By
– December 7, 2011
Peter Longerich, author of the critically acclaimed book Holocaust, has written what is almost the definitive biography of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. Almost because, although the biography is comprehensive with regard to Himmler’s early life and how he turned the SS into the murderous organization that was responsible for the mass murder of Jews, Longerich writes surprisingly little about his relationship to Hitler.
Historians agree that Hitler issued the orders for the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question,” and Himmler was given enormous power to enforce this murderous objective. Given Hitler’s propensity to give general policy directions without specifics, it is unclear whether the murderous rampage that became the Holocaust was the product of his explicit orders or that of Himmler’s fanatical and far-reaching objective of creating a new Aryan racial order in the East through mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Himmler’s ultimate goal was based on racial fantasies which he gleaned from the racial literature of his teenage years, when he dreamed of resettling the lost Nordic-Germanic populations of Eastern Europe within an Aryan German empire in Europe. This opportunity arose when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941 and Hitler issued his “Commissar ”order calling for a ruthless ideological war in the East against “Judeo-Bolshevism,” resulting in the murder of six million Jews, viewed as the primary target, as well as millions of other “inferior” beings. Given the leeway Hitler gave his commanders in the killing fields to interpret his orders, it is hard to distinguish Hitler’s ultimate intentions with regard to the Jews from Himmler’s own initiatives.
Thus, without knowing more about their relationship and the manner in which Hitler conveyed his orders to Himmler in regard to the general objective of making Europe Judenrein (free of Jews), it is difficult to concur with Longerich’s conclusion:
Historians agree that Hitler issued the orders for the “Final Solution” of the “Jewish question,” and Himmler was given enormous power to enforce this murderous objective. Given Hitler’s propensity to give general policy directions without specifics, it is unclear whether the murderous rampage that became the Holocaust was the product of his explicit orders or that of Himmler’s fanatical and far-reaching objective of creating a new Aryan racial order in the East through mass murder and ethnic cleansing. Himmler’s ultimate goal was based on racial fantasies which he gleaned from the racial literature of his teenage years, when he dreamed of resettling the lost Nordic-Germanic populations of Eastern Europe within an Aryan German empire in Europe. This opportunity arose when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June, 1941 and Hitler issued his “Commissar ”order calling for a ruthless ideological war in the East against “Judeo-Bolshevism,” resulting in the murder of six million Jews, viewed as the primary target, as well as millions of other “inferior” beings. Given the leeway Hitler gave his commanders in the killing fields to interpret his orders, it is hard to distinguish Hitler’s ultimate intentions with regard to the Jews from Himmler’s own initiatives.
Thus, without knowing more about their relationship and the manner in which Hitler conveyed his orders to Himmler in regard to the general objective of making Europe Judenrein (free of Jews), it is difficult to concur with Longerich’s conclusion:
If Himmler had been replaced in the 1930s by someone else, this specific and highly dangerous network of different powers (referring to Himmler) would not have come into being. If, on the other hand, these responsibilities had been distributed among several Nazi politicians as separate domains, Nazi policy could not have led to its dreadful consequences in quite the same way… for the systematic murder of European Jews to which Himmler’s is connected today was not in his eyes the ultimate goal of his policies but rather the precondition for much more extensive plans for a bloody new ordering of the European continent.
Jack Fischel is professor emeritus of history at Millersville University, Millersville, PA and author of The Holocaust (Greenwood Press) and Historical Dictionary of the Holocaust (Rowman and Littlefield).
