The Himmler's SS (24 page)

SS men guarding Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz railway terminal, summer 1944. This candid photograph was found in Czechoslovakia at the end of the war, among the possessions of a dead Waffen-SS soldier who had previously served at the camp. Himmler expressly forbade the taking of such souvenir snapshots, realising that they might well eventually be used in evidence against the SS.

During the second half of the war, the working hours of most prisoners were raised considerably. By 1944, an eleven-hour day had become the rule, even during the winter months, with only Sunday afternoons set aside for rest. Debility and mortality increased rapidly, and the productivity of inmates remained far below Himmler's and Pohl's high expectations. Consequently, more and more had to be employed to maintain even a static output. Anti-social elements and petty criminals were soon being transferred
en masse
by the RSHA from conventional German state prisons to the concentration camp factories, and according to a WVHA report of 15 January 1945 the number of inmates incarcerated at that time had reached an all-time high of 715,000, including 200,000 women. Probably as many as one-third of those subsequently lost their lives in the exhausting evacuation marches organised in the face of Allied advances on the camps. The total number of prisoners who died during the war from weakness and disease while labouring for the SS in the concentration camps and industrial complexes of the Reich was estimated by the Nürnberg tribunal at half a million.

The Nazi party in general, as a nationalist and anti-socialist movement, was supported from its infancy by big business. The SS was particularly attractive to major industrial groupings such as I.G. Farben, whose directors shared Himmler's opposition to the costly protection of the old Junker landholders, and his goal of building German hegemony in Europe, in a closed economic bloc independent of American capital and the world market. During the spring of 1934, Himmler befriended Wilhelm Keppler, one of I.G. Farben's managers, and bestowed upon him the honorary rank of SS-Gruppenführer. In return, Keppler was instrumental in the creation of the so-called Freundeskreis RfSS, or Circle of Friends of the Reichsführer-SS, a group of wealthy industrialists and business advisers. They agreed to make regular financial contributions towards the cultural, social and charitable activities of the SS, in return for Himmler's patronage and protection. While Keppler was the instigator of the Freundeskreis, its leading member was the renowned financier Kurt Freiherr von Schröder, whose Cologne Bank maintained the special account, codenamed ‘S', which held Freundeskreis donations. Other prominent members of the Circle included: Dr Rasche, Director of the Dresden Bank; Dr Lippert, Oberbürgermeister of Berlin; Dr Ritter von Halt, Director of the Deutsche Bank; and Gottfried Graf von Bismarck. Heavy industry was represented by, among others: Director-General Röhnert of the Lüdenscheid Metal Works; Steinbrinck of the Flick Steel Consortium; Bingel of the Siemens electrical combine; Bütefisch of I.G. Farben; and Walz of the Bosch chemical concern.

A typical concentration camp guard, February 1945. This is one of only a dozen known photographs showing the double-armed swastika collar patch being worn. It was used from September 1944 to identify full-time concentration camp guards who had been compulsorily transferred in from the Wehrmacht, SA, Werkschutz or similar non-SS organisations. Such men, who had little to do with the horrors of the camp system, bore the brunt of Allied reprisals when the camps were liberated.

Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in his uniform as an honorary SS-Brigadeführer, early 1936. At this stage in his career, von Ribbentrop had just been appointed Hitler's ambassador to Great Britain.

Throughout the life of the Third Reich, the Freundeskreis deposited vast sums into the coffers of the SS, and a special office was set up under SS-Brigadeführer Fritz Kranefuss to administer donations received from the Circle. For its part, the SS was able to award lucrative contracts in the conquered territories to the companies concerned, and supply them with cheap concentration camp labour. In September 1943 alone, over 1 million Reichsmarks went into Account ‘S', 200,000 of them from von Schröder personally, who wrote that he was very happy to be able to help Himmler perform his ‘special tasks'. There is no doubt that these pillars of German society played a most important part in oiling the wheels of the SS economic machine.

T
HE
SS S
OCIETY

Besides the acknowledged and logical development of the SS as regards its fusion with the police and security services, the organisation enlarged its position and range of influence in more insidious ways. By means of an unobtrusive but thorough policy of infiltration, the SS furnished itself with representatives in every branch of official and semi-official German life. It became, in effect, the archetypal ‘state within the state', a closely knit and powerful group of men and women governed by a rigid set of rules, the chief of which was loyalty to Himmler and unquestioning obedience of orders.

Membership of the SS was always attractive after 1933, offering a steady and lucrative job in the agency of the most influential body in Germany, with the chance of a quick lift on the road to economic, political, professional or even artistic success. Consequently, the Allgemeine-SS soon outgrew its origins as a group of guardsmen and came to represent a very carefully organised racial élite composed of intellectuals as well as exsoldiers, shopkeepers and peasant youths. In May 1944, no less than 300 of the 1,200 leading personalities in Germany, including industrialists, financiers and academics, held SS membership. By that time, SS domination throughout the Reich had become total.

Members of the Reichstag saluting Hitler in 1937. SS uniforms are evident everywhere, and prominent SS personalities in the group include Schaub, von Ribbentrop, Lammers, Otto Dietrich, von Neurath, Darré and Seyss-Inquart.

A starting point in the study of SS personalities can be made with the immediate entourage of the Führer. Hitler surrounded himself with SS men, the principal of whom were his secretary, SS-Obergruppenführer Philipp Bouhler, and his personal adjutant, SS-Obergruppenführer Julius Schaub, both constant companions and confidants since the old Stosstrupp days. The Führer's chief medical officer, Prof. Dr Karl Brandt, was a Gruppenführer; his personal pilot, Hans Baur, was a Brigadeführer in the RSD; and his chauffeur, Erich Kempka, was a Sturmbannführer. In addition, the majority of Hitler's young valets and aides, including Fritz Darges, Otto Günsche, Wilhelm Krause, Heinz Linge, Hans Pfeiffer, Max Wünsche and the brothers Hans-Georg and Richard Schulze, were junior SS officers.

SS-Brigadeführer Arthur Greiser (left) and SS-Gruppenführer Albert Forster (centre) with Grossadmiral Raeder on an inspection tour in Danzig, 1939. Greiser, a former navy pilot, wears the pale-grey Allgemeine-SS uniform while Forster sports a personalised political tunic, without insignia, in his other capacity as the local NSDAP Gauleiter. Greiser, then Forster's deputy, later became an SS-Obergruppenführer and Gauleiter of Wartheland.

As it was with the head of the party, so it was with the NSDAP itself. One of the key posts at the top of the Nazi hierarchy, that of Party Treasurer, was held by SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer Franz Xaver Schwarz, who controlled the whole financial policy of the NSDAP. Below him were three SS-Obergruppenführer: Walter Buch, the Supreme Party Judge; Max Amann, Chief of the Party Press Office; and Martin Bormann, Head of the Party Chancellery. To quote only two more examples, SS-Brigadeführer Erich Cassel was Chief of the NSDAP Racial Department, and SS-Brigadeführer Bernhard Ruberg was Deputy Gauleiter of the Foreign Section of the NSDAP, which co-ordinated all party activities abroad.

Control of access to Hitler and domination of the NSDAP by the SS could perhaps be expected, but the same penetration was also evident in the machinery of the state. Some of the most important posts in the Cabinet were held by SS generals. Obergruppenführer Dr Hans Lammers was Head of the Reich Chancellery, while Constantin Freiherr von Neurath and Joachim von Ribbentrop both served as Foreign Minister. In the various Reich Ministries, thirty-nine key positions were occupied by SS men from the ranks of Obergruppenführer down to Obersturm-bannführer. In the Foreign Office alone, ten posts were held by SS officers, including Wilhelm Keppler, Walther Hewel and Prof. Dr Werner Gerlach, who were heads of departments. Brigadeführer Kurt Freiherr von Schröder, of the Freundeskreis RfSS, and the giant Dr Alexander Freiherr von Dörnberg, Chief of Protocol, were ministerial directors. SS-Oberführer Prof. Dr Franz Six, Chief of Amt VII of the RSHA, was also Head of the Foreign Office Cultural Department. Ribbentrop is known to have fought hard to maintain the independence of the Foreign Office and Diplomatic Service against the encroachments of the SD, so it is all the more significant that so many SS men held influential posts in the sphere of activity which he controlled.