Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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Jews; Himmler clearly wanted to test out Ohlendorf ’s ‘severity’, as the latter

was considered an intellectual.

Hermann Fegelein was born in 1906, and as commander of SS cavalry

units participated decisively in ‘combating partisans’ and the ‘cleansing

campaigns’ that were to cost thousands of civilians their lives. He had

completed his grammar-school education in 1926, studied for two seme-

sters, and then broken off his studies. He entered the Bavarian State Police,

but left again in 1929 . He worked at his father’s riding school until, in 1933,

he joined the SS.

Fritz Katzmann was born in 1906, and in the Second World War, as an SS

and Police Leader, was chieﬂy responsible for the systematic mass murder of

hundreds of thousands of Jews in Galicia. After being trained as a carpenter

he worked from 1923 to 1928 in various towns. ‘From 1928 to 1933 without

work. From July 1933 to November 1933 in charge of the works police at

United Steel in Duisburg-Hamborn. December 1933 to January 1934 in

Duisburg as district head of the German Labour Front.’ In February 1934 he

was taken on full-time as an SS Leader.

Erwin Ro

sener, later Higher SS and Police Leader for the Alpine region,

and born in 1902, attended a technical school up to the age of 13, became an

apprentice electrician between 1917 and 1921, and then worked for various

ﬁrms. He was actively engaged in the Nazi movement, moved in 1929 from

the SA to the SS, and was therefore sacked by his employer. ‘Now I was able

to devote myself completely to the movement. I then had short-term

employment but always had to leave because of my political activities.’

Numerous members of both cohorts suffered considerably as a result of

failing to gain a foothold in a career. Marital problems, alcoholism, debts,

and long-term medical consequences took their toll on many. Of course,

the SS leaders were not alone in having these difﬁculties: we are not dealing

with a negative selection of damaged lives, but rather with life-stories

representative and typical of the time. Large segments of the German

population had similar experiences. And the biographies of a whole series

of leading SS men from the same generation developed without any striking

interruptions.

Himmler, it must be said, knew how to exploit for his own purposes the

susceptibilities evident from the ruptures described in the biographies of

many members of the SS leader corps. He was able to make these men

dependent on him in sometimes subtle ways. After all, many of the weak-

nesses he encountered in his dealings with his men were most probably

320 himmler as educator

familiar to him from his own experience and from personal acquaintances

and friends of his own age.

Vices and inadequacies

On 26 July 1939, a few weeks before the outbreak of the Second World

War, SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer Friedrich Jeckeln, Higher SS and Police Lead-

er based in Brunswick, received a letter from the Reichsfu

hrer-SS. Himmler

had received information, he wrote to Jeckeln, that a few weeks previously

the latter, ‘while under the inﬂuence of alcohol’, had roared through towns

and villages in his car at a speed of 80 to 100 kilometres an hour, ‘showing

disregard for drivers and pedestrians’. Himmler demanded that Jeckeln

answer three questions: ‘1. Did you drive on this particular stretch of

road? 2. How much alcohol had you drunk on that day? 3. Were you in

breach of the rules of the road?’ Jeckeln knew where Himmler had got his

information. On the evening of 23 June a Hamburg businessman and active

member of the NS Motor Corps (NSKK) had given chase and, after

catching up with Jeckeln at a level-crossing after a fairly long and very

eventful pursuit, had challenged him about his inconsiderate and dangerous

driving, obviously fuelled by alcohol. Jeckeln revealed himself to be an SS-

Obergruppenfu

hrer and drove on, but the NSKK man had not let the

matter rest there.

Jeckeln, who years before had admitted to Himmler that he had an

alcohol problem, then sent his Reichsfu

hrer the following ‘report’: at

lunchtime on the day in question he had met a number of notable people

for an ‘intimate lunch’, the purpose of which was ‘to maintain good social

relations and comradeship’. He had left this occasion, which was to go on

into the evening, shortly before eight and set off to his hunting lodge.

With the exception of minor infringements he had, as he emphasized,

observed the rules and above all had driven safely. Jeckeln attempted to

allay suspicion that he had had too much to drink by listing all the drinks he

had consumed that day: ‘4–5 glasses of Moselle wine’, ‘3 or at most 4 glasses

of schnapps’, then possibly ‘3 glasses of beer on top’. Jeckeln’s calculation

that if he admitted to ten or twelve alcoholic drinks Himmler would not

count these as excessive drinking seems to have worked; on the evidence of

his personal ﬁle the evening’s drive had no further consequences for him.

himmler as educator 321

During a comradeship evening in May 1936, following, of all things, an

inspection of Dachau concentration camp, an ‘argy-bargy’—as Kaul later

described it, in order to play it down—occurred between Brigadefu

hrer

Kaul and Oberfu

hrer Unger. In the course of this the two opponents tipped

wine and beer over each other’s uniforms. Unger was not prepared in

retrospect to take the ‘idiocies’ particularly seriously either, and excused

the incident by referring to the good atmosphere that had prevailed at

this cheerful evening’s drinking: ‘It was also already very late and the large

amount of alcohol consumed had created a very good and jocular mood.’

