Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life
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his adjutant Brandt enquired ‘whether the sun’s being obscured by fog in
some places might lead to the mutation of genetic material’—a question
raised by the Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS. The Ahnenerbe specialist responsible for the
Cosmic Ice Theory, the senior civil servant Scultetus, was, however, forced
to deny there was such an effect.
131
In September 1941 Brandt sent, on
Himmler’s behalf, an essay entitled ‘Butterflies Fly from South Africa to
Iceland’ to the administrative head Sievers, and asked for comments on it
from the perspective of the Cosmic Ice Theory.
132
A few months later
Himmler asked Sievers to pursue indications that frozen horses or mam-
moths had been found in Siberia, one of ‘the few tangible proofs of a
catastrophe to affect the earth however many thousands of years ago that
would correspond to the earth catastrophe of the last moon-capture and its
consequences, as stated in the Cosmic Ice Theory’.
133
Himmler was outraged by a negative response to the Cosmic Ice Theory
sent to him by a civil servant in the Reich Education Ministry; yet his letter
betrays a certain defensiveness, for the Reichsfu
¨
hrer clearly felt compelled to
make use of Hitler’s authority: ‘I am willing to defend freedom of research
in all its forms, and therefore freedom of research into the Cosmic Ice
Theory. I even intend to give the warmest support to free research and in
this I am in the best of company, as even the Fu
¨
hrer and Chancellor of the
German Reich Adolf Hitler has for many years been a convinced supporter
of this theory, though it is frowned upon by the journeymen of science.’
134
Even so, as early as 1938 he gave the Ahnenerbe the instruction to keep
the Cosmic Ice Theory ‘strictly under wraps’, in other words, ‘in no way to
make it public’ and to subject it ‘to critical scrutiny from the point of view
of very precise and limited fields of work’.
135
The Berlin meteorological
office promptly changed its name to Centre for Geophysics.
The effects of cosmic events on the earth and on human life aroused
Himmler’s particular interest—in the mid-1920s he had already shown
himself to be open-minded about astrology.
136
At the beginning of 1945
he set up an investigation into what knowledge was available concerning
the ‘influence of the weather on human beings’: ‘How far is there a
connection with cosmic events. Is there an astrological way of calculating
the weather?’ It was his intention after the war, according to Himmler, to
give the astrologer Wilhelm Wulff, who in the second half of the war wrote
astrological reports for him, and his Cosmic Ice Theory specialist Scultetus
the joint task of answering this question.
137
In addition, the Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS
was convinced ‘that the Teutons had possessed a remarkable, religiously
280 ideology and religious cult
based knowledge of the universe that even today has not been super-
seded’.
138
After the end of the war he planned to set up an observatory at
every SS location in order, as his adjutant explained in a letter, ‘to give the
broadest range of people the opportunity of taking an interest in astronomy
and by this means to discover a partial substitute for the Christianity we plan
to transcend’.
139
Himmler was also attracted by the myth of Tibet—the idea, that was
widespread in a variety of versions, that in the mountains of Tibet an
advanced civilization had once existed, possibly the product of an original,
sophisticated race that had sought refuge there from a global catastrophe. In
Himmler’s view it was clear that the civilization in question must have been
connected to the legend of ‘Atlantis’, and that the stranded ruling class of
Atlantis had spread out from there to Europe and East Asia. The conviction
that Tibet was the ‘cradle of humanity’ accounts for Himmler’s speculations
about the common roots of European (in particular Germanic), Asian, and
other elites.
140
In connection with this the Reichsfu
¨
hrer showed particular interest in the
Japanese samurai, whom he took to be distant relations. On 1 November
1935 Himmler expounded to Hitler his view ‘that the SS should become the
German samurai’, and the Fu
¨
hrer agreed.
141
In 1937 he wrote a short
foreword to Heinz Corazza’s book The Samurai: Honourable and Loyal
Imperial Knights, an extended version of a series of articles published in
Das Schwarze Korps.
142
In the foreword Himmler explained to his readers
that the history of the samurai demonstrated clearly ‘that in distant times this
people in the Far East had the same code of honour as our fathers had long
ago in a past all too soon destroyed’, and ‘that it is frequently minorities of
the highest calibre who give a nation eternal life in earthly terms’. He wisely
did not go into his Tibet theory, however.
