Thinking and The Holocaust

SS THINKING AND THE HOLOCAUST
VIBS
Volume 247
Robert Ginsberg
Founding Editor
Leonidas Donskis
Executive Editor
Associate Editors
G. John M. Abbarno Steven V. Hicks

George Allan Richard T. Hull
Gerhold K. Becker Michael Krausz
Raymond Angelo Belliotti Olli Loukola
Kenneth A. Bryson Mark Letteri
C. Stephen Byrum Vincent L. Luizzi
Robert A. Delfino Hugh P. McDonald
Rem B. Edwards Adrianne McEvoy
Malcolm D. Evans J.D. Mininger
Roland Faber Peter A. Redpath
Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Arleen L. F. Salles
Francesc Forn i Argimon John R. Shook
Daniel B. Gallagher Eddy Souffrant
William C. Gay Tuija Takala
Dane R. Gordon Emil Višňovský
J. Everet Green Anne Waters
Heta Aleksandra Gylling James R. Watson
Matti Häyry John R. Welch
Brian G. Henning Thomas Woods
a volume in
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
HGS
James R. Watson, Editor
SS THINKING AND THE HOLOCAUST
André Mineau
Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012

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Printed in the Netherlands
(HGS)
James R. Watson
Editor
Previous Titles in HGS

James R. Watson, Between Auschwitz and Tradition: Postmodern
Reflections on theTask of Thinking. 1994. VIBS 6
Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, eds. Postmodernism and the

Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the Systems Perspective. 1998. VIBS 72
André Mineau, The Making of the Holocaust: Ideology and Ethics in the
Systems Perspective. 1999. VIBS 81
Dan Stone, ed. Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. 2001. VIBS

108
James R. Watson, ed. Metacide: In the Pursuit of Excellence. 2010. VIBS

216
Camila Loew, The Memory of Pain: Women’s Testimonies of the Holocaust.

2011. VIBS 237
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL FOREWORD xi
PREFACE xiii
INTRODUCTION 1
1. General Considerations 1
2. Objectives 3
3. Hypotheses 3
4. Methodology 4
5. A Brief Recall of Definitions 5
One The Historical Context of Nazi Ideology 7
1. Modernity and Reason 7

2. Nationalism in Germany 8
3. Anti-Semitism and the Biological Paradigm 11
4. The Impact of World War I 14
5. Nazi Ideology in the Aftermath of World War I 17
6. In Summary 20
Two The SS System and Nazi Ideology 21
1. The Origins of the SS 21

2. Himmler and the Great War 22
3. The SS System and the Waffen SS 24
4. The Production and Dissemination of Ideology 28
5. The “Originality” of SS Thinking 30
Three SS Ontology 33
1. The SS Weltanschauung 33
2. SS Pantheism and the Laws of Life 35
3. Volk and Blood 38
4. In Summary 39
Four SS Anthropology 41
1. Race: The Basic Marker 41

2. Race in Pictures 42
3. Minderwertige, Jews, and Bolshevism 46
4. In Summary 49
viii SS THINKING AND THE HOLOCAUST
Five SS Ethics 51
1. Himmler: Ethics and Ideology 52

A. Himmler’s Moral Consciousness 52
B. The Ideological Transfiguration of Morality 54
C. The Moral Transfiguration of Ideology 56
2. SS Conscience and Nazi Values 61
3. In Summary 62
Six The Police Of Nazi Praxis 63
1. Going East 63
2. Cleansing the East 65
3. The Victory of the Child 67
4. The Tasks of the SS 68
5. In Summary 69
Seven The Police of History 71
1. The Cult of Germanic Ancestors 71

2. The End of the Enlightenment 72
3. The Trauma of 1918 73
4. The Blockade 73
5. The Dolchstoss 75
6. Mein Kampf and Its Aftermath 77
7. In Summary 79
Eight The Police of Being 81
1. Ethics as Eugenics 81
2. The Biological Security of Lebensraum 82
3. Total War For Total Health 83
4. Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust 85
5. The Antibiotic Character of SS Praxis 90
6. The SS Rationale for Killing the Jews 91
7. In Summary 93
Contents ix
Nine SS Ideology Remembered 95
1. The Holocaust Memorial Museums 96

and Education Centers
2. Does the Starting Hypothesis Verify? 106
3. Philosophy by Means of Photography 106
A. Ontology Revisited 107
B. Anthropology Revisited 107
C. Ethics Revisited 107
4. In Summary 108
Ten Conclusion 109
1. Philosophy and Ideology 109

2. SS Thinking Revisited 110
Works Cited 113

About the Author 119
Index 121
EDITORIAL FOREWORD
Since 1978 the Society for the Philosophic Study of Genocide and the
Holocaust (SPSGH) has been dedicated to making and critically examining
philosophic responses to the genocide and the Holocaust. Genocide has
become so commonplace that even the most graphic and moving depictions
do little to move us toward transformations of the way we think and act. We
have monuments, museums, and memorials but only the beginnings of
philosophic transformations. The SPSGH was founded to promote a philos-
ophic discussion of genocide and the Holocaust in the belief that a com-
pletely open-ended and non-sectarian approach to these issues is the best way
to foster research and philosophical studies for the required transformations of
our murderous, business-as-usual world.
Since its founding SPSGH national and international membership has
grown considerably. We are very proud to have Rodopi Editions as a spon-
sor. Rodopi’s special series Holocaust and Genocide Studies (HGS) is one
of many in the Rodopi Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS). André Mineau’s
SS Thinking and the Holocaust is the seventh volume to appear in the HGS
series. HGS philosophically examines the significance of the Holocaust and
genocide prospectively as well as retrospectively. Its volumes direct critical
thinking to the world that has been transformed by genocide and the
Holocaust into systematic dehumanization and mass death.
Papers accepted for presentation at any of the SPSGH conference panels
may be submitted for possible publication in future volumes of this series. For
information on the SPSGH, go to www.spsgh.org.
James R. Watson
Editor, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
PREFACE
The SS epitomizes Nazi evil in its quintessence: this is why it remains so
fascinating, even if decades have passed since the conclusion of World War
II. After the Nazi seizure of power in Germany, the SS emerged as a
formidable multi-faceted system that would soon prove its efficiency through
the organization and supervision of the Holocaust. But the Holocaust would
not have happened without Nazi ideology and ethics: it depended on SS
thinking for meaning and legitimacy, that is, for its raison d’être, whence the
importance of studying the theoretical framework that gave sense to the most
terrible forms of SS praxis.
Here, the connections with my book on Operation Barbarossa are
obvious, since the war against the Soviet Union was closely linked to SS
thinking and to the Holocaust. In order to avoid useless repetitions, on two
occasions, I have borrowed from Operation Barbarossa (OB), which was
published by Rodopi in 2004. Section 1 of Chapter Five is a slightly changed
version of a section of Chapter Three in OB. Also, Section 4 of Chapter Eight
constitutes a revised version of a section of Chapter Six in OB.
I wish to express my gratitude to Mike Jacobs, a Holocaust survivor who
is quoted with permission in Chapter Nine. I wish also to thank the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for its financial
support.
INTRODUCTION
To most people in North America and Europe, the SS (Schutzstaffel or
Protection Squad) epitomizes Nazi evil in its quintessence. Its image,
conveyed by literature, film, and personal memories, looks familiar to the
educated public in general, to whom it represents the spectacular and
horrifying face of Nazism. Its name will remain for ever associated with the
camp system, with the Holocaust, with unprecedented crimes against
mankind, with a geography of evil spreading from Oradour-sur-Glane to Babi
Yar.
Although it had originated in the Stosstrupp Hitler (Hitler’s shock
troop), early in the twenties, the SS lived in the shadows for most of the
Kampfzeit (time of struggle), at a time when the SA (Sturmabteilung or
Assault Section) fought for controlling the streets of the German cities. When
the Nazis seized power, the SS emerged as an increasingly efficient
organization, capable of meeting the challenges facing the new totalitarian
state. These challenges demanded the departure of SA street brawlers, to be
replaced with professionals and experts trained in the management of the
complex issues inherent in modern political life. Within the framework of a
remarkable organization, the success story of the SS held to the fact that it
could ally the certainties of ideology to the management skills that proved
indispensable for solving problems in a large modern state. Owing to this
alliance, it succeeded in breaking up the SA and in seizing the police
apparatus and the embryonic camp system, so as to impose Nazi order on
Germany. Toward the end of 1938, the SS was entrusted with the Jewish
Question, while a new large-scale war in Europe would allow SS managers to
move forward with daring expansionist policies, through which they would
invade the military and the economy, so as to become an empire within the
empire.
1. General Considerations
The SS has been widely studied as a practical organization devoted to murder
on a daily basis, from the viewpoint of internal rivalries, of decision-making
processes, and of policies that led to concentration camps and to the
Holocaust. This historical emphasis is easy to justify, given the scope and
monstrosity of SS endeavors. These, however, constituted to a large extent the
actualization of an ideology, with regard to which references have often
remained oblique. Many authors have been satisfied with general statements
about anti-Semitism and about a “master race” in Europe, and they have
implicitly considered SS ideology as a known entity, within the framework of
Nazism. In fact, “Nazism” represented a complex set of ideas, which the
2 SS THINKING AND THE HOLOCAUST
Nazis themselves did not always and necessarily understand in the same way.
In a different perspective, some people, especially in Germany, have
considered SS ideology as an excessive form or as a pathological hyperbole of
Nazism, which has enabled them to imagine, by contrast, a “more moderate”
and “more human” core in the movement.
However it may be, the literature that deals systematically with the SS
and ideology still remains rather thin. To limit this non-exhaustive survey to
some essential book titles, mention must be made of aging but seminal works
by Josef Ackermann (Ackermann, 1970) and by Bradley F. Smith (Smith,
1971). Much later, Richard Breitman addressed some ideological issues in an
indirect way, since he was mostly preoccupied with Heinrich Himmler’s role
as the “architect of genocide” (Breitman, 1991), but Bernd Wegner devoted
more substantial space to ideology (Wegner, 1990). The most recent
publications to have an impact dealt in fact either with ideology or with the
SS, but not with their systematic conjunction. For example, they were
concerned with “Nazi conscience” in general (Koonz, 2003), with Hitler’s
ethic in particular (Weikart, 2009), or with the relationship between Nazism
and the moral systems of traditional religions (Steigmann-Gall, 2003). And if
my last book includes a chapter on SS ideology, it is within the broader
framework of a study focusing on Operation Barbarossa and warfare on the
Eastern front (Mineau, 2004).
Ideologies are systems of thought, the parts of which come from society
at large, and, as such, they require the sustained contribution of thinkers to
pick up the relevant parts, to organize them in an apparently coherent
structure, and to disseminate the result. And the SS, under the leadership of
people whose education level was superior to the German average, would
encourage some of its members to develop their skills as thinkers, within a
framework that Adolf Hitler would deem acceptable, of course. The first one
among these thinkers, who set the tone and the framework through his
incessant and meticulous activity, was the Reichsführer SS himself, Heinrich
Himmler. He produced a huge amount of speeches as conveyors for ideology,
in addition to a lot of all-purpose textbooks published under his editorship.
SS ideology carried some dimensions that have remained so far largely
unexplored, in relation to Himmler’s key position within the system. If many
historians and social scientists have been impressed by the spectacular
character of an elitist theory of racial hygiene as the foundation for a modern
renewal of medieval military orders, they have overlooked the fact that the
Reichsführer SS perceived himself as a moralist (Breitman, 1991, p. 243), and
that SS ideology found its accomplishment in an ethic. More specifically, SS
ideology represented the biological subversion of the foundations of
traditional morality, while it constituted at the same time the moralization or
moral form of Nazi ideology. This perspective makes it possible to re-
examine the body of knowledge with regard to SS ideology, in a way that
takes a closer look at primary sources.
Introduction 3
But can SS ideology be seen as something unique or original ? No,

certainly not: it was and remained a particular display of Nazi ideology, and
its main themes were worked out by Nazi authors in general. However, it is
possible to speak in terms of some amount of originality of SS thinking within
Nazism, insofar as SS thinking claimed to be an ethic or a branch of practical
philosophy. Such thinking, beyond the mottos and hollow slogans, was in fact
the paroxysm of an ideology of health and performance, the basis of which
was widespread in German culture. But it would soon be transfigured into an
ethic that would support the terrible praxis of the Holocaust.
2. Objectives
This study purports to describe SS ideology in a systematic manner, as an
apparently philosophical system composed of different parts articulated to
each other. It tries to show how this system was accomplished through ethics,
which represented the pivot for its actualization in praxis. This book
illustrates how and why the SS, as a police of programmatic praxis in the field
of general bio-engineering, constituted in fact a police of history, aimed at
preventing a repetition of 1918, as well as a police of Being, implementing
the political sanitation of Lebensraum (living space) that culminated in the
Holocaust. It concludes on some remarks about Holocaust memorial
institutions, which have put forward an innovative philosophical way of
challenging SS thinking a posteriori. More specifically, it lies on the
following statements.
3. Hypotheses
1. SS ideology was the expression of an apparently philosophical self-
containing system of thought, because it was articulated around an organized
and systematic body of knowledge, which claimed to integrate humanity, in
nature and in action, inside a global vision of Being.
2. Using ontology and anthropology as foundations, SS thinking developed

essentially in the field of ethics.
3. It portrayed itself as the ground theory for a global approach to society and
civilization, based on eugenics and ethnic cleansing.
4. It accomplished the fusion of the modern biological paradigm with the

cultural shock brought about by World War I : it promoted total war for the
sake of total health.
5. Within the context of Nazism, SS thinking did much to work out the
theory for which the Holocaust would be the ultimate praxis: it intended to
provide the Holocaust with legitimacy, from the viewpoints of ontology,

anthropology, politics, and ethics.
6. Given that institutional philosophy largely ignores SS theory and praxis,

Holocaust memorial institutions may represent an alternative for
understanding and reflection.
4. Methodology
In order to reconstruct SS ideology in its essential aspects, it is necessary to
proceed from the primary sources in which it was formulated. With regard to
Himmler, these sources abound: they comprise a book (Himmler, 1936),
letters and administrative documents of all sorts, available at the German
Federal Archives, in addition to an enormous collection of speeches
(Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde (BA), NS 19). Reinhard Heydrich left a
booklet (Heydrich, 1935), and Kurt Daluege authored a long series of
speeches. Several documents dealing with ideological education within the SS
may also be important (BA NS 31, 33), in addition to periodicals and all-
purpose textbooks published by Himmler’s office (BA NSD 41), and to the
documents surrounding the Nuremberg Trials. Secondary sources play also an
important part in providing information, as well as access to exhibits in
Holocaust memorial institutions. Needless to say, given the enormous amount
of sources, a selection has to be made.
Primary sources allow us to track the main ideas conveyed by SS
authors, to understand their meaning, and to describe their inner connections
within a specific architecture of concepts. The SS system of thought must be
seen as an average, resulting from the interaction of numerous authors whose
intellectual freedom, however, remained constrained, within a hierarchical
structure dominated by Himmler. In a Nazi world, this system of thought was
all the more important that it constituted the source, the foundation, and the
justification for a praxis of oppression and genocide, which took place
because a structure of ideas gave sense to it.
This study proceeds to analyze the semantic contents of SS ideology, to
show how they made sense, in their authors’ minds, in relation to three main
points of reference, which were ontological (the reality of Being and Nature),
anthropological (the vision of humanity), and ethical (the level of values and
duty as guidelines for action). In this way, it becomes possible to understand
how a rhetoric of Truth (ontology) supported a vision of the community
(anthropology), for the sake of which a mandatory set of norms (ethics) was
subsequently justified. The comparative analysis of texts purports to shed
some light on how SS ideology was constructed, in terms of ideas, concepts,
and representations, within a particular political context characterized by
incessant internal feuds arbitrated by Hitler.
Introduction 5
5. A Brief Recall of Definitions

Insofar as the present book deals with an ideology that was bound for
actualization through ethics, within an apparently philosophical system, it is
necessary to provide some brief definitions, for purposes of clarity. Since it
would be too long and irrelevant to review all possible definitions, I limit
myself to propose the formulations that I retain, and I refer to my book on
Operation Barbarossa for a more detailed discussion (Mineau, 2004).
I define ideology as a system of ideas, cognitions, and value judgments,
which claim to enjoy a privileged access to Truth and to the Good, which
found a vision of the political community, and which command the
imposition of any legal and moral norms on which the realization of the
vision depends. And ethics constitutes an information system that tends to
command action, on the basis of rational deliberation relating behavior to
values, insofar as these values express the demands of the alter on the ego. It
represents the locus of the relationship between identity and otherness,
between individuality and community. It refers to values and norms
originating in religion, science, philosophy, tradition, and personal
experience, in a given social and cultural context.
Within SS ideology as a form of degraded philosophical discourse,
ethics appeared as a justification system for a military policy of social
hygiene, aimed at eradicating the biological basis of political enmity.
Himmler’s speeches, in particular, carried moral formulations of a paradigm
centered on social hygiene, which required the cleansing of the Volk’s body
through the violent purge of unfit, parasitic, criminal, and dangerous elements
of all sorts. In his eyes, the worst sort happened to be the Jews. SS thinking
stood on one side of the equation, and the Holocaust lay on the other side.
One
THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF NAZI

IDEOLOGY
Nazi ideology represented a synthesis of ideas and cultural trends that had
been developed in the nineteenth century, in a period of time ranging from the
Napoleonic wars to the Second Reich. These trends and ideas had appeared in
different contexts, whether in Germany or in Europe more generally, and they
led to different types of subsequent applications: none of them could be
envisaged in a one-way straightforward connection with anything that was to
happen in the twentieth century. In this sense, Nazism, when it began to rise
from 1920 onward, constituted a unique combination of older and newer ideas
now submitted to a new hermeneutics, through the prism of World War I.
Each element of the combination was a necessary condition for Nazism, but
none could be said necessary and sufficient at the same time.
Nazism involved a socialist component, but it was basically and
foremost German nationalism increasingly radicalized. It originated in
romantic völkisch forms of nationalism that were to reveal their extremism,
under the pressure of World War I and its aftermath. It was centered on an
organic notion of the Volk, whose existence and identity were distinct and
superior, enjoying primacy over any and all individuals. And although it
rejected some key aspects of modern thinking, and especially the
Enlightenment, it remained deeply rooted in the new opportunities for control
and engineering that modernity had opened.
1. Modernity and Reason
Modernity had brought about the gradual disappearance of transcendence
from the public sphere, so as to relegate it to the non-political part of
individual conscience, within the sphere of private life. This process was
already clearly visible in the French Revolution, when the supremacy of
Goddess Reason was proclaimed, and much later, during the installation of
the Third Republic, when references to religions and to anything transcendent
were suppressed from public institutions.
Reason stood alone, free of any external control, and it would have an
exclusive access to value and to the good, so as to determine the standards of
evaluation to be applied to Being in general and to humanity in particular.
Without any obligations outside its own logic, it would determine which
beings would be worthy of being, under which conditions, and on which
grounds. In other words, it would become the surgeon of Being, self-
authorized to remove from Being any beings that would not meet its
standards.
To illustrate this point, I may quote Zygmunt Bauman and his metaphor
of the “gardener”, which encapsulates the essence of modernity as the domain
of political engineering. According to him, in modern society:
Nothing should grow unless planted, and whatever would have grown
on its own must have been the wrong thing, and hence a dangerous
thing, jeopardizing or confounding the overall plan. The gamekeeper-
like complacency would be a luxury one could ill afford. What was
needed instead was the posture, and skills, of a gardener; one armed with
a detailed design of the lawn, of the borders and of the furrow dividing
the lawn from the borders; with a vision of harmonious colours and of
the difference between pleasing harmony and revolting cacophony; with
determination to treat as weeds every self-invited plant which interferes
with his plan and his vision of order and harmony; and with machines
and poisons adequate to the task of exterminating the weeds and
altogether preserve the divisions as required and defined by the overall
design (Bauman, 1989, p. 57).
By and large, modernity in its political dimension lay in the combination of

these three elements:
x the rationalization of violence, which entailed the reduction of
people’s rights and possibilities to resort to arms, to the benefit
of a new kind of state now endowed with a monopoly over
means and justifications (this was already implicit in Thomas
Hobbes’s political philosophy);
x the secularization of hope (from God to nation);
x the rationalization of duty, in a society where economic
categories pervaded everything, and where commitment
amounted to doing one’s job right, in compliance with the moral
ideal of an increasingly powerful bureaucracy.
Secularization and the rationalization of duty made the nation state and
conferred legitimacy upon it: the nation state conveyed the rationalization of
violence as a function of its own legitimacy.
2. Nationalism in Germany
German nationalism woke up in the first decade of the nineteenth century,
when the German states had to live under the superior military might of
Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies. Born under French occupation, it rose against
anything French, and especially against the Enlightenment’s philosophical
perspective, associated with the French Revolution. Since it defined itself in
The Historical Context of Nazi Ideology 9
reaction against the French Enlightenment, it soon carried a very strong

romantic component, privileging the unconscious over reason and promoting
a holistic vision of the nation, against modern individualism.
German nationalism ultimately led to the unification of the German
states, under the umbrella of Prussia. This process was favored by a series of
successes to be credited to the Prussian government and, in particular, to Otto
von Bismarck, who acted as minister-president. The Prussian forces defeated
the Austrians at Sadowa, and they won a decisive battle at Sedan, against
Napoleon III’s ill-commanded forces. In January 1871, the German Empire
was proclaimed by Kaiser Wilhelm, in the Galerie des Glaces at Versailles.
Germany could now become an even more powerful player in European
politics, in the age of proud and aggressive nationalism.
The strength of the counter-revolutionary trend was quite considerable
in nineteenth-century German thinking, all the more so that the German
national conscience owed much to reaction against the French invasion. In
this perspective, German political romanticism shaped up in opposition to the
universal values attached to the Enlightenment and to the French Revolution,
as an irrational ideology promoting the idea of hierarchical community
against liberal individualism and democratic egalitarianism. That perspective
would soon lose its Christian prerequisites, to replace them with a Social
Darwinian view of society and nation. It included a radical ethnocentric
current that placed the Volk above anything else (völkisch), that proclaimed
“the absolute specificity of the German Volk”, that pleaded for “the
eradication of all foreign influences”, and that would vest a large amount of
power on capable leaders (Dupeux, 1987, pp. 540-541).
The German concept of nation was developed in reference to a ius
sanguinis (blood law) model, based on parenthood, ethnicity, and culture,
open to further radicalization through the notion of “racial purity”. Within the
Second Reich, the connection became increasingly intimate between the
principle of descent and a cultural ethnic view of the nation as Volk. The
concept of ius sanguinis, which designated initially the transmission of
citizenship through parenthood, would eventually prevent members of
“foreign” ethnic groups from acquiring German citizenship. Much later, it
would become tied to “objective” biological properties (Gosewinkel, 2008,
pp. 96-99.
A complicated process of circular causality and influence took place
between German nationalism and the classical notion of political enmity. On
the one hand, the presence of the French enemy on Germany’s soil
contributed much to giving definition and shape to German nationalism. But
the latter contributed much in turn to the subsequent definitions of political
enmity, outside or inside the new empire’s borders. Furthermore, the notion
of political enmity, under its classical form that had designated the enemies of
the state, was to slide toward a new meaning, by focusing now on the enemies
of the nation, while the nation carried a different semantic content. In the
second part of the nineteenth century, the concept of nation, especially in

Germany, would be increasingly understood within the perspective of
ethnicity, owing to Johann Gottlieb Herder’s influence and to the
development of scientific anthropology.
In 1774, Herder had posited the diversity of cultures and defined an
essential concept: the Volksgeist (the people’s spirit). This concept referred to
the irreducible singularity of each Volk, of each culture in its national and
heterogeneous character, in reaction against the Enlightenment’s abstract and
universal humanism. Within such a perspective, the nation was defined
through difference, through the framework of a specific heritage, through the
determinism of common history and culture: individuals were born in a
nation, but they could not really enter the nation from the outside. Of course,
initially and within the context of early German romanticism, the concepts of
nation and Volksgeist bore no relationship to biological and racial categories,
which would not enter the scene before the last decades of the nineteenth
century (Cabanel, 1997, pp. 13-14).
Anthropology, thus, would soon challenge Kantian universality, by
fragmenting humanity through the prism of cultures. What was given to
observation was a vast array of different cultures that would determine the
nature of human beings and the being of human nature in a differential way.
In other words, humans were essentially different from one another, because
their being was inseparable from the culture that put them in shape. This
could and did lead to a vision of human cultures that emphasized equality
between cultures and the right to exist for all of them. But as soon as people
in the new Germany identified with their own culture, they were quick to
consider it as natural, normal, good, and better, in comparison to other
cultures. Difference would soon be interpreted in terms of inequality: this
phenomenon, obviously, had nothing typically German. But, in Germany, it
spurred romantic völkisch nationalism in its view of Kultur as the highest
form of culture.
But difference could also be seen as a source of threat and danger, as
something that could jeopardize the whole in its purity and in its authenticity.
As Patrick Cabanel puts it, in the perspective of Herder’s concept of the
nation as a living organism, “emigration and immigration could maim or
smear that organism, and anyone or anything foreign could de-nature the
national body” (Cabanel, 1997, p. 14).
German nationalism centered the concept of political enmity on cultural
differences as potential threats, which could ruin Kultur and degrade the Volk
capable of Kultur. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, in radical
milieus, the enemy became ultimately anyone or anything un-German,
representing a threat to Volk and culture. Ethnocentrism and xenophobia
easily flourished, within the perspective of radical völkisch nationalism.
Furthermore, in Europe as a whole, the colonial experience gave a
tremendous boast to anthropology. The Europeans discovered a world made
of a gamut of widely different cultures that might be charming sometimes, but

the inferiority of which was obvious, since they were vastly different from
what Western people would consider as normal and acceptable. The existence
of widely different cultures, the presence of a multiplicity of human images,
accounting for the human difference, laid the basis for the modernization of
political enmity. Although they behaved differently toward colonized peoples,
depending on time and place, the colonial powers took great pain to limit the
moral validity of these peoples’ cultural experience. In Germany, as soon as
the images of the peoples and “races” of the world entered the country,
whether through anthropological research or through the newly acquired
colonial territories, they contributed to reinforcing German nationalism.
Germans could see themselves as different and unique, in the better sense of
the term, when comparing themselves to strange “races” and even to other
European peoples. This created a solid basis for later ethnic intolerance and
cleansing, but, once again, this was not peculiar to German nationalism. Many
people had similar views and sentiments in Britain, France, the Netherlands,
and Italy, that is to say, in all Europeans countries that believed in nationalism
and capitalized on national grandeur, claiming superiority over their
neighbors and, of course, over these peoples from colonized continents.
3. Anti-Semitism and the Biological Paradigm
The biological sciences developed throughout the nineteenth century, and
they invaded culture and the public space in Germany, much more than
anywhere else (Weindling, 1989; Proctor, 1988). For obvious reasons, these
sciences, along with the scientists who worked in these fields, carried no
intrinsic relationships to romantic völkisch nationalism, let alone to still-to-
come Nazism. But their theoretical success accounted for a biological
paradigm, which became increasingly popular in Germany, as a framework
for understanding humanity, culture, and races. Under this vulgarized and
popularized form, biology entered the minds, carrying the idea that reference
to science was the necessary and sufficient condition for the validity of any
descriptive statement, in the field of anthropology in particular.
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) was a pioneer in the genesis of determinist
biological thinking in Germany, where he played a major role with regard to
the promotion of Social Darwinism. He tried to work out scientific
foundations for a concept of the German Volk as a winner in the struggle for
life, thus selected for hegemony. According to Richard M. Lerner: “Haeckel’s
perspective was a forerunner of the National Socialist vision of the synthesis
of biology and the policies of the fascist state.” In 1906, in cooperation with
some scientists and politicians, Haeckel set up the Monist League, based on
the principle that the whole of life, whether human or not, could be explained
through Social Darwinism (Lerner, 1992, pp. 23-24).
Haeckel saw the German Volk as “the ideal outcome of evolution”, and
he called for a synthesis of biology, politics, and ethics. He believed in the
superiority of the German Volk, of course: other peoples were inferior, to the
point of being, in some cases, subhuman. As he wrote: “the lower races —
such as the Veddahs or Australian Negroes — are psychologically nearer to
the mammals — apes and dogs — than to civilized Europeans, we must,
therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives.” In fact, Haeckel
considered that the task of German politics was to protect “the high
evolutionary status of the German people” from biological degeneracy. He
was in favor of negative eugenics, and he did not hesitate to recommend the
termination of “useless” and inferior lives (Lerner, 1992, pp.25-26).
Other scientists were quick to echo Haeckel’s words. To many of them,
the biological paradigm provided the scientific community with a true body of
knowledge, at last, capable of modifying reality with efficiency. It was now
becoming possible to exert efficient control over society, for the sake of an
allegedly true appraisal of human problems. The connection with politics,
therefore, seemed inevitable and desirable at the same time.
For example, Louis Pasteur’s works resulted in hygienist laws aimed at
protecting society against contagious diseases. However, as André Pichot
writes, these laws carried ideological consequences, insofar as they influenced
the way in which society was understood, bringing about a certain amount of
“biologization” of politics. Disease-control techniques were successfully
applied to animals first, before being transferred to human populations
plagued with diseases such as tuberculosis. The art of government was
becoming increasingly closer to control and management of animal herds,
while “the naturalization of society brought politics closer to biological
technique.” (Pichot, 2000, pp. 33-34)
In this sense, evolutionism and genetics were bound to have a strong
impact on the understanding of human society. They would soon have direct
claims to control politics, in order to make it better by molding it according to
the laws of nature.
These disciplines [would] thus claim to substitute a new social order to
the old one: an allegedly natural (biological) and scientifically founded
order, where the old one lay on tradition, religion and …
obscurantism… (Pichot, 2000, pp. 35)
In this new perspective, politics had to comply with nature, with natural laws,
with natural determinism. It was becoming an applied science, in tune with
the world as nature. In a corollary manner, an ethical conclusion seemed
inevitable. Pichot summarizes it in these words: “individual human life must
not be overrated by the institutions. …society must follow the model of
nature, and the latter is very little concerned with individuals…” (Pichot,
2000, p. 53)
On such a basis, biology became the obliged theoretical framework

through which anti-Semitism should be thought, so as to gain universal
validity. The Jews were then becoming a race, a quasi-race, or, at least, a
biological entity of some sort, according to scientific criteria that, as such,
could not be called into question. Their inferiority as a race or the equivalent,
as well as their noxious character, could be posited and described under the
umbrella of biology, so as to benefit from the legitimacy of science.
Pamphleteers like Wilhelm Marr vulgarized “Scientific” anti-Semitism, but it
would also find a niche in respectable racial-hygiene discussion groups aimed
at using science for the betterment of society.
As the modernized continuation of traditional Jew-hatred, anti-Semitism
had nothing specifically German either. Widespread in Europe, it benefited
from the new trends in anthropology, especially from the theory of races that
had emerged on the constructs of comparative linguistics. In this manner, it
became increasingly possible to conceive unequal cultures in terms of racial
inequality, and vice versa. Moreover, the characterization of the Jews could
leave the domain of the religious experience, which appeared less and less
important to the modern mind, so as to concentrate on “objective” group
characteristics through which the Jews, as members of a culture and of a race,
could be adequately described.
According to Pichot, for most people by the turn of the century, racist
evolutionary theories were scientific, in tune with modernity and progress. At
that time, there were racist laws, whether written or unwritten, in all places
where races were coming into contact: in 1919, a Japanese proposal to include
a declaration on the equality of races in the SDN Charter was rejected. But
biological anti-Semitism did not derive from racism proper: it rested mostly
on traditional anti-Semitism, and it merged with the Aryan question that had
originated in linguistics, as well as with Darwinism. However, anti-Semitism
could and would lend itself easily to a biological approach, and the definition
of race remained vague enough to include the Jews in biological racism
(Pichot, 2000, pp. 386-387, 394, 399, 403).
Biology, in fact, chose to support the credentials of racial theories. It
paved the way for a new ontology centered on nature as the space of struggle,
and, within that framework, it fostered the appearance and the development of
Social Darwinism. Insofar as it could support a view of history and politics as
a struggle for survival between nations and races, Social Darwinism provided
scientific and ethical foundations to German völkisch nationalism, in the sense
that aggression, war, and colonialism would appear solely as basic facts of
life, normalized through the approval of science, and morally legitimized by
reference to survival and self-defense, in a hostile world. Within such a
perspective, the struggle for survival between peoples called for the necessity
to secure land, resources, and raw materials, that is to say, Lebensraum. And
given the population growth, Lebensraum had to be extended, which led to
colonies and colonialism of some sort. Consequently, German nationalism
couched in a biological framework claimed Lebensraum and activated some

