooth operation’ led to it being given further, similar tasks.
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The RuSHA was even more heavily involved in the Sudetenland. In October Günter Pancke, who had replaced Darré as head of the RuSHA in the late summer of 1938, wrote to his boss Himmler that ‘the opportunity provided by the Sudetenland’ should be exploited for far-reaching changes in the ‘whole settlement field’. The Sudetenland should be intensively utilized as a test-bed for settlement in order to secure SS responsibility for settlement issues for the whole of the Reich or, as Pancke put it, so that, ‘by being able to refer to real achievements, the SS can work towards gaining the post of Reich Settlement Commissar in the old Reich as well’. Thus, his appointment as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of the German Ethnic Nation (
Reichskommissar für die Festigung deutschen Volkstums
), which represented the decisive step in increasing Himmler’s responsibility for settlement, was already being prepared the previous year. In July 1939, with specific reference to an order from the Reichsführer-SS, the Race and Settlement Main Office requested from the SD ‘documents, statistics, as well as maps dealing with the agricultural and geopolitical conditions in Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Romania’. The fact that, at the same time, a request was made for documents concerning the ‘work of
Catholic Action in the above countries’ indicates who was envisaged as providing the land for future settlement.
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The real change in SS settlement policy, however, came in spring 1939, when Hitler gave Himmler the task of organizing the resettlement of the German minority in South Tyrol. It was only then that settlement policy acquired the dimensions of a full-scale ‘ethnic population policy’, and it was only then that Himmler not only came to focus on it but saw it as a chance to shift the emphasis in the expansion of the SS empire from the concept of the ‘state protection corps’ to ‘Lebensraum policy’.

Such a reorientation of policy would have been impossible with Darré. The SS’s settlement policy needed to acquire a more racial and military emphasis than Darré’s peasant form of settlement policy. In the SS the future settlers were seen in the first instance as ‘military peasants’ (
Wehrbauern
).
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Thus, Himmler considered the removal of Darré, whom he had long regarded as a political partner and personal friend, as unavoidable

Darré’s personal records show that by 1937 at the latest he had come to mistrust Himmler. On 17 April 1937, on the occasion of a visit to Himmler, Darré had noted that the Reichsführer-SS had behaved in a ‘very warm and friendly way’ towards him, but ‘had been remarkably pessimistic about the damage to my public position and my relationship with the Führer’. Himmler was referring to Darré’s unfortunate appearance at the Reich Peasant Rally in 1936, which had seriously damaged his prestige within the Nazi leadership. In the view of leading Nazis, Darré’s long-winded speech, which focused on ideology, had failed to articulate agricultural policy. The whole event had served only to document the Reich Peasant Leader’s political isolation.
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Now, wrote Darré, on this visit he had ‘refrained from commenting’ and ‘simply calmly listened to what he had to say, since my friendship with Himmler means a lot to me’.
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On 8 December 1937 he had a ‘serious talk’ about the SS with his state secretary, Herbert Backe:

I don’t believe for a moment that the RFSS could have anything against me, but his entourage or some of them must have a very strong influence over him so that he’s beginning to do things and he’s not aware of their repercussions [. . .] What should
one do? Wait! [. . .] I can’t give up my post as head of the Race and Settlement Main Office [. . .] dangerous gaps in the flank of the Nazi struggle in support of the peasantry [. . .] Is the SS developing into a feudal praetorian guard? [ . . . ] People are pulling the wool over Himmler’s eyes with the slogan ‘good blood’ that has to be saved and yet behind the scenes all the key positions are being filled by SS donors.
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Two weeks later Darré noted: ‘Conversation with Backe: plan to turn the SS into a samurai order and at the same time to amalgamate it with the police (Plan RFSS). That won’t do. Cui bono?’ And, at the beginning of 1938: ‘Very worried about the way the SS is going [ . . . ] Wolff is creating an alternative regime with opponents of the SS.’ Two weeks later he noted: ‘Worried about the future of the SS. Would it be better for me to give up the Race and Settlement Main Office since the SS is developing into a capitalist praetorian guard under a Jesuitical high command?’
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In February 1938 he did in fact offer his resignation as head of the Race and Settlement Main Office. Himmler had strongly criticized Joachim Caesar, the head of the indoctrination department in the Race and Settlement Main Office, accusing him of excessive ‘intellectualism’, and evidently wanted to dismiss him over Darré’s head. According to Darré, he was the third head of the indoctrination department whom Himmler had rejected, and therefore the Reichsführer was obviously dissatisfied with the way in which ‘my [Darré’s] ideas of blood and soil, of breeding and race are being imparted to and anchored in the SS’. His dismissal as head of the Race and Settlement Main Office was therefore unavoidable.
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Although this resignation statement was phrased in such a way that it gave Himmler the opportunity of rejecting it, in fact he accepted Darré’s resignation without further discussion.
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A draft of this letter has survived that is even more direct. ‘I owe it to the Führer’, Darré had written, ‘to vacate my office, since it no longer provides the guarantee that my place in history will be clear.’ In the last sentence he had also described his decision as ‘irrevocable’, whereas in the letter that was actually sent he wrote that he ‘could not see an alternative course of action’.
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Darré’s resignation was announced to the public as resulting from the burdens imposed by his other duties. According to a note of Darré’s, ‘at the moment nothing could be worse’ than having ‘this solution exploited by somebody to drive a wedge between the SS and the peasantry’.
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After Himmler had secured Hitler’s approval for Darré’s dismissal he initially sent him on leave, because, as he wrote to him, he had been ‘unable to issue final
instructions and make a new appointment’ as a result of his preoccupation with other urgent political matters.
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At that time he had on his desk a proposal from Pohl to abolish the Race and Settlement Main Office, in order to be rid of its ‘chronic financial difficulties [ . . . ] once and for all’.
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In the end Himmler could not bring himself to do this, but, as Pohl had proposed, transferred the indoctrination office, hitherto subordinate to the RuSHA, to the SS Main Office, thereby considerably restricting Darré’s former sphere of operations.

