Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life
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Himmler began to distinguish between settled and nomadic Gypsies. He
ordered that ‘police measures should not be taken’ on principle against
indigenous Gypsies in the General Government, provided they were set-
tled;
123
they were not, therefore—as had been the norm in occupied Poland
since 1939—to be murdered. During 1942 the security police applied the
same policy as in the General Government to the occupied Soviet terri-
tories, where in many places Gypsies had been shot by the Einsatzgruppen
irrespective of their way of life,. Finally, in autumn 1943 Himmler ordered
nomadic Gypsies in Soviet territories to be sent to concentration camps, and
in spring 1944 Gypsies from Lithuania and Byelorussia were in fact deported
to Auschwitz.
124
From 1942 onwards Himmler also pursued a differentiated policy towards
the Gypsies living in the Reich, though in a very different form. He imposed
on the SS and police apparatus his view that in future they should distin-
guish between the ‘pure-race’ Sinti and Lalleri (including ‘half-castes’
capable of being integrated into these groups) as well as the Roma on the
one hand, and the remaining ‘half-castes’ on the other. After the end of the
war the Gypsies ‘of pure race’ should be placed in a ‘reservation’ and
continue the way of life ‘peculiar to their kind’ there in isolation. The
other Gypsies should be deported to camps.
125
In order to provide a scholarly basis for this differentiation, in September
1942 Himmler assigned to the Ahnenerbe the task of researching the future
of the Gypsy language and customs.
126
In October 1942 the RSHA issued a
directive on his instructions, according to which ‘pure-race Gypsies’ would
‘in future [enjoy] a certain freedom of movement’, that is to say, ‘to wander
in a certain area’ and to live according to their ‘traditions and customs’ and
to follow ‘an occupation peculiar to their kind’.
127
At the beginning of
November 1942 there is more evidence of Himmler’s personal interest in
the plan to ‘reorganize the treatment of the Gypsies in the Reich’.
128
Thus, as far as Germany was concerned, Himmler ensured that the
persecution of Gypsies was focused primarily on Gypsy half-castes, who
had become settled and, therefore, in his view had departed from the way of
life ‘peculiar to their kind’; in Poland and the Soviet Union, on the other
hand, it was precisely the nomadic Gypsies who were persecuted.
On 10 December 1942, therefore, Himmler ordered that ‘Gypsy half-
castes, Roma Gypsies, and members of Balkan Gypsy clans not of German
blood’ living in the Reich be sent to concentration camps.
129
‘Socially
adjusted’ Gypsies were not to be deported, although the criteria for this
670 a new opportunity?
classification remained unclear.
130
Beforehand he had managed to meet the
concerns expressed by Hitler and the Party Chancellery
131
—Himmler’s
idea of a racially differentiated treatment of the various Gypsy groups in
the Reich was directly opposed to the attitude of the state and party
leadership, who regarded all Gypsies as ‘inferior’ and wanted them all
murdered. With his decision of December 1942 to deport Gypsies the
Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS demonstrated his implacable determination to implement
the negative aspect of his policy towards the Gypsy population. By contrast,
the positive measures to maintain ‘pure-race’ Gypsies were postponed until
the end of the war.
If one bears in mind that since December 1942 the regime had been
simultaneously preparing the last great wave of Jewish deportations from
the Reich, and that, in autumn 1942, Himmler had agreed with Thierack to
deport ‘asocials’ to concentration camps,
132
one can appreciate the broader
context within which he took his decision to deport the Gypsies in Decem-
ber 1942: the Reichsfu
¨
hrer was relentlessly pursuing the ‘cleansing’ of the
area that was one day to be the core territory of the Greater Germanic Reich.
On 15 January 1943 a meeting took place in the RSHA at which
representatives of the Reich Criminal Police Office, the SD, the RuSHA,
as well as members of the Research Centre for Racial Hygiene and Popula-
tion Biology were present.
133
The meeting was designed to establish the
precise criteria for the differentiation of the two groups of Gypsies, as well as
to deal with the question of what was to be done with those who were not
to be deported. The ‘solution’ reached was to sterilize the great majority of
the ‘half-castes’. A telex from the Reich Criminal Police Office dated 29
January 1943
134
instructed the Kripo offices to register those ‘socially
adjusted Gypsy half-castes’ who were not to be deported.
