Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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well as to the German ethnic minorities in Romania, Yugoslavia, and

Hungary. As the organizer of the ‘ethnic German self-defence force’ in

Poland, he already had relevant experience in this sphere. His ambitions,

however, were not limited to Europe: ‘As far as ethnic Germans throughout

the world are concerned, we still have around 5 ½ mill. in North America

and Canada[,] 1.2 mill.(of pure blood) in South America[,] 77,000 in

Australia.’

As far as Himmler was concerned, Berger was pushing at an open door.

The Reichsfu

hrer had already begun to recruit ‘Germanic’ volunteers on

20 April 1940, when he secured a Fu

hrer order for the establishment of an

SS-Standarte ‘Nordland’, which consisted half of Germans and half of Danes

and Norwegians.

After Vidkun Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian

Nazis, appealed for recruits in January 1941, 300 Norwegians volunteered

during the weeks that followed. On 28 January 1941 Himmler travelled to

Norway in order personally to attend the swearing-in of the members of this

ﬁrst ‘Germanic’ SS unit.

‘After the passage of many generations’, he told

the men on this occasion

you are the ﬁrst Norwegian men who have determined to take up the ﬁght and to

do so on your own initiative, not having been compell ed to do it by a government

dependent on England. For the ﬁrst time you are standing lined up in the midst of

your com rades, men of the Hird [the paramilitary organization of the Norwegian

Nazis] and SS men from the Reich [ . . . ] We are admitting you as comrades, as

brothers into our ranks, into the ranks of a formation that has always thought in

Germanic terms and is Germanic in spirit.

Himmler used his stay to have a look at the country and its people. On

2 February he visited a ‘country farm near Trondheim typical of the central

Norwegian landscape’,

and made a speech to a German police battalion.

In the evening he took part in a German–Norwegian ‘comradeship even-

ing’. On the fourth he went to Narvik, and stayed in northern Norway until

the middle of the month.

In May 1941 he once again went to Norway in

order to establish a Norwegian SS division. At a solemn ceremony he

appointed Jonas Lie, the Norwegian state councillor responsible for the

police, to be leader of the country’s SS, and swore in the ﬁrst 150 Norwe-

gian SS men.

SS recruitment in Denmark began in July 1940 and was carried out by the

DNSAP, the Danish Nazis. On 1 September the Waffen-SS recruitment

ofﬁce opened a branch in Copenhagen.

However, following opposition

500 shifting borders: the year 1940

from the Foreign Ministry, which had been bypassed, it had to be closed

down again for the time being.

On 25 May 1940 Himmler had ordered the creation of an SS-Standarte

‘Westland’ for Dutch and Flemish volunteers. The two new Standarten,

‘Westland’ and ‘Nordland’, together with the Regiment ‘Germania’ which

was composed of Germans, were intended to form the Waffen-SS division

‘Viking’.

In the autumn of 1940 Himmler created a Dutch as well as a

Flemish General SS, thereby rounding off his establishment in the two

countries.

In February 1941 Berger received permission from Himmler to recruit

Finns. At the start of the war with the Soviet Union 400 Finns were already

serving in the ‘Viking’ Division.

At the beginning of April 1941 Hitler also gave permission for the

establishment of an SS-Standarte ‘North West’ for volunteers from the

Netherlands and Flanders, who did not need to meet the ‘racial’ criteria

for membership of the SS and were not to be admitted into it.

A few

months later, after the outbreak of the war against the Soviet Union, these

ﬁrst steps towards recruiting volunteers who did not count as ‘Teutons’

were to lead to the creation of ‘legions’ in the Waffen-SS. Despite the

relaxation of the selection criteria, however, Himmler’s ﬁrst recruitment

programme in northern and western Europe was not particularly successful.

Up until June 1941, apart from the Finns, the SS had recruited only 2,000

west European volunteers.