A successor to Darré, namely Pancke, was not appointed until 11 September 1938, after Darré had pressed for his dismissal to be made official on the grounds that the existing hiatus was creating problems. Two of his closest colleagues, the chief of staff of the RuSHA, Georg Ebrecht, and the head of the Race Office, Reichsle, left with him.
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However, Darré asked Himmler to appoint him as a ‘close personal adviser without any particular function’, since, during the next few years, Himmler would not be able to realize the ‘concept of the SS as an order’ that both of them were trying to achieve because the task of ‘state protection’ would have priority. Thus, Darré continued to hope that he would be able to realize his far-reaching ideological dreams over the medium term with the aid of Himmler and the SS. Significantly, Himmler did not respond to his request.
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This rejection may well have confirmed Darré in the opinion that he noted down when he was informed by Himmler’s adjutant of the Reichsführer’s acceptance of his resignation as head of the Race and Settlement Main Office: ‘Himmler has never understood the fundamental importance of my ideas.’ At the time he added that he wanted ‘to try to retain his friendship’.
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And indeed, Darré and Himmler were subsequently anxious publicly to demonstrate that their personal relationship remained intact.
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Nevertheless, they continued to drift apart, and by 1939–40 Darré’s initial mistrust had turned into enmity.

Now, without Darré, SS settlement policy could be geared to the concept of living-space. The prelude to this was Himmler’s assignment to resettle the ethnic Germans from South Tyrol.
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Immediately after the occupation of Prague, either at the end of March or the beginning of April, Hitler gave Himmler and the Gauleiter and Governor of Tyrol, Franz Hofer, oral
instructions to prepare to deprive 30,000 ethnic Germans living in South Tyrol of their German citizenship.
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The background to this was the attempt to defuse German–Italian relations through a clear demarcation of their respective spheres of interest. For the invasion of Prague represented a clear breach of the Munich Agreement, for which Mussolini had been largely responsible, and contradicted the statement made by the Germans to the Italian government that German expansion would stop at the German ‘ethnic frontier’. Hitler now aimed to allay the suspicion of his most important potential ally through a generous policy regarding South Tyrol. Hitler’s demonstrative step in the South Tyrol question was the essential precondition for the Pact of Steel of 22 May 1939, which was intended to consolidate the German–Italian alliance.

It was understandable that Hofer, the Gauleiter of Tyrol, should have been assigned this task, but why was Himmler brought in? There were several reasons. First, he could point to the experience gained by the Race and Settlement Main Office through the resettlement programmes involved in the establishment of military training areas in Austria and the Sudetenland. But much more important were his police responsibilities, which promised to ensure that the ‘de-settlement’ of the South Tyroleans would take place in an orderly manner, and that any objections from those affected would be immediately suppressed. In addition, there was his excellent relationship with the most senior officials of the Italian police, as well as, above all, the role that he had taken on in the past as the coordinator and most senior authority in the field of ethnic policy.

Right from the start, Himmler interpreted the task of resettling 30,000 South Tyroleans as the first stage in the complete clearing of South Tyrol of German-speakers.
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On 30 May 1939 he stated in a memorandum that, ‘the Führer’s fixing of the border between German and Italy’ was to be ‘permanent’. It was thereby ‘clearly and irrevocably established that South Tyrol has been abandoned as ethnic German territory and is of no more interest to us’. This did not, however, mean that ‘Germany has given up the 200,000 South Tyroleans who want to be German’. The problem could be solved only in the context of ‘what may be a historically uniquely generous process’: Germany would ‘create somewhere in the territory under its control, for example in the east, a space for 200,000 people’, a specially designated area from which all the existing population would be removed. Such an area could, for example, be established in North Moravia, which would also have the advantage that ‘Moravia would acquire an additional
200,000 national elements [
sic
], who are of good racial stock and very self-consciously and militantly German’.

That, however, was the ‘strategic final goal’. Until then they should aim for a ‘solution in stages’, for example through resettlement from the South Tyrol to the German Reich, above all to North Tyrol. They had already requested the Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans to produce a ‘central registry’ of all these immigrants, in order to be able later on to have the possibility of transferring the South Tyrolean immigrants to the designated settlement area. The resettlement programme would have to be closely coordinated with the Italian agencies, preferably in cooperation with their responsible police authorities.
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