Heinrich Himmler : A Life (88 page)

On 2 June Himmler arrived in The Hague to discuss with the radical Dutch Nazi Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the internal party rival of Mussert, the establishment of a Dutch SS, which he had just ordered the week before.
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The two had known each other since 1937, and Himmler hoped that with the support of Rost van Tonningen he would be able to realize his planned ‘Germanic’ policy in the Netherlands. Hitler declared that this appointment met with his ‘strong approval’. However, it made a conflict between the Reichsführer and Mussert inevitable.
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At the beginning of 1941 Seyss-Inquart received a letter from Himmler in which he outlined once again the principles of this policy: as Reich Commissar, Seyss-Inquart had the ‘historically important task of returning, with a firm but nevertheless very gentle hand, 9 million Germanic-Low German people, who for centuries have been alienated from the Germans, and of integrating them once more into the German-Low German community [ . . . ] Of course we both clearly understand that this task of creating a community of 110 million will be the basis for a really large Germanic Reich.’
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On 25 May, only a few days after his first trip to the Netherlands, Himmler proposed to Hitler the appointment of a Reich Commissar in
Belgium, which was about to capitulate. However, this time Hitler ignored Himmler’s wishes and instead appointed a military administration, which was also responsible for Luxembourg and for two French
départements
.
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On 15 June Himmler made another attempt, but again without success. Daluege, who in the meantime had arrived in Brussels to install a commander of the order police, had to return to Germany.
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Heydrich too was initially able to base only a small group in Brussels. Max Thomas, acting as the representative of the Chief of the Security Police and SD for Belgium and France, opened an office which, at the beginning of July, was reinforced by a small SD commando. This had been requested by Eggert Reeder, SS-Oberführer and district president in Düsseldorf, who in the meantime had been appointed head of the military administration.
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The Office of the Representative of the Security Police and SD responsible for the Area under the Control of the Military Commander for Belgium and Northern France that emerged from this development took its orders from the Reich Security Main Office,
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so that in the end Himmler and Heydrich were in fact able to exercise influence on the military administration of Belgium.

However, the SS was not content with this development; as far as they were concerned, the initial weeks of the occupation that were so decisive for security and intelligence operations had passed without being made use of. An HSSPF was only finally appointed in 1944. In France the situation was no different, which explains why, referring to both countries, Himmler noted in July 1940 ‘that the army high command [ . . . ] is engaged in operations that are clearly of a political police character [ . . . ] completely excluding the Reich bodies that are the leading experts in combating enemies of the state and crime in general’.
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In fact the military administration in France in 1940 was not prepared to grant the Reich Security Main Office a significant role.
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The SS’s position was not exactly helped by Werner Best, who had left the RSHA as a result of the dispute with Heydrich, being given the post of administrative chief in the office of the military commander in France. Although Best pursued a strictly racist policy, he relied in the first instance on his own organization.
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After the armistice of 22 June a small security police/SD commando (Heydrich referred to ten or fifteen men
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) under the command of Helmut Knochen began to operate in Paris, in order, according to its commission, to monitor ‘Jews, communists, émigrés, lodges, and churches’.
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However, the commando was bound by the directives of the military administration and had no executive functions. It was only in January 1941 that Knochen
acquired the right in cases of emergency to carry out arrests and expropriations without the permission of the military authorities.
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On 25 July 1940 Thomas and Knochen met the
chef du cabinet
of the French Interior Minister, Adrien Marquet, who requested them both to put him in contact with ‘someone close to the Führer’ so that the minister could pass on his ‘views and requests’ to the German leadership, bypassing the military administration. Himmler was only too glad to take on this role. A few days later Heydrich proudly informed Ribbentrop of the existence of an ‘informal link’ to the French government that ‘had been established and was being run by the Reichsführer-SS’s security service’. They were pleased to be placing it at the disposal of the Foreign Ministry in order to be able ‘to deal with particular problems in accordance with its wishes’. Apart from enabling him to make this patronizing dig at the Foreign Minister, Heydrich welcomed the agreement because he was now in a position ‘illegally to place security police and SD informants in all the
départements
’.
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Although the military restricted the influence of the security police and SD following the occupation of France, it is clear from this example that in the occupied territories they benefited from their terrifying reputation. As a result they were able to establish important contacts, with whose help they could build up their organization behind the backs of the military. However, the atrocities committed by the SS in Poland, and the affront to the moral code of the officer corps represented by the ‘Procreation Order’, evidently had negative repercussions for the Reichsführer’s claims to power. If one considers the role of the SS in connection with the invasions of 1940, Himmler was successful only in the Netherlands and to a limited extent in Norway; in those countries which were subordinated to a military administration its few representatives had to fight to win their positions.