form of colonial thinking. Once again, similar phenomena took place with
regard to nationalism in other European colonial nations.
As a result of the disappearance of the transcendent, ontology imploded
into biology, as the essence and totality of Being was now entirely
encompassed by Nature. Draping itself into the prestige of science, biology
could claim to be the only credible ontology left to human thinking, and the
only valid framework for the rationalization of human action. In this sense, it
paved the way for a new ethic, based on the biological transfiguration of good
and evil. In a world where Being was entirely natural, and where human
beings were essentially bodies governed by the laws of Nature, the good
became health, while evil was equated with disease. Thus, the traditional
moral opposition between good and evil could be modernized into a new
mode of evaluation in terms of health and disease. On that basis, it became
possible to portray individuals, groups, and races as vectors of illness, but also
and mostly as the embodiment of disease, which could be seen as determining
and as characterizing their essence and existence. Humanity would lose any
intrinsic moral connotation, because some human beings would be essentially
nothing but forms of disease. At this juncture, the biological paradigm, which
invaded ontology and ethics, would open new perspectives for anti-Semitism,
through the medicalization of the Jewish problem.
4. The Impact of World War I
By and large, Nazi ideology was constructed on the basis of the following
elements: völkisch German nationalism, racial anthropology, modernized anti-
Semitism, colonialism, and the biological scientific paradigm. But it
integrated all these components after World War I and because of the
consequences of the war. In this sense, World War I played an essential part
in the genesis of Nazism, because it provided the prism through which this set
of ideas was submitted to distortion, as well as the inferno in which
nationalistic sentiments were wounded and exacerbated. In other words, these
ideas impacted the reality and perspective of World War I first, and this
impact that was reverberated and transmitted to Nazism.
World War I was caused by a vast array of factors, including
nationalism and colonial imperialism in a prominent position. Whatever the
ranking to be established between causation factors, it certainly was an
ultimate showdown of nationalism, between nation-states that were proud of
their imperial status and of the military glory attached to it. This was Adolf
Hitler’s World War I, the real World War I, the war of trenches. The front
experience, under the power of modern weaponry, led soldiers and veterans to
a staggering level of brutalization, to which the recent past of colonial
brutality could still add some weight. This brutality increasingly appeared as
normal and legitimate, insofar as the interests of the nation were at stake.
At an unprecedented level, World War I was characterized by the mass

nature and by the industrialization of warfare. The staggering losses were
related to an unprecedented amount of destructiveness wielded by industrially
designed weapons, but also by the incredible capability of modern states to
organize, to mobilize, and to coerce. And the initial hostilities soon offered a
strange prefiguration of the war against civilians that would characterize
World War II.
According to Alan Kramer, the German Army was obsessed with the
possible presence of partisans in Louvain, and it feared a re-enactment of
what had happened during the Franco-Prussian War. Soldiers panicked and
executed civilians here and there.
In all, 248 citizens of Louvain were killed. Some 1,500 inhabitants were
deported to Germany on a long journey in railway cattle-wagons,
including over 100 women and children, and were forced to endure the
harsh conditions in Munster camp until January 1915. (Kramer, 2008, p.
10)
And there was the destruction of Dinant, where the German authorities
considered the civilian population collectively guilty for alleged partisan
actions. “A total of 674 people, including many women and children, or one
in ten of the population of Dinant, had perished in the executions.” (Kramer,
2008, p. 16)
World War I was a national and industrial war, fought to ensure the
prevalence of the nation against an enemy who was defined as an army, but
also and mostly as a nation and a culture. In this perspective, deportations,
destructions, and economic enslavement soon took place in Belgium and in
the occupied portion of France. “During the invasion in 1914, at least 10,000
French and 13,000 Belgian civilians were deported to Germany and held
under harsh conditions.” Ultimately, 58,432 would be sent to compulsory
labor in Germany, and approximately the same number would be coerced into
working for Germany in the front area (Kramer, 2008, p. 44).
In the East, German occupation was even more brutal. Lithuania was
subjected to violent rule and systematic exploitation. Tens of thousands were
sent to forced labor, under harsh conditions and a starvation diet. As Kramer
writes:
The German occupation in eastern Europe saw itself as a colonial
regime with a civilizing mission, to transform savages into decent
Europeans. [And] … it was the German soldiers (of whom two or three
million served in the East) who returned from the war with a new
concept of space: the East they encountered was a desolate, partly
depopulated, underdeveloped region ready to be colonized. They
encountered a confusingly wide range of ethnic groups to whom they
felt culturally superior. (Kramer, 2008, pp. 48-49)
This occupation pattern would have some influence on colonial and racist
thinking, especially among the groups related to right-wing nationalism in
Germany. However, historians must be careful not to postulate a simple and
straightforward connection with Nazi occupation policies of later times.
During the Great War, the German authorities were not prepared to go as far
as the Nazis would go in their time.
World War I was the tragic coronation of a specific idea of the nation,
which would engulf all citizens through the sharing of life at the front and
through death in huge masses (Cabanel, 1997, p. 107). According to Eric J.
Leed:
For many participants, August 1914 was the last great national
incarnation of the “people” as a unified moral entity. The August days
were universally remembered as the “most deeply lived” days in the
lives of the war generation, days that would never be forgotten and
never be repeated. … War was seen as the binary opposite of social life
and the counterpole to normal existence in modern industrialized
society. …With the war, the multitude had become a moral presence
embodying the solidarity of the nation. [And real society] was replaced
not with a new set of positions, statuses, and roles, but by a common
project or, as contemporaries preferred, a common “destiny.” (Leed,
1979, pp. 39, 41-42, 52)
World War I in Germany was to be colored by two specific realities that
would bear a fair amount of influence on subsequent history (I will come back
later to this point, when I will consider the origins and functions of SS
ideology). The first one was the blockade. Obviously, rationing and economic
hardships took place everywhere in Europe, but in Germany they were
aggravated by the widespread perception that they were caused by
geographical isolation and by encirclement, enforced by the Royal Navy. In
other words, Germany’s plight was due to an all-too small territory, to the
lack of living space that brought about problems in the food supply as well as
scarcity in strategic raw materials, in a geopolitical context characterized by
the overall presence of British sea power. The second German specificity was
the Treaty of Versailles, which demolished German prestige and pride in the
age of nationalism, by turning the country into a miserable and guilty loser.
Needless to say, the relationship between imagination and nationalism would
become far different in Germany, as compared to what prevailed in victorious
countries.
Thus, in 1919, began another World War I, an imagined World War I,
Heinrich Himmler’s war, the war of beer-hall brawls and street fights, which
would soon be joined by these teenagers who, like Himmler, were deprived of
military glory because of their age. This was the Great War revisited with the
notion of Dolchstoss (stab-in-the-back), which provided a much better
explanation for defeat, an explanation that would be much more welcome,

given the virulence of nationalism and the wounds to national pride.
5. Nazi Ideology in the Aftermath of World War I
In a context characterized by the presence of a multiplicity of right-wing
nationalistic revengeful movements, Nazism appeared and developed also as a
consequence of World War I. Stemming from the brutalization experience at
the front, it grew on anger caused by national humiliation at Versailles, but it
could find some consolation in the imagery of blockade and Dolchstoss. And
in this quite complicated mental scheme, an old component would soon be
exacerbated: anti-Communism. This was linked to the role allegedly played
by the socialists of all sorts in the November Revolution, as well as to the
prevalence of internationalism in workers’ movements and parties, and to the
success of Communist revolution in Russia. Nazism opposed Communism as
an ideological poison that had corrupted the national mind, and its basic aim
was to bring back the workers to German nationalism. In this sense, it was or
purported to be a workers’ movement, and it could introduce itself as Socialist
Nationalism or National Socialism.
Hitler had acquired some basics of Social Darwinism, Pan-German
nationalism, and anti-Semitism in the years that had preceded the war.
According to John F. Williams:
What does seem certain is that by August 1914 he already favoured a
pan-German, anti-Marxist and anti-Socialist worldview. It is also
apparent that, during the war, he was prepared to harangue any comrade,
or group of comrades, willing to listen to his monologues. … His mind
was fixed and he was willing to see, read or hear only what further
confirmed him in his prejudices. In the mostly volunteer List Regiment
of October 1914, his was hardly a unique case. (Williams, 2005, p. 2)
Hitler certainly used the war and his regiment to complete his rather sketchy
schooling, and to find some confirmation for his basic Social Darwinist and
nationalistic views. However:
There is no evidence to suggest that his views were ever other than
völkisch, pan-German and in tune with those of many of the first
volunteers of 1914. While these ideas were basically fixed, the war —
particularly the last two years of the war — pushed him into adopting
harder, more extreme positions and set in motion the transformation
from political dilettante to activist. (Williams, 2005, p. 199)
Commenting on the way in which Hitler reacted to the cease-fire, and relying
on the relevant passages of Mein Kampf, Richard Bessel believes that Nazism
as such was born in November 1918, at the Pasewalk military hospital.
Confronted with the sudden collapse of their world, many Germans were
looking for scapegoats on whom to blame the national catastrophe.

Resentment and anger would turn against the Western Allies, of course, but
also against those who, from the inside, had stabbed the country in the back
(Bessel, 2004, pp. 4-6).
In a sense, the Nazi Kampfzeit was a sort of continuation of World War
I: after the Dolchstoss, after the Jews had turned the beautiful dream of 1914
into a nightmare, the Nazis were trying to overcome reality by reasserting the
dream, turning their anger against those who had spoiled the dream and
brought about the reality of November 1918. Right from the beginning,
Nazism represented a combination of dream and disillusionment. Men whose
enthusiasm had been crushed and who had been disillusioned created it.
Hitler, among others, was lost, down and out, before the war: the remnants of
his enthusiasm of August 1914 were shattered by the shock of his
disillusionment in Pasewalk.
Hitler’s experience at war and after the war was crucial to the genesis of
Nazism, and his prominence in the emerging Nazi Party raised the problem of
the origin of Nazi ideology. Could it be reduced to Hitler’s thinking? Or was
it instead an encompassing system of thought in which Hitler was only a
voice among others?
The answer lay somewhere between these two opposite viewpoints. On
the one hand, the core ideas of Nazi thinking preceded Hitler, who adopted
and integrated views that had begun to circulate long before the Great War.
And during the 1920s and 1930s, a large number of people contributed to
formulating and to disseminating Nazi ideology everywhere in Germany,
from Party speakers to scientists who made sure to give a Nazi twist to their
usual research proposals. But on the other hand, Hitler had established the
basics himself, in the 1920s, and his position became such that nobody could
successfully claim to be a Nazi in outright opposition to him.
Although Hitler was the necessary reference to any thinking that
purported to be Nazi, he never suppressed his collaborators’ margin of
intellectual freedom. He had set the basics, the core ideas that would
determine the orientation of any further thinking, within the framework of
Nazi ideology, as well the boundaries that could not be trespassed. Within
that framework, however, Nazi thinkers enjoyed some freedom of thought,
and they could develop their views on several issues that he considered as less
important or still unsettled. He did not meddle in everything, and he could
even express some fair criticisms about “Nazi thinking”, as he did about
Alfred Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century.
Nazi ideology succeeded in condensing and in summarizing a certain
number of ideas that had been amplified in war and postwar culture. And the
crisis that was plaguing Germany was increasingly conceived in biological
terms, that is, in terms of a gloomy future that would be brought about by the
Volk’s diminished vitality. Biological metaphors and, more particularly,
Darwinian concepts had invaded the realm of political speech: notions such as
struggle, selection, and counter-selection were used to describe social

problems and to characterize relations between nations and races. As
Christopher M. Hutton puts it: “The view was widespread that the superior
Aryan or Nordic element was disappearing through regressive selection…”
(Hutton, 2005, p. 9)
Modernity was seen as a biological degenerative process, connected
with urbanization and mass consumerism, and committed to the destruction of
the “pure essences of the past” through the racial and cultural bastardization
of everything.
A rising tide of biologically mediocre elements … was seen as
threatening to overwhelm socially elite groups. …On a wider stage,
there was fear of the potential rise of non-white peoples and races, a
sense of threat from an ill-defined ‘east’ and from migration and racial
mixing. … [Therefore] Germany needed to reorder its national life on
the basis of organic principles; it needed its lost territories returned, and
it needed healthy, vital couples to have large numbers of healthy, vital
children. … Eugenics was the new religion of the intellectuals. (Hutton,
2005, pp. 10-11)
And anti-Semitism was central in the völkisch anti-modern vision, since the
Jews were seen as epitomizing the essence of modernity, representing
materialism, capitalism, liberalism, Marxism, etc., and moving across borders,
cultures, and languages.
Backed by biological and medical sciences, racial science promised to
illuminate “the deep structures of bio-racial reality”. This is why it was so
seductive to the intelligentsia, insofar as it represented “an apparently viable
alternative to cultural and racial pessimism”, a last hope of some sort (Hutton,
2005, pp. 12, 15).
The Nazis were able to argue that their policy was based on scientific
principles that were beyond question, and on that basis were able
sufficiently to convince university students, professors, doctors, lawyers,
theologians, fathers (and mothers) to live with the destruction of Jews
and others (like Gypsies) because, as distasteful as it might be, that was
ultimately what science demanded. (Haas, 1999, p. 50)
Within the biological paradigm and the promises of racial science, what was
new in Hitler’s thinking was the introduction of an apocalyptic scheme as a
framework for the duality Aryans-Jews: Hitler’s anti-Semitism was a racist
apocalyptic construct. In his speech of 30 January 1939, Hitler explained his
apocalyptic scheme of anti-Semitism: apocalypse meant revelation, about the
final struggle on which the fate of mankind depended. Hitler the prophet
announced that he would see to it that the Jews would not be the winners in a
new war. What was apparent, once again, was the 1918 trauma as the matrix
of Nazism (Burrin, 2004, pp. 50-51, 73-75).
All in all, in post-Versailles Germany, ethnic and biological racism
merged with völkisch thinking, in a way that would result in “positive”
eugenics as well as in the exclusion of “impure” biological elements from the
Volk’s body, thus renewing the debate around anti-Semitism. But Hitler’s
mind was much more biological and Social Darwinist than völkisch, at least in
the traditional sense of this term. In his mind, radical revisionism against the
Versailles Treaty was only the first step toward a policy of expansion in the
East. In conjunction with absolute anti-Semitism and with the Jewish nature
of Bolshevism, this constituted the obsessive core of Hitler’s thinking
(Dupeux, 1987, pp. 542, 544). And the fixity and coherence of anti-Semitic
thinking, whether in Hitler, Himmler, or their SS subordinates, referred to an
imagery filled with hatred and exclusion, born out of World War I and the
traumas of defeat (Solchany, 2000, pp. 228-229).
6. In Summary
According to Eberhard Jäckel, Nazi ideology was made of the interaction
between two key components: Lebensraum and anti-Semitism (Jäckel, 1981).
Although the relative weight of other elements in the Nazi mix should not be
ignored, the centerpiece of the structure remained völkisch nationalism,
however, since these two elements made sense only in reference to the nation
as Volk.
By and large, Nazi ideology represented a form of völkisch nationalism
that had integrated rampant and spiteful anti-Semitism, in the age of Jewish
emancipation, as well as hopes for Lebensraum, in the age of colonial empires
and national grandeur. But that form of nationalism was inserted into the
biological paradigm, which had become immensely popular in Germany.
Within such a perspective, Social Darwinism and the theory of races gave a
new dimension to anti-Semitism and to imperialism.
These views were not Nazi by themselves. They became Nazi ideology
after the synthesis that resulted from Germany’s passage through World War
I. German nationalism was deeply humiliated by November 1918 and by the
Versailles Treaty, and the bitter defeat could be attributed to the blockade and
to the Dolchstoss.
In this sense, Nazi ideology constituted a by-product of World War I, an
amalgamation of nationalism and biologism distorted through the prism of
Versailles, the blockade, and the Dolchstoss. The blockade led to Lebensraum
colonialism of a new type, oriented toward the east, as Hitler foresaw it in
Mein Kampf. This was to become the task of the Wehrmacht. The Dolchstoss
led to the need for racial purity, which was linked to anti-Semitism and to
anti-Communism, in order to avoid future repetitions of 1918. This was to be
the task of the SS.
Two
THE SS SYSTEM AND NAZI IDEOLOGY

In a well-known but now aging book, Gerald Reitlinger claimed that the key
for understanding the origins of the SS lay in the Freikorps: to him, there
were no clear-cut boundaries between the end of the Freikorps and the
beginning of SA and SS (Reitlinger, 1957, p. 4). This claim had the merit to
stress some ideological continuities in a defeated and humiliated Germany,
given that the Freikorps were animated by the same spirit that would give rise
to Nazism. To some extent, however, the origins of the SS were a by-product
of some of the Great War’s field tactics. Per se, they had little to do with
ideology.
1. The Origins of the SS
Late in the Great War, General Erich Ludendorff envisaged a series of
attacks, in order to break through the Western front. To that purpose, he set up
his assault divisions, spearheaded by shock units: the Stosstruppen, made of
fighters able to use all kinds of weapons. These units were inspired by a
model that had appeared empirically, on the battlefield, in 1915 (Jardin, 2005,
p. 182). And precursors of such units had existed already in 1914. In fact, the
inspiration for the SS came from that battlefield culture with which many
people were familiar at that time.
According to an official account prepared by the Archivamt des SS-
Hauptamtes (SS Archive Office), early in the history of the movement, the
necessity arose to create a small elite troop, made of tough and trustworthy
elements. In this perspective, in March 1923, a Stabswache was set up, under
the authority of Marine Lieutenant Klintzsch. After Klintzsch had gone back
to his Navy Brigade, Josef Berchtold created the “Stosstrupp Hitler”, which
included the Stabswache. The Stosstrupp was made of seasoned veterans, on
whom Hitler could count. In 1925, after the re-foundation of the Party, the
Schutzstaffel (Protection Squad) proper was created, with a limited number of
reliable and faithful Party comrades. The founder and first leader was Julius
Schreck, who, in 1926, handed his leadership over to Berchtold. The numbers
stood around 200, and growth was slow (BA NSD 41 / 77 a).
According to Heinz Höhne, Julius Schreck had undertaken to increase
SS unit numbers, but he had imposed restrictions on recruiting, so as to
preserve the elitist character of the new Protection Squad, before he was
replaced with Berchtold. The latter could use the title of Reichsführer SS,
although he remained nominally subordinated to SA Supreme Leader Franz
Pfeffer von Salomon. Berchtold would have a hard time trying to protect his
organization against Party hacks who were discontent with the “aristocratic”
claims of the SS. Ultimately, he had to resign. In March 1927, he was
replaced with his assistant Erhard Heiden, who showed some concern for
ethics, by issuing instructions about the correct behavior expected from SS
members during meetings (Höhne, 1972, pp. 22-25).
On 6 January 1929, Heinrich Himmler was appointed Reichsführer SS
by Hitler, over a troop of 270 men. Later in the year, at the Party Congress in
Nuremberg, Himmler could display twice that number. Under Himmler, the
SS had to put out some revolts within the Party, including the Stennes
incident, when it received its motto from Hitler: “SS-Mann, Deine Ehre heisst
Treue” (SS man, your honor is your faithfulness). Early in 1933, the
Leibstandarte (body-guard regiment) was created, followed by units of the
SS-Verfügungstruppe (troop at disposal). And schools were set up, in Tölz
and Braunschweig (BA NSD 41 / 77 a, pp. 9-13).
Himmler lost no time in asserting his vision of the SS, based on the key
role devoted to ideology. He was quick to issue a few basic principles.
According to him: “only noble blood, only real race could guarantee real
performances, in the long run”. Whence, the necessity of selection for
recruiting the best in terms of blood and character. And selection had to be
guided by four principles and virtues: the racial idea proper, bound to attract
those who were as close as possible to Nordic humanity, in height and general
look; the fighter’s spirit or the commitment to struggle; faithfulness and
honor; plus, of course, obedience. SS men were essentially committed to
protect Nazi thinking inside, as well as toward the outside (BA NSD 41 / 61,
pp. 9, 11-13).
Himmler changed drastically the small SS force, not only because he was
a skilled organizer who carried a vision, but also and mostly because he saw
himself as a thinker, especially in the field of natural philosophy and ethics. In
his mind, the SS was bound to become a powerful organization, which would
command respect and admiration in society at large, and especially in Hitler.
But it would be devoted also to develop the Nazi way of thinking, with the
explicit intent to actualize Nazi thinking into praxis.
2. Himmler and the Great War
Like Hitler and most Nazis of the early days, Heinrich Himmler was also a
by-product of the Great War, although in a different sense. His political
engagement and his ideological roots stemmed from an imaginary World War
I, from a mental system of fantasies about the war and about his own
relationship to it. Many SS top leaders, born also in the early twentieth
century, would display a comparable set of mind.
According to Guido Knopp, Himmler had experienced a normal
childhood in a normal well-to-do family, under the strong influence of
The SS System and Nazi Ideology 23
Gebhard’s father, whose mind was catholic, conservative, and nationalistic,

but not anti-Semitic. World War I, however, exerted a powerful mental
impact on Heinrich, who developed a strong desire to be a soldier. In January
1918, he succeeded in getting enrolled, but he spent the rest of the war on a
training base. He never went to the front, which he perceived as a shameful
failure. In a speech to the Hitlerjugend (Hitler Youth) on 22 May 1936, for
the first time, he would say: ”we, as soldiers…” and later: “we who took part
in the war”: Himmler’s desire took precedence over reality (Knopp, 2003, pp.
67, 69).
In 1918, in the aftermath of defeat, Heinrich faced an uncertain future,
and he came under the influence of anti-Semitic literature, accusing the Jews,
of course, but also the Bolsheviks, Freemasonry, and the Catholic Church. He
developed ties with the League of Artamanen, who considered themselves as
an order of knights whose purpose was to colonize the East: the forceful
conquest, the deportation, and the enslavement of Slavic populations was on
the Artamanen’s agenda. Himmler noted in his diary that there would be
military villages of people of Nordic blood, camps of slave laborers who,
whatever the losses, would build up everything (Knopp, 2003, pp. 70, 73). On
22 November 1921, he wrote that he would eventually participate in a future
campaign in the East, where fighting should lead to German settlements
(Höhne, 1972, p. 34).
As soon as he became Deputy Reichsführer SS in 1927, Himmler wanted
to be a teacher in the movement, and he tried to bring people back to life in its
authenticity. He was already obsessed with the Blut und Boden philosophy,
and he liked to imagine clean and healthy people who would be joyfully
going back to the land. More importantly, he thought of himself as gifted for
teaching, “born to be a great educator” (Höhne, 1972, pp. 40-41).
As evinced by speeches delivered in 1926, Himmler was at that time a
socialist of some sort, probably under Gregor Strasser’s influence. He was
already deeply immersed into agrarian romanticism, and his anti-Semitism
was obvious. He thought that small ailing farms had to be protected against
Jewish greed, and he depicted “international” Jewry as Germany’s main
enemy, whose power rested on Marxism and democracy. The emphasis on the
East to be settled was present also. Himmler referred to the peasants who had
peacefully conquered the East through the establishment of settlements, many
centuries ago. Now, 600 years after, German peasantry was called again to
preserve the Eastern land for the Volk, and against the Slavs (BA NS 19 /
1789).
Himmler never coped with the fact that his military career had aborted
before becoming real. Here, we reach the second aspect of Himmler’s duality:
in his mind, in addition to being a teacher, he was also a soldier. And he
would bring his managerial skills to bear on an organization of a military
nature. The SS would be a hierarchical system of ideological fighters and of
fighting ideologists, commanded by Himmler as a fighting teacher and as a

teaching fighter.
Himmler brought his imaginary World War I into Nazi politics of the
1920s, and his frustrations were echoed by many other youths who had
missed combat and glory. As Christian Ingrao reports, in his study on SD
(Sicherheitsdienst or Security Service) and RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt
or Reich Security Main Office) leaders, the same vision was largely shared by
the same generation. These leaders had been the children of the Great War,
who became adults during the 1920s in Germany. The Great War shaped the
ideological representations of this age group, and, more specifically, by the
war culture (Ingrao, 2000, p. 268), which had been deeply interiorized by this
generation, as the object of “an immense affective investment in populations”.
The magnitude of that investment was directly linked to the huge trauma
triggered by defeat in 1918, in connection with an imagery of panic about the
possible disappearance of Germany as a state and as a nation. In postwar
Germany, thus, these future SS leaders would adhere to an ideology that
echoed their fears, by raising the specter of Germany’s decline, while offering
a chance of survival through a special envoy, who would lead the fight against
lethal races and bring about a 1000-year Reich. “The attractiveness of Nazism
would lie partly in its capability to reinvest anxious representations into a
powerful millenarism.” (Ingrao, 2000, pp. 269, 270, 273)
In his study on the leadership of the Reich Security Main Office,
Michael Wildt reaches similar conclusions about the war teenagers, who were
too young to go to the front in World War I: “the war also became a thorn in
their sides, reminding them of a missed opportunity to prove themselves, one
that had been offered to an older generation but not to their own.” (Wildt,
2009, p. 21) As Wildt writes further:
For these adolescents the First World War thus constituted the incisive
biographical caesura that allowed them to become a generation unto
themselves. They were painfully aware of their own lack of war
experience, which they regarded as an unbridgeable generational
limitation and which at the same time seemed to implicitly call on them
to do something of their own. Discontinuity, breaking with the past, and
looking toward the future became the distinguishing marks of this
generation… (Wildt, 2009, p. 427)
3. The SS System and the Waffen SS
According to Himmler himself, in a speech delivered to the Commanders of
the Navy in December 1943, the SS was the organization of the minority of
the best, and, for obvious reasons, such a minority had to perform the best.
Consequently, in order to maintain its standards of excellence, the SS chose
not to retain anybody forcibly. In such an organization, one had to make sure
that entrance would be much more difficult than exit.
As Himmler explained, the work of the SS depended on its Hauptämter

(main offices), about which he explained some essentials to his auditors. First,
the system was based on the SS-Hauptamt (SS Main Office), which cared
about those who belonged to the Order, that is to say, SS men along with
wives and children. This service was also responsible for ideological
education, as well as for a great task with regard to population exchange and
growth. Here, Himmler talked about the necessity to unite the Germanics. He
gave figures about demographic growth in the Reich and about population
transfers: 700,000 Germans had immigrated, whereas 2 million foreigners had
left the country. He mentioned the Jews, who had emigrated to the East, but
he had no interest in telling the plain truth flatly or bluntly to navy officers.
He harped on the theme of a bigger Volk to be the main power in Europe,
about a Germanic Reich with a blood basis of 120 million Germanic people,
bound to rule over Europe. He rejoiced over new perspectives of development
and recruitment in Germanic countries. As he said: “In the Viking Division
and in the new Germanic Nordland Division, we can see the Germanic Reich
grow.” (BA NS 19 / 4011, fol. 106-153)
At this meeting, Himmler introduced most of his offices, such as the
RSHA (Reichsicherheitshauptamt or Reich Security Main Office), which
integrated the Gestapo and the criminal police, the RuSHA (Rasse- und
Siedlungshauptamt or Race and Settlement Main Office), responsible for SS
clans, marriage permissions, racial evaluations, etc., the Personalhauptamt
(Personnel Main Office), and his personal staff. He also had a few words
about the Führungsamt (Leadership Office), which acted as General Staff for
the Waffen SS, the Hauptamt Orpo (Main Office for the Order Police), the
WVHA (Economy and Administration Main Office), which had subordinated
the concentration camps, and the VOMI (Volksdeutsche Mittestelle or Ethnic
Germans Central Service), in charge of the return of ethnic Germans to the
Reich. This enumeration aimed at illustrating the ramifications of SS power,
through the variety and scope of SS offices.
The SS was in fact an organization specialized in population
engineering. On the basis of a blueprint provided by ideology, its main
activities consisted in displacing, enslaving, or exterminating populations.
Through its various main offices, it could submit people to racial evaluation,
surveillance, emigration, forced labor, imprisonment, and death. It was
actually the gardener of Europe’s modern garden, carrying out plans for
global harmony and efficiency, making decisions about which plants could be
allowed to exist, in accordance with that metaphor proposed by Zygmunt
Bauman (Bauman, 1989, p. 57).
Within that system, the Waffen SS deserves special attention, for at least
three reasons. Firstly, its development represented the accomplishment of
Himmler’s dream, inherited from World War I, to be a soldier (whose military
responsibilities would sharply increase during the last years of World War II).
Secondly, it testified to Himmler’s organizational skills, which would
reassure a Hitler discontent with the Wehrmacht, and it would lead the SS to
the apex of its prestige and power. Thirdly, its success and expansion would
raise some issues with regard to ideology.
The Waffen SS was well suited to actualize the concept of “order”,
which constituted the core of Himmler’s vision with regard to the structure of
his organization. As Bernd Wegner puts it, three aspects must be considered
in the development of the Waffen SS: “the ideal of virtue inherent within the
Order, its pseudo-religious status, and, derived from this status, its claim to an
elite position within all of society.” (Wegner, 1990, p. 14) In fact, Himmler
was determined to accomplish, at an elite level, the fusion between the
ideological and the military, all the more so that he was animated by a strong
will for expansion, while only the Waffen SS could lead the Black Order to a
position of political authority in German society.
According to Jean-Luc Leleu, who has written a monumental work on
the Waffen SS, the SS leadership pursued a developmental policy that tabled
on favorable conditions, in connection with windows of opportunity and
possibilities for recruitment. Between December 1938 and June 1944, the
numbers of the Waffen SS made a remarkable jump: from 23 000 to 600 000.
Its expansion policy went through three main phases: autumn 1939, autumn
1942, and spring 1944 (Leleu, 2007, p. 13).
The SS-Verfügungstruppe had originated in political commandos created
in 1933. In fact, the first SS assigned to barracks had been Hitler’s personal
SS guard, assembled on 17 March 1933. Totalizing 14,234 men in December
1938, the SS-Verfügungstruppe constituted a sort of parallel army: it was a
Party organization and an armed troop standing at Hitler’s exclusive disposal.
On 1 December 1939, Himmler made the decision to regroup all SS armed
formations into a single entity designated as “Waffen SS”. The army soon
recognized this SS reorganization, which was definitely acknowledged in
March 1940 (Leleu, 2007, pp. 14-15, 23).
To Hitler, the Waffen SS was meant to be a small elite corps only. It was
sent to the battlefield so as to earn some glory and credentials that would
support its legitimacy, during and after the war, as a repressive state police.
But in the spring of 1942, his mind changed radically. He began to think that
the Waffen SS represented the archetype of a real Nazi-minded armed force
that had proven superior to the Wehrmacht, during the military crisis of the
preceding winter. By means of the Waffen SS, Hitler now wanted to impose
his faith and his ideological inspiration on the military (Leleu, 2007, pp. 30-
33).
As Hitler increasingly praised his SS while castigating the Army’s
generals, the Waffen SS became the fourth branch of the Wehrmacht, late in
1942. At that time, Hitler considered the Waffen SS as a panacea, destined to
become the pillar of Germany’s defense against external enemies. Benefiting
from support at the highest level, the small elite force could grow into a
powerful army of hundreds of thousands of troops. Hitler believed in the “SS
miracle”, so to speak, in the SS capability to transform every recruit in a sort

of fanatic Nazi fighter. Thus, in 1944, the SS was entrusted with the mission
to mold the new army divisions according to its own image (Leleu, 2007, pp.
35, 47). And Himmler had played a key role in the preceding years, as he had
been very skilled and patient in his efforts to convince Hitler.
In compliance with its ideology based on the cultivation of a
biologically conceived Germanic race, the SS was open to integrate elements
from outside the Reich’s political borders, including the Volksdeutsche and
other Germanics. Later, it was led to recruit beyond the borders of race,
because of the necessities brought about by the war. In August 1942,
Himmler had to overcome his own reluctance in order to solicit Hitler’s assent
to the creation of SS Estonian and Latvian units. Six months later, Bosnians
were to follow (Leleu, 2007, pp. 55, 66).
But these units filled with “foreign races” “were never part of the SS,
although under its supreme command… These volunteers acted solely as
auxiliary troops.” (Wegner, 1990, p. 5) And only purely Nordic or
predominantly Nordic and Phalian (Fälisch) people were admitted into the SS
proper. Himmler was not interested in jeopardizing “his most cherished
principle of SS legitimation: the ‘racial nobility’ … of the German people.”
Thus, “even during the war, SS aspirants had to provide ‘proof of Aryanism
back to 1800’ before being accepted into the formations.” But this task could
be postponed until the end of the war, and the aspirant could be granted
conditional admittance with the mention “provisional”. In this sense, there
was something like a “second-class Waffen SS” (Wegner, 1990, pp. 134, 138-
139).
Himmler never issued any order that would have called the racial
principle into question. But he was compelled to have recourse to the fiction
of Deutschtum (“Germanhood”). When he proposed the creation of a French
SS battalion, he made it clear that the LVF (Légion des Volontaires Français
or Legion of French Volunteers) would stay out of it: he wished to enroll only
racially valuable people, who looked Germanic and thought in a Germanic
spirit. With regard to Bosnians and Ukrainians, ideological justifications
would be more far-fetched. But Bosnian Muslims could claim Gothic origins.
And the Austro-Hungarian imperial heritage was recycled, in a way that could
table on good old Bosnian and Galician loyalties (Leleu, 2007, pp. 71-73).
Ideology stayed safe, in the long run, because of the distinctions that
were made between different types of personnel employed by the SS. The SS
system made a basic distinction that opposed some units, made of men who
were integrated into the SS, to other units whose men were only nominally
part of the SS, through their belonging to the unit. These men, thus, were
fighting with and beside the SS, but not really within SS ranks: officially, the
SS did not give up its principles for the sake of ambition (Leleu, 2007, pp. 74-
75).
4. The Production and Dissemination of Ideology

