Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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was unhappy about his state as a whole. I think that from a medical point of

view he urgently needs some mental rest to regain his equilibrium.’

In the case of SS-Gruppenfu

hrer Karl Gutenberger, Himmler ordered a

‘comprehensive medical examination’ after hearing about his health pro-

blems. The SS-Reich Medical Ofﬁcer Robert Grawitz recorded that at the

examination the 38-year-old seemed ‘a little absent-minded’, and showed a

‘slight degree of indifference, a kind of euphoria, a tendency to see every-

thing on the same level’. ‘Possibly what we are seeing is the beginning of a

post-traumatic change’—which caused Grawitz to prescribe an examina-

tion by a consultant at the psychiatric clinic at the Charite

hospital in

Berlin.

On the basis of the results Himmler sent Gutenberger ﬁrst of all

for four weeks to the SS ‘Ho

henvilla’ in Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary), a sanato-

rium in which similar cases were treated.

When Erwin Ro

sener, Higher SS and Police Leader for the Alps, was

examined in May 1944, a specialist in internal and nervous illnesses came to

the conclusion: ‘this particularly strong and healthy 42-year-old man pre-

sents with a state of nervous exhaustion that on the one hand derives from

excessively prolonged pressures without a break and that on the other was

already apparent and made worse as a result of autonomic dysfunctions

consequent on a malfunctioning thyroid. We therefore have here a state

of exhaustion attributable to his having consumed his very considerable

reserves of strength.’

In August 1944 a medical report recommended that

sener be admitted to the Ho

henvilla in Carlsbad.

At the end of 1944 the doctors diagnosed Karl Gustav Sauberzweig,

commander of the Croat SS Volunteer Mountain Division, as having a

‘distinct state of excessive nervous excitability tending [ . . . ] towards psy-

chosis’: ‘He tries to be on his own; he does not wish to see anyone else;

the sound of gunﬁre or the sight of blood distress him; his powers of

concentration are distinctly deﬁcient and he fears having to take responsi-

bility, etc., etc.’

In 1942 Himmler was forced to pension off the head of his Personnel

Main Ofﬁce, Walter Schmitt, as he was suffering from urinary frequency,

attributable, according to a medical report, ‘to a general neurosis that

perhaps was worsened by his professional work’.

In addition, Richard

Hildebrandt, Higher SS and Police Leader for the Vistula and responsible

for annexed Polish territory, complained in 1942 of ‘dizziness’ and ‘tired-

ness’; the doctor who examined him could ﬁnd no organic cause.

330 himmler as educator

In cases in which a speciﬁc medical diagnosis could not be reached the

Munich specialist for internal medicine, Dr Karl Fahrenkamp, who took

particular account of psychological causes, was frequently consulted.

Fahrenkamp’s special position was also demonstrated by the fact that inside

the Personal Staff a department F was set up for him that in turn supported

an ‘Estate for Experimental Nutrition’ near Salzburg. In addition, before

1940 Fahrenkamp conducted experiments on plants at Dachau concentra-

tion camp, and in 1942 he set up a laboratory in the neighbouring training

camp, in which, amongst other things, herbally based cosmetics and beauty

products were produced; because these goods were produced within the SS

the strict government controls on cultivation could be circumvented.

Himmler was one of the grateful recipients of these products—skin-care

products, mouthwash, and suchlike

—and was also one of Fahrenkamp’s

patients.

In November 1941 Himmler assured Fahrenkamp ‘that I am

eternally grateful to you for treating my men, who are extremely difﬁcult

patients, with such skill and common sense’.

As Himmler attributed his

own stomach problems to psychosomatic causes, Fahrenkamp’s patient

reports gave him access to highly interesting material that allowed him to

compare the course of his own illness with that of his SS leaders.

The 45-year-old Waffen-SS General Felix Steiner, for example, seemed

to Fahrenkamp to be ‘a very closed and inaccessible man, who answers

serious questions with a smile and a certain self-irony’. It was his view ‘that

in this case a very vigorous man with a rigid military bearing arrives already

wearing a mask and that behind this mask is concealed a sort of depression

that under no circumstances’ is to be shown.

In the case of Ulrich Greifelt, head of the Four-Year-Plan Ofﬁce in the

Personal Staff, Fahrenkamp’s ﬁndings, set down on the eve of Greifelt’s

forty-second birthday, were as follows:

Damage to the sight of the left eye as a result of ﬂying. In 1918 quit his career as an

ofﬁcer. Through extraordinary efforts made a new career as technical director of a

large factory. Lost this post in 1932 through no fault of his own. Has always worked

hard [ ...]Herr G. suffers greatly from inner agitation and sleeplessness. Is unable to

fall asleep and wakes up again early. Becomes very tense about new tasks but does

not know why. Psychologically, his enjoyment of life is severely impaired. [ ...]

Herr G. is depressed by two changes of career, in particular because he was forced

to leave a sphere of activity he found very sat isfying.

himmler as educator 331

Werner Lorenz, head of the Coordination Centre for Ethnic Germans,

struck Fahrenkamp as someone who, although organically healthy, was

nevertheless a ‘tired, exhausted man’. He suspected ‘psychological causes

[ . . . ] as factors in his present condition [ . . . ] SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer L. says

that you, Herr Reichsfu

hrer, know about his personal family circumstances.’

It was, he continued, ‘obvious that this reﬁned and very alert man, whom I

did not feel has a very robust constitution, is experiencing the effects of a

psychological depression in the form of lassitude and exhaustion.’

Many SS leaders reacted to illness and pain with ‘severity’ towards

themselves, such as Heinz Johst, for example, commander of the security

police in the Baltic States, who announced to his Reichsfu

hrer in July 1944

that, as a result of the long-term effects of diphtheria, he was suffering from

serious heart complaints and circulation problems: ‘Because of the situation,

I have tried up to now to tackle the condition through my own vigour.

Increasingly bad attacks of dizziness and now disturbances to my vision

mean I can no longer do this.’

Wilhelm Rediess, Higher SS and Police Leader in Ko

nigsberg, com-

plained in October 1939 to Fahrenkamp of serious headaches on the left

side, and in general admitted to having a ‘very tired and preoccupied mind.’

The doctor stated that he found Rediess to be a ‘healthy and strong man’ and

therefore concluded that the complaints must ‘be caused by a general

exhaustion’. Fahrenkamp continued that advising him was ‘difﬁcult because

he is more brutal with himself than anyone can be without in the long run

damaging his overall ﬁtness. However obvious it is that even pain can be

conquered by force of will, medical experience shows that this attitude has

its limits and one day, despite every effort of the will, good health gives way

to illness.’ Prevention, he writes, should not be confused with ‘being soft’, as

Rediess believed.

Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, as Higher SS and Police Leader for Russia

Centre, responsible amongst other things for ‘combating partisans’ and for

the mass murder of Jews, suffered a physical and mental breakdown in

March 1942. The Reich Medical Ofﬁcer Grawitz reported to Himmler:

At the moment I have some concern about his frame of mind: from fear of his

haemorrhoid problems SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer v. d. Bach had already been going

without food for many months, both quantitatively and qualitatively, during the

eastern deployment; I have already reported repeatedly that the delayed and

somewhat halting process of recovery was caused by the serious physical, nervous,

and psychological exhaustion in which the patient arrived for treatment. Now that

332 himmler as educator

he is beginning to recover physically he is torturing himself with notions of

inferiority (‘exaggerated sensitivity to pain, lassitude, lack of will power’) and

with his anxiety about being fully ﬁt for service very soon and able to put himself

at your disposal again, Reichsfu

hrer.

Grawitz’s assumption was that although Bach-Zelewski would quickly be

ﬁt again, he would nevertheless ‘grapple for a considerable time with

various manifestations of depression’.

Von dem Bach-Zelewski, whom Daluege in 1933 judged to be ‘loyal and

honest, very impulsive, in many cases unrestrained’, and suitable for pro-

motion only if ‘his impulsive nature is held in check in his work and by his

own efforts’,

was anxious above all not to admit to himself the seriousness

of his illness and to appear to Himmler as unchanged and still healthy. In a

letter to his Reichsfu

hrer he claimed to have been wrongly treated at ﬁrst,

and only after that to have suffered a physical and mental breakdown:

It is untrue that I entered the ﬁeld hospital completely exhausted and battle-weary.

