HEINRICH HIMMLER
By Peter Longerich
In the lives of the leading figures of the Nazi establishment there’s often a large gap between an individual and their historical significance. In his biography of Goebbels, Peter Longerich could make something out of this, using it to gain a greater psychological insight into his subject. In this equally massive biography of Himmler it’s more of a problem.
For Longerich, Himmler’s private life was absorbed by his public persona. The SS was in many ways a product of Himmler’s own inhibited personality, but at the same time it came to define him. You couldn’t separate the man from the uniform. “Gradually the personality and the office became one.”
This is, then, very much a professional biography. About Himmler’s inner life Longerich remains circumspect. But was there all that much to say? I don’t think Longerich had access to the cache of letters between Himmler and his wife that formed the basis for the documentary The Decent One, but then I don’t see where they would have changed anything in his assessment. Himmler was a conservative prig, though bitter enough to succumb to fringe fantasies of mystical and racist claptrap, perhaps as a way of making up for his own inadequacies. It’s hard to see what it was he was any good at, or what he would have made of his life without the Nazi party.
Unfortunately, this makes Longerich’s book a hard slog, at times little more than a detailed calendar of Himmler’s various official functions. Things are made worse by the fact that Longerich, at least in translation, is an even duller writer than Ian Kershaw. There are interesting historical tidbits thrown up, and it’s no doubt a reliable resource, but this is a book that’s hard to read from cover to cover and it doesn’t tell us much more about its subject than we already knew.
Notes:
Review first published online May 24, 2020.
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