Himmler decided not to go along with the suggestion of von dem Bach-

Zelewski, the Oberabschnittsfu

hrer in charge, of initiating formal proceed-

ings but rather gave his chief of staff the task of summoning the two SS

leaders and giving them a dressing-down in Himmler’s name.

In February 1942 Karl-Heinz Bu

rger, who at this point was preparing

himself for his future tasks as a Higher SS and Police Leader in the Ukraine,

received a letter from Himmler. The Reichsfu

hrer reproached him with

having, in his earlier post as ‘desk ofﬁcer responsible for ideological ques-

tions’ and during his inspection of educational establishments, taken part in

a ‘massive drinking bout’. During this he had ‘manifestly more or less lost

the power of rational thought and all self-control’, and ﬁred his pistol.

rger candidly admitted the facts, claiming the incident had happened

during the celebrations to mark the opening of the ofﬁcial residence of his

boss Heissmeyer in January 1941. ‘The devil must have got into me when I

ﬁred two shots at the ceiling lights. At the time this frivolity caused me

much unease and I could explain it only by the fact that the deep sense of

dissatisfaction I had felt during my assignment to the administrative ofﬁce of

SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer Heissmeyer was ﬁnding violent release.’ Himmler’s

reaction was extreme indignation: an ‘ideological educator who himself so

abandons education and proper conduct’ had ‘morally no right [ . . . ] to pass

on ideology to other people’. Nevertheless, he did not intend, he wrote, to

take disciplinary action—on the assumption that this was an ‘exceptional

case’. He impressed on Bu

rger the need in future ‘to bring the ideology he

preached [sic], his bearing and the conduct of his life—in particular with

regard to alcohol—into line with each other’.

The fact that such free use of ﬁrearms was not an isolated incident is

shown by an instruction Himmler issued some months after the reproof to

rger: ‘I am repeatedly being informed that a member of the SS or the

police has felt the need to use his ﬁrearm in a completely inappropriate and

322 himmler as educator

irresponsible manner. Usually this happens in the company of others and

under the inﬂuence of alcohol and indeed particularly in the eastern terri-

tories.’ Such ‘ﬁrearms abuse’, Himmler went on, was ‘not only irresponsi-

ble’ but also ‘absolutely un-German’, for ‘a German uses his weapon in

battle and leaves such gunﬁghts to the Slavs’.

Matthias Kleinheisterkamp, commander of a Waffen-SS division, was

called to order by Himmler in the most blistering manner in the autumn of

1941 because of an excessive drinking binge in the division mess: ‘As a

captain or battalion commander you could afford the odd lapse. After I, in

spite of serious doubts, had entrusted you with a division, you were under

an obligation to face up to the fact that your time for getting drunk—should

you wish to count that activity among the high points of your life—was well

and truly over.’ The ‘repellent scenes of drunkenness’ had, according to

Himmler, revealed a ‘character ﬂaw you must make serious efforts to

eradicate by the end of your period of service’. Kleinheisterkamp, Himmler

went on, had escaped being relieved of his command only because Himmler

would have had to divulge to the Wehrmacht the reason for this personnel

decision—and for the sake of the prestige of the Waffen-SS he would not do

this. Thus the only punishment Kleinhasterkamp could expect was a ban on

alcohol: ‘I require of you not to drink any alcohol in the next two years,

after showing that at the age of 49 you are not yet capable of handling it.’

Himmler had regarded an alcohol ban for some time as a tried-and-tested

method of discipline: ‘If anyone is unable to handle alcohol and treats it as

would a small child, I take it away from him. Just as one takes away a pistol

from a small child because he does not know how to use it properly’, he

declared in 1938.

Two years previously he had propounded the principle

that in the case of alcohol-related offences the culprits were to be given the

alternative: ‘Either you show you can handle alcohol and follow our

example, or a pistol will be sent to you so that you can put an end to things.

So make up your mind; you have twenty-four hours to do so.’

Curt von

Gottberg had received a three-year alcohol ban as early as 1936, after he lost

a foot in an alcohol-related accident.

