# Heinrich Himmler

## Metadata
- Author: [[Peter Longerich]]
- Full Title: Heinrich Himmler
- Category: #books
## Highlights
- As a result Catholic members of fraternities experienced a fundamental conflict, as Catholic student organizations for reasons of principle resisted the marginalization of students of Jewish descent: though they were to ([Location 743](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=743))
- a considerable extent also anti-Semitic in outlook, they explained their hostility to the Jews primarily on religious and cultural grounds rather than on racial ones.48 ([Location 745](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=745))
- ‘After dinner I had a conversation [ . . . ] about Jewishness, questions of honour and so on. A very interesting discussion. I was thinking about it on the way home. I think I am heading for conflict with my religion’, Himmler noted in his diary, revealing that although he sympathized with racial anti-Semitism he could not yet make up his mind to adopt fully a radical anti-Semitic position. ‘Whatever happens,’ the diary goes on, ‘I shall always love God and pray to him, and belong to the Catholic church and defend it, even if I should be excluded from it.’49 Three days later he and Ludwig Zahler had a discussion, again about ‘the principles of fencing, matters of honour, the Church etc.’. ([Location 747](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=747))
- restless is the heart till it rests on Thee, O God. ([Location 792](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=792))
- Psychologists would analyse this in terms of the consequences of an attachment disorder.96 ([Location 857](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=857))
- People who suffer from this kind of dysfunction acquired in early childhood frequently tend, while growing up and as adults, to attach very high expectations to personal relationships, though they cannot define these expectations precisely, and as a result they cannot be fulfilled. The consequence is a sense of frustration and the desire for more signs of affection. People with this problem are prone to feeling constantly exploited. From time to time they unload their feelings in outbursts of rage that others find difficult to comprehend, and then develop strategies to help them approach others which are often perceived as ingratiating. Often, however, they learn to conceal their emotional immaturity by means of particular behavioural techniques, and up to a certain point to compensate for it in their dealings with others. ([Location 858](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=858))
- Thus, as Ulrich Herbert in particular has demonstrated, in those years a way of living emerged amongst those who became adults during the war that can be summed up in the words: sobriety, distance, severity, and rationality.97 Himmler’s determined struggle to conceal his relationship problems by means of strict observance of social formalities and rules for daily life, and to avoid and control emotion, was also matched, therefore, by a desire to live up to the demands of his contemporaries. This he could do much more easily as a Territorial soldier than in his everyday life as a student from a comfortable background. The world of the military, with its organization of every last ([Location 880](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=880))
- detail, met his need for rules and control, and in view of the tendency in this masculine world to suppress emotion his difficulties in forming attachments must have appeared as a positive virtue. Herein lies the biographical key to his enthusiasm for the military and, after a career as an officer was denied him, for his later engagement in the paramilitary movement. According to psychologists, the origins of attachment disorder go back to early childhood, to a lack of affection and mirroring on the part of the mother. What the cause was in Himmler’s case can only be the subject of speculation. Possibly his brother’s frequent illnesses were a factor, and perhaps also competition developed between Himmler and his younger brother and he fell into the classic role of the middle child who feels neglected. Whatever the causes of his difficult interpersonal relations, they remained a problem for him throughout his life. ([Location 885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=885))
- This move was prompted by the murder of Walther Rathenau on 24 June. For the Right, the Reich Foreign Minister embodied the hated Weimar Republic like no other figure. He was attacked as the main representative of the ‘policy of fulfilment’ of the Versailles treaty, and his active engagement in support of democracy was seen as treason, particularly in view of his social origins as a member of the Wilhelmine upper-middle class. Moreover, the fact that he was a Jew made him the target of continual anti-Semitic attacks. And now a radical right-wing terrorist group in Berlin had taken action. ([Location 1285](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=1285))
- It would be quite wrong, on the basis of this political constellation, to interpret Himmler’s radicalization as a break with the conservative views of his parents, an interpretation which is put forward, for example, in Andersch’s account of Himmler’s father as a schoolmaster, ‘The Father of a Murderer’. For, during these months, many Bavarian conservatives tended to contemplate radical political solutions. This undermines the argument that Himmler’s involvement with the radical Right should be understood as a rebellion against his parents. ([Location 1303](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=1303))
- According to the official story, which the SS leadership put about a few years later, after the Stennes putsch Hitler coined the motto, ‘Your honour means loyalty’ (‘Deine Ehre heißt Treue’), which subsequently became ‘the most important guiding principle of every SS man’. That may or may not be true. But it is in any case significant that the moral precept chosen by the SS as its motto should refer to an internal party conflict which took place during the ‘time of struggle’.4 ([Location 2394](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=2394))
- We must always work the hardest and yet never talk about what we have achieved, for there is an old proverb that says: “He who talks a lot never achieves anything.”’ ([Location 2513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=2513))
- The Nazi mass movement had been continually expanding since its great success in the Reichstag election of September 1930. It was now also continually making gains in state and local elections. It benefited above all from the fact that the Brüning government, which was backed by the Reich President’s right to issue emergency decrees, failed to come up with adequate solutions to the political and economic crisis and thus kept providing the NSDAP with opportunities for attacking the ‘system’. ([Location 2549](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=2549))
- The SS man, on the other hand, was expected to be disciplined, to be ([Location 2581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=2581))
- reserved in manner, to be ‘Aryan’, and through his marriage to contribute to the improvement of the ‘racial quality’ of the German people. ([Location 2581](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=2581))
- Himmler wanted to direct the SS to one task above all: it was to act as the vanguard in overcoming Christianity and restoring a ‘Germanic’ way of living. As he understood it, this was the actual mission of his Schutzstaffel; it was to this task that it owed its identity and the justification for its existence. ([Location 5136](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B0062M9GM8&location=5136))