As your old ﬁghter, whose energy is returning more strongly each day, I will not

accept such a distortion of the facts, despite assertions of this being made at my

bedside all day long. [ . . . ] I after all submitted to the operation only because the

doctors estimated that a full recovery would take four weeks and I wanted to be 100

per cent ﬁt again for the major battles in the spring. Up to fourteen days after the

operation I was in daily contact with Mogilew by radio and courier [ . . . ] Only

when the cramps began, and my body and then my mind began to be poisoned

because my intestines had been put out of action , was there anything like a

breakdown. It was less the appalling physical pains that caused the collapse than

my conviction of having had the wrong treatment and the threat of the disgrace of

dying in a hospital bed at a time when every soldier has the right to a decent

soldier’s death. [ . . . ] Reichsfu

hrer, I will prove to you this year that your old

warriors cannot be kept down even by such experiences.

Himmler assured him immediately that he had ‘never been in any doubt

that you are still your old self ’.

Seemingly somewhat restored, von dem

Bach-Zelewski plunged again into the fray.

There was, however, to be no fundamental change to his maladies. Two

years later a specialist characterized his condition as follows: ‘Irregular bowel

movements’, ‘Constipation and weak anal muscles’, ‘very sensitive rectal

mucosa’. ‘The Gruppenfu

hrer lacks the concentration required to strength-

en the sphincter. Given that we are dealing with an already highly strung

disposition such as the Gruppenfu

hrer’s, I attribute this failure to the fact

that in the ﬁeld there is limited hygiene, such as bathing facilities and

suchlike, and thus the abovementioned complaints are made worse.’

himmler as educator 333

Alongside Fahrenkamp, Himmler’s old schoolfriend Karl Gebhardt, now

professor of medicine and director of the Hohenlychen sanatorium in the

Uckermark in Brandenburg, played a key role in Himmler’s efforts to

maintain the health of his men.

Himmler’s mistress Hedwig Potthast

was to give birth to their ﬁrst child at Hohenlychen in 1942, and Karl

Wolff, head of the Personal Staff, recovered there in 1943 from a break-

down, Himmler giving Gebhardt a gift of a dinner service for twelve in

gratitude.

The sanatorium was also open to prominent ﬁgures who were

not members of the SS. Thus, Gebhardt performed a knee operation in June

1938 on Lieutenant-General Walter von Reichenau, who played a signiﬁ-

cant political role among the generals, and sent Himmler a detailed report of

the operation when the work was done.

Gebhardt sent a stream of reports

about the treatment of famous patients, including members of the higher

echelons of the European nobility.

When he repaired the ruptured Achil-

les tendon of Himmler’s friend Darre

in August 1938 , he also let his old

schoolfriend know about it.

After the assassination attempt on Heydrich in 1942 Himmler sent

Gebhardt to Prague. After even Gebhardt was unable to prevent Heydrich’s

death, Himmler thanked him ‘for being such a brave comrade and good

friend to our dear Heydrich in his last days and hours’.

When, in 1936,

Himmler’s father developed cancer Gebhardt had again been on hand with

advice: he made discreet investigations into the history of the illness and

advised against an operation. Himmler followed his counsel.

Even in more trivial matters Himmler turned to Gebhardt for his opin-

ion. In January 1938 he sent him an ‘old remedy for tuberculosis that has

been passed down several generations of a family I know’: ‘a pinch (1 gram)

each of lungwort, liverwort, ribwort plantain, centaurium, coltsfoot, Ice-

land moss, Irish moss, sweet ﬂag, hibiscus, salad burnet, speedwell, rhubarb

root, ground and mixed well into one old measure (c. a kilo) of honey. The

honey must be warmed beforehand [ . . . ] If diarrhoea should set in, then

stop taking for 2 days.’ Gebhardt’s answer was, however, a disappointment

to Himmler: no remedial effect in the case of tuberculosis could be ex-

pected, and in addition this tea mixture was already long familar from folk

medicine.

