Heinrich Himmler : A Life (12 page)

Ill. 2.
Himmler with his family and his fiancée Margarete Boden; on the left Heinrich’s elder brother Gebhard with his wife Mathilde; standing behind Margarete to the right is Heinrich’s younger brother Ernst. The dejection suggested by Heinrich’s posture is no accident, for he often felt misunderstood by his family. Margarete shared this feeling.

The upshot of these past days. I’m someone who comes out with empty phrases and talks too much and I have no energy. Did no work. Mother and everyone very kind but on edge, particularly Gebhard. And empty conversation with Gebhard and Paula. Laughter, joking, that’s all.—I could be unhappy but as far as they’re concerned I’m a cheery chap who makes jokes and takes care of everything, Heini’ll see to it. I like them but there is no intellectual or emotional contact between us.
⁶¹

Even writing his diary occasionally turned into an ‘exercise of the will’.
⁶²
In a mood of depression he expressed it even more negatively: ‘I’m such a weak-willed person that I am not even writing my diary.’
⁶³
There was increasing evidence of difficulties in his relationships with others. In particular his relationship with Käthe, the more elevated woman he dreamt of and his friend Zahler’s fiancée, went through several crises. As early as November the tensions were building up. Käthe reproached him with

despising women completely and seeing them as unimportant in every sphere, whereas there were in fact areas where women were in control.—I have never taken that view. I am only opposed to female vanity wanting to be in charge in areas where women have no ability. A woman is loved by a proper man in three ways.—As a beloved child who has to be told off and also perhaps punished because it is unreasonable, who is protected and cared for because it is delicate and weak and because it is so much loved.—Then as a wife and as a loyal and understanding comrade, who helps one with the battles of life, standing faithfully at one’s side without restricting her husband and his intellect or constraining them.—And as a goddess whose feet one must kiss, who through her feminine wisdom and childlike purity and sanctity gives one strength to endure in the hardest struggles and at moments of contemplation gives one something of the divine.
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At the beginning of December 1921 open conflict broke out: ‘A remark of mine caused a row this afternoon. The same old story. Everything I say provokes people. It is not Lu’s fault, she’s not blaming him. I’m the one who’s supposed to be at fault. She says she doesn’t understand Lu. You women don’t understand any of us. She says I’m trying to take Lu away from her and so on. A lot of crying.’ Himmler assumed Frau Loritz was behind the fuss, and decided: ‘I’m going to break with Frau Loritz and Käthe for quite a time. We’ll observe the social formalities but nothing more. If she’s in trouble she will always find in me the same loyal friend as two years ago. In that case I will behave to her as though nothing had happened and look for no thanks.’ And in general: ‘I think too much of myself to play the fool to feminine caprice, that’s why I’ve broken with her.

It’s not easy, though, and when I look back I still can’t understand it.’ Hardly had he admitted this than he was challenging himself: ‘But in the end I must be consistent. I intend to work on myself every day and train myself, for I still have so many deficiencies.’
⁶⁵

Although in January he had a discussion with Käthe on the sofa to clear the air, in March the fragile peace was finally over. Zahler had told him that she was reproaching him for having ‘attached himself at a ball to an aristocratic woman in order to make good contacts’—in Himmler’s view ‘the egoism and jealousy of an injured woman’. ‘Now there are mountains between us.’
⁶⁶

Arguments with his fellow students are hinted at in his diaries at various points. The 21-year-old complains in a highly condescending tone about the ‘lack of interest and maturity of the young post-war generation of students’, by which he means those who, unlike him, had done no military service.
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The aim of ‘every man should be to be an upright, straightforward, just man, who never shirks his duty or is fearful, and that is difficult’.
⁶⁸
Himmler tried to get over the crisis by imposing a programme of discipline on himself, of which regular ju-jitsu exercises formed a part.
⁶⁹