135
Between February and July 1944 some 20,000 Gypsies living in the
Reich—around three-quarters of the people who belonged to this minori-
ty—were transported to Auschwitz, where they were compelled to live in a
special ‘Gypsy camp’.
136
Together with those people who had been de-
ported from territories occupied by Germany, the total number of Gypsies
transported there amounted to around 23,000.
137
From April 1944 onwards Gypsies ‘capable of work’ were transferred
from Birkenau to concentration camps in the Reich, a total of barely 1,600
people. Of the other Gypsies deported to Birkenau, around 6,000 were still
alive in spring 1944. In August the camp authorities took the decision—
presumably in light of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews to
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Auschwitz—to liquidate the ‘Gypsy camp’. In all, around 5,600 Gypsies
were murdered with gas in Auschwitz.
138
There is no evidence of a direct
order from Himmler for this; however, in view of the detailed instructions
for dealing with the Gypsy question that Himmler had given hitherto, it can
be assumed that this decision was treated as ‘a matter for the boss’ and at the
very least would not have been taken without his approval.
In the occupied Soviet territories at least 10,000 people and possibly
many more were victims of the Gypsy persecution,
139
in Poland around
8,000.
140
In Serbia the Wehrmacht and police murdered around 1 ,000
Gypsies.
141
In Slovakia measures to arrest Gypsies were only seriously
adopted after the German intervention in the summer of 1944: SS-Einsatz-
gruppe H may also have murdered up to 1,000 Gypsies.
142
At the end of
1944, under the rule of the Arrow Cross, numerous Roma were deported
from Hungary to forced labour in concentration camps in Germany.
143
In the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, by contrast, the persecution
consisted of control measures, bans on settlement, and the confinement of
Gypsies and other members of the ‘travelling population’ to particular sites.
Here a differentiated Gypsy policy was not pursued and the number of
victims remained in the hundreds.
144
All in all, as is clear from this overview, the SS murdered tens of thousands
of Gypsies, but not with the same determination and systematic approach as
was the case with the Jews. Himmler’s notion of a differentiated treatment of
the Gypsies in the future Greater Germanic Reich affected specific Gypsy
groups with its brutal arbitrariness, depending on whether the Reichsfu
¨
hrer,
operating in his fantasy world, considered them either particularly racially
valuable or particularly dangerous.
More men for the Waffen-SS
In 1942 Himmler had extended the recruitment basis of the Waffen-SS both
within and outside Germany; from the end of the year onwards he en-
deavoured to establish new divisions from German SS members. In Febru-
ary 1943 Hitler agreed to his setting up a division formed from members of
the Hitler Youth (which later acquired the title ‘Hitler Youth Division’),
and in October two more SS-Panzergrenadier divisions—‘Go
¨
tz von Berli-
chingen’ and ‘Reichsfuhrer-SS’—composed of members of the Reich
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Labour Service. In the same month the divisions ‘Leibstandarte’, ‘Das
Reich’, ‘Death’s Head’, ‘Viking’, and ‘Hohenstaufen’, which were already
substantially mechanized, were renamed SS-Panzer divisions.
145
By recruiting from the Hitler Youth age cohorts and from Reich Labour
service camps, which in some cases involved exerting considerable pres-
sure—Himmler himself spoke of our ‘involuntary volunteers’
146
—the SS
had finally given up the voluntary principle in Germany as well. Members
of the General SS were in any case drafted into the Waffen-SS en masse, and
the recruitment of non-members of the SS, which had increased from 1942
onwards, now became the norm.
147
The main focus of recruitment, how-
ever, continued to be abroad. It is clear from a register from the end of 1943
that at this point 54,000 ethnic Germans from Romania, 22,000 from
Hungary, more than 5,000 from Slovakia, 21,000 from the Banat and Serbia,
more than 18,000 from Croatia, and 1,292 from North Schleswig were
serving with the Waffen-SS, the vast majority of them on account of the
‘duty of military service’ introduced by Himmler for ethnic Germans.
148
On 12 May 1943 the German and Romanian governments signed an
agreement that regulated the recruitment of ethnic Germans for the Waf-
fen-SS and ensured that volunteers retained their Romanian citizenship.
149
On the basis of this agreement, in the second half of 1943 an increasing
number of ethnic Germans from the Romanian part of the Banat and from
Siebenbu
¨
rgen were transferred to the ‘Prince Eugene’ division.
