‘Decency’ towards ‘animals in human form’ was, therefore, for Himmler
not a moral imperative but purely a matter of expediency, because, as he
explained in a speech in May 1944, the ‘many little subhumans in our
service’ were ‘attached to their master with doglike devotion [ . . . ] because
he was decent to them’.
58
Himmler’s concept of decency can be read as a cipher for double
standards; it stands for norms that were in themselves contradictory. On
the one hand decency, even towards enemies, is declared to be virtuous, but
on the other it is labelled as ‘madness’. Decent treatment could be expedi-
ent, but there was always the danger of treating enemies too well and thus
doing damage to one’s own cause—and that was morally reprehensible.
Accordingly, it was decent not to treat one’s enemies decently.
This is the only way of explaining how the SS on the one hand laid claim
to being honourable and chivalrous, and yet on the other found every
possible way of degrading, torturing, and murdering human beings with
the greatest cruelty. The aura of dread surrounding the SS was a component
in their strategy of terror, and Himmler knew how to exploit this effect.
‘I have no intention, at least not during the war, of dispelling the bad
reputation we have, which is only advantageous for Germany, because it
keeps enemies at a distance’, we read, for example, in a speech Himmler
made to senior naval officers in December 1943.
59
The demands of decency posed major problems even for Himmler
himself. However firmly and repeatedly he declared ‘decency’ to be his
life’s motto, it was impossible to disguise the fact that, just once in a while,
he wanted to be allowed to be ‘not decent’ and ‘not well-behaved’, as he
had confessed to his fiance
´
e at the beginning of their relationship.
60
The
context in which he confessed to this is important; he was referring to his
stomach problems, caused, he believed, by precisely those constant efforts to
be ‘decent’. He knew, therefore, that his rigid self-control, his torturous
system of rules and virtues, was causing psychosomatic disorders. His body
bridled at the imposition of decency—it wanted instead ‘not to be decent’.
Himmler’s constant appeals to ‘decency’ can be read as the expression of
his strenuous efforts to resist temptations ‘not to be decent’: to be cruel, to
torment or revile his enemies, to benefit from their downfall or to take
malicious pleasure in it—‘understandable Schadenfreude’, as he called it in
1936. The imposition of ‘decency’ seems essentially to be a way of combat-
ing those feelings, which were only too familiar to him.
310 himmler’s leadership style