Heinrich Himmler : A Life (16 page)

In addition, from 1923 onwards he was keen on anti-Semitic literature. He was, however, disappointed by a book on the German criminal
argot
(
Mauscheldeutsch
), since the author was ‘evidently someone patronized by Jews and in any event not a Jew-hater’.
⁴²
By contrast, the
Handbook on the Jewish Question
published by Theodor Fritsch, who since the 1880s had been one of the most important German anti-Semites, met with his approval: ‘it shocks even someone who knows the score.’
⁴³
Shortly afterwards he read
The False God: Evidence against Jehovah
, by the same author. Evidently Fritsch provided him with backing for his existing scepticism about the Old Testament. ‘One suddenly begins to understand things that one couldn’t grasp as a child about what quite a lot of biblical stories are worth. And, as is the case with all these books, comes to appreciate the terrible scourge and danger of religion by which we are being suffocated.’
⁴⁴

In February, during a visit to his friends Friedl and Hugo Höfle, he read two novels combining an anti-Semitic leitmotif with erotic themes, which
he thoroughly enjoyed.
⁴⁵
During a train journey in September 1924 he devoured a pamphlet of the anti-Semitic Ethnic German Defence and Resistance League (Deutschvölkische Schutz und Trutz Bund), which was totally in accordance with his views.
⁴⁶

And finally he came across
In the Power of Dark Forces
by a certain Gotthard Baron von der Osten-Sacken. This book, which first appeared in 1924, was a classic example of a shift from anti-Semitism to paranoia. Himmler clearly saw this, and yet it did not detract from the author’s plausibility in his eyes, as is plain from his notes: ‘Description of the Jewish system which is designed to condemn people to a moral death. It’s conceivable that there’s a persecution complex involved in all this to a certain degree. But the system undoubtedly exists and the Jews operate it.’
⁴⁷

There are also a whole series of anti-Jesuit works on his reading list. After reading the first book, he noted, in November 1923: ‘It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that expelling the Jesuits was one of the best and most sensible things Bismarck ever did.’
⁴⁸
According to his notes, the ‘influence of this powerful order’ was also reflected in the novel
The Sadist in a Priest’s Cassock
, which he read a few months later.
⁴⁹

In May 1924
The Guilt of the Ultramontanists: A Reckoning with the Centre Party
provided, as far as he was concerned, ‘a new and fearful insight into an enemy workshop. One gets really bitter when one reads all about it. What have we done to these people that they won’t let us live? And that’s even more true now. We want to be Germans and to fight to be so against all our enemies.’ And yet he claimed that his criticism was not directed at the Christian religion as such. ‘What enemies of the faith and of the Christian religion of love these people are.’
⁵⁰
His comment on another anti-Jesuit pamphlet, which dealt with the ‘black hangmen of the German people, who’ve been exposed’, is particularly revealing: for him the ‘ultramontane question’ was ‘definitely a secondary issue and the Jewish question the primary one, and not the other way round’.
⁵¹

After the unsuccessful putsch he got to know Hitler through two books, and noted in his reading-list: ‘He is a truly great man and above all a genuine and pure one. His speeches are marvellous examples of Germanness and Aryanness.’
⁵²
This is in fact the first occasion on which Hitler’s name appears in Himmler’s surviving writings—his diary, correspondence, and reading-list. He was not one of those Nazi supporters who were attracted by the ‘Führer’s’ charisma; instead, he became politically involved primarily in the context of the general preparations for a putsch that were being carried
out by right-wing paramilitary organizations in the years 1922/3. If he had a political hero at this time it was Röhm, not Hitler.

It is clear from his reading-list for the years 1923–4 that his interest in ‘Teutonic’ topics not only endured but increased.
⁵³
Above all, in September 1923 he began reading the trilogy of novels by Werner Jansen published between 1916 and 1920. These were popular adventure stories in the form of versions of the
Nibelungenlied
and other sagas. Jansen had tried to transform these sagas into Teutonic-German myths, and infused them with racist and Teutonic clichés. The result was a kind of Karl May
*
for Teutonic enthusiasts and, above all, young readers.

