Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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members in the provinces that their exceptional talents would in the end

help the party to victory.

So long as, in his conﬂicts with party members in the provinces, Himm-

ler appealed to the authority of the party leader or to the ‘gentlemen’

in party headquarters, he could be reasonably sure that, in the ﬁnal analysis,

he would get the backing of Hitler and his colleagues. Hitler’s style of

leadership, which was to let Himmler and the other functionaries in

party headquarters operate largely independently, had the result, as already

indicated, that their position was essentially dependent on Hitler’s role as

the absolute leader remaining intact. Hitler was, in turn, loyal to his

colleagues. If he had continually intervened to correct Himmler’s approach

or criticized him vis-a

-vis the party rank-and-ﬁle, his own authority might

have suffered. In addition, in Gregor Strasser Himmler had an important

mentor in party headquarters, from whom he could count on additional

support.

Although he now belonged to the more intimate leadership staff around

Hitler, it cannot be said that Himmler’s personal relations with Hitler at this

juncture were particularly close. Their meetings on a personal level were

probably few and far between, and when Hitler had meetings with his

people they soon turned into his long-winded monologues.

It is signiﬁ-

cant that there are no records of Himmler, even at a later period, reminis-

cing about common experiences with Hitler during the ‘time of struggle’.

The deputy Reich Propaganda Chief was, in the ﬁnal analysis, an insigniﬁ-

cant party functionary working for the party leader, whom Hitler clearly

kept at arm’s length.

Agricultural expert of the NSDAP and member

of the Artamanen movement

During this period Himmler also acted as the party’s agricultural expert. In

this function he developed agrarian ideas, which he described as ‘a vo

lkisch

peasant policy’. The structural crisis in agriculture, which he had analysed in

previous years and linked with anti-Semitic propaganda, was to be com-

bated through a programme of settlement, particularly in eastern Germany;

in his eyes this would also represent a contribution towards the regeneration

of the German ‘national body’ and towards the ‘recovery of its military

morale’.

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The development of Himmler’s ideas for a ‘vo

lkisch peasant policy’ was

directly linked to his involvement with the ‘Artamanen’, which can be

traced from 1928. The Artamanen movement had been in existence since

1924;in1928 it became more organized and from then onwards called itself

the Artam League. It was a vo

lkisch youth league, which had initially seen

its main task as being to send groups of young people (‘Artamanen groups’)

to estates in eastern Germany, in order to replace Polish seasonal workers.

The idea behind the project was to reconnect urban young people with the

soil through hard work on the land, and thereby, at the same time, help to

secure the ‘ethnic German [vo

lkisch] frontier’. According to the league, at

the end of the 1920 s there were 2,000 young people involved in this

agricultural project. This badly paid and self-sacriﬁcial work, regarded as

voluntary labour service, was regarded by the league as its ﬁrst step towards

playing an active role in the ‘internal colonization’ of eastern Germany; for

this purpose it organized its own settlement projects. In addition, within its

ranks the league encouraged the idea of the ‘Ostlandfahrt’, the ‘journey to

the East Land’; in other words, these settlement activities were by no means

to be conﬁned to German territory.

The league, which was a strong supporter of the ideology of ‘blood and

soil’, was also anti-Slav, anti-urban, and anti-Semitic. Thus, from the start

there was a close ideological afﬁnity with Nazism, and a large number of

Artamanen were in fact members of the Nazi Party. In 1937, for example,

Friedrich Schmidt, who was leader of the league from 1925 to 1927, became

head of the Nazi Party’s Main Indoctrination Department. His successor,

Hans Holfelder, who was leader of the league from 1927 onwards, was also

closely associated with the NSDAP,

and from September 1927 onwards

he was Himmler’s link with the Artam League.

The league’s principles matched Himmler’s earlier enthusiasm for settle-

ment in the east. Its model of how to live—a simple way of life, hard work,

avoidance of nicotine and alcohol, sexual abstinence, adherence to Teuton-

ic traditions—corresponded with the maxims that he himself followed.

From 1928 onwards he acted as the Gau leader for Bavaria, a post in

which he was conﬁrmed in January 1929, only three weeks after his

appointment as Reichsfu

hrer-SS (RFSS). The ofﬁce of the Bavarian Gau

was based within the building housing the NSDAP headquarters. Thus,

Himmler was easily able to deal with the matters arising to do with the

league. In fact there was only a very small organization in Bavaria, with

about twenty members in all.

There is no record of Himmler having

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played a very active part in the league; he can be shown as having partici-

pated only twice in events at the national level.