Otto Rahn, an SS-Untersturmfu

hrer

whose main occupation was as a writer, was also obliged to accept a two-

year alcohol ban.

Signiﬁcantly, however, Himmler grew more lenient with regard to

alcohol bans during the war: when serving at the front, particularly in the

east, he made it known, alcohol consumption was ‘justiﬁed, naturally within

the bounds of moderation, and occasionally even to be recommended on

himmler as educator 323

health grounds’. Thus ‘alcohol bans already imposed and/or those still to be

imposed’ were ‘to be set aside during service at the front’.

In the east the

disinhibiting effect of alcohol was clearly welcome.

These examples show that, in the case of members of the SS leader corps

guilty of alcohol-related excesses, although Himmler delivered moral con-

demnations he nevertheless shied away from disciplinary punishments and

preferred to use ‘educative’ means.

This is the more curious because he

generally took the view that alcohol-related misdemeanours were to be

treated particularly strictly,

for he assumed that in the case of two-thirds of

all people who had ‘run aground, alcohol was the most deep-seated reason

for this shipwreck’.

Why, then, this leniency towards excessive drinkers in the SS? Had he

realized that draconian punishments would not achieve anything? Or did he

not really intend to get rid of alcohol-related offences at all? Had he

recognized that binge drinking and intoxication were a ﬁxed component

of the SS subculture, and that this bad habit among his men gave him

repeated opportunities to call individual SS leaders to account and to subject

them to his educative methods?

In 1941 a further measure was introduced: the Reichsfu

hrer had a reha-

bilitation home set up at Buchenwald concentration camp for SS members

with alcohol problems.

In this measure Himmler saw ‘not punishment but

health education in their own interests for those SS men and police referred

there’; he wanted, he said, to ‘create an exemplary compulsory recovery

home, in which the inmates were to be weaned off alcohol abuse by means

of unconditional withdrawal of alcohol, coupled with health measures such

as sport, toughening up, and so forth, and educated into being healthy men,

robust in body and mind, with cause to be grateful to the Reichsfu

hrer-SS for

his intervention’. Another practical measure was the imposition of a smoking

ban. He also ordered that ‘food be as free as possible of meat’ (‘In particular

oatmeal is always to be served in the morning with grated apple or Maggi

seasoning or similar additions’), and advised that a sauna be constructed.

The decision about who should be sent there was, of course, his.

Financial exigencies among his subordinates similarly required the

Reichsfu

hrer’s regular interventions. The fact that many members of the

SS leader corps had signiﬁcant debts made them, to his mind, susceptible to

all kinds of temptations, as he conﬁrmed in June 1937 in an order: ‘Thus,’ he

said, the situation still arose ‘in which industrial and commercial circles or

324 himmler as educator

personalities try to make SS leaders benevolent and well disposed towards

them by means of unusual concessions, usually of a material kind.’

There were numerous instances of SS leaders in ﬁnancial difﬁculty

turning to Himmler. He gave von dem Bach-Zelewski ﬁnancial support

several times, for example in 1938 by lending him 7,000 Reich marks to buy

a farm; in total the payments recorded in the ﬁles amounted to at least

11,000 Reich marks.

SS-Brigadefu

hrer Paul Moder informed Himmler in

1937 that he had taken an interest-free loan of 15,000 Reich marks from the

Hamburg entrepreneur Hermann Reemtsma, as his wife was demanding a

large sum before she would agree to a divorce.

SS-Gruppenfu

hrer Paul

Hennicke, the chief of the Weimar police, was ‘for the moment completely

broke’, as a friend of the Himmler family informed the Reichsfu

hrer in

September 1939; the police chief’s salary was at the time being im-

pounded.

Obersturmbannfu

hrer Otto Hofmann, a wine merchant up to

1933 and then a full-time SS leader, asked Himmler in 1934 for ﬁnancial

help as he was suffering a ‘dire emergency’; Himmler doubted this informa-

tion when, a short time later, he got wind of the fact that Hofmann had

allegedly taken part in a ‘champagne binge’.

SS-Oberfu

hrer Erwin Ro

sener informed the head of the Personnel

Ofﬁce that he was suffering ‘acute ﬁnancial embarrassment at the moment’,

for in the ‘time of struggle’ he had, ‘like any other party comrade, been

forced to take on heavy debts and to be supported by my parents and

siblings. Now I have to make that up somehow to the aforementioned by

supporting them.’ Asked for his advice, Himmler decided that no additional

payments should be made.

