Himmler’s differences with the other leaders, particularly with Göring and Ribbentrop, were caused by his encroachments on what they regarded as their privileged territory. Himmler’s information services were in some ways superior to those of either Goring or Ribbentrop because the men he employed, such as Schellenberg, were often of superior skill and intelligence. At the time of the Battle of Britain, Himmler’s assessment of British aircraft production was over double that of Goring, whose easy optimism that he could destroy the Royal Air Force in a matter of days was partly based on his estimate that the output of planes in Britain was only some 300 a month. Goring did not welcome the challenge of such contradicting figures, nor did Ribbentrop approve of Himmler’s interference in foreign affairs. They differed in 1940 over policy in Rumania, and in October Himmler was sent by Hitler on a further mission to Spain to try to involve Franco in the war. During the same period he went to Norway to strengthen the campaign against the growing resistance movement; he introduced the fearful system of persecuting men and women opposed to Germany by arresting their dependent kinsfolk and children and holding them as hostages.
Ribbentrop equally resented the extension of Himmler’s Intelligence services abroad under Schellenberg, and his attempts to influence German policy in the occupied countries. The breach in the relations between the two ministers came to a head in the winter of 1941-2, when, according to Frau von Ribbentrop, Himmler even ‘tried to enlist my husband in his personal intrigues… My husband considered it impossible from the point of view of foreign relations that Himmler should succeed Hitler’. Ribbentrop in his Memoirs summarized his points of difference with Himmler at the time, including among them Himmler’s uncompromising attitude to freemasonry and the Church, his treatment of the Jews, and his evil influence in such countries as France, Denmark and Hungary. He complained that his ambassadors were kept under surveillance by the S.D., and that secret reports on them were sent direct to the Führer. Ribbentrop bitterly resented the fact that this was done behind his back, especially when these reports led Hitler to take decisions based on what he called ‘false information’. He complains that in Rumania, for example, Himmler supported Horia Sima after he had decided in conference with Hitler that the man they should support was Antonescu.18
In an attempt to force Ribbentrop’s hand, Schellenberg contrived one of those Machiavellian tricks in which he took such delight in order to discredit Ribbentrop’s own secret service. He was, he claimed, under instruction from Himmler ‘to do my best to destroy this organization.’ He succeeded in feeding certain of Ribbentrop’s agents with false information about the Polish Government in exile in London, and then sat back to count the days until the erroneous reports arrived on Ribbentrop’s desk and were duly forwarded to the Führer. Such tactics were hardly calculated to bring Ribbentrop and Himmler closer in their personal relations.
In January 1941, Himmler made an effort to extend his power and that of Heydrich over the German Courts of Justice by asking Hitler to hand over their control from the Ministry of Justice to Frick’s Ministry of the Interior, where the Secretary of State, Wilhelm Stuckart, was a member of the S.S. and under Himmler’s influence. Hitler, wary as ever when asked to dispose of power, failed to respond, and the courts themselves remained outside the control of the Gestapo until the end of the war.
Himmler’s control of criminals and political police affairs was, however, complete. Each Gau, or administrative province in Germany, had its Higher S.S. Leader, the counterpart of the Nazi Gauleiter himself but directly responsible to Himmler and Heydrich. As the rule of the Reich spread, these S.S. Leaders were appointed in places as far apart as Oslo and Athens, Warsaw and The Hague. In Russia they were attached to each of the Army Groups. These men were supreme in all matters which they were able to call criminal and political, and answerable only to their headquarters in Berlin.
More complicated by now were his relations with Heydrich, who, when he had left his desk in May 1940 to fly with the Luftwaffe over the stricken people of France, had only himself two years left to live. Of these the first fifteen months were to be spent in preparing the Action Groups for the war against Russia in the summer of 1941 and in perfecting the extermination system in the camps set aside for that purpose by Himmler, while the last nine months were spent in his duties as Reich Protector in Czechoslovakia, where he was to be assassinated in May 1942. During this time it is plain that he considered himself Hitler’s favourite, ear-marked for promotion to a ministerial level, outflanking Himmler in the movement to the top of the hierarchy. Meanwhile Himmler was treated as an ally by his most powerful subordinate, and they worked closely together on the plans to take control of Russia.
On 13 March 1941 Hitler issued a directive signed by Keitel concerning the coming campaign in the East. This directive disturbed the High Command; it stated that ‘in the area of operations the Reichsführer S.S. is entrusted, on behalf of the Führer, with special tasks for the preparation of the political administration, tasks which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing political systems. Within the scope of these tasks, the Reichsführer S.S. shall act independently and under his own responsibility.’19 Not content with giving Himmlerthe task of purging Communism from Russia, and Goring, as plenipotentiary of the Four Year Economic Plan, responsibility for stripping individual territories of food and other products valuable to Germany, Hitler the following month suddenly salvaged Alfred Rosenberg, the old-time Party intellectual, and appointed him Minister for the future occupied territories of the East, an appointment so ludicrous that it can only be explained as a formal attempt to counter the combined and growing power of Himmler and Heydrich or the potential greed of Goring’s agents.
During the period of intense preparations for the invasion of Russia, which were developed at the same time as those for the mass extermination of the unwanted peoples, Himmler and Heydrich had to establish plans for the Action Groups which would be acceptable on the one hand to the Army and, nominally at least, to Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg constantly tried to intervene in the plans that Heydrich was preparing, though Himmler contemptuously ignored his existence. These differences brought Heydrich and Martin Bormann, Hitler’s powerful aide, closer together, for Bormann disapproved of Rosenberg, who had wild ideas of playing the part of a Baltic-German liberator of the Russian people from Soviet tyranny. As for the Army, Schellenberg was required in June to use his legal diplomacy in order to negotiate suitable terms with General Wagner, representing the High Command; the plan he devised and which was finally signed released the Security Police and the S.D. from Army control outside the immediate fighting area, leaving them free to conduct the campaign in their own way. The Army, in fact, was expected to assist them in carrying out their atrocities.
When the invasion, after much postponement, finally came on 22 June 1941, Heydrich once more disappeared in order to fly with the Luftwaffe, and his plane on one occasion was seriously damaged by Russian flak. He managed to bring the aircraft back near the German lines, and landed it, crawling to safety with his leg injured. This exploit won him the Iron Cross, First Class, from Hitler, but Himmler must have been distraught at the news of the danger he had been in. While Heydrich flew on his missions over Soviet territory, his Action Groups began their fearful massacres, shooting, hanging and terrorizing prisoners, Communist officials and partisans, as well as whole Jewish and gypsy communities.