In fact his main role was to

act as the link between the Nazi leadership and Holfelder. His involvement

was very much ‘at the behest of the party’, as he later recalled.

For

example, he recommended party members to join the Artamanen

and

instigated the exclusion of those party members who had broken their work

contracts with the league.

At the end of the 1920s the league became the scene of major disputes.

At the end of 1929 there was a disagreement between one group, who

wanted to focus above all on ‘selection and settlement’ and advocated a

ndisch way of life modelled on the organizations of the German youth

movement, and another group, whose members were more closely linked

to the NSDAP and favoured turning voluntary service on the land into

a labour service organization; they also advocated subordinating the

league to the Nazi Party. Himmler was deﬁnitely a member of the second

group, as is clear from a series of statements that he made in his role as

deputy Propaganda Chief. Thus, in 1928, commenting on romantic agrar-

ian ideas, he wrote: ‘internal colonization, cultivating heathland, horticul-

ture—these are all forms of aid for declining, self-satisﬁed nations.

Advocating internal colonization to a nation as a way out of a crisis

simply means encouraging its cowardice.’

‘Settlement policy’, he noted

succinctly in 1930, ‘can only ever be pursued after one has achieved power,

never beforehand.’

At a meeting of the Artamanen ‘parliament’ (Reichsthing)on21 December

1929 the bu

ndisch group passed a motion of no conﬁdence in the league’s

leadership, which was closely linked to the NSDAP; in response they were

immediately thrown out of the organization. Moreover, Friedrich Schmidt,

referred to above, imposed a further sanction: he read out a letter from

Himmler announcing that the group who had been defeated should also

consider themselves excluded from the Nazi Party. Himmler, who was not

present at the meeting, had evidently prepared this statement beforehand in

anticipation of the row.

After the split, those who had been excluded

established a new association called ‘The Artamanen’ and the NSDAP

appeared to lose interest in maintaining close links with the Artam League.

With the Nazi Party’s establishment of an agrarian cadre, the ‘Agrarian

Political Apparatus’ headed by R. Walther Darre

,in1930 Himmler gave

up his involvement in agricultural matters and, apart from that, sought to

integrate the league into the Nazi Party.

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As the NSDAP’s agricultural expert, for a short time in 1929 Himmler

was responsible for editing Der Bundschuh , a weekly with the subtitle

‘A Fighting Journal for the Awakening Peasantry’.

In the ﬁrst issue,

which appeared on 2 May 1929, Himmler explained to its readers why

the paper’s title was taken from the peasant revolts of the sixteenth century:

‘Four hundred years ago, the Bundschuh ﬂag was unfurled for the ﬁrst time

as the German peasants rebelled against personal servitude and the lack of

national freedom, against oppression and exploitation, and rose up in

support of a great and uniﬁed Reich and for the rights of the ordinary

man. And so, once again, the Bundschuh is being unfurled at a time of crisis

for German peasants.’ The paper contained a mixture of practical informa-

tion for its peasant readership and political and ideological contributions.

There was a particular column devoted to the topic of ‘Peasant and Jew’. In

addition, it regularly published the announcements of the Artam League.

Looking at Himmler’s role as the NSDAP’s agrarian expert during these

years, it is clear that, while on the one hand his views on agriculture were

imbued with vo

lkisch ideology, on the other, he did not allow himself to be

carried away by agrarian notions that were romantically inspired. In his

view, what was decisive for solving Germany’s agricultural problems was

the question of power: so long as the Nazi Party was not in control of

Germany there was no point in trying to provide Germany with a new

agrarian structure through settlement. Thus, to begin with, all efforts in this

direction must be integrated into the party’s propaganda.

From ‘lonely freebooter’ to husband and father

In the late summer of 1927 Himmler made a fateful acquaintanceship: he

met Margarete Boden, his future wife. The date 12 September was specially

marked out in his pocket diary; perhaps this was the day on which he saw

Margarete for the ﬁrst time. If this assumption is correct, they met in the

town of Sulzbach in Bavaria, where Himmler was staying during one of his

numerous speechifying trips.

In view of what we know about Himmler’s

ideal woman, we should not be surprised by Margarete’s occupation: she

was a nurse. The couple at once began a lively correspondence.

Her letters

have survived; his may also have done but are not available to researchers.

In any event, Himmler soon opened a special ﬁle for Margarete’s letters; he

always scrupulously noted the date and time of their receipt.

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He provided her with papers and newspaper cuttings and accounts of

his travels in the service of the movement.