Above all, however, he fantasized about a heroic future for himself, in comparison with which the tribulations of the present were insignificant. It was no accident that at the end of May 1922 he began a new diary with a poem taken from Wilhelm Meister’s
The Register of Judah’s Guilt
:

Even if they run you through
Stand your ground and fight
Abandon hope of your survival
But not the banner for
Others will hold it high
As they lay you in your grave
And will win through to the salvation
That was your inspiration.
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Himmler’s increasingly brusque and disengaged manner may well also have been caused by the anxiety aroused in him by the thought of the approaching diploma exams. He was pursued by his parents’ recurring concerns about the range of his activities in Munich, most of which were not related
to his studies. On the occasions when he put in a burst of work, it was above all the thought of his father that oppressed him: ‘Ambition because of the old man.’
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At times he was overcome by a wave of panic. ‘One could get very worried at the thought of exams, study and time, study and being thorough. It’s all so interesting but there’s so little time.’
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A few weeks later he lapsed into melancholy: ‘Brooded about how time flies. The nice, blissful student days already soon over. I could weep.’
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He was, however, successful in gaining advantages for himself, for the contacts among the academic staff that he had built up as an AStA representative proved useful. ‘Dr Niklas is immensely obliging. I told him I didn’t attend the lecture series. I am to tell him that in the exam and he will question me on the work placement.’
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To complete a programme of study in agricultural sciences the Technical University in Munich in its examination regulations scheduled a minimum of six semesters. Himmler had, however, taken advantage of a dispensation for those with war service, according to which he had been allowed to sit parts of the preliminary examination after only two semesters, in other words, during his work placement. By this means he was able to shorten his course to four semesters. In his submission he claimed to have been a member of the Free Corps from April to July 1919, and that ‘as a result of over-exertion in the army’ he had ‘developed a dilatation of the heart’.
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In reality, as he confessed in a discussion with one of his professors, the premature completion was ‘not legal’, but he got away with it.
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On 23 March 1922 he completed the last part of the preliminary examination and so was halfway towards passing the final examination. The semester was finished; Himmler went for a few days to Fridolfing, in order to boost his reserves of energy.
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In May he visited friends in a village near Landshut and at the end of the month finally returned to Munich for his last semester of study.

The fact that in spring 1922 his father took up the post of headmaster at the long-established Wittelsbach Grammar School in Munich signified for Himmler that, at least to some extent, he was again under his father’s watchful gaze. Until Frau Himmler also moved to Munich in the autumn Gebhard Himmler was alone and spent a relatively large amount of time with his son. At the end of May Himmler suddenly realized that his father’s proximity could very easily lead to problems: ‘Suddenly Father arrived all het up and in a terrible mood and reproached me etc.—Had something to
eat. My good mood was completely destroyed and shattered; won’t it be just great when we are together all the time; it’ll be diabolical for us and for our parents, and yet they’re such trifling things [that cause the rows].’

On the whole, however, the relationship between father and son developed harmoniously. The two met frequently for meals, chatted about this and that, and on one occasion even went together to a political event.
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They were in agreement as far as their fundamental convictions were concerned, and Himmler even initiated his father into the mysteries of his paramilitary activities.
⁷⁹

In the diary entries for 1922 there is an increasing number of references to discussion of the ‘Jewish question’. The contexts in which these references occur indicate the wide range of issues which Himmler believed relevant to this topic. Thus, at the beginning of February he discussed with his friend Ludwig Zahler ‘the Jewish question, capitalism, Stinnes, capital, and the power of money’;
⁸⁰
in March he talked with a fellow student about ‘land reform, degeneracy, homosexuality, Jewish question’.
⁸¹

At the beginning of 1922 his reading-list once more contained two anti-Semitic works. Himmler found confirmation of his anti-Jewish attitude above all in
The Register of Judah’s Guilt
, the work by Wilhelm Meister already referred to.
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He found Houston Stewart Chamberlain’s
Race and Nation
, which he read shortly afterwards, convincing above all because its anti-Semitism was ‘objective and not full of hate’.
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This indicates that he saw the ‘mob’ anti-Semitism, which was relatively widespread during the post-war years and found expression in insults and acts of violence against Jews, as unacceptably vulgar. Instead, Himmler preferred ‘objective’ reasons for his anti-Semitic attitude and, unlike during the arguments about whether Jewish fellow students were eligible to duel, he was increasingly adopting racial theory, which appeared to provide the intellectual basis for such an approach.