To begin with, a few weeks after his participation in the Hitler putsch Himmler embarked on
The Book of Loyalty
. He was bowled over; ‘One of the most magnificent and most German books I’ve ever read. He deals with the issue of German loyalty marvellously and provides a really true view of the state and the nation. Hagen is an ideal character.’
⁵⁴
He had acquired a copy of the
Nibelungenlied
even before he had finished reading this ‘Nibelungen novel’. ‘Its immortal language, depth, and Germanness reflect an eternal beauty’, he commented in his reading-list.
⁵⁵
Almost a year later he read Jansen’s
Book of Passion
, which he enjoyed just as much: ‘ . . . I really feel that I belong to these Teutons, but that at the moment I’m very much alone in feeling this.’
⁵⁶
Again, reading this novel prompted him to study an original source. He got hold of Tacitus’
Germania
and commented: ‘What a marvellous picture of how pure and noble our ancestors were. That’s how we should be again, or at least some us.’
⁵⁷
A few weeks later he read Jansen’s version of the
Gudrun
saga, and once more was swept away: ‘It’s the noble song of the Nordic woman. That is the ideal of which we Germans dream in our youth, for which we as men are prepared to die and in which we still believe’, even if, he regretfully noted, ‘one is so often disappointed’.
⁵⁸
He was never to find his Gudrun, but when, in 1929, he came to select a name for his daughter, the choice was not a difficult one.

Apart from Jensen’s novels, Hans Günther’s treatment of ‘the heroic ideal’, which appeared under the title
Knight, Death, and Devil
, also had a crucial influence on Himmler’s notion of ‘Germanic heroism’. He read the book twice in the course of 1924, and noted briefly and pointedly: ‘A book that expresses in wise and carefully considered words and sentences what I have felt and thought since I began to think.’
⁵⁹
Germanic mythology,
reinforced by all sorts of occult ideas, evidently became for him a kind of substitute religion.

In the summer of 1924 Himmler took the fateful decision to adopt the role of political activist as his profession and the true purpose of his life. He began to work for the Lower Bavarian Nazi Gregor Strasser, a post which he appears to have acquired as a result of his involvement with the NSDAP in Lower Bavaria.
⁶⁰

Born in 1892, Strasser was a pharmacist in Landshut, one of the main towns of Lower Bavaria, and had held the rank of first lieutenant in the First World War. For some years he had been one of the leading Nazis in the region and had taken part in the Hitler putsch, for which he had been placed on remand. However, he was a candidate for the Völkisch Bloc, which was acting as a substitute for the banned Nazi Party in the Bavarian state elections of 6 April and 4 May (in the Palatinate). The Völkisch Bloc received 17.4 per cent of the vote (as much as the Social Democrats). Strasser was elected, released from prison, and took over the leadership of the Völkisch Bloc in the Bavarian parliament. Nowhere else in the Reich was the extreme Right so well represented in parliament. In the Reichstag elections of December 1924 Strasser also won a seat, this time as a candidate of the National Socialist Freedom Movement (Nationalsozialistische Freiheitsbewegung), a combined völkisch and Nazi grouping; as a Reichstag deputy he resigned his seat in Bavaria.

As a supporter of a ‘German Socialism’, Strasser advocated views different from those of Hitler, particularly on social and economic issues. He demanded the ‘nationalization’ of land and of the means of production, and within the NSDAP represented a decidedly anti-capitalist stance.
⁶¹
His main task now consisted in trying to build up the party in north Germany. For this reason alone he spent little time in Bavaria, his old power-base, where Himmler now took over the office and dealt with party matters in Lower Bavaria more or less independently.
⁶²

During this period Himmler alternated between despondency and a determination to keep going. In August 1924 he wrote to his acquaintance in Milan (in response to a discouraging letter about the job prospects in Italy):

As you can see, I’m still here. I’ve got a terrific lot to do. I have to run the whole organization in Lower Bavaria and to build it up in every way. I don’t have any time for myself and answering a letter promptly is out of the question. I’m very much enjoying the organizational work, for which I’m entirely responsible, and things would be great if one could look forward to victory or prepare for a struggle for freedom in the near future. As it is, it involves a lot of self-denial by us racists [
Völkische
]; it’s work that will never bear visible fruit in the near future. One always has to bear in mind that the fruits of this work will be gathered only in later years and at the moment we may well be fighting a losing battle [ . . . ]