She was concerned about the

dangers and burdens involved: ‘So you managed to get out of Brunswick all

right, despite the fact that there was a ﬁght. It’s sad that it always has to come

to this, and not only for those involved.’

And on the following day she

wrote: ‘Oh no -do you really have to speak 20 times in these 20 meetings? It

would be awful. And you’ve got to go on doing this till Christmas.’

She

repeatedly asked him about his health.

In November the correspondence

became more personal. After Himmler had hinted that he had been a bit

disappointed by her last letter, Margarete replied: ‘Frankly, I thought you

would be pleased at getting two letters in such a short space of time.’

why was he disappointed? Margarete kept probing, but evidently Himmler

did not want to pursue the matter.

It is already clear from these ﬁrst letters that Margarete Boden was an

embittered woman: ‘Your letters always refer to my “mistrust” and my wish

to give it all up. You’re right. I have lost faith in humanity, above all in

men’s honesty and sincerity in their relations with women. Believe me,

that’s worse than if one were just mistrustful. I’m really afraid of believing in

the truth of words.’

Nevertheless, she was prepared to take the acquain-

tanceship further. They agreed to meet in Berlin.

During this meeting, which occurred in December, Himmler appears to

have abandoned his dogged commitment to remaining celibate. After his

Berlin visit they addressed one another in the familiar ‘Du’ form. Now her

letters were addressed to: ‘My dear, beloved’, ‘My dear silly fool’, or ‘Silly

fool and beloved’.

When she ﬁnally asked how she should address him in

her letters,

Himmler suggested for the sake of simplicity ‘Heini’, which is

what he had been called as a young boy. ‘What shall we call the “bigger”

boy now? Something else?’ she replied mischievously.

In this ﬁrst phase of their relationship, still committed to his role as ‘a

soldierly man’, Himmler portrayed himself as a ‘freebooter’ (Landsknecht),

and told her (as is clear from her letter): ‘We freebooters should really

remain solitary and ostracized.’

However, the ‘freebooter’ was quite

ready to confess his weaknesses. Thus, he complained to her about his

continuing ‘submissiveness’ to his parents. ‘Surely you don’t think your

“submissiveness” is noticeable at home?’, she wrote back. ‘In the ﬁrst place

it’s not in your character to change, at least not in a way that would be

obvious. Secondly, it wouldn’t be a nice thing to do. Give in sometimes, my

silly fool, but only if you yourself think you should.’

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He also did not deny his dislike of big cities, indeed his fear of the

metropolis. She replied by making gentle fun of him: ‘You needn’t be

frightened of big cities. I shall do my very best to protect you.’

She

regularly asked him about his stomach problems, which he was to complain

about during the coming months, and enquired anxiously about the results

of his visits to the doctor: ‘Did you go and see Uncle Doctor?’

From her

letters it appears that Himmler believed his stomach pains were psychoso-

matic and attributed them to his constant attempts to discipline and control

himself—to be ‘good and decent’, as he put it. He remarked to her that he

would like once in a while to be allowed ‘not to be good and decent’, as a

kind of therapy.

Himmler also appears to have admitted to her the issues he had with his

outward appearance, for his rather insigniﬁcant and weak chin did not

accord with his soldierly image of himself. ‘Why have you got your hand

in front of your face?’ she commented about a photo he had sent her. ‘Did

you want to cover up your chin?’

She quickly began to have doubts about the emotional basis of this new

relationship: did he feel her deep affection as a burden? Did he doubt

whether her love for him was as strong as his love for her?

My love, which will last for eve r, should never be a burden to you, that is to say,

never become too ‘much’. But you are convinced that I haven’t reached the right

degree of affection because I just could not help sayi ng when asked what I feel in

my heart of hearts. Whether that feeling is still there I leave to you to sense, to feel.

You write, ‘Whatever happens I will always feel the same towards you and love you

always’, and, in spite of what you go on to say, that’s severe [ . . . ]. I cannot possibly

think that you really feel I might not love you as much as you love me.

When she confessed to fearing that her love might be a burden to him, he

troubled her by asking if he perhaps wrote to her too often. Did that mean,

she wrote back, that he did not want to write to her so often?

Margarete Boden was an independent woman, who was very competent

in her chosen profession and who, in her work environment, as head of

nursing at a small private clinic in which she was a partner, behaved in an

assured manner: ‘On rereading your letter I have just noticed that you wrote

“small”. You’ll have to make that up to me. Anyway, it’s not true and you

wouldn’t say that if you saw me in my clinic . . . ’

Yet this professional

conﬁdence concealed a deep insecurity.

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The approaching end-of-year festivities provoked gloomy thoughts

in her. ‘I dread Christmas for it is a festival of peace and yet what an

awful year it was. The autumn was lovely, though, and it gave me faith in

human beings again. I can believe and trust once more [ . . . ] Now I have

to go across to the festivities. If only they were over, for I so dislike being

the “matron”.’

The day before New Year’s Eve she wrote: ‘Tomorrow

is the dreadful day when everyone is having a party and I must be alone.

It really is awful. You see what a terribly discontented creature I am,

wanting everything to suit me.’

She began the New Year full of

pessimism.

Ill. 4. Heinrich Himmler in a photograph taken by

Heinrich Hoffmann around 1930. Himmler covered his chin

even for Hitler’s personal photographer.

106 th e party functi onary

From the start the relationship between the two had its difﬁculties: ‘Love

without pain and worry is something I can’t imagine’, she wrote.

And:

‘You have no idea how utterly miserable I am. [ . . . ] Do you doubt my

love? I can say with certainty that no other woman will love you as I love

you.’ And she added: ‘You may understand me, you will understand me,

if—no, because—you love me.’

He spent the holiday with his parents; he clearly used the stay amongst

other things to give his father a lecture on the tactics of street-ﬁghting.

‘What a good and “loving” son you are’, she wrote back. ‘People at home

have most deﬁnitely not noticed any “submissiveness”. You horrid boy.

How can you do such a thing.’

Her political position tended to be

moderate. She had little sympathy for his radicalism: ‘Why do you reach

for the dagger in such a bloodthirsty way?’ she asked him. ‘Being a conser-

vative is after all a nice thing to be.’

And was the party not exploiting him?

‘I can’t understand how you can let the party get you down so much that

you can’t even write a letter. I’ll bet the other esteemed gentlemen don’t

allow themselves to be so used. And I’m sure you’re not getting any sleep

any more [ . . . ] and the result is that you’re getting ill and wretched. I’d like

to know who gets any beneﬁt from you then.’

Even to her he clearly

made use of the claim of permanent overwork, which he always carried

before him like a shield.

During the early months of 1928 the two met a number of times, for

example in Bavaria in mid-January

and then in Berlin at the beginning of

February,

at Easter in Berlin, and at Whitsun in Munich.

On several

occasions in the days before they were due to meet she reminded him to

bring with him the books of puzzles he loved so much—after all, they did

not want to get bored!

Her letters are full of doubts about the possibilities of a future together.

Without further explanation, for example, she wrote to him that a friend

had ‘advised her against marrying a man 7 years younger.’

Nevertheless

she ﬁnally renounced her independence, though it was patently not easy for

her, even if she tried to disguise the emerging conﬂicts somewhat through

the mock-sulking, mischievous style of her letters. ‘This poor little rascal of

a woman is very sad because the wicked man won’t allow her any work of

her own. She wants to argue back and if she can’t she’ll look for pastures

new.’

Conversely, she made it clear to him that the freedom of his

bachelor existence would soon end: ‘Cinema, theatre, you’re a pleasure-

loving man. Sweetheart, there’ll be very little of that after we’re married.

the party functionary 107

You’d better take advantage of the opportunity while you can.’

When he

sent her a letter setting out various matters in a numbered list, as was his

custom, she rejected this manner of writing: ‘Never again write 1.) 2.) 3.)

like a typical bureaucrat.’

She also feared she would be rejected by his parents.

100

She was simply

unable to write them a letter: ‘Sweetheart, I simply cannot write to them

myself. My love, what heartache your relationship with me will bring you.

I am so fearful of new people.’

101

In the eyes of the Himmler family she

must be a terrible disappointment, she said: ‘Sweetheart, how disappointed

your sister-in-law will be by me. The fact is I’m so mistrustful and can never

accept that people are well disposed towards me.’

102

At the latest after their meeting in February 1928 it is clear that Heinrich

Himmler and Margarete Boden had decided to marry.

103

She began the

process of leaving the private clinic and asked for reimbursement of her

share. The sum agreed upon was 12,000 Reich marks;

104

yet she obviously

felt she had been ﬂeeced by the director of the clinic: ‘A Jew is always a

Ill. 5. Margarete Boden and Heinrich Himmler in the year they married. From

the start they faced difﬁculties in establishing a life together.

108 th e party functi onary

Jew! And the others are no better.’

105