THE THIRD PERSONALITY MOST mentioned in connection

with Hitler is Heinrich Himmler. He had been a student,

military ensign and an agriculturalist before joining
the NSDAP and Hitler after a brief career with a
Freikorps. Himmler had started out as Gregor
Strasser’s secretary in Lower Bavaria. His origins,
education and interest, his anti-semitic‘world-view’ and
his enthusiastic schemes to improve the world
recommended him straightaway for the post Hitler was
to give him. At Hitler’s order he was to organise
and expand the SS, the so-called ‘protection staff’ of
the Party. It was to become a Party militiaon
military lines dedicated to Hitler through thick and thin. As
chief of the Party-SS Himmler came to Hitler’s
notice early on account of his pedantic reliability,
‘fulfilment of duty’ and talent for organisation. Himmler was
setting out to realise what he had dreamed of, if
only indistinctly, for years. He would lead an elite:
men who impressed by their physical build and were so
far as possible ‘perfect racial specimens’. Hitler’s idea
that this ‘Order of the Death’s Head’, as Heinz
Höhne later called the SS, should receive not
only careful military training but also have a systematic
National Socialist background through indoctrination
corresponded exactly to Himmler’s intentions. That in
practice it did not quite reach this standard I
noticed for myself. When I came to Hitler in
1935 I knew aboutas much aboutNational Socialism as
any other soldier of the same age in the Wehrmacht.
Although it lacked a detailed understanding of
the ‘world-view’, the military training of the SS could
be used for special missions whichthe Wehrmacht
would almost certainly have rejected, and thus it
met the expectations of Hitler and Himmler for whichit
had been created. General conversations between Hitler and
Himmler before the war were not always held behind
closed doors. I was thus witness to many of
 their talks and would always keep a keen ear for when
they spoke aboutthe SS-Leibstandarte, my own unit.
When the SS won its first laurels on the
battlefield alongside the German army,Himmler, very
conscious of history, tried to introduce a system
of knighthoods for SS men who had proved especially
valiant. This ‘nobility’, which to Himmler’s idea should
not be hereditary, struck Hitler as a fantasy and
to Himmler’s disappointment declined to proceed with it.
The Reichsführer had already worked out all the
procedures down to the minutest detail. The document
bestowing nobility was to be inserted into the hilt of
the SS dagger and always carried on the battlefield.
The members of this Orderwere obliged to marrythe
‘racially most valuable women’ and thus he would have
the offspring on a lead
from cradle to grave. Hitler, who had his own ideas
abouthealthy heredity, heard Himmler out and then
condemned the idea as ‘playing at sandcastles’.
One day Hitler’s travelling physician Karl Brandt came and
proposed that the women whom SS officers wanted
to marryshould be obliged beforehandto qualify for
marriage by winning the Reichsports badge. Hitler
asked me: ‘Linge, what’s your mother’s best time for
the hundred metres?’ When I said I did not
know he said cheerfully: ‘My mother didn’t have a sport
badge either, but nevertheless I think I turned
out to be quite a good German.’ Hitler also rejected
Himmler’s plan to replace Christianity with the old
Germanic gods and the cults of Wotan and Thor. For him
it was sufficient that the SS had no ties to a
Church. When Hitler and Mussolini were lunching alone
on Obersalzberg one day, Hitler brought the talk roundto
the subject of religion. The conversation rambled
in general termsover the question of the Vatican
and the Church. Hitler pointed out that not only the
 Italian royal house was causing theDuce difficulties but
also the Church, whichwas why it was necessary for
Mussolini to react and ‘explain things’ to the people.
When the Duce shook his giant head lightlyfrom side
to side and asked by his stare how that was to
be achieved in Italy, of all places, Hitler said to
me in an aside: ‘Linge, do you go to church?
How many men of my SS bodyguard and the
Leibstandarte attend services?’ I told him the truth:
‘None, mein Führer’. This hit Mussolini literally like a
low blow. He stared at me speechless with large eyes.
Hitler lapped up this enjoyable little scene. Himmler was
a calm, unimpressive and self-possessed man. I never
knew him to commit any act of violence himself
but without a moment’s reflection he would issue
orders of such to be carried out by others.
To us in Hitler’s staff he appeared inscrutable.We
had no affection for him and liked it betterwhen he
was departing than arriving. We also knew that he imposed
drastic punishments on SS men for even the most minor
infractions. The kind of rules he set were unbelievable.
In the SS it was forbidden to eat salted
potatoes. Potatoes also had to be cooked unpeeled.
If he noticed that somebody was looking thin or
pale he would award him a ban on smoking for
twenty-four hoursto the minute. Hitler would often poke
fun at these goings-on but madeno attempt to
intervene because the SS was loyal to Himmler. He
even left to Himmler the decision on marriage
applications from SS men wanting to marryforeign
girls, a power that even extended into the
Wehrmacht. Whether Himmler ever held grudges I was
unable to determine. If somebody was off form he
would remember his past errors, but these would
not necessarily