Peter Longerich - Heinrich Himmler : A Life

PETER LONGERICH

TRANSLATED BY

JEREMY NOAKES

AND

LESLEY SHARPE

OXFORD

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Peter Longerich, 2012

First published as Himmler: Bibliographie
by Siedler Verlag Peter Longerich, 2008

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First published 2012

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This book was written, with interruptions from other publications, over the last ten years and in various places: in London and Munich, in Washington, Frankfurt, and Essen, as well as almost everywhere I spent time during those years.

First and foremost, I should like to thank my colleagues and students at Royal Holloway College, University of London, who were once again willing to enable me to complete this work by generously allowing me periods of research. A series of research institutes gave me vital support by granting scholarships and visiting fellowships that provided the opportunity to discuss my work with others: the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Fritz Bauer Institute in Frankfurt, and the Cultural Studies Institute in Essen.

In addition, in the last few years I have had the opportunity of presenting my work as it developed at a number of universities, in particular Freiburg, Stanford, Exeter, Oxford, and London (German History Seminar), also at the Villa Ten Hompel in Mnster, at the Wewelsburg Documentation Centre, and at the Imperial War Museum.

I was also able to have intensive discussions about Himmlers personality with a group of psychoanalysts in Hamburg and a circle of psychotherapists in Cologne; the discussions with both groups made a distinct and lasting impact on my work on Himmler. I should like to thank all those who took part in these gatherings: Christiane Adam, Sabine Brckner-Jungjohann, Petra Demleux-Morawietz, Gundula Fromm, Beata Hammerich, Ulrich Knocke, Dr Brbel Kreidt, Rita Krull-Wittkopf, Johannes Pfafflin, Dr Peter Pogany-Wnendt, Erda Siebert, Dirk Sieveking, Dr Bernd Sonntag, and Matthias Wellershoff.

Dr Andreas Kunz, director of the branch of the Federal Archive in Ludwigsburg, drew my attention to the memoirs of Colonel Eismann, Himmlers military colleague on the staff of the Army Group Vistula. Mrs Christa Schmeisser, in the head administrative office of the Bavarian Archives, obtained for me a transcription of Himmlers diaries and part of his correspondence. Mr Alois Schmidmeier helped me to decipher a number of shorthand passages in Himmlers letters. I am grateful to him as well as to all the staff of all the various archives and institutions that have supported my work.

P.L

Munich and London

July 2008

The primary sources for this biography are scattered across archives in several countries. Thus there are personal documents of Himmlers in the Bundesarchiv [Federal Archive] in Koblenz, in the Hoover Library in Stanford, California, and in the Special Archive in Moscow. Margarethe Himmlers diary, which provides insights into their marriage, and several family photograph albums have for some years been accessible to researchers in the US Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Some of Himmlers private papers are in the hands of various individuals and are continually being offered for sale in auction houses. It is, however, extremely unlikely that further material of Himmlers will come to light that provides significant insights into his political actions.

The Bundesarchiv in Berlin contains over 4,000 files of the Personal Staff of the Reichsfhrer-SS and varying quantities of material from the SS main offices. The collection of the personal files of SS leaders in the former Berlin Document Center (now part of the Bundesarchiv, Berlin) not only contains valuable information about their careers but, in some cases, substantial correspondence with Himmler and his personal staff. I have used several hundred of these files for this book.

The Munich archives proved very productive for Himmlers early years. The files of the Nazi Partys Reich propaganda headquarters in the Bundesarchiv, Berlin contain extensive correspondence of Himmler, who ran this office from 1926 to 1930 as its deputy head.

Finally, his activities are revealed in the files of a large number of other institutions, for example in those of the Foreign Ministry, which are held in its political archive in Berlin, in the documents of military agencies (Bundesarchiv, Freiburg), in those of various party and state agencies (Bundesarchiv, Berlin), but also in the files of British institutions, which are in the Public Record Office in London [now the National Archives].

As far as possible I have consulted the original documents in the relevant archives. However, I was obliged to make a few exceptions: in some cases I have used copies of SS files from the Bundesarchiv in Berlin, which are available in the National Archives in Washington, DC, and used their reference numbers because trying to access these files in Berlin proved too time-consuming. In a number of cases I have also used copies of documents I was able to make during a lengthy stay in Yad Vashem in 19956. The originals are held in other archives.

The most important of the published sources is Heinrich Himmlers Office Diary 1941/42, which was edited by eight German historians. In an exemplary pioneering project, covering the particularly critical years 19412, they combined Himmlers hitherto undiscovered appointment notes, which were held in the Moscow Special Archive, with the Himmler calendars which were already available, and drew upon the Reichsfhrers correspondence contained in various collections of files in order to provide a context for the diary entries. In the process they have provided an indispensable source.