Behind the scenes, nevertheless, Himmler pressed strongly for the
discovery of proof of the central role of Tibet as the land of origin of
Germanic and Asiatic elites. In 1935 the young zoologist Ernst S cha
¨
fer,
who had already taken part in two expeditions to eas tern Tibet, came to
his notice. Himmler made Scha
¨
fer a member of th e SS,
143
and when the
latte r was preparing for a further expedition to Tibet these preparations
were closely li nked to the work of the Ahnenerbe. The cooperation
collapsed, but Himmler nevertheless acted as patron to the expedition,
which finally went ahead in 1939, pa id for the participants’ hurried flight
home in view of the strained international situ ation in August 1939,and
ideology and religious cult 281
on their return made a point of welcoming them personally at the airport.
One of the team was Bruno Beger, an employee of the Race and Settle-
ment Main Office, who was conducting anthropological research primar-
ily aimed at provi ng that the in habitants had ‘Aryan racial elements’.
144
Himmler had given Scha
¨
fer a special mission: along with thirty SS troops
and a considerable arsenal of weapons he was to be smuggled into Tibet
through the Soviet Union, in order to stir up unrest among the population
against British forces stationed there.
145
Although this mission came to
nothing, the Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS had an Ahnenerbe ‘Research Centre for
Inner Asia and Expeditions’ set up for Scha
¨
fer, which focused first of all
on evaluating the materials from the expedition.
146
Nevertheless, Himmler
kept Scha
¨
fer on a short leash. At the end of 1939 he obstructed Scha
¨
fer’s plan
for public showings of a film about the expedition,
147
and in March 1940
made it clear ‘that nothing will appear in the newspapers about you, your
work, your film, or about the expedition in general’.
148
In 1943 he went a
step further and tried to forbid the publication of Scha
¨
fer’s book Secret Tibet,
as ‘the first part is written in such a German manner, so objective by
comparison with the English’, while on the other hand the indigenous
states and nations are presented ‘in a very amiable but also mocking manner.
This might do us immense damage among the coloured nations.’ And in his
typically opinionated manner he added: ‘The reservations I had about the
public showing of the film were justified after all.’
149
In fact, the real motive
behind Himmler’s efforts, unsuccessful though they were, to suppress
publication was most likely embarrassment about exposing in public his
search for proof of his eccentric vision of the world.
This vision was not, it must be said, restricted to Tibet. In 1938–9
Himmler also worked on plans to send an expedition to Bolivia, Peru,
and Chile. The private scholar Edmund Kiss was to lead the expedition.
150
Himmler regarded him as particularly suitable because he had come to
prominence by putting forward a theory which explained the mountains
in the north of South America by means of the Cosmic Ice Theory.
151
The
outbreak of war put an end to this plan, however.
Himmler also preferred to keep from public gaze the fascination he had
had since his student days for the occult. The significance he in fact attached
to it is, however, suggested by his relationship with his closest adviser in this
field, Karl Maria Wiligut, who from October 1934 was first of all director of
the archive section of the Race and Settlement Main Office, and then from
January 1936 in charge there of special commissions.
152
282 ideology and religious cult
Wiligut, whose name in the SS was ‘Weisthor’, was a retired colonel in
the Austrian Imperial Army and already 66 years old when Himmler
engaged him. We know little about his earlier life, and what we do know
is not particularly reliable: one of the most important publications about
‘Himmler’s Rasputin’ originates from the very circles in which Wiligut was
admired.
153
According to it, Wiligut had frequented vo
¨
lkisch and esoteric
circles in Vienna before the First World War and had been involved in
journalism along the same lines. In 1903 his book Seyfried’s Runes ap-
peared.
154
He did not come to prominence as a figure within vo
¨
lkisch
occultism until after the First World War, however. Wiligut claimed to be
the ‘bearer of the tradition’ of an ancient Gothic clan, the Asa, and further-
more to be the bearer of a secret German kingship. Thanks to the abilities he
claimed to have as a medium he was, being childless and the last of his line,
Ill. 14. One of Himmler’s pet projects was research into and preservation
of the ‘ancestral heritage’ of distant Germanic prehistory. He took part on a
number of occasions in inspections of sites and archaeological excav ations in
order to make detailed observations. Here he is shown with Wiligut in
a quarry in the Palatinate thou ght to contain runes.
ideology and religious cult 283
capable of making contact with his ancestors and calling up occult knowl-
edge thousands of years old. Himmler is said to have tried everything to
boost the ageing Wiligut-Weisthor’s ability to work, with the help of
injections and drugs, and to salvage as much as possible of his store of occult
knowledge; according to his biographer Mund, although this treatment
certainly did bring about a reactivation of Wiligut’s energies, they mani-
fested themselves above all in over-indulgence in nicotine and alcohol.