When Marianne Bu

rger, who was employed at

the SS ofﬁcer-training college in Brunswick and married to Obersturm-

bannfu

hrer Karl-Heinz Bu

rger, asked Himmler for a monthly supplement

to her income—she was expecting her fourth child—Himmler not only

refused this request but also gave Frau Bu

rger instructions personally about

how she might manage on the available money.

Obersturmbannfu

hrer Ludolf von Alvensleben, the son of an aristocratic

landowner, was, by his own admission, ﬁnancially ‘at rock bottom’ in

1928.

In 1934 he had managed to clear around a third of his enormous

debts of 750,000 Reich marks. In the autumn of 1934 Himmler got wind of

the fact that von Alvensleben had failed to respond to the demand of a

creditor for 2 ,500 Reich marks. Himmler ordered that von Alvensleben ‘be

questioned at a minuted interview’, and furthermore decreed: ‘If Ober-

sturmbannfu

hrer v. Alversleben is unable to give satisfactory explanations to

himmler as educator 325

show that he has treated the matter in the manner required of a National

Socialist and SS leader, his continued membership of the SS is impossible.

The private debts of an SS leader are a matter which his superiors must take

the keenest interest in.’

In July 1937 Himmler ordered von Alvensleben, who in the meantime

was head of SS-Abschnitt X and had by his own account cleared his debts

with only 12,000 Reich marks remaining, to appear in the Four Seasons

Hotel in Munich, and accused him there in the presence of the Chief of his

Personal Staff of enjoying free use of a car that had been offered to him at a

very attractive price by the Mercedes works. Himmler forbade von Alvens-

leben to acquire the car on these exceptional terms.

Before this meeting Himmler had already issued a regulation in which he

described the case in detail, without mentioning von Alvensleben by name,

and impressed on his men that he wanted ‘my SS leaders to remain free and

independent, including in ﬁnancial matters’. He expressly demanded that

‘every SS leader refuse strictly and proudly to accept favours of any kind,

even if they are dressed up as having a professional purpose, such as the claim

that the high-level work of the recipient in question will be made easier’.

Whereas Himmler made a show of intervening here in order to prevent

von Alvensleben from losing his independence to a company for the sake of

a relatively small ﬁnancial advantage, only a year later he appeared signiﬁ-

cantly more generous: in order ﬁnally to secure for von Alvensleben a life

free of debt, Himmler approved a consultancy contract between the SS

leader and the Salzgitter works that boosted von Alvensleben’s monthly

income by 1,000 R eich marks.

Why did Himmler consent to the consultancy, when he refused the car

purchase? It appears that in the case of the consultancy his consent in the

matter was a means of showing, at least to outward appearances, that things

were under his control; he heard about the car purchase, however, only

when the deal was in train, and was forced to intervene because his

authority was being called into question. For that is primarily what was at

stake in this case, and possible corruption was a secondary issue.

Old debts from the ‘time of struggle’ were, however, by no means the

only reason for ﬁnancial difﬁculties. In a staff order of December 1936, for

example, the head of the Race and Settlement Main Ofﬁce stated that ‘a

considerable proportion of members of the Main Ofﬁce are heavily in debt.

The debts have arisen almost exclusively by the thoughtless acquisition of

radios, cameras, motor vehicles, etc., on which only a down-payment has

326 himmler as educator

been made. Most of those in debt are unmarried and comparatively well

paid according to the salary scale, but by their frivolous purchases are so

indebted that on the ﬁrst of the month they have only small change left out

of their salary.’ This, he continues, is leading to an ‘escalating amount of

borrowing’ among comrades, in pubs and from businessmen, amounting to

what is ‘ultimately stealing from comrades in the case of weaker personal-

ities. But those in debt are also a good subject for the attentions of the

opposition’s intelligence services.’ The SS members working full-time at

the Main Ofﬁce were therefore asked to hand in a declaration of debt. Any

frivolous incurring of debt would result in immediate dismissal.

In 1936–7 Himmler initiated serious measures to combat debt: he saw to it

that the SS took out a loan, ﬁrst of a million, later of 2.5 million Reich marks,

in order to pay off the debts of ﬁrst the Main Ofﬁce staff, then the entire

leader corps, and ﬁnally the SS as a whole.

At the beginning of 1937 a

questionnaire was used to establish the ﬁnancial liabilities of the Main Ofﬁce

SS leaders, and in the spring of 1937 he set up a department for economic

support: SS debt counsellors negotiated with creditors a partial settling of the

debts; the SS men in question had to pay the sums owed to the SS and to

undertake never again to incur debts and—and this was a particular concern

of Himmler’s—never again to enter into hire-purchase agreements.

