Killing Hitler (5 page)

The midnight oath-taking ceremony before the Feld-herrnhalle in Munich. Splendid young men, serious of face, exemplary in bearing and turnout. An élite. Tears came to my eyes when, by the light of the torches, their voices repeated the oath in chorus. It was like a prayer.
⁴¹

Already by this point, the
Leibstandarte
was engaged guarding the Reich Chancellery, Berlin’s three airports, numerous ministries, Berchtesgaden, and Himmler’s home.

It was, of course, primarily a corps of bodyguards. As such it excelled, not least in its very obvious manner. Its giant sentries, in their immaculate black uniforms with white belts and white gloves, were a gift to the propagandists. They inspired fear, respect, and envy in equal measure. One eyewitness recalled their impressive appearance in Breslau in 1938, where they remained unperturbed as a march threatened to descend into hysterical chaos:

There was, however, one group that remained immune to the excitement spreading around them, and stood fast in their positions with stoical ease. These were the Führer’s bodyguards from the
SS Adolf Hitler
, gigantic men over two meters tall wearing black uniforms and black steel helmets. They surrounded the rostrum, and, at a sign from an officer, closed ranks.
⁴²

The
Leibstandarte
was, however,
not justa
corps of bodyguards. It was the élite troop of the élite SS: Hitler’s “Household Cavalry.” Its men provided the guard of honor for visiting dignitaries. They paraded for Hitler’s birthday and for the numerous other anniversaries in the Nazi calendar, with their famed marching
band leading the chorus. But they also fulfilled a much more sinister function. They served as chief executioners during the Röhm Purge and would attend every ceremonial entry as the Reich expanded: the Saar in 1935, the Rhineland in 1936, Vienna in 1938, Prague and Warsaw in 1939, Paris in 1940. As their oath demonstrated, they were the beginnings of Hitler’s private army.

Despite the
Leibstandarte
’s apparent position of strength, a new rival was to emerge in 1935. By that time, Himmler had expanded his own power base and had succeeded in pushing for a further review of Hitler’s security apparatus. After much wrangling, he persuaded Hitler to appoint him chief of the newly formed
Reichssicherheitsdienst
(RSD, Reich Security Service), which would supersede the earlier
Führerschutzkommando
and would be responsible for the protection of Hitler and other prominent government figures.

The RSD initially consisted of only forty-five officers, divided into a number of “bureaus,” the first of which was assigned to protect the Führer. Its tasks included the routine surveillance of salient buildings, pre-event spot checks at venues, travel security, and the investigation of suspects. Wherever Hitler traveled within Germany, the RSD was granted authority over all local police forces for the duration of the visit. By the outbreak of war, the unit numbered over two hundred officers.

The fourth player in the prewar security regime was the
SS-Begleit-Kommando
(SS Escort Detachment), established by Sepp Dietrich in 1932. With the seizure of power, the clique of “old fighters” who had previously made up Hitler’s entourage were rewarded with various administrative postings, honorary positions, and sinecures. The SS Escort Detachment, therefore, effectively had to be refounded, and its new members, drawn from elsewhere in the SS, were strictly vetted. Initially numbering only about eight, it was charged with accompanying Hitler on all domestic and foreign trips. Those not on duty with the escort served as valets, drivers, and orderlies.

Meanwhile, the tug-of-war for control of Hitler’s security continued at the highest level. After Himmler’s Führer Protection
Group fell by the wayside, absorbed into the regular police and subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior, the remaining players—the RSD, the SS Escort Detachment, and the
Leibstandarte—
were forced to divide their labor sensibly. Where their remits overlapped, they had to establish discrete areas of competence. The solution was that the escort duties were undertaken by the SS Escort Detachment; bodyguards, ceremonial guards, and sentry details would be provided by the
Leibstandarte;
and the RSD would supply the professional police support, including surveillance and investigation. Between them the three formed a formidable barrier to anyone who wished Adolf Hitler harm.

