Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life
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follows: ‘I shall vigorously resist any legal or strong moral restriction on
relationships between men and young women. In this I am certainly not
alone, but am acting with the Fu
¨
hrer’s approval, for I have had repeated
conversations with him about this subject.’ And now he came full circle:
‘For anyone we restrict too severely will end up on the other side, in the
homosexual camp.’
85
Over a year before this, in April 1936, Himmler had made use of a stay in
Gmund to put down on paper his thoughts about the problem of illegiti-
mate births in relation to the SS.
86
There is an evident difference between
this memorandum, intended for internal purposes, and his remarks to the
Expert Advisory Panel: in the case of the SS he wanted not only to accept
illegitimate births but to promote them, as an integral part of a population
strategy. Beyond that, the paper clarifies the extent to which, for reasons
based on population policy, he condemned the hostile attitude of the
churches to sexuality. For the SS was to assume the role of an avant-garde
as far as population policy was concerned, by absolutely rejecting the
church’s teaching on sexual morality. The time was not yet right, however,
to go public with such ideas. He was to decide to take this step only after the
beginning of the war.
‘Certainly not later than a hundred years from now,’ Himmler stated in
the memorandum in question, ‘and perhaps much sooner, we shall be happy
about every additional human being in Germany, and the time might come
when we are heartily thankful for every battalion we can send to our eastern
border to fight against Bolshevism.’ ‘Welcoming illegitimate children’,
however, should never be allowed to ‘do damage to the institution of
marriage’. He intended to set a requirement within the SS, he said, for
‘young men of 25 and at most 28 who have a paid position to marry, and
once they are married, to have children’. It could not, however, be ex-
pected that young men and women should live ‘lives of sexual abstinence’
up to this point.
However commendably motivated, no allegedly moral laws instituted by Chris-
tianity provide a solution for this. They merely have one purpose for Christianity,
namely, to make it indispensab le as an institution with the power to forgive the sins
of others. [ ...] In the SS I intend once and for all to part company with this
dishonesty and in doing so I hope to set the whole of the G erman nation an
example. My ideas are moving between the two poles of marriage on the one hand
and the sure knowledge on the other that in most cases men and young women
follow nature’s imperative.
370 the ss family
By this means he was hoping, he continued, to obtain ‘200–300 children
per year from every battalion of the Verfu
¨
gungstruppe’. ‘I not only resolve
to do all I can to raise our SS men’s illegitimate, in most cases highly
talented, children of good race and make them soldiers and officers or,
alternatively, superior wives for our nation, but I shall expend an equal
amount of effort on giving the girls in question [ . . . ] an honoured place
beside the married mothers.’ In the case of SS families who had the
‘misfortune’ not to be able to produce sufficient children of their own, it
should become ‘an accepted custom to take in illegitimate or orphaned
children of good blood and bring them up’. Indeed, they should receive ‘the
number of children that should be the norm for an SS family’, namely
‘between four and six’.
Meanwhile, however, Himmler had also made a practical start towards
ensuring ‘racially high-quality’ offspring from extramarital relationships: in
September 1936 he announced in a circular to all SS leaders the founding of
the Lebensborn association, which had in fact taken place in December
1935.
87
By contrast with the formulation chosen for its statutes,
88
supporting
‘racially and eugenically high-quality families with many children’ played
only a subordinate role in the association’s activities.
89
What it was actually
doing above all was looking after single mothers, to whom Lebensborn,
with its special maternity homes, offered the chance of giving birth far away
from their normal environment and keeping it secret. If desired, the baby
became the association’s ward.
90
In addition to single mothers, the homes
were also available to married women, in particular to wives of SS men.
In every case the basic precondition for acceptance into the homes was an
examination of both the mother and the father by an SS doctor, using the
same racial criteria that prospective wives of SS men had to satisfy. The SS
doctors were committed to confidentiality beyond the normal medical
demands ‘by a particular obligation imposed by the Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS’. In
cases where ‘special circumstances’ applied, Himmler reserved the right to
keep the birth and the father’s identity completely secret.
91
Though to the outside world the Lebensborn was an association, it was
firmly integrated into the SS organization, reporting to the Race and
Settlement Main Office. In 1937 its administration was part of the remit
of the SS administrative head, Pohl. On 1 January 1938 the Lebensborn was
taken out of the Race and Settlement Main Office and subordinated to the
Personal Staff. The association’s council was reorganized, and Himmler put
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himself at its head.
92
The organization was financed by compulsory levies
on SS members. Those who were childless had to pay the most, while
anyone with four or more children, whether legitimate or illegitimate, no
longer had to contribute.
