The Himmler Brothers

[Aptrgangr]

The Himmler Brothers

A descendant bravely airs Nazi dirty linen that denies family tradition.


The Himmler siblings.

IN A 2002 STUDY OF FAMILY memories of National Socialism among children and grandchildren of Germans who lived through the Third Reich, 50 per cent of the interviewees reported that in their opinion their relatives had disapproved of National Socialism, and only 1 per cent thought their relatives had held a positive opinion of Hitler and Nazism.
Only 1 per cent of those surveyed believed that their parents or grandparents had been "directly involved in crimes", whereas more than 63 per cent mentioned how their parents or grandparents had suffered during the war.

These results, published in a book entitled Grandpa Wasn't a Nazi, highlight the widespread tendency for second and third-generation postwar Germans to construct stories about their family experiences that protect the moral integrity of their relatives by drawing a sharp distinction between "Nazis" and "Germans".
In these family narratives, grandchildren, in particular, dissociate their grandparents from the evil Nazis about whom they have learned so much in school and through the media, in some cases even transforming their relatives into heroic figures of opposition.
For Katrin Himmler, fashioning such a comforting and exculpatory family history with respect to her great-uncle, Heinrich Himmler, was clearly impossible. Heinrich Himmler, notorious as the head of the Nazi SS and the man often labelled as the architect of the Holocaust, is firmly inscribed in genocide history as one of the greatest mass murderers of the 20th century.

But in her fascinating family history, Katrin Himmler indicates that the tactic of dissociation was nevertheless widely practised among her relatives. Heinrich was, of course, irredeemable. But within the family the stories told about the SS leader's two brothers, the older Gebhard and the younger Ernst (Katrin's grandfather), aimed at distancing these two from the criminality of the middle sibling. In the family memories Ernst, in particular, was styled as "a victim of his brother", lured into Nazism by Heinrich.

In 1997 Katrin Himmler received a phone call from her father asking her to submit a request to the federal archives for any files related to Ernst Himmler. This marked the beginning of eight years of research into the lives of the two lesser-known Himmler brothers. What emerged was a history sharply at odds with the often vague and sketchy information that circulated among the members of the extended Himmler family.

As she reconstructed the family history, Katrin Himmler discovered more and more evidence that revealed that the family narrative about Gebhard and Ernst contained more legend than fact. Both brothers were committed supporters of Nazism, who required no cajoling from their prominent brother to join the party and the elite SS.
While Heinrich Himmler had studied agriculture at university, both of his brothers opted for engineering degrees. During the Third Reich, both enjoyed successful careers closely linked to the Nazi regime. Both were "willing technocrats" who supported the regime and benefited from their powerful brother's patronage.

Gebhard became a key figure in the Nazi Association for German Technology, responsible for ensuring the political reliability of the engineering profession. Ernst became chief engineer at the Reich Broadcasting Company in Berlin. In 1944 he supplied an expert opinion to Heinrich that amounted to a denunciation of a "half-Jewish" manager, an act that would have delivered the victim to a concentration camp or perhaps brought a death sentence.
Throughout most of this disturbing investigation into her family history, Katrin Himmler adopts a cool and dispassionate stance. Only at the beginning and end of the book does she reflect in more emotional terms on what she labels "a painful process, and one constantly jeopardised by fears of what one might lose".

In the epilogue, after having demonstrated that her grandfather was indeed a Nazi and not a non-political technocrat, Katrin Himmler delivers a final new twist to the family saga. She is now married to a Jewish Israeli, many of whose relatives perished in the Holocaust, and they are now the parents of an eight-year-old son.
"I am still afraid," she writes, "of the moment when he will learn that one side of his family made every effort to wipe out the other."
This unflinching family history, she hopes, will allow her to answer her son honestly and thus put to rest the obfuscating legends about the past devised by the older generation.

Steven Welch is senior lecturer in modern German history at the University of Melbourne and is writing on the crime of subversion in the Third Reich.

The Himmler Brothers - Book Reviews - Books - Entertainment - theage.com.au

[Menydh]

...Katrin Himmler delivers a final new twist to the family saga. She is now married to a Jewish Israeli, many of whose relatives perished in the Holocaust, and they are now the parents of an eight-year-old son.

I wonder if her husband bought her a gas or microwave kitchen oven.