the devil duo

7/27/2019 The Devil Duo

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Chapter 1

In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and

thereby I become the supreme judge of the German people.

Adolf Hitler

The Devils Duo:Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Rhm

Adolf Hitler was the most powerful man in Europe years before

the United States entered World War II. His chosen successor,

Reichsmarshall Hermann Gring, was also one of Germanys

most dominant leaders. However powerful the former air ace was as the

head of a mighty Luftwaffe at warand notwithstanding his general

corruptness and megalomaniaGring was forced to operate within the

conventional framework of the armed forces, and all the restrictions that

system entailed. He had stood side-by-side with Hitler during the

Austrians climb to power, and was first in line in responsibility for

victory in Poland and the Low Countries. But Grings fortunes rested

upon a foundation of military successes. Humiliation over the skies of

Britain and the humbling experience above the steppes of Russia dimmed

his star.

Two other dominant personalities also played an important role in the

rise of Nazism and Adolf Hitler during the 1920s and 1930s. Their

quasi-military organizations were not hampered by traditional bureau-


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cratic niceties or other such impedimenta. Laws and tradition existedonly to be broken and extinguished. Only one of the leaders survived to

witness the outbreak of war in 1939. His star rose during the heady days

of 1939-1941and kept on rising as setbacks in the east and west

mounted. His position within the Third Reich was less conspicuous than

that of Grings, and the power he wielded was almost absolute.

* * *

The character of one of the Nazi regimes most brutal officers

continues to fascinate historians. Despite his explicit and freely admittedresponsibility for monstrous cruelty against his fellow man, the

dichotomy that was Heinrich Himmler remains.

Born in Munich on October 7, 1900, Himmler was the son of a pious

authoritarian Roman Catholic schoolmaster who had once been tutor to

the Bavarian Crown Prince. His early career in life was singularly

unimpressive. Education during his formative years was taken in

Landshut. While a teenager, he trained as an officer cadet and served with

the 11th Bavarian Regiment, but did not see active service before the end

of World War I. Unlike Hitler, however, Himmler did not outwardly

manifest vehement infuriation at the harsh outcome imposed by the

Versailles Treaty. Returning home, he entered Munichs School ofTechnology in 1918 and emerged four years later with a degree in

agriculture. The first few years of the 1920s passed quietly while

Himmler labored as a fertilizer salesman and poultry farmer. Quiet,

non-violent, and outwardly unemotional, the young man was described

by one who knew him well as an intelligent schoolmaster. But inside

that calm schoolmasters demeanor was something terribly wrong.

By 1923 Himmler had acquired a deep interest in German politics.

Setting aside his quiet life of agriculture, he participated in Hitlers

abortive Beer Hall Putsch and joined Ernst Rhms criminal paramilitary

organization, theReichskriegsflagge (Reich War Flag). By 1925 he was a

full member of the Nazi party as well as the black-shirted SS(Schutzstaffeln), Hitlers personal armed bodyguard. A succession of

positions of power within the fledgling party were now open to him;

promotions flew in his direction. In 1926 he became the partys assistant

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propaganda leader. After marrying in 1927 and briefly returning topoultry farming, Hitler tapped him to run the SS, at that time a small body

comprised of about 200 men. The following year Himmler was elected as

a Nazi Reichstag deputy. For the next three years he worked tirelessly on

Hitlers behalf, guaranteeing his own continued rise to power.

After the Nazis seized the countrys political machinery in 1933,

Himmler was appointed police president in Munich and head of the

Bavarian political police. This authority and control gave Himmler

exactly what he had been seeking for years: the power base to broaden

and deepen his SS and organize the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, a separate

ideological intelligence department within the SS under the command of

Reinhard Heydrich. It also distanced him from Ernst Rhms

Sturmabteilung, or SA, Hitlers paramilitary police. Himmler took the

opportunity to set up the first concentration camp at Dachau, where

political opponents and undesirables were housed in what was

euphemistically called protective custody. Throughout these early

years Himmler demonstrated an amazing organizational ability,

especially with regard to the formation of political alliances within the

Nazi hierarchy. The superficially cool officer was a survivor, an

ambitious climber who craved power.1

According to one author, Himmler used his new powers in 1933 to

begin constructing a state within the state, a shadow government that

answered to no one. Membership in his SS grew from 200 to more than

50,000 before the end of 1933. The ideology driving Himmler, and thus

the SS, was an unhealthy preoccupation with religion, Nordic myths, and

Aryan genealogy. As a result, the SS was constructed on the organized

principles of the order of the Jesuits. The service statutes and spiritual

exercises prescribed by Ignatius Loyola were emulated. Indeed,

Himmlers title, Reichsfhrer, was intended as the counterpart of the

Jesuits General of Order. The complete structure of the SS leadership

was adopted from Himmlers studies of the hierarchic order of the

Catholic Church. His domination expanded during this time when he

secured the SSs independence from control of Ernst Rhms SA, to

which the SS was initially subordinated. Together with Reinhard

Heydrichs SD, Himmler continued his ceaseless labors to consolidate

his power. In September 1933 he was made commander of all the

political police units outside Prussia and, though formally still under

Heinrich Himmler and Ernst Rhm 3


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Grings control, became head of the Prussian Police and Gestapo onApril 20, 1934. Up until now Himmlers rise within the party hierarchy

had been little short of meteoric. Only one man stood in the way of his

complete consolidation of power.

* * *

Like Himmler, Ernst Rhm was also born in Munich. Other than their

mutual association with Adolf Hitler, however, similarities were few and

far between. Rhm served honorably in World War I. By the time

Germany surrendered in 1918 he was the recipient of three combat

wounds and held the rank of captain. Like so many men after thatdisastrous war, Rhms postwar goals were ill-defined at best. Yearning

for structure he joined the Friekorps, a radical right-wing group of armed

associations organized to defend the countrys borders against the threat

of communist invasion. After participating in the Friekorpss bloody

slaughter of hundreds of communists and socialists in March 1919, Rhm

steeped himself in nascent right-wing party politics. It was Rhm who

secured the services of a young Adolf Hitler to spy on the German

Workers Party (GWP), which Rhm soon joined. Like so many others,

Rhm found Hitler to be a charismatic comrade. At his urging, Rhm led

a group of armed storm troopers in the failed Beer Hall Putsch in

November 1923. Tried and found guilty of treasonable acts, Rhmescaped prison but was booted from the German army. Hitler was much

smarter than Rhm. Instead of trying to defend himself on the few merits

of his position, Hitler turned his trial into a political discourse that

elevated his prestige even as he later languished in Landsberg prison.

In these early years of the Nazi movement Rhms Brownshirts had

been an indispensable element of Hitlers success, a magnet that had

attracted thousands of disaffected recruits into the Party. From within

Landsberg the future leader of Germany came to realize that Rhms

thirst for direct military confrontation with the German State was not the

true course to power. He began to disassociate himself from a man he

now viewed as an undesirable. Discarded by Hitler, Rhm withdrewfrom political life. The few jobs he held frustrated and bored him. Only an

offer from Bolivia to serve as a military instructor preserved in Rhm

some vestige of self worth. But history was not yet finished with the

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stocky native of Munich. The round chubby-faced ex-captain with a deepscar on one cheek, uneven mustache, and biting, porcine eyes, had one

more act to play in the drama unfolding within Germanys borders. 2

While Rhm toiled, Hitler plotted a new course for the SA. Shedding

its paramilitary garb, Hitler honed the organization into a political

weapon wholly subordinated to the NSDAP, or Nazi party. Hitlers

significant electoral victory in 1930 prompted him to recall Rhm as the

SAs chief of staff though only after Hitler had assumed the position of

Supreme Leader of the organization. Rhm rapidly expanded the SA into

a popular army of street fighters, gangsters, and thugs. By 1934 the

unemployed and disaffected swelled the ranks of the SA to several

(loosely organized) millions. Rhm regarded this plebeian army of

desperadoes as the core of the Nazi movement, the embodiment and

guarantee of a permanent revolution. Under his leadership the SA

fulfilled an indispensable role in Hitlers rise to power between 1930 and

1933. Spreading propaganda and terror, Rhms brownshirts won the

battle of the streets against the communists and other political opposition.

As 1934 dawned, Rhms private army was as powerful as the German

Army itself. But while Rhm was conquering the streets for Hitler, the

new Chancellor of Germany had again come full circle in his thinking:

his SA chief was no longer necessary.

Indeed the SA chief was now a threat to Hitler. Rhm had become

disillusioned with the Nazi revolution. The growing bureaucratic Nazi

movement angered Rhm, who dreamed of a soldiers state and the

primacy of the soldier over the politician. Provided a seat on the National

Defence Council in 1933, Rhm vocalized his dissatisfaction over the

use of his SA. In October he sent an ominous letter to Walther von

Reichenau, the liaison officer between the German army and the Nazi

Party. I regard the Reichswehr [German army] now only as a training

school for the German people. The conduct of war, and therefore of

mobilization as well, in the future is the task of the SA. Rhm insisted

on maintaining momentum in a socialist direction while talking openly

about the conquest of Germany. His populist demagogy alienated the

middle class and the industrialists, whose support Hitler was still seeking

and desperately needed. Rhm failed to understand Hitlers concept of a

gradual insurrection carried out under the cloak of legality. The real

revolution, warned Rhm, was yet to come.



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If Hitler did not readily admit and recognize it, his chief supportersdid: Rhm had to go. The head of the SA overplayed his hand by

antagonizing two dangerous rivals, Hermann Gring and Heinrich

Himmler. Both feared the SA leader, who was potentially strong enough

to crush them. Both pressured Hitler to reduce his power and exposure by

utilizing the SS and the Gestapo to do so. Rhms own conduct and that

of his entourage, given to dissolute homosexual orgies and drinking

bouts, loutish behavior, and wildly indiscreet remarks, made the task of

his enemies that much easier. Still, Hitler hesitated. How could he

eliminate his oldest comrade-in-arms, a man to whom he felt a debt of

gratitude and a certain warmtheven though he had become a liability

and even a danger to his regime?

In goose-stepped Heinrich Himmler and his SS. Together with

several officers of the German army, Himmler plotted Rhms

spectacular demise. Heydrich, head of Himmlers SD arm, was ordered

to compile a damning dossier. The SA leader, Heydrich discovered,

had accepted millions of marks from the French to launch a coup and oust

Hitler. Hitler knew the record was untrue, but he saw the opportunity to

finally be rid of Rhmand seized it. Taken utterly by surprise, Rhm

was arrested on June 30, 1934, in a private hotel at Bad Wiessee, a small

Bavarian spa south of Munich where he was taking a holiday with other

SA leaders. He was taken to Stadelheim prison, where he was executed

two days later by firing squad after refusing to take his own life. It was an

ironic end for the man who had once uttered, All revolutions devour

their own children.3

The bloody purge was kept secret until the middle of July, when

Hitler mentioned the action during a speech and gave it a name that would

resonate through history: The Night of the Long Knives. Hitler

publicly branded Rhm a traitor and accused him of having fomented a

nationwide plot to overthrow the government. In this hour I was

responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I become the

supreme judge of the German people, shouted Hitler in his explanation

of why he did not use the German justice system to try Rhm. I gave the

order to shoot the ringleaders in this treason. Hitler professed outrage at

the homosexual aspects of Rhm and his criminal entourage, although

the leaders lifestyle had been well known and tolerated for many years.

Scores and perhaps hundreds perished in the purge that both ended the

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influence of the SA and gained for Hitler the acceptance of the Germanofficer corps and support of many industrialists. When President Paul

von Hindenburg died five weeks later, the former World War I corporal

became head of state.4

Himmler, too, was the beneficiary of a Nazi apparatus unfettered

with the likes of an Ernst Rhm. The flow of SA blood paved the way for

the emergence of the more military SS as an independent organization

charged with safeguarding the embodiment of the National Socialist idea

and translating the racism of the regime into a dynamic principle of

action. The Reichsfhrer occupied a splendid villa in the fashionable

Berlin suburb of Dahlem alongside other high Party officials, as well as a

country home on the Tegernsee. However, neither location was suitable

for the seat of his rising SS Order. His wandering eye fell upon

Wewelsburg Castle, an impressive triple-towered renaissance-era citadel

overlooking the Alme Valley ten miles southwest of Paderborn. The

location and unusual triangular form of the castle, which had served as

the secondary residence of the prince bishops of Paderborn in the early

1600s, was perfect for what Himmler had in mind. He viewed his

black-shirted SS men as the reincarnation of not just the medieval order

of the Teutonic knights, but also of King Arthurs Knights of the Round

Table. Arthur had Camelot; Himmler would have Wewelsburg.

The SS rented the castle in 1934 from the district of Bren for a single

Reichsmark each year. Himmler intended to transform the castle into a

nucleus of support for the pseudo-scientific ideology of National

Socialism and a sacred shrine for dead SS leaders. Improvement work on

the Wewelsburg complex began immediately. The castles focal point, a

grand dining hall complete with a gigantic oak table that seated twelve,

owed much to Arthurian legend. Coats of arms adorned the walls. Below

the dining hall was a circular cellar called the Ring of Honor. The

room, intended as a crypt, was lighted by a few rectangular openings in

the thick brick walls and sported a giant swastika embedded in the

ceiling. Signet rings emblazoned with the horrendous deaths head

insignia were presented to the first 10,000 SS men and to senior

commanders. Whenever an SS notable died, his ring was placed in a chest

housed in the crypt. Select SS members were ordained into senior

positions there.



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Each of the rooms allotted to the knights in the castle commemoratedGermanic heroes, decorated and furnished in period and provided with

books and documents on their subject. Himmlers castle quarters were

dedicated to Heinrich I, the tenth-century Saxon King who beat back

Magyar horsemen pressing westward from the interior of Russia and

formed the basis of the German confederation of princes which became,

under his son Otto, the Holy Roman Empire.5

* * *

Reichsfhrer Himmler had successfully completed his bid to win

control of the political and criminal police throughout the Third Reichwhen he became head of the Gestapo that had originally been established

by Gring. Almost every level of power was now either under Himmlers

command or within reach of his iron cold grasp. Now the only question

was how that power would be wielded and the results that would flow

from its use.

Chapter Notes

1. This general background of Heinrich Himmler is extracted from Peter

Padfield, Himmler: ReichsFhrer-SS (London, Cassell Publishers, 2001). See

specific references within. Padfields book is, by far, the best single source on

Himmlers life and career under the Nazi banner.

2. Joachim C. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich: Portraits of Nazi

Leadership (London, 1970), pp. 141-144.

3. Fest, The Face of the Third Reich, pp. 144-147.

4. Axelrod and Phillips, Dictionary of Military Biography, p. 166.

5. Padfield, Himmler, pp. 248-249.

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