Heinrich Himmler

matter to come to an absolutely clear-cut solution. I would not feel entitled merely to root out the men — well, let’s call a spade a spade, for “root out” say kill or cause to be killed — well I just couldn’t risk merely killing the man and allowing the children to grow up as avengers facing our sons and grandsons. We were forced to come to the grim decision that this people must be made to disappear from the face of the earth. To organize this assignment was our most difficult task yet. But we have tackled it and carried it through, without — I hope, gentlemen, I may say this — without our leaders and their men suffering any damage in their minds and souls. That danger was considerable, for there was only a narrow path between the Scylla and Charybdis of their becoming either heartless ruffians unable any longer to treasure human life, or becoming soft and suffering nervous breakdowns.’

He promised the Gauleiters, whom he called ‘the supreme dignitaries of the Party, of this political Order of ours’, that ‘before the end of the year the Jew problem will be settled once and for all.’ He concluded:

‘That’s about all I want to say at the moment about the Jew problem. You know all about it now, and you had better keep it to yourselves. Perhaps at some later, some very much later, period we might consider whether to tell the German people a little more about all this. But I think we had better not! It’s us here who have shouldered the responsibility, the responsibility for action as well as for an idea, and I think we had better take this secret with us into our graves.’

Nineteen forty-four was the year in which Himmler established his highest prestige with Hitler and finally won from him a command on the battlefield in addition to control of the Reserve Army and the Waffen S.S. Yet he was realistic enough at the same time to modify his position over the Jews. There were many practical reasons for this. The machinery of slaughter was becoming increasingly difficult to operate now that the adversities of war were gathering momentum. By the spring of 1944 it was conceivable that areas such as Auschwitz might eventually be overrun by the enemy; with the heavy losses of men and equipment the attempts to mobilize the labour of the prisoners became more urgent. At the same time, an increasing pressure was being brought to bear on Himmler to relent, and this matched a growing fear in his own mind that the revulsion of the world outside Germany to the genocide associated most directly with his name would tell against him if he were ever able to put himself forward as Germany’s negotiator with the Allies in the West.

Himmler never understood the nature of the abhorrence in which his name was held, nor realized the extent of it. He believed that a few apparent gestures of goodwill would be sufficient to re-establish his unfortunate reputation in the West, though the announcements made in America during the summer that there would be trials for war crimes once hostilities were over must have reached his ears.

Himmler began to think again. The constant humanizing influence of Kersten and the intrigues of Schellenberg designed to edge his master into becoming a peace negotiator, combined to make Himmler retreat to some extent from the absolute position he had held in 1943. The first change of policy was, as we have seen, second only to genocide itself in its inhumanity — extermination of unwanted peoples through work. Then came the attempted sale of certain Jews, negotiated on the one side in order to save lives and on the other to gain either money or commodities useful for the war.⁷ The first important negotiations of this kind were those undertaken by Yoel Brand on behalf of the Hungarian Jews, whom the Nazis had finally succeeded in adding to their victims in 1943. In May 1944 Eichmann offered Brand the lives of 700,000 Hungarian Jews in exchange for 10,000 lorries which the Allies were to deliver to Salonika; this was the first form of barter to be suggested and came to nothing. It was to be followed by other proposals equally appalling, such as Eichmann’s subsequent offer on behalf of Himmler to receive 20 million Swiss francs for the lives and liberties of 30,000 Jews. This last proposal led to the actual transfer of 1,684 Rumanian Jews, who reached Switzerland in August and December 1944, and a further 1,000 Hungarian Jews the following February, for all of whom Himmler received through the Swiss President, Jean-Marie Musi, 5 million Swiss francs subscribed through international Jewish charity. These developments were assisted by the proposals Himmler received from a Madame Immfeld to settle liberated Jews in the South of France. The negotiations for the transfer of the money were most complicated and were in fact hindered by the action of the U.S. State Department. Information about this pitiful sale was eventually to reach the ears of Hitler. But by this time, as we shall see, Himmler was deeply involved in negotiations with the Red Cross.