An impression of the security surrounding the Führer can be gleaned from an examination of the procedures instituted in the Reich Chancellery in 1938. Any visitor to the building would have to pass through two SS sentry posts prior to entry. Then the visitor would be referred to a receptionist and issued an identification pass before receiving an SS escort to the relevant office. Thereafter, the visitor would pass the various sentries of the thirty-nine-strong permanent SS guard. On accessing the first floor, where the Führer’s suite was located, the visitor would encounter a visibly stricter security presence with meticulous identity checks. Anyone without a valid pass was liable to arrest. Upon departure, the visitor would be escorted back to the reception area, where the pass would be surrendered. In addition to all this, Hitler was also widely rumored to have employed a double, although no documentary evidence supports this supposition.
⁴³

Hitler’s transport arrangements were another obvious source of security concern. Hitler was an early enthusiast of the motorcar. He had owned one as early as 1923: a red Mercedes, which was confiscated by the Munich police following the Beer Hall Putsch.
⁴⁴
Thereafter, he acquired a string of vehicles, mainly Mercedes or Maybach, for his personal and political use. Following the seizure of power, he began to assemble a fleet of specially modified Mercedes, some of which were armor-plated, with bulletproof tires and 5-centimeter-thick glass, and were supposedly impervious to bomb blasts and small-arms fire. Despite its obvious shortcomings, however, Hitler’s favored vehicle was an open-top
tourer. Being seen was evidently more important to him than being safe.

On public appearances Hitler’s car would usually form part of a convoy of at least four vehicles. A pilot car would lead the way, followed by Hitler’s vehicle, with at least two more behind that: one carrying the SS Escort Detachment detail and another containing officers from the RSD. Elaborate routines were planned whereby the Führer’s arrival could be effected while a security cordon was simultaneously thrown across the street. Any vehicle attempting to disrupt or infiltrate the convoy was to be rammed off the road. Occasionally even star-struck pedestrians were run down.

One pedestrian who was less than star-struck was the British military attaché, Sir Noel Mason-Macfarlane, who witnessed Hitler’s convoy en route to Vienna in 1938. Near Linz, he pulled into a garage at a spot he heard that the Führer was due to pass. He recalled:

I decided to wait and see the Arch-Thug pass. Only a few minutes later a couple of Mercedes
[sic]
, filled with S.S. bristling with tommy-guns and other lethal weapons, came by; they were closely followed by half a dozen super-cars containing Hitler and his immediate entourage and bodyguard…. There was something terribly sinister about that string of shining black Mercedes, rolling along inexorably towards Vienna.
⁴⁵

In addition to his fleet of Mercedes, the “Arch-Thug” also kept a small fleet of airplanes. In the early 1930s, he had already made novel and extensive use of air travel in his political campaigning. This trend continued after 1933, when he appointed his pilot, Hans Baur, to supervise the creation of a “flying group.” As well as using the ubiquitous workhorse, the Junker-52, Hitler also employed a modified Focke-Wulf Condor, bearing the registration D-2600, as his private plane. Security measures were especially tight. Only Baur was permitted to pilot the plane, and he would never reveal the destination of a flight, even to airport
officials. D-2600 was kept in a secure hangar at Tempelhof airport in Berlin, where it was guarded by a joint detail of RSD and
Leibstandarte
and maintained by a strictly vetted team of engineers. Before every departure it made a fifteen-minute test flight, and the carriage of parcels, mail, and unauthorized luggage was expressly forbidden.

From 1937 Hitler also operated a personal train: the
Führersonderzug
, or “Führer Special.” Constructed almost entirely of reinforced steel, it consisted of a locomotive pulling a succession of as many as fifteen cars and conference coaches. It had a permanent staff of over sixty, including guards, adjutants, valets, and maintenance personnel. When on the move, the Führer Special was often preceded by a dummy train to attract any malicious intent. It was to be given priority at all times, and scheduled services were forbidden to overtake, while any following locomotive had to proceed after a five-minute interval.

Despite these measures, it was, of course, extremely difficult for the RSD to keep Hitler’s train movements out of the public domain. Given the constraints of timetabling, any departure required a minimum of two hours’ advance notice to the rail authorities, to adjust timetables and minimize confusion. And in every case, word would inevitably be swiftly passed down the line to railwaymen, stationmasters, and beyond.

