In 1940 he established his own high-class brothel, the notorious Salon Kitty, a mansion rented by the S.D. in the Giesebrechtstrasse, just off the Kurfürstendamm in the west end of Berlin.2 Salon Kitty had nine bedrooms, in all of which concealed microphones were installed connected to a monitoring room in the basement. This was a pleasant means of spying, primarily on diplomatic visitors to Germany. Schellenberg is careful to point out that his responsibilities ended with supervision of the recordings, while Artur Nebe, the Chief of the Criminal Police, controlled the women, because in the past he had been connected with the vice squad. Important diplomats, such as Ciano, were early induced to visit Salon Kitty by Heydrich and others who knew the establishment’s secret uses, and their conversation while drunk or making love was recorded on tape. In February 1941, Heydrich invited Kersten to visit the house, remarking that it had been opened in agreement with Ribbentrop to save their foreign guests from becoming the victims of the worst type of prostitutes; although it had to be subsidised, he believed it would soon become self-supporting. He was, he said, even contemplating opening a similar establishment for homosexuals. According to Schellenberg, Salon Kitty was established without the knowledge of Ribbentrop, and the Foreign Minister had visited it himself before he learned who was in control of the management.
Kersten had the opportunity of seeing Heydrich primarily through Himmler’s eyes; though he had some direct dealings with Heydrich, he avoided him because he knew that he was under suspicion because of his growing intimacy with Himmler. Although, like Schellenberg, Kersten praises Heydrich’s striking Nordic appearance, the brilliance and polish of his speech ‘in the concise military manner’, and his remarkable ability to expound his arguments to Himmler in such a way as to force the decision he wanted from him, he also sees certain weaknesses of character that Schellenberg either overlooks or chooses to ignore. While Himmler treats Heydrich with ‘open friendliness’, Heydrich addresses his chief with ‘quite inexplicable servility’. ‘Yes, Reichsführer, certainly, Reichsführer, yes, yes, indeed,’ is his response once Himmler raises objections. Although Heydrich is ‘far more dynamic’, and outclasses Himmler every time in the way he can present his arguments, 'Himmler seems to possess some sort of secret power over Heydrich, before which Heydrich submits unconditionally.’ Himmler’s adjutants, Wolff and Brandt, both themselves in a position to exercise influence over Himmler, seemed to Kersten to have a poor opinion of Heydrich, whom they saw as a man operating entirely in a selfish vacuum, without a friend or supporter, either man or woman. No one trusted him: everyone tried to avoid him.3 Among his great weaknesses was his hatred of being beaten or unsuccessful in sport, and in order to prove his skill in action he joined the Luftwaffe and won the Iron Cross after making sixty operational flights.
Kersten observed that Himmler had his own methods of resisting the resolute personality of Heydrich. He records that he had seen Himmler ‘quite overwhelmed’ by Heydrich’s powerful arguments, but nevertheless he had also seen him telephone Heydrich’s office afterwards and leave instructions with the subordinates to hold up any measure to which he had been led to acquiesce in Heydrich’s presence, using now the need to consult Hitler as his reason for delay. In this way Himmler preserved his superior position and postponed making decisions, a habit which was to increase with him during the war to such an extent that it helped destroy him.
It was not until after the death of Heydrich that Himmler, still carefully shielding himself behind Hitler, admitted to Kersten that the hold they had on Heydrich was knowledge that there was Jewish blood in his family; Hitler had decided that the knowledge and ability Heydrich possessed were best kept active in the service of the Party, while the need to atone in their eyes for the taint in his blood would make this Nordic officer a more valiant persecutor of the Jews than any so-called pure-blooded Aryan. It pleased both Hitler and Himmler to make Heydrich their principal agent against the race to which in some part they imagined he belonged. Read Machiavelli, said Himmler in conclusion. A few days later he added that Heydrich had always suffered from a sense of inferiority, that he had been ‘an unhappy man, completely divided against himself, as often happened with those of mixed race’.
‘He wanted to prove the Germanic elements in his blood were dominant’, said Himmler. ‘He never really found peace.’
Himmler lit a cigar, and gazed at the receding veils of smoke.
‘In one respect he was irreplaceable,’ he added. ‘He possessed an infallible nose for men. Because he was divided himself, he was sure to sense such divisions in others. They were right to fear him. For the rest, he was a very good violinist. He once played a serenade in my honour. It was excellent.’
But Heydrich was dead, and it was easy, therefore, for Himmler to be either cynical or sentimental about him. There was no doubt about the tension and perhaps even the jealous possessiveness in their relationship; they had risen together as self-made men who had used their wits to gain advancement, and each had been and indeed still was dependent on the other. Those around them, trained to be watchful for weakness, were only too ready to dramatize what they observed in the behaviour of their superiors. To Schellenberg Himmler appeared, as to so many others, like an exacting headmaster, insisting on precision, industry and loyalty with a ‘finicky exactitude’, yet fearing to express an opinion of his own in case he should be proved wrong. He preferred others to take the responsibility off his shoulders, and receive the blame. ‘This system’, wrote Schellenberg, ‘gave Himmler an air of aloofness, of being above ordinary conflicts. It made him the final arbiter.’ But it also revealed a grave weakness of character in a man so prone to accumulating power.
This weakness was shown in his lifelong subservience to Hitler. ‘Look at Heini — he’ll crawl into the old man’s ear in a minute’, Schellenberg heard one of the adjutants whisper when Hitler was talking endlessly to Himmler, who listened with rapt attention. When Kersten asked him whether he would kill himself if Hitler ordered him to do so, Himmler replied, ‘Yes, certainly! At once! For if the Führer orders anything like that, he has his reasons. And it’s not for me as an obedient soldier to question those reasons. I only recognize unconditional obedience.’ One of the characteristics of Himmler’s nature was that, having gained power, he was most loath to use it except when he was certain no risk was involved. The death of Heydrich only intensified his isolation and his weakness of character in the face of Hitler.
Matters had been very different three years earlier, when Hitler’s troops poured into Poland after the devastating raids inflicted by Goring’s Luftwaffe. The S.S. fighting formations, some 18,000 men, took part in the war which was virtually over by 18 September. Himmler, travelling in his special armoured train known as Heinrich, left for the north on 13 September, taking Ribbentrop with him. They followed Hitler’s own train and another housing the High Command up to the Danzig area. Himmler was for long to resent having no control over the use of the S.S. formations, and it seems that their casualties were heavy. All the Reichsführer S.S. was able to do was accompany Hitler on formal inspections of the battlefronts, and he followed him back to Berlin on 26 September.
Heydrich did not travel with Himmler in this vain pursuit of military command; the S.D. was represented on the train by Schellenberg, who was at first received rather coldly by both Himmler and Wolff, Himmler’s Chief of Staff. Schellenberg seized the opportunity to gain Himmler’s favour, and at the same time to study the atmosphere and character of the men at the top. On the way back from a flight over the burning city of Warsaw, Schellenberg’s efforts to impress Himmler at length succeeded; he was invited to take supper with the Reichsführer S.S. and given confidential information about the secret agreement between Germany and Russia for the partition of Poland. They also decided to investigate Hitler’s private physician, Dr Morrell, whose panic while accompanying the Führer to the battlefronts had not impressed the Reichsführer.