machination of the generals, the collapse of the German Army, the chicanery of Goebbels or of Goring, the uncertain powers of Bormann as the controller of Hitler’s court; he tried to allow for everything in the process of keeping himself at the centre of the spiders’ web of Nazi intrigue. No wonder his head ached and the nerves of his stomach were knotted with cramp. But Kersten was there to relieve him. In the Nazi hierarchy, the man whom Germany feared most after Hitler was himself the greatest victim of chronic doubts and fears.
At this moment he needed the reassurance of some new and active occupation which would release him from the constraint of his own nature. He would become a field commander. In July, as we have seen, Hitler in a moment of great national insecurity had impulsively given him the doubtful command of the Reserve Army, a melting-pot of units mainly composed of the older age-groups still in uniform, of men who had been wounded but not released from service and army trainees who had never seen action at all. For Himmler command of such forces spread over Germany was a beginning but not an end. He needed far more than this to consolidate his power and secure his ego. Nevertheless, he set out to make the men of his new command observers of National Socialism by increasing the number of National Socialist Control Officers, and he initiated new Army divisions to be called by such names as the Peoples’ Grenadiers (
The Party Control Officers, of whom Lieutenant Hagen had proved so notable an example when he had brought the Bendlerstrasse conspiracy to Goebbels’ notice on 20 July, were in effect commissars attached to the Army to ensure the political education of the men. Himmler addressed a group of these political commissars a few days after the attempt, spurring them on to take violent action against all defeatists and deserters: ‘I give you the authority to seize every man who turns back, if necessary to tie him up and throw him on a supply wagon… Put the best, the most energetic and the most brutal officer of the division in charge. They will soon round up such rabble. They will put up against a wall anyone who answers back.’12 Such talk as this prepared Himmler to issue his notorious decree of 10 September that the families of those who deserted to the enemy would be shot:
‘Certain unreliable elements seem to believe that the war will be over for them as soon as they surrender to the enemy. Against this belief it must be pointed out that every deserter will be prosecuted and will find his just punishment. Furthermore, his ignominious behaviour will entail the most severe consequences for his family. Upon examination of the circumstances they will be summarily shot.’13
During August Himmler finally gained control of the V-weapons.14 According to General Dornberger, the head of the project at Peenemunde, Himmler had in September 1943 appointed S.S. Brigadier Dr Kammler, who was in charge of building projects for the S.S., to supervise any buildings needed for the development of the V-weapons. Kammler was there, says Dornberger, to act as a spy, and he is described as an energetic, Machiavellian figure, handsome and utterly without conscience. Kammler’s purpose was to supersede Dornberger as controller of the project, nominally taking over on behalf of Himmler. Dornberger worked under Fromm, the Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, and Himmler naturally saw his opportunity to take action after his appointment to succeed Fromm following the attempt on Hitler’s life. On 4 August he formally took over at Peenemunde and appointed Kammler his Special Commissioner in charge of the entire programme. The development of the secret weapons continued to be seriously retarded by the constant intrigue to which it had all along been subject.
Himmler’s second bid for power on the fighting front was won in the teeth of opposition from Guderian, Hitler’s new Chief of Staff, barely two weeks after the explosion at Rastenburg, when the Poles in Warsaw revolted on what seemed to be the eve of liberation by the Russians. As Guderian himself describes it: ‘I requested that Warsaw be included in the military zone of operation; but the ambitions of Governor-General Frank and the S.S. national leader Himmler prevailed with Hitler… The Reichsfuhrer S.S. was made responsible for crushing the uprising… The battle which lasted for weeks was fought with great brutality.’15
Himmler sent S.S. Group-Leader von dem Bach-Zelewski with S.S. and police formations to fight in the streets of Warsaw, reinforced by the White Russian officer Kaminski and his S.S.brigade of some 6,500 Russian prisoners- of-war. These men were sent on the mission because their hatred of the Poles was well known. The Russians committed atrocities of such a nature that Guderian stated after the war that he had felt forced to persuade Hitler to withdraw them from Warsaw, while Bach-Zelewski claimed later that he had had Kaminski executed.16 Hitler, with memories of the revolt in the Ghetto during 1942, ordered Himmler to raze Warsaw to the ground, but the tragic and futile revolt continued until the beginning of October without any assistance from the Russian armies stationed on the Vistula, which flowed right through the heart of Warsaw. In his speech at Posen on 3 August, Himmler went so far as to praise the Kaminski brigade for its resource in looting German Army supplies that had been abandoned. Later, in the autumn, Himmler proposed that Budapest should be treated like Warsaw when the Russians were approaching the city. Himmler declared Budapest to be a centre of partisan warfare in order to keep the campaign within his jurisdiction and that of his favourite commander, Bach- Zelewski.
The use of these Russian forces did not in fact appeal to Himmler. He was bitterly hostile to the renegade Russian general Andrei Vlassov, who as a Ukrainian was ready to fight against Stalin. The Army was anxious to exploit this disillusioned Red general, who had been captured in the spring of 1942, and use him to recruit the Cossacks to fight against the Red Army. In April 1943 Vlassov became in effect the organizer of so-called Free Russian forces in Smolensk. Himmler was outraged. In his speech at Posen on 4 October he attacked Vlassov for his boasts that only Russians could defeat Russians and that he could muster an army of 650,000 deserters to fight alongside the Germans.17 Later, in the more informal but also more revealing talk he gave to the group of Gauleiters and senior officials at Posen on 25 May 1944, he described how Fegelein made fun of a Russian general by treating him as an equal and calling him ‘Herr General’, praising him until he had managed to get all the information he needed from him. ‘We were well aware of the Slav’s racial characteristic that he particularly likes to hear himself talk’, sneered Himmler:
‘All of which proves you can have that sort of man quite cheaply, very cheaply indeed… All that fuss about Vlassov has really frightened me. You know I’m never pessimistic and not easily excitable. But this thing seemed to me downright dangerous… There were fools among us who would give that shifty character the arms and equipment which he is meant to turn against his own people, but quite possibly, when the occasion comes, he will turn against us.’
After the attempt on Hitler’s life, Himmler commissioned Gunter d’Alquen, who was now Head of Army Propaganda, to organize the Russian deserters under Vlassov, but in the end only two divisions were formed in place of the twenty-five divisions of which Vlassov spoke, and the German Army kept its own Cossack divisions intact. Himmler was only induced to support Vlassov’s claim to be a Ukrainian de Gaulle because he was ready to claim jurisdiction over these Free Russian forces if ever they were brought up to full strength, incorporating them into the
With his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, Himmler also founded with Bormann the