In Himmler’s mind, the SS was intended to be an ideological and military
order. This meant that the organization could not be satisfied with routine
police action and battlefield drill. It had to produce and to teach a form of
thought that was essential to its mission and appropriate to Nazism. Thus,
Nazi ideology would be presented to SS personnel through speeches,
publications, and school training. The SS would also deliver speeches and
sponsor publications intended for non-SS audiences, within Party, state, and
society at large.
Speeches played a major part in expressing and in conveying SS
thinking. Himmler himself frequently delivered speeches to SS audiences,
mostly to the officer corps, but also to Wehrmacht high-ranking personnel, to
Party activists, and to state servants. In this respect, mention must be made
also of Kurt Daluege, the Chief of Order Police, who was a very active and
prolific speaker. In general, most top SS leaders held seminars intended for
peers or subordinates, and they participated in conferences on a regular basis.
In compliance with Himmler’s wish, the SS-Hauptamt (SS Main Office)
was responsible for ideological education (BA NS 19 / 4011, fol. 106-153).
From a schooling office (Schulungsamt) in this service were released the SS-
Leithefte, which played a major role in disseminating SS ideology within the
SS. The office also published textbooks intended for teaching (Unterrichts-
bücher), whether in the field of Weltanschauung (world view) or in that of
scientific knowledge (Wissen), as well as practical textbooks on German
history, Reich history, and Party history.
Schooling competence had been held initially by the RuSHA, early in
1935, and it had been supervised for a while by a special schooling office
under Joachim Caesar. In 1938, it moved to the SS-Hauptamt, under August
Heissmeyer and, later, Gottlob Berger. In the schooling office, the SS-
Leithefte and other teaching materials were assembled. In the middle of 1936,
the RuSHA had already prepared the first part of a three-theme series on
Jewry, Freemasonry, and Bolshevism. It was a photo essay entitled: “Das
Judentum, seine blutsgebundene Wesensart in Vergangenheit und Gegen-
wart”, useful for small seminars on the Jewish question (Matthäus, 2003, pp.
37, 47).
Das Schwarze Korps, the official SS newspaper, was published for the
first time on 6 March 1935. It remains unsure whether Das Schwarze Korps
was Himmler’s idea: at any rate, he approved the idea of a SS journal, and he
chose the title and the editor. Gunter d’Alquen would be the paper’s editor,
and he would be seconded by his younger brother Rolf and by Rudolf aus den
Ruthen. They worked under Himmler’s Personal Staff: Himmler gave them
much latitude to operate the paper, but he could and would intervene. In all
likelihood, most contributions in the early period were authored by the
brothers. By June 1935, the printing reached 100,000 copies weekly, and this
figure would double by November 1935. It would reach ultimately 750,000

(Combs, 1986, pp. 21-31).
In the spring of 1943, the SS-Hauptamt released the Germanische
Leithefte, as the equivalent of the SS-Leithefte in the Reich. They were
produced in large numbers: 4,000 copies in Flemish and 10,500 copies in
Dutch. The photo album Der Untermensch was printed by hundreds of
thousands of copies: the Das Reich Division could obtain 4,400 of these
copies (Leleu, 2007, pp. 246, 442-443).
For obvious reasons, the SS tried to emphasize ideological education
within the curriculum of future officers. Although the military part of their
instruction remained heavy, the SS cadets had to go through ideology classes,
in order to assimilate the minimum required.
SS-Junkerschule-Tölz was destined to be the reference school in SS
academia, the second one being Braunschweig, destroyed in 1943. Three
other cadet schools were open late during the war, in Posen-Treskau,
Klagenfurt, and Prague. These schools were the main instrument for
educating the SS officer corps. In the SS-Junkerschule-Tölz, ideological
education was officially considered as important, although the number of
teaching hours dedicated to ideology was relatively small (4-6 hours). These
hours were intended to reinforce Nazi ideology, already present in the cadets’
minds, and not to introduce it from scratch. Cadets were observed and
scrutinized for ideological reliability, for the whole duration of their stay at
the school (Hatheway, 1999, pp. 7, 92-93). But ideological education
remained “limited to approximately 10% of the cadet’s course work”: it
emphasized basic goals of Nazism, such as the need for Lebensraum and the
struggle against the Jewish world conspiracy. The lectures reviewed most
familiar themes, such as the Aryan birth rate, the purity of Nordic race and
culture, and some völkisch philosophers like Paul Lagarde and Julius
Langbehn (Hatheway, 1999, pp. 120-121).
Ideological instruction was meant to support and to promote SS values.
Usually, it consisted in presenting the basic themes of SS thinking:
The ‘eternal laws of life’, their realization through national socialism,
but above all an extensive portrayal of German and European history
since early Teutonic times from a racial and geopolitical perspective, the
latter being treated from the standpoint of Nazi Lebensraum ideas. The
constantly recurring leitmotiv in this endeavour was to justify
Germany’s right to political primacy…. (Wegner, 1990, p. 171)
The goal was to guide the cadet toward a certain attitude toward life, “to
stimulate the SS-man’s impetus to act according to a few basic rules of Nazi
‘morality’”, and to lead him to identify personally with ideology (Wegner,
1990, p. 173).
Ideological education in the Waffen SS should neither be overestimated

nor underestimated. There were mid-course and final exams in the field of
Weltanschauung, and the courses were supervised by the Amt für Führer-
ausbildung (Bureau for Officer Training). But doubts were permitted with
regard to the efficiency of ideological education (Wegner, 1990, p. 174).
With regard to Waffen SS troops at large, there were Schulungsleiter
(schooling directors) in battalions and regiments of militarized units, since the
spring of 1934. But the dualistic principle was gradually abolished after the
end of 1937, when ideological education became the task of company
commanders (and of battalion commanders to a certain extent). SS officers
had to be the ideological leaders of their men (Wegner, 1990, pp. 200, 202,
204).
An interesting example could be that of the SS Sanitary Corps. The
schooling of the SS officers in the Sanitary Corps comprised five nights, one
per month, from November to March. These evenings had officially a
scientific character, and the presentations had to be up to the most modern or
updated state of scientific research. With regard to presentations about
heredity and race (Rassenpflege) and about other related issues, a specialist
was by no means always necessary, since these issues now belonged to
general medical training. Any SS physician, therefore, was able to work or to
comment on these issues, and to make a competent presentation about them.
In the program for the evening, there should be fifteen minutes devoted to
Nazi Weltanschauung. Basic materials for teaching should include the SS-
Leithefte, plus relevant literature on heredity and race (BA NS 33 / 87).
A list of conferences held during the summer semester of 1938 should
give an idea of the themes discussed, in the different SS sectors or territories.
For example: in Munich, “Die Aufgaben des Vereins Lebensborn”; in
Heidelberg: “Erbgesundheitspflege”; in Cologne: “Politischer Katholizis-
mus“; in Bonn: “Der Will zum Kinde”; in Kiel: “Das Rassenproblem”; in
Hamburg: “Seelenleben und Vererbung”; in Breslau: “Der biologische
Gedanke in der nationalsozialistischen Weltanschauung”; in Frankfurt/Main:
“Naturwissenschaft und Weltanschauung”, “Die soziale Frage im Lichte der
Rassen- und Weltanschauungen”, and “Der Gedanke von Blut und Boden in
der deutschen Geschichte”; in Graz: “Volk in Gefahr” (Geburtenrückgang
und Rassenmischung). The speakers were SS officers or NCOs most of the
time (BA NS 33 / 87).
5. The “Originality” of SS Thinking
Within the Waffen SS, Leleu writes, ideology took the second place to
military imperatives. Division commanders cared about it, but they did not
consider it as a priority (Leleu, 2007, p. 424). With regard to the SS in
general, there were some gaps between ideology and reality. Himmler never
succeeded in expelling traditional religions from the SS, and SS wives were
not really interested in having children in great numbers (Höhne, 1972, pp.
144-145).
Now, could it be accurate to portray SS ideology as something unique or
original? No, certainly not. It remained at all time a particular figure of Nazi
ideology, and its main themes could be found in Nazi authors in general. But
it could be possible to talk in terms of “relative” originality, to some extent
and within certain limits, since SS thinkers gave a particular twist to some
Nazi themes.
More than any other branch of Nazi thinking, SS ideology was
characterized by the coupling of a modern technological problem-solving
approach with pre-modern elements of thought, such as agrarian romanticism.
Other Nazi agencies evacuated the contradiction by paying lip service to rural
values, which they would ignore in practice. Contrary to them, the SS was
serious about the myths of the land, and it genuinely promoted rural life, in
thinking as well as in action, although its power rested on a modern urban and
industrial basis.
SS thinking tried to develop a form of naturalism that imploded into
ethics, and its relative originality lay in that particular feature. Of course, the
SS did not invent ethics and had no monopoly over it. After all, the Nazis who
manned other Party and state organizations were not deprived of moral
consciousness (Koonz, 2003), and Hitler himself had an ethic (Weikart,
2009). But SS thinking could be characterized by its practical intentionality,
that is to say, by its insistence on ethics. It accomplished the ultimate
moralization of Nazi ideology, in a way that normalized and legitimized its
most extreme consequences.
SS thinking understood natural philosophy as praxis, and it viewed
praxis as the natural accomplishment of philosophy. It was a by-product of
the dual nature of the SS, as an organization devoted to theory and practice, as
well as of the dual personality of its supreme leader, a skilled organizer who
saw himself as a thinker and, more specifically, as a moralist. The SS was not
meant to be a sort of intellectual association, devoted as such to purely
abstract thinking, nor a mere machine to be activated by other Nazis’
thinking. In Himmler’s mind, thinking and action were inseparable, and the
SS was devoted to the accomplishment of both, in their essential conjunction.
By and large, the SS was concerned with three correlated issues: the
production, the amplification, and the actualization of Nazi ideology.
Needless to say, it produced ideology in competition with other Nazi agencies
and within certain parameters predetermined by Hitler. But it succeeded in
addressing a lot of issues, including morality, lifestyle, nature, rural life, and
behavior in extraordinary circumstances. And it made tremendous efforts at
disseminating Nazi ideology, especially through the readiness of its leader-
ship to hold seminars and to deliver speeches in huge quantities.
In producing and in broadcasting Nazi ideology, the SS benefited from
an unparalleled advantage as compared to other Nazi organizations, owing to
the means that it could deploy from its power position. It considered Nazi
ideology as something to be thought, taught, and practiced, and its powerful
means could be used within all dimensions of public space. The SS was out to
achieve the political security of ideology, as well as the ideological security of
politics.
Three
SS ONTOLOGY
Traditionally, the Greeks divided philosophy into three main parts: logic,
physics, and ethics. Reason had to analyze itself as the organon of thinking,
before contemplating the world and organizing the human experience in the
world. Many centuries after the Greeks, philosophy still consists in a rational
and critical approach to Being, to humanity within Being, and to the standards
that should govern the organization of society and the destiny of individual
life. In other words, it is a rational mode of inquiry into the surrounding
world, aimed at discovering humanity’s nature in it, so as to infer appropriate
guidelines for human action.
As a subset of Nazi ideology, SS thinking was a way of viewing Being,
humanity, and the relevant ethical standards to be applied to humanity. It was
ontological as well as anthropological, and it comprised physics and ethics,
but it had no logic, in the strict sense of the term. In fact, the SS never used
the term “philosophy” to designate its own thinking. It preferred the
expression “Weltanschauung” (world view), and it remained convinced that
feeling (and not reason) should be considered as the prime mover of a world
vision.
1. The SS Weltanschauung
According to the definition provided by a textbook intended for SS teaching,
the term “Weltanschauung” means a view of the world (or a look at it:
anschauen). It designates the sum of all thoughts and ideas, in a human
community, about the world and life. “Any Weltanschauung is conditioned
and shaped through the whole being (Dasein) of man, like race, education,
environment, and experience.” (BA NSD 41 / 75, p. 1)
The Nazi Weltanschauung was not meant to be the exclusive affair of
educated or learned people in the movement. To the SS, since Nazism was
nothing but “life being alive” (das lebendige Leben), the Weltanschauung
necessitated no philosophical construction to be understood. It went along
with the simple fact of living, that is to say, of going through a decent
(anständig) life (BA NSD 41 / 137 a).
The Nazi Weltanschauung acknowledged the fundamental law of life,
entailing that the fruitful mind always strengthens the Volk’s will to develop
its own way of being. In this sense, it was a conception of life that was meant
to be characteristic of, or appropriate to, a given nature (arteigene) (BA NSD

41 / 122, p. 55). Here, the word “arteigene” ensured some measure of
independence with regard to universal reason. More specifically, the Nazi
Weltanschauung originated in a body of knowledge grounded in the racial,
blood-related, and moral forces of the German Volk. It was the guardian of
life as expressed in a given nature, and it was ipso facto natural. This
designation, thus, would guarantee the ontological validity of the
Weltanschauung. Furthermore, Nazism testified to the high values of
Germanic humanity. As we can read in a textbook:
National Socialism is life in the blood-bound community and service to
the Volk as the highest moral law for any German. It is the doctrine of
blood and honor. (BA NSD 41 / 75)
This passage would ground the Weltanschauung into anthropology (blood)
and ethics (honor), but its corollary would formulate a principle of exclusion
leading to political consequences.
Indeed, given the close connection between the mind and the inner law
of blood in a Volk, a foreign culture and an estranged Weltanschauung could
be lethal. After World War I, according to a textbook author, the force and
vision of the German people lay in a state of destruction, because political and
ideological views, which were foreign to German blood, reigned over the
Volk. This would have been the ruin of the Volk, if the disrespect for the laws
of blood, if the pollution of the cultural values holy to the Volk had
continued. The destruction of blood could lead to the collapse of culture that
originated in this blood, but also and conversely, the lack of respect for the
Volk’s particular nature and cultural values could lead to the destruction of its
blood (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 21).
On the political side, another textbook drew some conclusions as
follows. According to the author, a Weltanschauung is a philosophy of war,
telling friend from foe, couched in ethical, anthropological, and biological
categories. In the Weltanschauung, anyone has to know where is the friend,
and where is the foe. Anyone has to position himself or herself toward work,
money, the opposite sex, other human beings, and the past. Any SS and
policeman has to know where he stands in reference to the past, the present,
and the future, in reference to eternity and God (BA NSD 41 / 117, pp. 9-10).
In a sense, the Nazi Weltanschauung struck a delicate balance between
thinking and political or military action. Above the German sword stood a
German idea, which determined a decision, based on German interests and
nature, about whom should be protected by the sword and whom should be
exterminated by it (BA NSD 41 / 117, p. 41). Since the SS was meant to be
the embodiment of political soldiery, the ensign-bearer of the Nazi
Weltanschauung, its task would always be to see to it that the German Volk
should prove worthy of Germany’s military victory and of Hitler’s
SS Ontology 35
accomplishments. And since the SS could be the ideological fighting guard of

Hitler only if each SS man worked on himself ideologically, anyone had the
duty to build up a body of ideological knowledge for oneself (BA NSD 41 /
86, p. 7).
The SS viewed Nazism as a Weltanschauung that forced everybody to
take a stance, for or against (BA NSD 41 / 137 b). In this sense, on the basis
of its own presuppositions, the Nazi vision could not be universal. Not only
did it consider its biases and shortcomings as normal and legitimate, but it
was deliberately closed to any form of genuine dialogue. As Himmler said,
with regard to all questions related to the Weltanschauung, the SS had to
adopt a viewpoint that excluded any and all compromises (BA NS 19 / 4011,
fol. 106-153).
That viewpoint presented itself as idealistic, since materialistic
evolutionism was not compatible with the Nazi Weltanschauung. The latter
was allegedly idealistic, because it chose to emphasize cultural ideas instead
of material products of civilization. It challenged the Enlightenment that had
fought religion but had ended up with a reverse faith, fostering a kind of
materialism leading ultimately to Marxism. It reinstated Blut und Boden, race
and Volk, as the true foundations for human action. As an author wrote in
substance: “We are coming back to the roots of our existence (Sein) and
reunite God and spirit in the harmonious synthesis of Blut and Boden.” (BA
NSD 41 / 137 c)
2. SS Pantheism and the Laws of Life
SS ideology claimed to be idealistic, and it strongly opposed materialism,
especially atheistic materialism such as Marxism. It rejected all forms of
atheism, by positing the existence of God as a universal evidence. Strangely,
however, it could not conceive of God outside the sphere of materiality.
The SS “god” had nothing to do with the Christian theological heritage,
and he was endowed with no transcendence. The SS view of religion was a
form of naturalistic pantheism that had integrated the biological paradigm. In
such a vision, God designated Nature as a whole, in pure immanency: Deus
sive Natura.
To SS thinking, Being was Nature and nothing but Nature. Being was
entirely encompassed within Nature as the existing material world, and it was
entirely actualized and expressed by the universal laws of life. To modern SS
minds addicted to the biological paradigm, Being could be described
exclusively and exhaustively by life sciences. In this sense, ontology
imploded into biology, as the sole mode of knowledge applicable to Being as
nature and to nature as Being.
SS leaders were convinced that their “belief” in God was sufficient by
itself to make them emerge above the low intellectual level of materialistic
thinkers. But some internal debates took place, with regard to the proper place
to be left to traditional Christian denominations. Officially, under Himmler’s

inspiration, the SS rejected Christianity, and it incited SS people to renounce
these denominations and to declare themselves gottgläubig (believer in god),
in compliance with SS pantheism, which had recycled some elements of
ancient Germanic cults. The issue was particularly sensitive, however, all the
more so that a great number of SS men had not repudiated their traditional
faith.
Moving cautiously on this issue, Himmler repeated the interdiction for
SS members to participate in conference evenings, the subject of which dealt
with denominations. In other words, any presentation concerning Christianity
was forbidden. Himmler encouraged talks about German history or about
scientific themes connected with the Weltanschauung, but in a way that
should avoid hinting at the dogmas and faith statements of established
denominations (BA NS 33 / 76 a, fol. 36). He even claimed that he had
downgraded and dismissed a SS speaker, on the grounds of a tactless talk
about denominational issues. As he said in substance: “those men, who smear
and ridicule those things that are holy and matters of faith for the others, are
not welcome in the SS” (BA NS 33 / 76 b, fol. 37).
To education directors and others, Himmler forbade “any attack against
Christ as a person, given that such attacks or calumniating Christ as a Jew are
unworthy of us and, historically speaking, untrue”. According to him, SS
men, “through the knowledge of our Volk’s history, of our prehistory, and of
the grandeur and Kultur of our ancestors, should be persuaded of the value of
our own blood and of our past, so as to get rooted in those values of past,
present, and future”: such a persuasion should be enough to make attacks
unnecessary. He demanded a strict adherence to the documents provided by
the Leithefte (BA NS 33 / 76 c, fol. 39).
By and large, and although he forbade SS members to hold any
leadership position in established churches, Himmler claimed that faith was
something that belonged to each individual, within his own conscience. And
he would not tolerate from any SS member any mocking or calumniating of
the religious views and persuasions of other Germans (BA NS 33 / 76 d, fol.
54). In spite of such declarations, however, the SS did all that it could do to
tamper with competing religious practices, and it strongly encouraged catholic
and protestant members to leave their church and to adopt the official
“gottgläubig” designation (Leleu, 2007, pp. 445-446).
Now, insofar as the world is God’s creation, natural laws appear as
divine laws. And since races are part of God’s worldly order, racial care,
racial purity, and racial selection must be understood as divine commands
(BA NSD 41 / 75). Himmler used to insist that natural laws are basically the
laws of selection, and that a selection process is always something ruthless
and cruel. But such a process is fair and logical, as Nature always is. Its result
is that the strong will stay, and that the weak or the unworthy of life will go.
Essentially merciless, Nature always puts away, in every generation, what is
SS Ontology 37
sick and weak, allowing only the most valuable stems to reproduce. This was
Nature for millions of years, bound to remain the same today as well as in the
future (BA NS 19 / 4011).
To Himmler, he who knew that basic ontological truth was in the
deepest sense a believer (gläubig). But in the last centuries, unfortunately,
people had gone increasingly away from natural laws. They had carelessly
overlooked the law of natural cleanliness in the maintaining of racial value.
They had increasingly forgotten the struggle principle, the principle of harsh
selection in the vital struggle (Lebenskampfe) of the individual and of the
Volk (BA NS 19 / 4011).
To SS thinking, human successes would always be rooted in the value of
blood and in the observance of the laws of life. The laws of nature proceed
from an immutable and inflexible will, whence the necessity to acknowledge
these laws, as the precondition for the maintaining and for the development of
life. Like all other living creatures, human beings are subjected to some
constraints inherent in their struggle against their environment. According to a
textbook author: “The goal of Nazism is the reproduction of a natural order of
life, and Nazism endorses the validity of natural laws, as they apply to
humanity, with the necessary acknowledgement of the state.” (BA RD 18 /
19, p. 4)
The SS valued struggle as the law of life. Throughout the course of
history, struggle shaped up the German man and characterized his whole
being (Dasein), as the divine law of education, as the natural command of
harshness (Härte). And since Nazism was the Weltanschauung of the strong
and fighting man, its key elements would be precisely struggle and harshness,
to be applied especially against the mortal enemy of soft egotism and
materialism.
In the struggle for life as understood by SS minds, the one who prevails
is the one who eliminates the unfit for life: the struggle for existence (Dasein)
brings about a continuous selection of the best (BA NSD 41 / 75). In other
words, under struggle as the fundamental law of nature, everything (food,
soil, etc.) has to be won by means of fighting. And the deepest meaning of
that eternal fight is that anything weak or of lesser value (minderwertig) will
be exterminated. In fact, whole peoples have been exterminated, because they
have violated the laws of nature. But in the Nazi state, fortunately, steps could
be taken to change the Volk’s decay into a new and lasting start upward (BA
RD 18 / 19, pp. 5, 8).
Within SS thinking, war and extermination appear as natural processes,
which, as such, cannot be subjected to traditional morality. Since they are
natural, they are ipso facto legitimate. And since survival is at stake, no moral
objection may be raised against them.
3. Volk and Blood

SS ontology considers the Volk as the prime being created by God as Nature.
But what is a Volk? A Volk is a blood flow that comes from eternity and
leads to eternity. And blood represents the real locus of ontological value, as
compared to the individual. Like a single drop lost in the blood flow, the
existence (Dasein) of the individual has a meaning only if he or she is bound
to the Volk as a whole. The blood bearers of the past always carry
responsibility for the shaping up of future generations: the Volk is a
community of origins as well as a community of destiny (BA RD 18 / 19, p.
9).
The Volk is endowed with two basic natural properties, youth and
eternity, which depend on the preservation of blood. As Himmler wrote, life
is a chain between ancestors and offspring to come. This chain is endless, and
its natural impulse to ensure its continuation stresses the ontological value of
the child, on which Himmler has always insisted so much. Through the child,
the Volk enjoys eternal life, provided that it preserves its blood. Blood
operates as a Fountain of Youth. “We, the SS, a military order of Nazi men,
we believe that we are the ancestors of future generations, for the eternal life
of the Germanic Volk.” (BA NS 19 / 1454)
In a short text entitled “Ewig ist das Blut”, an SS author made that point,
the substance of which could be summarized as follows:
Blood is immortal. We live in a community the borders of which are
made of blood. And that community is where our soul survives, in our
children and in our works. We exist through time, today, as we existed
yesterday and will exist tomorrow. What flows inside of you is the blood
of free Germanic peasants, who have always been the pillars of higher
culture, due to the outstanding creativity of that blood. This is the blood
of the Ostlandfahrer, who have conquered by the sword and brought the
ploughshare to foreign lands. Fight for the future of that blood! In this
way, you were, you are, and you will be, from eternity to eternity. You
are immortal in your Volk. (BA NSD 41 / 77 b)
Through blood and for eternity, the Volk is the visible effect of God’s will to
order the world. And by belonging and getting committed to the Volk, the
individual accomplishes God’s true law. Besides, if the Volk is the highest
good given to humanity, families and clans are part also of God’s order, as
subsets of the Volk.
The SS must build up an order of life that guarantees the Volk’s eternity.
Such an order requires that good and valuable blood be maintained and
promoted. Conversely, what is minderwertig, foreign, or estranged must be
suppressed or eliminated (BA NSD 41 / 75). In other words, scientific reason
must play its role as surgeon of Being, and SS ontology leads directly to
biological engineering, for the sake of the Volk’s security.
SS Ontology 39
In the fight for survival, the Volk’s racial substance is threatened mostly
with three major sources of danger: a decreasing birth rate, counter-selection,
and racial mixing leading to the Volk’s death. A mortal danger lies in the fact
that the Minderwertige have a much higher number of children than those
whose heredity is healthy. And the mixing of two different races leads to
cultural downfall in both races. A pure race may survive as such only if its
harmonious whole is protected and maintained, since “the whole culture of a
race flows from its life-shaping instincts, which determine and lead feeling,
volition, and action in the individual, as in the whole kind (Art).” (BA NSD
41 / 122, pp. 27-28, 42, 47)
Protective action is needed, therefore, and SS ontology founds and
animates a cleansing praxis, the legitimacy of which is grounded in a survival
imperative. As a photo textbook puts it, to maintain the blood pure is the
highest law of life in god-given Nature. And the sin against that law is the
biggest sin committed by humanity as a living species, since it is a violation
of the law of life. Nature and history show that such a sin against blood must
result in the destruction and ruin of a given kind or species. Consequently,
Germans have the duty to multiply the best blood in the world, and to protect
its purity (BA NSD 41 / 86, pp. 17-18).
The laws of biology entail far-reaching political consequences, as they
open up old boundaries and condition a new way of looking at Europe. To an
SS author, biopolitical thinking (in his own words) is moved by a strong sense
of responsibility toward the whole. As he wrote in substance: “The
pacification of the European space and the creation of a larger unity can be
accomplished only through thinking centered on the laws of life.” (BA NSD
41 / 61, p. 88) The connection of ontology with anthropology, politics, and
ethics becomes obvious and potentially dangerous.
Theoretically speaking, such a connection is natural, therefore,
legitimate. As Reinhard Heydrich put it, everywhere in Nature, the life of
peoples is made of the eternal struggle between those who are stronger,
nobler, and of higher racial value, on the one hand, and the lower ones, the
Untermenschentum (sub-humanity), on the other (Heydrich, 1935).
Practically speaking, the urgency of history would make that connection
operational. As Himmler said, it was a time of pure struggle of race against
race, of pure struggle for selection, in order to determine which Volk and
blood would prevail, and which Volk and blood would be exterminated (BA
NS 19 / 4011).
4. In Summary
By and large, SS ontology had major implications on the other parts of SS
ideology. At the anthropological level, it anchored human inequality to
differential ontological value, measurable in terms of fitness, health, and
capability to survive. At the political level, it equated war with the struggle
for life: war could be seen as normal, natural, inevitable, and therefore
legitimate, and, as such, it could raise no moral objections per se, since it
promoted survival. At the ethical level, Nature already contained and
expressed the law of the strong and fit: it founded and legitimized a basic
right to life and survival, whatever the means necessary to that end.
SS ontology constituted a first level of discourse that would legitimize
the Holocaust. The Jews were depicted as lesser-value people of a
biologically noxious nature. A war against the Jews was natural and normal,
since life was made of the eternal struggle of races: so was the world. And in
this war, Germany had a right to life: consequently, she could take any and all
steps necessary to secure her survival, including cleansing operations against
civilian populations. SS ontology, thus, would justify the Holocaust.
Four
SS ANTHROPOLOGY
During the 1930s, in Germany, there was some agreement on the fact that the
German Volk was racially mixed, owing to the contribution of approximately
six races, although no consensus existed over this issue, even within the SS.
Many anthropologists saw the Nordic race as the superior one, the race that
was ultimately behind all major achievements in human history. Many
endorsed Hans Günther’s theory of the basic races that were represented in
the German Volk: Nordic, Mediterranean, Dinaric, Alpine, East Baltic, and
Phalian (Fälisch). These stems were subjected to the influence of Negro,
Mongolian, Near Eastern, and Oriental races. The Jews did not constitute a
race, strictly speaking, but they were seen as a “secondary racial grouping”
(Hutton, 2005, pp. 35-49). As Christopher M. Hutton writes:
Nordicism was suffused with nostalgia and racial pessimism, though
there remained the hope that the Nordic race and the German Volk might
yet be saved. By contrast, eugenic science, in its pure form, was
technocratic and ‘progressive’, in that it argued for the engineering of a
future bio-utopia. (Hutton, 2005, p. 113)
But Himmler and the SS succeeded in combining these two aspects, by
recycling völkisch nationalism and Nordic romanticism through a modern and
bureaucratic machine devoted to the fabrication of biological utopias.
1. Race: The Basic Marker
In SS thinking, race represented the basic anthropological marker and the
ontological substrate of anthropological inequality. For example, the authors
of the SS Handblätter für den weltanschaulichen Unterricht defined race as “a
group of living beings with the same innate basic qualities”, while they made
it clear that the differences among these qualities would materialize human
inequality. As they wrote in substance: “Equality of all those who have a
human face is contradicted by experience and observation (Nigger – White).”
And since all values and cultural performances were linked to heredity, the
doctrine of the equality of all human beings was opposed by the doctrine of
race (BA NSD 41 / 75).
Furthermore, given that races were different, unequal, therefore
antagonistic, racial thinking complemented differential anthropology with war
as the essence of politics: “the history of mankind was the history of race
struggles.” In fact, racial thinking said yes to natural life and covered all fields
of life, as biological thinking created rational yardsticks for evaluating
everything. It showed what “you could and should do”. In this perspective,
ethics appeared as the logical continuation of biology (BA NSD 41 / 75).
In a photo essay on blood purity, the authors presented some basic
anthropological information to their readers. According to these authors, the
races that made the German Volk were the following: Dinaric (Dinarisch),
Phalian (Fälisch), Eastern (Ostisch), East Baltic (Ostbaltisch), Western
(Westisch), and Nordic (Nordisch). These races were all naturally similar to
each other, contrary to foreign racial components linked to Jewish blood, or to
black, yellow, and red races. All German people carried some amount of
Nordic blood, which was crucial to the Volk’s value, and, of course, only the
bearers of German blood were Volk comrades (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 11).
Racial anthropology was to be the basis of political inclusion or exclusion.
To these authors, science constituted the ultimate guarantee that
legitimized and validated SS anthropology. As they said in their own words,
science teaches us that blood is the bearer of good and bad characteristics.
The external appearance of any human being is dependent on blood, just like
the manner in which he or she gets involved with the things of the world. If
we compare old fighters of Nazism with Bolshevik Untermenschentum, we
can see the difference (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 12).
But if we want to fight to maintain our Volk’s particularity, as they
wrote further, if we want to maintain our Nazi state, we must get involved in
the struggle for maintaining our blood (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 13). This struggle
must mobilize all individuals, without exception, and it must take precedence
over all details of public and private life. In all this, we know that human
beings are not all equal and do not think in the same manner.
2. Race in Pictures
In accordance with the Weltanschauung that emphasized feeling over reason,
SS anthropology relied very much on external appearance as the expression of
race and as the source of positive or negative impressions, whence the
pedagogical use of photos aimed at illustrating human contrasts. Thus, the
contrasted photos constituted a level of discourse in themselves, which
skipped overly rational considerations and established a direct way of
communication between images and feelings. And the contrasts were
sufficient to make the point about human inequality. As the authors wrote,
those who believe in the equality of all human beings only have to look at this
picture to change their mind (the picture shows a female aboriginal from
Australia, age 24, and a German young woman of the same age).
Furthermore, we know that a wide spectrum of differences characterizes the
inner dispositions of human beings toward things and questions of the world.
SS Anthropology 43
A community may exist, therefore, only between people of equal blood (BA
NSD 41 / 86, p. 14).
In SS-Mann und Blutsfrage, the argument follows a similar line.
Although humanity constitutes a species, whenever one sees a White, a
“Nigger”, or a “Mongolian”, it shows clearly that it is inaccurate to talk about
the “human species” per se: one has to subdivide that species into human
races. Races show through the differences in body and in essential nature.
Any race has a determined heritage of heredity, and any Volk has developed
from particular races into a unity of life. The German Volk owes its
determination to the prevalence of the Nordic race, which is also the race that
has shaped up the European face. Race determines the bodily and spiritual
capabilities for performance, but high-level cultures are created exclusively
by high-value races. The ascension of humanity depends on the maintaining
of purity and strength in culture-creative races (BA RD 18 / 19, pp. 10-11).
In all areas of Germany, the Nordic race is represented. It constitutes the
support for the German Volk’s high performances, and, owing to these
performances, it is entitled to be called the leading race or the top race of
humanity. No other race has produced so many spiritual leaders, warlords,
and statesmen (BA RD 18 / 19, p. 15). “The Nordic race is the German
Volk’s race. It prints its stamp on our being, it determines our thinking,
acting, and feeling.” Consequently, destiny is indissolubly bound to blood
community (BA RD 18 / 19, p. 27).
If talents and qualities are innate, bad traits and hereditary diseases are
also inherited. Using examples illustrated with tables and drawings, the
authors of the Lichtbildvortrag describe the woes brought about by a female
drunkard who has a large offspring that includes drunkards, criminals, and
mentally ill individuals. Human inequality can best be exemplified by photos
of those suffering from hereditary illnesses, owing to the effect created by the
direct connection between images and feelings: “see how they look”. These
Minderwertige divert resources of which capable and fit fighters will be
deprived: they represent nothing but a burden for the Volk, since valuable
people must work and pay for them (BA NSD 41 / 86, pp. 28-29).
A table appears at the right place in the textbook, in order to show the
demographic monstrosity of these Minderwertige who will flood the Volk, if
they are to be free to reproduce. Fortunately, so one reads, the Volk can now
count on the sterilization law (1933) to protect itself. But there are still people
who, on allegedly moral grounds, are enemies of that law aimed at protecting
the Volk. By protecting German blood, one fulfills the will of God who, in
history, has punished any sin against blood with ruin and death for the guilty
peoples (BA NSD 41 / 86, pp. 30-31).
Since history could be understood in terms of a permanent and deadly
struggle between races, the authors of the Lichtbildvortrag thought that
victory would go to the Volk that would outnumber its enemies with a healthy
and racially fit offspring. Directly supervised or, at least, inspired by
Himmler, they stressed the importance of that “victory of the child”.

