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whom could hardly read or write, were required to repair at intervals to contemplate the glory of their order and establish spiritual contact with the heroes of medieval Germany. We see the crusader in action in the notorious speech of October 4th, 1943, to his S.S. Generals at Posen:
âOne basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S.S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says, âI cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,â then I have to say, âYou are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood.â¦â Our concern, our duty, is our people andour blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians.â¦â
The S.S. did.
And again, referring to the massacres of Jews:
âMost of
you
know what it means when a hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck it out, and at the same timeâapart from exceptions caused by human weaknessâto have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history, which has never been written and is never to be written.⦠We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.â
This was the tone set by Himmler for all the organizations under his command, including the Gestapo and the S.D. They obeyed it in the spirit and in the letter. Himmler was mad; but not all his many tens of thousands of subordinates were mad. Numbers of these to this day, still sane, hold responsible positions throughout the two Germanys.
There was also Himmler the animal lover. We glimpse him in the Posen speech. Here he is again, in conversation with his masseur, Felix Kersten, of whom he made a confidant and who was able, in this commanding position, to save the lives of some who would have been put to death. According to Kersten, Himmler used to condemn all blood-sports as âcold-blooded murder of innocent and defenseless animals.â And he would fulminate against Goering, the huntsman (another animal lover):
âGoering, that damned bloodhound, kills every animal he can shoot. Imagine, Herr Kersten, some poor deer is grazing peacefully, and up comes the hunter with his gun to shoot that poor animal.⦠Could that give you pleasure, Herr Kersten?â
Himmler did not like blood at all; but he had his duty to do, and he did it unflinchingly. When he addressed his S.S. Generals at Posen referring to the terrible sights they had all seen, the spectacle of hundreds of men, women, and children lying side by side at the bottomof the trench they had been forced to dig with their own hands, and congratulated them on
âOne basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S.S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says, âI cannot dig the antitank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,â then I have to say, âYou are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood.â¦â Our concern, our duty, is our people andour blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians.â¦â
The S.S. did.
And again, referring to the massacres of Jews:
âMost of
you
know what it means when a hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand. To have stuck it out, and at the same timeâapart from exceptions caused by human weaknessâto have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history, which has never been written and is never to be written.⦠We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.â
This was the tone set by Himmler for all the organizations under his command, including the Gestapo and the S.D. They obeyed it in the spirit and in the letter. Himmler was mad; but not all his many tens of thousands of subordinates were mad. Numbers of these to this day, still sane, hold responsible positions throughout the two Germanys.
There was also Himmler the animal lover. We glimpse him in the Posen speech. Here he is again, in conversation with his masseur, Felix Kersten, of whom he made a confidant and who was able, in this commanding position, to save the lives of some who would have been put to death. According to Kersten, Himmler used to condemn all blood-sports as âcold-blooded murder of innocent and defenseless animals.â And he would fulminate against Goering, the huntsman (another animal lover):
âGoering, that damned bloodhound, kills every animal he can shoot. Imagine, Herr Kersten, some poor deer is grazing peacefully, and up comes the hunter with his gun to shoot that poor animal.⦠Could that give you pleasure, Herr Kersten?â
Himmler did not like blood at all; but he had his duty to do, and he did it unflinchingly. When he addressed his S.S. Generals at Posen referring to the terrible sights they had all seen, the spectacle of hundreds of men, women, and children lying side by side at the bottomof the trench they had been forced to dig with their own hands, and congratulated them on
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