The Lebensborn opened its first maternity home in August 1936 in
Steinho
¨
ring in Upper Bavaria. Six more were opened up to the outbreak
of war. Head of the medical team for the whole of the Lebensborn was
Himmler’s former family doctor in Munich, Gregor Ebner, like him a
member of the Apollo duelling fraternity and a friend on first-name terms
with the Reichsfu
¨
hrer.
93
The existence of the Lebensborn homes gave rise
to all sorts of rumours about their purpose. The Lu
¨
beck woman who sent in
a request to the SS for information about the nearest SS ‘copulation home
(Begattungsheim)’
94
was not an isolated case, and to this day in fact the
Lebensborn is associated with the notion of a ‘breeding institution’.
Himmler now also gave his attention to gaining support within the SS for
extramarital procreation, naturally in a moderate form: he attempted to
convey to his men that they did not have to marry the first person who came
along: ‘The sort of girl you meet at dances and parties is not the sort you
marry,’ he explained to the Gruppenfu
¨
hrer in November 1936, two months
after he had announced the founding of Lebensborn:
We mu st teach our men to recognize that they don’t have to marry the first girl
they meet out dancing. I see from the requests to marry that our men often marry
having no idea what marriage is. Reading the requests I often wonder: my God,
does an SS man have to marry this woman of all people, this walking mishap with a
bent and sometimes ghastly frame. A little eastern European Jew or a little Mongol
can marry her; that’s all a girl like that is good for. In by far the most cases the men
in question are radiant and handsome.
Before getting married SS men should ‘have a good look at the sisters,
brothers, and parents’ of the bride. If the chosen one is the ‘only acceptable
one, while the other family members are dreadful’, it is an exercise in
‘practical racial awareness’ to recognize that the bride’s family has ‘blood
that is undesirable’ for the SS man. He was not prepared to accept the excuse
that a man might already have become involved in an established relation-
ship before discovering that ‘her brother or uncle was in a lunatic asylum’:
‘No, gentlemen, the man must be so good as to ask beforehand.’
For an unmarried man it was, Himmler said, ‘no disgrace to have a
girlfriend. He must, however, be clear in his own mind from the outset:
372 the ss family
I shall not marry you because I cannot justify doing so. How he makes the
girl accept that is his business; everyone has to be the judge in matters of his
own conscience. But SS men must never behave in a way that is not decent
but must rather be open and say: I’m sorry, I can’t marry you as there have
been too many serious illnesses in your family.’ SS men were to be urged, ‘in
many individual conversations’, to take these ideas on board.
95
For the rest,
he was hopeful, as he confided to the Gruppenfu
¨
hrer in 1937, that ‘in the
course of a thoroughly reasonable, open, and extremely tactful discussion
with the young man or girl their sense of duty and their awareness of the
immense responsibility they bear can be boosted to the point where they
can both be educated to accept a life without sex up to the age of 18, 19,
20’.
96
In 1936 and 1937, whenever Himmler’s topic was sexual politics his ideas
always revolved around the same considerations: the threat to young people
of homosexuality; the toleration of sexual relations between unmarried
young people; acceptance of illegitimacy; early marriage. It is obvious that
Himmler had entered a phase in which he was settling accounts with his
earlier attitude to the subjects of sexuality and masculinity. In the early 1920s
the model before his eyes was that of the celibate, heroic warrior, the figure
of the ‘lonely freebooter’. He had already given up this image of himself in
1927–8, when he met his wife and set about founding a family. Now, some
ten years later, this blueprint for life was gradually turning out to be flawed.
If his prescriptions in matters of sexual politics from the 1936–7 period are
read as reflections on his own development, then he clearly reproached
himself with not having gained sexual experience earlier and not having
married a woman of his own age earlier and founded a family with her. It
was obvious to him which institution had caused him these difficulties: the
Catholic Church.
The fact that Himmler gave voice to views on matters of sexual politics in
1936–7 in a manner that can be read as a critical commentary on his own
previous life, and the fact that he showed himself so liberal with regard to
extramarital sex and illegitimate births, most certainly had roots in his
private experience. In autumn 1937 the Himmlers spent a relatively harmo-
nious holiday together in Italy, and yet a precise reading of the entries in
Margarete’s diary, something she began to keep during this holiday, reveals
deep dissatisfaction. After the seizure of power the Himmlers were certainly
in a position to cultivate a lifestyle in keeping with their membership of the
country’s political elite: first of all they moved from Waldtrudering to a flat
the ss family 373
in the exclusive Mo
¨
hlstrasse in Munich, which they moved out of again in
1934 to live near Lake Tegern, where in 1936 Himmler bought a village
house (Lindenfycht) from the renowned singer Alois Burgstaller, extending
it in 1937.
