Himmler als Feldherr
From 20 July Himmler was appointed the commander of the Ersatzheer in place of the arrested Fromm and henceforth he was to be responsible for the raising of all new army formations – mainly infantry divisions, these to be known as Volksgrenadier. The manning, discipline and administration of these divisions was to be controlled entirely by the SS, a special Abteilung 10 being set up in the Heerespersonalamt to provide ‘SS approved’ officer replacements for these divisions: thereafter the officers could not be posted elsewhere without SS permission. The Volksgrenadier divisions remained responsible to Himmler, as were the SS divisions, even when they took to the field. The word Volk added to the divisional titles was intended to emphasize the link between these later groupings and the people, and to give expression to the ‘National-Socialist spirit’ of these new troops, in contradistinction to the old style that was tainted by the reactionary officer corps.
On 26 August all army formations that recruited foreigners were transferred to the SS and, since the SS was now raising its own SS army headquarters (SS Armeeoberkommandos) and additional corps headquarters, army general staff officers were transferred to the SS against their will to occupy technical appointments that the SS were not qualified to fill. By January 1945 candidates for army commissions could be compulsorily directed into the SS. Himmler had no wish to absorb the German Army into the Waffen SS, but he wanted to use army personnel, when absolutely necessary, to fill out the SS; for he jealously safeguarded the Waffen SS identity and exclusiveness. His intention was to have the German Army subordinated to, and controlled in its entirety by, the Waffen SS with himself at its head. The V-2 development and production programme and the control of firings and operational units was taken over by the SS immediately after 20 July.
That Himmler had Feldherr pretensions there can be no doubt; in September he became the commander at the front of all troops in the Upper Rhine, taking under his command 19 Army, Wehrkreis V and 14 and 18 SS Corps. At the turn of the year he was to take over Army Group Vistula on the eastern front. According to Goebbels, the question had been mooted, and presumably put to Hitler in late 1944, as to whether Himmler should not also be appointed as the German Army Commander-in-Chief.
