by Bill Yenne
Two months later, Hitler inked a deal with Italy’s Fascist “duce,” Benito Mussolini. Known as the Pact of Steel, the agreement called for cooperation in time of war—a war that seemed all that much closer because of the pact.
On August 24, Hitler sent his foreign minister to Moscow. There, Joachim von Ribbentrop signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union’s own brutal strongman, Josef Stalin. Much to the surprise of the global media, which demonized and caricaturized both leaders, the right-wing demon Hitler had tumbled into bed with the left-wing demon Stalin.
A week later, Hitler, the man who held the best hand at the table of European politics that year decided that negotiating had taken him as far at it could. It was time for war.
German bombs began falling on Poland the morning of September 1, 1939, as German troops raced across the border. In London, Neville Chamberlain proposed more negotiations. Chamberlain consulted with Daladier, and together they came to realize that the time for negotiating was indeed over. On September 3, Britain and France declared that a state of war between them and the Third Reich had existed for two days.
Seen here shaking hands, Adolf Hitler and Hermann Göring were all smiles in 1940 and early 1941 as their armies remained undefeated and apparently invincible in every land campaign that they had fought so far. U.S. National Archives
World War II had begun, and the SS had fired the opening volley. In case one might labor under an illusion that Himmler’s disciplined and elite warrior caste was somehow as noble or as righteous as it imagined itself, one has only to look at the despicable circumstances of this opening volley. Himmler had even agreed that it should be named after himself.
Operation Himmler had been cooked up by himself and Reinhard Heydrich, even as the former was making the arrangements to fly his boys home from Tibet. The idea was to use mainly SD troops to generate the illusion that Poland was attacking Germany. It was much the same as on the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 when the SS faked a putsch against Hitler by Röhm and the SA as an excuse to smash Röhm and the SA. Dressed in Polish uniforms, Heydrich’s men attacked German border areas, shooting wildly and leaving behind bodies—of inmates from Himmler’s Dachau concentration camp—also dressed in Polish uniforms. This way, Hitler was able to point to an “attack” on Germany.
At the time Germany invaded Poland, the Wehrmacht, especially its Luftwaffe, was the most well-trained, best-equipped and overall superior military force in the world. Among them, or rather, alongside the Wehrmacht, were three regiments of a growing SS Verfügungstruppe. It was a small force, but it was no longer merely symbolic, to the consternation of the Oberkommando Wehrmacht, who would like to have seen the black-shirted army disbanded and sent back to being a party police force. (It should be pointed out that the SS combat troops wore military-style camouflage uniforms in combat. Black, symbolizing their image as “black knights,” was reserved for their dress uniforms.)
The coordinated German air and ground offensive, known as the Blitzkrieg (lightning war), was the most rapid and efficient mode of military attack the world had ever seen. The use of fast-moving tanks, mobile forces, dive bombers, and paratroop units, all working together as one tight, well-disciplined force, stunned the world, especially the Polish defenders. Germany was able to subjugate Poland in just three weeks.
Meanwhile, SS Einsatzgruppen (special operations groups) commanded by Reinhard Heydrich undertook the sinister task of eliminating those members of Polish society and the intelligentsia who might be problematic to the occupation. Functioning essentially as hit men, they systematically murdered business leaders, professors, politicians, and even doctors. A special target was the Catholic Church. In one diocese, a third of the priests were executed, and another third were arrested.
As shown in this chart, Heinrich Himmler, as Reichsführer SS, held eight separate offices besides those resulting directly from his position as commander of the SS proper. They included Reich and Prussian minister of the interior (Reichs und Preussischer Minister des Innern), under which Himmler controlled a department for constitutional and legislative matters; the administration of the German civil service, veterinary matters, and public health; the federalized communal administration, census, and survey; and the administration of sports and athletics. As German chief of police, (Chef der Deutschen Polizei) since June 1936, he federalized former state and local police organizations into the SS. These included the Sipo, Orpo, and Kripo, as well as the Gestapo. U.S. War Department Technical Manual 30-451, March 15, 1945
This table shows the organization of the SS high command (Reichsführung SS), consisting of the Reichsführer SS, his staff, and the chiefs of the main departments administering the internal affairs of the three functional subdivisions of the SS, the General SS, Waffen SS, and the Death’s Head Formations (Totenkopfverbände). U.S. War Department Technical Manual 30-451, March 15, 1945
Adolf Hitler had not forgotten Drang Nach Osten. He had not forgotten that the creation of Poland itself was one of the insults cast against Germany by the Treaty of Versailles, which he reviled so much.
