Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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he had authority through voluminous instructions, in part concerned with

absurdly minor matters, through countless decisions on individual cases, or

through direct interventions; as a precaution he reserved ﬁnal judgement in

numerous cases for himself. He instructed and advised, criticized and

commanded. No detail was too insigniﬁcant for him.

If Himmler was in his ofﬁce, he worked long hours. As a rule he arrived

at 10 a.m. and, apart from short breaks for lunch and supper, rarely left

before 1 or 2 in the morning.

He preferred, however, to size up situations

in their own location and then to make a point of reaching decisions on the

spot rather than from his desk at headquarters. He recommended this

procedure to his men also; for example, on 16 September 1942 to the SS

and Police Leaders he had assembled at his headquarters at Hegewald: ‘It is

really no accident that I make decisions on most problems when I am on the

spot. I don’t decide them in Berlin but go to Lublin, Lemberg [Lvov], Reval

[Talinn], and so on and eight, ten, twelve big decisions are made that

evening. You should do this too!’

Throughout his career Himmler was constantly on the move: as a Gau

assistant in the mid-1920s he roared through Lower Bavaria on his motor-

bike; as deputy Reich propaganda chief he travelled the length and breadth

of the Reich with the aid of the Reich railways; and as Reichsfu

hrer-SS he

travelled through the whole of Europe during the war by special train, by

plane, und by jeep. He particularly enjoyed inspection tours of newly

conquered territories where the smoke of battle had hardly dispersed, in

the company of a small entourage. In such cases he liked to get behind the

wheel himself.

Signiﬁcantly, among the photos he sent during the war to Gmund on Lake

Tegern, to give his daughter Gudrun an idea of her father’s daily work, there

are none that show him at a desk in a ﬁxed location. Instead there are numerous

shots of him in animated conversation, on journeys and inspections, or making

speeches.

That is exactly how the Reichsfu

hrer-SS wanted to be seen: as

communicative, ubiquitous, as a leader who took care of everything, had

everything under his control, and shared the privations of his men.

This ‘soldierly’ image was something he was to cultivate throughout his

life; the corresponding habitus was essential to his leadership style. In order

to lend credibility to this self-stylization he had no qualms about slight

enhancements to his biography. Thus, for example, at the summer solstice

of 1936 he spoke out about drunkenness in the SS, though, adopting the

pose of the old soldier, he made certain allowances for this vice: ‘Those of us

300 himmler’s leadership style

who have been to war and come from that generation [ . . . ] have learned to

booze and to ﬁght as front-line soldiers. I tell you, if you are in battle and

don’t know if you’ll survive the next few hours, you’re hungry and haven’t

eaten for days, then it’s easy to get used to smoking and boozing.’

Speaking

to Wehrmacht generals in May 1944: ‘in 1917 I became an ensign and as a

young ensign I experienced the Revolution.’

Similarly, he failed to correct

biographical details released to the press that stated that he had been a soldier

at the front.

In fact he did not join the army until January 1918 and, as we

know, because of this late call-up he had never seen active service and spent

the R evolution at his parents’ home on leave.

Himmler hoped to conceal his awkwardness and lack of conﬁdence with

others behind military ‘objectivity’ and ‘sobriety’, and to transform them

into positive virtues conditioned by his profession. This was true in his

private life as well as in the professional sphere. ‘Do not take it amiss’, he

wrote to a publisher in 1933, ‘if I ask you not to publish a biography of me at

the moment. [ . . . ] when you get to know me you will understand that for

the time being I have an absolute aversion to being photographed or

interviewed, and to biographies and intrusive questions.’

And when, in

1942, his friend the Nazi writer Hanns Johst advised him against sending an

actress a crate of fruit-juice as a token of his admiration—his motives might

be misinterpreted—Himmler thanked him, saying that in the world of the

theatre such things were ‘understood and judged quite differently from how

we down-to-earth soldiers intend them’.

In personal matters Himmler set great store by being seen as very correct.

Thus, he insisted that he be billed for the cigars he smoked in the Berlin SS

mess

and refused to accept invitations from business-people trying to make

a splash.