Himmler also encountered difficulties in France in his role as Reich Commissar for the Consolidation of the Ethnic German Nation (RKF). Nazi ethnic experts worked on the assumption that in France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there were around 1.6 million ethnic Germans, who could be returned to the German ethnic identity—‘won back’, as the contemporary idiom put it.
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Thus, in June 1940 the Reich Security Main Office was already beginning to make preparations for the racial screening of these people in occupied France.
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Alsace and Lorraine were not formally annexed. Instead, Gauleiters Robert Wagner (Baden) and Josef Bürckel (Saar-Palatinate) took over the civil administration in Alsace and Lorraine respectively, and thereby
incorporated these French territories into the administrative structure of the Reich. Their main task, according to Hitler’s instructions, was to create the conditions for the ‘Germanization’ of these territories by carrying out various political measures relating to population issues.
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Around 100,000 people were expelled or driven into the unoccupied zone in France in order to make room for German settlers from the Reich.
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However, in carrying out these resettlements Gauleiter Bürckel, whom Himmler had appointed RKF representative for Lorraine, pursued his own strategies. With Hitler’s support, Bürckel did not place the main emphasis on racial criteria, but instead gave particular importance to language, political reliability, and economic factors. This was contrary to the policy of Settlement Commissar Himmler, whose colleagues deployed in Lorraine wished to ‘screen’ the population according to racial characteristics. In September 1940, following his usual practice, Himmler had established a Land Office (Bodenamt) in Metz in order to take over agricultural properties that had ‘become vacant’. It was headed by Friedrich Brehm, who had gathered appropriate experience as boss of the land office in Kattowitz (Katowice). Moreover, in October 1940 Bruno Kurt Schulz, a leading racial expert from the RuSHA, took over its branch office in Metz. However, all these appointments came too late to exercise a significant influence on the Gauleiter’s expulsions and to be able to organize them according to racial criteria.
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By the end of 1940 Bürckel had already expelled over 80,000 people from Lorraine.

By the end of 1940 Gauleiter Wagner had deported or driven around 100,000 people from Alsace into the unoccupied zone, including 22,000 Alsatian Jews.
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Although Bruno Schultz, the RuSHA’s representative in Metz, had already initiated ‘racial assessments’ of the Alsatian population in 1940, it was only during the course of 1941 that Himmler, in his capacity as Settlement Commissar, succeeded in imposing his will on the further resettlement programme in Alsace. In June 1941 he appointed Carl Hinrichs head of the Strasburg Land Office, thereby creating the material preconditions for measures to be taken along the lines he wanted.

It is clear from a letter to Lammers, dated March 1939, that during the prewar period Himmler had already been aiming ‘to win over [ . . . ] men of
Nordic blood for the active regiments of the SS [ . . . ] from all Germanic-type nations with the exception of the Anglo-Saxons’. He had already raised this topic ‘a long time ago with the Führer and received his approval’.
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On 8 November 1938 he had told the Gruppenführer of his aim that, ‘at the latest within two years the Standarte “Germania” would contain only non-German Teutons’.
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After the defeat of France the time had come to implement this project on a large scale.

