Hitler's evil henchman

Richard Lamb

HIMMLER REICHSFUHRER SS by Peter Padfield

Macmillan, £17.95, pp. 656

Over 650 pages on that evil man Himmler takes some stomaching. Clear writing and much detail about atrocities bring sharply to life the unbelievable hor- rors of Nazi rule; it is so sad and unpleasant that the main appeal of this book must be to serious students of German history from 1923 to 1945.

Heinrich Himmler, born in 1900, was the son of a Munich schoolmaster who had been tutor to the Bavarian Royal Family. Against his father's advice he joined the Nazis; he felt bitter about reparations and the senseless French occupation of the Ruhr. Then he became violently anti- semitic, and had delusions about the grandeur of the Aryan race. Padfield claims Himmler was 'moved by a mystical sense of the past', and found in Hitler's personality the reincarnation of Frederick Barbarossa. This in no way explains his atrocious behaviour. He was a sadist and opportunist who hitched his star to Hitler after a minor involvement in the abortive Munich coup of November 1923 when Hitler wanted, with Ludendorff's help, to march on Berlin and take over the Govern- ment from Ebert. Despite Hitler's abject failure Himmler threw all his energies into the Nazi party, and was not discouraged when their vote dropped to 3 per cent in the 1924 General Election, and to 2.6 per cent in 1928, as under the 'good' German Chancellors Stresemann, Muller and Brun- ing a more prosperous Germany began to put the first world war behind.

Hitler found him useful, and he was an influential party figure by July 1932. Then after Sir John Simon and Neville Chamber- lain had bullied Germany into agreeing further reparations at Lausanne in June, the Nazis won 37 per cent of the vote, and could not be kept out of power. In 1933 by his Enabling Act Hitler made himself dictator, and much increased his popularity by tearing up the Treaty of Versailles, occupying the demilitarised Rhineland and seizing Austria and Czechoslovakia.

As soon as he assumed power Hitler put Himmler in charge of concentration camps

for Jews and political opponents where, without any shred of legality, Himmler began his brutal work. Soon he was in command of the Waffen SS. Doing Hitler's dirty work gave him emotional satisfaction, and he deluded himself that his Waffen SS gang of thugs were a 'warrior elite'.

When Poland was invaded Hitler gave Himmler a free hand to exterminate the Jews. Padfield provides intimate details of Himmler's disgusting behaviour during visits to Auschwitz and Treblinka where he took sadistic pleasure in witnessing beat- ings and mass executions. In 1943 Himmler gloried in obliterating the Warsaw Ghetto, killing over 60,000. He also personally planned the genocide of great numbers of mentally sick, and was intensely interested in details of the barbarous medical experi- ments carried out by his SS doctors on inmates of the concentration camps.

Himmler gave the superficial impression of good manners and prudishness, but in fact he was a sadistic thug without a conscience; he was also corrupt and accumulated a large fortune. Although unintelligent, he was hard working. Hitler trusted him implicitly and allowed him to practise his brutality all over Europe where death camps and slave labour made the impact of this frenzied, half-crazed crea- ture awe-inspiring. Pertinently, Padfield quotes the evidence of a survivor of Au- schwitz and Ravensbruck at Nuremberg: Ilimmler had a systematic and implacable urge to use human beings as slaves and to kill them when they could no longer work.'

Surprisingly, in 1943, Himmler was dis- loyal to Hitler and made overtures in Madrid through the British Ambassador, Sir Samuel Hoare, for a negotiated peace in which he would replace Hitler as leader. The archives about this in the Public Record Office are not used in this book.

The late Sir Geoffrey Harrison dismissed it in a sharp Foreign Office minute: `Himm- ler is probably the most hated man in Europe.' Padfield shows how Himmler never understood the loathing his name inspired, and oblivious of this he made similar overtures through the British Lega- tion in Stockholm in 1944, even involving the discredited Swede Dahlerus who had twice been received at Downing Street by Chamberlain during Goering's last-minute efforts to stop the war. Eden and Churchill gave this effort short shrift. Still Himmler persisted and met Berna- dotte four times. He even released some Swedish Jews, but would not defy Hitler and honour his promise to Bernadotte to surrender the concentration camps intact as the Allies advanced.

Padfield claims Himmler had foreknow- ledge of the Trott-Beck-Stauffenberg bomb plot of 20 July 1944. This is incor- rect. Himmler was friendly with Langbehn, a leading conspirator, mainly because their children went to the same school, but Padfield is wrong in suggesting Langbehn was a double agent. If the author had asked Langbehn's close surviving friends Peter and Christabel Bielenberg they would have denied it hotly.

Mysteriously, Himmler kept Langbehn and other leading members of the Resist- ance including Gordeler, Popitz and Pastor Bonhoeffer alive in prison after they had been condemned to death. He must have thought they could help him in peace negotiations with the West. Yet he could not bring himself to break completely with Hitler and when, on 20 April, only 17 days before the end of the war, Hitler suddenly ordered their execution he meekly com- plied, thus forfeiting the credibility of his peace efforts. He did defy Hitler's decree and allowed a tiny few resisters to cross the Alps to safety in a convoy as Fey von Hassell has vividly described in her recent book, A Mother's War; if it had not been for the post-war testimony of these rare beneficiaries of Himmler's leniency, little would have been known of how that gallant and little appreciated band of Ger- man patriots tried to kill Hitler.

On 28 April Hitler discovered Himm- ler's contacts with the Allies and ordered his arrest. After Hitler's suicide Himmler endeavoured to join Doenitz's govern- ment, but was rejected. When arrested by the British, Himmler committed suicide.

Many would like to forget Himmler's misdeeds. This is impossible. Padfield has used his talents well to shed light upon many shocking facets of this sad period.

Richard Lamb's The Drift to War 1922- 1939 was published by W. H. Allen last autumn; he is currently working on a book on Churchill as War Leader, to be pub- lished next year.