Himmler’s intensive efforts to secure the physical well-being of his men

stretched even to making suggestions about their diet. When, in 1942,

Sturmbannfu

hrer Ernst Gu

nther Schenk, Waffen-SS Nutrition Inspector,

sent in a memorandum on the improvement of the troops’ rations in the SS,

334 himmler as educator

Himmler reacted with comments in a twenty-two-point list—a veritable

explosion of ideas—which he passed on to Pohl: ‘The attention of all units

must be drawn most vigorously to the toasting of bread. In all circum-

stances, even in marshland, bread can be sliced, warmed, and toasted on an

open ﬁre as on a hunt, and in the form of rusks would be an easily digested

diet for those with intestinal problems.’ After the war, he continued, the SS

would have to create its own sources of food, if only for use in the east and

for speciﬁc types of food:

It is only the speciﬁc types of food that inﬂuence our species that we must provide

for ourselves: fruit and in particular pomaceous fruit, nuts (limitless supplies,

especially for the winter), mineral water from natural springs, fruit juices, oat ﬂakes,

and oil for cooking [ ...]. Exaggerated stockpiling inside the borders of the Reich,

as practised by the church in the Middle Ages, must absolutely be avoided. It is,

however, our task, by promoting hand-operated mills in some of our own bakeries

and in manual bakeries in the areas where we live, to inﬂuence and determine the

preparation of these foodstuffs.

All in all, he placed great emphasis on accustoming the SS man and his

family ‘to our natural food in national-political training centres, in barracks,

ofﬁcer-training colleges and team houses, and in Lebensborn homes’, ‘so

that later the boy will never eat anything else’. ‘Slowly, imperceptibly, and

in a sensible manner’, the ‘consumption of meat’ was to be ‘restricted for

future generations’. Himmler’s wish was ‘a steady growth into a better

future after centuries of aberrations and false starts. Only when meat and

sausages are replaced imperceptibly by equally tasty foods that satisfy the

palate as well as the body can there be any hope of success. Moral sermons

are of no use here. We know ourselves that only good, cheap mineral water

and excellent fruit juices, as well as good cheap milk can displace alcohol.’

In peacetime he intended, furthermore, ‘to design and order the provi-

sioning of the entire SS and police and their families, ﬁrst for ﬁve years and

then for all time’. It might be possible also to consider setting up ‘nutrition

supervisors’ in the SS units, though the possibility that some kind of soldiers’

council or commissar might emerge from this institution, even if only in the

distant future, was to be avoided.

Standard menus were, in addition, to be

planned for the SS: ‘These menus must contain hot meals, in the form of

soup, jacket potatoes, and a cold side-dish, at least three times a week and

ﬁve times in the winter. A good herbal tea must be provided every evening.

[ . . . ] Boiled and salted potatoes are to be strictly avoided.’

himmler as educator 335

Himmler’s solicitous strictness

Himmler carried on a lively correspondence with senior SS leaders, using it

again and again to dispense praise, blame, advice, and criticism in profes-

sional and personal matters. To old comrades-in-arms the Reichsfu

hrer sent

personally written letters of encouragement. Thus, in a letter of January

1943 he thanked Theodor Eicke, whose division was facing immediate

further deployment on the eastern front, for the ‘loyal wishes for this

difﬁcult new year [ . . . ] As far as you are concerned I have only one wish:

stay well and uninjured, for the SS and I need you as a loyal, brave and

resolute old soldier, so that if the going gets tough we can do everything the

hrer and the Reich expect of us.’ His concern turned out to be justiﬁed: a

little more than ﬁve weeks later Eicke was dead. His plane was shot down

during a reconnaissance ﬂight.

Himmler’s former adjutant Ludolf von Alvensleben received an express

letter from Himmler in November 1943, when he was promoted to SS-

Gruppenfu

hrer and Lieutenant-General of the police. In it Himmler pro-

nounced the ‘ﬁrm expectation that in the Crimea you will be a pillar of

faith, conﬁdence, strong action, and will never yield. Take care that even

the last SS soldier or member of the police always keeps calm and is there

when vigorous action and ﬁghting are required.’ Himmler signed off using

the formula: ‘In sincere and long-standing solidarity, Faithfully yours.’

