Le Paradis - the Paradise - was the name of the French village where a company of the
SS-Totenkopfdivision on May 27, 1940 clashed with units of the Second Royal Norfolk
Regiment which defended the bridgehead at Dunkerque. The German unit had got its name from
the fact that it consisted of people who normally served as concentration camp personnel.
About one hundred British soldiers had entrenched themselves in and around a farm, and
their sharpshooters killed and wounded several SS-soldiers before they ran out of
ammunition. Relying on the Haag Convention of Warfare, they signalled for surrender; they
hoisted the white flag and marched out unarmed, with their hands over their heads.
The German company commander ordered them up against a wall, in front of which two heavy
machine-guns had been mounted, and then he orded to open fire; the dead comrades were to
be revenged. Afterwards the SS-soldiers with fixed bayonets checked that all Englishmen
were dead, and they stabbbed or shot those who still moved.
Nobody would have known anything about this massacre if not two British privates had
succeeded in pretending to be dead, and afterwards to surrender to a regular army unit, to
whom they told of their experience of that ruthless fanaticism which characterized the SS
at war.
Heinrich Himmler visited Le Paradis on May 31, 1940, and he had only one complaint: that
the dead SS-soldiers had not been buried immediately. But the superior of the company
commander stood up for his subordinate and explained that it had not been possible for
them to bury their dead because they immediately after the massacre had been exposed to a
violent attack.
The SS-Totenkopf-regiment was commanded by Theodor Eicke, who before the outbreak of war
had been leader of the concentration camp at Dachau, and the regiment had at that time an
extremely independent relationship with the Army Command, to which it in principle was
subject. When the army wished to investigate the accounts from the two British prisoners
of war, Himmler - with Hitler's support - immediately had the case closed.
The brutal conduct was on the contrary a means of convincing the Fuehrer that he could
employ such fanatical soldiers as his executioners.
The recognition of a special Waffen-SS a an independant military formation beside the
three traditional arms - the army, the navy, and the air force - had been on its way since
the beginning of the war. The establishment of a proper Waffen-SS was apparently not an
occurrence which attracted any special attention as it happened in the middle of the
campaign in France, and despite the fact that the Army Command jalously guarded its rights
as the only legitimate arm of the Reich.
As early as November 1938, their brutal conduct had induced Himmler to talk of developing
the semi-military Verfügungstruppe into a "complete army corps" - and from
November 1939, SS internally started to use the designation Waffen-SS for the units which
were in active service at the front, as opposed for the SS- and SD-units which served in
the mopping-up operations behind the front.
During the campaign in Poland the brutal conduct of Heydrich's special units lead to
intense frictions between Himmler and the Army Command, frictions which had culminated in
the Army Command's prohibition against using them in the campaigns against the North and
the West. SS-Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler participated in the campaign in France as a
regular army unit, while the other military SS-unit, SS-Totenkopf-Regiment, as we have
seen, demonstrated its unique interpretation of the Haag Convention's rules about the
treatment of prisoners of war at Le Paradis.
The designation Waffen-SS for the members of the SS which served at the front was used
officially for the first time in an order in March, 1940. It might be seen as an
expression of the ongoing militarization of German society - a militarization which
naturally also tokk place inside the SS-state, the state within the state.
There are certain indications that June 1, 1940 - the day of Hitler's visits to Langemarck
and La Montagne - was also made the day of the formal approval; maybe not exactly on that
day, but probably a few days later, and in that case the backdating would be another
stressing of the importance which the Fuehrer attributed to the visit to La Montagne.
Anyhow, nobody found out that Hitler again had stolen a march on his fellow-players and
opponents, because he intuitively used the chaotic events of war to camouflage his future
strategy.
Members of the SS - Hitler's state within the state - had sworn their personal oath to the
Fuehrer and therefore felt a very special obligation to go to war in a body. The SS-units
could be seen as a sort of "political soldiers", who by their mere presence
would strenghten the loyalty of the army towards the Fuehrer. It was well-known that he
did not have much confidence in the Army Command, neither in times of peace nor in times
of war - on the contrary.
Therefore it was Heinrich Himmler whom Adolf Hitler summoned privately in the evening of
June 22, 1940, in Wolfsschlucht.
The Fuehrer had received final confirmation that Providence had called upon him to
accomplish a task of messianic character. It had happened when he at 18.50 P.M. received
the message that France had signed the cease-fire agreement in the salonn car in
Compiègne. An hour later he had the signed document in his hands and could once again see
with his own eyes that "Providence" had fulfilled its part of their agreement.
Now it was his turn to act: The road lay open for the inception of the systematical
elimination of the Jews of Europe.
The meeting took place behind closed doors - probably in the Fuehrer's private rooms - and
neither Hitler nor Himmler did ever put anything in writing about what happened that
evening. It was not really necessary, for the oral order of the Fuehrer was not of a kind
to be misunderstood: during a coming campaign against the Jewish-Bolshevist Russia
SS-units should exterminate the many millions of Russian Jews, sheltered by the war - just
as it had been done to Jews and Poles the year before.
At the same time Himmler, together with Heydrich, should set to work on how the
extermination of the European Jews in areas controlled or influenced by Germany could be
carried out. The strategy in this case should be that the Jews were to be used to the
utmost as slave labourers, and whenever they came to putting the Reich to expenses, they
were to be killed. Those who survived the forced labour should be killed as well, because
otherwise they could became the foundation of a new, stronger, and therefore dangerous,
Jewry. As the Jews gradually disappeared, their forced labour should be taken over by Slav
"subhumans"; the next phase in the endeavours to create a millenary Third Reich.
The extermination should be carried out region by region, starting with the Jews in
Occupied Poland, because they constituted the largest problem. After that the Jewish
populations of the rest of Europe should be slowly but safely weeded out, eliminated along
the same lines as the Polish Jews. The ongoing Madagascar Prject would provide a suitable
cover for this process, as it would offer the best opportunities to register the Jews
outside Germany (see p. xxx..)
Heinrich Himmler was shocked, because he considered it "un-German" to kill off
entire nations. On November 11, 1941, he told his masseur, Felix Kersten, about the
proceedings which according to Himmler had taken place just after the conclusion of the
campaign in France:
"When Hitler explained what he wanted to do, I answered, without thinking of what I
said, and by sheer egoism:
"My Fuehrer, I and my SS will be ready to die for you, but don't lay this task on
he!"".
The Fuehrer had been furious at Himmler's resistance, had flown at him and had seized him
by the throat:
"Everything that you are, you owe to me, and now you refuse to obey me! You have
joined the traitors!"
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became very much afraid, but - as he told Kersten - he
had also become very disconsolate, for the accusation of treason was the worst thing that
Hitler could charge him with. He asserted that he had begged the Fuehrer to let go of the
accusation of not living up to his motto of blind obedience:
"My Fuehrer, forgive me. I will do anything - absolutely anything - that you command
me to do - and more. But you must never, never say that I belong to the traitors".
But Hitler's fit of rage had continued. He stamped on the floor and screamed:
"The war draws towards its conclusion, and I have given my word that there will not
be one single Jew left on earth when the war is over. We must act firmly and determined.
We must act fast and I am not at all sure that you are equal to this task."
It was like a diabolical version of the scene in Gethsemane, where Jesus prayed: "My
Father! If this cup cannot pass, and I must drink it, thy will be done". And Heinrich
Himmler, who had started to draw up the new National Socialist religion, followed the
command of his Fuehrer. He contacted Heydrich in Berlin and briefed him on the task, while
the Fuehrer lingered at Napoleon's grave. Heydrich promised him to take the necessary
steps, and the very next day he wrote to the Foreign Office in order to monopolize the
elaboration of the Madagascar Project.
The consciousness of having delegated the responsibility for the "un-German"
task to Heydrich helped Himmler to repress its existence. Instead he threw himself on the
more positive work in connexion with the germanization of the new German parts of Eastern
Europe. He drew up a new memorandum which contained the proposal that the area should be
occupied by German and Nordic peasant, as History had shown that otherwise it would never
become a "safe" area. He thought of providing lands for his SS veterans, as they
would then be able to constitute a well-trained reserve in case of an attack from the
Soviet Union. The rest of the native population should be used in connexion with
construction works, but they were to be gradually driven away - an eighth might be left in
villages and towns to take care of the work that was deemed to be beneath the dignity of
the German race. The rest of the population, some seven million Poles, were to be deported
to Occupied Poland, which already acted as the "garbage can" of the Reich.
On June 30, 1940, the Fuehrer approved Himmler's new draft, which in contrast to his plan
of the preceeding month did not mention the Jews at all. Even though Himmler had been
entrusted with the formal responsibility, the real responsibility lay with Reinhard
Heydrich. Himmler therefore asked him to prepare a report on the experiences gathered by
the efforts of the SS-units during the campaign in Poland, as these could form the basis
of the strategy for the coming war of extermination against the Jewish-Bolshevist enemy.
The report was ready as early as July 2, 1940, and it stressed the problematic
relationship with the army in future efforts.
According to Heydrich, the army would "indeed make use of police experts, but not in
SS-uniform and not under the leadership of SS-leaders, but [it would] solely bring the men
to effort as Geheime Feldpolizei". Or to put it in another way: the army would
"itself engage in political and police cases, put down directives for them and
consequently treat them according to its different conception of Jews, masons, marxists
and church matters".
Heydrich fully regretted this circumstance, but in this way he also offered Himmler an
opportunity to spin out the unpleasant task.
Himmler later told Kersten how he some days later - probably on July 8, 1940, when he had
a conversation with Hitler in Berlin - convinced the Fuehrer that the time was not ripe
for a systematic extermination of the Jews of Europe. Such a comprehensive project could
not be kept secret, and it would undoubtedly damage the morale of the army.
Added to this, Himmler doubted whether his Waffen-SS had the necessary ressources to carry
through the enormous task. He must have more time to make the neccessary preparations. He
must have more men, their ideological schooling must be much more intensive, etc. Lastly
it was necessary to reinforce the propaganda effort, so that the German people would at
least accept what was going to happen.
Himmler had, however, a proposition ready which would solve the problem vis-à-vis the
army. The Fuehrer must make it clear to the Army Command that the attack an the Soviet
Union was not a war that should be fought along the lines of the Haag Convention. If this
was understood, it would start a process of self-enforcing brutalization of the soldier -
and thus facilitate army accept of systematic genocide.
He also asked the Fuehrer to see to it that the Army Command realized that Heydrich's
special units in no way was placed under its orders, but that they were solely responsible
to Hitler himself.
Himmler's arguments that day was characterized by his usual petit bourgeois stolidity, and
they were immediately accepted by Hitler; Reichsführer-SS no longer refused the task, he
submitted practical problems and concrete propositions for their solution. The Fuehrer was
satisfied and he held out a prospect of a reward to Himmler, which would tie him to the
accomplishment of the task: It would be him and his SS which, once the Fuehrer had passed
away, should take care of the most important relic of his religion, the foundation myth
itself in the shape of the mortal remains of Hitler (see p. xxx).
Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler would become Wächter des Paradieses - The Guardian of
Paradise.