Nor was he willing to charge the SS bureaucracy for the cost of

private journeys.

But another feature of Himmler’s pernickety way of

dealing with personal expenditure was that he claimed the generous tips he

gave out on his travels as expenses.

In his dealings with his staff, with visitors, or—when travelling—with his

hosts he took pains to observe the formalities, and behaved in a friendly and

genial, easygoing, good-natured, and polite manner. As far as food, drink,

and personal comfort were concerned, his demands were modest. ‘As a

human being,’ according to a typical statement by his bodyguard Josef

Kiermaier, ‘the Reichsfu

hrer-SS was naturally frank, friendly, and polite

to everyone,’ though only ‘as long as he was sure that friendliness was not

inappropriate’.

Then his demeanour could easily change, and Himmler

himmler’s leadership style 301

became, as Otto Wagener, one of the leading party functionaries of the

‘time of struggle’ remembered, ‘ironic, sarcastic, cynical’.

According to

Albert Speer’s description, he was ‘correct in a friendly, slightly forced way’,

but ‘never warm’.

This rather artiﬁcial correctness and excessively sche-

matic participation in the lives of others was also demonstrated by the way

that Himmler maintained his extensive present-giving with the aid of an

elaborate set of records: a specially created card-index system made it

possible at any time to establish who had received what presents from the

Reichsfu

hrer-SS and when.

Recruitment and career of SS members

At ﬁrst the fundamental requirement for acceptance into the SS was to be at

least 1.70 metres tall—at 174.5 centimetres (measured by himself and, as he

noted, ‘in stockinged feet’), Himmler, incidentally, fulﬁlled this criterion.

From 1933 onwards candidates for membership (and not only SS members

wishing to marry and their future wives) were also checked for their

‘hereditary health’ and ‘Aryan descent’. Gradually even the old SS men

had to submit retrospectively to this procedure. A genealogy stretching back

at least to 1750 was required, in which there was to be no evidence of ‘non-

Aryan’ ancestors. Himmler would have liked to put the relevant date for all

SS applicants back to 1650, as he declared in 1936 at the celebration of the

summer solstice on the Brocken mountain, but it seems that because of the

expense this ruling was applied only to SS leaders.

If a non-Aryan forebear

was found in anyone’s family tree the person concerned was excluded from

the SS on principle.

The actual ‘racial examination’, which always included a medical exami-

nation, involved an assessment of the applicant’s overall appearance, accord-

ing to the criteria of ‘physical build’ and ‘racial evaluation’, and both were

graded under the combined heading of ‘appearance’. Negative ‘racial’

characteristics could be compensated for by means of ‘overall appearance’

and ‘mental attitude’.

An intelligence test and sports test rounded off the

general evaluation of the candidate.

In cases where, although the ‘certiﬁed

proof of descent’ was fully in order, the ‘overall appearance’ nevertheless

aroused ‘strong suspicion of traces of alien blood’, Himmler decreed that a

special ‘racial-biological examination’ be carried out.

302 himmler’s leadership style

Himmler intervened repeatedly in the recruitment process. In 1938, for

example, he ruled that a ‘considerably more lenient standard’ was to be used

when judging eye defects. Problem cases, such as where an otherwise

‘eligible candidate’ had lost an eye in an accident, were to be referred to

him personally.

In the case of the Security Service also, Himmler took the

view in May 1935 that, as far as the physical examination was concerned,

‘full eligibility for SS membership’ was not necessary. If, however, a ‘racial

examination gives rise to doubt or suggests ineligibility, every individual

case is to be referred to me for a decision’. This ruling was designed above all

with Gestapo members in mind, who, when admitted to the SS, were

assigned to the SD.

In 1937 Himmler asserted in a speech to Wehrmacht ofﬁcers that only 10

to 15 per cent of candidates were accepted into the SS.

In actual fact the SS

was much less choosy: in the SS-Oberabschnitt Elbe, for example, in the

years 1935 and 1936 the available ﬁgures on applicants rejected on ‘racial’,

physical, or age grounds show that 75 to 80 per cent of candidates were

accepted.

