Page "Heinrich Himmler" Paragraph 83

Historian John Toland relates a story by Günter Syrup, a subordinate of Heydrich.

Heydrich showed him a picture of Himmler and said, " The top half is the teacher but the lower half is the sadist.

" Historian Adrian Weale comments that Himmler and the SS followed Hitler's policies, without question or ethical considerations.

Himmler accepted Hitler and Nazi ideology, and saw the SS as a chivalric Teutonic order of new Germans.

Himmler adopted the doctrine of Auftragstaktik (" mission command "), whereby orders were given as broad directives, with authority delegated downward to the appropriate level to carry them out in a timely and efficient manner.

Weale states that the SS ideology gave the men a doctrinal framework, and the mission command tactics allowed the junior officers leeway to act on their own initiative to obtain the desired results.