The ethnic German minorities in eastern and south-eastern Europe

proved more productive. They were to provide a reservoir not only for

the Waffen-SS but also for armed self-defence units operating under the

aegis of the SS. Shortly after the start of the Second World War the Waffen-

SS had already begun recruiting among the ethnic Germans from Yugosla-

via who were working in the Reich. The Waffen-SS’s recruitment ofﬁce

had also begun to take steps to register the ethnic Germans in Yugoslavia

itself, even though Go

ring had forbidden it.

On Himmler’s instructions,

Berger recruited 200 ethnic Germans from Yugoslavia and, after the coun-

try was occupied in April 1941, increased these efforts considerably. The

other ethnic German minorities in the Balkans now also became a target for

SS recruiters.

First moves in this direction were made as early as 1940. In August 1940

the German R eich forced through Hungarian claims to territory at the

expense of Romania in the so-called Second Vienna Award, thereby

shifting borders: the year 1940 501

documenting its dominant position in the Balkans. This had direct reper-

cussions not only for the aspirations to independence of the ethnic German

groups in both countries but also for Himmler’s and Berger’s recruitment

measures.

In the summer of 1939 the Waffen-SS had already recruited a group of

sixty to eighty ethnic German grammar-school boys from Romania and

brought them to Germany. There these young men joined the Waffen-SS

and received basic military training.

In the spring of 1940 a further

thousand young men, who allegedly were needed in the Reich as agricul-

tural labour, were given a preliminary medical then taken over the border to

Vienna and there given their ﬁnal medical examination; 700 of them joined

the Waffen-SS.

This recruitment drive, which became known as the

‘1,000-man action’, represented the start of the systematic recruitment of

ethnic Germans from Romania for the Waffen-SS, which reached its high

point in 1943.

The Second Vienna Award and the consequent ceding of territory

brought about the abdication of the King of Romania. The pro-German

Marshall Ion Antonescu formed a new government and, on 9 November

1940, Nazi sympathizers within the German minority exploited the political

upheaval to found the NSDAP of the Ethnic German Group in Romania,

Berger’s son-in-law, Andreas Schmidt, taking over the leadership.

Despite this close connection between Schmidt and Berger, the party’s

foundation had taken place without the prior approval of Himmler, who in

the meantime had become the central ﬁgure in ethnic German politics. In

fact, Himmler regarded the founding of this party, which called itself

National Socialist and displayed the swastika ﬂag, as ‘entirely detrimental

to us’; the other Balkan states would consider it a threat to their indepen-

dence and it would cause unnecessary annoyance to Russia. Thus, the party

should display ‘the swastika as little as possible’.

‘As always happens in

ethnic German questions,’ Himmler complained to Berger, he ‘was told

about it only when the damage had been done’: ‘If something goes well

then it’s always the others who are responsible, but if something doesn’t go

off as planned then it’s the Reichsfu

hrer’s fault.’

In connection with the Vienna Award the Germans imposed a minority

agreement on the Hungarian government, according to which the already

Nazi-inclined National League of Germans in Hungary was declared to be

the sole legitimate representative of the ethnic Germans in Hungary and

membership of the ethnic group was linked to a commitment to Nazi

502 shifting borders: the year 1940

ideology.

However, Franz Basch, the leader of the ethnic group, rejected

an initial move by Berger to recruit 500 ethnic Germans from Hungary for

the Waffen-SS. Nevertheless, Hungarian Germans who had ﬂed to the

Reich or were declared to be ‘itinerant workers’ did join the Waffen-SS.

In the autumn of 1940 Sturmbannfu

hrer Viktor Nageler, whom the SS

had sent to Slovakia in the summer of 1940 as an adviser to the Hlinka

Guard, began to assess volunteers for the Guard in accordance with ‘racial’

principles. Between November 1940 and January 1941 the Danube SS

recruitment ofﬁce carried out an assessment, disguised as a medical exami-

nation, of a total of 4,694 men. More than half of the candidates proved to

be ‘suitable’; 40 per cent were even ‘eligible for the SS’. In January 1941

Himmler approved further assessments but did not want to do anything ‘for

the time being’.