Other standard forms were: ‘I shake your hand sincerely’ or ‘My greetings

in sincerest friendship’.

Himmler sent Waffen-SS Major-General and Brigadefu

hrer Walter Kru

ger a personal letter when the latter was taking over command of a police

division ﬁghting on the eastern front. Its conﬁdential nature was underlined

by Himmler’s request to ‘leave it in Germany’. Himmler exhorted Kru

ger

‘to supervise or set in motion a good many things that would usually be

passed on simply as commands’. Kru

ger was to be guided always by the

principle that war was ‘the best teacher of war itself’. Himmler concluded

with the request that Kru

ger ‘be sustained by faith in our SS men, that

means therefore by faith in the good blood we have here and faith in these

inspiring hearts, capable of sacriﬁce. I require you to eliminate any trace of

defeatism. Reports from Unterfu

hrer, leaders, company commanders, or

commanders that their unit is not ready to attack are to be answered with a

336 himmler as educator

court martial ending in a death sentence. A squad is ready to attack until it

has suffered 80 per cent losses, deﬁnitely not before then.’

But Himmler was also not slow to lecture and criticize. Friedrich Karl

von Eberstein, Himmler’s Higher SS and Police Leader in Munich, was

forced in October 1942 to put up with Himmler reminding him in clear

terms of his duties. Himmler accused Eberstein of being too ‘phlegmatic’,

for the latter had communicated a decision of Himmler’s in a tricky

personnel matter by letter to the treasurer of the NSDAP and not, as

Himmler expected, personally and ‘in a nice manner’. Himmler admon-

ished him:

It is not the task of a Higher SS and Police Leader to rule from his desk. I can just as

well put an ofﬁcial behind a desk. Similarly, I am not [ ...]satisﬁed with the work

of the ﬁre police and the police after the air raid on Munich. After air raids and

bomb damage you must be on the move day and night until the last German lying

under the rubble has been recovered. The recovery of people within 5 days is

imperative. Imagine if your child had lain beneath the rubble. I must ask you to

regard your work not as being a ministerial quill-and-desk job but rather, as in the

time of struggle, as requiring you to be highly active and mobile, working alongside

the people and the troops. That is what I want from my Higher SS and Police

Leaders, who are of course my representatives.

Emil Mazuw, the Higher SS and Police Leader for the Baltic Region, was

also reproached in December 1944 for inadequate activity: ‘If I had wanted

to have the Higher SS and Police Leaders as ofﬁces for passing on complaints

or as letter-writing centres I would have indicated this, and in place of an

SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer and General I would have appointed an administra-

tor and secretary. In future you will do your duty better. Apart from that

you are a representative of the SS and not that of the local mayor or of the

local party ofﬁces working against the SS. You are to take special note of this

last point.’

In August 1942 the SS Police Leader for Estonia, Hinrich Mo

ller, was also

accused of being phlegmatic and overweight. After a visit to Reval (Talinn),

Himmler wrote to Mo

ller that he expected him ‘to be on duty 6 evenings a

week out of 7 with the squad and the men [ . . . ] I regard it as unheard of that

a man of 36 is so phlegmatic, fat, and complacent. It is in your interests to

change this as quickly as possible.’

100

When Erhard Kroeger, who was the leader from June to December 1942

of an Einsatzkommando in the Ukraine and after that in the SD Main

Ofﬁce, betrayed signs of being less than happy about being moved to the

himmler as educator 337

Waffen-SS, Himmler wrote to him in no uncertain terms: ‘This ability to

obey without comment is a characteristic you have yet to acquire. Only

then will you be a proper SS man and come up to what I have always

wanted you to be. Be assured that at the proper time you will be placed

where you can be fully effective. I wish you every success for the ﬁght.’