150
In fact
the recruitment had already begun weeks before the agreement had been
signed, and some of the ‘volunteers’ had been forced into military ser-
vice.
151
As early as 30 July 1943 Berger reported that 41,560 men had been
recruited. Himmler responded by sending him ‘hearty thanks’: ‘As with so
many of your other actions and achievements you have done an enormous
amount for our German fatherland and the Fu
¨
hrer.’
152
During his trip to Germany in June 1942 the Hungarian Prime Minister,
Miklo
´
sKa
´
llay, had promised Ribbentrop a further 10,000 ethnic Germans
for the Waffen-SS.
153
In May 1943 an agreement concerning recruitment
was worked out with the Hungarian government.
154
However, Franz
Basch, the leader of the ethnic German group, was ‘gloomy’ about its
success: the volunteers would lose their Hungarian citizenship; he advo-
cated compulsory enlistment.
155
This is in fact what happened, and in
August of 22,000 ‘volunteers’ 18,000 were enlisted as fit.
156
The occupation of Hungary on 12 March 1944 opened up quite new
perspectives, from Himmler’s point of view. The Reichsfu
¨
hrer-SS planned
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to establish a cavalry and two grenadier divisions each from ethnic Germans
of Hungarian nationality and ‘Hungarian citizens of mainly German ori-
gins’, in other words, a total of six divisions. Evidently in this way he wanted
to create another SS army out of thin air.
157
The agreement for such an
SS recruitment programme was signed on 14 April 1944.
158
Moreover,
Himmler forced the Hungarian government to transfer ethnic Germans
serving in the Hungarian army to the Waffen-SS. He had already made the
same agreement with the Slovakian government at the beginning of 1944.
In this way the SS secured an additional 50,000 ethnic German soldiers from
both countries, although too few to create separate divisions for each of
them.
159
Of the approximately 25,000 ethnic Germans from Croatia liable for
military service around 17,000 were serving in the Waffen-SS after
the existing militias, task forces, and Croatian-German territorials had been
integrated into the ‘Prince Eugene’ division.
160
A mass mutiny which
occurred in the summer of 1943 sheds some light on conditions in the
division. As a result, 173 members of the division, all of them ethnic Germans
from Croatia, were arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp. On 17
October Himmler wrote to the divisional commander, Arthur Phleps, in
exceptionally moderate terms; evidently he was well aware of conditions in
the division, in which many were serving by no means voluntarily. Accord-
ing to Himmler, what was decisive about the case was the fact that the ethnic
Germans were being continually insulted by their superiors. In particular, the
‘nice Balkan habit’ had spread of ‘cursing the mother of the person
concerned’. Himmler ordered drastic counter-measures. He instructed that
‘in every such case in which NCOs or men curse a comrade’s mother, they
are to be shot on the spot’. In particularly serious cases the person should be
hanged. He had nevertheless, so he informed Phleps, ‘consigned’ the 173
ethnic Germans to a camp so that they could be trained ‘to be good
volunteers of the Waffen-SS’ and improve their knowledge of German.
161
Apart from the recruitment of ethnic Germans and ‘Germanic’ volunteers,
from 1942 onwards Himmler began increasingly to recruit men who, in
Nazi jargon, were termed ‘ethnic aliens’. As early as 1940 he had formed
‘legions’ in north-west Europe—with limited success, as we have seen—
whose members did not have to meet the high ‘racial’ standards of the SS,
and during the following years he engaged in massive recruitment in
Wallonia and France. But if he was permitting men of ‘Roman’ or other
674 a new opportunity?
non-Germanic origins to serve in the SS volunteer divisions then surely this
practice could be expanded?
He embarked on one of the most audacious plans in this sphere in
February 1943, after he had received Hitler’s approval for establishing a
division of Bosnian Muslims along the lines of the Bosnian-Herzogovinan
regiments of the Austrian empire.
162
He met with opposition from the
Croatian authorities, however. Furious, he told his representative in Croa-
tia, Konstantin Kammerhofer, ‘to intervene using all your weight’.
163
In the
end the latter had the recruits conscripted on the basis of the general duty of
military service. The men received their training in France and Silesia. Like
their predecessors in the Austrian empire, the soldiers of the 13th SS
Volunteer Mountain Division (Croatia) wore a red fez (in their combat
uniforms it was grey) with a tassel and a badge which combined an eagle, the
SS skull, and a swastika. Instead of the SS runes, on their right collar they
wore a model of a ‘Handschar’, or scimitar. With reference to that, in May
1944 the division was renamed ‘Handschar’.