Schellenberg, having reached that stage in his post-war memoirs when he was most determined to promote himself as the humane peace negotiator, describes in some detail how he brought Musi and Himmler together on a number of occasions during the winter of 1944—5. At the first of these meetings, Musi persuaded Himmler to accept money instead of equipment and medicines, while at a second conference, which Schellenberg says took place on 12 January in the Black Forest, the following terms were agreed:

‘Every fourteen days a first-class train would bring about 1,200 Jews to Switzerland. The Jewish organization with which Herr Musi was working would give active support in solving the Jewish problem according to Himmler’s suggestions. At the same time, the beginning of a basic change in the world-wide propaganda against Germany was to be brought about. According to my suggestion, it was agreed that the money should not be paid over directly to the International Red Cross, as had originally been decided, but should be handed to Musi as a trustee.’⁸

This was the plan that led to the dispute with Hitler, which Schellenberg claims was deliberately fostered by Kaltenbrunner: ‘Hitler immediately issued two orders: that any German who helped a Jew, or a British or an American prisoner to escape would be executed instantly.’

Hitler summoned Himmler, told him what he thought of his action in terms that Himmler was never to forget and, according to Kurt Becher, Himmler’s agent in the commercial negotiations over the Jews, gave his notorious order that ‘no camp inmate in the southern half of Germany must fall into enemy hands alive’.⁹

Meanwhile, with Hungary in the autumn on the eve of capitulation to Russia, the deportations began once more. Himmler employed Hoess, now Deputy-Inspector of Concentration Camps, to act as one of the supervisors who were supposed to ensure reasonable humanity. Budapest fell in December with a considerable Jewish population still left there alive.¹⁰ Himmler had permitted an International Red Cross Mission to make a highly restricted inspection of Auschwitz in September, and in October and November there is evidence that he was trying to halt the massacres, or at any rate shift the responsibility for them onto the shoulders of his subordinates. He began, according to Becher, by issuing an order to Pohl and Kaltenbrunner ‘between the middle of September and the middle of October’: ‘By this order, which becomes immediately operative, I forbid any liquidation of Jews and order that on the contrary, care should be given to weak and sick persons. I hold you personally responsible even if this order should be not strictly adhered to by the subordinate officers.’¹¹ This was followed on 26 November by an order which Becher is also responsible for recording: ‘The crematoria at Auschwitz are to be dismantled, the Jews working in the Reich are to get normal Eastern workers’ rations. In the absence of Jewish hospitals they may be treated with Aryan patients.’

The Red Army were not to reach Auschwitz and its associate camps until the end of January 1945; when they arrived they found that the evacuation of the vast body of prisoners to the west, which had begun as early as the previous September, had been all but completed, and there were less than 3,000 invalids left for them to tend. According to Reitlinger, the central camps and their satellites inside Germany numbered over a hundred at the beginning of 1945, and still held, in conditions which were now deteriorating beyond all control, 500,000 ‘Aryans’ and 200,000 Jews. Their fate remained now in the balance; Himmler wanted to use them as his bargaining point with the Allies, while Hitler and Kaltenbrunner seemed equally determined they should die before there was any chance of their final liberation.

Himmler had always covered his weakness of character and indecision by assuming a mask of strength. The rank and uniform of an Army Commander fulfilled his need to prove to himself that he was a resolute man of action. Just as he had forced his inadequate body to reach the required standard in athletics, he braced himself now to become a general in the field of battle.

He was completely unsuited either in mind or body for such a task. But he had a purblind faith in himself, and the doubts that always welled up from hidden sources in his mind and conscience were quelled by his able advisers. If Kersten was at his side to convince him of his humanity and Schellenberg always ready to persuade him he was a diplomat, Skorzeny, the genius in commando tactics, was there in his service to make him feel a general. His instinctive need was to compensate for anything that might go wrong — the death or derangement of Hitler, the