Having defeated Poland, he and his new ally, Stalin, put Poland out of existence. Western Poland disappeared into the Third Reich, while eastern Poland was permanently absorbed into parts of the Soviet Ukraine and what was then the Byelorussian (White Russian) Soviet Socialist Republic (now Belarus). Meanwhile, their secret deal also allowed Stalin to absorb Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in one fast swoop.
According to documents later captured by the Allies, 10 percent of Polish farmland in the western part of the country was handed over to Völksdeutsche settlers, and 20 percent of Polish businesses were confiscated and handed to German or Völksdeutsche owners.
Of course, the Soviets were not above ruthless slaughter in the part of Poland that they swallowed. In an incident known as the Katyn Massacre, 21,768 soldiers, priests, business owners, politicians, and professionals were murdered. Under orders given by Stalin himself and rubber-stamped by the Soviety Politburo, they were rounded up by the Soviet secret police, taken to Russia, and executed, mainly in the Katyn Forest.
In the aftermath of Poland’s collapse, Britain and France dispatched a few bombers over Germany, but for the most part, took no offensive action. A lull in the action of World War II descended over Europe. Throughout the winter of 1939–1940, Allied and German troops sat and stared at one another across the heavily fortified Franco-German border. So little was happening, that newspaper writers dubbed the situation “the Sitzkrieg,” or the “phoney war.”
For the SS Verfügungstruppe, it was far from phoney. During the “sitzing” time, the SS army was growing. Three SS regiments, named Der Führer, Deutschland, and Germania were combined into an SS Verfügungs division. Some of the Totenkopfverbände death camp guards were organized into a second division. The Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler remained as an independent regiment until it was expanded to brigade, then achieved division status in 1941.
All through the winter and into the spring, Europe waited and wondered what would happen next in this conflict called World War II. On April 9, 1940, the other shoe—or the other jackboot to be more accurate—in Europe’s nervous standoff finally dropped. Germany went on the offensive. Sitzkrieg became Blitzkrieg once again.
The German armed forces quickly occupied Denmark, and by the end of the month, Norway had also been swallowed. On May 10, with the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler in the spearhead into the Netherlands, the Germans began a great offensive to the west that duplicated their advance on Belgium and France in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. The most battle-ready of the units in the still relatively small British army were dispatched to France as the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to help the French stem the German tide.
By the end of May, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands had surrendered, and German forces were pouring into France. The French army and the BEF were outmaneuvered and quickly routed by the German Blitzkrieg. The latter found themselves surrounded at t
he French port of Dunkirk, with their backs to the English Channel. Between May 26 to June 4, a hastily assembled fleet of more than 800 boats, including fishing boats, pleasure craft, and lifeboats, made numerous crossings of the English Channel, rescuing nearly 200,000 British troops and more than 100,000 French soldiers from capture by the Germans.
The rest of the French army was not so lucky. By June 14, Germany had seized control of Paris, having accomplished in five weeks what it had been unable to do in four years of protracted fighting in World War I. France surrendered a week later, leaving Britain to face the onslaught of Germany’s Blitzkrieg alone. Only about thirty miles of English Channel separated Germany’s crack troops from a British army that had abandoned all of its equipment in France when it barely managed to escape from Dunkirk.
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ON JUNE 22, the attention of the global media was on the fall of France. Hitler had smugly arranged for the French to formally surrender at Compiègne Forest near Paris, in the same spot and in the same railway car where the Germans had surrendered in 1918. Hitler had achieved an astounding victory, and he would gleefully rub French noses in the filth of defeat.
Mussolini was so awed and impressed by Hitler’s conquests that he sent the Italian army to invade southern France—but he did wait until after the Germans had beaten the French army.
Across the globe, Imperial Japan was so awed and impressed by Hitler’s conquests that they asked to join Germany’s Pact of Steel alliance with Italy. On September 27, 1940, the Tripartite Pact was signed, creating the three-nation Axis alliance.
