Longerich Peter. Heinrich Himmler: A Life

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Shifting Borders:

The Year 1940

immler was unable to exploit the conquests of 1940—the occupation

of Norway, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and

Luxembourg—in the same way that he had done with the campaign against

Poland; he was prevented from acquiring a comparable position of power in

the territories that had been newly occupied. Similarly, he was largely

unsuccessful at realizing the foreign-policy ambitions that he developed

during this period. Nevertheless, he had a signiﬁcant impact on the German

occupation of northern and western Europe. By pursuing a decidedly racist

policy in France involving ‘ethnic political’ measures, with his comprehen-

sive plans for deporting the Jews, as well as his attempts to recruit ethnic

Germans and ‘Teutons’ for his Waffen-SS, Himmler ensured that German

rule differed signiﬁcantly from conventional occupation policies.

Ever since the Anschluss with Austria Himmler had been able to acquire

experience of the annexation of occupied or conquered territories. While

the position of the police in Austria had been regulated along the lines of

the situation prevailing in the Reich, Himmler’s police organization in the

Protectorate had been granted the greatest possible autonomy vis-a

-vis the

Reich Protector, von Neurath.

In the satellite state of Slovakia, which had

been created after the occupation of the ‘remainder of Czechoslovakia’,

Himmler aimed to establish a Gestapo branch which could control the

Slovakian secret police, the USB (Ustredna statna bezpecnost), and treat

the allied state de facto as German territory. To achieve this, between June

1939 and August 1940 he sent three police commissions one after the other

to Pressburg (Bratislava). However, apart from causing tension with the

German Foreign Ministry, nothing much came of this.

In July 1941 the

‘Ofﬁce of the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce in Pressburg’ was ﬁnally closed.

The only ofﬁcial who remained was a police attache

attached to the German

embassy.

The behaviour of Himmler’s organization and his forces in Poland had

prompted the Wehrmacht to object to the integration of security police and

SD Einsatzkommandos into the army as part of the planning for future

military campaigns. Heydrich commented on this in a document, noting

that in many cases ‘among senior army commanders’ there was ‘a funda-

mentally different attitude towards basic issues involving the combating of

enemies of the state’ compared with that of the SS. The directives for the

deployment of the police in Poland had been ‘extremely radical’ (‘for

example, the order to liquidate numerous members of the Polish elites,

amounting to thousands’). Since the Wehrmacht could not be let in on this,

the actions of the police and SS had appeared to outsiders arbitrary, brutal,

and unauthorized. The Selbstschutz, which ‘in some cases had carried out

impossible and uncontrollable acts of revenge’,

had added to the problem.

Thus, at the end of March Heydrich was obliged to inform his ofﬁce chiefs

that the planned participation of Einsatzkommandos in the invasion of

Belgium and Holland had been cancelled.

On 9 April 1940 the Wehrmacht mounted a surprise landing in Norway

in order to pre-empt a feared intervention by Britain. While the German

troops, engaged in ﬁerce ﬁghting with Norwegian and British forces, were

still endeavouring to bring the country under their control, the structure

of the future German occupation began to take shape under the Essen

Gauleiter Josef Terboven, whom Hitler had appointed Reich Commissar

on 24 April.

Himmler had tried to acquire inﬂuence in Norway right from the start,

and, despite opposition from the Wehrmacht, on 20 April 1940,ata

meeting with Hitler attended by Terboven, Go

ring, and Bormann, he

succeeded in securing the appointment of a Higher SS and Police Leader

and the deployment of an Einsatzgruppe. Improvising, Heydrich produced

a unit of which the core was formed by eighty Gestapo and SD ofﬁcials who

had originally been intended for ‘a special deployment in the West’, which

had been kept secret from the Wehrmacht.

SS-Obergruppenfu

hrer Fritz

Weitzel was appointed HSSPF in Norway. However, while staying in

sseldorf during June he was killed in an air raid and was replaced by

the Ko

nigsberg HSSPF, Wilhelm Rediess. In fact, both Weitzel and Rediess

allowed themselves to be controlled by Terboven to a large extent, even

though they were not ofﬁcially subordinate to him.

The same was true of

shifting borders: the year 1940 491

Heinrich Fehlis,

hitherto head of the security police/SD group in Oslo. In

the autumn of 1940 Fehlis replaced SS-Oberfu

hrer Stahlecker, previously

commander of the security police in the Protectorate, as the commander of

the around 200-strong Einsatzgruppe of the security police and SD which

had arrived in Norway at the end of April. Thus Terboven had some success

in blocking Himmler’s attempt to intervene in the occupation administra-

tion through his own men. In Heydrich’s opinion, the deployment of

security police and SD in Norway occurred in any case ‘to some extent

[ . . . ] too late’ for them still to be able to combat ‘the enemies of the state’

there effectively.

In the case of the occupation of Denmark, which occurred simultaneous-

ly with that of Norway, Himmler had no success at all. German plans for the

occupation envisaged the stationing of troops; however, interventions in

the work of the Danish government and administration were only to occur

for military purposes. Thus, no proper occupation administration was

established; instead, the German envoy in Copenhagen, who had the

additional title ‘Reich Plenipotentiary’, communicated the wishes of the

Reich government to the Danish government and deployed a small staff to

observe whether or not they were carried out.

On 10 May German troops invaded Belgium, Luxembourg, the Nether-

lands, and France. The Dutch armed forces had already capitulated

on 15 May. Two days later Himmler embarked on a trip to the newly

conquered territory in order to visit his Waffen-SS units and get to know

the country and its people. He was accompanied by, among others, Wolff,

his adjutant Joachim Peiper, his old schoolfriend and personal physician

Gebhardt (probably because of the latter’s personal connection with the

Belgian royal family), as well as the latter’s colleague, the physician Ludwig

Stumpfegger.

Himmler recorded his impressions in a diary, in which the trip is also

documented by a series of photographs: ‘This part of Holland and Maas-

tricht itself make a distinctly friendly and clean impression. The population

was by no means hostile but greeted our soldiers. If we asked for informa-

tion it was given to us freely and correctly.’ On the evening of the ﬁrst day

they stayed at the Hotel Warson in Hasselt. The commander of the Stan-

darte ‘Der Fu

hrer’ and his deputy, who were based nearby, joined the party.

There was a victorious mood: ‘We had a very nice meal in the evening,

drank some wine, and the two of them talked about their experience of the

ﬁghting’.

492 shifting borders: the year 1940

Next day the group left for Eindhoven and Tilberg to visit the headquar-

ters of the 18th Army. That night they stayed in the Hotel La Suisse.

Himmler was very content: ‘The food was good and incredibly plentiful.

All the Dutch cities made an excellent impression; the population is friendly

and its racial quality is high. It was really nice seeing the men, women, and

children. They are a great gain for Germany.’ Thus, for Himmler it was

clear that the Netherlands were going to be annexed.

On the following day the group went on an excursion—Himmler, as he

noted, was at the wheel—in the direction of Rosendaal, where they met up

with the SS-Standarte ‘Germania’. On 19 May, after a ﬂying visit to

Antwerp, which involved a roundabout route because bridges had been

blown, on the way to Brussels they went through a small town:

When we came through Runst, a Flemish town with lots of brickworks, we were

met by members of the town militia who were obviously hanging around waiting

for the ﬁrst German troo ps to arrive. They took us to meet the mayor and the town

council, who surrendered the town of Runst to us. At the same time they wanted

us to provide them with water, gas, and electricity. At the end Gruppenfu

hrer

Wolff told these good people that I was the head of the Gestapo.

Next they visited the town of Leuven (Louvain), which was badly

damaged. Himmler tried to convey his impressions: ‘Apart from a few

soldiers there was hardly anybody in the town, which looked very odd.’

Finally they got to Brussels, and on the following day went sightseeing.

After a meeting with the commander of the Leibstandarte the group

returned to the Felsennest Headquarters, where on 22 May Himmler gave

Hitler a ﬁrst-hand account of his impressions.

Before starting out on his trip Himmler had already proposed to

Hitler that Arthur Seyss-Inquart, at the time Deputy Governor of the

General Government, should become the new Reich Commissar for the

Netherlands.

Seyss-Inquart was an old acquaintance of Himmler’s and,

following his usual practice, in October 1938 the latter had awarded him

the rank of SS-Gruppenfu

hrer, backdated to 12 March, the date of the

Anschluss.

On18 May Seyss-Inquart was indeed appointed Reich Commissar in the

Netherlands; from Himmler’s point of view this provided the prospect of

his being able to appoint a HSSPF in the Netherlands. He chose Hans Albin

Rauter, chief of staff of the SS-Oberabschnitt South-East in Breslau, whom

Seyss-Inquart integrated into the occupation administration in the role of

shifting borders: the year 1940 493

Commissar-General for Security. This meant that Rauter was subordinate

both to the head of the civil administration and to the Reichsfu

hrer-SS and

Chief of the German Police. In the event of a conﬂict between the two, in

practice his loyalty to Himmler had clear priority.

Heydrich, however, was once again dissatisﬁed with the situation: here

too the appointment of a HSSPF had occurred ‘almost too late’, as ‘natural-

ly, because of a lack of practical experience and expertise, the work carried

out under the direction of military intelligence had been relatively ineffec-

tive at capturing e

migre

s as well as documents and archives relevant to

the police, compared with what would have been possible if the Gestapo,

with all the records and information at its disposal, had been able to act

immediately’.

Ill. 22. During the war, in particu lar, Himmler’s leadership style was marked by

a high degree of mobility. He was continually on the move through occupied

Europe inspecting his units and ofﬁces and giving his people detailed instructions

on the spot. In this way the Reichsfu

hrer-SS conveyed the impression that he was

personally involved in all matters concerning his extensive area of responsibilities

and ready to share the wartime stresses and strains with his men.

494 shifting borders: the year 1940

At the end of May Hans Nockermann, who had already arrived in

Amsterdam immediately after the Dutch capitulation as leader of an SD

commando, was appointed commander of the security police and SD in the

Netherlands.

However, Nockermann did not stay long. After the Dutch

population had publicly and demonstratively expressed their sympathies for

the royal family on 29 June, Himmler replaced him with Wilhelm Harster,

who had brieﬂy held the same post in Prague in 1939. Harster immediately

began to transform the Einsatzkommandos of the Dutch Einsatzgruppe into

units with permanent bases in the country.

The long-term aim of the German authorities was to integrate the

Netherlands into the German Reich as part of a ‘Germanic Reich’. In the

short and medium term, however, the independence of the Netherlands

was to be maintained, not least in view of the continuing existence of

the Dutch administration in their colonies. Moreover, in the shape of

the Nationaal-Socialistisch Bewegung (NSB) under Anton Mussert the

occupiers found a not-insigniﬁcant partner (the NSB had, after all, won

8 per cent of the vote in the elections of 1935), which was ideologically

close to them, but which was not prepared to give up political indepen-

dence in favour of an alleged ‘Germanic’ blood relationship.

On 2 June Himmler arrived in The Hague to discuss with the radical

Dutch Nazi Meinoud Rost van Tonningen, the internal party rival of

Mussert, the establishment of a Dutch SS, which he had just ordered the

week before.

The two had known each other since 1937 , and Himmler

hoped that with the support of Rost van Tonningen he would be able to

realize his planned ‘Germanic’ policy in the Netherlands. Hitler declared

that this appointment met with his ‘strong approval’. However, it made a

conﬂict between the Reichsfu

hrer and Mussert inevitable.

At the beginning of 1941 Seyss-Inquart received a letter from Himmler in

which he outlined once again the principles of this policy: as Reich Com-

missar, Seyss-Inquart had the ‘historically important task of returning, with a

ﬁrm but nevertheless very gentle hand, 9 million Germanic-Low German

people, who for centuries have been alienated from the Germans, and of

integrating them once more into the German-Low German community

[ . . . ] Of course we both clearly understand that this task of creating a

community of 110 million will be the basis for a really large Germanic

Reich.’

On 25 May, only a few days after his ﬁrst trip to the Netherlands,

Himmler proposed to Hitler the appointment of a Reich Commissar in

shifting borders: the year 1940 495

Belgium, which was about to capitulate. However, this time Hitler ignored

Himmler’s wishes and instead appointed a military administration, which

was also responsible for Luxembourg and for two French de

partements.

15 June Himmler made another attempt, but again without success. Da-

luege, who in the meantime had arrived in Brussels to install a commander

of the order police, had to return to Germany.

Heydrich too was initially able to base only a small group in Brussels. Max

Thomas, acting as the representative of the Chief of the Security Police and

SD for Belgium and France, opened an ofﬁce which, at the beginning of July,

was reinforced by a small SD commando. This had been requested by Eggert

Reeder, SS-Oberfu

hrer and district president in Du

sseldorf, who in the

meantime had been appointed head of the military administration.

The

Ofﬁce of the Representative of the Security Police and SD responsible for

the Area under the Control of the Military Commander for Belgium and

Northern France that emerged from this development took its orders from the

Reich Security Main Ofﬁce,

so that in the end Himmler and Heydrich were

in fact able to exercise inﬂuence on the military administration of Belgium.

However, the SS was not content with this development; as far as they

were concerned, the initial weeks of the occupation that were so decisive

for security and intelligence operations had passed without being made use

of. An HSSPF was only ﬁnally appointed in 1944. In France the situation

was no different, which explains why, referring to both countries, Himmler

noted in July 1940 ‘that the army high command [ . . . ] is engaged in

operations that are clearly of a political police character [ . . . ] completely

excluding the Reich bodies that are the leading experts in combating

enemies of the state and crime in general’.

In fact the military administration in France in 1940 was not prepared to

grant the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce a signiﬁcant role.

The SS’s position

was not exactly helped by Werner Best, who had left the RSHA as a result of

the dispute with Heydrich, being given the post of administrative chief in

the ofﬁce of the military commander in France. Although Best pursued a

strictly racist policy, he relied in the ﬁrst instance on his own organization.

After the armistice of 22 June a small security police/SD commando

(Heydrich referred to ten or ﬁfteen men

) under the command of Helmut

Knochen began to operate in Paris, in order, according to its commission, to

monitor ‘Jews, communists, e

migre

s, lodges, and churches’.

However,

the commando was bound by the directives of the military administration

and had no executive functions. It was only in January 1941 that Knochen

496 shifting borders: the year 1940

acquired the right in cases of emergency to carry out arrests and expropria-

tions without the permission of the military authorities.

On 25 July 1940 Thomas and Knochen met the chef du cabinet of the

French Interior Minister, Adrien Marquet, who requested them both to put

him in contact with ‘someone close to the Fu

hrer’ so that the minister could

pass on his ‘views and requests’ to the German leadership, bypassing the

military administration. Himmler was only too glad to take on this role.

A few days later Heydrich proudly informed Ribbentrop of the existence of

an ‘informal link’ to the French government that ‘had been established

and was being run by the Reichsfu

hrer-SS’s security service’. They were

pleased to be placing it at the disposal of the Foreign Ministry in order to be

able ‘to deal with particular problems in accordance with its wishes’. Apart

from enabling him to make this patronizing dig at the Foreign Minister,

Heydrich welcomed the agreement because he was now in a position

‘illegally to place security police and SD informants in all the de

partements’.

Although the military restricted the inﬂuence of the security police and

SD following the occupation of France, it is clear from this example that in

the occupied territories they beneﬁted from their terrifying reputation.

As a result they were able to establish important contacts, with whose

help they could build up their organization behind the backs of the military.

However, the atrocities committed by the SS in Poland, and the affront to

the moral code of the ofﬁcer corps represented by the ‘Procreation Order’,

evidently had negative repercussions for the Reichsfu

hrer’s claims to power.

If one considers the role of the SS in connection with the invasions of 1940,

Himmler was successful only in the Netherlands and to a limited extent in

Norway; in those countries which were subordinated to a military admin-

istration its few representatives had to ﬁght to win their positions.

Himmler also encountered difﬁculties in France in his role as Reich Commissar

for the Consolidation of the Ethnic German Nation (RKF). Nazi ethnic experts

worked on the assumption that in France, including Alsace and Lorraine, there

were around 1.6 million ethnic Germans, who could be returned to the

German ethnic identity—‘won back’, as the contemporary idiom put it.

Thus, in June 1940 the Reich Security Main Ofﬁce was already beginning to

make preparations for the racial screening of these people in occupied France.

Alsace and Lorraine were not formally annexed. Instead, Gauleiters

Robert Wagner (Baden) and Josef Bu

rckel (Saar-Palatinate) took over the

civil administration in Alsace and Lorraine respectively, and thereby

shifting borders: the year 1940 497

incorporated these French territories into the administrative structure of the

Reich. Their main task, according to Hitler’s instructions, was to create the

conditions for the ‘Germanization’ of these territories by carrying out

various political measures relating to population issues.

Around 100,000 people were expelled or driven into the unoccupied

zone in France in order to make room for German settlers from the Reich.

However, in carrying out these resettlements Gauleiter Bu

rckel, whom

Himmler had appointed RKF representative for Lorraine, pursued his

own strategies. With Hitler’s support, Bu

rckel did not place the main

emphasis on racial criteria, but instead gave particular importance to lan-

guage, political reliability, and economic factors. This was contrary to the

policy of Settlement Commissar Himmler, whose colleagues deployed in

Lorraine wished to ‘screen’ the population according to racial characteris-

tics. In September 1940, following his usual practice, Himmler had estab-

lished a Land Ofﬁce (Bodenamt) in Metz in order to take over agricultural

properties that had ‘become vacant’. It was headed by Friedrich Brehm,

who had gathered appropriate experience as boss of the land ofﬁce in

Kattowitz (Katowice). Moreover, in October 1940 Bruno Kurt Schulz, a

leading racial expert from the RuSHA, took over its branch ofﬁce in Metz.

However, all these appointments came too late to exercise a signiﬁcant

inﬂuence on the Gauleiter’s expulsions and to be able to organize them

according to racial criteria.

By the end of 1940 Bu

rckel had already

expelled over 80,000 people from Lorraine.

By the end of 1940 Gauleiter Wagner had deported or driven around

100,000 people from Alsace into the unoccupied zone, including 22,000

Alsatian Jews.

Although Bruno Schultz, the RuSHA’s representative in

Metz, had already initiated ‘racial assessments’ of the Alsatian population in

1940, it was only during the course of 1941 that Himmler, in his capacity as

Settlement Commissar, succeeded in imposing his will on the further

resettlement programme in Alsace. In June 1941 he appointed Carl Hinrichs

head of the Strasburg Land Ofﬁce, thereby creating the material precondi-

tions for measures to be taken along the lines he wanted.

Volunteers for the Waffen-SS

It is clear from a letter to Lammers, dated March 1939, that during the pre-

war period Himmler had already been aiming ‘to win over [ . . . ] men of

498 shifting borders: the year 1940

Nordic blood for the active regiments of the SS [ . . . ] from all Germanic-

type nations with the exception of the Anglo-Saxons’. He had already raised

this topic ‘a long time ago with the Fu

hrer and received his approval’.

8 November 1938 he had told the Gruppenfu

hrer of his aim that, ‘at the

latest within two years the Standarte “Germania” would contain only non-

German Teutons’.

After the defeat of France the time had come to

implement this project on a large scale.

On 15 August 1940 Himmler ordered the creation of an SS Leadership

Main Ofﬁce (SS-Fu

hrungshauptamt) to operate ‘as a headquarters for the

military leadership of the Waffen-SS and for the pre- and post-military

leadership and training of the General SS’. Himmler initially reserved the

right to head this new main ofﬁce himself. The new arrangement worked at

the expense of the SS Main Ofﬁce (Hauptamt), which, however, still

continued to be responsible for the recruitment and indoctrination of the

Waffen-SS, as well as for the Business and Administration Main Ofﬁce, the

Personnel Main Ofﬁce, and the SS Court Main Ofﬁce. These ofﬁces in turn

continued to be responsible for their particular areas insofar as they affected

the Waffen-SS. As a result, rivalries and conﬂicts among the Main Ofﬁces

were unavoidable.

On 7 August, a week before the introduction of this new arrangement,

Gottlob Berger, the head of the recruitment ofﬁce in the Main Ofﬁce, who

was responsible for the recruitment of the Waffen-SS, approached Himmler

to request a considerable expansion of his existing role. On 15 August

Himmler responded to Berger’s ambitions by promoting him to be de

facto head of the SS Main Ofﬁce; the dismissal of August Heissmeyer, the

relatively weak acting head of the Main Ofﬁce, was now merely a matter of

time.

In a letter dated 15 August, Berger informed Himmler that the

number of recruits which the Waffen-SS could rely on securing during the

coming years would in all probability be insufﬁcient to cover the increasing

demands being made on the force.

Berger, however, had devised a

solution to this problem: ‘The Wehrmacht will not object to the further

expansion of the Waffen-SS provided it can succeed in securing some of its

recruits from those German and Teuton ethnic groups which are not drawn

upon by the Wehrmacht. I consider this to be a particular issue that the

Reichsfu

hrer still has to resolve.’ Berger, who had already asked Himmler

on 15 May 1940, the day of the Dutch capitulation, whether he could have

permission to try to recruit for the Waffen-SS from ‘the Dutch and later the

Flemings’,

was now looking further aﬁeld to Denmark and Norway as

shifting borders: the year 1940 499