Heinrich Himmler : A Life (87 page)

Himmler also kept issuing penal guidelines. For example, in January 1945, when members of the 256 Volksgrenadierdivision (a Wehrmacht unit set up and led by the SS) had participated in looting, he ordered that, in the case of looting in Reich territory, ‘as a deterrent a death sentence should be imposed in a suitable case and should be carried out in the presence of members of the units of the division concerned’.
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And after a lecture by the SS Judge on the Staff of the Reichsführer-SS concerning the ‘prosecution of those who have shot Jews without authorization’, Himmler decided that the decisive point was the ‘motives’ of those involved in such incidents: ‘In the case of political motives there should be no prosecution unless required for the maintenance of public order [ . . . ] In the case of selfish, sadistic, or sexual motives they should be prosecuted and, where appropriate, for murder or manslaughter.’
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Thus, even in the face of unparalleled mass murder Himmler did not want to abandon the right to claim that his SS murdered ‘decently’.

Himmler was unable to exploit the conquests of 1940—the occupation of Norway, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg—in the same way that he had done with the campaign against Poland; he was prevented from acquiring a comparable position of power in the territories that had been newly occupied. Similarly, he was largely unsuccessful at realizing the foreign-policy ambitions that he developed during this period. Nevertheless, he had a significant impact on the German occupation of northern and western Europe. By pursuing a decidedly racist policy in France involving ‘ethnic political’ measures, with his comprehensive plans for deporting the Jews, as well as his attempts to recruit ethnic Germans and ‘Teutons’ for his Waffen-SS, Himmler ensured that German rule differed significantly from conventional occupation policies.

Ever since the Anschluss with Austria Himmler had been able to acquire experience of the annexation of occupied or conquered territories. While the position of the police in Austria had been regulated along the lines of the situation prevailing in the Reich, Himmler’s police organization in the Protectorate had been granted the greatest possible autonomy vis-à-vis the Reich Protector, von Neurath.
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In the satellite state of Slovakia, which had been created after the occupation of the ‘remainder of Czechoslovakia’, Himmler aimed to establish a Gestapo branch which could control the Slovakian secret police, the USB (Ustredna statna bezpecnost), and treat the allied state de facto as German territory. To achieve this, between June 1939 and August 1940 he sent three police commissions one after the other to Pressburg (Bratislava). However, apart from causing tension with the German Foreign Ministry, nothing much came of this.
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In July 1941 the ‘Office of the Reich Security Main Office in Pressburg’ was finally closed.
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The only official who remained was a police attaché attached to the German embassy.
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The behaviour of Himmler’s organization and his forces in Poland had prompted the Wehrmacht to object to the integration of security police and SD Einsatzkommandos into the army as part of the planning for future military campaigns. Heydrich commented on this in a document, noting that in many cases ‘among senior army commanders’ there was ‘a fundamentally different attitude towards basic issues involving the combating of enemies of the state’ compared with that of the SS. The directives for the deployment of the police in Poland had been ‘extremely radical’ (‘for example, the order to liquidate numerous members of the Polish elites, amounting to thousands’). Since the Wehrmacht could not be let in on this, the actions of the police and SS had appeared to outsiders arbitrary, brutal, and unauthorized. The Selbstschutz, which ‘in some cases had carried out impossible and uncontrollable acts of revenge’,
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had added to the problem. Thus, at the end of March Heydrich was obliged to inform his office chiefs that the planned participation of Einsatzkommandos in the invasion of Belgium and Holland had been cancelled.
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On 9 April 1940 the Wehrmacht mounted a surprise landing in Norway in order to pre-empt a feared intervention by Britain. While the German troops, engaged in fierce fighting with Norwegian and British forces, were still endeavouring to bring the country under their control, the structure of the future German occupation began to take shape under the Essen Gauleiter Josef Terboven, whom Hitler had appointed Reich Commissar on 24 April.

Himmler had tried to acquire influence in Norway right from the start,
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and, despite opposition from the Wehrmacht, on 20 April 1940, at a meeting with Hitler attended by Terboven, Göring, and Bormann, he succeeded in securing the appointment of a Higher SS and Police Leader and the deployment of an Einsatzgruppe. Improvising, Heydrich produced a unit of which the core was formed by eighty Gestapo and SD officials who had originally been intended for ‘a special deployment in the West’, which had been kept secret from the Wehrmacht.
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SS-Obergruppenführer Fritz Weitzel was appointed HSSPF in Norway. However, while staying in Düsseldorf during June he was killed in an air raid and was replaced by the Königsberg HSSPF, Wilhelm Rediess. In fact, both Weitzel and Rediess allowed themselves to be controlled by Terboven to a large extent, even though they were not officially subordinate to him.
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The same was true of
Heinrich Fehlis,
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hitherto head of the security police/SD group in Oslo. In the autumn of 1940 Fehlis replaced SS-Oberführer Stahlecker, previously commander of the security police in the Protectorate, as the commander of the around 200-strong Einsatzgruppe of the security police and SD which had arrived in Norway at the end of April. Thus Terboven had some success in blocking Himmler’s attempt to intervene in the occupation administration through his own men. In Heydrich’s opinion, the deployment of security police and SD in Norway occurred in any case ‘to some extent [ . . . ] too late’ for them still to be able to combat ‘the enemies of the state’ there effectively.
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In the case of the occupation of Denmark, which occurred simultaneously with that of Norway, Himmler had no success at all. German plans for the occupation envisaged the stationing of troops; however, interventions in the work of the Danish government and administration were only to occur for military purposes. Thus, no proper occupation administration was established; instead, the German envoy in Copenhagen, who had the additional title ‘Reich Plenipotentiary’, communicated the wishes of the Reich government to the Danish government and deployed a small staff to observe whether or not they were carried out.
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On 10 May German troops invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and France. The Dutch armed forces had already capitulated on 15 May. Two days later Himmler embarked on a trip to the newly conquered territory in order to visit his Waffen-SS units and get to know the country and its people. He was accompanied by, among others, Wolff, his adjutant Joachim Peiper, his old schoolfriend and personal physician Gebhardt (probably because of the latter’s personal connection with the Belgian royal family), as well as the latter’s colleague, the physician Ludwig Stumpfegger.

