Free Heinrich Himmler : A Life by Peter Longerich Page A

1933–1945: Leitbild, Struktur und Funktion einer nationalsozialistischen Elite
, 5th edn. (Paderborn, 1997), 179.
     
26 . On the Dachau model see Tuchel,
Konzentrationslager
, 141 ff.; Richardi,
Schule
, 119 ff.
     
27 . Partly reproduced in doc. PS-778, in
IMT
, vol. 26, pp. 291 ff.
     
28 . BAB, R 22/1167, Service Regulations for Sentries and Prison Guards, see Tuchel,
Konzentrationslager
, 144 f.
     
29 . Details in Richardi,
Schule
, 183 ff.
     
30 . Ibid. 189 ff. and 209 f. At the cabinet meeting on 26 July 1933 Interior Minister Wagner announced that he had directed Himmler ‘to provide him with daily reports on important events and on significant measures that were being planned’ (BHStA, MA 99 526).
     
31 . Richardi,
Schule
, 179 ff.
     
32 . Published in Distel und Jakusch,
Dachau
, 80; see also Tuchel,
Konzentrationslager
, 142 f.
     
33 . The acting Minister of Justice had already advocated restricting the use of protective custody at the cabinet meeting on 7 April 1933; on 16 May the ministers criticized the unauthorized measures taken by the Bavarian political police chief against Jewish institutions in Munich. It was minuted that ‘actions of the political police chief had repeatedly caused great concern’ (BHStA, MA 99 525). On 26 July the Reich Governor complained about the measures taken by the political police against the Nuremberg Jews; Prime Minister Siebert suggested that Himmler should be assigned an ‘experienced administrative lawyer’. In the cabinet meeting on 27 February 1934 the Justice Minister declared that the practice of the political police in carrying out arrests was ‘intolerable’, and won support for his suggestion that decisions on the application of protective custody should in future be made by the Interior Minister (MA 99 526). But Himmler’s work was not seriously affected by these repeated criticisms from the government.
     
34 . Dok. D-926, in
IMT
, vol. 36, pp. 47 f. In a letter to Justice Minister Frank of 29 November 1933 Wagner refers to Himmler’s commission of 18 November1933, according to which the investigations of deaths in Dachau were to be abandoned ‘for political reasons of state’. See Gruchmann, ‘Justiz, 423 ff.
     
35 . BHStA, MA 99 525, meeting of 6 December 1933.
     
36 . Doc. D-926, in
IMT
, vol. 36, pp. 54 f., minute of Stepp, 6 December 1933.
     
37 . This is the accurate characterization in Tuchel’s
Konzentrationslager
, 149.
     
38 . In Bavaria by 13 April 5,400 people had already been taken into protective custody, more than half of them communists. See Hartmut Mehringer, ‘Die KPD in Bayern 1919–1945. Vorgeschichte, Verfolgung und Widerstand’, in Hartmut Mehringer, Anton Grossmann, and Klaus Schoenhoven (eds),
Bayern in der NS-Zeit
, vol. 5:
Die Parteien KPD, SPD, BVP in Verfolgungund Widerstand
(Munich, 1983), 1–286, here 73 ff. In June 1933 over 1,000 Social Democrats were incarcerated in a further wave of arrests, see Hartmut Mehringer, ‘Die bayerische Sozialdemokratie bis zum Ende des NS-Regimes. Vorgeschichte, Verfolgung und Widerstand’, ibid. 287–432, here 338 ff.
     
39 . Tuchel,
Konzentrationslager
, 153 f.
     
40 . Ibid. 53 ff.
     
41 . On the takeover of the political police see the overview in Hans Buchheim, ‘Die SS—Das Herrschaftsinstrument’, in id.
et al
.,
Anatomie des SS-Staates
, 7th edn. (Munich, 1999), 13–212, 39 ff., and the detailed account in Browder,
Foundations
, 98 ff.
     
42 . Wegner,
Politische Soldaten
, 81 ff.; James J. Weingartner,
Hitler’s Guard: The Story of the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler
,
1933–1945
(Carbondale, Ill., etc., 1974), 1 ff.
     
43 . Even after Himmler had appointed Dietrich leader of the SS-Oberabschnitt East, Dietrich continued to emphasize the special position of the Leibstandarte. In April 1934, however, he agreed to the subordination of the Leibstandarte to the Oberabschnitt East; see Wegner,
Politische Soldaten
, 83, and Weingartner,
Guard
, 8 f.
     
44 . On the