Weisthor prepared pieces for Himmler on prehistory and early history
and on religious questions, and sent him poems he had written himself.
155
Among other things the former colonel suggested that Himmler introduce
an ancient Germanic religion in Germany.
156
Above all, however, he
supplied him with what he claimed to be orally transmitted occult knowl-
edge from the ‘Asa-Uana clan’: for example, the ‘nine commandments of
God’, which he ‘had set down in written form’ for the first time ‘since 1200’,
as the ‘records on this subject were publicly burned by Louis “the Pious” ’.
The ninth commandment was: ‘God is beginning without end—the uni-
verse. He is perfection in nothingness and yet everything in three times
threefold knowledge of all things. He closes the circle [ . . . ] from conscious-
ness to the unconscious so that this may become conscious again.’
157
In summer 1936 Himmler read Wiligut’s Description of Human Develop-
ment, which he claimed originated from the ‘occult transmission of our Asa-
Uana clan Uilligotis’:
Mankind, as the highest expression of intelligence and reason in creation on earth
at any given time, falls into seven epochs, of which four are complete; the fifth is
humanity i n the present, and the sixth and seventh are the ages still to come. Each
of these four epochs of development now completed was, according to oral
occult teaching, brought about by a n enormous earth catastrophe that ended
with the union of our earth with one of these stars that gravitated towards us.
[...] The fragments of humanity remaining on earth assimilated in this process
with th e intell igent b eings who had come ‘from heaven’ (the stars) to ‘Earth’ and
were be ing shaped in a similar way. Thus they fo rmed the new humani ty in each
particular case, which represented new racial types, as of course such ‘first’ human
beings were always to be found at different points of the earth, as it was assuming
its new shape.
158
In other words, clear evidence for the Cosmic Ice Theory!
Wiligut enjoyed several promotions, and in 1936, as an expression of his
special esteem, Himmler bestowed on him the rank of SS-Brigadefu
¨
hrer.
159
At the beginning of 1939, however, Himmler broke with Weisthor. One
284 ideology and religious cult
reason was that Hitler had made a public statement opposing occultism, and
another was the discovery that Himmler’s adviser on the occult had spent
three years in a Salzburg institution for the mentally ill and in 1925 had been
legally incapacitated.
160
Himmler did not, however, give up the relationship entirely. Significant-
ly, the Reichsfu
¨
hrer kept Wiligut’s death’s-head ring, which he had had to
give back when he left the SS, in his own strongroom.
161
And he still called
on Wiligut for advice, for example in the summer of 1940, when he was
having an emblem designed for the graves of fallen SS men. Wiligut agreed
with Himmler’s suggestion that in place of the ‘Christian cross the cross
with bars of equal length can be used to accord with our ancient German
religion’, as it signifies ‘God as spirit, God as strength, and God as matter in
eternal change’; the Reichsfu
¨
hrer gave orders for this to be carried out.
162
Finally, Himmler’s office diary for November 1941 indicates a lunch with
‘Colonel Wiligut’ in Berlin.
163
The following general picture emerges from all of this. Central to Himm-
ler’s vision of the world was the restoration of a de-Christianized, Germanic
environment, which with the help of the myths of Atlantis and Tibet was to
be linked to long-lost examples of sophisticated cultures, and via the Cosmic
Ice Theory/astrology/astronomy to the history of the cosmos. Just as
Himmler supposed that, with the help of his adviser Weisthor, he could
penetrate directly to the world of the Germanic ancestors, so he believed he
could be ‘reincarnated’ in his own bloodline—his vision therefore most
certainly reached into eternity. Through the mixture of history, historical
myth, Teutonic cult, astrology and astronomy, theories of how the earth
came to be and how reincarnation is possible, a real substitute religion was
created, possibly interwoven with notions of a primitive Germanic religion.
This construct admittedly suffered from the fact that, to put it mildly, it
was not yet coherent. Himmler was aware of this, and for that reason spent a
significant amount of his time—and this during the war—collecting ‘evi-
dence’ to support his ideas. Tellingly, his view of the world can be recon-
structed only from original sources, for he clearly never expounded it as a
coherent whole.
It was not, however, only the incoherence and the protests from the
academic world he anticipated that prevented Himmler from propounding
his theory of the world to the public. His realization that the great majority
of his fellow men would be unable—as yet—to recognize the intellectual
ideology and religious cult 285
consistency of his vision, and in particular that he would meet with vigorous
opposition from Hitler should he, as one of the most important leaders of
the NSDAP and Chief of the German Police, cause a stir by founding a
substitute religion, made him cautious.
