The Himmler's SS (16 page)

At Auschwitz, the main extermination camp complex, which comprised twenty labour camps and four massive gas chambers, racial experiments were carried out in the same way that Rascher engaged upon military medical experiments at Dachau. Skeletons of victims were collected for racially-based ‘scientific measurements'. Skulls and skin types were compared, eyes and noses categorised, brains weighed and hair graded. An assortment of SS eugenists from Ahnenerbe strove to prove by their research that humans could be bred exactly like animals, with full pedigrees. The most infamous of them all was Josef Mengele, a Doctor of Philosophy (Munich) and a Doctor of Medicine (Frankfurt/Main), who was rabidly inspired by the hope of eliminating all racial impurities and physical abnormalities from the German people. He served as a medical officer with the Waffen-SS in France and Russia, and in 1943 was appointed Chief Doctor at Auschwitz, with
carte blanche
from Himmler and an unlimited supply of human guinea-pigs at his disposal. At once, he began a study of deformities. All prisoners who were in any way malformed were immediately butchered upon their arrival at Auschwitz so that Mengele and his team could examine the bodies in a special dissection ward. No twins, dwarves or hunchbacks escaped his scalpel. He even sewed normal twins together to create artificial Siamese twins, and injected the brown eyes of living patients in an effort to turn them blue. These racial experiments caused untold agonies and had little or no practical benefits, unlike some of the purely medical experiments carried out in other camps.

Modern apologists for the Waffen-SS have consistently put forward the argument that the horrors which took place in concentration and extermination camps during the war must have been unknown to ordinary SS soldiers fighting at the battlefront, on the basis that the camps had nothing at all to do with the Waffen-SS. However, the fact is that from April 1941 the camps were classified by Himmler as an integral part of the Waffen-SS system. From that time on, during the worst atrocities, camp officers and guards wore Waffen-SS uniforms with distinctive brown piping and carried Waffen-SS paybooks. The permanent camp administrative staffs of older Totenkopf NCOs were reinforced by substantial numbers of wounded and recuperating personnel transferred in on a temporary rota basis from various battlefield SS units, of which the Totenkopf-Division was only one. For example, Feldgendarmerie elements of the Leibstandarte and men from the 13th SS-Division were stationed at Buchenwald and Gross-Rosen camps in 1943, while ‘Wiking' Division troops found themselves in the unfortunate position of manning Belsen when it was liberated by the British. Karl Gebhardt, supervisor of medical and racial experiments at the camps, had formerly been a front-line surgeon with SS-Division ‘Das Reich', and Richard Glücks, the man in daily charge of the whole concentration camp system, was a Waffen-SS general as well as being Inspekteur der Konzentrationslager. The Waffen-SS men who transiently staffed the camps took their directions from the permanent cadre of Totenkopfverbände veterans, and were assisted by foreign auxiliaries, selected prisoners, and even a few factory guards, SA and Wehrmacht personnel in 1944–5. So while the WVHA administered the camps and the RSHA decided who was to be incarcerated in them, members of the Waffen-SS effectively ran them and were certainly not exempt from practising the Final Solution at grass-roots level. It is still a common misconception that ‘the black-uniformed Allgemeine-SS staffed the concentration camps'.

Security policemen searching Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, November 1939.

An SS medical officer, from Mengele's staff, examining a newly arrived consignment of Jews at the railway sidings at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944. Those deemed unfit for work in the SS factories were despatched for immediate gassing.

Under Himmler, the SS came to regard itself not merely as a temporary political association but as a ‘Sippe', i.e. a tribe or clan. The same racial qualities looked for in the SS man were therefore also required of his wife. The Engagement and Marriage Order of the SS, one of the oldest fundamental laws of the organisation, was issued by Himmler on 31 December 1931, and read as follows:

1.
The SS is an association of German men, defined according to their Nordic blood and specially selected.

2.
In conformity with the National Socialist conception of the world, and recognising that the future of our people is founded on selection and the preservation of good German blood, free from all taint of hereditary disease, I now require all members of the SS to obtain the authorisation of the Reichsführer-SS before marriage.

3.
Consent to marry will be given solely on the grounds of racial or physical considerations, and with a view to congenital health.

4.
Any SS man who marries without seeking the prior authorisation of the Reichsführer-SS, or who marries in spite of being refused such authorisation, will be dismissed from the SS.

H. H
IMMLER
.

Young German girls from a Lebensborn home, their heads garlanded with flowers in pagan style, give the Nazi salute at Nürnberg in 1938.