From the beginning of 1922 onwards his diary contains an increasing number of negative characterizations of Jews. A fellow student is described as ‘a pushy chap with a marked Jewish appearance’.
⁸⁴
‘A lot of Jews hang out’ in a particular pub. Wolfgang Hallgarten, the organizer of a protest demonstration of democratic students and a former classmate, is referred to
as ‘a Jew boy’, a ‘Jewish rascal’.
⁸⁵
However, his diary shows that, despite his prejudice, he still tries to differentiate among the Jews he meets. In January, for example, he visited a lawyer on behalf of his father and noted: ‘Extremely amiable and friendly. He can’t disguise the fact that he’s a Jew. When it comes to it he may be a very good person, but this type is in the blood of these people. He spoke a lot about society, acquaintances, and contacts. At the end, he said that he would be very glad to be of assistance to me. I’ve got a lot of fellow fraternity members, but all the same.—He didn’t fight in the war because of problems with his heart.’
⁸⁶
However, from summer onwards there was an increasing number of negative descriptions of, as well as dismissive remarks about, Jews, while he began to see himself not merely as ‘Aryan’, but as a ‘true Aryan’.
⁸⁷

Himmler’s increasing anti-Semitism coincided with the phase in the summer of 1922 when he became seriously politicized. While he had been very interested in politics since the end of the war and had made no bones about his hostility to the Left and his sympathies for the nationalist Right, now, in the early summer of 1922, he came out into the open with his views: he became actively involved with the radical Right.

This move was prompted by the murder of Walther Rathenau on 24 June. For the Right, the Reich Foreign Minister embodied the hated Weimar Republic like no other figure. He was attacked as the main representative of the ‘policy of fulfilment’ of the Versailles treaty, and his active engagement in support of democracy was seen as treason, particularly in view of his social origins as a member of the Wilhelmine upper-middle class. Moreover, the fact that he was a Jew made him the target of continual anti-Semitic attacks. And now a radical right-wing terrorist group in Berlin had taken action.

The German public responded to the assassination with dismay and bitterness, and it led to the formation of a broad front of opposition to the anti-Republican Right. On 21 July the Reichstag responded to the murder by passing a ‘Law for the Protection of the Republic’, which considerably facilitated the prosecution of political crimes and made a significant encroachment on the responsibilities of the federal states. The Bavarian government refused to implement the law and, on 24 July, issued its own ‘Decree for the Protection of the Constitution of the Republic’. The competing legislation led to a serious crisis in relations between Bavaria and the Reich, which, after difficult negotiations, was resolved on 11 August.

Radical right-wing elements, in particular the Nazi Party, made full use of this crisis for their propaganda. Because of his willingness to compromise, the Prime Minister of Bavaria, Baron von Lerchenfeld, was a particular target of criticism. Hardly anyone on the political Right in Bavaria could avoid becoming affected by the politicization that developed as a result of these conflicts. The dividing-line now ran between the moderate Bavarian conservatives, who were united in the Bavarian People’s Party (BVP) and supported the Lerchenfeld government on the one hand, and the right wing of the party under the former Bavarian Prime Minister Gustav von Kahr, the German Nationalists (who had adopted the name ‘Bavarian Middle Party’ in Bavaria), as well as various radical leagues and groups, to which the Nazis in particular belonged, on the other. These latter forces had embarked on a course of fundamental opposition to the Weimar Republic and, with growing determination, advocated the violent overthrow of the constitution. This alliance came to an end only with the so-called Hitler putsch of November 1923.
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