Himmler was quite prepared to respect the culture and way of life of his
Islamic volunteers, and, as always when he was interested in something, got
involved in details. He enquired of the Grand Mufti what Islamic food
regulations should be adhered to as far as supplying the division was
concerned, and then announced in August 1943 that he would grant to all
‘Islamic members of the SS and police [ . . . ] as an absolute special privilege
[ . . . ] that, in accordance with their religious laws, they should never be
served pork or sausage containing pork and should never be given alcohol to
drink’. He should be informed of all contraventions of this order. And,
‘I also forbid any joking about these matters such as typically occurs among
comrades or any “pulling the legs” of the Muslim volunteers’.
164
He also
concerned himself with practical questions: the new fezes of the division did
not meet with his approval. He told Pohl that their colour had to be
changed and they had to be slightly trimmed.
165
Himmler was not only prepared to allow the Grand Mufti to appoint
several imams for his Bosnian division, he even aimed to allow members of
the division to pursue Islamic studies; indeed, he went so far as to envisage
establishing an ‘Islamic institute somewhere in Germany in which the Mufti
can train imams so that he can have a corps of priests who are personally
loyal to him and at the same time have been appropriately politically
trained’.
166
For after all, Islam and Nazism were linked by their common
hostility to ‘the Jews’.
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Ill. 31. The mountain infantry company of the ‘Handschar’ division on the
parade ground.
676 a new opportunity?
‘Why should anything come between Muslims in Europe and in the
whole world and us Germans?’ he asked the 13th SS Mountain Division in a
speech in January 1944:
We have the same aims. There can be no more solid a basis for living together than
common aims and common ideals. For 200 years Germany has not had the slightest
cause for friction with Islam [ . . . ] Now we Germans and you in this division, you
Muslims, share a common feeling of gratitude that God—you call him Allah, but
it’s the same—h as sent our tormented European nations the Fu
¨
hrer, the Fu
¨
hrer
who will rid first Europe and then the whole world of the Jew s, these enemies of
our Reich, who robbed us of victory in 1918 so that the sacrifice of two million
dead was in vain. They are also your enemies, for the Jew has been your enemy
from time immemorial.
167
Reading this speech, one might conclude that Himmler’s expression of
respect for the world religion of Islam was genuine. In fact, however, his
emphasis on common ideals was nothing more than cynical hypocrisy. Two
weeks later Himmler reiterated to the Reich propaganda offices why he
valued the Croatian volunteers so highly: ‘I must say I have nothing against
Islam; for it preaches to its members in this division and promises them
paradise if they have fought and died. A practical and agreeable religion for
soldiers!’
168
In battle, however, the division disappointed his expectations. Deployed
against partisans in their homeland at the end of 1943, the force proved
relatively ineffective and, what is more, increasingly rebellious. At the end
of 1944 Himmler ended the experiment.
169
Two other Muslim units—the
21st SS Mountain Division ‘Skanderbeg’ composed of Albanians and a
Croatian division named ‘Kama’—were also short-lived. Both had been
established only in 1944. ‘Skanderbeg’ was dissolved in autumn 1944 and
‘Kama’ appears never to have been ready for combat.
170
As a result,
Himmler’s original plan of establishing two army corps of Bosnian and
Albanian troops in the Balkans and, by the end of 1944, of combining
them with the ‘Prince Eugene Division’ to form an autonomous SS army
had failed.
171
In May 1942 Himmler had still been hesitating with regard to Baltic units.
At the end of August 1942, however, he approved the establishment of an
Estonian legion and shortly afterwards the Wehrmacht transferred a number
of Estonian battalions to the Waffen-SS for this purpose.
172
In January 1943
Himmler personally inspected a group of fifty-four Estonian legionaries
who were attending a Waffen-SS training course for NCOs, and received
a new opp ortunity ? 677
a ‘good impression’ of their ‘racial quality’. He therefore considered it
worthwhile to encourage German-language lessons and ideological indoc-
trination for the soldiers.