Himmler recorded his impressions in a diary, in which the trip is also documented by a series of photographs: ‘This part of Holland and Maastricht itself make a distinctly friendly and clean impression. The population was by no means hostile but greeted our soldiers. If we asked for information it was given to us freely and correctly.’ On the evening of the first day they stayed at the Hotel Warson in Hasselt. The commander of the Standarte ‘Der Führer’ and his deputy, who were based nearby, joined the party. There was a victorious mood: ‘We had a very nice meal in the evening, drank some wine, and the two of them talked about their experience of the fighting’.

Next day the group left for Eindhoven and Tilberg to visit the headquarters of the 18th Army. That night they stayed in the Hotel La Suisse. Himmler was very content: ‘The food was good and incredibly plentiful. All the Dutch cities made an excellent impression; the population is friendly and its racial quality is high. It was really nice seeing the men, women, and children. They are a great gain for Germany.’ Thus, for Himmler it was clear that the Netherlands were going to be annexed.

On the following day the group went on an excursion—Himmler, as he noted, was at the wheel—in the direction of Rosendaal, where they met up with the SS-Standarte ‘Germania’. On 19 May, after a flying visit to Antwerp, which involved a roundabout route because bridges had been blown, on the way to Brussels they went through a small town:

When we came through Runst, a Flemish town with lots of brickworks, we were met by members of the town militia who were obviously hanging around waiting for the first German troops to arrive. They took us to meet the mayor and the town council, who surrendered the town of Runst to us. At the same time they wanted us to provide them with water, gas, and electricity. At the end Gruppenführer Wolff told these good people that I was the head of the Gestapo.

Next they visited the town of Leuven (Louvain), which was badly damaged. Himmler tried to convey his impressions: ‘Apart from a few soldiers there was hardly anybody in the town, which looked very odd.’
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Finally they got to Brussels, and on the following day went sightseeing. After a meeting with the commander of the Leibstandarte the group returned to the Felsennest Headquarters, where on 22 May Himmler gave Hitler a first-hand account of his impressions.
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Before starting out on his trip Himmler had already proposed to Hitler that Arthur Seyss-Inquart, at the time Deputy Governor of the General Government, should become the new Reich Commissar for the Netherlands.
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Seyss-Inquart was an old acquaintance of Himmler’s and, following his usual practice, in October 1938 the latter had awarded him the rank of SS-Gruppenführer, backdated to 12 March, the date of the Anschluss.
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On 18 May Seyss-Inquart was indeed appointed Reich Commissar in the Netherlands; from Himmler’s point of view this provided the prospect of his being able to appoint a HSSPF in the Netherlands. He chose Hans Albin Rauter, chief of staff of the SS-Oberabschnitt South-East in Breslau, whom Seyss-Inquart integrated into the occupation administration in the role of
Commissar-General for Security. This meant that Rauter was subordinate both to the head of the civil administration and to the Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police. In the event of a conflict between the two, in practice his loyalty to Himmler had clear priority.
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Heydrich, however, was once again dissatisfied with the situation: here too the appointment of a HSSPF had occurred ‘almost too late’, as ‘naturally, because of a lack of practical experience and expertise, the work carried out under the direction of military intelligence had been relatively ineffective at capturing émigrés as well as documents and archives relevant to the police, compared with what would have been possible if the Gestapo, with all the records and information at its disposal, had been able to act immediately’.
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Ill. 22.
During the war, in particular, Himmler’s leadership style was marked by a high degree of mobility. He was continually on the move through occupied Europe inspecting his units and offices and giving his people detailed instructions on the spot. In this way the Reichsführer-SS conveyed the impression that he was personally involved in all matters concerning his extensive area of responsibilities and ready to share the wartime stresses and strains with his men.

At the end of May Hans Nockermann, who had already arrived in Amsterdam immediately after the Dutch capitulation as leader of an SD commando, was appointed commander of the security police and SD in the Netherlands.
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However, Nockermann did not stay long. After the Dutch population had publicly and demonstratively expressed their sympathies for the royal family on 29 June, Himmler replaced him with Wilhelm Harster, who had briefly held the same post in Prague in 1939. Harster immediately began to transform the Einsatzkommandos of the Dutch Einsatzgruppe into units with permanent bases in the country.
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The long-term aim of the German authorities was to integrate the Netherlands into the German Reich as part of a ‘Germanic Reich’. In the short and medium term, however, the independence of the Netherlands was to be maintained, not least in view of the continuing existence of the Dutch administration in their colonies. Moreover, in the shape of the Nationaal-Socialistisch Bewegung (NSB) under Anton Mussert the occupiers found a not-insignificant partner (the NSB had, after all, won 8 per cent of the vote in the elections of 1935), which was ideologically close to them, but which was not prepared to give up political independence in favour of an alleged ‘Germanic’ blood relationship.
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