What was taught inside the SS and police under the heading of ideologi-
cal indoctrination reflected, therefore, only in part Himmler’s much more
far-reaching beliefs: topics such as the Cosmic Ice Theory, Tibet myth, and
Atlantis were excluded from the start, and overly aggressive attacks on
Christianity also had to be avoided. It is therefore no surprise that Himmler
did not design the ideological aspect of indoctrination (about which more
will be said later) as a complete system of thought based on written texts.
Rather, he tried to emphasize the communication of concrete role-models
and heroic stories. Indoctrination was geared to affect the disposition rather
than the intellect. Precisely because of its imprecise and mythical nature, the
ideology he espoused could be turned into ‘indoctrination’ to only a limited
degree, and other ways of getting it across had to be found: he considered
gifts with symbolic meanings, ceremonies, and special ‘holy’ places to be
particularly suitable for this.
By means of ‘the things that are conferred, ceremonies, all the inner life
that has been reawakened here’, the SS had, in Himmler’s opinion in 1938,
perhaps done something more important [ . . . ] for Germany than the SS can do by
means, let’s say, of exemplary organization or a regiment that can march faultlessly
or fine sporting successes. I believe that these inner things connected with the heart,
with honour, and with a mind filled with the most real and deep vision of the world
are truly in the last analysis the things that give us strength, strength for today, and
that will give us strength for every conflict and every hour of destiny that will
confront Germany, and perhaps us personally, in the next thirty, fifty, 100 years.
164
Symbols, festivals, rituals
By ‘the things that are conferred’ Himmler was referring to a series of gifts,
heavy with symbolism, that he used to distribute within the SS.
At Christmas, which Himmler intended to change into the festival of the
winter solstice, or Yuletide, he gave so-called Yule lights. These candle-
holders, which were about 20 centimetres tall and had on them images that
were supposed to commemorate the Germanic past, held two candles. Their
significance and function Himmler explained as follows: ‘The small light at
286 ideology and religious cult
the bottom of the candle-holder is to burn as a symbol of the last hour of the
year that is ending: the big light is to burst into flame in the first moment the
new year begins. There is a deep wisdom in the old custom. May each SS
man see the small flame of the old year burn out with a pure and upright heart
and be able to ignite the light of the new year with an exalted will.’
165
The Reichsfu
¨
hrer wished the family of every married SS man to have a
Yule light. ‘The wife in particular, when she loses the myth of the church,
will want to have something else to fill her mind and the mind and heart of
her child’, Himmler told the Gruppenfu
¨
hrer in November 1936. He would,
therefore, this year again give away a larger number of Yule lights.
166
In
1937 it was 8,000
167
and in 1939 it was already over 52,000.
168
In 1939 Himmler hit on the idea of having an additional ‘solstice light’
made, but he did not like the design. As, in the meantime, war had broken
out he set the matter aside.
169
During the war newborn babies of SS families
received ‘life lights’.
170
Himmler continued this custom until the spring of
1945, though the recipients were informed that in the circumstances the gift
could not be sent until after the war.
171
All SS men with a membership number less that 2,000, as well as all SS
leaders after they had been members for several years, received the death’s-
head ring.
172
Himmler committed this circle of SS leaders ‘to wear the ring
permanently on the ring finger of the left hand [ . . . ] The conferral of the
ring is the external sign of inner worth, gained through struggle and duty,
and of a community, tried and tested through the years, of loyalty to the
Fu
¨
hrer and to his vision.’
Those distinguished by receiving the death’s-head ring were sent a lengthy
letter by Himmler making them aware of the significance of the ring and how
it should be treated. According to this, the death’s-head ring was a
sign of our loyalty to the Fu
¨
hrer, of our unchanging obedience towards our
superiors, and of our unshakeable solidarity and comradeship. The death’s head
admonishes us to be ready at any time to commit our individual life for the life of
the whole community. The runes on the opposite side of the death’s head are the
sacred symbols of our past, with which we are reconnected through the ideology of
National Socia lism [ . . . ] The ring is garlanded with leaves from the oak, the
ancient German tree.
He goes on to say that the ring ‘cannot be purchased’, must never be allowed
‘to fall into the hands of outsiders’, and will revert to the Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS after
‘you leave the SS or this world’. There was even an instruction that the
ideology and religious cult 287
making of ‘illustrations and copies’ was an offence, ‘and you are to prevent
this’.