97
In addition, Himmler immediately rented a lakeside house,
98
as
well as a hunting lodge in the mountains nearby.
99
In Berlin too he had
comfortable accommodation, at first in a flat in Tiergartenstrasse 6a and
from November 1934 in Hagenstrasse 22,
100
before he finally moved into a
spacious house befitting the position he had in the meantime attained,
Dohnenstieg 10 in the exclusive suburb of Dahlem. It had fourteen
rooms,
101
and as his official residence was provided for him free of
charge.
102
The financial worries of the first years of marriage were therefore over,
and Margarete’s diary entries certainly convey her pride in Himmler’s
professional successes. At the same time, it is impossible to overlook her
complaints that he is almost permanently away from home,
103
her doubts
about whether his commitment to his work is really being adequately
rewarded and whether it is all worth it.
104
On their tenth anniversary she
wrote: ‘In spite of the happiness marriage brings, I have had to do without
many things in my marriage for H. is almost never there and his life is all
work.’
105
After attaining considerable social status as Himmler’s wife, her lack of
social confidence grew into a contempt for others, with undertones of
aggression. She seems above all to have taken out her frustration on her
domestic staff: there was constant annoyance in the Himmler household
because the servants were ‘insolent and lazy’.
106
In one diary entry, occa-
sioned by just such an episode, she vented her resentment and fury: ‘Why
are these people not put under lock and key and made to work until they
die. Sometimes I wonder if I live with human beings or not.’
107
In March
1939 two further employees left, and she complained: ‘The notion of duty
and service doesn’t exist any more.’
108
She had additional troubles on account of her foster-child Gerhard,
whom the Himmlers had taken in. The son of a dead SS man, he was a
year older than their daughter Gudrun. The complaints pile up in Margar-
ete’s diary: the boy is a ‘criminal type’, has stolen money, and ‘is an appalling
liar’, she writes.
109
His natural mother was not prepared to have her
wayward son back under these circumstances either, thereby displaying an
attitude that, as Margarete confided to her diary, did nothing to ‘unsettle’
her ‘opinion about human beings’.
110
In March 1939 Gerhard passed the
374 the ss family
entrance examination for a National Socialist educational establishment—
these schools, designed to train up the future National Socialist elite, had in
the meantime also become part of Himmler’s empire—but in October he
was forced to leave again.
111
In the light of these entries the Himmlers’
domestic situation at the end of the 1930s can hardly be described as
harmonious.
Early in 1936 a young woman named Hedwig Potthast took up a post as
Himmler’s private secretary. The two gradually became close, and at the
end of 1938, it is believed, confessed to each other that they had fallen in
love; they could not have started a relationship earlier than 1940, however.
There is little point in speculating whether Himmler’s rather barren domes-
tic situation prompted his relationship with Hedwig Potthast, or whether
his growing interest in the young woman created the backdrop against
which Margarete’s frustration must be viewed. As is usual in human re-
lationships, both aspects most probably reinforced each other. Nevertheless,
Himmler’s statements of June 1937 to the Expert Advisory Panel on
Population Policy reveal clearly the explosive potential he saw in his
growing private conflict: in his view, he explained, it was ‘absolutely
clear, that the German nation is in absolute disarray on sexual matters,
that as a nation we have the greatest possible tensions in this area, and we
must face up to the fact that, if a nation is not living in accord with its most
fundamental natural laws, then that is dynamite for the whole nation’.
112
Divorce, adultery, remarriage
If SS members wanted to get divorced, Himmler in principle had no
reservations. The Reichsfu
¨
hrer declared openly to the Gruppenfu
¨
hrer in
1937 that if the couple had grown apart he had ‘complete sympathy’ with
their wish to divorce. At the same time, he set a condition: ‘I require the
guiding principle of the SS leadership corps to be that whatever fate decrees
must happen in this area of life should be carried through in a way that is
ordered, decent, and extremely generous on the part of the individual
concerned.’
113
Generosity was something Himmler himself inclined to: if in the course
of disciplinary or criminal proceedings ‘marital lapses’ came to light, it was
Himmler’s policy for the wife not to be informed, ‘in the interests of
upholding the marriage’.
