Heinrich Himmler

Peter Fraenkel, Roger Manvell

• Publisher: Frontline Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781526713414
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Segunda Guerra Mundial

‘There are no better biographies of Goering, Goebbels and Himmler in existence’ New York Review of Books**Heinrich Himmler was the commander of the SS, and as founder and officer-in-charge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads, he was responsible for implementing the extermination of millions of people. By the time he died he was the second-most powerful man in Germany and regarded himself as Hitler's natural successor, going so far as to attempt to negotiate independent peace with the Allies.Based on US documents handed over to the German Federal Archives and the testimonies of Himmler's family and staff, this book examines how a seemingly ordinary boy grew into an obsessive and superstitious man who ventured into herbalism and astrology before finally turning to the ‘science’ of racial purity and the belief in the superiority of the Aryan race.Filled with insights into Himmler’s private life, activities and beliefs, this is an important study of one of the most sinister figures of World War II.

Notes

The primary published sources to which we have constantly turned during the preparation of this book are Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution and The S.S., The Kersten Memoirs, and The Schellenberg Memoirs, and also the transcript of the Trial of the Major War Criminals in Nuremberg; the edition of the latter referred to below as I.M.T. is that published by H.M.S.O. in London in twenty-two volumes. We have also drawn extensively on the documents used in evidence at the trial in the edition in German published in Nuremberg, and in the American edition in English known as Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, referred to as N.C.A. below. Important secondary sources include Willi Frischauer’s Himmler, Charles Wighton’s Heydrich, H. R. Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler, Rudolf Hoess’s Commandant of Auschwitz, Edward Crankshaw’s Gestapo, and Mitscherlich’s and Mielke’s The Death Doctors.

Throughout this book we have drawn on material from the copious files originating from Himmler’s headquarters and preserved now variously at the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the Berlin Document Centre, the Tracing Centre in Arolsen, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlog Documentatie in Amsterdam, and the Wiener Library in London.

In these Notes the authors are referred to individually by their initials, R.M. and H.F.

CHAPTER I

We are grateful to Gebhard Himmler, the elder brother of Heinrich, who was our principal source of information for this initial period. We have also studied the microfilm of the surviving portions of Himmler’s early diaries kindly loaned us by the Library of the Hoover Institution at Stanford in California, and consulted the most valuable analysis of these diaries made by Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith in the Journal of Modern History, Vol. 31, No. 3, Sept. 1959. The quotations from the diaries are in some instances derived from their translations, but in most cases we have used our own.

Other sources of information concerning Himmler’s youth include evidence from men who knew him as a student, in particular Dr Riss, head of the Erding law court, and Colonel Saradeth of Munich.

1. During Himmler’s infancy the family home was frequently changed. Himmler was bom in a second-floor apartment at 2 Hildegardstrasse, Munich. In March the following year the family moved to a comfortable apartment over Liebig’s chemists’ establishment in the Liebigstrasse, a pleasant street in the city. From March 1902–4 the Himmlers were in Passau, a town near Munich, after which they returned to Munich and lived until 1913 at 86 Amalienstrasse. It was in this house, therefore, that Himmler’s boyhood was spent. From 1913–19 the family was in Landshut; from 1919–22 in Ingolstadt; then back again in Munich from 1922–30, when Himmler’s father retired at the age of 65. He died five years later, in 1935; Himmler’s mother died in 1941.

2. These are, of course, German pounds. Himmler’s weight at birth was 3.7 kilos.

3. Diary-writing was not common among the boys of the period, but Himmler was no doubt encouraged to keep one because his father was a meticulous diarist. A list of books noted by Himmler as read during his last years at school include Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and works by Dinter and Bierbaum, which put the case both for and against the Teutonic ideal. Strangely enough, Himmler makes no comment about any of these books, merely listing their titles.

4. He made this claim to Count Bernadotte. See The Fall of the Curtain, p. 57.

5. These recollections are principally those of Dr Riss and Col Saradeth. Dr Riss was a member of the Apollo.

6. Dr George W. F. Hallgarten was later to emigrate from Germany to the United States where he works as an historian and sociologist. He published a pamphlet in German giving his recollections of Himmler at the school in Munich at which his father taught. He confirms Himmler’s diligence, his primness of nature, and his pathetic determination to succeed in sport and gymnastics, for neither of which he had any aptitude. For example, he could not complete a single ‘pull-up’ at the cross-bar. The school served as a preparatory establishment for the Pagerie, a school reserved exclusively for the sons of the Bavarian aristocracy who were eligible for service as pages in the Bavarian Court. Hallgarten claims that Himmler felt great resentment that he was not eligible by birth to attend the Pagerie. This however has been denied to H. F. by both Herr von Manz and the Baron Waldenfels, who knew the Himmler family and attended the Pagerie. For Prof. Hallgarten’s recollections see Mein Mitschüler Himmler (Wiener Library).