173
Lastly, Himmler presented selected SS leaders with swords of honour:
‘I confer on you the sword of the SS. Never draw it without need! Never
sheath it without honour! Preserve your own honour as unconditionally as
you are committed to respecting the honour of others and to acting
chivalrously to defend the defenceless!’ By contrast with the ring, the
sword was allowed ‘to remain in your clan, if you have carried it for a
lifetime without blame’. If not, the Reichsfu
¨
hrer demanded it back.
174
In 1936 Himmler announced the introduction of a brooch that every SS
man should present to his wife on her becoming a mother, and which could
be worn only by SS wives who were mothers.
175
The model for this piece
of jewellery was a ‘brooch decorated with runes arranged in the shape of the
hagal rune’, which Himmler had given to his wife.
176
When a third child
and any subsequent children were born to SS wives they received from
Himmler a letter of congratulation as well as a life light and Vitaborn
juices.
177
From the fourth child onwards Himmler gave a birth light, on
which were the words: ‘You are only a link in the eternal chain of the
clan.’
178
In the course of time Himmler also developed diverse ceremonies, from
birth and marriage ceremonies to burial rites. His stipulations for these were
very detailed. A set of instructions dating from 1937, from the Race and
Settlement Main Office’s indoctrination section, for the ‘ceremony of
marriage of members of the party and its component organizations’ makes
clear how such a ceremony was envisaged. At its heart is the abolition of the
division introduced by Christianity between the public ceremony of mar-
riage and the private celebration; the intention was to return to what was
allegedly the Germanic form of marriage ceremony.
The ceremony was introduced by music, though the document was
obliged to confirm, with regret, that ‘wedding music appropriate to our
times is not yet available’. Then, to open the proceedings, sayings should be
read out, preferably ‘quotations from the Fu
¨
hrer’s speeches and book’,
followed by Nietzsche quotations from ‘Child and Marriage’ (Thus Spake
Zarathustra) and an address by an SS leader. After a musical interlude the
registrar concluded the marriage formally, whereupon the bride and groom
were to light a candle ‘as a sign of the commencement of a new Germanic
blood-line’. Salt and bread were given to them and the couple committed—
288 ideology and religious cult
by handshake—‘to a shared life and shared work for the nation’. If the
bridegroom was an SS man, the SS leader had the task of explaining to the
young woman the fact that she would be received into the SS and of
handing over the SS clan book or a certificate. The ceremony closed with
everyone singing the ‘SS anthem of loyalty’.
179
When he conducted the ceremony himself Himmler was accustomed to
give the couple a pair of silver goblets, and he recommended this practice to
the SS commanders. For the exchange of rings, he introduced the following
line: ‘I wish not only, as of old, that your love should be without beginning
or end, but I wish that your clan may be without beginning or end.’
180
Christian baptism was to be replaced by a ‘name consecration’. A set of
instructions still in existence shows how such a ceremony was to be
structured.
181
It was to be held in special ‘consecration rooms’, in which
there was to be an altar draped with a flag bearing the swastika, on which, in
place of the holiest Christian symbol, there was to be a picture of Hitler.
Behind the altar three SS men had to stand holding an SS standard, while
the walls were to be decorated with a black flag bearing the SS runes. The
‘consecrator’ took the place of the priest and the ‘loyal guardian’ that of
the godparent.
The child had to be laid before the altar. Then texts from Mein Kampf
were spoken or sung in chorus. The ‘consecrator’ delivered the following
articles of faith on behalf of all present: ‘We believe in the God of the
universe / And in the mission of our German blood / that grows eternally
young from the German soil. / We believe in the nation, the bearer of this
blood / And in the Fu
¨
hrer, whom God has given us.’ If Himmler was
‘guardian’ at birth ceremonies he gave as a present a small silver cup and a
spoon. A lovely old custom, as he said, recommending it to the Gruppen-
fu
¨
hrer in 1936, was that of giving the child ‘the large blue sash denoting new
life and made of blue silk’.
182
When, in 1937, Karl Wolff ’s third child received the name Thorismann,
Himmler presided over the ceremony, which was carried out by his prehis-
tory adviser Weisthor. Weisthor wrapped the child in the blue ‘sash of life’,
then gave the Wolffs the cup, the spoon, and a ring; the child should not
wear it until, ‘as a youth you have proved yourself worthy of the SS and
your clan’.
183
The celebration of the solstices was Himmler’s particular hobby-horse,
and above all the summer solstice of 21 June: he wished to give this day back
its ‘ancient meaning’. What he meant by this he explained rather ponder-
ideology and religious cult 289