Admiral Miklós “Nicolas” Horthy, the former Austro-Hungarian naval commander, who was now the regent of landlocked Hungary, was so impressed with Hitler’s triumphs that he asked whether his kingdom could please join the Axis as well. He inked a deal to join the others on November 20.
In Romania, there was also interest in joining the Axis. General Ion Antonescu of the pro-Nazi Iron Guard, with whom the Ahnenerbe’s Dr. Franz Altheim and Erika Trautmann had dined when they visited Bucharest in August 1938, became prime minister on September 6. He squeezed out King Carol II, installed his son as a puppet monarch, and joined the Axis three days after Horthy and the Hungarians.
Through the Axis alliance with Italy’s Mussolini, Adolf Hitler now controlled virtually all of continental Europe from the border of the Soviet Union to the Atlantic Ocean. By virtue of the surrender of France and its African colonies, the Axis controlled all of North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Egyptian border. Hitler would try, and later give up on, a defeat of Britain, but for the people of continental Europe, the dark shade of Nazi occupation and domination had been drawn.
As Germany consolidated its frighteningly quick conquests, the role of the SS in the occupation expanded. The heavy iron hand of the SS that had become familiar within the Third Reich was now felt throughout Europe. The conniving, furtive eyes and ears of the SD now snooped on foreign enemies of the occupier.
Europe had a new police chief, and his name was Heinrich Himmler.
The SS and SD were tasked with keeping tabs on potential resistors to German occupation and dealing with them as only such agencies can. Usually, the subjects of Nazi suspicion simply disappeared. Under Reinhard Heydrich, the SS adopted a Nacht und Nebel (night and fog) policy, meaning that the Black Knights would do their brutally efficient work discreetly under cover of darkness, striking the cold chill of fear (while providing the grist for countless exploitation films in the decades since World War II).
In 1941, Heydrich himself had a chance to personally wield his own iron fist in Bohemia and Moravia. Though they were permitted to have a puppet government, the Czechs were still uppity over their ignoble loss of sovereignty. They failed to appreciate their puppet government, and public opinion still supported the Czech government-in-exile in London. Hitler needed someone to throw a little fear of the pagan gods into these Slavic ingrates. Named as Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich instituted a bloody reign of terror on a scale not yet seen in Nazi-occupied Europe. The SS swept through the country, arresting, trying, convicting, and executing opponents with blistering speed and ruthlessness.
As quickly as he had done this, however, Bohemia and Moravia’s “protector” increased the flow of foodstuffs and consumer goods, transforming himself and the Third Reich into an almost benevolent dictatorship. Having tasted Heydrich’s wrath, Bohemia and Moravia now tasted his generosity. Fear turned to confusion, and confusion turned to acceptance. The Reichsprotektor had his subjects eating out of his hand—both literally and figuratively.
The brutality Heydrich demonstrated in his protectorate had been demonstrated by the Third Reich to some degree or another throughout Western Europe in 1940 and 1941. The Germans were here to stay, and their dark side was not a side that you wanted to see. For most people, it was time to keep your head down or taste the lash. For some people, however, no amount of keeping your head down would save you from the lash.
CHAPTER 14
Drang Nach Osten
IN HIS ASTOUNDING INUNDATION of Western Europe, Adolf Hitler had not forgotten Drang Nach Osten, the yearning of the Germanic Völkisch fringe for their destiny in the east. Lebensraum, the “living space” about which Hitler had waxed so romantically in Mein Kampf, was one of his favorite themes; now living space to the East seemed ripe for the taking, like low-hanging fruit. With his armies undefeated in every land battle thus far, Hitler made the decision to trash his nonaggression pact with Josef Stalin and invade the Soviet Union.
Strategically, the German invasion of the Soviet Union was the most enormous single-front military undertaking yet contemplated in world history. Consequently, it has been one of the most widely discussed. With twenty-twenty hindsight, military historians will call it Hitler’s biggest battlefield miscalculation, although in the second half of 1941, that fact was far from evident. It was impudent and audacious, and there a million reasons why it failed—and half a million “ifs” justifying how it might have worked. But this discussion is beyond the scope of this work. The bottom line is that Hitler did it—because he really had no choice. He could no more elude the impulse to invade the Soviet Union than an unrepentant alcoholic can keep his hands off a drink. He had to do it. Drang Nach Osten was his destiny. Lebensraum was to be his sacred gift to his people.