According to them, only the wealth of children could secure eternal life for
the Volk, and the German woman should be honored as the keeper of the
Volk’s blood legacy (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 27). As they put it:
Our Volk needs many children from the those whose heredity is healthy.
The value of a German woman for our Volk depends on the number of
fit children to whom she gave birth. (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 32)
And they obviously condemned that form of egotism that killed the will to
have children. The sense of duty about the task of maintaining and
multiplying good German blood should be made alive in all German women
and girls. Their conscience had to be awaken to the fact that it was a shameful
crime against the highest good of the Volk, that is, against its blood legacy, to
put private pleasure above one’s duty to the Volk.
A similar perspective was developed by the authors of Rassenpolitik,
who provided plenty of sketches, charts, and statistics to illustrate the
demographic dangers facing Germany, and to document the point that
Germany’s future depended on the people’s will to have numerous children.
Part of the problem lay in the fact that, during the pre-Nazi liberal era,
mentalities had been hostile to children and to life. Any Volk that had
tolerated disrespect for the laws of life, with regard to procreation, was in the
process of destroying itself, while only those peoples abiding by the laws of
life would succeed in maintaining themselves over time (BA NSD 41 / 122, p.
38). In a somewhat contradictory manner, SS thinking posited the eternity of
the Volk, but it negated the meaning of the word by making eternity
dependent on racial hygiene. Finally, the Volk might not be eternal at all. This
would depend on concrete plans in the field of population engineering,
including a sharp rise in the birth rate.
On this issue, the photo album Sieg der Waffen—Sieg des Kindes was
pretty much explicit. It focused on children and large families, and on the
necessity for Germany to sponsor such families. It displayed the usual
Nordic-type faces of young men in SS uniforms, and it showed young women
in sport activities or taking care of children. The pictures and portraits were
the main part of the argument, since their look and their aesthetics were
intended to make the point: the reader should be convinced, owing to the
emotions induced in him or her by the images. These images carried an
association of concepts: Germanic = healthy = beautiful = right = Nature. And
the concepts were induced at a pre-rational level, since they would be
validated not in reason, but on the sole basis of the sentiments that they would
induce.
Only a large number of healthy children could secure the flow of Nordic
blood, which impregnated the face of the Volk, determined its character, and
bound people’s hearts. Here, the authors insisted that Nordic blood lived in all
SS Anthropology 45
regions of Germany, of course, but also in all Germanic countries (BA NSD
41 / 130, pp. 8- 9). They knew that most Germans had a tendency to under-
stand racial thinking in a way that was centered on the German Reich proper.
They considered useful to add that precision, therefore, in order to make the
point that Deutschtum was a matter of blood that rendered traditional political
borders obsolete.
Since SS teaching was based on feelings induced by pictures, it is worth
taking the time to describe some contents of this educational procedure. On
page 12, for example, some photographs are displayed of young men in Nazi
uniforms, of girls in sport outfits, and of German-looking youths in general.
The captions say: “Who will not feel, by looking at these faces, what we mean
by Germanic-German people?” On page 13, other faces give rise to this
comment: “These faces are the expression of our soul!” On page 16, we can
see a young woman with a child in her arms, a calm and resolute SS officer, a
laughing woman, and another SS officer with two kids. The captions ask
whether (the answer is implicitly “yes”, of course) these faces of men and
women express “all the values that we feel as German”. Therefore, the
aesthetics of faces carries an ethic, as well as a concept of truthfulness: the
aesthetic and ethical look on faces generates a feeling that holds as truth. This
is a perverted form of Emmanuel Lévinas’s Face of the Other.
But the same line of argumentation is used a contrario, as usual in SS
literature, so as to show the ugliness and wickedness, expressed by their
physical appearance, of the Minderwertige. On page 24, by showing pictures
of feeble-minded women and camp detainees, the authors mention that Nazi
laws prohibit the reproduction of such people: the Volk’s body must be
protected from infections.
The contrasts are part of the procedure, as they are intended to enhance
the beauty and health of the good youths. On page 26, following a series of
photos of young people indulging in sport activities, the captions say in
substance: “By looking at these beautiful and healthy German men and
women, don’t you feel that the beauty of the racially pure and healthy body is
something blissful and sacred?”
All this leads to the conclusion that individuals must make the good
choice and transmit that flow of good Germanic-German blood to the future.
German maids should seek personal accomplishment through motherhood,
and all women who are capable of pregnancy should be grateful to destiny by
having many children. The child born outside the wedlock is also a valuable
member of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community), as far as he or she
is from healthy parents of Nordic stem (BA NSD 41 / 130, pp. 27-28).
Given the great tasks awaiting Hitler, Germany must become a children’s
land again, and all German families should have between four and six
children. The best proof of commitment to Nazism, for German men and
women, is to become the parents of numerous healthy children (BA NSD 41 /
130, pp. 29-31). The victory of weapons must be followed by the victory of
the child, the healthy one, of course. In SS-Mann und Blutsfrage, there is a
photo of three abnormal children, with the following comment: “In the future,
the Nazi state will prevent the birth of people whose life is not valuable.” (BA
RD 18 / 19, Bild 12) By contrast, a group of children is represented during a
meal, with the captions: “anything for the healthy child!” (BA RD 18 / 19,
Bild 14)
3. Minderwertige, Jews, and Bolshevism
Anthropological considerations would soon have repercussions on the
foundations of morality. According to SS authors, the state went very far, out
of a mistaken sense of compassion, in providing care for the unfit and the
Minderwertige, and it forgot that its true task was to promote healthy and
valuable heredity. In the Weimar days, the mentally ill and even the criminal
elements lived better than biologically valuable and fit German families. The
mortal danger for the Volk lay in the fact that the Minderwertige had a much
higher number of children than fit and healthy people (BA NSD 41 / 122, p.
42).
But the Minderwertige included also a vast array of foreign racial
elements, in such a way that the problem of the Volk’s survival had to be
envisaged from a general perspective centered on the dangers related to racial
mixing. According to the logic of life, the mixing of two different races would
bring about the downfall of culture in both races. Whereas a pure race was a
harmonious whole, racial mixing would necessarily destroy racial harmony.
Whenever this happened, the highest valuable instincts, on which creative
performance rested, were quickly lost. Mixing led to disequilibrium in
character and soul: a Mischling (individual with mixed blood) could only be a
broken being, with a split personality (BA NSD 41 / 122, pp. 47- 48).
The concept of race occupied a central position in SS thinking, insofar
as it anchored anthropology to biology qua ontology. Its pivotal role easily
showed in the quite singular importance granted to race issues in Das
Schwarze Korps, for example. As William Combs writes:
Nearly every issue and, so it seemed, every article had some reference to
race. Even if only those dealing primarily with race are counted, there
were over eighty items on anti-Semitism in the first volume alone
(March, 1935, to December, 1935), and there were about half that
number on the cult of Aryanism. (Combs, 1986, p. 70)
The words Untermensch and Menschentier were used with increasing
regularity, as a designation of Jews, Slavs, and Gypsies. Emphasis was put on
their dangerous and criminal nature, and photos were provided to generate
fear and hatred (Combs, 1986, p. 71).
To SS thinkers, racial issues were polarized on the Jewish Question,
since the Jews represented the most immediate and lethal threat to the Volk’s
SS Anthropology 47
survival. In SS minds, the mixing of Aryan people with Jews carried far-
reaching consequences, given that the Jews constituted a counter-race, the
parasitic instincts of which were out to undermine Aryan blood, character,
and mind (BA NSD 41 / 122, p. 48). In Hutton’s words: “Anxieties about
hybridity and decline, entangled in the politically uncomfortable model of
racial diversity, were projected onto a Jewish threat to the unity and survival
of the Volk.” (Hutton, 2005, p. 129) Since the differences laid out by
anthropology could be interpreted in terms of a toxic threat to the Volk’s
blood, anthropology would lead to a form of racial-war politics, already
cleared by ethics, and directed primarily against the Jews.
On 22 April 1936, the SS-Leithefte printed a file summarizing the
essentials of the Jewish question, from an “educational” viewpoint, in the
following way. In the SS, so one reads, the Jew is a privileged subject of
teaching, because he is the most dangerous enemy of the German Volk.
History teaches that Jewry carries destructive effects on all peoples, as can be
seen today in the Soviet Union. The Jew purposefully destroys blood
conscience and racial pride in the host peoples. When the purity of blood is
affected, the performance capabilities, the fighting spirit, and the unity of soul
will be eventually ruined. Jewry is an enemy of soil-rooted thinking, the
mortal enemy of peasantry. The Jew poisons the soul of host peoples. He
undermines their characteristic thinking and feeling, their morality, their law,
and their culture. He destroys their heroic and idealistic sense, through
materialistic thinking: money overruns honor. He is a parasite, the
bloodsucker of the world. Three figures are characteristic of the Jews:
Ahasver, who has no roots, Shylock the soulless, and Judas the traitor (BA
NSD 41 / 77 c).
As one can read further, the enemies of Germany are led by the Jews or
are the Jews’ spiritual children: Freemasonry, Bolshevism, liberalism,
pacifism, and political churches. Pacifism corresponds to Jewry’s natural
cowardice and absence of roots. It damages the strength and the capability for
self-defense in Aryan peoples. Jewry’s goal is world domination, and any
means to it is right to the Jews. They stay in the shadows as long as they can,
until the masks fall down, revealing a brutal and soulless nature. The means
used by Jewry are: money, marriage, the public medias, and the destruction of
morality and culture. Against the most dangerous enemy of all peoples, so
one reads further, Nazi political measures are aimed exclusively at ensuring
the salvation of the German Volk. In relation to the treatment of the Jewish
question, schooling programs should be designed so as to educate racial
conscience and pride.
Stimulated by Himmler’s thinking, SS authors were quick to pinpoint
Bolshevism as the quintessential Jewish ideology, well suited to the
attainment of Jewish goals. In his own book, Himmler attacked the Jew,
“whose desire is world domination, whose pleasure is destruction, whose will
is extermination, whose religion is atheism, whose idea is Bolshevism.”
(Himmler, 1936, p. 30) In the Leithefte, an author wrote sententiously that

there has always been a struggle between Jewish Untermenschen and other
people, a struggle for life or death. In Bolshevism, the Jew has thrown his
mask away, revealing himself as a brutal animal-like Untermensch. He first
destroyed the leadership of the host people, so as to leave that people in a
state of economic, cultural, and spiritual slavery. And he completed the work
of destruction with blood mixing. As one can read, Bolshevism is not a
unique phenomenon of our times: it is rather a struggle for extermination that
can be seen at all times, led by the Jewish Untermensch against Aryan
peoples. The Soviet Union is nothing but today’s best example. To prevail
over Bolshevism is a matter of life for all peoples of the world (BA NSD 41 /
77 d, pp. 6-13).
In the SS Handblätter für den weltanschaulichen Unterricht, an author
castigates Bolshevism as a by-product of the Jews’ desire for world
domination, coupled with Asian despotism. Its theoretical foundation,
Marxism, is pure materialism that negates religion, higher civilization, human
dignity, and property. It aims at destroying the human. It means ruin and
death for Europe (BA NSD 41 / 75, Theme 12).
According to this author, the SS opposes blood and race to the so-called
equality of all human beings, based on a mistaken doctrine that sins against
the laws of nature. Human beings are determined by heredity inherited from
their ancestors: this has been proven scientifically. In compliance with the
laws of nature, the SS promotes blood purity, against Bolshevik racial mixing.
It stands for an organic order in Europe (BA NSD 41 / 75, Theme 14).
For obvious reasons, the Jews have no place in such an order. Efficient
and destructive like bacilli, they are waging the current war against healthy
peoples. In general, they use two poisons against their enemies: materialism
and individualism, so as to contaminate and disrupt the life patterns of host
peoples.
For Germany, there is only one goal: the fight against Bolshevism and
the fight against plutocracies. The elimination of the Jew, the arch-
enemy of any people! …And for the new Europe … there can be only
one solution: liberation of Europe from the domination of the Jew! (BA
NSD 41 / 75, Theme 18)
To SS authors, the connection between Jewry and Bolshevism was intimate
and necessary: a destructive “race” had to rely on an ideology of destruction.
In their eyes, as a counter-nature form of thinking and living, Bolshevism
strived to destroy all natural expressions of life, such as family, the desire for
children, and the connection with fatherland and soil: it was an enemy of
anything biological (BA NSD 41 / 61, p. 74). In the Soviet Union, for the sake
of Bolshevism, the Jews knocked down the concept of God, which was the
only content of the Russians’ “primitive soul”. Then, they were in a strong
SS Anthropology 49
position to face people who could no longer be differentiated from animal

nature, except for their bodily form. Since Russia, for racial reasons, lacked in
managerial skills, the Jews could easily step in, with their will to power, and,
through the practice of Bolshevism, they would uproot Russian peasantry (BA
NSD 41 / 117, pp. 27-32). After their victory, they could control everything
and impose their foreign domination. They could rule inside the Communist
Party and state organs, in order to subvert the economy, the arts, education,
church life, and the press (BA R 58 / 68).
The author of a photo essay described Bolshevism as the most frightful
form of the Jews’ eternal fight for extermination against other humanity.
Given the goals pursued by the Jews, it was a matter of life or death, for any
Volk (BA NSD 41 / 88, pp. 3, 43). In fact, a positive Weltanschauung such as
Nazism could not get along with a negative one like Bolshevism. As another
author wrote in substance:
The Bolsheviks have become so strong today that a struggle over life
and death has ignited. We can live only if we succeed in defeating the
Bolsheviks’ will to destruction. But we can break up that will only if we
exterminate Jewish-Bolshevik ideology. (BA NSD 41 / 96, p. 10)
In an effort to strengthen his point through an appeal to his readers’
sentiments, the author asked: “what destiny would the Bolsheviks prepare for
your parents, siblings, wife, and children?” The answer was obvious: forced
labor, rape, deportation, and death (BA NSD 41 / 96, p. 24).
4. In Summary
SS anthropology offered two basic elements as grounds for the justification of
the Holocaust. Firstly, the Jews were Untermenschen, closer to animals than
to real Menschen, which excluded them from the sphere of moral obligations.
And secondly, these Untermenschen were biologically noxious and morally
evil, moved by a strong desire to exterminate Aryan people. This entailed
that any murderous action against them would be morally justified as self-
defense, backed by the Aryans’ basic right to life, and further ennobled as the
heroic defense of children and old people. On such a basis, stimulated by
Himmler the moralist, SS thinking developed in the field of ethics, where it
could ground the legitimacy of genocidal action.
Five
SS ETHICS
For obvious reasons, SS thinking could not be reduced to the person of
Himmler. SS authors and speakers were numerous and, very often,
anonymous, like those who did not sign the textbooks prepared under the
editorship of Himmler and the SS-Hauptamt. There is no question, here, of
claiming that they were all in agreement about everything, let alone that their
ideas were always put successfully in practice within the SS. In fact, the
organization had recruited thousands of people distributed into a vast array of
branches, and its complexity ultimately impaired to some extent Himmler’s
capability for efficient control of inside thinking. Several officers were
educated people who could be expected to sort out ideas by themselves, and
who wrote or published textbooks, journals, essays, etc.. Although Himmler
enjoyed the priority of control and communication within the system, he
could not possibly review every sentence said or written by his subordinates.
We know, however, that he was very meticulous, especially with regard to
ideological matters, and he could and did supervise the textbooks and
teaching materials published by his office.
Himmler could and did set the tone and fix the margins into which his
subordinates could operate. In this sense, SS ideology and ethics began with
him and revolved around him as their natural center. This was especially true
with regard to all topics directly connected with ethics, all the more so that
Himmler saw himself as a moralist. In fact, SS thinking was mostly
concerned with practical philosophy, and its main emphasis lay on ethics.
And it was so, because Himmler wanted it to be so. As a matter of fact, SS
thinking developed on the basis of Himmler’s intellectual evolution, from
youth to maturity.
However strange as it may look at first sight, Himmler and SS leaders in
general needed this process of translation from Nazi ideology into moral
categories related to admitted common sense, so as to give meaning to what
they were doing, and to protect or enhance their sense of legitimacy. True, the
majority of SS officers were to a large extent convinced Nazis, and they were
not necessarily keen on the practice of metaphysical doubt. But they were not
born into the SS. Their life began in the Wilhelmine Reich or in the Weimar
Republic for the youngest ones, and Nazi ideology (or, at least, their interest
in the SS) was something that came to them in a context where a variety of
social philosophies were available, in the midst of traditions and accepted
moral wisdom. Given this, it was quite understandable that even they would
try to back up the meaning provided by Nazism with widely accepted moral
notions. This was precisely the function that was to be performed by SS

ethics, whence its importance in Himmler’s mind.
By and large, an interesting phenomenon of moralization of Nazi
ideology was to take place within the SS apparatus. By moralization, I mean
the introduction of values and norms bearing some relation to traditionally
accepted notions, in function of a concept of the Good already invested by
ideology. Generally speaking, moralization facilitates action, and it could
easily appeal to people in whom the penetration of ideology had been
relatively superficial. Within the chaotic context of Operation Barbarossa in
particular, it could provide legitimacy by reference to the familiar, by turning
the abnormal into something normal. To Heinrich Himmler, it made a
difference.
1. Himmler: Ethics and Ideology
If Himmler kept his reflections within the ideological framework authorized
willy-nilly by the Führer, his preoccupation with morality was his distinctive
trademark in the universe of Nazi thinking. Through his life and his “work”,
he strived to articulate a traditional structure of morality to a naturalistic
völkisch ideology bound to the Führerprinzip (leader principle). Here, I
propose the three following theses as a framework:
(1) Himmler put emphasis on some traditional values and saw himself as
someone genuinely preoccupied with morality.
(2) His moral becoming took place through two main phases:
first, the articulation of ideology to traditional values, so as to provide
them with renewed legitimacy (the ideological transfiguration of
morality);
then, the articulation of morality to the main tenets of ideology, so as to
validate them in terms of traditional legitimacy (the moral
transfiguration of ideology).
(3) Through this process, the same structure of moral action was maintained,
confirmed, and reaffirmed.
A. Himmler’s Moral Consciousness
Himmler became involved in right-wing movements neither out of sadism nor
out of opportunism. True, he took advantage of both Ernst Röhm and Gregor
Strasser before cracking down on them, and his relationship with Hitler
testified to his sincere but rewarding servility. But casting his lot, in the early
1920s, with marginalized tiny groups whose existence was precarious cannot
be considered as an act of opportunism. Such an involvement would have
made little sense in the absence of a global vision supplying the main source
of motivation. Without this vision, the young Heinrich would have found
SS Ethics 53
occasions to vent his primary impulses somewhere, but he would never have
been photographed in front of the Bavarian War Ministry, on 9 November
1923, with his comrades of the Reichskriegsflagge. This was, however, the
real starting point of the Himmler phenomenon.
Up to the age of twenty-three, the young Heinrich was a devout Catholic
who took faith quite seriously, along with the moral values received from his
parents. Himmler the father appears to have been generally appreciated in his
milieu: Bradley Smith portrays him as a man who, although intrusive to some
extent, was nonetheless devoted to his family and interested in his children's
activities (Ackermann, 1970, pp. 31-34, 99). As to Mrs. Himmler, she always
cared about her children's well-being, regardless of their age: when Heinrich
underwent his military training in January 1918, he received from her money,
food, clothing, and advice in huge quantities (Smith, 1971, pp. 14-15, 51). If,
according to Peter Padfield, both parents embodied the bourgeois virtues
centered on the social order and the Church (Padfield, 1991, pp. 21, 23), they
were preparing their young ones for life in the world as it was. Besides, the
Himmlers enjoyed themselves a lot in recreational family activities.
Heinrich had been strongly influenced by his father, and, in spite of
ideological conflicts that took place later on, he would always maintain a
correct relationship with Gebhard. He inherited most of his typical character
features from his father, including his obsessive meticulosity and his
paternalistic manners (IMT, 2825-PS a). As a young man sensitive to the
conjuncture of his time, he had borrowed also from Gebhard, at least partly,
those rightist secular values bearing on the German nation and on war as
something quite compatible with Christian morality, insofar as Germany's
“place under the sunshine” was at stake (Ackermann, 1970, pp. 100-102).
Right after the Great War, Heinrich was a Catholic of strict obedience, a
defender of military virtues, and a völkisch romantic nationalist whose anti-
Semitism was still moderate. In his personal relationships, he put emphasis on
willpower, self-control, and duty (Padfield, 1991, pp 37-41, 46). Given the
available documentation, his moral system could be characterized in relation
to three fundamental values: the established social order, religion, and the
nation. Warfare represented a particular case, in the sense that it was valued
for itself while it was at the same time instrumental to the fundamental values.
But ancillary values proper were loyalty, responsibility, heroism, self-
sacrifice, prudery, self-control, willpower, and obedience to a code of honor.
And the element that guaranteed systemic integration and the accomplishment
of values was duty of which Himmler possessed a highly developed sense.
But nobody is a moral being in a psychological vacuum, and Himmler's
understanding of duty would be strongly colored by the peculiarities of his
personality. In all likelihood, Himmler experienced feelings that were attuned
to his fundamental values: he cared for people in his immediate environment,
he loved his family and his country, etc. But he was at the same time
pedantic, meticulous, rigid, intolerant, and insecure. His concept of duty

would be directly influenced and inflated by these traits.
In the early 1920s already, Himmler’s morality appeared as a structure
of duty that could be seen as a degenerate form of Kantianism. This structure
would maintain itself constantly throughout the life and work of the
Reichsführer SS who would refer, in his talks with Felix Kersten, to the
“categorical imperative of duty” (Kersten, 1956, p. 244). But it rested on
fundamental values the contents of which were especially fragile. These
contents were to be seriously shaken during the major crisis that hit Germany,
following the conclusion of World War I, and that shattered the small and
predictible world of Bavaria's well-thinking middle class.
B. The Ideological Transfiguration of Morality
To Immanuel Kant, a morally appropriate action is an action accomplished by
duty, and not only in conformity with duty, according to a law that posits
humanity as an end by itself, and that allows for only one sentiment as a
subjective principle, namely respect for the law and for reasonable beings
who formulate it. This concept was too complex for Himmler who prefered
his own, according to which a morally appropriate action is an action
accomplished by duty, accomplishing ideologically absolute fundamental
values, and entailing, to that end, the exclusion of any sentiment (except love
for these values) from the determination of practical judgment.
This moral structure was already in place in the young Heinrich by the
early 1920s, and, in 1923-1924, it came out during what may be called the
“Paula incident”. Paula was engaged to Gebhard Himmler, Jr. who suspected
her of unfaithfulness, and who had made the mistake of drawing his brother
Heinrich into this affair. Heinrich wrote a moralizing letter to Paula, telling
her in substance that she had to control herself with “barbarian” strength, in
the interest of the couple and of the entire Volk (Smith, 1971, pp. 149).
According to Bradley Smith's account, Heinrich subsequently concentrated
his efforts on breaking up the engagement, and he even hired a private
detective to spy on Paula. This is the first known occurrence, in Himmler's
career, of police action in support of morality. But what is especially
revealing is this passage in which Heinrich, in an exchange of letters
involving Paula and common friends, declares that he is naturally decent,
although he may show a different aspect of his personality if someone
compels him to do so: then, he will be refrained by “no mistaken sense of
mercy, until the opponent is socially and morally expelled from the ranks of
society” (Smith, 1971, p. 151).
If the “Paula incident” exemplifies quite well in my view the moral
structure of duty in Himmler, it must be presented in comparison with another
incident that had taken place earlier: this other incident had staged the young
Heinrich's anti-Semitism, while showing that sentiments could still curb the
SS Ethics 55
impact of the structure. In the early 1920s, as Richard Breitman reports,