101

SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer Hermann Ho

ﬂe, Higher SS and Police Leader

and German commander-in-chief in Slovakia, received an irate letter from

his Reichsfu

hrer on 14 January 1945. Himmler reproached Ho

ﬂe with

‘softness, dependence, and lack of self-reliance with regard to your collea-

gues and staff ’. He went on:

I can only request you to be ﬁrm, to understand ﬁnally that you are the commander

and your chief of staff as well as your Ia [1st General staff ofﬁcer] are your

colleagues. They are not there to be your brain. Remember the basic concept of

obedience, according to which we were both brought up, even if people around

you try to talk you round. If I had had any notion how much this command I

entrusted to you and which you took up with such hesitation overstrains your

psychological reserves I would never have moved you there, to spare you and me

this dist ress. This is the last time I shall express the hope that things will change and

that in 1945 you will avoid the errors of 1944 and no longer commit them.

102

In March 1943 the head of the Race and Settlement Main Ofﬁce, Otto

Hofmann, was given to understand in unmistakable terms that, as a result of

a series of events, Himmler considered that he was not performing ade-

quately in his job. By contrast with others, Hofmann had apparently been

spending too little time at his desk. Himmler concluded his letter with a

serious, if not quite syntactically correct, admonition:

Gruppenfu

hrer Hofmann, to establish a Main Ofﬁce on a sound footing requires

ceaseless application, skill, and serious work that does not neglect even the smallest

details, until these things have become second nature to your subordinates. It is my

wish that you refrain from so much work-related travel and from being constantly

out of the ofﬁce in order to make appearances as a great commander and general.

All in all I am obliged to say that as the weeks go by I like your Main Ofﬁce less

and less.

103

In April 1943 Hofmann was replaced as head of the Race and Settlement

Main Ofﬁce. Himmler recorded in a note that he had formed the impres-

sion that ‘Hofmann lacks the calm and serenity required of one who has to

remain in the background with the Race and Settlement Main Ofﬁce during

the war’. He assured Hofmann, however, ‘that I have in no way, either

338 himmler as educator

personally or professionally, lost my conﬁdence in him and he still retains it

completely.’

104

Yet even in his new position as Higher SS and Police Leader for the

South-West Hofmann brought upon himself the wrath of his Reichsfu

hrer.

He had taken decisions in an area that Himmler regarded as exclusively his

own: ideological training. Himmler rebuked him ‘for starting a competitor

to the SS Guidance Booklets in the form of army postal service letters.’ The

discovery of this fact merely conﬁrmed to me how right it was to relieve you of the

responsibilities of head of the Race and Settlement Main Ofﬁce. I have made a clear

decision to remove the Indoctrination Ofﬁce from the SS Race and Settlement

Main Ofﬁce. I consider it incompatible with the obedience expected of an SS man

to circumvent an instruction, not its letter but, and this is eve n more serious, its

spirit. Although you have no more inﬂuence in this matter I have felt obliged, in

order to set you on the right path, to declare to you my clear and unam biguous

opinion for the beneﬁt of your future professional life.

105

Hofmann tried to expunge this serious reproach by declaring his loyalty:

The accusation of disobedience that you have levelled at me hits me exceptionally

hard, as neither in this case nor at any time have I intended to circumvent one of

your instructions. I have always regarded you as the epitome of the man who, after

the Fu

hrer, claims my reverence as well as my loyalty and obedience. This is my

true attitude and so I would request you, Reichsfu

hrer, not to burden me with this

serious reproach.

106

Yet Himmler did not withdraw the accusation but rather, a year later, added

a further, much more serious one to it, namely, that of cowardice. In a

devastating letter in November 1944 he claimed that the SS and Security

Police agencies ‘seem to have ﬂed in panic and in a cowardly manner’ from

Alsace (for which Hofmann, as Higher SS and Police Leader for the South-

West, was responsible). And he added: ‘To give you clear direction in this

matter I wish to apprise you that I had a Security Police chief in Paris shot

for similar things.’

107

Himmler’s criticism of Gerret Korsemann was similarly devastating. He

relieved the Gruppenfu

hrer and police general in July 1943 of his post as

deputy Higher SS and Police Leader for Russia Centre because he consid-

ered the accusation levelled at Korsemann of having been in too much of a

hurry to retreat from the Caucasus as justiﬁed. Himmler summoned Korse-

mann and ‘urgently’ brought home to him the need ‘to cleanse himself by

the most committed effort from the charge attaching to him of lack of

himmler as educator 339