As he had written in Mein Kampf, “We begin where we left off 600 years ago. We put an end to the perpetual Germanic march towards the South and west of Europe and turn our eyes toward the lands of the East. We finally put a stop to the colonial and trade policy of prewar times and pass over to the territorial policy of the future.”
Heinrich Hoffman took this photo of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler inspecting Slavic Red Army prisoners, somewhere on the Eastern Front, sometime in 1941. Himmler couldn’t wait to round up every Slav west of the Urals and turn the steppes over to Völkisch settlers. “It’s the greatest piece of colonization the world will ever have seen,” he told Felix Kersten. “Linked with a most noble and essential task, the protection of the Western world from an irruption from Asia.” U.S. National Archives
Hitler’s theories, especially in Mein Kampf, are said to have been influenced by the geographer Karl Ernst Haushofer, whose assistant had been Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s friend and now the deputy Führer. A pre–World War I officer in the kaiser’s army, Haushofer had served as an advisor to the Japanese army for a year and a half in the early twentieth century and had been a student of the Greek-Armenian mystic George Gurdjieff. Haushofer’s theory saying that a thorough understanding of geography was one key to future German greatness is credited by some as an inspiration for Hitler’s Lebensraum concepts. Some say that Haushofer had even visited Hitler in Landsberg prison while the latter was writing his book. Others say that Haushofer’s experiences with the samurai in Japan influenced Heinrich Himmler as he designed his own warrior society, the SS.
It has also been said that Haushofer may have played a role in forging the
alliance between Germany and Japan. While working in Japan as a military advisor, he had met the emperor, albeit the previous emperor, and he had developed and maintained many contacts within the Japanese military establishment.
By 1941, the seventy-two-year-old Haushofer was ensconced as a senior lecturer in the geography department at the Universität München, but he was still influential in the inner sanctums of Hitler and Himmler. As Frederic Sondern wrote in the June 1941 issue of Current History and Forum magazine:
Dr. Haushofer and his men dominate Hitler’s thinking. That domination began 17 years ago when the World War general flattered the ex-corporal by paying him visits in prison. Haushofer saw possibilities in the hysterical agitator who had launched an unsuccessful beer-hall revolution. The prison visits became frequent; the distinguished soldier-scientist fascinated Hitler, then finally made him a disciple. The ascendancy has grown as Dr. Haushofer again and again has proved the accuracy of his knowledge and the wisdom of his advice…. It was Haushofer who taught the hysterical, planless agitator in a Munich jail to think in terms of continents and empires. Haushofer virtually dictated the famous Chapter XVI of Mein Kampf which outlined the foreign policy Hitler has since followed to the letter.
Sondern clearly believed the stories that Haushofer had actually visited Hitler at Landsberg.
Thinking back through those “600 years,” of which he wrote in Mein Kampf, Hitler picked an appellation for the invasion of the Soviet Union that had venerable, even mystical, connotations. He named the operation “Barbarossa,” after Friedrich I, the twelfth-century Holy Roman emperor and a successor to Heinrich I der Vogler as king of Germany. The name “Barbarossa,” meaning “Red Beard,” was a nickname given to Friedrich I by the northern Italians against whom he campaigned. Indeed, Friedrich I, Barbarossa himself, had led a great European campaign against the East in 1189—specifically the Third Crusade. Flanked by Philip II of France and Britain’s famous, French-speaking King Richard Lionheart, Friedrich I Barbarossa rode toward the Holy City of Jerusalem at the head of an army that legend estimates at 100,000 troops. In picking this nickname as their operational code name, the Völkisch Nazi leaders demonstrated their attentive cognizance of their German medieval military heritage. (One wonders, however, how many of the men of 1941 thought about Barbarossa’s last moments as they passed around the operation’s paperwork. On June 10, 1190, near what is now Antakya, Turkey, the red-bearded Holy Roman emperor stumbled while going to bathe in the shallow Saleph [now Göksu] River and drowned.)