The SS had also created a paramilitary organization within the German

ethnic group in Slovakia, which called itself the ‘Voluntary Protection

Squad’, and, in addition, a clandestine SS unit with the title ‘Einsatztruppe’,

which, in accordance with Himmler’s instructions, was expanded to form

an ‘ET Sturmbann’ and served as a source of recruitment for the Waffen-

SS.

At the end of 1940, however, Berger informed Himmler that Franz

Karmasin, the leader of the ethnic group, was causing ‘the men all sorts of

difﬁculties’ because he considered the SS was exerting too much inﬂuence

on the formation of the Hlinka Guard. For, in the meantime, Sturmbann-

hrer Nageler, who had been assigned to the Hlinka Guard as an adviser,

had started to create an elite unit from the members of the Guard, the so-

called Wehrmannschaften (defence teams), who were envisaged as in the

future helping the SS to integrate Slovakia into a greater Germanic empire.

By creating such an elite, Nageler intended nothing less than to select

racially ‘valuable’ Slovaks in order to amalgamate them with the ‘Germanic’

population. This was a project with which Himmler sympathized and

which he was to return to in the following year.

However, the imple-

mentation of such ideas would have damaged in the long term the

privileged position the German ethic group was claiming for itself in

Slovakia, and this was the reason for Karmasin’s opposition.

By contrast, and in direct opposition to Nageler’s scheme, Berger advo-

cated creating out of the ET Sturmbann a Standarte of the General SS in

Slovakia. However, Himmler considered such ideas ‘premature’.

At this

point Himmler was concerned above all to avoid anything that might

damage German–Slovak relations; the accusations being made against him

shifting borders: the year 1940 503

in connection with the failed legionnaires’ putsch in Romania, to which we

shall return in the next section, made this appear advisable.

Nevertheless,

despite Karmasin’s obstruction and Himmler’s cautious approach, by the

end of 1941 the Waffen-SS had managed, through individual commitment,

to recruit 600 ethnic Germans from Slovakia.

During 1940 the SS also began trying to recruit from the ethnic Germans

in Alsace, though with only moderate success. At the beginning of 1941

there were only around 200 volunteers. At short notice Himmler expected

those responsible to produce an immediate increase to 500 recruits: ‘Ger-

manic tribes who do not have a single son participating in the current great

freedom struggle for the reordering of Europe will lose all self-respect and

will be unable to retrieve it for decades.’

Himmler has a go at foreign policy

On 23 October 1940 Hitler met the Spanish dictator, Franco, at the railway

station in Hendaye in order to discuss the modalities of Spain joining the

Axis alliance, without, however, achieving a really signiﬁcant result. A few

days before this meeting Himmler had travelled to Spain and, among other

things, had met Franco. Evidently the presence of the Reichsfu

hrer was

intended to reinforce the ﬁnal discussions concerning security for the

meeting of the two dictators in Hendaye.

Moreover, Himmler will have

used his visit to discuss the relatively intense German–Spanish police rela-

tions. The ofﬁcial reports, however, gave the impression of it being primar-

ily a tourist visit.

On 20 October, after stops in San Sebastian and Burgos, Himmler arrived

by train in Madrid. According to the Vo

lkischer Beobachter: ‘The streets

leading to the North Station were packed with people and Falangists in

uniform together with units of the newly formed Spanish police lined the

route to the Ritz Hotel. Flags were ﬂying throughout Madrid in celebration.

The Reichsfu

hrer-SS was warmly greeted by the population on his drive

through the streets.’

On the same day Himmler was received by Franco,

and in the afternoon he attended a bullﬁght where, according to the

lkischer Beobachter, his arrival was greeted ‘with loud applause’.

On the following day Himmler went to Toledo in order to look at the

historic fortiﬁcations, the Alca

zar, which in the meantime had become a

pilgrimage site for Spanish nationalists. In 1936, at the beginning of the Civil

504 shifting borders: the year 1940

War, for two months Franco supporters had withstood a siege by superior

Republican forces.