For all its apparent effort and expense, Hitler’s security regime suffered a number of fundamental flaws. Most important, there was a surprisingly lax attitude toward the vetting of staff in potentially sensitive positions. Few of the RSD members, for example, were initially Nazi Party supporters, and even the unit’s commander, the rotund Bavarian Johann (Hans) Rattenhuber, only joined the party
after
his appointment.
⁴⁶
Among the
Leibstandarte
, too, Nazi Party membership was apparently not a precondition, and over a quarter of the personnel were not paid-up members.
⁴⁷

Even among Hitler’s inner circle, the same apparent laxity prevailed. One of Hitler’s secretaries, Traudl Junge, owed her position not only to her stenographic skills but also to her sister’s relationship with Bormann’s brother.
⁴⁸
Similarly, Hitler’s cook,
Marlene von Exner, was engaged solely on the strength of a personal recommendation from the Romanian dictator Marshall Antonescu and did not undergo any vetting procedure. Had she been of a mind to do so, Frau von Exner would have been ideally placed to poison Hitler. She was later dismissed when it was discovered that she had a Jewish grandmother.
⁴⁹

Albert Speer, who was to become one of Hitler’s closest confidants, noted the almost complete lack of security checks for his first meeting with the Führer in the summer of 1933. Though an acquaintance of Goebbels and Rudolf Hess, Speer was still a virtual unknown. Yet when admitted to an interview with Hitler in his Nuremberg apartment, he was ushered in by an adjutant and stood, alone, before “the mighty Chancellor of the German Reich.”
⁵⁰
Security measures, if there were any, were not mentioned.

In addition, it appears that some of Hitler’s guards did not treat their positions with the conscientiousness that one might have expected. In one instance, a formal complaint was forwarded to Sepp Dietrich after
Leibstandarte
men were caught riding in the Reich Chancellery lift. Another of Dietrich’s men was reprimanded for pressing his nose against the ground-floor windows when on duty. More seriously, weapons were inadvertently discharged within the complex on a number of occasions.

The bodyguards themselves described their efforts as insufficient, even amateurish.
⁵¹
One veteran of the
Leibstandarte
recalled that they were given no special training in their task and were merely told not to be rude to the public when protecting Hitler at speaking events. He also claimed that when on guard duty at Hitler’s residences, the bodyguards often had little to do and so doubled as messengers or errand boys.
⁵²

Perhaps because of these shortcomings, a number of uninvited visitors managed to penetrate the Reich Chancellery. All of them were intercepted, but their presence made it clear that the Chancellery was not as hermetically sealed as Hitler would have wished. Operations in the field were often just as flawed. When Hitler entered Vienna in 1938, for example, his bodyguards attempted to merge into the crowd dressed in what he described as
an “astonishing collection of clothes—rough woollen mackintoshes, ostler’s capes and so forth.” The urbane and sartorially sophisticated Viennese viewed them with amusement. Hitler was furious. “Any moron,” he raged, “could recognise them for what they were at a glance.”
⁵³

Perhaps for this reason, Hitler considered his bodyguards to be of only limited utility and felt that his continued survival was due to the benign attentions of providence. Indeed, he was notoriously impatient with his closest defenders. He had an almost visceral aversion to policemen, perhaps as a result of “years of struggle,” and could not bear to feel himself being watched. He would often shout at his SS patrols:
“Go and guard yourselves!”
⁵⁴

In the circumstances, the overlapping spheres of competence of Hitler’s numerous security organs must have proved a constant irritation. Yet this curious state of affairs was entirely of the Führer’s own making. Being congenitally suspicious, he was unwilling to allow one individual to take charge of his security apparatus. And he was also keen to utilize the principle that guided many of his political machinations—that of “administrative chaos.” Under this system, numerous organizations and individuals would be encouraged to compete in fulfilling a single task. This competition, it was thought, bred efficiency; but it also appealed to Hitler’s “Darwinian” ideal of the survival of the fittest. As one Nazi memoirist recalled, Hitler also liked to play his paladins off against each other: