This assimilation of special powers in the German states through acquiring the office of Commander of Political Police was illegal because Frick, the Nazi Minister of the Interior, was never consulted, in spite of the fact that the provincial governments were responsible to the Ministry of the Interior for their police administration. To cover his activities, Himmler always declared himself the servant of the provincial governments when, after parading the local S.S. formations in order to intimidate the officials, he assumed his new command on their behalf. Frick, in the face of Hitler’s policy of the gradual centralization of power, was all but helpless to defend his own rights as Minister against these obvious encroachments by Himmler into his area of responsibility. According to the anti-Nazi Gisevius, he roused himself to forbid the states to create further offices without his direct consent, but Himmler circumvented this by forcing the finance ministers of the provincial governments to subsidize his S.S. formations and the concentration camps in their area. In one way or another, Himmler built up the network of his powers until the web spread over the whole of Germany with the exception of Goring’s Prussia.
At the same time, during the autumn of 1933, Heydrich had established in Berlin, in open defiance of Goring, a section of the S.D. at premises in Eichen-Allee, and in November Gregor Strasser, who had once been Himmler’s employer, made his celebrated pun in a note sent to Hans Frank: ‘Hitler seems to be entirely in the hands of his Himmlers and Anhimmlers (adorers).’ Nevertheless, it was Roehm who received official promotion to Hitler’s Cabinet in December 1933, a step which so alarmed Goring that it made him carefully reconsider his future relationship with Himmler.
Gisevius, at that time still an official in the Gestapo, has described how he became involved in the intrigues between Daluege, Diels and Heydrich. In February 1934 he was invited, to use a polite term, to attend a conference at the barracks of the S.S. Leibstandarte in Lichterfelde along with Nebe. They went, thinking their last hour had come; to their surprise, they were greeted by Dietrich, Commandant of the Leibstandarte, with flattering messages from Himmler and Heydrich. Their stand against corruption in the Gestapo was specially commended, and they were invited to sit down there and then and write a report of their ‘grievances’, as Dietrich put it. They did so, recording many instances of ‘extortion, torture and killing’. As Gisevius puts it: ‘It was always a favourite S.S. tactic to appear in the guise of respectable citizens and to condemn vigorously all excesses, lies or infringements of the law. Himmler, when talking to a small group, sounded like the stoutest crusader for decency, cleanliness, and justice.’ Undoubtedly Himmler believed in his mission, like a strict schoolmaster, while Heydrich went on filling his files for the final assault on the citadel of Prussia.
To emphasize the need for the co-ordination of the political police under a single authority, Heydrich made use of a report from one of his agents that a Communist plot was forming, quite unknown to Goring’s Gestapo, to murder Goring. Arrests were made before either Goring or Hitler was informed, and Himmler used the plot to press the Führer to place the whole police force of Germany under the control of the S.S. After some hesitation, Hitler agreed, and with Goring’s consent the Prussian Ministry of the Interior was merged with the Reich Ministry of the Interior, and its political police, including the Gestapo, placed under Himmler as the new head of the national secret police force. To soften the transfer of power, Goring as Prime Minister of Prussia remained nominally responsible, but on 10 April he addressed the assembled Gestapo in the presence of Himmler and Heydrich, explaining to them that Himmler would in future take charge of their work as his deputy. He ordered them to support Himmler in the struggle against the enemies of the State, while Himmler in his turn protested his loyalty and gratitude in an excess of delighted subservience. ‘I shall forever remain loyal to you. Never will you have anything to fear from me’, he declared. On 20 April 1934 Himmler formally took over the Gestapo, with Heydrich as his deputy. The links in the chain of office were now complete.
III. The Élite
During the period he was gradually increasing the range of his power and influence, Himmler had realized it was no longer either proper or practical for him to continue as a farmer. The small-holding in Waldtrudering had been sold, and he had removed his wife and family, who now included an adopted boy called Gerhard as well as his five-year-old daughter Gudrun, to Lindenfycht at Gmund at the head of the beautiful lake of Tegernsee, some twenty-five miles from Munich.1 When he took control of the Gestapo in April 1934, he moved his official residence to Berlin and settled in a villa at Dahlem, a fashionable suburb where Ribbentrop also lived. His headquarters in Berlin were at the Prinz Albrechtstrasse, where Goring had established the Gestapo; Heydrich’s headquarters were set up near-by in the Wilhelmstrasse.
Himmler’s domestic life was meagre. He had no strong feeling for the woman he had married; his passionate devotion was to his work in Berlin, and this led to a gradual separation which, although it was never made formal, was none the less real.2 Marga stayed in Gmund, and this remained to the end of Himmler’s life his solidly bourgeois family home. Marga’s frequent letters, no longer sentimental as they once were, are full of domestic chatter about the weather, her husband’s clothes, the losses and gains in the vegetable and fruit garden and complaints of his infrequent visits: ‘We look forward to your visit… Don’t bring along so many files and other things to read. We want a bit of your attention too.’ From as early as 1931, she began to address him in her letters as ‘Mein Lieber Guter’, and when he is away she seldom fails to remind him, as always, that the housekeeping money is due. Marga was undoubtedly a good and frugal housewife, scraping the last penny of value out of the money her husband gave her, but her husband’s long absences hardened her. Her social station in life did not rise with his, since she could not come to town and share it with him. As early as October 1931 she writes naively about the good news for the Nazis, adding, ‘How I’d like to be present at all these great events.’ But Himmler kept her as firmly as possible in the background. She was, nevertheless, very conscious of being the Herr Reichsführer’s wife, and dealt with the local tradespeople on those terms, driving as hard a bargain as she could in the process. They much preferred to deal with Himmler, who, when they encountered him during one of his visits, seemed to them far more human and less socially pretentious. He loved his daughter Gudrun, and it was to see her rather than Marga that he came to Gmund.
Marga had two sisters, Lydia and Bertha; Bertha on 19 April 1936 received an official letter from her brother-in-law which began:
‘I am told that you’ve been in our office again making tactless and bloody silly (saudumne) remarks. I herewith forbid you (i) to enter my office; (ii) to telephone anyone in my office except myself or S.S. Brigadeführer Wolff… Henceforth you are to refrain from any remarks about S.S. matters and personalities. All departmental chiefs have been acquainted with this letter. Heil Hitler!’
He accused Bertha of making adverse remarks about Heydrich and saying that when he, Himmler, was absent from Berlin she had to run the office for him.
Himmler’s relations with his parents during their final years were friendly and correct. He set his father the task of research into the family ancestry, and a letter about this, sent by the old man from Munich in February 1935, begins: ‘My dear Heinrich, this time your father does not come to you with a request but to give you something’, while his mother scribbles a postscript saying how proud she feels to see her son’s name and picture so often in the papers. But, she adds, he should not work too hard; he must look after himself, and come and see them soon in Munich.