The day after he visited the archaeological museum in

Madrid, studied intently a map of the barbarian invasions, and asked the

director of the museum to provide him with a copy of some of the

exhibits.

That evening Himmler spoke at a meeting of the Madrid branch of the

German NSDAP, in which he gave the audience some of his impressions of

his recent trip. He was quoted by the Vo

lkischer Beobachter as saying: ‘One

can still see in the Germanic physiognomies of the northern Spanish traces

of the German blood that over the centuries has been lost to the Reich.

However, since the year 1933 this tragic development has ceased.’ Himmler

then turned ‘to the great settlement project in the German east’, and ‘gave

graphic details of the huge trek involved in the resettlement programme’. In

the east, according to Himmler, ‘not only [ . . . ] were settlements being

constructed but the landscape is being given a new appearance’. Himmler

noted with approval that in Spain they had begun the necessary reforestation

of the barren Karst areas and the plains, and continued—now evidently

mounting one of his hobby-horses: ‘We too must create windbreaks in the

German east by planting dense forests. This would block the Asiatic wind

coming from the Steppes.’

On 23 October he ﬂew to Barcelona, from

where on the following day he set out for home.

During the coming years ofﬁcial state visits by Himmler such as the one

to Spain were to be relatively infrequent. This was not simply because the

number of states with which the Third Reich still maintained diplomatic

relations continually declined, but above all because Foreign Minister von

Ribbentrop regarded all diplomatic activities undertaken by Himmler with

great suspicion and endeavoured to restrict them. The reason for this change

in attitude was the SD’s unsuccessful initiatives in Romania at the beginning

of 1941.

In January 1941 the SD intelligence network in Romania had supported

an unsuccessful putsch by the Iron Guard, the paramilitary organization of

the Romanian fascists, against the dictator Antonescu, a close ally of Nazi

Germany, and subsequently helped the leader of the putsch, Horia Sima, to

escape to Germany. This dilettante action not only discredited the SD in the

eyes of the Nazi leadership but also weakened Himmler’s position vis-a

-vis

the Foreign Ministry. Hitler explicitly disapproved of the SD’s independent

initiative and instructed Himmler to keep Jost’s SD foreign department on a

tight leash.

On 21 February Himmler met Jost and the people responsible

shifting borders: the year 1940 505

for the security police’s and SD’s activities in Romania for a discussion of

these events.

Himmler always rejected accusations that he himself had

supported Sima’s putsch. In fact, when, during the planning stage of the so-

called legionnaires’ putsch, he had been asked for support he had sent Sima a

letter in Hitler’s name admonishing him to work collegially with Anto-

nescu. However, he could not dispute the reproach that his agents in

Romania had at the very least acted without authorization.

From now on Himmler showed a demonstrative lack of interest in

Romanian domestic politics. A few years later, at a meeting with Antonescu

in March 1944, he claimed that ‘after the unfortunate legionnaires’ putsch I

[kept] my people out of Romania’. Antonescu, at least, was not convinced

by this retreat: he made it unmistakably clear to Himmler at this meeting

that the SD was encouraging opposition to him in Bucharest. Himmler

replied with disarming naivety that, ‘all in all’, he could not ‘believe that’, as

the police attache

had only ‘two or three assistants’.

As a direct consequence of the ‘unfortunate legionnaires’ putsch’, in April

1941 Ribbentrop wanted to cancel the agreement he had reached with

Himmler at the start of the war about police attache

s. The agreement had,

in particular, granted the SD the right of reporting independently to the

RSHA.

Ribbentrop now demanded from all members of German foreign

missions a declaration, on their word of honour, that they were not working

for the SD or for military intelligence.