114
The requirement to be ‘decent’ and ‘chivalrous’
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was not infringed, therefore, as long as the marital lapse did not come out
into the open. In 1944 Himmler even approached the Reich Minister of
Justice in an individual case to remove the legal ruling according to which
adultery was to be regarded as an ‘impediment to marriage’.
115
If proceed-
ings were initiated in SS or police courts on the grounds of adultery,
Himmler reserved for himself the decision on how they should be handled.
In such cases he wished to be comprehensively briefed; amongst other
things, photographs of all those involved (in particular, of any children)
had to be included.
116
The privilege of a ‘second marriage’ was something Himmler by no
means took advantage of only for himself. His study of Germanic prehistory
had convinced him of the existence of the ‘second or Friedel-Ehe,* which
the free Teuton of good race could enter into’,
117
and he also permitted his
men to enter into such an arrangement, on condition that they intended to
have children. Thus, in 1944 Himmler allowed a married Obersturmbann-
fu
¨
hrer, who on account of his wife’s ‘nervous condition’ was unwilling to
leave her, to cohabit with another woman. That was, however, with the
proviso that the new relationship produced children.
118
On a visit to the
acting Gauleiter of Westphalia-South, Obergruppenfu
¨
hrer Schlessmann,
Himmler advised him that in view of his marital problems he should look
for ‘a loving woman’, who ‘would be prepared to give children to the
German nation with me [Schlessmann]’. Some time after this conversation
Schlessmann ‘reported’ to Himmler that he had now found ‘this loving
woman’, who was his secretary and was now three months pregnant with
his child. No stranger to this type of relationship himself, Himmler was very
pleased, granted the second wife accommodation, and promised ‘complete
secrecy’.
119
Marriage orders and number of children
In spite of all these efforts the number of marriages among SS members was,
in Himmler’s view, still too low, and the lack of children produced when
the war was causing many losses became a problem that threatened the
future viability of the SS. In June 1942 he explained to the leadership corps
* Translators’ note: Quasi-marriage or ‘lover’ marriage between a man and a woman of lower
status.
376 the ss family
of the SS-Division ‘Das Reich’ ‘that the number of children does not replace
even half of those who have fallen [ . . . ] A terrible loss, much more terrible
than the death of the men themselves.’
120
Specific challenges had to be
issued.
121
In December 1944 Himmler requested the commandant on
Obersalzberg, Obersturmfu
¨
hrer Frank, to ‘enquire’ of the unmarried leaders
and Unterfu
¨
hrer under his command ‘what they had done so far to put an
end to their unmarried state or what they were intending to do in the
foreseeable future’.
122
In 1943 Himmler had his ‘acute displeasure’ con-
veyed to one Hauptsturmfu
¨
hrer Schwarz for ‘still being unmarried at the
age of 44’; if this were still the case by the end of the war, he would be
dismissed from the SS.
123
If all cajoling and admonitions produced no results, in particularly ex-
treme cases Himmler ordered his men to marry. Hauptsturmfu
¨
hrer Arnold,
for example, received such a letter from his Reichsfu
¨
hrer in June 1943:
Dear Arnold!
As far as I am aware, you are your parents’ only son. In my opinion you are
under an obligation to marry and ensure that the Arnold clan does not die out.
I expect an answer to this letter.
124
To make doubly sure, Himmler sent a letter the same day to Arnold senior,
suggesting it would be good if the latter ‘were to influence him in the same
direction’.
125
Fritz Bauer, a sports teacher at the SS sanatorium in Hohenlychen,
reported as early as October 1936 that he had carried out just such an
order from his Reichsfu
¨
hrer: ‘With regard to your order to marry by 30
January 1937, I am pleased to report that I intend to obey the order on 12
December 1936 .’
126
Himmler was delighted, and donated 500 R eich marks
for the wedding.
127
The case of SS-Hauptsturmfu
¨
hrer Feierlein was somewhat more compli-
cated. At first he received an unequivocal instruction from Himmler: marry
by 20 April 1938—the Fu
¨
hrer’s birthday! When the date passed, nothing
had happened and Wolff sent him a reminder, Feierlein attempted to
wriggle out of it by saying he had not understood Himmler’s instruction
to be an order. The Chief of the Personal Staff did not, however, accept this
‘lazy excuse’, and passed on to him a formal order from the Reichsfu
¨
hrer
that Feierlein ‘had until 31. 12. 38 to report the execution of your order to
marry’.
128
When, however, a short time later a suspicion arose that Feierlein
might be involved in a corruption scandal in Vienna, Wolff informed him
the ss family 377
that the order had been suspended and he was forbidden ‘to get engaged or
married without receiving further communications’.
129
In May the follow-
ing year Feierlein asked for his marriage prohibition to be suspended, as in
the meantime he had met ‘a girl’; his wish was granted, and in June he ‘gave
notice’ of his impending marriage.
130
In 1936 Himmler prescribed four as being the ‘smallest number of
children to be expected of a good and healthy marriage’.
131
On occasion
he spoke, in reference to Hitler, of four sons.
132
Himmler personally
attended to the creation of the right circumstances in which his men
could use their leave to father children: wives of SS men were to be given
the opportunity to holiday near the places where their husbands were
deployed, in order to boost the birth rate, as he decreed in an order of
October 1942.
133
To one childless wife of an SS man Himmler provided the
services of a healer.
134
On the other hand, if the wife’s family tree revealed a
‘non-Aryan’, he demanded that already married SS men should have no
more children.
135
The results of Himmler’s efforts to produce more marriages and children
among the SS were extremely meagre, in fact positively pitiful. According
to the SS Statistical Yearbook for 1938, a mere 39.7 per cent of the SS were
married. Taking into account that only some 2.5 per cent of the under-25s
were married, this means that among older SS men only 57.3 per cent were
married.
136
The number of children per married SS man was a mere 1.1 .
Apart from this, only very few SS men had responded to Himmler’s call to
bring children into the world outside wedlock: a total of 741 unmarried SS
men had, according to the figures, produced in all 811 illegitimate children
up to this point.
137
For the war period there are no equivalent statistics, and
yet Himmler’s constant lament about the lack of children produced by his
men, and his attempts to encourage them to father a new generation, even if
partly illegitimate, show clearly that the fertility of SS members had basically
not altered at all. But SS members disappointed Himmler’s expectations
with regard to marriage and children not only in terms of quantity but also
of quality: the procedure for approving marriage requests broke down, as
we have seen, because it was impracticable, while the Reichsfu
¨
hrer’s notions
of breeding never got off the ground. The ‘clan order’ was above all a
construct of Himmler’s imagination.
Even in his private life he indulged this illusion of a ‘clan order’. Anyone,
relative or friend, who was close to him was gradually integrated into the
378 the ss family
‘order’. His parents may have observed the beginnings of his political career
with a sceptical eye, but by the early 1930s at the latest they looked upon
their son’s career with pride. His father collected newspaper cuttings, mostly
from the Vo
¨
lkischer Beobachter, containing mentions of his son,
138
and in
1932 he even worked his way through a copy of the second volume of Mein
Kampf that Heinrich had given him. His final comment on it was that Hitler
was a man who engaged his interest and whom he viewed with true
admiration.
139
In 1933 both parents became members of the NSDAP.
140
Even in the years that saw Himmler advance to the position of chief of a
terror apparatus surrounded by an aura of horror, no shadow seems to have
fallen on the relationship. Although in the period that followed Himmler
senior repeatedly approached his son in the name of petitioners who were
frequently suffering from his persecution, the two also carried on an avid
correspondence during these years about their family history.
141
When
Gebhard Himmler died in 1936 Heinrich organized a grand funeral, at-
tended by an official SS delegation, which in many respects resembled a
state funeral.
142
Himmler’s younger brother Ernst, who had completed his university
course in electrical engineering in 1928, got a job in 1933 with Heinrich’s
help with the Berlin radio and at the same time joined the SS. He had
already become a member of the NSDAP in 1931 . In the Reich broadcast-
ing organization Ernst quickly rose to become deputy technical director and
then, in 1942, director.
143
In 1937 Himmler approved a loan for his brother,
who in the meantime had established a family, from an SS fund and thus
enabled him to buy a house that had formally belong to a trades union.
144
Ernst, in turn, supplied Heinrich on various occasions with internal information
from the world of broadcasting and from other areas his professional activities
gave him knowledge of, not scrupling even to make a denunciation.
145
The oldest of the Himmler brothers, Gebhard, who since 1925 had been
teaching at a college of further education, also advanced his career during
the Third Reich. In 1933 he became leader of the Bavarian Further Educa-
tion Association, and the same year joined the NSDAP. He insisted,
however, on his membership dating from May 1932, the date when his
wife joined, because as a civil servant he had at that point not been
permitted to become a member. In June 1934 he joined the SS and in
1935 he became head of a college of engineering in Munich.
146
In 1939 he
entered the Reich Education Ministry as a desk officer and in 1944 became
head of the department responsible for further education throughout the
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