Nevertheless, candidates for membership continued to be examined

thoroughly even after the outbreak of war; indeed, Himmler reﬁned the

process in December 1939 by ordering the introduction of a special ‘race

chart’.

It provided those conducting examinations with those ‘character-

istics that occur primarily when blood from another race is present’, for

example, ‘jet-black hair’ or a ‘hooked’ nose (by that was meant the ‘Near-

Eastern’ or distinctly ‘Jewish’ nose). By particular request of the Reichs-

hrer-SS, the ‘Greek nose’ (‘no or only a slight indentation at the root of

the nose’) was included in order to avoid mix-ups. When the head of the SS

Race Ofﬁce, Bruno Kurt Schultz, wanted, in view of wartime conditions,

to limit the ‘proof of ancestry’ to six generations and to make a decision

about any ‘compromised’ SS members by means of a racial and character

assessment, Himmler was outraged. Schultz, he declared, was unsuitable to

be head of the Race Ofﬁce.

Early in 1935, at an SS leaders’ conference for Oberabschnitt Silesia,

Himmler set out his view of the career of the normal SS member: ‘In future

a member of the SS will ﬁrst of all be selected according to the most rigorous

principles, which will get more rigorous from year to year. At 18 he will join

us as a cadet. For eighteen months he will train with us as a cadet. He will be

on duty for long periods, four times a week and on two or three Sundays a

month. Above all, during this time and while he is still young and can

himmler’s leadership style 303

develop and be educated he will be ideologically trained.’ At 19 he would

have a further six months’ labour service and then he was to serve for a year

‘in a state organization’. When national service was introduced two months

after this speech it naturally replaced the latter service.

Thereafter, Himmler continued, the young man would return to the SS

in order to train for a further ﬁfteen months as a cadet, before he was

ofﬁcially ‘recognized as an SS man’. From this point up to his twenty-ﬁfth

birthday he would belong to the active General SS. ‘In these years the

following service is required: twice a week and two to three Sundays a

month.’ After that he was to be transferred to Reserve 1, then, aged 35 to 40,

to Reserve II, and at 45 to the division of permanent members. ‘It is

impossible to leave the SS on the grounds of age.’

Anyone who had

placed himself under the authority of the Reichsfu

hrer-SS was to remain

under it until death.

SS virtues

‘I have reserved for myself matters to do with our conduct and all ethical

questions and shall deal with them myself’, Himmler declared in November

1938 to the head of the Indoctrination Ofﬁce, when the latter reported to

him; that is to say, ‘questions of the relationship of the individual to the clan,

family, the nation, and the state’.

In order to make these ‘ethical questions’

clear once and for all, Himmler in numerous speeches to SS members

worked his way through a positive ‘catalogue of SS virtues’. Central to

it were the concepts of loyalty, obedience, and comradeship, and he

frequently emphasized bravery, honesty, hard work, and fulﬁlment of

duty. But he demanded repeatedly, and above all, one thing from his SS

men—decency!

Let us examine more closely the virtues Himmler proclaimed.

For Himmler loyalty meant voluntary and total submission to a leader.

Loyalty was a question of race and could be genuinely shown only by

people of ‘Germanic blood’. In the ﬁnal analysis loyalty could not be

rationally based, but rather it was an emotional tie, a ‘matter of the heart’,

as Himmler put it.

It was a fundamental attitude that produced a reliable,

extremely stable basis for the relationship between subordinate and leader.

The SS was naturally loyal above all to Adolf Hitler. ‘The political creed

of the SS is Adolf Hitler’, wrote the writer Hanns Johst, a friend of Himmler

304 himmler’s leadership style

and at that time an SS-Oberfu

hrer, in SS Guidance Booklets in 1937: ‘This

order’s concept of honour is pledged to this man ﬁrmly and irrevocably

through the magic power of loyalty. The order serves and this service

guarantees the immortality of Adolf Hitler and his will.’

Or to quote

Himmler himself: ‘The Fu

hrer is always right, whether the subject is

evening dress, bunkers, or the Reich motorways.’

Loyalty was lauded in the ‘SS anthem to loyalty’.