The closing down of the ‘Ofﬁce of

the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce in Pressburg’ in July 1941, which had

already begun intelligence operations in Slovakia comparable to those in

the Reich, must be seen in this context. Evidently the Foreign Ministry

feared that, as in Romania, independent initiatives by the SD could jeopar-

dize relations with a Reich ally.

Ribbentrop’s response put an end to his friendship with Himmler. ‘It

seems to be all over between Ribbentrop and Heini,’ Margarete Himmler

wrote in her diary on 8 May 1941. ‘Herr v. R is too full of himself.’

The

cooling of personal relations most probably contributed to the slow progress

of negotiations between the SS and Foreign Ministry concerning the future

position of police attache

s at German foreign missions that produced an

agreement only after several months; as Heydrich noted, ‘a peace agreement

that was so important for the Reichsfu

hrer in human terms’.

In the

agreement of August 1941 Himmler and Ribbentrop concurred on the

following points: the representatives of the SS and police working

abroad should refrain from all diplomatic activities; if, in the course of

506 shifting borders: the year 1940

their intelligence work, they came across material relevant to foreign policy

this should be handed over to the Foreign Ministry. Himmler’s agents

would in future be led by police attache

s, who were responsible to the

heads of mission and would be required to report to them.

At this time so-called police liaison ofﬁcers were attached to the German

diplomatic missions in Soﬁa, Shanghai, Rome, Tokyo, Lisbon, Pressburg

(Bratislava), Madrid, Paris, Belgrade, and Bucharest. Representatives of the

SD’s foreign department were located in Addis Ababa, Soﬁa, Shanghai,

Reval (Tallin), Athens, Teheran, Tokyo, Belgrade, Bucharest, Leningrad,

Bern, Pressburg, Ankara, and Budapest.

Furthermore, the August agree-

ment included the sending of further police attache

s to German foreign

missions. As a result, at the beginning of 1942 Ribbentrop sent Himmler’s

representatives to Helsinki, Stockholm, and Bern. However, he was not

prepared to go beyond the agreement that had been reached and therefore

declined to accept the appointment of SS leaders to the consulates in Izmir

and Trapezunt (Trabzon), Casablanca, and Marseilles.

After the crisis of 1941 Ribbentrop claimed the right to approve Himm-

ler’s foreign trips. To support his stance he could refer to a circular of August

1941 from Hans-Heinrich Lammers, head of the Reich Chancellery, that

established the requirement for all leading ﬁgures to secure permission for

trips abroad.

When Himmler wanted to make a ﬂying visit to Belgrade in

October 1942 to inspect the ‘Prince Eugene’ division, Ribbentrop in-

structed that ‘the Reichsfu

hrer-SS’s trip to Belgrade should be treated just

like any other foreign trip’.

However, Himmler visited Belgrade even

without permission,

and the Foreign Ministry decided that it was advis-

able to take no further action.

When, in spring 1943, Himmler planned a

visit to Mussolini, Ribbentrop once again intervened in the preparations for

the visit, and it did not in fact take place.

Ribbentrop also attempted to subject the visits that Himmler received

from abroad to a conﬁrmation procedure which, however, the latter always

succeeded in smoothly avoiding. Thus, Ribbentrop complained to Himm-

ler in 1944 that ‘the Hungarian Interior Minister Vajna’s trip to Germany

should have been submitted to the Fu

hrer for approval via the Foreign

Ministry’; in future he should please ensure that this happened.

100

Himmler

replied that in principle this was true, but Vajna was a ‘special case’ which

‘[I] have of course cleared with the Fu

hrer’.

101

shifting borders: the year 1940 507

The extension of Jewish persecution

In the spring of 1940 the Nazi government was once more engaged in

planning a ‘ﬁnal solution’ of the ‘Jewish question’. Now, after victory in the

west, the French colony of Madagascar appeared to be the answer.

102

This

was by no means an original idea. Ever since the end of the nineteenth

century the notion that one could settle European Jews in large numbers in

Madagascar had been very popular in anti-Semitic circles in various Euro-

pean countries.