Himmler still displayed a relatively conventional brand of anti-Semitism, and
he retained the capability to distinguish between the Jews he liked and the
others (Breitman, 1991, p. 15). In 1922, an interesting scene took place during
which Himmler socialized with a Jewish dancer to whom he had made anti-
Semitic remarks before being informed that she was Jewish. In his personal
diary, he would qualify her as “a young lady who deserves respect”
(Ackermann, 1970, p. 26; Smith, 1971, p. 123). Obviously, Himmler had not
sunk yet into anti-Semitism to the point of being totally blind to the reality of
persons. He felt enough sympathy to restrain his judgment about this woman
whom he considered, after all, as a decent Jewess.
If, in 1922, Himmler's anti-Semitism still remained moderate, his ideas
in general were entering a process of growing radicalization. The war and the
subsequent disasters had exerted a profound impact on German young men
who had to adjust to an extremely unstable world for which they were ill-
prepared. They could count only on their experience at the front, useful
perhaps to Freikorps politics and to insurrections, but to nothing else, finally.
The stake of the war had been power, in the era of colonial empires and
nationalistic religions: for the humiliated loser, the fighting could never be
over. And if different viewpoints could and did exist, Himmler saw things
that way. Although he never went to the front, he had been engulfed as a
teenager in an unended war in which he would spend the rest of his life. His
whole ideology would soon be realigned in function of wounded nationalism
and warfare to continue for its sake. His mind was becoming increasingly
open to a new Weltanschauung that was to push his traditional nationalism to
völkisch extremes. This process can be checked against the evolution of his
literary interests, the more so that we know that his readings produced a deep
and lasting influence on him (Ackermann, 1970, pp. 25-31).
Since my purpose is neither to review Himmler's readings nor to trace
back his ideas one by one, I will limit myself to the moral consequences of an
evolution that led the young Heinrich to Hitler. In this respect, two
complementary points must be mentioned. On the one hand, the structure of
morality as a morality of duty was easily maintained, since nothing required
its evolution. But, on the other hand, Nazi ideology would invade completely
the level of fundamentals and transfigure the basic values which, under the
same label, would now harbor deeply modified contents.
Thus, the crumbling social order was to be recast in Himmler's mind,
owing to fashionable völkisch theories coming to the rescue of bankrupt
justification systems. The young Heinrich approved of a rigid social order,
built on transcendent and fixed principles, supported by tradition and
regionalisms, and led by a nobility spearheaded by the Wittelsbachs and the
Hohenzollerns: the future Reichsführer SS would try to set up a rigid social
order, based on immanent and fixed principles, supported by Germanic
history and Pangermanism, and led by a new SS nobility spearheaded by
Hitler. The social order thus became a blood (Blut) order that would draw its
vitality from the soil (Boden), which would have to be extended sooner or
later through conquests in the East. Such a concept of social order, by the
way, was perfectly coherent with this religion of immanence that had
redirected Himmler's mystique yearnings, and that had reformulated God's
law in Social Darwinian terms. Himmler was in fact a typical representative
of this Nazi Weltanschauung in which nature and race had merged into each
other, within the framework of pantheistic neo-paganism (Conte, 1995, p.
348). Again, if the forms inherited from childhood are maintained through SS
ceremonials, pagan liturgies, the emphasis put on faith and providence,
contempt for atheism, etc., the contents evolve toward a radical brand of anti-
Christianity entailing the denial of transcendence, the total secularization of
ontology, and the special status granted to Hitler as God's extraordinary
envoy. This onto-theology will result in the axiological inflation of the nation
as a value conveyed by Himmler's past experience, since the Germanic nation
constitutes the highest existing entity, created as such by “God” who put it
under Hitler's protection, in a world inhabited by races struggling for survival
and supremacy. The nation, then, takes on the tragic features of the Volk
assailed by sordid enemies (Jews, Communists, Catholics, Freemasons, etc.)
plotting its ruin. And warfare, finally, plays a vital part with regard to all
values: it guarantees the survival of the Volk by securing its much-needed
living space and by eliminating its enemies. Therefore, it maintains itself
easily within Himmler's axiological spectrum, the more so that it conveys
directly the meaning and the accomplishment of his new religion.
In the postwar turmoil in Germany, the young Himmler had experienced
a break-up in the imaginary line that gave a sense to his personal life by
relating the past to the present and to the future. Given that he was unable to
get rid completely of schemes that he now deemed obsolete, and given that he
lacked in intellectual means but also in a genuine will to understand what was
taking place in Europe, Himmler preserved his moral structure of duty that
enabled him to save his personal “decency” and to carry on with tradition,
while adapting it to the new realities through the ideological transfiguration of
his fundamental values. The continuity of time and meaning was thus ensured
by a moral structure that remained in place, on a perverted ontology. With his
morality now deeply rooted in ideology, Himmler would later try to trigger a
similar process in those who would have to live under his control, as
exemplified by the importance of Weltanschauung in the training of SS
recruits (BA NS 19 / 1457 a).
C. The Moral Transfiguration of Ideology
In 1924 by the latest, the subversion of Himmler's fundamental values had
been accomplished for good. From then on, he would hold to the key
elements of an ideological credo that would undergo no significant modify-
SS Ethics 57
cation, except perhaps in the end, when the Reich was collapsing. But his
ancillary or ordinary values, honored by traditional morality as daily-life
virtues, as well as his duty structure would remain unchanged and would
retain their importance. To him, “good” ideology went necessarily along with
moral correctness. And not only was ideology considered as coherent with
morality, but it also justified itself, at least partly, through this coherence :
Himmler often defended his ideologically irreproachable stances and actions
by declaring them morally correct, in reference to traditional standards that
had nothing specifically Nazi. In other words, he was truly good at
understanding and at promoting ideology whenever he could translate it into
moral terms.
The moralization of ideology shows in a series of texts produced around
1935 by Himmler's office. In a document entitled Lebensregel für den SS-
Mann, a masterpiece in moralizing paternalism by the way, the essentials are
couched in the language of duty (BA NS 19 / 1457 b). The SS man has the
duty to harness his energy to serve the Volk, and he has no right,
consequently, to waste his precious strength in silly squabbles with his
comrades. Therefore, conflicts must be solved with usual civilities, although
the procedure may be altered as soon as the opponent is uncorrect, dishonest,
or dishonorable. But the moral discourse on harmony and comradeship
represents nothing but the reverse side of ideology, since the Volk constitutes
the ultimate reference, whereas the epithets characterizing the lack of
correctness, honesty, or honor acquire their contents through Nazi ideology.
This scheme, which validates traditional values by binding them to
ideology, has been systematically developed in the SS-Kateschismus (BA NS
19 / 1457 c). Here, the order of beings and values is summarized within a
theoretical framework involving three traditional values, namely faith,
faithfulness, and obedience, legitimized by a “new” ontology. To begin with,
Himmler posits a supreme being who first created the Volk, which engendered
clans from which present-day individuals emerged. The Führer enjoys a
special status within this structure, since he is both the Volk's embodiment and
the special envoy of God whose creation he protects with the Party and the
SS. In all this, the individual SS “subject” discovers the real meaning of his
life by accomplishing the demands of being through his personal moral values
(and this applies also to Himmler himself). Therefore, he must have faith in
God, in Germany, and in Hitler, so as to be moved by faithfulness toward the
Volk and the Führer to whom he must display obedience. By the way, the
concept of God to which the mature Himmler refers has little to do with
Christianity. Himmler further elaborates on it within the framework of a
“dogmatic theology” exposed in Entwurf der 9 Lebens-Leitsätze für SS (BA
NS 19 / 1457 d). Sometimes, he calls this “God” Waralda whom he identifies,
finally, with Nature (BA NSD 12 / 35).
In several speeches and talks, the Reichsführer SS did not spare his
efforts to cast Nazi ideology and its foundational ontology in moral terms that
referred to his ordinary values inherited from his past and to the duty structure
that integrated them. On that basis, the moralization of ideology would
comprise three particular dimensions: the elaboration of a doctrine of virtues
actualizing Nazi ideology, the use of moral arguments to justify the
consequences of ideology, and the pre-eminence granted to this duty structure
that was to make ideology so efficient.
x The Treatise on Virtues
The speech pronounced by Himmler on 4 October 1943, before an
audience of SS Gruppenführer gathered in Posen, contained an extensive
discussion on virtues: the Reichsführer SS dwelled at length on the issue, as
he had done in several speeches before (IMT, 1919-PS). In substance,
Himmler's virtues roughly corresponded to the ordinary values of his youth
time, and they also reconfirmed the axiology of the SS-Kateschismus, faith
being implicit. Here, I do not claim that Himmler himself always abode by the
values he taught and defended. But he believed in these values, to the point of
conceiving of them as the necessary passage from ideology to practice.
First comes faithfulness, which, according to the speaker, must
impregnate totally his auditors as well as their underlings: sins against such a
cardinal virtue, even in thought, should in no case be forgiven. To Himmler,
faithfulness represents an attitude of belonging to the system and of openness
to ideology, presupposing and conditioning at the same time the destruction
of subjectivity. It expresses a psychology of constancy ensuring individual
reliability and, as such, it must be considered as capital. Furthermore, it has
practical implications insofar as it generates secondary virtues allowing for an
appropriate determination of action: with regard to the Nazi system proper, it
entails obedience, whereas it fosters courage as soon as it deals with the
outside or the enemy. Next, Himmler turns to truthfulness, in which he
includes respect for contracts and for the given word, to honesty, and to the
sanctity of property about which he had previously enacted a “law” (IMT,
2825-PS b). To conclude, he briefly reviews comradeship, the “joy” of
responsibility, expediency, and self-control regarding alcohol. Although these
virtues may look minor, they allow for efficiency in action, and Himmler saw
fit to mention them as he had done many times before.
As these lines show, moral virtues are ways of actualizing an ideology
the ultimate reference of which lies in the Volk. More specifically, virtue is
entirely contained in the Volk as a function of blood: by definition, the
“10,000 Russian women” who die at work for Germany are excluded from its
scope. The SS trooper, Himmler says, must display decency, honesty,
faithfulness, and comradeship to members of his race but to nobody else
(IMT, 1919-PS). And the officer, so we read elsewhere, must be a model of
faithfulness and an educator (BA / MA RS 5 / 327).
x The Moral Justification of the Holocaust
SS Ethics 59
In addition to making his ordinary values functional within the

perspective of Nazi ideology, Himmler resorted to current forms of moral
reasoning to legitimize the consequences of his actions. In other words, he
justified the Holocaust with traditional moral arguments, on the basis of his
ideological definition of the Jew.
A conversation reported by Kersten may be illuminating (Kersten, 1956,
pp. 119-121). Here, in order to justify the genocide in progress, Himmler uses
the self-defense argument, since the Jews have always destroyed political
systems through warfare and revolution. To him, this argument is strong
enough to overthrow his previous position to the effect that destroying
peoples would be “un-Germanic” (Denkschrift Himmlers, 1957, pp. 194-
198), because it would be suicidal to try to protect “organized nihilism”.
Himmler also speaks about retribution for the Jewish people's misdeeds:
retribution remains proportional to evil, given the extent of damages and the
millions of casualties brought about by the Jews, and it is fair from the
viewpoint of Jewish thought itself, which has always proclaimed “an eye for
an eye”. Further arguments are evoked: the usual practice of peoples, the laws
of history, biological necessity, the greater good (salvation for the world) that
should result from the lesser evil (death for the Jews), and the need to save the
future generations.
Elsewhere, Himmler will talk about exceptional times justifying
extraordinary procedures (Breitman, 1991, p. 174), or, as in a speech
delivered in Stettin, he will bring in the dehumanization argument: we may
mercilessly kill beings who, after all, are not really human (Breitman, 1991, p.
177; Stein, 1984, pp. 126-127; IMT, 1919-PS). Other examples could for sure
be cited, but my purpose is to highlight the general line of argumentation, not
to proceed to an exhaustive review of cases. At any rate, a rigid and repetitive
pattern may clearly be identified.
Admittedly, Himmler's reasonings lie on an ideological concept of
Jewry that is completely unrealistic, in addition to being unspeakably perverse
and monstruous. On such a basis, however, they are logical. At any rate, they
allow well-thinking Nazis to see the Holocaust as an exercise in virtue. As to
Himmler himself, he will be busy also trying to integrate his duty structure in
relation to harshness as a newly discovered virtue.
x The Permanency of the Duty Structure
According to Himmler, moral consciousness tends to be invaded by
sentiments that are normal and human by themselves, except that they must
never determine the action when fundamental values are at stake. The morally
appropriate action is the action done by duty, that is to say, the action that
accomplishes the fundamental values and, to that end, the virtue of harshness,
by casting aside any sentimental or humanitarian consideration. Himmler
perceived himself as a “nice guy”, good mannered and compassionate in the
normal circumstances of daily life, but who could be extremely harsh

whenever ideology required him to be so.
This structure of duty, already in place during the Paula incident, was
maintained and reconfirmed through several documents of his “maturity”
years. In a speech delivered in November 1938, Himmler used a formulation
quite close to what he had said fifteen years before. Talking about eventual
deserters in a forthcoming war, he declared: “as humanly good and as decent
as we could be, we would have no mercy since the point would be to save a
Volk from death….” Among several other examples, we may mention the
speech to the officer corps of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, on 7 September
1940: alluding to crimes committed in Poland, Himmler insists that it is
difficult to apply the “necessary” harshness by deporting and killing civilians
(IMT, 1918-PS). But, as he would later say, the number of casualties has
absolutely no importance as soon as the Volk's survival is at stake. The
speeches of October 1943, by the way, are filled with formulations of this
kind. In the Posen speech of the 4th, Himmler declares that the SS, without
being needlessly brutal, has the right and the duty, morally speaking, to
exterminate the bacillae that threaten the Volk with death. Also, he praises his
officers because they have remained decent (anständig) through their most
difficult task (IMT, 1919-PS). Two days later, in front of the Reichsleiter and
Gauleiter, he harps again on the same theme: morality demands the
accomplishment of some hard tasks “without any sentimentality but with
great enthusiasm for Germany”. In Bad Schachen on the 14th, Himmler
reiterates that his subordinates must be harsh and merciless whenever
necessary, even to put out “small fires” that must always be taken seriously
(IMT, 070-L).
We are confronted, here, with a structure of duty that was already in
place when the Paula incident happened. And I think that the Paula incident
and that of the Jewish dancer constitute a whole, conceptually speaking, a
whole that should be related to later speeches. In 1922, Himmler's duty
structure could still be softened through sentiments that influenced his
judgment at least in some particular cases: this is exemplified by his
comments on a person who, “although Jewish”, was nonetheless respectable
in her singularity. In other words, Himmler who would soon claim that
sentiments are irrelevant to moral judgment was not capable, yet, to be
consistent with such a stance. If it is impossible to know for sure what he
would have said or thought about the Jewish dancer in 1923-1924, the Paula
incident, however, reveals a duty structure that excluded any sentimental
consideration and that would be maintained as such subsequently. “Decent”
Jews as exceptions to the rule would no longer be allowed to exist.
In October 1943, Himmler displays his total contempt, in contradiction
with what had been his attitude, for those who try to bail out individual Jews
whom they consider as “decent”. Any sentiment other than love for the Volk
has been completely evacuated from his moral judgment, but not from his
SS Ethics 61
psychical experience. In fact, sentiments related to compassion continue to

appear at least sporadically on Himmler's conscience, as his reactions show
upon witnessing extermination scenes, and he takes for granted that his
subordinates also experience the same sentiments (Breitman, 1991, pp. 195-
196; Fest, 1970, pp. 120-121). But sentiments have become nothing but
psychological difficulties to overcome, for the sake of morality, as they must
not interfere with the decision-making process aimed at determining the
appropriate action.
We can find another expression of the same pattern in Himmler’s speech
to Navy officers. In substance, as he insisted on the necessity to proceed
against partisans, villagers, or Jewish commissars, he had this explanation:
I have given the order to kill also the women and children of these
partisans and commissars. I would be a feeble guy and a criminal for our
descendants and for others later to come, if I allowed the hateful sons of
these Untermenschen, killed in the fight of Mensch against
Untermensch, to grow and to become adults. Believe me: it is not always
easy… (BA NS 19 / 4011, fol. 106-153)
This was a struggle of races and a struggle for selection, as he said. His
formulation laid out, in good logic, the ethical consequences of SS ontology
and anthropology.
2. SS Conscience and Nazi Values
When discussing the Holocaust in front of different audiences, Himmler was
proud to declare that the moral principle of duty had prevailed, within the SS,
in spite of quite normal sentiments of disgust. The latter, however, could not
and did not determine the course of action: for that reason, SS conscience
stayed clear. This was the message on which Himmler insisted, when he
spoke to top SS and Party leaders in 1943. In 1944, he delivered the same
moral explanations to Wehrmacht superior officers.
On 5 May, for example, he declared emphatically that the Jewish
question had been solved without compromise. It was hard for the SS men
and police officers who had to do it: that they could get through all this
without having suffered damage to their morale or soul was the most difficult
(BA NS 19/4013). But if psychological damage of some sort represented a
theoretical possibility, it would result from the virtue of harshness, in pursuit
of the highest Nazi values. SS conscience, thus, remained unscathed.
By turning mass murder into a pure act of virtue, Himmler’s principle of
harshness offered a convenient moral justification for the killing of civilians
in general, including the Jews. Consequently, his subordinates found it quite
useful. Whenever this principle was applied to moral inhibitions, it provided
the individual SS man with a moral scheme that enabled him to silence his
possibly split conscience, and to carry out apparently immoral orders (Leleu,
2007, p. 494).
In fact, the SS man’s conscience was educated to consider moral
inhibitions as misplaced, whenever action was necessary against evil-doers
who were threatening the moral good as embodied in basic Nazi values. In
Nazi ethics in general, according to Philippe Burrin, the three key values were
health, power, and culture, bound to each other and seen in a racist
perspective (Burrin, 2004, p. 57). But the Jews and only the Jews represented
the exact opposite of these three values.
Health meant racial purity and cleanliness, as well as work and
performance. Here, the Jews were one target among others. Power included
the themes around the Reich and the Volksgemeinschaft: the Jews were at the
center of the problem, as best enemies. With regard to culture, once again, the
so-called Jewish culture was the exact opposite of anything German (Burrin,
2004, pp. 58-60). Basing themselves on such premises, the SS leaders would
consider themselves as morally justified to translate these Nazi values into
practice, regardless of the consequences for the Jewish people.
3. In Summary
To a large extent, SS ethics depended on the readiness to change oneself as a
moral subject. As Heydrich wrote:
We, the SS, we must work on ourselves. We must keep and anchor to
ourselves the eternal foundations of our Weltanschauung, given to us by
the Führer. … In order to protect our Volk, we must be hard toward the
adversary. (Heydrich, 1935, p. 18)
And Heydrich emphasized the necessity of reinforcing German heredity, of
being fair and faithful, of becoming the best ones in all domains, and of
increasing the body of knowledge about Germanic ancestors. “This is the
knowledge of all the values that God has given to our Volk: our blood, our
nature, our true historical past.” (Heydrich, 1935, p. 19) Armed with this
knowledge, SS people should become living examples of the eternal
principles given by the Führer. In Heydrich’s words: “we, the SS, want to be
the ideological Stosstrupp and the Schutzstaffel of the Führer’s idea.”
(Heydrich, 1935, p. 20)
In fact, SS ethics relied on SS ontology and anthropology, so as to make
up the morality that legitimized practical Nazism, or Nazism as praxis. It
streamlined a resulting program of racial engineering that culminated in the
Holocaust.
Six
THE POLICE OF NAZI PRAXIS

The SS was the “architect” of genocide, as part of its function as the
biologically knowledgeable and modern-minded gardener of Germany’s
social and political garden. Its thinking provided the theoretical framework
for justifying a radical form of praxis. This praxis lay in the field of general
bio-engineering, which included positive engineering (the creation and
sponsoring of health and fitness), as well as its negative counterpart (the
weeding out of unfit or noxious elements).
There is no question, here, of reviewing in detail all SS practices: a huge
amount of books and articles have already described the workings of SS
endeavors. For the same reason, it would be pointless to summarize the series
of events and processes that have constituted the Holocaust proper. My
purpose would rather be to stress the points of passage from theory to
practice, in SS thinking, and to identify the SS ideas that have fueled SS
praxis.
1. Going East
The spirit of SS praxis was anchored to a particular view of Germanic history,
and it was summarized in a few sentences pronounced by Himmler, in 1936.
In that year, he organized a ceremony to honor King Heinrich, on the
occasion of the 1000th anniversary of his death, on 2 July 1936. He praised
King Heinrich as an example, as a model, as a great Führer of Germany, who
had fought the Slavs. And he easily assumed that King Heinrich had viewed
the world in a racist perspective. In substance, Himmler expressed himself as
follows:
He [King Heinrich] has never forgotten that the strength of the German
Volk lay in the purity of its blood and in the peasant implanting in free
soil. He was aware of the fact that the German Volk, in order to survive,
had to turn its eyes above its own clan and above its own space toward
something larger. He already knew about the laws of life… (BA NSD 71
/ 43, p. 14)
The key elements of SS praxis were bundled together in these sentences:
blood, peasantry, space in the East, and the laws of biology. And they would
have a maximal historical impact, thanks to the special envoy Adolf Hitler,
appearing in the wake of King Heinrich. Himmler pledged to serve Hitler,
who, 1000 years later, was taking over King Heinrich’s human and political
legacy (BA NSD 71 / 43, p. 20).
To the SS, in the twentieth century as it was before, Ostraum (the stretch
of space in the East) was the land of Europe’s destiny. It called European
youth to commitment through the soldier’s weapon or through the peasant’s
ploughshare. The SS, indeed, turned the idea of Europe into practice. It went
out of the narrow national borders, and it invited the blood-related Germanic
peoples to fight for a common future (BA NSD 41 / 61, pp. 18-19). As
Himmler said: “This Reich will be a holy myth, the ordering power of
Europe, the leading Volk for the whole Germanic Reich.” After the war, it
would put its stamp on Europe and assemble the white race (BA NSD 71 / 44,
p. 10). At that time, a process would be introduced and promoted, that would
lead from the Great German Reich to the Germanic and Great Germanic
Reich (BA NSD 71 / 44, pp. 13-14).
As Himmler continued, for this global Germanic Volk, “we” will have a
space in the East, where we will have at last some air to breathe and a place to
live, a space prepared to become the German Germanic land of settlement.
That means the creation of a garden to nurture Germanic blood, so that we
can be again a Volk with numerous children. It is not a matter of any vision or
opinion: it is a matter of life for our Volk. The East must and will become the
garden of the purest brand of Germanic blood, the crucible of all German and
Germanic stems (BA NSD 71 / 44, p. 14). It is worth noting, here, that
Himmler himself used the gardener’s metaphor.
Himmler described the East as the basis on which the Germanic Reich
would be able, in the upcoming centuries, to contain and to defeat the shock
waves that would always come back, sooner or later, from the interior of Asia.
“We”, so Himmler said, want to prove worthy of that gift from destiny that
sent us the Führer. We have to build up the Germanic Reich created by Hitler,
to gain settlements in the East, to win soil in the old German way, to protect it
with the sword, “and to conquer new soil over again … for the eternal youth
and for the future of the German Germanic Volk.” (BA NSD 71 / 44, p. 15)
In SS thinking, as well as in Nazi ideology at large, the general good
always comes before private interests. As a matter of principle, the individual
is nothing, but the Volk is everything. A Volk, obviously, needs space where
to live. Consequently, “the growing, healthy Volk alone has the moral right to
expand its Lebensraum, and, if necessary, to fight for it.” (BA RD 18 / 19, p.
6) In this respect, survival and self-defense provide the justification.
The SS-Leithefte, which served educational purposes, dwelt at length on
the Lebensraum issue, in a historical perspective. The point was to justify
present practices in reference to the past and to a sort of historical necessity.
For example, in an article published in 1937, an author wrote that King
Heinrich I had conquered Lebensraum in the north and, mostly, in the east.
His eastern policy had been made of a series of wars against the Slavs, in an
effort to extend and to consolidate his kingdom’s eastern boundaries. He had
The Police of Nazi Praxis 65
colonized the conquered areas with German peasants, as the safest protection
wall against the Slavs. Heinrich had inherited the soul traits of the Nordic-
Phalian (Fälisch) race. He had erected his Reich on the same pillars as
Hitler’s: a soil-rooted Germanic peasantry and a powerful army (BA NSD 41
/ 77 e).
Another author went further back in time. According to him, the East
had been Germanic: in prehistoric and early ancient times, the areas around
the Oder and the Weichsel had been populated with Germanic tribes. The
Slavs entered these territories later. But King Heinrich (919-936) drove his
forces east, and the way for a German reconquest of the East was open. In the
late Middle Ages, the German princes pushed northeast and east, in the Baltic
area. A precondition for winning back the East was the superiority of German
culture. The German peasants who colonized the East were racially valuable
people, of course (BA NSD 41 / 77 f).
Elsewhere, an article about the Goths is remarkable in its genre. The
Goths, so one reads, rode east and Germanic settlers were in the East a long
time ago. In the Antiquity, there was a Germanic Reich in the steppe, a first
bulwark of Europe against the racially foreign eastern areas. Then came the
Vikings, the Waräger, and the Teutonic Knights. Given the racial
contamination of eastern peoples, the Jews felt strong enough to organize that
Untermenschentum and to create the Soviet Union. But where the Goths,
Waräger, and others did not succeed, a new Germanic cohort was now
moving east again. Wieder reiten die Goten, since 22 June 1941 (BA NSD 41
/ 77 g).
This Germanic cohort would open up new possibilities for SS people
interested in becoming free peasants in the East. A new German peasantry
would arise in the East, and a human eastern wall would stand up, guarded by
SS peasants-soldiers. Thanks to reliable and seasoned SS men, the conditions
would be met, at last, for the creation of a fit, healthy, and indestructible
peasantry in the East (BA NSD 41 / 127, p. 68).
2. Cleansing the East
Officially, the conquest of vital space was the prerogative of the Wehrmacht.
But the SS could and did participate directly in this venture, through the
contribution of Waffen-SS units, which reached the front lines in increasing
numbers. However, SS praxis was mostly concerned with the organization of
conquered territories, in terms of population engineering and security, which
required surveillance and cleansing operations.
On Himmler’s order, SS-Standartenführer Dr. Konrad Meyer prepared
and submitted a general settlement plan for the East. He foresaw three main
areas of settlement: the Ingermanland (the region of Petersburg), the
Gotengau (the Crimea and Kherson), and the region of Memel and Narev
(Bialystok and Western Lithuania), in addition to more than 36 “support
points”. Germanization was to unfold over 25 years. According to Meyer,

4.85 million people would be needed to populate these settlements (including
the areas directly attached to the Reich), and he was confident that he could
recruit 5.65 million settlers, from the old Reich, from overseas, and from
Europe in general. In a letter to Meyer dated 12 January 1943, Himmler
pleaded for the inclusion and for the total germanization of more territories,
such as the three former Baltic states, White Russia, and the Crimea as a
whole (BA NS 19 / 1739).
In these areas, security and cleansing would lie on an anthropological
concept, the essentials of which were provided by Himmler, in his Stettin
speech of July 1941. As he said on that occasion, Germany is now engaged in
a war of ideologies and in a fight between races, a fight against a 180-million
people, a mix of races and peoples, whose form (Gestalt) is such that they can
be shot mercilessly. This Volk is organized by the Jews under Bolshevism:
they are out to take control of Germany and Europe. It is the same fight
against the same Untermenschentum, the same lower races, as had taken place
one thousand years ago. Fortunately, Hitler made the decision to crush the
power of Bolshevism and Jews (BA NS 19 / 4008).
Published by hundreds of thousands of copies, the album Der
Untermensch developed that thesis further, by means of texts and photos
intended to support the SS anthropological framework for population
engineering in the East. The concept of Untermensch played a pivotal role, in
an ideology that established a close connection between biological sub-
humanity, Bolshevism, the Soviet Union, and Jewry, in a way that called for a
global solution to what happened to be a single and unique problem. For
example, one can read that the Untermensch looks human, although he or she
is an abyss of cruelty and chaos, filled with boundless passions, the will to
destroy, hatred, and desire for murder. He or she is nothing but a beast, ruled
by the Jews. The term “beast” plays a key role in the text, all the more so that
it enhances the notions of non-humanity and danger, thus legitimizing any
and all possible protective measures. Once again, rhetoric depends on the
display of photographs emphasizing the contrasts between the noble Aryan
fighters and the “beasts with a human shape” (BA NSD 41 / 131).
Within the global context of Nazi ideology, SS praxis kept in line with
Hitler’s concept of German colonialism in the East. As the Führer said, the
war in the East was not a purely ideological war, in the sense that it was a
struggle for life and survival. If Bolshevism was to be victorious, that would
mean the flooding of Europe by Asian “human raw materials” (Menschen-
rohstoff). The victory of Bolshevism would entail the hegemony of Asian
human races over European ones, and the latter would be exterminated or
dominated through racial mixing. In other words, Germany was threatened
with racial flooding by Asian races: therefore, the battle had to be conducted
with extreme harshness, and German soldiers knew that there was no
forgiveness, since the stake was life or death. Besides, gigantic stocks of raw
materials were waiting to be seized in the East, and the most valuable raw
materials were the people in Russia. On the one hand, the population in the
East had no more value than tropical people. On the other hand, Asian waves
were threatening to overflow Europe and to exterminate the higher races,
whence the necessity of wall-building and long-term fighting (BA NS 6 /
161). Given the low ontological value of Untermenschen in general, and
given the absence of value in the Jews, coupled with the extreme danger that
they represented, the Holocaust appeared as a crucial and legitimate
operation, within the larger context of a newly conquered Lebensraum to be
organized and cleansed.
3. The Victory of the Child
The victory of the child (of Aryan race, of course) represented the natural
anthropological complement of the Holocaust, so to speak, as a proof that the
Jews would fail in their efforts to destroy the Aryan race. As an author wrote,
the victory of arms had to be followed by the victory of the child, because it
was necessary to secure the growth of the Volk. In order to be able to deal
with the upcoming tasks, the Volk had to count on sufficient numbers of
physically and mentally healthy people. For that reason, early marriages with
numerous children were a basic demand of Nazism (BA NSD 41 / 130, p. 5).
Consistent with itself, the SS chose to intervene vigorously, within the
sphere of chaotic Nazi family policies. In this respect, the Lebensborn played
a central part in the SS efforts to influence the future of the Volk. It succeeded
in setting up eight delivery homes and six homes for children who met the
racial norms. According to a minimal estimation, 92,000 children went
through the Lebensborn system, including 80,000 who had been taken away
from their families, and 12,000 who were born there (Pichot, 2000, p. 244).
With Hitler’s knowledge and approval, the Lebensborn e.V. was founded
on 12 December 1935, in Berlin, on Himmler’s initiative. Although it was
incorporated in the SS organization, it was given the juridical form of a
registered association (eingetragener Verein). Its tasks were: 1) to support
racially and biologically valuable families with many children; 2) to provide
shelter and care for racially and biologically valuable future mothers whose
children would be valuable, on the basis of an investigation carried out by the
RuSHA; 3) to care about these children; 4) to care about these children’s
mothers. The statutes linked the association’s activity to the racial idea
(Lilienthal, 2003, pp. 43-44).
The Lebensborn belonged to positive selection. As Georg Lilienthal puts
it, it represented an illustration of the Nazis’ biological will to shape the Volk.
In this connection, it aimed at providing support to single mothers and at
germanizing children from abroad.
Himmler and the SS were concerned more than anybody else with
rescuing the German Volk from the abyss and with putting the Volk on the
racial tracks leading to the summit of mankind. But the growth of Nordic
blood demanded an increase in Germany’s birth rate, and the way to world
hegemony was open to peoples who had many children. Himmler claimed
that his views about demography were the results of his practical experience
as a police chief. He could realize, then, the damage done to the birth rate by
homosexuality and abortion (Lilienthal, 2003, pp. 20-21, 25).
In fact, the Lebensborn was initially conceived as a positive complement
to the ban on abortion. The appeal of abortion could be reduced by offering
protection to unwed mothers and to their children, who had to face social
reprobation. But Himmler’s main motivation, although it entailed the
protection of unwed mothers, lay in racial politics: according to him, any
healthy life of good blood to be born had to be maintained and protected at all
costs. This being granted, the Lebensborn actually focused on helping single
mothers, while the homes connected with it were open also to married
women. Himmler’s idea was to curb the drop in the birth rate, in a way that
offered extended care to pregnant single mothers, so as to make them
renounce their eventual intents to have recourse to abortion (Lilienthal, 2003,
pp. 28, 45-46).
SS racial thinking showed quickly whenever defective children were
born in the Lebensborn homes. In compliance with official policies, children
with defects were expelled from the homes. When these defects were severe,
they were sent to institutions in which “euthanasia” would be performed
(Lilienthal, 2003, p. 102).
4. The Tasks of the SS
A photo essay describes the SS as a community of Nazi fighters for the idea
of blood: “this is why the SS has the particular task to protect Adolf Hitler’s
Reich against all interior dangers, which spring mostly from the lack of
understanding for our Weltanschauung and for our political goals.” Within
that community, every SS man must shape up his life in the Nazi spirit and be
a model for the Volk (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 8).
Before anything else, SS praxis is concerned with fighting, and it must
be interpreted through the category of struggle as a way of life, literally, since
fighting is part of Nature and given as an ontological reality. Insofar as the SS
represents the best blood selection of the Volk, its task is to fight against the
interior enemies of the Nazi Weltanschauung, who are still waiting for their
chance to destroy the Reich (BA NSD 41 / 86, p. 9). And this task is
conceived as an antibiotic operation. For instance, in reference to general
guidelines laid down in a speech by Hitler, one learns that the task of the
police is:
to help strengthen the Volk’s body inside, to help purify this Volk’s
body from the noxious elements that do not belong to him, and to
contribute to the worthy representation of this Volk’s body toward the

outside. (BA RD 18 / 25, p. 5)
In the above-mentioned Lichtbildvortrag, the author summarizes as follows.
SS racial thinking sets two tasks for the SS, in relation to racial health: (1) the
elimination of all foreign and sick blood from the heredity stock of our Volk;
(2) the multiplication and betterment of our blood heritage through sub-
ordination of each fighter to Nordic training (BA NSD 41 / 86). In an article
published in 1942, Himmler preferred a more clearly political formulation. He
wrote that the task of the SS was:
to guarantee the inner order and security of Germany, like the
Wehrmacht protects the country toward the outside. We see to it that in
Germany, the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution, the animal man … is not
ignited again. (BA NS 19 / 1454)
Through this mission, “we know the Jew well, this people that has taken in
itself the garbage of all peoples”, moved by a strong desire for world
domination.
5. In Summary
SS praxis as bio-engineering, in both its positive and negative branches, saw
itself as a scientific and political solution to two specific sets of events, in
which Nazi ideology had originated. This brings us back to the World War I
syndrome.
Seven
THE POLICE OF HISTORY

The SS pictured itself as the police of history. Its task was to guarantee that
the major mistakes of the past would not be repeated. To that effect, it strived
to eradicate the spiritual traces left over by years and decades of philosophical
and political misery. More specifically, it drew lessons from Germany’s nadir
point in 1918, and its thinking and praxis was obsessed by the fear of living
that experience again in the future. Fortunately, the country was put on the
right track of history with the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. But since life
was an eternal struggle against all-too dangerous enemies, the SS was there to
make sure that Germany would accomplish her destiny, by staying on the
proper historical course.
As the self-proclaimed police of history, the SS sought to intervene, by
means of all forms of coercion, to weed out noxious ideas of the past and
noxious people of the present, so as to secure the Volk’s hegemony over the
future. It would see to it that upcoming wars in Europe would replay World
War I, revisited with a happy ending this time. And in order to carry out its
tasks efficiently, it had to address a certain number of issues.
1. The Cult of Germanic Ancestors
Over the issue of modernity, SS conscience was split. Obviously, it valued
science and the biological paradigm, as well as all these technologies that
made control systems efficient. But it deeply resented some important
phenomena attached to modernity, such as urbanization, universalism,
internationalism, and pacifism, in which it saw the mark of the Jewish mind.
In its efforts to curb the nasty effects of modernity, the SS proposed a
revaluation of ancient Germanic culture. This culture had represented an apex
in the history of the Volk, a golden age in which the laws of life had been
honored and blood had been maintained in its purity. This cultural treasure
was abandoned and lost in the course of history, forgotten and buried deep
into he past. Although it would be impossible to make the clock of history
tick backward, SS thinkers thought that the Germanic heritage should be
salvaged as much as possible.
Himmler deployed much energy to keep that heritage alive in SS culture.
He reintroduced the notion of reverence toward ancestors, and he organized
SS society under the lines of kinship clans. He worshipped the values
presumably related to ancient Germanic culture, such as the cult of Nature,
respect for racial purity, joyful strength, warfare, and attachment to soil.
Consequently, he sponsored archeological and linguistic research about

