Hitler’s name barely appears in the surviving diaries. On 19 February 1924 Himmler notes that he reads aloud to some friends from a pamphlet called
He rejoined the Nazi Party on 2 August 1925; it was during this period that he also joined the staff of Gregor and Otto Strasser, the Bavarian brothers who were among the principals in the reconstruction of the Nazi movement. The Strassers had a family druggist establishment in Landshut. They remained uneasy partners to Hitler who, after his release from Landsberg on 20 December 1924, began at the age of thirty-five to gather once more the reins of leadership into his own hands. While the Strassers were for compromise with other nationalist groups, Hitler was determined to lay the foundation of a new and vigorous political party over which he had full personal control. In the very month of his release from prison, the Nazi-Volkische alliance lost all but fourteen of its thirty- two seats in the Reichstag after the second election of the year, but Hitler, to the exasperation of the Strassers and Roehm, did not seem to care. Once he had obtained the removal of the ban on the Nazi Party, he was prepared to lose the support of the anti-Catholic Volkische groups. All that concerned him was to make a new start, to reform the Nazi Party under his own undisputed leadership. This he announced at the end of February 1925, and his platform included a virulent campaign against the Marxists and the Jews.
Himmler had obtained his appointment nominally as a secretary, but actually as a general assistant prepared to undertake any duties assigned to him. According to Otto Strasser, his brother welcomed Himmler because, as he put it, ‘the fellow’s doubly useful — he’s got a motor-bike and he’s full of frustrated ambition to be a soldier’.9 He was responsible for surveying the secret arms dumps which were kept concealed in the country districts away from the eyes of the Inter-allied Control Commission. Himmler, aged twenty-four, enjoyed this underground activity; it filled him, says Otto Strasser, with nationalistic pride, and he preferred it to the office work which he had to carry out for Gregor Strasser who, as well as being a Reichstag Deputy, was in charge of Party activities in the district of Lower Bavaria, a position he had held since 1920. Gregor Strasser was a vigorous orator and a tireless organizer. At this stage Hitler could not spare him and, in spite of the growing differences between them, it was by mutual consent that the Strassers finally moved the main sphere of their activities to the north. Otto Strasser, whose particular flair was for journalism, moved to Berlin and founded there the northern Party newspaper, the
During 1925 Goebbels and Himmler met at Landshut during the course of their work for the Strassers. It soon became apparent that while Goebbels was the brilliant speaker and potential journalist, Himmler’s talent lay rather in desk-work and other, more pedestrian, activities. It has been assumed, based largely on loose statements made by Otto Strasser, that Himmler was displaced in the Strassers’ service by the vain and volatile young man from the Ruhr.10 This was far from the case. Goebbels, during his frequent visits south, became increasingly fascinated by Hitler, who soon recognized his talents and, during 1926, flattered him into accepting the difficult post of Gauleiter, or party organizer, in Berlin. Previously, however, Goebbels had spent the greater part of his time in the Ruhr when he had not been engaged in special conference work for Strasser or Hitler in other parts of the country. Himmler, on the other hand, consolidated his own position in Lower Bavaria during 1925 to a sufficient extent to be able to write as follows at the end of the year to Kurt Ludecke, one of Hitler’s supporters who was soon to leave for America:
‘Dear Herr Ludecke,
Excuse my bothering you with this letter and taking the liberty of addressing a question to you. Perhaps you know that I am now working in the management of the district of Lower Bavaria for the Party. I also help with editing the local “folk” journal, the
‘For some time I have entertained the project of publishing the names of all Jews, as well as of all Christian friends of the Jews, residing in Lower Bavaria. However, before I take such a step I should like to have your opinion, and find out whether you consider such an undertaking rich in prospects and practicable. I would be very indebted to you if as soon as possible you would give me your view, which for me is authoritative, thanks to your great experience in the Jewish question and your knowledge of the anti-Semitic fight in the whole world.’11
According to Ludecke, Gregor Strasser laughed when he was told of the letter, saying in effect that Himmler was getting fanatical about the Jews. ‘He’s devoted to me, and I use him as secretary’, he added. ‘He’s very ambitious, but I won’t take him along north — he’s no world-beater, you know.’
Himmler’s ambitious diligence, however, won him the position of Strasser’s deputy as district organizer in Lower Bavaria, working of course under Hitler’s shadow in Munich. He also became second-in-command of a small corps numbering some two hundred men and known as the
The main task for Himmler in the Party offices at Landshut, where a portrait of Hitler frowned down on his activities, was to increase the Party’s supporters. His initial salary was 120 marks a month, and the local S.S. were sent out to collect subscriptions and canvas advertisements for the Party newspaper, the
He did, however, travel to Berlin, and it was during one of these visits to the capital in 1927 that he finally became involved with the woman whom he was later to marry. She was a nurse seven years older than himself; she was of Polish origin and her name was Margarete Concerzowo. Marga, as she was called, owned a small nursing-home in Berlin, and had unorthodox ideas about medicine which appealed to Himmler and excited afresh the discussions of his student days. She was interested in herbal cures and homoeopathic treatments, and their discussions set up a longing in Himmler to work once more in the open air. These two seemed at this stage in their relationship to be made for each other, in spite of the difference in their ages. Both worshipped efficiency, thrift and the rigorous neatness of a parsimonious life. Both felt they needed the comforts of marriage and domesticity, and both believed that their common interests in such matters as medicine and herbs amounted to love. Marga sold her nursing-home and decided to use the money to acquire a property in the country.
They married early in July 1928. One of Marga’s coy and excited letters, written eight days before their marriage, survives in Himmler’s carefully preserved files, and relates to the house and smallholding they bought with her money in Waltrudering, some ten miles outside Munich. In her joy at the thought of marriage, she hastily calculates what they are spending and whether or not they can avoid taking out a mortgage. In the margin Himmler coldly notes that her totalling is out by 60 marks. Nevertheless, Himmler, her ‘naughty darling’, will soon be hers, as she goes on to remind him.13
The smallholding at Waltrudering became a modest enterprise and was left largely in the hands of Marga Himmler. They kept about fifty hens, and they marketed produce and agricultural implements; it made a little money over and above Himmler’s salary, which stood now at around 200 marks a month. The following year Marga gave birth to her only child, their daughter Gudrun.
This year, 1929, became the turning-point in Himmler’s life. On 6 January Hitler issued an order appointing him Reichsfuhrer S.S. in place of the commander Erhard Heiden, whose deputy he had been. It was a far-seeing appointment. Something in this clerk-like man with his military ambitions and scrupulous self-discipline must have revealed to Hitler that he had in him the kind of perfectionism necessary to create a reliable counter-force to the undisciplined mob of storm-troopers who roamed the streets in the name of the Nazis.14