7. See Note 22, p. 211 of the article by Angress and Smith mentioned above.

8. Each state in Germany had, and still has, its own provincial parliament for the conduct of local affairs, to which deputies are appointed from the parties after local elections. The Reichstag represented, and still represents under its new name the Bundestag, the federal parliament, dealing with national policy and legislation. Deputies were elected to the Reichstag (as now to the Bundestag) on the basis of proportional representation, the various parties selecting their own deputies to fill the number of seats due to them after each election.

9. Gebhard Himmler recollects that the motor-cycle was a second-hand Swedish machine of which Himmler was inordinately proud.

10. We drew this conclusion from evidence originally given us by Otto Strasser when he was interviewed by H.F. in connection with our book, Doctor Goebbels.

11. See Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 267.

12. See The Early Goebbels Diaries, pp. 78, 94, 116.

13. Otto Strasser told the story to H.F. that Himmler came into his office shortly before his marriage and solemnly admitted that he had lost his virginity. Strasser congratulated him. According to Gebhard Himmler, it was Marga’s blonde hair that was her outstanding attraction for Himmler. Himmler’s first meeting with her at Berchtesgaden came about through his clumsiness in pouring melting snow all over her frock when removing his Tyrolean hat with too generous a flourish as he entered the hotel lobby. His apologies led to making her acquaintance, and this in turn to long walks and longer conversations.

14. The initials S.S. also stood for Saal-Schutz, that is, ‘hall protection’. This is a reminder that the original duty of the S.S. was to act as ‘chuckers-out’ at political meetings.

Additional Note

Among the superfluity of personal papers meticulously preserved by Himmler and now held in the Federal Archives, there is an early essay written by Himmler as a very young man and revealing his idea on the economic and ideological aspects of agriculture. The date of this essay cannot be exactly determined, but according to the style and content there can be no doubt that he wrote it while studying at Munich. This impression is confirmed by his brother Gebhard. The essay is naïvely idealistic and visualizes what Himmler regarded at that time as a model farming community, entirely self-supporting, that is, living on the fruits of the soil and by their own labour, and having no use for money within the community itself. Money would only be required to repay the initial cost of machinery and other capital expenditure, and this would be obtained from the sale of surplus products from the land. When writing at this time Himmler deliberately used archaic terms such as Meister, Geselle and Lehrling for the hierarchy of his community; he advocated chastity and a deep communion with the soil, together with the revival of ancient folklore, folk-dancing, traditional music and so on. It is interesting to compare his concept for community living on the land with the economy and ideology of the contemporary Israeli kibbutz.

CHAPTER II

We are grateful to Frau Lina Heydrich, widow of the S.S. leader, for giving us facts concerning her husband’s early career and initial meeting with Himmler.

1. Darré’s conception of inferior races extended to the Latin peoples, Negroes and Asiatics. When the Rome-Berlin axis was widened to include the Japanese, this caused Himmler and the other racialists considerable embarrassment.

2. The text of the code appeared as document PS-2284 at I.M.T.

3. The word Sippe is a deliberate archaism which has no exact English equivalent, the nearest word being possibly ‘clan’. In using it, Himmler was anxious to stress the Teutonic ideals of ancestry.

4. In the evidence she gave H.F., Frau Heydrich denies the familiar story that the girl with whom Heydrich was previously in love was with child by him. She also denies that Heydrich had any Jewish blood in his ancestry ; even so, the suspicion of it hung over him throughout his career in the Party. See also Chapter IV, note 3.

5. This account of Heydrich’s introduction to the Nazi Party and to Himmler was given us by Lina Heydrich. It is supported by Werner Best in evidence he gave H.F.

6. Frau Heydrich has stressed how extremely poorly paid her husband was, as well as other S.S. leaders. Since neither she nor Heydrich had significant private means, they lived very humbly. Frau Heydrich’s family gave them furniture an...