Germanic ancestors. He encouraged the return to Germanic natural religion,
and he instituted SS rituals based on a mix of ancient and medieval culture.
By and large, the SS repossessed to a large extent the ancient and
medieval Germanic culture, in order to use it internally as a structuring
scheme of beliefs, values, and practices. It did so as an open challenge to
some modern notions that had developed in the wake of the Enlightenment.
2. The End of the Enlightenment
In SS minds, the woes of twentieth-century Germany were closely connected
with Enlightenment thinking, from which stemmed Volk-damaging concepts
such as individualism, humanitarianism, liberalism, international socialism,
and the like. SS authors considered Enlightenment ideals as dangerous for
Volk and race, and they strived to put an end to what they saw as a tragic
parenthesis in intellectual history, by means of theoretical critique as well as
practical action.
Modern thinkers had promoted a vision of the world centered on
individuals, free and equal to each other, through concepts such as the
Cartesian cogito, a priori transcendental subjectivity, adhesion to a social
contract, and universal human dignity. To SS authors, the individual was
nothing but a member of the Volk, a temporary link in the chain of life that
ran from ancestors to progeny. The ontological primacy was granted to the
Volk, whose reproductive success was the individuals’ raison d’être. To make
the meaning of life revolve around individuals would be contrary to the laws
of life and would invite national and racial catastrophe.
Against universal humanity, the SS would posit the Volk once again. To
SS thinkers, humanity carried no ontological value per se and generated
consequently no moral obligation. Human value was conceived as differential
and unequal, in function of racial characteristics, and it was inseparable from
the Volk as the source of value. SS thinking challenged the notion of human
dignity, because it denied any value to humanity qua humanity. Value was
conferred by race and Volk, by fitness and by health: this would generate an
ontological and moral hierarchy within humanity, thus nullifying the very
notion of humanity, by depriving it of its necessary universality. The denial of
universal human dignity paved the way for rejecting any politics based on the
foundational character of human rights, on the notion of social contract, and
on liberal or republican institutions.
On numerous occasions, directly or indirectly, SS authors criticized the
philosophy and politics of the Enlightenment. They saw the Aufklärung ideals
as the ruin of Volk and race. Given that Germany had once succumbed to
these ideals during the years of the “System” (the Weimar Republic), with
almost fatal consequences, the SS felt concerned with blocking off any
political resurgence of Enlightenment values.
The Police of History 73
3. The Trauma of 1918

The SS was out to revisit a posteriori the course of World War I and, so to
speak, to erase the year 1918 from German history. Obviously, 1918 had been
the matrix of Nazism, and the events that had taken place in and around
November were constantly replayed in SS minds, thus fueling the incessant
SS paranoia for security.
To Nazis in general, the year 1918 had marked the nadir of German
history, that point of humiliation and helplessness dangerously close to the
Volk’s political death. Now that the Führer succeeded in defeating the System
and in reversing the course of history, it was incumbent on the SS to protect
Germany’s renaissance and to secure her victory in the inevitable wars of the
future.
In fact, the task number one of the SS was to prevent 1918 from
happening again. The events of that tragic year, including their continuation
in the postwar years, should never be repeated in Germany. The home front
had to be secured at all costs, to make sure that the continuation of World War
I, through future campaigns against Germany’s enemies, would lead to a
happy ending.
In order to carry out efficiently its primary task, the SS had to focus on
two basic events or series of events, which had been presumably pivotal in
Germany’s collapse, and which would soon polarize SS thinking and action.
These two basic subsets of the German trauma had been the blockade and the
Dolchstoss.
The Dolchstoss designated the alleged stab-in-the-back of the German
Army left undefeated on the field. This myth became very powerful in
military, nationalistic, and right-wing minds in the 1920s. Ironically, it was
significantly amplified by a statement made by Socialist President Friedrich
Ebert, who had declared to troops, at a Berlin parade in December 1918, that
they had not been defeated at war. The blockade, however, bore a more direct
connection with reality. It referred to real action aimed at isolating the
seaports of Germany, although the conclusions to which this episode led after
the war were largely mythical as well.
4. The Blockade
During World War I, as a matter of fact, the German civilian population had
suffered from food shortages, the severity of which had increased during the
last two years of war. Although the Allied blockade of German ports had
obviously contributed to German misery, its real impact on the German
economy would be debated for years and decades after the armistice. Many
other factors had to be taken into consideration, such as the modified structure
of wartime economy, the shortage of German manpower brought about by
massive conscription, and the possibly comparable situation in other
European countries. However it might be, as Michael Wildt puts it:
Lack of food was almost certainly the defining experience on the home
front. Hoarding drove up the price of meat, butter, and eggs in German
cities even during the first months of the war. … The horrors of the
“rutabaga winter” of 1916-17…remained firmly planted in the German
collective memory for decades…. The first disturbances over food
occurred in Berlin in October 1915. After that there was a steady chain
of hunger riots. (Wildt, 2009, p. 24)
Indeed, in 1916 and 1917, several food riots took place in Germany, and in
spite of some later improvements, the food supply would remain below what
would be minimal levels. German civilians did suffer from hunger during the
war, on rations below 1,000 calories per day, and hunger-related casualties
reached hundreds of thousands. Obviously, the Allied blockade played a part
in it, by preventing imports from reaching German ports, but its role has been
overrated. In fact, the main reasons behind the food shortages were common
to all warring countries, as they lay in the reorganization of manpower and
production for the purpose of winning the war. Besides, as compared to
Germany, the food situation was much worse in Austria-Hungary and in
Russia, where sea blockades would play no part (Kramer, 2008, pp. 153-155).
Before the war, some political groups had voiced concerns and
complaints about the lack of living space (Volk ohne Raum) and the exiguity
of the German farmland. After the war, these concerns were revived, all the
more easily that wartime hunger was blamed directly on the blockade. In a
tragic way, the blockade illustrated a serious geopolitical disadvantage on the
German side, in relation to the functioning of a wartime economy and to the
capability to maintain the food supply at acceptable levels.
Whatever its relationship to reality, the blockade trauma struck the right-
wing political imagination in the twenties, and it soon came to occupy a
predominant position in Nazi thinking. In future wars, Germany’s enemies
should be given no opportunity to choke off the food supply once again, and,
in Mein Kampf, Hitler granted a high priority to autarky (Hitler, 1971, pp.
233, 611-612, 642-667). He thought that Germany had a strong strategic
interest in the East, in order to secure a steady flow of raw materials and
foodstuffs into Germany. The conquest and control of eastern territories
would shelter the country from the effects of any blockade in the future.
If Hitler was mostly concerned with strategic materials for wartime
industry, Himmler dealt with the blockade trauma by investing the field of
agrarian utopia. From the campaign against Poland to the war against the
Soviet Union, the SS was preoccupied with policing and securing the newly
conquered farmland. It tried to implement its agrarian program by displacing
and relocating ethnic Germans to the countryside, and by installing SS
veterans on the land. It set out to create a network of German villages in the
East, populated with peasants-soldiers who would feed the fatherland and
defend their soil against “Asian hordes”.
The blockade trauma was a basic reference point in SS thinking, all the
more so that it stimulated SS agrarian utopias, which called Germans to return
to the land as much as possible, as well as the will to conquer the East. The
solution to the blockade trauma was Lebensraum.
5. The Dolchstoss
Immediately after the armistice, a viewpoint quickly spread according to
which the German army, undefeated in the field, had been stabbed in the back
by the German revolutionaries who were mostly Jews, Socialists, and other
adepts of Jewish-inspired ideologies. The Dolchstoss legend was the most
powerful and the most dangerous trauma generated by the conclusion of the
war, all the more so that, contrary to the blockade memory, it would unleash a
huge amount of anger, resentment, outrage, and hatred, against specific
groups inside Germany. The Dolchstoss scandal was a key drive in the
genesis of Nazism: In Mein Kampf, Hitler referred to it as an origin, a seminal
moment, that had shaken him out of his torpor, at the Pasewalk hospital
(Hitler, 1971, pp. 202-206).
According to Pierre Jardin, who has carefully searched the Dolchstoss
syndrome, a legend began to circulate, in the winter of 1918-1919, to the
effect that the armistice had resulted from a series of subversive maneuvers
leading to an upheaval: in all this, the army had not been defeated. This
legend allowed for a heroic reconstruction of the war’s final episode, which
had been anything but glorious. In reality, that army had reached “the terminal
stage of a physical and moral disintegration process”, in the context of the
stalemate in which Ludendorff’s spring offensives had ended. In November
1918, the German army was “in a state of clinical death”. But the trauma
delivered by the catastrophe was such that the only possible explanation
would see it as the result of a revolutionary plot. To Hitler and others, defeat
had been caused by a revolutionary process that had sacrificed the army to the
benefit of a few criminals. Thus, they could maintain a sense of continuity in
the Reich’s history. Germany had not been defeated in her military
confrontation with external enemies: she fell victim of her political
confrontation with herself (Jardin, 2005, pp. 12-13). Reality, however, was
something completely different.
In August 1918, after the disappointments created by the failed
offensives, the will to fight began to wear out. Soldiers would increasingly
disappear in convoys, and whole units would now refuse to be transported.
The army was increasingly suffering from the lack of recruits, but material
resources were also lacking, including wheat and fuel. By and large, the
troops were distrustful and weary, and the authorities tried to put a stop to
desertion and to disobedience. Obviously, the troops could no longer hold the
front, and they were worn out to such a point that enemy breakthroughs could
succeed rapidly (Jardin, 2005 pp. 185, 398).
The legend of the undefeated army began with the armistice. On 12

November, Hindenburg declared: “We have borne our arms with honor”, and
we have kept the enemy far from our borders. In a communiqué about the
return of troops, on 13 November, the emphasis was put on pride and dignity:
the returning troops had to behave in a way that would be worthy of an army
that had gloriously held back the whole world for four years. The idea of
pride was close to that of victory. On 11 November, the Kronprinz had
declared that his army group had not been defeated by weapons but by hunger
and distress. On 18 November, General von Hutier, who commanded the 18th
Army, said that his army had repelled victoriously the assaults of an enemy
largely superior in numbers. “Undefeated, it is coming back home, after
having faithfully accomplished her duty.” And on 23 November, the
Kölnische Zeitung called on local population to welcome a division with all
due honors, “for the army has not ‘lost the battle’…” (Jardin, 2005, pp. 435,
442)
The notion of the undefeated army evolved quickly, in November and
December. The press soon developed that view one step further: not only was
the army undefeated, it was close to victory. On 3 December, a newspaper
reported about troops who were entering Koblenz and who, allegedly, were
unanimous in blaming the country for falling on their backs. Thus, the army
was now almost victorious. It was deprived of its righteous victory, because
of surrender and revolution, brought about by treason and subversion (Jardin,
2005, p. 464).
On 2 December, the obvious conclusion appeared in some papers, using
the terms attributed to an English general: “the German army has been
stabbed in the back by the civilian population…” In fact, the view according
to which defeat had not happened for military reasons, but had been caused by
a Dolchstoss by the revolutionary country against its army, had “appeared
almost immediately after November 1918” (Jardin, 2005, pp. 468, 607). But
there was a thin line between the notion of an undefeated army and that of a
betrayed army. The right-wing press crossed the thin line late in November
and early in December of 1918, in the continuity of army accusations against
the “councils”. Hindenburg accused the Socialist Party of systematic and
secret subversion within the army, before and during the war, thus introducing
the idea of a plot involving human intentions.
This was what Hitler would retain from the Dolchstoss legend, which
represented a sort of matrix of his own thinking, because it pointed to the
culprits for the 1918 defeat, and because it provided explanations about how
they could have provoked the catastrophe. Hitler would aim at neutralizing
the subversion forces, through radical methods.
Commenting on the manner in which Hitler, in Mein Kampf, reacted to
the news about the armistice, Richard Bessel believes that, if there was any
moment that could be identified as the birth of Nazism, it would be November
1918, at the Pasewalk military hospital. Confronted with the collapse of their
world, many Germans, like Hitler, were looking for scapegoats on whom to
blame the national catastrophe. The Western powers should be held
accountable, of course, because of the infamous Versailles Diktat, but also all
those who, from inside Germany, had stabbed the country in the back (Bessel,
2004, pp. 4, 6).
In Pasewalk, a wounded and bitter Hitler, although he was helpless and
isolated, expressed his “determination” to see to it that the Dolchstoss scene
could never be repeated in Germany. The home front should never be allowed
to betray the soldiers again. And “non-German” elements should lose for ever
their freedom to spread their poison through the German population (Bessel,
2004, p. 10). This was later to be the task of the SS.
6. Mein Kampf and Its Aftermath
Through history, emotions and imagination have often combined with politics
in a very lethal way. In this sense, politics has little to do with reality. It
relates to perceptions and to representations of reality to which some belief is
attached, in a process in which people establish a connection between their
emotions and a line of political imagination, which they assume to be
necessarily right. This gives birth to powerful political myths, the strength of
which bears no relationship to their scientific validity. And this gave
credibility, prestige, and power to Hitler in particular.
Throughout the 1920s, in Nazi minds, the Dolchstoss-blockade
syndrome refueled and stimulated more ancient myths revolving around racial
theory and Lebensraum. By the time Hitler authored Mein Kampf, it was clear
to the Nazis that the Dolchstoss had happened for racial reasons, whereas the
German vulnerability to the blockade had been caused by European
geopolitics. In order to build up a future for Germany, some lessons had to be
drawn from the conclusion of the Great War. On the one hand, the Jews, who
were responsible for everything, would have to go somehow, although it was
still too early to speculate on how they would go. On the other hand, the
blockade reinforced the necessity for Germany to obtain Lebensraum. In
Hitler’s mind, it came out clearly from the war that Germany had no vocation
overseas, since she could not afford to challenge the British in the tropical
world. Her empire lay in the East, in the regions spreading beyond her eastern
borders, and the conquest of needed Lebensraum would sooner or later
necessitate a war with the Soviet Union, which required the maintaining of
peaceful relations with Britain (Hitler, 1971, pp. 611-625). But huge Jewish
populations happened to live east of the German borders, under, or close to,
Bolshevism as their most lethal ideology. At this point of thought, the fusion
was possible, in Hitler’s mind among others, between the Lebensraum issue
and racial purity. And the geographical focus of all German hopes and
problems would soon shift to the East, since both Lebensraum and huge
Jewish populations happened to be there, in addition to racially inferior Slavic

people.
By and large, from 1938 to 1944, Nazi Germany undertook the conquest
of the East, in a process that combined positive geopolitics with negative
demography. This process targeted two complementary goals: the inclusion of
new territories, coupled with the exclusion of local populations. In this way, it
prolonged the World War I syndrome and the two foundational myths of
Nazism. In this venture, the SS played a key role, mostly with regard to
population engineering, in order to anticipate and to ward off any Dolchstoss
threat.
In 1939, the conquest of Poland brought the Nazis in contact with
racially inferior Poland hosting a gigantic Jewish population, and they would
soon establish a clear link between the desirability of the territory and the
undesirability of its population. Soon, there were to be deportations and
executions of Jews and Poles. The former would be pushed toward the east
and confined to urban ghettos, as the latter would be expelled from the areas
marked for reintegration into the Reich.
Almost two years later, Operation Barbarossa would exemplify par
excellence that Nazi geography of inclusion/exclusion, which operationalized
the two foundation myths. Operation Barbarossa, indeed, represented the
unfolding of a huge military effort, on a gigantic scale, to seize a large amount
of Lebensraum that would yield quasi-infinite quantities of food and raw
materials, so as to protect Germany from any blockade in the foreseeable
future. But the newly conquered Lebensraum had obviously to be sanitized,
because of the presence of Jews and of other Untermenschen, that is to say, of
populations of racially determined troublemakers. Therefore, Operation
Barbarossa was the war of the Holocaust, as well as a war for the enslavement
of the Slavs. This was mostly the domain of expertise of the SS.
The intended war against the Soviet Union was officially discussed by
Hitler on 30 March 1941, during a speech to top Wehrmacht commanders. On
this occasion in particular, Hitler made it clear that ideological enemies would
be eliminated this time: there would be no Dolchstoss coming from the East.
General Franz Halder noted the essentials:
Clash of two ideologies. Crushing denunciation of Bolshevism,
identified with a social criminality.… A Communist is no comrade
before or after the battle. This is a war of extermination.… War against
Russia: Extermination of the Bolshevist commissars and of the
Communist intelligentsia.… We must fight against the poison of
disintegration. This is no job for military courts.… The troops must fight
back with the methods with which they are attacked. Commissars and
GPU men are criminals and must be dealt with as such.… Embody in
ObdH order. This war will be very different from the war in the west.…
Commanders must make the sacrifice of overcoming their personal

scruples. (Burdick, 1988, p. 346)
Hitler and the SS thought that the inclusion of Lebensraum within Germany
should go along with the exclusion of local populations from the sphere of
moral responsibility, whatever the consequences. Keine Kameraden: potential
back-stabbers could be no comrades, indeed. And World War I, at last, would
be over.
7. In Summary
The Nazi Kampfzeit was the bitter continuation of World War I: because of
the Dolchstoss, the beautiful dream of 1914 had turned to a nightmare. The
Nazis were trying to overcome reality by reasserting the dream, and by
turning their anger against those who had spoiled the dream and brought back
the reality of reality (November 1918). In this sense, Nazism was born out of
a combination of dream and disillusionment. It was conceived and designed
by men who had been disillusioned by the outcome of the war, whether they
had missed the fighting, like Himmler, or not, like Hitler, whose enthusiasm
of August 1914 had made place to depression and anger, at the Pasewalk
military hospital.
When the SS authors or speakers referred to “1918”, they had in mind
the downfall, the nadir of Germany, caused by the back-stabbers, the
“November criminals”, the Socialists, who could all be traced back to the
Jews proper or to Jewish influence. And even after the new start in 1933, the
1918 syndrome continued to cling to SS minds. The brave new Nazi world
was fragile, threatened by all these old enemies who were standing in the
wings. In this context, the SS was essentially concerned with order in the
Party, of course, but also with Germany’s interior security. Its main task was
to see to it that 1918 would never be repeated again. This task would
ultimately expand, so as to be defined as the biological security of Lebens-
raum.
In good SS logic, however, as well as in Hitler’s mind, preventing the
1918 events from happening again was soon equated with finding a final
solution to the Jewish question. Early in 1939, as a new European war was
near to break out, Hitler was becoming increasingly nervous about the Jews,
and the SS apparatus underwent some restructuring. In his speech to the
Reichstag on 30 January 1933, Hitler formulated his “prophecy” about the
fate of Jews in an upcoming war. This time, there would be no conclusion in
the style of 1918, no Dolchstoss. If a war was to erupt once again by the deed
of Jews (and, in his mind, it could not break out otherwise), there would be a
happy ending, this time, in the absence of the Jews. This was implicit in his
message.
On 30 January 1939, the measures that would prevent a repetition of
1918 were not determined, yet, and it was still too early to engage on a
specific course of action. In this sense, Hitler’s phrase did not pre-contain
policies that were to be worked out later. But ultimately, the solution to the
Dolchstoss issue would be the Holocaust.
In order to be efficiently the police of history, the SS had to become the
police of being. The Holocaust lay at that juncture.
Eight
THE POLICE OF BEING

SS thinking opposed the Enlightenment by downgrading the individual on the
scale of ontological value. It granted a higher ontological status to the Volk,
all the more easily that the Volk conserved being over time, through
immortality. The Volk, after all, was eternal.
Through the endless chain of reproduction, the Volk would escape death
as the timely termination of all beings. But its immortality could not be
absolute, since it would depend on victory in the struggle for life. SS thinking,
on this point, was self-contradictory.
SS thinkers found a way out in this manner: the Volk would be eternal,
provided that it cared for being over time. This entailed that the Volk could
dodge death as long as “defective” individuals could not. In other words, the
Volk’s survival was predicated on high levels of reproduction, health, and
fitness. The Volk would live as long as it selected the best and weeded out the
unfit. There would be no being for the Volk outside human action: the
ontology of the Volk depended on the ethic of eugenics.
1. Ethics as Eugenics
Within SS thinking, ontology was prescriptive, and this made it implode into
ethics. The laws of nature were to be observed in human action, and they were
consequently confused with moral laws. Conversely, it was by definition
morally commendable to abide by the laws of nature. There was no difference
between “is” and “ought”. And the observance of moral natural laws would
lead to the Volk’s good as the supreme good in this world.
Furthermore, SS ontology divided and ranked peoples and individuals
according to race. It allowed different amounts of value to human individuals
and groups in function of racial components, heredity, and health. Such an
ontological concept produced an anthropology based on natural inequality in
terms of intrinsic value. Consequently, it could do without the notion of
universal moral obligation, and people who had low scores on the scale of
value could be weeded out in a moral way, since no inherent dignity would
protect them.
Now, SS thinking was meant for application, that is to say, for police
action in the sphere of being, so as to regulate human existence in compliance
with recognized standards of ontological and anthropological value. If many
Nazi thinkers and officials had said that Nazism was applied biology, Nazi
practical philosophy or the application of biology amounted in fact to

eugenics. And as the rational application of the laws of nature, eugenics
merged with ethics. The weeding out of the Minderwertige, thus, was nothing
but the accomplishment of the laws of life, which would confer moral
respectability to the operation.
This way of reasoning carried the intended effect of nullifying any
connection between eugenics and violence, regardless of the consequences on
life and reproduction for human beings. Any conceptual trace of violence
would be erased by invoking science, the Volk’s survival, and the laws of life
in support of eugenics. Consequently, there would be no moral issue with
preventing the genetically defective from reproducing, or with terminating
lives “unworthy of living”. Eugenics as practical philosophy or applied
biology would lead to the morally dignified killing of human beings.
2. The Biological Security of Lebensraum
The main task of the SS was to guarantee the biological security of the
German Lebensraum. And to SS thinking, security was biological by
definition, since all threats posed to the Volk were biological by nature, as
they could all be traced back to biological agents. Indeed, in the struggle for
life, the Volk could be dragged down to decay by declining rates of
reproduction, in terms of quantity and quality, by faulty heredity materials
conveyed by reproduction, as well as by the presence of foreign races and
Untermenschentum in the Volk’s body. To the SS, human beings were
biological beings and nothing else, whose quality and value were biologically
determined. Assuming that Aryan people would be the yardstick of the best,
different humanity would be prima facie suspect, and it could be dangerous as
soon as it would degrade into sub-humanity.
By and large, the Volk’s Lebensraum was populated in part with
dangerous Untermenschen, who, because of their particular biological make-
up, could ruin the Volk’s reproductive health. Furthermore, insofar as soul
and mind qualities were also the result of biological determinism, these
Untermenschen had soul characteristics and frames of mind that would make
them work against the German Volk. They would use their mind and
conscience to set up ideological systems that could destroy Germany and ruin
the racial quality of the Volk.
Since the biological threat to the Volk could be reduced to attitudes and
actions of humanity or sub-humanity living within the Lebensraum, biological
security was political at the same time. And since Untermenschen, because of
their particular heredity and racial make-up, would be necessarily the Volk’s
back-stabbers, political security was ultimately a biological matter. To SS
thinking, biological evil and political enmity merged into one another. The
Volk’s enemies were somewhat biologically determined people, and
biological characteristics per se would turn these people into enemies.
The Police of Being 83
Untermenschen and Jews in particular were necessarily political enemies

through biological determinism.
The SS concept of enmity went further than racial issues, so as to
include people with physical or mental handicaps. Significantly, in a report
from Einsatzgruppe B, we can read that forty-seven people were arrested by
Sonderkommando 7c, including one mentally ill person and three other (my
emphasis) enemy elements (BA R 70 SU / 9 a). Therefore, the mentally ill
were enemies of the Reich. Likewise, in another report in particular, mention
was made of victims including five mentally ill persons and forty-four other
(my emphasis again) enemies of the Reich (BA R 70 SU / 9 b). On this issue,
SS thinking was consistent with itself.
By and large, as Richard M. Lerner writes: “it is clear that, in the Nazi
world view, disease and immorality were mutually defining.”
This conception of disease allowed Nazi ideologues to view biological
goals (of racial survival and purification) and political goals (of
destroying enemies of the state) as interchangeable. (Lerner, 1992, p. 33)
To SS thinking, the quintessential locus of the fusion between biological evil
and political enmity was the Jewish race. As a matter of fact, a debate was
going on among SS authors, with regard to the proper racial designation for
Jewry. Some of them thought that Jewry was a race in the strict sense of the
term, while others sometimes used concepts such as “quasi-race” or “special
race”, so as to suggest that Jewry was to be considered as a race for all
practical purposes, whatever the theoretical difficulties inherent in the
definition of race. At any rate, they all agreed that the essence of Jewry was
biological.
But with regard to Nazi security, the so-called Jewish race represented
the basic problem to be solved, because of the magnitude and immediacy of
the danger for the Volk’s health and for the Reich as the political vehicle of
the Volk. In reference to the biological models through which their ontology
was structured, SS thinkers conceived of the very existence of Jewry as a
virulent poison or as a lethal bacteria, threatening the Volk’s body with short-
term decay and ruin, as evinced by the events that had taken place in 1918.
Action of some sort was mandatory.
3. Total War For Total Health
In this context, action could only be war, since it constituted a response to the
presence of an enemy whose enmity was radical, immutable, predetermined,
and implacable. War was legitimized on the basis of ethics (since self-defense
should always prevail in matters of survival), of anthropology (given the non-
human or less human nature of the enemy), and of ontology (because war was
inseparable from the nature of reality, as the most natural way of advancing
for survival). Besides, the German Lebensraum had to be conquered through
war, before it could be sanitized. As Richard Bessel writes in substance, war

was central inside Nazi ideology: it represented the first goal of any nation, as
well as the yardstick for measuring racial health. Nazi ideology was in fact an
ideology of war, predicated on the eternal struggle of races, and aimed at
reshuffling the distribution of races through Europe. Within Nazi thinking,
war was the essence of Nazi political intentions, as well as the precondition
for their achievement (Bessel, 2004, pp. xi-xv).
As a matter of fact, as soon as ontology and ethics implode within
nature, as they are or can be nothing but the expression of nature, whereas
nature is war, it becomes obvious that war cannot be construed as a state of
exception or as a form of moral evil.To the contrary, war is considered as life,
therefore, as something morally acceptable, as normality in all senses of the
term. And according to the law of nature, nothing may legitimately have
precedence over survival as victory in this war. In this sense, the ultimate
value, in a world made of bodies at war, is vested precisely in the body, in the
conditions for victory and survival, that is to say, in health. And the noblest
body of all, whose health is the most precious, is the Volk.
Nazism appeared as a condenser that brought this conceptual evolution
to paroxysm. To Nazi ideology, war was the actualization of an ontology of
nature. It expressed the normal state of nature as well as of culture, since
nature represented the ultimate justification to which culture had to conform.
Therefore, war became absolutely and completely boundless, for it knew no
limitations of space, time, morality, or law, as it encompassed the supreme
law of supreme reality: nature. It preceded any value and pervaded any
reality, as it conveyed the basic reality of nature along with the moral duty
attached to the sanctity of the cause. In this sense, it carried inevitably a
dimension of totality (Mineau, 2004).
Within Nazism as a war praxis, Operation Barbarossa represented the
practical apex of an ideology, to which SS thinking contributed a great deal.
As a matter of fact, it was the war for Lebensraum: it was the military effort,
on a gigantic scale, to seize a huge living space that would yield quasi-infinite
quantities of food and raw materials, so as to protect Germany from any
blockade in the foreseeable future. But the newly conquered Lebensraum had
obviously to be sanitized, because of the presence of Jews and of other
Untermenschen, that is to say, of populations of racially determined
troublemakers and potential back-stabbers. Therefore, Operation Barbarossa
was the war of the Holocaust, as well as a war for the enslavement of the
Slavs.
The invasion of the Soviet Union aimed at solving Germany’s
geopolitical and racial problem, by accomplishing a much more radical
version of the incomplete Great War. Like the military operations of 1914,
Barbarossa was presented as a defensive war. As had happened during World
War I, the war was pictured as a struggle in which the very existence of the
German Volk was at stake. But this time, Nazi racial determinism
reinterpreted the stakes in terms of biological survival for the Aryan race. In
this perspective, Operation Barbarossa could be a war of extermination, but
also, at the same time, a defensive war (Ingrao, 2002, p. 226). And owing to
its anti-Jewish biological nature that transcended the traditional political
borders, such a defensive war would generate concern and support throughout
Europe as a whole. As stated in a SS textbook: “The solution of the Jewish
question has become today, beyond the Reich’s borders, a question of life for
Europe’s peoples.” (BA NSD 41 / 61, p. 77) In this way, in August 1941, the
SS began to kill the Jewish women and children also, because the biological
survival of the Nordic race was at stake. And the great racial war made sense
in relation to the millenary Reich to be born out of victory and expansion in
the East (Ingrao, 2002, p. 229).
4. Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust
The war in the East, owing to the ideological stakes and to the amount of
violence generated, was in a sense already total from the start. And its total or
totalizing character had its roots in warfare as experienced in World War I, all
the more so that Operation Barbarossa lay at the end of a cultural spectrum
that had originated to a large extent in the events of July and August 1914.
World War I with the 1918 collapse remained a focal point of Hitler’s
thought, as exemplified in numerous speeches. And typically enough, when
Hitler had to explain the necessity of Operation Barbarossa to his soldiers, he
recapitulated a story that had begun in 1914 (BA/MA RH 27-7/156).
The World War I syndrome was present also in other Nazi leaders as
well as beyond the Party proper. Heinrich Himmler, for instance, was proud
to feature himself in a speech among the “young soldiers of 1917” (BA NS 19
/ 4009 a). Technically, what he said was true, since he had received his long-
awaited call to duty late in 1917. But he was to spend 1918 in camps at
Regensburg, Freising, and Bamberg: the “soldier” would never leave
Germany (Smith, 1971, pp. 49-60). World War I and its aftermath, however,
would stay with him throughout his career: for example, in an article authored
by him late in 1942 and intended for a Hungarian newspaper, we read that the
SS must see to it that the Jewish-Bolshevik revolution be prevented from
breaking out again in Germany (BA NS 19 / 1454). And a sketch, on the front
page of Das Schwarze Korps, pictures a SS trooper stopping the Dolchstoss,
by grabbing the threatening arm of a Red Army officer identified as “the Red
International 1918-1941” (BA NSD 41 / 137 d).
By and large, World War I was a form of ethics to the Nazis, in that it
encompassed and summarized the meaning of life to them, and Nazism
epitomized the theoretical and practical continuation of World War I through
official peace and within the Weimar Republic. Indeed, not only was Nazism
based on an ontology positing the continuity of war as a normal and desirable
state of affairs, but it never put an end to World War I and continued to
consider itself at war with people formally designated as enemies and

practically fought with all means available, then, to paramilitary groups
engaged in street skirmishes and in theatrical insurrections. This process
lasted until it transformed itself into World War II as the culmination of
efforts aimed at terminating at last World War I. And the continuation line
from the first to the second war lay in Jewry. As Hitler had declared in
substance in one of his earliest speeches: “we will never forget what Jewry
has done to us.” (Jäckel, 1980, p. 128) This entails that measures would have
to be taken in order to ensure the ultimate happy ending of the continuum, and
Hitler gave some hints in this direction during the often-cited speech of 30
January 1939: World War II would be World War I not repeated, but
revisited.
To be sure, World War II was to be the continuation of World War I not
so much by other means as with different purposes, linked to the ideological
radicalization of war in Europe as it exacerbated existing tendencies up to
paroxysm. And if the 1939-1941 period was to some extent a reenactment of
the year 1914 (except in Poland), Barbarossa would be the apex of World War
II, in the sense that it opened the door to the most radical aspects of Nazi
ideology, in a way that pushed to the extreme the potentialities inherent in the
new war. In other words, World War II may be characterized as the ultimate
radicalization of World War I. It began more or less as a follow-up but
shifted, under the empire of ideology and especially within Barbarossa, to an
absolute form of civil and civilian war.
A war for the sake of Nazi ideology tended to be absolute by nature,
since the stake was not a particular pool of resources that could be shared
somehow, but Truth and Good about which no compromise was possible.
And given that the enemy, then, was nothing but the embodiment of
corresponding anti-values, of error and evil, the demand for his or her
eradication became absolute. Operation Barbarossa was by itself total in its
concept as an ideological war, aimed at fighting civilian populations in a way
that would exclude any compromise. It was total in that it was conceived as
the ultimate venture into social hygiene, in that its goal was total health.
Within the Nazi perspective, the permanency of war makes sense in
relation to the permanency and virulence of threat, whereas modern trends of
thought in Nazism tend to reduce the threat to the existence of biological
substrates and the response to threat to a purely rational problem-solving
matter. Ironically, although Nazi thinkers were filled with contempt for
contemporary materialism, they had thoroughly assimilated the philosophical
trends that had reduced being to nature. In a world where being has imploded
into nature, where life has no other dimension than biological, and where war
is the normal state of affairs, the ultimate value can be but survival, whereas
evil becomes what calls survival into question. Such a world is characterized
by the biological transfiguration of evil, in the sense that evil has lost any and
all metaphysical references, so as to designate almost exclusively what
jeopardizes legitimate aspirations to survival, namely, disease. But evil and

disease designate not only the faulty functioning that threatens organisms
from within, but also the existence of organisms (such as viruses and bacteria)
representing a threat by virtue of their sole existence.
The crucial point, here, is that evil, as a threat to this ultimate value, is
not only conceived as disease, but also reified in the biological constitution of
a category of beings, in such a way that the threat, finally, lies in these beings’
existence. And since the Volk is the ultimate locus of ontological value, or of
healthy and fit existence, disease and biological unfitness gradually set in as
racial distance from the Volk increases. In other words, the more being or
existence is seen as biologically different from the Volk, the more it is
perceived as inimical and threatening, as the mind progresses through the
spectrum of Untermenschtum down to the limit represented by the Jews.
Thus, given that the ultimate good consists in preserving the body politic or
the Volk against threats understood in terms of disease, politics becomes the
accomplishment of social hygiene, which could be defined as a set of theories
and practices aimed at weeding some individuals and groups out of the sphere
of moral reciprocity, out of society, or even out of existence, because of some
of their characteristics accounting for their marginality and identified with
uncleanliness or disease. And if, for more than a century, social hygiene was a
deep trend at work in Western culture in general, nowhere did it “flourish” to
the point it did in Nazi Germany. Confronted with the pervasiveness of
biological evil, Nazism was the politics of hypochondria.
In Hitler’s speeches and writings, biological or biologizing notions taken
from popularized scientific culture were everywhere and, given Hitler’s
unique influence, they would soon spread to other Nazi thinkers, as well as to
like-minded individuals and beyond. In general, such notions were
characteristic of the Nazi and Nazi-related discourse to the point that they
were always present in it, from the movement’s beginnings in the early 1920s
until late in World War II. Examples abound, here, apart from the well-known
descriptions, in Mein Kampf, of Jews as bacillae and parasites. For instance,
in a speech pronounced late in 1943, Himmler depicted the Volk as a body in
which human beings can be like poison (BA NSD 71 / 44). Or, as in the photo
album Der Untermensch, the Jewish-led struggle of the Untermenschen
against human beings was presented as something natural, like the attack of
pest bacillae against healthy bodies (BA NSD 71 / 44). In a particular speech,
by the way, Himmler developed as usual the notion of decency
(Anständigkeit), identified with cleanliness, order, and the fight against
vermin. Although he was talking literally in this occasion, he obviously
believed that this approach was valid also in a more global perspective. And
he harped on the notion of “russification” (Verrussung), in connection with
lifestyle excesses to be condemned as morally reprehensible and health-
destructive (BA NS 19 / 4009 b).
Thus, Operation Barbarossa proceeded from this paradigmatic cultural

trend of which it represented the ultimate fulfillment. To be sure, it was the
military accomplishment of the Nazi ideology of health or, more specifically,
a large-scale and multi-faceted sanitary operation in the sick and evil world of
Untermenschen. It represented an effort to secure the basic conditions for the
Volk’s survival, within the global geopolitical context as perceived by the
Nazi leadership. And survival, for an organism living in a Social Darwinian
world, depended on access to scarce resources as well as on immunity as the
capability to repel threats from other organisms. In this sense, Barbarossa was
the Nazis’ major and most crucial attempt at securing needed Lebensraum and
at eliminating threats and sources of disease, the most lethal one being Jewry.
Here, if the war for Lebensraum is easy to understand because of its obvious
connections with “classical” imperialism, the immunity function attached to
Barbarossa as a concept was essential to it and was indissolubly bound to the
first aspect. On the one hand, Lebensraum was indispensable to the survival
of Germany, since her 1919 and even 1914 borders had made her vulnerable
to Jewish-led international schemes, as World War I and the Allied blockade
had shown. More generally, resources were needed so as to build up an
efficient immunity system. On the other hand, occupying Lebensraum made
sense provided that its environment contained no source of disease that could
nullify the expected benefits. For that reason, the territories occupied as
Lebensraum had to be cleaned up and kept clean.
In all this, for racial reasons, the peoples inhabiting the eastern space
were prime suspects as health hazards, with regard to the potential
contamination of the Volk’s blood. The Slavs in general were seen as
embodying evil to a significant extent, and their blood had to remain strictly
separated from the Volk’s bloodstream. However, if their ontological value
was too low to provide them with a genuine right to life, the amount of threat
attached to their existence was not sufficient to justify their total and
immediate eradication. Consequently, they might stay to some extent on
Germany’s conquered Lebensraum, within a political framework designed for
ensuring their enslavement. But as far as the Jews were concerned, the matter
was totally different. As Hitler, late in March 1941, made it plain to the top-
ranking military officers, Operation Barbarossa would be no ordinary military
operation, precisely because it was to be grounded on ideology as makeshift
biology. The Holocaust, then, would be and was intended to be an essential
dimension in the upcoming war: in other words, Barbarossa would be the war
of the Holocaust.
With regard to the Holocaust, it is extremely difficult to evaluate exactly
what Hitler’s intentions were, before the regime actively engaged in
preparations for waging war against the Soviet Union. But regardless of what
was on Hitler’s mind, and although the invasion and occupation of Poland had
triggered an ambiguous “diffuse Holocaust” phase in which the Nazis had
created conditions ensuring that large numbers of Jews would die, the direct
and systematic murder of the Jews was no official policy yet. Murder policies
were made in connection with Case Barbarossa, through a series of informal
decisions ranging, in all likelihood, from the early spring to the late summer
of 1941. And the situation cannot be understood in terms of a sheer window
of opportunity provided by secrecy and by the closing of borders in wartime:
killing the Jews was part of Barbarossa as a concept, as evinced by the orders
and agreements involving the Sipo-SD (Sicherheitspolizei-Sicherheitsdienst or
Security Police and Security Service), the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres
or High Command of the Army), and the OKW (Oberkommando der
Wehrmacht or High Command of the Armed Forces), as well as by the quick
evolution of practices.
In fact, Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust can be understood as a
single and gigantic sanitary operation. In other words, the couple
Barbarossa—the Holocaust represents the apex of a culture dominated by
biological values pushed to their paroxysm, by the systematic practice of
Social Darwinism, as well as by the politics of antibiotics par excellence. And
the one term of the couple is indissolubly bound to, and inconceivable
without, the other, while something logical about the fusion of the two terms
precedes the making of policies always conditioned by circumstances. To the
Nazis, on the one hand, the Holocaust became feasible with Operation
Barbarossa, since the Nazi apparatus would then seize areas with large Jewish
populations allegedly prone to Bolshevism. On the other hand, the Holocaust
became necessary because of Barbarossa, in the sense that the rational
occupation and use of Lebensraum required its purification, all the more so
that the Volk’s health had to be seen as the prerequisite for success in the
geopolitical struggles of the future.
Owing to this logical connection between Lebensraum and immunity,
Barbarossa represented in reality the geopolitics of the Holocaust. Through
the conquest of Lebensraum as sanitized by the Holocaust, it could at last take
Germany away from August 1914 and, mostly, from November 1918. At this
point, in order to avoid repetitions on a subject that has been extensively
covered, I will limit myself to three statements summarizing, in my view, the
essentials of the Holocaust in relation to Case Barbarossa (Bartov, 1996, pp.
23, 26-27, 48-50; Decrop, 1995, pp. 115-120, 143).
(1) The Holocaust was total war.
It was so because it aimed at accomplishing completely the essence of
war, namely, murder and destruction. More generally, ideological war in the
Nazi perspective cannot be seen as the continuation of politics by other
means, because the agents cannot return to the situation that prevailed before
the other means were employed. After state-sponsored violence has failed,
politics involves normally the possibility to negotiate some sort of settlement
with an adversary who has kept or can regain enough humanity to be
considered as a discussion partner. But hygiene operations do not enter this

framework, and they tend by definition to be total, since the threat is so high,
and the enemy’s ontological status so low, as to preclude any preconditions
for an agreement. In such a case, as no recognition of any type is given to the
adversary, the outcome cannot be but one-sided, ranging from strictly
controlled enslavement to sheer destruction, depending on the relationship
between the amount of threat and the level of ontological value. With regard
to the Jews, this relationship was such that murder and destruction had to be
accomplished in totality and at the exclusion of any other consideration.
(2) The Holocaust was World War I revisited.
The Holocaust took place in order to guarantee a happy ending, so to
speak, to World War I. As mentioned earlier, Hitler assumed that World War
I had never ended and that history, since 1914, could be explained as a single
line of continuity dictated by Jewry’s aggression and will to power. In this
respect, the speech to the Reichstag on 30 January 1939 remains a key clue to
the understanding of historical continuity as envisaged by Hitler (Domarus,
1965, p. 1058). As he said in substance, if the Jews succeed in plunging
Europe into war again, the result this time will not be the victory of
Bolshevism (indissociable from Jewry), but the elimination of the Jewish
race. In other words, we will see a happy ending this time, because we will be
careful enough to hit the real enemy. At last, then, World War II will have
rectified the course taken by World War I.
(3) The Holocaust, therefore, was at the same time the cure for, and the proper
ending of, World War I.
With Barbarossa, World War II shifted from the destruction of armies
and states to the destruction of humanity, intended not as a means (as had
happened mostly during the first part of the war) but as an end by itself.
Barbarossa represented the practical and necessary accomplishment of an
ideology that revolved around concepts of total war and total health. Nazism
and SS thinking came from total war and were heading for total health,
through Operation Barbarossa and the Holocaust.
5. The Antibiotic Character of SS Praxis
The SS took at face value and accomplished Hitler’s key concepts of racial
purity and Lebensraum. In a sense, SS thinking was to a large extent the
moral management of Hitler’s ideological impact, as it rested on the equation
of the Good with nation, empire, hegemony, race, and war. In a world where
God was Nature and its laws, the supreme value at stake for the Volk as
quintessential being in nature was the couple survival/health. In relation to
this, the derivative values were purity, obtained by hygiene, and soil,
conquered by war. And these values were moral, in the sense that they
commanded duty and provided legitimacy for action. More specifically,

cleansing and war were natural, therefore, moral.
To the SS, space management was essentially an antibiotic operation:
providing for the internal security of the German Lebensraum amounted to
controlling the spread of an infectious disease, which lay in the existence of
the Jewish people. But as compared to the situation that had prevailed in the
thirties, and despite the fact that Operation Barbarossa lay in the logic of total
war for Lebensraum, the Nazi successes soon aggravated the problem and
sparked up a sense of great urgency in SS minds, for at least two reasons.
Firstly, the newly conquered Lebensraum was overflowing with Jews:
the number of Jewish agents of contamination, within the German sphere of
control, was now multiplied by many times. In Christopher Hutton’s words:
The paradox of the expansion of the Nazi state was that inherent within
European colonialism. The greater the area of territory annexed, the
greater the hybridity of the population controlled by the state. The
genocidal nature of that expansion, in particular in the east, reflected its
radical settler-colonial agenda and the radical will to police the
boundaries of the Volk. … For Nazism, survival in evolution required
the genocide of the Jews. (Hutton, 2005, pp. 206, 212)
Secondly, all those Jews of Europe, who were allegedly responsible for the
current war, were waiting for an opportunity to bring about a repetition of
1918. The thought of such a “danger” looming behind the scene would soon
exert some pressure on the Nazi panic button. Since preventing a repetition of
1918 constituted the basic core of the SS mission, the SS would take steps to
ward off the danger and submit the German Lebensraum to an appropriate
antibiotic treatment. Such a treatment was considered as morally justified,
therefore, all the more so that the paramount values of victory and health were
obviously at stake.
SS thinking was obsessed with security, especially with regard to the
interior of the Reich, Volk, and blood. The task of the SS was to guarantee the
ideological security of politics, as well as the political security of ideology.
To SS eyes, the Holocaust appeared as the ultimate precondition for security.
6. The SS Rationale for Killing the Jews
The SS pictured itself as the police of being. Through police intervention, it
removed from being any and all beings whose existence was deemed noxious
per se to the German Volk. And it felt justified to do so, all the more so that
SS thinking had worked out the proper ontological, anthropological, political,
and ethical concepts that would provide legitimacy to the Holocaust.
x Ontological reasons
In support of the Holocaust, SS thinking could invoke the laws of Nature

and the need to prevail in the struggle for survival. As part of life as a
whole, human life was a struggle between races, and any form of
weakness would be eliminated. Therefore, against the Jews, the German
Volk only applied the laws of Nature, as it implemented its basic and
natural right to life, by eliminating a noxious and threatening racial
entity. So was life, and, consequently, there was nothing wrong in being
and in staying alive.
x Anthropological reasons
Human equality and universal dignity were challenged by SS thinking.
Human value was differential, in function of the biological and racial
substratum of individuality: human beings, thus, could be divided into
Hochwertige and Minderwertige. Since they would not have the same
amount of value, they did not enjoy the same rights within the sphere of
reciprocal moral obligations. On that basis, the Jews constituted an
inferior and noxious race, at the lowest level of Untermenschentum. Even
at that level, whatever humanity they still possessed could be called into
question. Since they were biologically dangerous and outside the sphere
of moral obligations, because of their belonging to Untermenschentum,
they could be killed without any infringement upon rights or dignity. The
Holocaust was legitimate per se, since it killed dangerous biological
beings who were endowed with no value and enjoyed no human status.
x Political reasons
The Holocaust was legitimate, because it represented an act of political
self-defense against a dangerous internal enemy. State security could be
invoked. The Jews were preparing to stab Germany in the back once
again, and they were trying to throw the country into the abyss, once
more, as in 1918. The Jews were enemies at war with Germany, and all
enemies of Germany were Jewish or Jewish-inspired. There was nothing
wrong, in wartime, with killing mortal enemies who had declared war
first.
x Ethical reasons
They flew from the other categories, by covering the ontological,
anthropological, and political arguments with relevant moral concepts
such as correctness or decency (Anständigkeit), virtue, and duty. The
Holocaust was legitimate from a moral viewpoint, because the laws of
life were supreme for all living creatures, because self-defense was
natural in the struggle for life, and because the Jews as Untermenschen
were outside the sphere of moral obligations, while they were at the same
time dangerous, busy as they were to plot the ruin of the country.
Globally speaking, the Holocaust was an act of virtue and duty,

accomplished under duress or necessity by selfless people who put the
good of the Volk first.
7. In Summary
The Holocaust took place in a context that had worked out the four basic
preconditions for it to happen:
1. biological anti-Semitism;
2. colonialism and racial anthropology;
3. a powerful, modern and bureaucratic state;
4. and the modern freedom to create values and to forge the good in
line with science.
SS thinking made a huge contribution to these four theoretical and practical
elements, on which the Holocaust project was based.
SS thinking worked on the basis of the equation and confusion between
four concepts: disease (ontological) / inferiority (anthropological) / enmity
(political) / evil (ethical). The Jews were the quintessential embodiment of
these concepts. Thus, the Holocaust was justifiable on these four accounts.
Nine
SS IDEOLOGY REMEMBERED
The Holocaust was a joint Nazi venture that involved several offices of state
and government. And when deportations on a large scale became thinkable in
Europe, the Wannsee Conference was called to coordinate the efforts of the
participating agencies. Besides the civil service proper, other respectable
bodies offered their gracious contribution to the Holocaust, like the
Wehrmacht, the role of which has been highlighted by numerous publications,
including the photo exhibit organized by the Hamburger Institut für
Sozialforschung, in the 1990s. Some researchers have scrutinized the role
played by the professions, by the private sector, and by the Reichsbahn. In
these various agencies, people could and did collaborate to the Holocaust,
directly or indirectly, out of a mix of reasons including ideological conviction,
professional ethics, legal constraint, careerism, self-interest, etc. In terms of
ideology, some of them were die-hard Nazis, while others were Mitläufer of
all sorts, traditional anti-Semites, lukewarm people who would always
privilege their self-interest over ideology, or indifferent people who were
simply not prepared to take issue with the legitimate authorities on moral
concepts.
This being said, the Holocaust would not have happened in the absence
of Nazi ideology and of the SS system. Firstly, the Holocaust would have
made no sense outside of Nazi ideology, to which the SS contributed a great
deal: it rested on a vision of Jewry as a mortal biological enemy engaged in an
all-out struggle against Aryan people, determined to poison Germany in her
very blood supply, and waiting in the wings to replay 1918 and to stab the
German Volk in the back once again. Genocide could proceed only because
the Nazi leaders thought along such lines, regardless of whatever drifting was
allowed by the circumstances in 1941. Secondly, the SS and police apparatus
happened to be indispensable, given the scope and difficulties of the intended
genocide, and it is doubtful whether any other Nazi agency could have
succeeded in doing anything close to it. In fact, to use Richard Breitman’s
phrase, it was Heinrich Himmler who was the “architect of genocide”
(Breitman, 1991). And it was Reinhard Heydrich who chaired the Wannsee
Conference, where he appeared as the main officer in charge of the whole
operation. In other words, although the SS could and did benefit from the
contribution of other Nazi offices, although it could and did enlist the support
of other sectors of government, society, and the economy, it was and
remained the main apparatus of extermination, in charge of a genocide
intended as such. The Holocaust was mostly (although not exclusively) an SS

endeavor.
1. The Holocaust Memorial Museums and Education Centers
Today, the Holocaust Memorial Centers carry the legacy of the Holocaust as a
Jewish catastrophe that reverberated over mankind as a whole. They exist as
an ultimate response to Nazism and SS ideology, through the words of
remembrance. Since they are devoted to commemoration as well as to an
educational presentation of the Holocaust, it may be assumed that they have
reserved a prominent place to Nazi ideology in general and to the SS in
particular, in which the Holocaust found its meaning, its raison d’être, as well
as the condition for its practical feasibility.
With this assumption in mind, I undertook to visit a certain number of
these centers throughout North America, to check whether some validation
could be obtained. Of course, given the limited scope of this chapter, I had to
exclude the thousands of memoirs authored by survivors, in order to
concentrate on the exhibitions proper. It was impossible to visit them all, but I
tried to see as many as possible, in order to collect a sufficient sample as a test
for this hypothesis. This should be interpreted not as a statistical quantitative
study, but rather as a first step in a broader survey that I will try to complete
in the future.
x St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center, St. Louis, Missouri
It is a small institution that relies very much on the support of the local Jewish
community. It rests on a limited amount of material resources, but on a great
deal of staff devotion.
It shows testimonies in which the dialectic between normality and
abnormality is emphasized. Survivors invoke their legitimate aspirations to a
normal life, broken by the Holocaust as a tragic parenthesis of history, but
later vindicated by emigration to the United States. In these presentations, the
SS and the Nazis in general are mostly absent: the insistence is put on the
personal tragedies within a historical parenthesis.
The exhibition purports to describe the Jews’ daily life, relatively
normal at the beginning of Nazism, but increasingly threatened as time went
by. Some historical explanations are provided with regard to the causes of
catastrophe, centered on the Nazis’ seizure of power in Germany and on
subsequent history.
The SS is not really identified in its particularity: the perpetrators are the
Nazis in general. In the section on propaganda and anti-Semitism, one can see
a front page of Das Schwarze Korps and one of Der Stürmer. A poster
presents the Einsatzgruppen and the first massacres of the Holocaust: much
meaning in a few words.
x The William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, Atlanta, Georgia
SS Ideology Remembered 97
This museum displays a wealthy and well-organized exhibit, which comprises

a large number of interesting but largely known photographs, completed by
other pictures brought by survivors or by Jewish families established for a
long time in the Atlanta area. This presentation is supplemented by recorded
testimonies of survivors. But the exhibition proper presents a general view of
the history of Jewish persecutions, the apex of which lies in the Holocaust.
Everything is clear, concise, pedagogical, and well summarized.
The organizers stick mostly to the facts. There are few mentions of Nazi
ideology, borrowed sometimes from the front pages of Der Stürmer, and very
little on science and racial theory. The SS is present on several photos, but it
is only an element of a global system. There is no mention of its ideology and
organization. But the exhibition integrates some aspects of recent historical
works about the Reichsbahn, the Auschwitz-bombing issue, and German
resistance.
A large propaganda poster is displayed, entitled (in Polish): “Death to
Jewish-Bolshevik murderers”. The image is really powerful. It presents a
“Jew” in a Red Army uniform, who has just run two women and a very young
girl through his bayonet. A German soldier is trying to hit him with his rifle
butt, as if the “Jew” was nothing but a snake or an insect to be crushed.
Actually, the image says much without words. The “Jew” is so brutal that he
cannot be human, and, consequently, the German soldier does not kill him as
he would kill a “human” soldier, by shooting him. To the contrary, here, he
tries to kill the “Jew” as a non-human creature. The legitimacy of the act rests
on the inhuman character of the “Jew”, as evinced by the shocking horror of
his crimes.
x The Jewish Museum, New York, NY
This museum features a collection of Jewish ancient artifacts, and it presents a
summary of the history of Israel. It contains a small section on the Holocaust,
under the theme of rupture and continuity. Some camps and ghettoes are
mentioned, as well as non-Jewish victims of Nazism.
There is no mention of the SS. The perpetrators are always designated as
“the Nazis”. And the arts are allowed to speak, through the works of George
Segal (The Holocaust) and Anselm Kiefer (The Heavenly Palaces).
x Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York, NY
Jewish life is presented through archive audio-visual documents and survivor
testimonies. One can see the well-known photo of Himmler during the putsch
of 1923, as well as the young Himmler’s personal copy of Mein Kampf. There
is a poster on biology and politics, and a brief comment on the Nazis and
ethics, saying in substance that the Nazis also embraced traditional values
such as strength and order, although these values were distorted by racism.
The exhibition features a chronology of the main events surrounding the

Holocaust. The Einsatzgruppen appear in the chronology, but the SS as such
is the object of little mention. There is a significant amount of information
about Poland, racial policies, and life in the ghettoes.
The exhibition presents a summarized history of the Holocaust, with
insistence on human dignity. A mosaic of 2,000 photos symbolizes the trains
of deportees. These people had lives and houses, families and friends: they
had names.
x Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, Glen Cove,
NY
In this center, the staff has set up a detailed exhibition that contains several
original elements. The presentation is well organized and quite systematic.
It starts with a reminder of the most important dates in the history of
anti-Semitism. It narrates the main events around the Nazis’ seizure of power,
illustrated with some well-known photographs. Most importantly, it devotes a
certain amount of space to Nazi eugenics and biological racism: it recalls the
laws against racial mixings, the theories and teachings about inferior races,
the role played by Eugen Fischer, the emphasis put on health, and the murder
of 5,000 handicapped children in 1939, during Operation T4.
With the beginning of the war, the exhibition moves to a description of
the ghettoes in Poland. The visitor can see some elements of information
about the SS, through a basic description of the Einsatzgruppen. Three photos
are displayed, including that one of a SS man who is shooting a woman with a
child in her arms, in 1942, in the Ukraine.
Then comes the usual description of the camp system, and the
perpetrators are usually designated as “the Nazis”. A lot of photos are
provided, with comments on the main events, on SS physicians, and on social
cooperation that made the Holocaust possible. And there is a summary of the
main events surrounding the camp liberation and the aftermath of 1945,
including photos and a section about those who have helped the Jews.
The exhibition also contains some original elements, which are not
usually present in most centers. First of all, the organizers recall the Herero
genocide: for the sake of historical truth, indeed, it must be known that the
Holocaust was not the first and only genocide committed by Germany. Then,
they point to the fact that 2,500 Aryan teenagers, including many jazz
listeners, were incarcerated. They mention that 7% of camp guards were
women, who could be as brutal as their male counterparts. And a few words
are said also about the gay tragedy: 100,000 gay people were arrested, among
whom 50,000 were sent to ordinary prisons and 15,000 to concentration
camps. Besides, the children’s tragedy is emphasized: a garden is dedicated to
the young victims of the Holocaust.
In conclusion, this exhibition comprises some mentions and descriptions

of the SS. But it does not say much about ideology, apart from some
comments on eugenics and biological racism.
x Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania
It is a small museum that is entirely contained within a single room. It
depends on volunteer work as well as on contributions by local survivors. It
results from hard work and commitment by its founder, a Polish Jew who
settled down in the area. It maintains a register about the survivors in the
Philadelphia area, and it has recorded testimonies in books and DVDs.
The main events surrounding the Holocaust are presented in a
summarized way, through posters and old newspaper clips. In a corner,
mention is made of the children in the Holocaust.
Some space is devoted to the Babi Yar mass executions, thanks to a
Philadelphia survivor who lost her family there. A map shows the
Einsatzgruppen in action, through the Baltic States and Bielorussia. But the
perpetrators are usually designated as “the Nazis”, and there is no mention of
ideology.
x United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, DC
I am now presenting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum next to
the tiny Philadelphia center, and I am doing this on purpose. In terms of
practical organization and financial means, however, no comparison would
ever be possible. As a matter of fact, the Washington museum is enormous,
certainly ranking first in the United States. It constitutes a world-class
museum, visited by crowds of tourists and supported by powerful means of all
sorts. In addition to a permanent exhibition that includes many videos, it hosts
temporary presentations, conferences, an archive section, a well-endowed
library, and a staff of seasoned specialists. Like smaller centers, however, it
rests on the dead and survivors of the Holocaust: it says the same words with
the same voices, from a philosophical point of view.
The first section deals with the Nazi assault on the Jews, from 1933 to
1939. With a wealth of photos and texts, Jewish life before 1933 is described.
Figures are provided about the Jewish population of Europe.
In this section, mention is made of ideology, through Der Stürmer.
There is also a detailed presentation of racial science, with a photographic
mosaic of races, supported by the slides that belonged to the geneticist Otmar
von Verschuer. A few words are said also about the so-called “Rhine
bastards”.
While documenting the persecution of Jews, the organizers do not omit
the other “enemies”: gays, Freemasons, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses. They
describe German society under Nazism, insisting on the progressive exclusion
of Jews. After the outbreak of World War II, the emphasis shifts to the crimes
and executions committed by the German army in Poland. The SS is
mentioned, then, for the first time, as well as the T4 euthanasia program and
American responses. Photos of Jewish families are displayed in a high hall.
The following section concentrates on the Final Solution proper, from
1940 to 1945. It recalls Hitler’s “prophecy” of 30 January 1939. It displays
cobblestones and wall fragments from the Warsaw ghetto, and it documents
ghetto life in Theresienstadt, Lodz, and Kovno. The perpetrators are usually
designated as “the Nazis”.
The organizers present the action of the Einsatzgruppen, who benefited
from the support of the army and of local nationals. Reference is made to the
Lebensraum issue, as well as to a quote from Himmler who justified
Germany’s war. Other considerations include the Babi Yar executions, the
Romanian Holocaust, the Wannsee Conference, and the role of the
Reichsbahn in the deportations. The railcar “Karlsruhe”, donated by the
Polish State Railways, is on display. Besides, the visitor can read a
description of procedures in killing centers, as well as comments on slave
labor for German firms, and on the reasons why Auschwitz was not bombed.
The Auschwitz gateway arch “Arbeit Macht Frei” is reproduced, along with
the Mauthausen crematorium.
A last section is concerned with issues such as the rescue efforts, the role
played by Raul Wallenberg, the Jewish revolts, the death marches, the
bystanders, and the Kielce pogroms. Mention is made of the children, with
drawings from the Theresienstadt ghetto. A wall of rescuers bears 10,000
names, and a Hall of Remembrance terminates the visit.
x Holocaust Memorial Museum of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
This small center opened in 1985. It is organized around old photos and
posters. It contains a series of portraits of Jews who have been important in
the arts, literature, music, science, and politics.
The exhibition begins with the description of Jewish life before the war.
Various photos aim at shedding light on Jewish contributions and successes in
all fields, including that of philanthropy. A few pictures document the social
exclusion of Jews in Germany, and mention is made of anti-Semitic
propaganda around Der Stürmer and Julius Streicher.
The Jewish fate in the war years is presented through posters about the
Lodz ghetto, the concentration camps, and Theresienstadt, with three
reproductions from the children’s art collection. In a summary of the
Holocaust, the emphasis is put on the children, whose murder was part of the
Nazis’ racial struggle. Besides, the visitor can see a display of identity
documents, Jewish stars, drawings, and maps representing Nazi domination in
Europe, along with the main concentration and extermination sites. Issues
related to the end of the war are also addressed, like the discovery and
liberation of camps, Jewish emigration, the creation of Israel, and the role of
Canadians in wartime and postwar Europe. A section is devoted to the
“Righteous Among Nations”, and a Hall of Remembrance features the names
of the victims’ families, along with a Torah saved from a synagogue during
the Kristallnacht.
Most of the time, the perpetrators are identified as the Nazis. There are
very few structured comments about the SS, and ideology is seldom
mentioned. But a section on statements and reflections raises some
philosophical questions. Different comments are presented about Jewish faith
and dignity, dehumanization, human indifference, and the absence of
humanitarian concern. Arrogance, dogmatism, and ignorance, which are
usually concealed by claims to absolute knowledge in total disregard to
reality, often lead to human disaster. Auschwitz appeared as the first mutation
that led to Hiroshima and to genocides in Africa. It symbolizes the system of
dehumanization.
x Montreal Holocaust Memorial Museum / Musée commémoratif de
l’Holocauste à Montréal, Montreal, Canada
This is a well-structured museum, established in the heart of a large Jewish
community. It presents the Holocaust through a series of historical
documents, posters, recorded videos, and photos. It posits the duty to know
about history, to remember, and to fight any propaganda promoting racial
hatred, anti-Semitism, and intolerance.
After a few generalities about Jewish life in Central Europe, the first
section covers the period from 1919 to 1939. It deals with the aftermath of
World War I, the Versailles Treaty, and the general crisis. It stresses the
importance of Jewry in German life: for example, between 1901 and 1933, 11
among the 37 German Nobel-Prize winners were Jews.
At the same time, the Nazi Party was rising. This part of the section
deals with anti-Semitic propaganda, displaying a copy of the Protocols of the
Elder of Zion, as well as a copy of Revolution der Deutschen by Josef
Goebbels. A large poster focuses on ideology. It outlines racism and the
hierarchy of races as the basis of Nazi ideology. It provides details about an
ideology centered on the exploitation of nationalism, on a mythic and
powerful Aryan nation, and on the Führerprinzip in a totalitarian state
monitored by the Gestapo. Several pictures are displayed, in order to
document the teaching of Nazi genetic and racial theories at school, and to
show Nazi scientists in the process of studying Aryan purity. Two copies of
Mein Kampf are shown, along with two front pages of Der Stürmer and the
cover page of the Protocols of the Elder of Zion. Nazi ideology, so one reads,
spread through all aspects of life in Germany: school, Hitler’s Youth,
newspapers, books, games, magazines, etc..
The section ends with considerations on terror, the Gestapo, and the
concentration camps. Jewish efforts to emigrate would increase after the
Kristallnacht.
The second section focuses on the 1939-1945 period, starting with a
fragment of a letter from Heydrich to the first Einsatzgruppen in the
background. A chronology of the year 1939 is presented, along with data
concerning the persecution of Polish Jews, life in the ghettoes, and the Jewish
Councils. As racism propagates through Europe, owing to the collaboration of
satellite and occupied states, extermination increasingly appears as a short-
term possibility.
The exhibition shows the Einsatzgruppen of 1941 on 5 photos. Babi Yar
is mentioned, as well as the collaboration of local militias in Lithuania and in
the Ukraine. Then come the descriptions about deportations, transit camps in
occupied countries, the SS in control of the Drancy camp, the extermination
factories operated by Sonderkommandos of detainees, and the role played by
the Wannsee Conference.
The organizers do not forget the struggle for human dignity, and they
narrate the resistance and rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto. Then come detailed
presentations about Hungary, the Lodz ghetto, and the death marches. Some
emphasis is put on the extent of collaboration, in France, Romania, Croatia,
etc., on the Auschwitz-bombing issue, and on the world’s indifference and
idleness. The aftermath of the Holocaust is also the object of some
consideration, including the quest for justice, the role of the International
Military Tribunal, the Eichmann trial, and the creation of the Deschênes
Commission in Canada.
The museum includes a Hall of Remembrance that contains a funeral
urn of ashes from Auschwitz, a column from a Warsaw synagogue, and an
eternal flame. It must be added, here, that Montreal hosts the third largest
community of survivors in the world. Their number was 30,000 in the early
1980s.
This exhibition allows much space to ideology and the SS. The events
surrounding the Holocaust are explained in reference to ideology.
x Dallas Holocaust Museum, Dallas, Texas
It is a small museum, organized by its founder Mike Jacobs, who is very often
present on the premises. The exhibition begins with a quote from Albert
Einstein on bystanders who make the world unsafe, in the proximity of a
photo of German civilians accompanied by American soldiers in Buchenwald.
It is supplemented by a theater showing recorded videos of survivors.
The Hall of Remembrance is impressive, with its commemorative
plaques in marble on the walls. It contains also a small urn of ashes from
Majdanek, a Torah from the Jewish community of Horovice, in
Czechoslovakia, and a Torah found in Debica, Poland. There is a tombstone
for the victims, along with the Urn of David’s Star, which encloses human
ashes from the Auschwitz-Birkenau crematorium.
The exhibition is centered on Jewish life and culture. It displays copies
of old newspapers of the 1940s, identity documents and photos of daily life,
an old boxcar from Belgium, and objects from the camps. Mention is made of
the Warsaw ghetto and of its uprising, of Operation T4, and of the Wannsee
Conference. There is a series of photos and texts about the camp of Malines
Mechelen in Belgium, because of some survivors who settled down in Texas.
Through the display of photos, some key aspects of the Holocaust are
covered, but there is no chronological presentation of the events.
The exhibition proper contains little on the SS, except for one photo of
the Einsatzgruppen. There is no mention of ideology, apart from the front
page of Der Stürmer and a photo on Nazi racial science, featuring a scientist
who was measuring a skull, along with a chart explaining the transmission of
heredity. But the connection with ideology is present in this quote from Mike
Jacobs, survivor and founder:
What happened to the Jewish people happened because Hitler wanted to
avoid a repetition of Germany’s defeat in World War I. I did not know
that at that time.
And the opening toward philosophy lies in the following statement: “My
sense of human dignity was in myself, and I did not let the SS take it away
from me.”
x Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston, Texas
This well-organized exhibition gathers the essentials. It starts with a poster
that summarizes the Holocaust, with insistence on the children. A reference to
ideology is quickly introduced, through the notion of superior race: racial
superiority was to be protected against the Jews, but also against the Gypsies
and the handicapped. Other victims were Soviet prisoners of war, the Slavs as
slave labor, and gays. All in all, Nazism was out to challenge democratic
values and to deny human rights.
The exhibition narrates the history of the Jewish people, commenting on
Jewish life before the Holocaust. It insists on the fact that Germany’s Jews
took part in World War I, and that 14 among the 38 German Nobel-Prize
winners, from 1905 to 1936, were Jews. Asking how disaster ultimately
happened, the organizers allow much space to a detailed presentation of the
history of anti-Semitism, including comments on traditional anti-Semitism
and on Wilhelm Marr. This section is important, because there would have
been no Holocaust without anti-Semitism.
The section on the Third Reich presents Hitler as the author of Mein
Kampf, a copy of which is displayed (the first English edition), accompanied
by a summary of the book’s racist ideology. Then come some considerations
and photos on the growth of Nazism, on the opening of concentration camps,

and on the importance of power structures such as the SA, the Gestapo, and
the SS led by Himmler. Nazi ideology is described as based on nationalism,
German racial purity, anti-Semitism, one-party dictatorship, anti-
Communism, imperialism, and expansion through war. Racial anti-Semitism
appears at the center of Nazi policy, with its insistence on purity of blood and
culture and on a judenrein Germany. The promotion of Nazi ideology
depended on posters, radio programs, movies, the press, schools, and
universities. Nazi education sought to spread ideology and racial theory, as
the Nazis identified the Jews in racial biological terms: the Jews had no right
to exist, and they should be forced out of Germany. These points are made
and supported through photos, the display of anti-Semitic publications, and
comments on heredity charts and on the “scientific” teaching of techniques
for measuring racial facial characteristics.
The section on World War II begins with Hitler blaming the Jews for the
war and pledging their annihilation. There are descriptions of the ghettoes, of
the Jewish councils, and of the invasion of the Soviet Union, with several
pictures of the Einsatzgruppen. Mention is made of Hitler who connected
Communism with Jewry, of Babi Yar, of the role played by Heydrich and the
RSHA, of Eichmann and the Gestapo, and of the Wannsee Conference, with
quotes from the minutes.
The description of the camps and of the extermination process is very
detailed. The organizers narrate the opening of death installations, the role of
the Reichsbahn, the arrival and selection under SS control, life in the camps,
and the working of the gas chambers. Several photos document the institution
of slave labor and the involvement of some private ventures. Some non-Jews
are also depicted as victims: gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Soviet POWs,
Gypsies, and political enemies, who suffered from an overall Nazi assault on
human values. Some space is devoted to the Theresienstadt childen, to
medical experiments, and to Dr. Josef Mengele: scientists sought to test
methods of sterilization, in order to control the reproduction of “inferior”
humanity.
A last section includes considerations on liberation, emigration, Jewish
life after the war, the International Military Tribunal, and the Kielce pogroms.
A stone monument lies in the backyard.
Has the world learned from the Holocaust? Not enough, so the visitor
reads: the world is still plagued with ethnic cleansing, anti-Semitism, and the
denial of the Holocaust. It is necessary to remember, and to fight ethnic hatred
and racism. Memory is a reminder that evil, ethnic hatred, racism, and
religious intolerance should never happen again. In summary, this exhibition
includes much on the SS and ideology.
x Virginia Holocaust Museum, Richmond, Virginia
This museum centers on Lithuania, since Jay Ipson, the main founder, was
originally from that country. It hosts a very well organized exhibition,
featuring lots of Holocaust-related scenes reconstructed with stage settings
and dummies. It shows a street stone from the Warsaw ghetto, along with
Treblinka railroad tracks. It starts on the street, actually, with the main
entrance that imitates a fence, marked with the following signs: Vorsicht,
Lebensgefahr, Hochspannung. Parked close to the entrance, on an old track,
sits a boxcar identified as Deutsche Reichsbahn. The visitor remarks some
insistence on trains, with rails drawn on the floor, and a first poster about the
Reichsbahn.
The Kristallnacht is dramatically evoked through the reproduction of a
Jewish store covered with Nazi warnings. There is a brief chronology of
Nazism and the Holocaust, completed with the Nuremberg laws, posters on
Dachau and Buchenwald, photos and drawings from the camps.
The emphasis is put on the German occupation of Lithuania. The
organizers comment on the massacres of Jews committed by Lithuanian
nationalists, in Kovno. Close to photos of the Kovno ghetto, a poster accuses
local anti-Semitism. Then comes the narration of the events that took place on
28 October 1941, on Democratic Square, when SS Sergeant Helmut Rauca
separated families in columns: the 9,200 people sent to the left were met with
firing squads. Karl Jaeger, commander of Einsatzkommando 3, recorded the
dead. A photo of Rauca, responsible for the executions at the Ninth Fort, is
tagged to a SS dummy. Mention is made of a West German request for
extradition, reported by the Montreal Gazette, on 13 November 1982. Two
photos show the SS blowing up the Kovno ghetto in 1944.
There are posters on the Final Solution, referring to Hermann Göring
and to the Wannsee Conference, and on crematoriums operated by Sonder-
kommandos. In addition to a reproduced crematorium, the visitor can see the
reproduction of a gas chamber, with a dummy pouring Zyklon B inside.
Overall Holocaust figures make room also for non-Jewish victims: Poles,
Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally and physically
handicapped, African Germans, and captured American GIs.
The exhibition contains a large section on the death marches, on
liberation, and on Exodus 1947. A Hall of the Righteous shows photos along
with the description of courageous acts. The children are evoked through a
series of drawings and some watercolors, as well as through the children’s
memorial.
A large section also is concerned with the International Military
Tribunal, organized around a reproduction of the courtroom with dummies.
Much space is allowed to subsequent trials, to the RuSHA, to the
Einsatzgruppen, to Adolf Eichmann, and to later genocides. At the end, the
visitor reaches a prayer hall and the Holocaust survivors’ memorial wall.
This exhibition is quite original and certainly impressive. Inside, there is

much on the SS system and actions. But there is very little on ideology in
general.
2. Does the Starting Hypothesis Verify?
Obviously, the starting hypothesis fails partly to verify as formulated. Among
the Holocaust memorial centers already visited, most say little about the SS
and Nazi ideology. Three important exceptions must be mentioned, here,
regarding the centers located in Washington, Houston, and Montreal.
The further exploration of other centers would probably allow for a few
more exceptions, but I doubt that the overall conclusion would be different. In
all the centers and museums visited, however, SS ideology is implicitly
present, because they all exist as remembrance of its consequences. By means
of necessity, they all constitute a response to it. And that response is conveyed
mostly through the vocal silence of images.
3. Philosophy by Means of Photography
In several publications, the SS used photographs to illustrate the basics of its
Weltanschauung. By showing pictures of people who had inborn defects, who
were suffering from various diseases, or whose appearance was affected by
the misery and hardships that they had to endure, SS authors tried to cancel
any sympathy, in their readers’ minds, for people whose lives were obviously
not worth living.
The Jews were key victims of SS thinking thus illustrated. Photographs
of Jews were intended to convey the impression that they were subhuman,
dangerous, and criminal at the same time, to such a point that any display of
sympathy would appear as out of place. These images alone should make the
point that Jewry lay outside the sphere of moral obligations, as a dangerous
group of sub-humanity whose existence would be tolerated only at Germany’s
greatest peril. SS photography was aimed at illustrating the legitimacy of the
Holocaust.
In a sense, Holocaust memorial centers in general fight images by means
of images. In fact, they rely mostly on images, including survivors’
testimonies recorded on videos. They use a great deal of photography to show
that persecutions and genocide were catastrophes that happened to real
people, as individuals and as members of families.
Holocaust memorial exhibitions seem to be inspired by Emmanuel
Lévinas’s moral philosophy. Against Nazi thinking in general, they display
whole galleries of photos that show the Other’s Face. In opposition to SS
ontology, anthropology, and ethics, they posit the existing, human, and
dignified faces of real Jewish people. In this sense, they represent a sort of
vindication of ontology, anthropology, and ethics.
A. Ontology Revisited
Against Nazi thinking, political will, and genocidal praxis, the photo exhibits
affirm Jewish existence, qua existence and qua Jewish. The Jews had lived
for centuries before the Holocaust, and they had produced a complex and
wealthy culture, in its spiritual as well as in its material aspects. During the
Holocaust years, they were still alive, tragically alive, even when they were
standing on the brink of their graves, literally sometimes, in the case of those
who were murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. After the
Holocaust, they retained existence as much as they could, through the
memory of the dead, and through survivors who would open the future to
further generations. Jewish existence is posited and reaffirmed, before and
after the Holocaust, despite SS theoretical and practical denial, despite
genocidal intent and praxis.
B. Anthropology Revisited
Against Nazi thinking, against racial theory and eugenic biology, the photo
exhibits in memorial centers posit and affirm Jewish humanity, qua humanity
and qua Jewish. The Other’s Face is always and necessarily human, through
its myriad manifestations. Beyond the Nazis’ theoretical and practical attempt
at separating Jewish and humanity, Jewish humanity is irreducible as such.
All those Jewish faces, in the Polish ghettos, on the ramp at Auschwitz-
Birkenau, or elsewhere, are human faces as embodiments of the Other’s Face.
And they are all equally human, human in equality, and equal in humanity.
More often than not, Holocaust memorial exhibitions pay tribute to non-
Jewish victims of Nazism, and, sometimes, to victims of other genocides as
well.
C. Ethics Revisited
The Other’s Face demands respect. To SS subversion of Kantianism as well
as of other major approaches to ethics, the photo exhibits in Holocaust
memorials oppose the victims’ faces as faces of humanity. Humanity
represents a necessary and sufficient condition for value endowment and for
respect. In other words, humanity commands ethics. Humanity is the
reference point for equal value, and no rational moral argument can ever
suspend its foundational role in ethics. The Holocaust was a crime against
humanity, regardless of any a posteriori moral justification.
Most Holocaust permanent exhibitions do not devote much space to
Nazi ideology or to SS thinking in particular. But they all respond to it,
through the faces of victimized humanity. Purposively or not, the photographs
that document the Holocaust carry that response to present and future
generations.
4. In Summary
By and large, the Holocaust memorial centers posit ontology, anthropology,
and ethics. They exist, for the sake of humanity, so as to prevent evil of such a
magnitude from happening again. These centers themselves, the recorded
testimonies, but also the loud voices of all these silent photographs, may be
the beginning or the rebirth of philosophy. Perhaps they are the origin of
philosophy, in the sense intended by Karl Jaspers.
Ten
CONCLUSION
To some respects, the structure of the SS was reminiscent of that model
developed by Plato in the Republic. On top of the system stood Himmler and
all those superior officers who were authorized to teach, to preach, to write,
and to command, because their mind had a direct access to Nazi Truth and
Good. The bulk of the SS was composed of fighters whose virtue revolved
around courage and faithfulness, strengthened by the “right opinion” about
Truth and Good as taught to them by their master thinkers during their
curriculum. The ignorant people protected by the structure were those who
belonged to the Germanic race and Völker.
The heuristic value of such a comparison remains limited, of course. But
it has the merit, at least, to problematize the connection between praxis and
philosophy. Inside a modern, biological, and totalitarian version of the City, it
leads to some questions about a possible link between philosophy and SS
ideology as a blueprint for reorganizing the Reich.
1. Philosophy and Ideology
Philosophical reflection appears as the consequence of rationality turning
outward, in a quest for gaining knowledge over the world, and inward, in a
double effort to discover the meaning of the thinking self and to provide
guidance to the self propelled into the sphere of action. In this sense,
philosophy is a rational endeavor that aims at reflecting over the nature of
being, at understanding humanity’s nature and place in this world, and at
laying out the ways in which human beings must act in order to fulfill
themselves qua human beings. As it tries to comprehend and to articulate the
delicate relationship between being, humanity, and the Good, it tends to posit
an ontology that will provide the framework for understanding anthropology,
which will give meaning in turn to ethics.
Philosophy comes out of reason, confronted with a world in which the
uniqueness and limitations of humanity take place. Spurred by astonishment,
it undertakes to discover the world, but it soon realizes that its constructs may
always be called into question through doubt, while it becomes increasingly
aware of the limit situations that characterize humanity’s experience in this
world (Jaspers, 1965). Since it cannot reach any absolute knowledge or all-
encompassing truth, and because it is out of the reach of any self-operating
human mind, it is produced by the continuously renewed dialogue that binds
together, throughout space and time, a multiplicity of searching minds whose
humility is linked to the acute awareness that philosophy is, and will be
forever, an unfinished conversation.
Ideology presents some structural resemblance with philosophy, at least

at first sight. It consists in a mixed system of sentiments, cognitions, and
beliefs about life in this world, providing the framework for a vision of the
human community, from which an all-purpose social and political morality
derives. Formally, since it claims some knowledge about the real world and
since it displays a vision of the human experience, the meaning of which is to
be translated into moral ideals and norms, it represents a structure of though
resting on the articulation of ontological, anthropological, and ethical parts.
But contrary to philosophy, it calls for the closure of the mind on rigid and
definitive concepts of Truth and the Good. It evacuates anything related to
astonishment, doubt, and the awareness of limit situations, because it claims
to rest on absolute certainties, from which the power to realize the human
good directly flows. Thinking and research may and do continue to take
place, but they will be enclosed in a framework and focused on a perspective
that may not be called into question. In this sense, the quest for meaning and
the dialogue between equal and equally searching minds are over, now that
the truth has been discovered, now that the good forces its clarity upon any
good-willed person. The conversation, then, is finished.
The line may sometimes be thin between philosophy and ideology, but
dogmatism is a fair indication that such a line has been crossed. Ideology
begins when a vision of the human community is held as true and good, true
and good enough to be imposed on people. It represents an ontological,
anthropological, or ethical temptation to which even official philosophers tend
to succumb. Ideologies integrate data from philosophy and science, but they
are meant for action. At some point, they give rise to decisions about truth
and the good, by those who want to see real and efficient action in support of
their beliefs.
2. SS Thinking Revisited
At first sight, SS ideology comprised a philosophical dimension, owing to the
structured presence of ontological, anthropological, and ethical elements. But
it conveyed a perverted form of thinking that involved the crystallization of
the approach, the closure of contents, and the replacement of dialogue with an
inspired monologue. More specifically, ontology was degraded in the
production of naturalistic Truth, anthropology turned to biologism, and ethics
found its accomplishment into moralism as the foundation for a praxis of war,
destruction, and genocide.
In fact, SS thinking failed to be authentically philosophical for at least
four reasons. Firstly, it gave precedence to “life” and feeling over reason.
Secondly, it crystallized truth and good as indisputable dogmas. Thirdly, it
sheltered itself from any real dialogue by discrediting prima facie other
speakers as inspired by “lower” humanity or as Minderwertige themselves.
Fourthly, it denied value to humanity per se.
Conclusion 111
But SS thinking was not meant to meet those professional philosophical

standards which it would challenge at any rate. Its purpose was the
actualization and the moral management of the requirements of Nazism. In
this sense, ethics constituted a key dimension of the Nazi eschatological
Weltanschauung, since a new type of humanity was to be built in accordance
with Nature and its laws, for the sake of health and fitness, as the only
possible forms of the now secularized good. And since evil was nothing but a
merely biological and immutable category, mass murder would become the
only way of actualizing the requirements of ethics. More specifically, ethics
appeared as the ultimate moralization of ideology, with the Holocaust as the
almost innocent result of the daily praxis of virtue.
Popular wisdom says that it is always more difficult to construct than to
destroy. Himmler and the SS failed to transfer many of their ideas to praxis,
and, in particular, to implement their family policies. They did not succeed in
building up and in developing their community of clans, made of racially pure
peasants-soldiers. Many of them, including Himmler himself, failed to live up
to the requirements of SS ethics. But the SS showed a remarkable amount of
efficiency when formulating and implementing its views about enslaving and
killing people by the millions, especially in the East. Mostly, in the favorable
circumstances of the war, SS thinking merged into praxis, as the SS did
succeed in accomplishing the Holocaust.
SS writers and speakers were not interested in pursuing essential and
existential issues by means of open thinking. Out of self-closure within Nazi
ideology, SS thinking refused to think. Within that refusal, the Holocaust
constituted the paroxystic result of SS ideological self-consistency.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANDRÉ MINEAU was born in Sorel, Canada. He studied philosophy at the
University of Montreal. He is currently Professor of Ethics and History at the
University of Quebec at Rimouski. He conducts research on Nazism within
the framework of projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities
Research Council of Canada. He is the author of Operation Barbarossa:
Ideology and Ethics Against Human Dignity (Amsterdam and New York:
Rodopi, 2004).
INDEX
anthropology, 3, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, Dolchstoss, 16, 17, 18, 20, 73, 75,
34, 39, 41, 42, 46, 47, 49, 61, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 85
62, 81, 83, 93, 106, 108, 109,
110 Einsatzgruppen, 83, 85, 96, 98,
anti-Semitism, 1, 13, 14, 17, 19, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, 105,
20, 23, 46, 53, 54, 55, 93, 96, 107, 115
98, 101, 103, 104, 105 Enlightenment, 7, 8, 9, 10, 35, 72,
Artamanen, 23 81
Auschwitz, 97, 100, 101, 102, Entwurf der 9 Lebens-Leitsätze
103, 107 für SS, 57
ethics, 3, 4, 5, 12, 14, 22, 31, 33,
Babi Yar, 1, 99, 100, 102, 104 34, 39, 42, 47, 49, 51, 52, 62,
Belgium, 15, 103 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 95, 97, 106,
Berchtold, Josef, 21 107, 108, 109, 110, 111
Berger, Gottlob, 28 eugenics, 3, 12, 20, 81, 82, 98, 99
bio-engineering, 3, 63, 69 evil, xiii, 1, 14, 49, 59, 62, 82, 83,
biology, 11, 12, 13, 14, 35, 39, 42, 84, 86, 87, 88, 93, 104, 108,
46, 63, 81, 82, 88, 97, 107 111
Bismarck, Otto von, 9
blockade, 16, 17, 20, 73, 74, 75, France, 11, 15, 102
77, 78, 84, 88 Freikorps, 21, 55
Blut und Boden, 23, 30, 35 French Revolution, 7, 8, 9
Bolshevism, 20, 28, 46, 47, 48,
49, 66, 77, 78, 89, 90 genocide, 2, 4, 59, 63, 91, 95, 98,
Bonaparte, Napoléon, 8 106, 110
Britain, 11, 77 Germany, 1, 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 15,
16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26,
Caesar, Joachim, 28 29, 34, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 47,
colonialism, 13, 14, 20, 66, 91, 93 48, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, 63,
Communism, 17, 20, 104 66, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75,
77, 78, 79, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88,
d’Alquen, Gunter, 28 89, 92, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101,
Daluege, Kurt, 4, 28 103, 104, 106, 113, 115
Das Schwarze Korps, 28, 29, 46, Gestapo, 25, 101, 102, 104
85, 96, 114 Goebbels, Josef, 101
Der Stürmer, 96, 97, 99, 100, 101, Günther, Hans, 41
103
Der Untermensch, 29, 66, 87 Haeckel, Ernst, 11, 12
Dinant, 15 Halder, Franz, 78, 79, 114
disease, 14, 83, 87, 88, 91, 93 Hamburger Institut für
Sozialforschung, 95
Hauptamt Orpo, 25 Jaeger, Karl, 105

health, 3, 14, 39, 45, 62, 63, 69, Jaspers, Karl, 108, 109, 116
72, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 87, 88, Jews, 5, 13, 18, 19, 23, 25, 40, 41,
89, 90, 98, 111 46, 47, 48, 49, 55, 56, 59, 60,
Heiden, Erhard, 22 61, 62, 65, 66, 67, 75, 77, 78,
Heissmeyer, August, 28 79, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92,
Herder, Johann Gottlieb, 10 93, 96, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102,
Heydrich, Reinhard, 4, 39, 62, 95, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107
102, 104, 115
Himmler, Heinrich, 2, 4, 5, 16, 20, Kaiser Wilhelm, 9
22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, Kant, Immanuel, 54
31, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44, Kersten, Felix, 54, 59, 116
47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, King Heinrich, 63, 64, 65
56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64,
65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 74, 79, Lagarde, Paul, 29
85, 87, 95, 97, 100, 104, 109, Langbehn, Julius, 29
111, 113, 114, 115, 116 Lebensborn, 30, 67, 68, 116
Hitler, Adolf, 1, 2, 4, 14, 17, 18, Lebensraum, 3, 13, 20, 29, 64, 67,
19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 26, 27, 31, 75, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 88,
34, 45, 52, 55, 56, 57, 60, 63, 89, 90, 91, 100
64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 74, 75, 76, Lithuania, 15, 65, 102, 105
77, 78, 79, 80, 85, 86, 87, 88, Lodz, 100, 102
90, 100, 101, 103, 104, 115, Louvain, 15
116, 117 Ludendorff, Erich, 21, 75
Hobbes, Thomas, 8
Holocaust, 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 25, 40, 49, Marr, Wilhelm, 13, 103
58, 59, 61, 62, 63, 67, 78, 80, Marxism, 19, 23, 35, 48
84, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, Mein Kampf, 17, 20, 74, 75, 76,
95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 77, 87, 97, 101, 103, 115
102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, Mengele, Josef, 104
108, 111, 114, 115 Meyer, Konrad, 65, 66
hygiene, 2, 5, 13, 44, 86, 87, 90 Minderwertige, 39, 43, 45, 46, 82,
92, 110
ideology, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 14, 16, modernity, 7, 8, 13, 19, 71
18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, morality, 2, 29, 31, 37, 46, 47, 52,
28, 29, 30, 31, 33, 35, 39, 47, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62,
48, 49, 51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 58, 84, 110
59, 60, 64, 66, 69, 77, 84, 86,
88, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97, 99, 101, National Socialism, 17, 34
102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 109, nationalism, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14,
110, 111 16, 17, 20, 41, 55, 101, 104
Ipson, Jay, 105 Nazism, 1, 2, 3, 7, 11, 14, 17, 18,
20, 21, 24, 28, 29, 33, 34, 35,
Jacobs, Mike, 102, 103 37, 42, 45, 49, 51, 62, 67, 73,
Index 123
75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 85, Schreck, Julius, 21
86, 87, 90, 91, 96, 97, 99, 103, science, 5, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 41,
104, 105, 107, 111, 114, 117, 42, 71, 82, 93, 97, 99, 100, 103,
189 110
Nuremberg, 4, 22, 105, 115 SD, 24, 89
Second Reich, 7, 9
ontology, 3, 4, 13, 14, 35, 38, 39, Sieg der Waffen — Sieg des
40, 46, 56, 57, 61, 62, 81, 83, Kindes, 44
84, 85, 106, 108, 109, 110 Social Darwinism, 11, 13, 17, 20,
Operation Barbarossa, 2, 5, 52, 89
78, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 90, 91, Soviet Union, 48, 66, 74, 77, 104
116, 189 SS, i, ii, xiii, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 16, 20,
Oradour-sur-Glane, 1 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,
29, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37,
pantheism, 36 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45,
Pasteur, Louis, 12 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 54, 55,
philosophy, 3, 4, 5, 8, 22, 23, 31, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64,
33, 34, 51, 72, 82, 103, 106, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 72, 73,
108, 109, 110, 189 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82,
Poland, 60, 74, 78, 86, 88, 98, 83, 84, 85, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95,
100, 102 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102,
politics, 4, 9, 12, 13, 24, 32, 39, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109,
41, 47, 55, 68, 72, 77, 87, 89, 110, 111, 114, 115, 116
91, 97, 100 SS Handblätter für den
praxis, 3, 4, 22, 31, 39, 62, 63, 65, weltanschaulichen Unterricht,
66, 68, 69, 71, 84, 107, 109, 41, 48
110, 111 SS thinking, 3, 5, 29, 31, 49, 51,
Protocols of the Elder of Zion, 63, 72, 73, 82, 83, 90, 91, 111
101 SS-Führungsamt, 25
Prussia, 9 SS-Hauptamt, 25, 51
SS-Kateschismus, 57, 58
race, 1, 13, 22, 27, 29, 30, 33, 35, SS-Leithefte, 28, 29, 30
39, 41, 42, 43, 46, 47, 48, 56, SS-Mann und Blutsfrage, 43, 46
58, 64, 65, 67, 72, 81, 83, 85, SS-Verfügungstruppe, 22, 26
90, 92, 103, 109, 115 Stosstrupp Hitler, 1, 21
Rassenpolitik, 44, 67, 68, 116 Strasser, Gregor, 23, 52
Röhm, Ernst, 52
Rosenberg, Alfred, 18 Theresienstadt, 100, 104
RSHA, 24, 25, 104
RuSHA, 25, 28, 67, 105 Untermensch, 46, 48, 61, 66
Ruthen, Rudolf aus den, 28
Versailles, 9, 16, 17, 20, 77, 101
SA, 1, 21, 104 Verschuer, Otmar von, 99
Salomon, Franz Pfeffer von, 22 violence,, 8, 82
virtues, 22, 53, 57, 58 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89,
Volk, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 18, 19, 90, 91, 92, 98, 100, 103, 104,
20, 23, 25, 30, 33, 34, 35, 36, 110, 111
37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, Watson, James R., v, xi
46, 47, 49, 54, 56, 57, 58, 60, Wehrmacht, 20, 26, 28, 61, 65, 69,
62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 71, 78, 95
72, 73, 74, 81, 82, 83, 84, 87, Weltanschauung, 28, 30, 33, 34,
88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 115 35, 36, 37, 42, 49, 55, 56, 62,
68, 106, 111
Waffen SS, 24, 25, 26, 27 White Russia,, 66
Wallenberg, Raoul, 100 World War I, 3, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17,
Wannsee Conference, 95, 100, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 34, 54,
102, 103, 104, 105 69, 71, 73, 78, 79, 84, 85, 86,
war, 1, 3, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 88, 90, 101, 103, 116
20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 27, 29, 34, World War II, 15, 25, 86, 87, 90,
37, 39, 40, 41, 47, 48, 53, 55, 100, 104
60, 64, 66, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77,
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Thinking and The Holocaust

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SS THINKING AND THE HOLOCAUST

G. John M. Abbarno Steven V. Hicks

Amsterdam - New York, NY 2012

Cover Design: Studio Pollmann

Previous Titles in HGS

Alan Milchman and Alan Rosenberg, eds. Postmodernism and the

Dan Stone, ed. Theoretical Interpretations of the Holocaust. 2001. VIBS

James R. Watson, ed. Metacide: In the Pursuit of Excellence. 2010. VIBS

Camila Loew, The Memory of Pain: Women’s Testimonies of the Holocaust.

One The Historical Context of Nazi Ideology 7

1. Modernity and Reason 7

Two The SS System and Nazi Ideology 21

1. The Origins of the SS 21

1. Race: The Basic Marker 41

1. Himmler: Ethics and Ideology 52

Six The Police Of Nazi Praxis 63

Seven The Police of History 71

1. The Cult of Germanic Ancestors 71

Eight The Police of Being 81

Nine SS Ideology Remembered 95

1. The Holocaust Memorial Museums 96

Ten Conclusion 109

1. Philosophy and Ideology 109

Works Cited 113

But can SS ideology be seen as something unique or original ? No,

2. Using ontology and anthropology as foundations, SS thinking developed

4. It accomplished the fusion of the modern biological paradigm with the

provide the Holocaust with legitimacy, from the viewpoints of ontology,

6. Given that institutional philosophy largely ignores SS theory and praxis,

5. A Brief Recall of Definitions

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF NAZI

By and large, modernity in its political dimension lay in the combination of

reaction against the French Enlightenment, it soon carried a very strong

second part of the nineteenth century, the concept of nation, especially in

of a gamut of widely different cultures that might be charming sometimes, but

On such a basis, biology became the obliged theoretical framework

couched in a biological framework claimed Lebensraum and activated some

At an unprecedented level, World War I was characterized by the mass

explanation for defeat, an explanation that would be much more welcome,

looking for scapegoats on whom to blame the national catastrophe.

struggle, selection, and counter-selection were used to describe social

THE SS SYSTEM AND NAZI IDEOLOGY

Gebhard’s father, whose mind was catholic, conservative, and nationalistic,

fighting ideologists, commanded by Himmler as a fighting teacher and as a

As Himmler explained, the work of the SS depended on its Hauptämter

miracle”, so to speak, in the SS capability to transform every recruit in a sort

4. The Production and Dissemination of Ideology

figure would double by November 1935. It would reach ultimately 750,000

Ideological education in the Waffen SS should neither be overestimated

to be characteristic of, or appropriate to, a given nature (arteigene) (BA NSD

accomplishments. And since the SS could be the ideological fighting guard of

to be left to traditional Christian denominations. Officially, under Himmler’s

3. Volk and Blood

Himmler, they stressed the importance of that “victory of the child”.

(Himmler, 1936, p. 30) In the Leithefte, an author wrote sententiously that

position to face people who could no longer be differentiated from animal

notions. This was precisely the function that was to be performed by SS

pedantic, meticulous, rigid, intolerant, and insecure. His concept of duty

impact of the structure. In the early 1920s, as Richard Breitman reports,

In addition to making his ordinary values functional within the

normal circumstances of daily life, but who could be extremely harsh

psychical experience. In fact, sentiments related to compassion continue to

THE POLICE OF NAZI PRAXIS