Himmler's hobby horses
In the summer of 1940 [Heinrich Himmler] instructed the head of the Ahnenerbe (Ancestral Heritage), a research organisation within the SS, to investigate references to thunderbolts in Germanic myths, on the grounds that these were surely evidence that the ancient Germans had possessed ‘a highly developed weapon’ requiring ‘an extraordinary knowledge of electricity’. The Ahnenerbe spent thousands of man-hours compiling a massive file on the witch trials of early modern Germany because Himmler believed witches to be the custodians of an occult ‘old knowledge’ that might still be recoverable. An expedition was dispatched to Tibet to confirm the postulations of ‘cosmic ice theory’ (according to which ice was the basic substance of all cosmic processes), another of his hobby horses. From the desk of the Reichsführer-SS poured a stream of letters on the correct preparation and ageing of mead, a suitable design for mineral-water bottles, the nutritional potential of seaweed, the baking of crispbreads using ‘a special form of algae’ and so on. As late as November 1944, Himmler was urging SS boffins to look into the possibility that the remains of meteors might be lodged inside Europe’s highest mountains.
To an extraordinary degree, the proclivities of the leader shaped the public life of the organisation. Even as a very young man, Himmler had demonstrated a need to police and control the lives of others. After his political ascent, this trait was given free reign. Letters went out to SS men across the Reich ordering them to father children, to stop using swearwords, to have their potential brides inspected for childbearing capacities by gynaecologists, to stop being ‘henpecked’ by their wives. One man was told to check his mother-in-law into a lunatic asylum, another to go on a diet: ‘I regard it as unheard of that a man of 36 is so phlegmatic, fat and complacent. It is in your interests to change this as quickly as possible.’
There was a streak of punitive malice in many of these communications. In the summer of 1944, furious at the news that some SS and police leaders in Russia were failing to treat pest control as seriously as they should, Himmler proposed that a Fly and Gnat Room should be established to discipline delinquents:
All SS leaders and police who are either uninterested in the nuisance created by flies and gnats or even dismiss it with a superior smile will find they will be taken into care there for some considerable time, during which they will have the opportunity to study the question of flies and gnats from a theoretical angle as well as to enjoy the attentions of the hundreds and thousands of flies and gnats in the room itself.