‘A considerable number of old Nazis are still carrying liabilities and debts

from the time of struggle and the years of economic misery’, asserted

Himmler at a Gruppenfu

hrer meeting in February 1937. ‘In the long run

I consider this untenable.’ For the future he recommended the following

‘way of life’: an ‘SS man buys nothing he cannot pay for’; he ‘will never buy

anything in instalments’; the ‘SS man is the most honest human being that

exists in Germany’.

In his November speech to the Gruppenfu

hrer in

Munich he announced an additional ten-point ‘Basic Law concerning

compulsory saving’, in which one requirement was to create a savings

fund into which salaried SS men each had to pay 1 mark a month.

Alcohol abuse and indebtedness were not the only aspects of the lives of

his leader corps that Himmler disapproved of. He repeatedly criticized his

men, for example, for excessive ambition or exaggerated vanity. Hermann

Behrends, liaison ofﬁcer at the Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans,

was in fact, in Himmler’s estimation, ‘personally a decent, able, and coura-

geous man in his work’, but Himmler was disturbed by his ‘consuming and

unhealthy ambition’. For he suspected that the person behind Kaltenbrun-

ner’s recommendation of Behrends as Kaltenbrunner’s replacement as

himmler as educator 327

Higher SS and Police Leader Danube was in fact Behrends himself.

Himmler was highly displeased when SS leaders pressed for their own

promotion, and put them ﬁrmly in their place.

In June 1942 he reproached SS-Brigadefu

hrer Walther Schro

der, Higher

SS and Police Leader in Riga, with being ‘addicted to being constantly in

the newspapers’, and ‘made it clear’ to him that ‘the next time he was

mentioned in a newspaper article’ he would be ‘demoted’:

It is not the task of the SS and Police Leader to put on a public show and make a

name for himself in the rear area post of Riga, rather it is to work from morning till

night to care for his troops, to train and lead his men, learn about the region and its

people, and learn also about the minutiae of workplace procedures. Public display

and newspaper propaganda are not necessary for this. What is required is that your

superiors, not the public, are convinced of your effectiveness, for the public does

not promote or demote you. Take this ﬁnal warning to heart.

Ill. 15. Although right-handed, Himmler practised shooting with his left hand

as well and stipulated that the SS as a whole should do the same. His men were

supposed to learn to make up for phys ical weaknesses and other inadequacies

through self-discipline and willpower.

328 himmler as educator

There were also instances of his ﬁnding fault with the ‘company kept’ by

senior SS leaders. Thus, in March 1943 SS-Gruppenfu

hrer Gerret Korse-

mann received a letter from his Reichsfu

hrer containing the reproach that

Korsemann had been a guest at the home of a major who was held by the

ofﬁcer corps of the order police to be a man ‘about whose worth and

character opinion has often been divided’. He knew, however, that he

could expect of Korsemann ‘that in future in choosing your friends and

close associates you apply the care and acuteness of judgement I must

demand of a Gruppenfu

hrer for his intimate circle’.

SS members who committed suicide were reprimanded by him even after

death. According to Himmler, 85 per cent of suicides in the SS were

‘committed for reasons that can never be acknowledged: fear of punish-

ment, fear of being tested, after a reproof from a superior, after a quarrel

with parents, after breaking off an engagement, jealousy, an unhappy love

life, and so forth’. Such suicides were, he claimed, ‘seen by us SS men as an

escape, an evasion of the struggle, of life itself’. In such cases no notice was

to be taken of the suicide and the SS was to keep away from the funeral.

Suicides were not to be buried with a formal ceremony but had to be ‘put in

the ground’ (verscharrt).

Himmler explained the rising number of suicides

in the SS at the end of the 1930s by claiming that the cohorts reaching

adulthood in the Weimar Republic were ‘hothouse plants’.

Ailing SS ofﬁcers

The Reichsfu

hrer showed himself similarly concerned about the health of

the SS. He prescribed medical examinations, read the diagnoses, and gave

his men tips on nutrition and lifestyle. Occasionally he decreed where men

should go on holiday and for how long, and forbade them to read ofﬁcial

ﬁles while there.

The constant pressure and ceaseless ‘deployment’ led to

numerous members of the SS leader corps, although only in their late

thirties or early forties, suffering considerable physical wear and tear, and

above all psychological and psychosomatic problems, during the war years.

In the medical reports the same keywords recur: fatigue, exhaustion, pro-

blems with ‘nerves’, depressive conditions.

For example, the report on Gruppenfu

hrer Waldemar Wappenhans from

April 1944 read: ‘He seems agitated and exhausted. Purely physically his

heart and circulation are no worse than at the last examination. [ . . . ] But I

himmler as educator 329