already begun, Himmler intervened personally to reprimand an S.S. man who had accepted refreshments from the father of a Jew he was escorting from a concentration camp, and in April 1940 he sent a long letter of sympathy to another S.S. man at the front who had put on paper the terrible shock he received when he had discovered he possessed Jewish blood. He wrote antedating ancestral purity by a further century:
‘I can so well imagine your position and your feelings. So far as our blood is concerned, I have stipulated that the end of the Thirty Years War (1648) is to be the day to which each of us is obliged to make sure of his ancestry. Should there be some Jewish blood after that date a man must leave the S.S… . In telling you all this I hope that you will understand the great sacrifice I have to impose on you… In your heart of hearts you still belong to us, you can still feel you are an S.S. man.’
Himmler softens the blow he so sympathetically deals by adding that if the man were to die at the front, the S.S. will look after his wife and children.
During the war Himmler formed a permanent association with a girl called Hedwig who was his personal secretary and by whom in 1942 and 1944 he had two further children, Helge, a son, and Nanette Dorothea, a daughter. Hedwig was the daughter of a regular soldier, who had been at the time of her birth in 1912 a sergeant- major in the German Army. In 1936 she was awarded the standard sports certificate, the
In spite of the fact that in 1937 Himmler solemnly went through the routine of qualifying for his own S.S. sports badge, forcing his inadequate body to run and to jump until he was persuaded by his adjutants that he had reached the necessary standards, his health was far from good.21 He had been suffering from acute headaches for some years, and his congenitally weak constitution produced stomachcramps, the intensity of which was increased by nervous tension resulting from continued worry over his responsibilities. He feared he might be developing cancer, the disease from which his father died.22 It was Wolff who, knowing his suspicion of orthodox treatment, persuaded him in 1934 to undergo massage, and Franz Setzkorn, a nature healer, was called in to soothe away the pain. It was not until 1939 that a man was found who was able to bring more lasting relief to the strained nerves which made Himmler’s stomach twist with cramp and his head feel like a ball of fire. This was Felix Kersten, the cosmopolitan Finnish masseur whose second home before the war was in Holland. Kersten’s reputation for alleviating nervous pains had enabled him to maintain a lucrative practice in Berlin, near to which he had bought a country estate in 1934 called Hartzwalde. At this stage, however, they had not met.
In the middle of January 1937 Himmler was once more invited to address officers of the Wehrmacht during a course of political instruction designed to prepare them for the war which Hitler had decided was inevitable.23 He did not spare them the detailed explanation of his views. He began by tracing the history of the S.S. from its original formation in 1923 as shock troops to support Hitler, and its reformation in 1925 in squadrons set up in various cities to patrol meetings. But from these small beginnings, said Himmler, the noble ideal of an
‘only good blood, Nordic blood, can be considered. I said to myself that should I succeed in selecting as many men as possible from the German people, a majority of whom possess this valued blood, and teach them military discipline and, in time, the understanding of the value of blood and the entire ideology that results from it, then it will be possible actually to create such an
For this reason, Himmler continued, very exacting standards were set for the recruiting of the S.S., including a minimum height, 1·7 metres, and the careful examination of portrait photographs by Himmler himself, who was determined to detect ‘traits of foreign blood, excessive cheek-bones’. Special burdens were placed on those selected — ‘valuable personnel is never trained by means of easy service’ — and in spite of the economic hardships of the time, the S.S. men were expected to provide their own uniforms. Now, in 1937, the ranks of the S.S. stood at 210,000; only one in ten of those who applied to join were accepted. When a young man of, say, eighteen years wanted to become an S.S. man, ‘we ask for the political reputation of his parents, brothers and sisters, the record of his ancestry as far back as 1750… . We ask for a record of hereditary health,’ and for ‘a certificate from the race commission’, which was made up of S.S. leaders, anthropologists and physicians, who conducted a full examination of the candidate. If he was only eighteen, the minimum age for consideration, he spent three months as an applicant, then after taking the oath to the Fuhrer he became a recognized candidate for the S.S., spending a year obtaining his sports diploma and a further two years of military service in the regular Army. He then returned to the S.S. and was ‘with special thoroughness instructed in ideology’, learning among other things about the S.S. marriage law. Then, but only then, according to Himmler, was he finally accepted into the S.S.
Himmler did not refrain from putting himself on exhibition. ‘The Reichsfuhrer of the S.S.,’ he said, ‘is just as much an S.S. man in the sense of the S.S. organization as the common man of the front. On this 9th of November he is being awarded the dagger, and this is the occasion when he promises to abide by the marriage law and the disciplinary laws of the S.S.’
Himmler then laid stress on the importance of good health. City life with its rush made men ‘grow pale and fat… which is never good for the State. If we desire to remain young we have to be sportsmen.’ He went on to describe how he expected men to practise in using both left and right hands equally in learning to fire pistols and rifles, or in putting the shot; everyone from eighteen to fifty years of age must train to keep fit.
Ideological training went along with physical training. ‘Weekly periods of instruction are held during which pages from Hitler’s
He then described the various divisions into which the S.S. were divided, including the S.D.: ‘the great ideological Intelligence service of the Party and, in the long run, of the state,’ and the Death’s Head units, which ‘originated from the guard units of the concentration camps’. The prisoners in the camps he described as ‘the offal of criminals and freaks, for the most part, slave-like souls’. To attempt to indoctrinate such people was a waste of time; just to train them to keep themselves clean was as much as need be done. ‘The people are taught to wash themselves twice daily, and to use the tooth brush, with which most of them have been unfamiliar. Hardly another nation would be as humane as we are.’
After dealing with the objective of the Security Service, he turned to the S.S. marriage laws. ‘No S.S. man can get married without the approval of the Reichsfuhrer S.S. A physical examination of the bride and guarantees for the bride’s ideological and human character are required. In addition, a genealogical table up to 1750 is required; this results in tremendous work. It is our concern that our men get married.’
He went on to describe how he was at that moment in process of unifying the German police system — ‘We now have for the first time in German history a Reich Police.’ The importance of the police in time of war was paramount, fighting in ‘a fourth theatre of war, internal Germany,’ against the insidious forces of ‘Jewish-Marxist- Bolshevist influence… It is the obligation of the S.S., and the police to solve positively the problem of internal security.’
He ended the speech with further references to the supreme racial struggle in which Germany was engaged:
‘We are more valuable than the others who do now, and always will, surpass us in numbers. We are more valuable because our blood enables us to invent more than others, to lead our people better than others. Let us clearly realize, the next decades signify a struggle leading to the extermination of the subhuman opponents in the whole world who fight Germany, the basic people of the Northern race, bearer of the culture of mankind.’
This speech, as the generals present must have realized, was a direct challenge to the Army and must have reminded them of Roehm’s assaults on their authority, though coming now from a source which was far more powerful, secret and sinister than anything Roehm had represented. The speech had the support of Hitler and was circulated, in a shortened form, as an official document, while the full text, taken down in shorthand, was smuggled