On 15 August 1940 Himmler ordered the creation of an SS Leadership Main Office (SS-Führungshauptamt) to operate ‘as a headquarters for the military leadership of the Waffen-SS and for the pre- and post-military leadership and training of the General SS’. Himmler initially reserved the right to head this new main office himself. The new arrangement worked at the expense of the SS Main Office (Hauptamt), which, however, still continued to be responsible for the recruitment and indoctrination of the Waffen-SS, as well as for the Business and Administration Main Office, the Personnel Main Office, and the SS Court Main Office. These offices in turn continued to be responsible for their particular areas insofar as they affected the Waffen-SS. As a result, rivalries and conflicts among the Main Offices were unavoidable.
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On 7 August, a week before the introduction of this new arrangement, Gottlob Berger, the head of the recruitment office in the Main Office, who was responsible for the recruitment of the Waffen-SS, approached Himmler to request a considerable expansion of his existing role. On 15 August Himmler responded to Berger’s ambitions by promoting him to be de facto head of the SS Main Office; the dismissal of August Heissmeyer, the relatively weak acting head of the Main Office, was now merely a matter of time.
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In a letter dated 15 August, Berger informed Himmler that the number of recruits which the Waffen-SS could rely on securing during the coming years would in all probability be insufficient to cover the increasing demands being made on the force.
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Berger, however, had devised a solution to this problem: ‘The Wehrmacht will not object to the further expansion of the Waffen-SS provided it can succeed in securing some of its recruits from those German and Teuton ethnic groups which are not drawn upon by the Wehrmacht. I consider this to be a particular issue that the Reichsführer still has to resolve.’ Berger, who had already asked Himmler on 15 May 1940, the day of the Dutch capitulation, whether he could have permission to try to recruit for the Waffen-SS from ‘the Dutch and later the Flemings’,
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was now looking further afield to Denmark and Norway as
well as to the German ethnic minorities in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Hungary. As the organizer of the ‘ethnic German self-defence force’ in Poland, he already had relevant experience in this sphere. His ambitions, however, were not limited to Europe: ‘As far as ethnic Germans throughout the world are concerned, we still have around 5 ½ mill. in North America and Canada[,] 1.2 mill.(of pure blood) in South America[,] 77,000 in Australia.’

As far as Himmler was concerned, Berger was pushing at an open door. The Reichsführer had already begun to recruit ‘Germanic’ volunteers on 20 April 1940, when he secured a Führer order for the establishment of an SS-Standarte ‘Nordland’, which consisted half of Germans and half of Danes and Norwegians.
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After Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian Nazis, appealed for recruits in January 1941, 300 Norwegians volunteered during the weeks that followed. On 28 January 1941 Himmler travelled to Norway in order personally to attend the swearing-in of the members of this first ‘Germanic’ SS unit.
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‘After the passage of many generations’, he told the men on this occasion

you are the first Norwegian men who have determined to take up the fight and to do so on your own initiative, not having been compelled to do it by a government dependent on England. For the first time you are standing lined up in the midst of your comrades, men of the Hird [the paramilitary organization of the Norwegian Nazis] and SS men from the Reich [ . . . ] We are admitting you as comrades, as brothers into our ranks, into the ranks of a formation that has always thought in Germanic terms and is Germanic in spirit.
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Himmler used his stay to have a look at the country and its people. On 2 February he visited a ‘country farm near Trondheim typical of the central Norwegian landscape’,
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and made a speech to a German police battalion. In the evening he took part in a German–Norwegian ‘comradeship evening’. On the fourth he went to Narvik, and stayed in northern Norway until the middle of the month.
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In May 1941 he once again went to Norway in order to establish a Norwegian SS division. At a solemn ceremony he appointed Jonas Lie, the Norwegian state councillor responsible for the police, to be leader of the country’s SS, and swore in the first 150 Norwegian SS men.
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