Himmler did not refrain from putting himself on exhibition. ‘The Reichsführer of the S.S.,’ he said, ‘is just as much an S.S. man in the sense of the S.S. organization as the common man of the front. On this 9th of November he is being awarded the dagger, and this is the occasion when he promises to abide by the marriage law and the disciplinary laws of the S.S.’
Himmler then laid stress on the importance of good health. City life with its rush made men ‘grow pale and fat… which is never good for the State. If we desire to remain young we have to be sportsmen.’ He went on to describe how he expected men to practise in using both left and right hands equally in learning to fire pistols and rifles, or in putting the shot; everyone from eighteen to fifty years of age must train to keep fit.
Ideological training went along with physical training. ‘Weekly periods of instruction are held during which pages from Hitler’s Mein Kampf are read. The older a person, the more steadfast must he be in his ideology.’
He then described the various divisions into which the S.S. were divided, including the S.D.: ‘the great ideological Intelligence service of the Party and, in the long run, of the state,’ and the Death’s Head units, which ‘originated from the guard units of the concentration camps’. The prisoners in the camps he described as ‘the offal of criminals and freaks, for the most part, slave-like souls’. To attempt to indoctrinate such people was a waste of time; just to train them to keep themselves clean was as much as need be done. ‘The people are taught to wash themselves twice daily, and to use the tooth brush, with which most of them have been unfamiliar. Hardly another nation would be as humane as we are.’
After dealing with the objective of the Security Service, he turned to the S.S. marriage laws. ‘No S.S. man can get married without the approval of the Reichsführer S.S. A physical examination of the bride and guarantees for the bride’s ideological and human character are required. In addition, a genealogical table up to 1750 is required; this results in tremendous work. It is our concern that our men get married.’
He went on to describe how he was at that moment in process of unifying the German police system — ‘We now have for the first time in German history a Reich Police.’ The importance of the police in time of war was paramount, fighting in ‘a fourth theatre of war, internal Germany,’ against the insidious forces of ‘Jewish-Marxist-Bolshevist influence… It is the obligation of the S.S., and the police to solve positively the problem of internal security.’
He ended the speech with further references to the supreme racial struggle in which Germany was engaged:
‘We are more valuable than the others who do now, and always will, surpass us in numbers. We are more valuable because our blood enables us to invent more than others, to lead our people better than others. Let us clearly realize, the next decades signify a struggle leading to the extermination of the subhuman opponents in the whole world who fight Germany, the basic people of the Northern race, bearer of the culture of mankind.’
This speech, as the generals present must have realized, was a direct challenge to the Army and must have reminded them of Roehm’s assaults on their authority, though coming now from a source which was far more powerful, secret and sinister than anything Roehm had represented. The speech had the support of Hitler and was circulated, in a shortened form, as an official document, while the full text, taken down in shorthand, was smuggled abroad and published later in the year in an anti-Nazi journal. By that time, Hitler had favoured Himmler still further by announcing on 15 May that decisions issued from his office should have the same validity as ministerial decrees.
By the summer Berlin was seething with rumours that the S.S. were planning a putsch against the High Command. Fritsch, the Chief of Staff, was under surveillance by Heydrich’s agents, while Blomberg was about to cause his own downfall. When Hitler held his notorious staff conference on 5 November, neither the field-marshal nor the general was enthusiastic in response to his extraordinary outburst about the necessity for war with the Western Powers and the annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. When Blomberg, after consultations with Goring, approached Hitler with the request that he might marry a typist with whom, at the age of sixty, he had become infatuated, Hitler consented with good grace and, along with Goring, even acted as a witness of the wedding on 12 January 1938.
The main facts of the disgraceful sequel to this marriage are well known, though accounts differ considerably about the nature of the complicity of Goring, Himmler and Heydrich in Blomberg’s downfall. The dossier proving that the bride’s mother kept a brothel and revealing that Frau Blomberg had herself a police record for prostitution emerged immediately after the wedding from the office of Count Helldorf, the Police President of Berlin. When Helldorf saw it he decided not to give it to Heydrich; he tactfully took the papers first of all to General Keitel, Blomberg’s counsellor at the Ministry, whose son had recently married Blomberg’s daughter. Keitel refused point-blank to handle the matter, and it was decided the papers should be sent next to Goring. According to Gisevius, Goring had some knowledge of the matter from the start, though there is other evidence that contradicts this. Josef Meisinger of the Gestapo, before his execution in Poland in 1947, claimed that he had faked the evidence against Blomberg’s young wife, using her mother’s record for the purpose, and that only Heydrich knew the forgery was on file waiting to be used once the wedding was over. If this were so, it seems most unlikely that Himmler was unaware of it. Whatever machination was used, the result was the same; Blomberg was disgraced and forced to retire.
This isolated Fritsch, about whom Heydrich also held damaging evidence implying that the general was a homosexual. Meisinger had also been in charge of this work. A professional blackmailer called Schmidt had been interrogated about Fritsch in 1935 and had claimed that he was blackmailing him for homosexuality. Schmidt was produced once again by Heydrich, Himmler and Goring to disgrace their second victim. Fritsch was directly charged with homosexual practices by Himmler in the presence of Hitler on 26 January; Schmidt was called in to identify Fritsch. Hitler did not want to act too hastily; he put Fritsch on indefinite leave pending some form of enquiry into the charges, while Himmler attempted to blacken him still further in the sight of the Führer by suggesting he would be the cause of a military demonstration against the regime when Hitler addressed the Reichstag on 31 January.
Meanwhile, during further interrogations of Schmidt, their principal witness, the Gestapo officials made a terrible discovery. It appeared that he had made a mistake in his deposition of 1935; the military gentleman from whom he had been exacting payments had been a retired cavalry officer called Captain von Frisch. Gestapo officials went at once to interrogate this officer at his house on 15 January, and found this new testimony was only too true. The Gestapo’s primary case against Fritsch was now destroyed.
At a meeting with Beck and Rundstedt of the General Staff, Hitler finally agreed to allow official enquiries to be made jointly by the Army and the Ministry of Justice into the evidence against Fritsch. He insisted, however, that the enquiries were to be conducted in association with the Gestapo. This enquiry placed both Himmler and Heydrich in a most difficult position. The assessors now had the legal right to interrogate Schmidt, who was in the hands of the Gestapo. Himmler, naturally enough, had been opposed to any further enquiries from the start of the campaign by the Army to initiate them. Nebe, who appears to have been in touch with both sides in the struggle over Fritsch, had already given Gisevius a hint of the truth about the Gestapo’s dilemma. The assessors were therefore encouraged to insist that the Gestapo hand their witness over. In the end, after close questioning, Schmidt unwillingly gave the assessors the address of the house where, he claimed, Fritsch had retired to fetch the money his blackmailer was demanding from him. The assessors visited the address, and found in a neighbouring house the Captain von Frisch who was the cause of the Gestapo’s embarrassment. He was in bed seriously ill. During the visit the Captain’s housekeeper admitted that the Gestapo had been there the previous month; she even remembered the date, 15 January. As soon as the Gestapo were informed of this visit, they took the Captain from his bed and placed him under arrest.