But we few are continuing with this work without wavering [ . . . ] Because one has to say to oneself if we don’t do this work, which has got to be done, this sowing of the German idea, then no one will do it and then, in years to come, when the time is ripe, nothing will happen because nothing has been sown. It is selfless service for the great idea and a great cause, for which of course we shall never receive recognition and do not expect to receive it.
⁶³

In fact the conditions for agitation in favour of the Nazi cause in Lower Bavaria were, all things considered, not bad. For example, in the Reichstag election of December 1924 the Völkisch Bloc received 10 per cent of the vote in Landshut and became the third-strongest party after the BVP and the SPD; this exceeded the overall election results gained by the candidates of various Nazi groupings in Bavaria (5.1 per cent) and the Reich (3 per cent).
⁶⁴

In December 1924 Hitler was released from Landsberg prison, and in February 1925 he re-founded the Nazi Party (the ban on the party had been lifted after Hitler had promised the Bavarian prime minister to obey the law). Himmler in Landshut now had the task of bringing the Lower Bavarian Nazis, whom Strasser had gathered under the flag of the National Socialist Freedom Movement,
⁶⁵
over to the NSDAP.

However, this did not occur without conflict. In July 1925 Nazi Party headquarters complained to Strasser that not a single membership form, on which the Lower Bavarian Nazis were obliged to sign up for the NSDAP, had reached Munich, let alone any subscriptions.
⁶⁶
So in August Himmler travelled to Munich to discuss the organizational details of the transfer of almost 1,000 Lower Bavarian Hitler supporters, organized in twenty-five local branches, to the new NSDAP. However, he warned the headquarters beforehand that he would not deal with Max Amann (at that point head of the party publishing-house, the Eher Verlag), with whom he had had a confrontation on his previous visit six months earlier. He signed his letter, as
was usual for the racists at the time, with ‘A True German Greeting of Hail (
treudeutschem Heilgruß
).’
⁶⁷

Himmler’s fussiness about his personal dignity, and the lack of charm he showed in his personal manners, were not the only reasons for the tensions between the Munich headquarters and the Landshut office. Contrary to what he had said in his letter to his Milan acquaintance, Himmler had difficulty in coping with Landshut party business. He kept failing to meet the deadlines given him by Munich headquarters. He generally excused himself by referring to permanent overwork and speeches he had delivered outside the area.
⁶⁸

It took until the spring of 1926 before all the membership forms, which were supposed to have been filled in during the summer of 1925, were finally sent in, and the submission of the subscriptions, 10 pfennigs per member per month, to Munich was equally slow. Himmler evidently could cope only by responding to the increasingly urgent reminders from headquarters with an explanation in terms of local culture: ‘The long delay, particularly in Landshut, really has less to do with people’s indifference and more to do with their dislike of making any written or formal statement, something that is particularly prevalent in Lower Bavaria.’
⁶⁹
In addition, there were political differences. For example, on one occasion headquarters wanted to know why the founder of the Nazi Party, Anton Drexler, who was now
persona non grata
, had been allowed to speak at a party meeting in Landshut.
⁷⁰

At least Himmler could count it as a success that the Munich headquarters had officially recognized the Landshut office,
⁷¹
and had recognized the
Kurier für Niederbayern
(with a circulation of 4,000 copies) as the party’s official local newspaper.
⁷²
In his activity report to the Gau rally of the Lower Bavarian NSDAP on 2 May 1926 in Landshut he produced a set of meticulously prepared figures: in the course of slightly more than six months 340 letters had been received and 480 letters and cards sent; no fewer than 2,131 items of propaganda material were distributed ‘in the form of special editions, copies of
Weltkampf
,
Nationalsozialistische Briefe
, leaflets, other newspapers, and pamphlets’.
⁷³
This account cannot, however, disguise the fact that Himmler was not, in the first instance, a pedantic and industrious party bureaucrat, who directed the party’s activities from his desk in Landshut. On the contrary, he saw his job above all as continually to travel round the Gau and look after the local branches. Thus, between mid-November 1925 and the beginning of May 1926 he spoke at twenty-seven
meetings throughout the Gau of Lower Bavaria (this made him the most active party speaker in the Gau) as well as at twenty meetings outside the Gau, not just in Bavaria but also in Westphalia and north Germany, in the Hamburg area, in Schleswig-Holstein, and Mecklenburg.