173
Himmler never formally recognized the Estonians as Teutons, for that
would have brought him into conflict with German occupation policy in
that country. In his view, however, they were so similar to Teutons that
there would be no danger in racially mixing with them. ‘The Estonians’, so
he informed the heads of his Main and Leadership Offices, ‘really belong to
the few ethnic groups with whom, after having excluded a very few
elements, we could mix without incurring any damage to ourselves.’
174
As we have seen, he had reached similar conclusions about the Slovaks and
the Walloons.
At the end of 1942, on Berger’s advice, Himmler secured Hitler’s ap-
proval for a Latvian Waffen-SS legion.
175
In April 1943 6,500 Estonians and
Latvians had been recruited.
176
The Estonian and Latvian legions were
strengthened by the addition of German SS and transformed into the
Estonian and Latvian Volunteer Brigades. Shortly afterwards they were
expanded into divisions.
177
For this purpose Himmler introduced compul-
sory military service into the Reich Commissariat Ostland: Estonians and
Latvians—Himmler considered Lithuanians unreliable—could now be
conscripted into the Waffen-SS.
178
A third Baltic SS division was created
out of the police battalions of the auxiliary police, which Himmler had
established in 1941.
179
From April 1943 onwards he allowed Ukrainians from the old Austro-
Hungarian territory to be recruited for a Galician division. Out of 100,000
applicants 30,000 were accepted.
180
Himmler visited the division, which
was given the title 14th SS-Waffengrenadier division after it had completed
its training. In a speech to its commanders he dealt, among other things,
with criticism that had emerged within its ranks. The tough drill was not
harassment, and Galicians too had the possibility of being promoted. To
prevent ‘unrest’, he forbade the men to engage in ‘politics’ and, apart from
that, preached his list of virtues in a slightly altered form. Apart from
obedience, comradeship, and loyalty, he considered it particularly impor-
tant to explain to the Ukrainians the importance of ‘order’.
181
The division
did not last long. It was deployed against the Red Army and in July 1943
almost completely wiped out.
182
The establishment of other ‘ethnic alien’ volunteer units during 1944 met
with an equal lack of success. Apart from two Russian, two Hungarian, one
678 a new opportunity?
mixed German and Hungarian, and two Cossack divisions, there were
several smaller units such as the ‘SS-East Turkish Armed Unit’, the ‘Cauca-
sian Armed Unit’, as well as Serbian, Romanian, and Bulgarian units, and
the SS tried to reorganize the Indian legion that had been taken over from
the Wehrmacht and had been recruited in POW camps. A British legion,
also to be composed from POWs, could not be formed in 1943 because of
lack of interest.
If these units were ever deployed—in several cases this did not happen—
their military performance was far inferior to that of the average German
units.
183
Hitler himself was very critical of the whole programme. In view
of the occupation of their homelands the members of these units naturally
lacked motivation and were unreliable, as he commented in 1945, shortly
before the end of the war. Given the serious shortage of armaments,
deploying these units was ‘a luxury’, ‘stupid’, ‘nonsense’.
184
For Himmler, however, their immediate military usefulness was not
necessarily the main point. Right from the start of the recruitment
programme Himmler had made a sharp distinction between full Waffen-
SS divisions, whose members had to satisfy the same ‘racial’ criteria as all
other members of the SS, and volunteer units composed of foreigners who
did not have to satisfy these criteria. In his view, the big increase in the
Waffen-SS must not be allowed to lead to a dilution of the racial criteria for
acceptance into the SS.
185
Himmler made it clear, for example, that one
should not speak of a Ukrainian SS man, but only of ‘Ukrainians serving in
armed units of the SS’. The ‘term SS man, which means so much to us and
which we regard so highly,’ should not be used for ‘the numerous members
of alien ethnic groups which we are now organizing under the command of
the SS’.
186
Himmler insisted that only men in groups I and II of the four-level racial
scheme of the RuSHA should be allowed to become members of the SS.
Men in group III could ‘join the volunteer units of the Waffen-SS’ or the
order police, ‘which are under the command of the R FSS’.
187
The same
applied to Reich German SS volunteers who were not considered racially
suitable for the SS.
188
In spring 1943 Himmler ordered the establishment of a further SS corps,
the so-called Germanic Panzer corps, which was intended to comprise
the ‘Viking’ division and a new unit formed out of the existing volunteer
corps, the ‘Northland’ division.
189
Himmler explained his ultimate aim in
establishing such a corps, composed of members of various nations, in a note
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