To administer the racial and marriage procedures, Himmler created the SS Race and Settlement Office on the same day the order was issued, and placed it under Darré, his racial guru.

The main objects looked for in adjudging the marriage applications of SS men were, firstly, racial purity and, secondly, physical compatibility between the two partners likely to result in a fertile union. Thus an application to marry an elderly woman, or a woman markedly bigger or smaller than the intended husband, was likely to be rejected. The prospective bride and her family had to prove their Aryan ancestry back to the mideighteenth century, uncontaminated by the presence of Jewish or Slavonic ancestors. She further had to demonstrate that she was free from all mental and physical disease and had to submit to an exhaustive medical examination, including fertility testing, by SS doctors. Only after a couple had successfully completed all these tests could an SS marriage take place. More than a few members found the marriage regulations impossible to live with, and in 1937 alone 300 men were expelled from the SS for marrying without approval.

Christian weddings were replaced in the Allgemeine-SS by pseudo-pagan rites presided over by the bridegroom's commander. Marriages no longer took place in churches, but in the open air under lime trees or in SS buildings decorated with life runes, sunflowers and fir twigs. An eternal flame burned in an urn in front of which the couple swore oaths of loyalty, exchanged rings and received the official SS gift of bread and salt, symbols of the earth's fruitfulness and purity. A presentation copy of
Mein Kampf
was then taken from a heavy oak casket carved with runes, and handed over to the groom. Finally, as the couple departed from the ceremony, they invariably passed through a sombre arcade of saluting SS brethren.

During the war, the position as regards Allgemeine-SS men serving in the Wehrmacht became fairly unclear, for a decree published in Army Orders on 27 October 1943 stated that the decision on the marriage of such persons to foreigners rested with the Reichsführer-SS. Requests for permission were to be forwarded through official service channels to the competent High Command which would then transmit the request to RuSHA for a final decision. The implication, at least, of this decree was that marriage between SS men in the Wehrmacht and females who were Reich German nationals no longer required the authorisation of the Reichsführer-SS.

The SS maintained colonies for the convenience of its married personnel. Eight of these existed in 1944. Four (Auschwitz, Buchenwald, Dachau and Oranienburg) were located at the large SS settlements which grew up around or near concentration camps, and the remainder (Berlin, Graz, Radolfzell and Wien) were in the neighbourhood of main SS headquarters, barracks or schools. In addition, three colonies specifically for married officers of the Allgemeine-SS were established at Bad Frankenhausen, Jüterbog and Klagenfurt.

It is interesting to note that the marriage rules applied not only to male members of the SS but also to female employees and auxiliaries. In the case of the latter, if they were already married when they applied for appointment with the SS, they were obliged to produce on behalf of their husbands records and genealogical charts going back to the grandparents, for examination by RuSHA.

The SS demanded that its racial élite should breed quickly and multiply, to compensate for the catastrophic losses of manpower suffered between 1914 and 1918. In 1931, Himmler announced that it was the patriotic mission of every SS couple to produce at least four children, and where that was not possible the SS pair were expected to adopt racially suitable orphans and bring them up on National Socialist lines. To show the interest the SS had in its children, the organisation created a range of official gifts for them. At the birth of their first child, Himmler sent each set of SS parents a ribbon and bib of blue silk, symbolising the unity of birth, marriage, life and death, and a silver beaker and spoon representing eternal nourishment. During the subsequent pagan naming ceremony, which replaced the traditional christening in SS circles, the child would be wrapped in a shawl of undyed wool embroidered with oak leaves, runes and swastikas, while both parents placed their hands on the baby's head and pronounced names such as Karl or Siegfried, Gudrun or Helga, and, of course, Adolf or Heinrich. The Reichsführer served as nominal godfather to all SS children born each year on the anniversary of his birth, 7 October, and on the birth of a fourth child he sent the happy parents a letter of congratulations and a Lebensleuchter, a silver candlestick engraved with the words, ‘You are a link in the eternal racial chain'.

The future SS: new pupils on parade at the Potsdam NPEA, 1938.

However, the SS birthrate during the 1930s remained average for the country as a whole. Wages were low, and children were expensive. On 13 September 1936, in a further desperate attempt to encourage SS families to have more offspring, the Reichsführer established a registered society known as Lebensborn, or the Fountain of Life. Senior full-time SS officers were expected to make financial contributions so that the Society could provide maternity homes to which both married and unmarried mothers of SS children could be admitted free of charge. Although affiliated to RuSHA, Lebensborn was directly subordinated to SS-Standartenführer Max Sollmann of the Hauptamt Persönlicher Stab RfSS. Its stated objectives were: