In that, if you were a German at the time, which of the Reich’s many officials would you really not want to get on the wrong side of. Excluding Hitler because he’s too obvious.
I’d have thought that *Reichsführer-SS *Heinrich Himmler, whose private army ran the death camps would be the next one down but according to Adolf Eichmann this was not the case, Gestapo head Heinrich Müller was (which makes sense); “If one of my specialists got in trouble with a local commander, I would then have my bureau chief, General Müller, give the necessary orders. Müller was more feared than Reichsführer Himmler.”
From an interview published in Life
For an early pick, how about Ernst Rohm, head of the SA (“brown shirts”), whom Himmler feared and hated as a rival? Rohm was eventually killed in the Night of the Long Knives purge.
I’ll throw in Rheinhard Heydrich, head of the SS security service, as a generally scary guy even among that crowd.
The SS, SD and Gestapo were all under Himmler, so Muller and Heydrich worked under him. And Himmler became a religious zealot about the Master Race/Aryan Purity bojive. I think religious zealots who command their own armies with their government’s approval and support are really dangerous and fearful.
And I’m making an effort not to name any prominent current day politicians in the US, because this isn’t supposed to be a current political thread.
Mengele was just a doctor in a concentration camp, and bot even the head camp doctor. He horrifies us because we know about his role in Selections and the perverse and macabre research he did on prisoners, but almost no German at the time would have heard of him.
Heydrich was the first who came to mind… But he spent most of his time in occupied areas, didn’t he? Himmler was in control of the homeland, and, too, most of the Gestapo guys who would actually kick your door in at 2:00 a.m. were anonymous. Himmler was the “face” of the domestic terror.
Hitler was able to pretend to an austere remoteness, focused on the war, and not really making himself feared directly. You could avoid Hitler’s notice, but you could never be sure of avoiding Himmler’s.
The “man with the iron heart” as Hitler called Heydrich is a good suggestion, his SD was responsible for the ‘Nacht und Nebel’ decree, if they identified you as an enemy of National Socialism you would vanish, under night and fog.
His successor, Kaltenbrunner, was no slouch in the intimidation factor either - even Himmler said of him, regarding talks with the Jewish World Congress “But how am I going to do that in regard to Kaltenbrunner? I shall then be completely at his mercy!”
Anther suggestion - Roland Freisler, the head of the People’s Court, seen here displaying the kind of objectivity one could expect from a judge.
Was Mengele even known outside of Auschwitz? Maybe among SS medical circles.
I’d say Oskar Dirlewanger, a charming fellow on the Eastern Front.
He led a group called the 36th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, where “the recruits sent into Dirlewanger’s band were convicted of major crimes such as premeditated murder, rape, arson and burglary. Dirlewanger provided them with an opportunity to commit atrocities on such a scale that even the SS executioners complained.”
He tried his level best to depopulate Belorussia:
And was quite active in the Wola massacre in Warsaw:
The most feared were the ones who were taught from childhood that Obedience is a Virtue. Every nazi, from the top-ranked to the bottom, was equally feared, because it was known that they would blindly follow orders. Hitler might have been the least feared, because he alone did not need to be bound to mindless commands, and could choose whether or not to be brutal according to the circumstances at hand. If I were in nazi Germany in the hands of the nazis and about to be judged, I would have wanted Hitler himself to render the verdict, face to face… .
In fairness to Nazis (something I don’t say that often), their membership was not a monolithic hive mind, the party membership ran from Schörner to Schindler.
That’s who I dropped in to post. Other Nazi leaders certainly loathed him but they feared him too. The Brown Eminence, as he was known, had the ear of Hitler and controlled access to the Fuhrer. Bormann had risen swiftly through the party bureaucracy in the 30s and even the flight of his boss Rudolf Hess during the war had not interrupted his rise. He used the opportunity to take over Hess’s position and powers. Bormann had learned early that knowledge was power and he was rumored to have the goods on all the senior Nazis. Hitler knew full well the unease and fear Bormann inspired and found it useful.
Most ordinary Germans during the war years would have had no idea at all who Bormann was but senior party members did and spoke his name in nervous whispers.
I’m going with Goring. If you (as a German at the time) feared Hitler it was probably more from what the Party did and could do as much as it was from personal safety. Most of what I have read, written by Germans at the time, seems to indicate that Hermann was the only one they thought could hold the Party together given the death of Adolf.
Otherwise I would throw in Fritz Todt and after his death Albert Speer - forced labor frightened quite a few people. Also for consideration would be Artur Axmann or Baldur von Schirach; leaders of the Hitler Youth. We sometimes forget that they really did cause children to turn on their parents. How much/often is hard to say but that seems to have been a common fear.
What a disturbing read. While his efforts seem to have been directed more toward their neighbors rather than ordinary Germans, I don’t know that I’ve read of a more disgusting history of mass murder, rape, pedophilia, etc than Dirlewanger. He and his men were humanity at it’s worst.