It was strengthened

towards Hitler by the oath sworn by every SS member. ‘I swear to you,

Adolf Hitler, as Fu

hrer and Chancellor of the German R eich, that I will be

loyal and brave. I pledge obedience unto death to you and to those you

appoint to lead. So help me God.’

On being appointed by Himmler, the

SS-Gruppenfu

hrer were committed by a further oath to adhere strictly to

his speciﬁcations when accepting candidates, even if ‘it means rejecting my

own children or the children of my clan [ . . . ] I swear by Adolf Hitler and

by the honour of my ancestors—so help me God.’

There was a positively ritual quality to the way loyalty was maintained,

for example in the letters that Himmler regularly exchanged with SS leaders.

Congratulations he sent on promotions, birthdays, and births, letters of

condolence on the deaths of close family members, greetings at New Year

and ‘Yuletide’ were normally acknowledged by a personal letter of thanks,

which frequently culminated in renewed vows of loyalty. Himmler’s birth-

day was in turn the occasion for personally written letters from his close

associates to the Reichsfu

hrer-SS.

This correspondence reveals an almost limitless repertoire of formulae

expressing loyalty. On Himmler’s thirty-seventh birthday he was, for ex-

ample, congratulated by Theodor Eicke, leader of the SS Death’s Head

regiments, as follows: ‘I have only one aim, that of welding together the

men entrusted to me into a ﬁghting unit resolute to the death, in the spirit of

the SS and in loyalty to our symbol. All our strength belongs to you and thus

to the Fu

hrer. Devotion to duty and loyalty are and will remain the

morning prayer of the SS Death’s Head units.’

Gruppenfu

hrer Wilhelm Rediess, who received the gift of a Yule light

from Himmler in 1935, sent his thanks: ‘In its light I renew, along with my

family, the vow of loyalty I made to the Fu

hrer and to you. I wish you,

Reichsfu

hrer, a long life for the sake of the nation and therefore for all our

sakes until your actions and aims have become irrevocable laws shaping the

life of the whole German nation. These are my wishes for the New Year, to

which I add hearty greetings from my clan to yours.’

himmler’s leadership style 305

During the war the vows of loyalty became even more intense. As Ruth

Bettina Birn has already indicated, many SS leaders were no longer satisﬁed

with assuring Himmler of their loyalty in general terms, but reinforced their

vow with the promise of the utmost commitment to duty and service.

Now it really was a case of loyalty unto death. Thus, in October 1944

Obergruppenfu

hrer Benno Martin sent thanks for his promotion to this

rank by ‘announcing’ to Himmler that ‘I will carry out my duty to you and

to the idea of the SS to my last breath. Reichsfu

hrer, you can be equally

certain of the commitment of my leaders and of the SS men and police

under my command.’

Hermann Fegelein, the former head of the main SS Cavalry School in

Munich and now commander of the 8th SS cavalry division, wrote Himm-

ler a letter in October 1943 on the latter’s birthday, in which he not only

vowed loyalty but claimed he was doing so because he owed the Reichs-

hrer his entire existence:

Just as previously when we played sports, now in wartime too we have ridden

undaunted, even in the most difﬁcult times, assured in our hearts of victory under

your command and in obedience to your orders. The fallen comrades of your

cavalry units are testim ony to this; they died on the ﬁeld of honou r, fulﬁlling your

saying: ‘We have to do more than our duty: as knights without fear or reproach.’ In

the heaviest ﬁghting, in all seasons, summer or winter, we have served undaunted,

loyal and obedient, true to you, Reichsfu

hrer, and to our word, carrying out

everything we promised in peacetime. [ . . . ] In my life you have been the great

patron, a strict superior ofﬁcer, and an unfailingly helpful comrade. Together with

SS-Obergruppenf u

hrer Ju

ttner you have made me what I am today. I have often

had to carry out orders of yours that were heavy with responsibility and sometimes

looked as if they were suicide missions. But my men and I have come through them

all, through the mentality of our teams and through our precise way of think ing as

Prussians. By nature I have the impetus, but it is you who have taught me to be

conscientious and aware of my responsibilities, and ready to carry out my duty to

the letter, and I believe I can say today that I have always proved how sacred your

orders were to me. Perhaps, Reichsfu

hrer, you could tell the Fu

hrer that we feel

this in our hearts simply and in faith and with the instinct of the German soldier,

whose ancestors fought just like us for 2,000 years for the good of the Reich and

who, when necessary, also fell.

Friedrich Jeckeln, the Higher SS and Police Leader Ostland (the Baltic

States and Byelorussia) and Russia North, reported to Himmler in May 1944

that two of his children had died. His letter ends as follows: ‘My wife is

distraught. I can bear even heavy blows of fate and still be committed and

306 himmler’s leadership style

have the strength to work.’ Himmler answered: ‘It is terrible when fate

suddenly strikes. I know that you as a profoundly loyal National Socialist

and SS man grieve for your two sons, one of whom died a hero’s death and

the other of whom died so tragically as a child. I know too, however, that

you always remain the same, unbowed and committed.’

Six months later

Jeckeln let Himmler know that his home had been completely destroyed in

a bombing raid. ‘My entire earthly possessions have gone up in smoke. My

wife and my four small children are safe at her parents’ farm [ . . . ] And now

we’ve really got to act!’

The idea of loyalty had been internalized by many SS leaders to such an

extent that the mere suspicion that they might have lost the Reichsfu

hrer’s

conﬁdence could become a nightmare. The Viennese police chief Josef

Fitzthum, who came under suspicion of having been too liberal with the

proﬁts of the ‘Aryanization’ programme, wrote in September 1940 to

Himmler: ‘The sense that I may have lost the conﬁdence you have placed

in me up till now is unbearable. Your reassurance that I still have it means a

thousand times more to me than any formal exoneration.’

Obedience, the second pillar in Himmler’s doctrine of virtue, was the

practical consequence of loyalty. If loyalty was an emotional attachment,

obedience had to be demonstrated in practice; loyalty was an ‘attitude of

mind’, the internalized willingness to be obedient that found expression in

achievement and in the fulﬁlment of one’s duty.

Disloyalty meant in effect treason, and in principle was unforgivable. If

instances of disobedience did occur, however, Himmler’s approach was

distinctly ﬂexible; for disobedience, he explained, was a weakness of the

Teutons, who were by nature headstrong. In certain circumstances, there-

fore, a mild punishment or even a pardon was possible—as long as the

foundation of the relationship, namely loyalty, was not compromised.

Gottlob Berger, head of the SS Main Ofﬁce, was aware of this ﬂexibility

when, in July 1942, he told Himmler with regard to a conversation with

General Steiner, who was under suspicion of disobedience, that he had

gained the impression that ‘he was loyal to the core’, whereupon Himmler

assured Steiner in a letter: ‘I trust you implicitly.’

‘Anyone who is disloyal’, as Himmler said in his programmatic SS speech

of 1933, ‘excludes himself from our society. For loyalty is a matter of the

heart, never of the intellect. The intellect may stumble [ . . . ] but the heart

must always go on beating, and when it stops a human being dies, just as a

nation dies, when it breaks its oath of loyalty.’

himmler’s leadership style 307

If Himmler demanded of his men not only obedience but absolute loyalty

and elevated loyalty to the supreme law of the SS, then this was certainly

also the result of his own insecurity in his relations with others. Although he

developed considerable diplomatic skill in the course of time in concealing

this weakness, in essence he could sustain personal relationships in the long

term only if he controlled the relationship or if, as in his relationship as a

young man with Ro

hm or Strasser or as in the case of Hitler, he subordi-

nated himself to the other person. On the other hand, close personal

relationships with people he regarded as equals he found difﬁcult, as be-

comes clear from his complicated or cool relations with other leading party

members. His strong need to reinforce obedience (something that went

without saying in the SS) with an emotional element (that of loyalty), to

have this conﬁrmed by the repetition to him of formulaic expressions of

loyalty, and to invent regular rituals of loyalty was no doubt deeply bound

up with this deﬁciency of character.

By comparison, his elucidations of another central term in the catalogue

of virtue, ‘comradeship’, remained insipid. We can infer from one of his

few comments on this subject that comradeship in the ﬁnal analysis sup-

ported men’s training in obedience.

‘I ask that you train each other in your

Sturm. You must be vigilant that in your Sturm no one lacks decency!’,

Himmler proclaimed in December 1938 when speaking to an SS Stan-

darte.

But how comradeship was to be developed emotionally, how it was

to be lived in everyday life inside and outside the SS, and whether and how

far it was to encompass personal affection, friendship, and mutual trust—

these were matters on which Himmler was silent. We have already indi-

cated that, in particular in 1936–7, Himmler had opposed tendencies to

regard the SS as a male league and had vehemently attacked Blu

her’s theory

that such leagues were based, in the ﬁnal analysis, on homoerotic attach-

ments. Yet Himmler had no alternative to offer beyond mere commitment

to loyalty and obedience.

On the other hand, in almost every speech there is an appeal to the SS to

carry out their tasks ‘decently’. ‘Decent’ (ansta

ndig) was a word he frequently

connected with terms such as ‘pure’ and ‘chivalrous’; what was meant was

generous, understanding behaviour, free from selﬁsh motives. ‘Decency’

was omnipresent in Himmler’s world. ‘May each of us live through every

good day as decently as every bad one’, was his message to his men in the

foreword to the 1937 SS calendar.

Decency was required above all,

however, when Himmler was demanding ‘relentlessness’ and ‘severity’, in

308 himmler’s leadership style

particular when executions were to be carried out: ‘Soldiers have to do many

things,’ he said looking back on 30 June 1934, ‘but they must always do them

decently, cleanly, setting aside understandable Schadenfreude and personal

advantage. [ . . . ] Only if these principles are observed have we the moral

strength and resolve to do these things and thus to be the kind of instrument

the Fu

hrer requires.’

Sadistic torture or reviling of victims was, in Himm-

ler’s view ‘not decent’ and therefore to be rejected.

During the war Himmler was to stand by the claim that the SS killed its

enemies ‘decently’. His best-known declaration on the subject of decency

and mass murder was made to the SS-Gruppenfu

hrer in Posen in October

1943, and referred to the mass murder of the Jews: ‘Most of you will know

what it is like to see 100 corpses lying side by side or 500 or 1,000 of them.

To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to

have remained decent, that has made us hard.’

Even in 1936, however, he had drawn a distinction, and not during a

secret meeting of his Gruppenfu

hrer but in a public statement to the

Prussian State Councillors. The principle of a ‘decent ﬁght’ applied only

to ‘any opponent worthy of such treatment’; it was, on the other hand,

‘madness’ to apply ‘this chivalrous attitude [ . . . ] to Jewry and to Bolshe-

vism’, or to the treatment of a ‘Jesuit ﬁghting to gain earthly power’ or

‘Jewish or Jewiﬁed Freemasonry’.

In his Posen speech of 1943 he took the line that it was necessary

to be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely [ . . . ] to those of our own blood and to

no one else. How the Russians or the Czech s fare is a matter of indifference to me.

[ . . . ] Whether or not 10,000 Russian women collapse with exhaustion while

digging an anti-tank ditch concerns me only insofar as the anti-tank ditch is

being dug for Germany. We will never be brutal and callous unless it is necessary:

that is obvious. We Germans, who alone on this earth have a decent attitude to

animals, will of course adopt a decent attitude to these human animals, but it is a

crime against our own blood to worry about them and to apply ideals to them so

that our sons and grandsons have an even harder time with them. If anyone comes

to me and says: ‘I can’t make the anti-tank ditch with women or children. It’s

inhuman because they’ll die’, then I am forced to say: ‘You are murdering your

own blood, for if the ditch is not made then German soldiers will die and these are

the sons of German mothers. It is our blood.’ That is what I would like to inculcate

in the SS and have, I believe, inculcated as one of the most sacred laws of the future:

our concern, our duty, is towards our nation and our blood; that is what we must be

concerned about, must think about; for that we must work and ﬁght, and for

nothing else.

himmler’s leadership style 309