103

Himmler provided an important impetus, presenting Hitler, on 25 May

1940, with a memorandum ‘Concerning the Treatment of the Alien Popu-

lation in the East’ in which he expressed the intention of seeing ‘the term

“Jew” [ . . . ] completely eliminated through the massive emigration of all

Jews to Africa or to some colony’. However, when discussing the plan to

steal children ‘of good racial quality’ from Poland he distanced himself from

the ‘physical extermination of a people’; that would be ‘fundamentally un-

German and impossible’. Hitler approved the memorandum in principle,

104

and during the summer made a number of positive comments about the

Madagascar project,

105

which was now being developed both by the For-

eign Ministry and by the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce.

Franz Rademacher, the head of the ‘Jewish Affairs’ desk in the Foreign

Ministry, presented a plan on 3 July. A few days earlier Heydrich had

requested to be allowed to participate in the planned ‘territorial solution’,

which would affect the 3.25 million people concerned.

106

Rademacher’s

motto, ‘all Jews out of Europe’, makes clear how the ‘territorial solution’

had come to be envisaged in the meantime. Rademacher proposed that

France should give Germany Madagascar as a mandate ‘for the solution of

the Jewish question’: ‘The part of the island that is not required for military

purposes will be placed under the administrative control of a German police

governor, who will be subordinate to the Reichsfu

hrer-SS. Apart from that

the Jews will be allowed to govern themselves in this territory.’ This would

ensure that the Jews would be ‘hostages in German hands for the future

good behaviour of their racial comrades in America’. Thus, the Madagascar

project was envisaged as hostage-taking (as indeed had been the case with

the plan for a ‘Jewish reservation’ in Poland).

508 shifting borders: the year 1940

A memo of Rademacher’s dated 2 July (‘Plan for Solving the Jewish

Question’) contained more details of this project:

From the German point of view the Madagascar solution represents the creation of

a large ghetto. The security police are the only people who have the necessary

experience in this area; they have the means of preventing escapes from the island.

Moreover, they have the experience to enable them to impose the appropriate

punishments that will be necessary in view of the hostile acts committed against

Germany by Jews in America.

107

During the following weeks the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce produced its

own version of the Madagascar Plan, which was issued as a booklet on 15

August. It referred to the creation of a ‘police state’ in Madagascar for the 4

million Jews under German rule. A time-scale of four years was envisaged

for their transportation by ship.

108

Furthermore, in August Viktor Brack, the ofﬁcial within the Chancellery

of the Fu

hrer of the NSDAP responsible for organizing the ‘Euthanasia’

programme, put forward a proposal ‘to use the transport organization that

he has developed during wartime for the Fu

hrer’s “special assignment” for

transporting the Jews later on to Madagascar’, a suggestion that was explic-

itly approved by Rademacher.

109

The fact that Philipp Bouhler, the head of

the Chancellery of the Fu

hrer of the NSDAP, was being considered as

governor of a future colony in East Africa

110

also demonstrates how sinister

the whole Madagascar project was. The idea that over a period of years

millions of Jews would be deported to Madagascar, where a large number of

them would presumably succumb relatively quickly to the inhospitable

conditions—leaving aside the ‘punishments’ to be inﬂicted by the security

police—clearly demonstrates that, in the ﬁnal analysis, this project envisaged

their physical extermination even if, in the event of ‘good behaviour’ by the

United States, this might have been subject to revision. Thus, the plans, in

which the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce was heavily involved, were develop-

ing step by step in the direction of the ‘extermination’ that Himmler had

himself rejected in May.

However fantastic the Madagascar project may sound, the Reich Security

Main Ofﬁce took it seriously. The Madagascar plan provided a substitute for

the plans for a ‘Jewish reservation’ that they had not been able to realize in

Poland and in which they now included the west European Jews. They

most likely assumed that if Madagascar failed to work out then in good

time they would ﬁnd some other territory. What is remarkable about

shifting borders: the year 1940 509