Meanwhile, a heavy vengeance was being taken on the Czechs by Frank at the order of Himmler. All life and movement was stopped in the city overnight on 27 May, and a million crowns reward was offered for news which would lead to the arrest of the assailants. Hostages were arrested in the tradition already well-established by the Nazis, who used the occasion as an excuse to rid themselves of people they knew to be hostile; hundreds were killed and thousands arrested. Himmler’s teleprinter to Frank read: ‘As the intellectuals are our main enemies shoot a hundred of them tonight.’
On 6 June the first in a succession of funeral ceremonies took place in the presence of Himmler, who was the principal mourner and personally took charge of Heydrich’s two young boys who accompanied him. Frau Heydrich, who was pregnant, remained in her castle. Then the body was taken on a train under guard to Berlin, to lie in state at R.S.H.A. headquarters. At three o‘clock on 8 June, Himmler led Hitler forward to open the obsequies over the coffin at the Chancellery, to which the body had been taken for its final display. Hitler laid a wreath of orchids beside the man he said ‘was one of the greatest defenders of our greater German ideal,… the man with the iron heart’. Afterwards, he touched the heads of the two little boys whom Himmler was holding by the hand. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra played Wagner’s Funeral March, and Himmler delivered the final lengthy oration on Heydrich’s career before the body was taken to the Invaliden Cemetery for burial.
The following night, at the command of Hitler, the special vengeance of the Führer was visited on the Czech people at the village of Lidice, and upon their children. The Chief of the Security Police in Prague wrote the history of Lidice himself in the Gestapo order sent to the Resettlement Office in Lodz on 12 June:
‘By supreme command, owing to the assassination of Gruppenführer Heydrich, the village of Lidice in the Protectorate has been flattened. The entire male population was shot, the women assigned to concentration camp for life. The children were investigated with a view to their suitability for Germanization. Those not suitable are to go to you at Litzmannstadt for distribution in Polish camps. There are 90 children; they will go to Litzmannstadt in a coach attached to the train arriving Saturday 13.6.42 at 21.30. Will you please see to it that the children are met at the station and immediately distributed in suitable camps. The age groups are as follows: 1-2 years, 5; 2-4 years, 6; 4-6 years, 15; 6-8 years, 16; 8-10 years, 12; 10-16 years, 36.
The children to have nothing except what they stand up in. Special care or attention is not required.’
Immediately after the death of Heydrich, Himmler himself, following an agreement with Hitler, took over temporary command of R.S.H.A., announcing this to the senior officers present while Heydrich’s body still lay before them in state. According to Schellenberg, he used the occasion to make a severe criticism of each man in turn, except for Schellenberg himself, whom he referred to as ‘the Benjamin of our leadership corps,’ saying that Schellenberg would in future be required to work more closely with him. Schellenberg admits to blushing at the praise accorded him when the others, so much older than he, were blamed. By assuming Heydrich’s command of the S.D., Himmler ensured that no one but himself had control of the secret safe in which so much damaging evidence existed about the Nazi leadership.
As for Himmler’s attitude to Heydrich, we have his remarks to Kersten that have already been quoted. Perhaps, after all, it was a relief to be rid of so dangerous a man, who had shaken himself free from proper subordination. Two months after Heydrich’s death, Himmler called Schellenberg to his office and stood beside him face-to-face with the death-mask of the dead man. Then he said, in a deeply serious voice, ‘Yes, as the Führer said at the funeral, he was indeed a man with an iron heart. And at the height of his power fate purposefully took him away.’ He nodded his head in approval of his own words and, says Schellenberg, his small, cold eyes glinted behind their pince-nez like the eyes of a basilisk.
V. Final Solution
Whatever doubts there may have been in Himmler’s mind and conscience, there is no sign of them in the meticulous decrees and orders he despatched secretly to his officers. In these he weighed with a fearful exactitude how he might best dispose of the human raw material in his hands. After the Wannsee conference of January 1942, he made the parsimonious Oswald Pohl, who from 1939 had been in charge of the economic administration of the camps, head of a new department of the S.S. which gave him added incentives to develop the slave-labour programme. Pohl was told he must exploit the prisoners to the full as a means not only of helping Germany’s war production, but of making profits for the exclusive benefit of the S.S.
Pohl, who had been a paymaster captain in the Navy, did his best to serve his masters in carrying out the impossible task of forcing efficient work out of dying men and women; indeed, he built himself a staff some 1,500 strong solely for this purpose. In the same month, on 20 February, Himmler issued a directive that ‘special treatment’ should be given to any prisoners who proved themselves undisciplined by refusing to work or by malingering. ‘Special treatment is hanging’, explained Himmler with a frankness unusual in such orders, but he added, ‘It should not take place in the immediate vicinity of the camp. A certain number, however, should attend the special treatment.’
On 15 December 1942, Himmler wrote to Pohl on the problem of feeding the prisoners:
‘Do try, in the New Year, to cope with the feeding of prisoners by acquiring raw vegetables and onions on the largest possible scale. At the appropriate periods give them carrots, cabbage, white turnips, etc., in large measure. And during winter maintain large stocks of vegetables, enough at any rate to provide a sufficiency for each prisoner. That way, I think, we will appreciably improve the state of health. Heil Hitler!’
In January 1943 Himmler issued personally very detailed instructions for executions in the concentration camps.1 These included the following clauses:
‘The execution is not to be photographed or filmed. In exceptional cases my personal permission has to be obtained… After every execution the S.S. men and officials who had anything to do with it are to be addressed by the Camp Commandant or the S.S. leader deputizing for him. The legality of the execution is to be explained to the men, and they are to be influenced in such a way as to suffer no ill effect in their character and mental attitude. The need for rooting out elements such as the delinquent for the common weal is to be stressed. Such explanations are to be given in a truly comradely manner; they might be repeated from time to time at social gatherings.
‘After executions of Polish civilian workers as well as workers from former Soviet territories [Ostarbeiter], their compatriots working in the vicinity are to be led past the gallows with an appropriate lecture on the penalties for disobeying our orders. This is to be done as a regular routine unless there is a counterorder necessitated by special reasons, such as the need to bring in the harvest, or other reasons making it inopportune to encroach on the working time available.