They say Himmler was a very organized man. He must have been to run the SS, form and oversee the ruthless Einsatzgruppen mobile killing force, build extermination and concentration camps on Hitler’s behalf and orchestrate the murder of over 11 million people. He did it all while attending to his personal pet projects, like the Lebensborn Homes for unwed mothers he designed, built and obsessed over, down to the furniture. And the events he micromanaged at Ravensbruck Concentration Camp for women, where he personally chose the number of strokes prisoners received in the punishment block. (In 1940 he approved 25 lashes, the same as in the men’s camp, then later amended it to allow floggings on bare buttocks.) And then there is the strange ring he designed and gifted his SS standouts.
The SS-Ehrenring or Honour Ring, often called Death’s Head Ring or Totenkopf Ring, was a highly-prized award Himmler bestowed upon his SS members. At first it was a very select group who earned the ring, senior officers of the Old Guard who showed valor in battle. But by the end of the war any SS officer could wear this charming number after three years service. The skull, that all-too-apt symbol of National Socialism, was the centerpiece, with ancient runic symbols placed at intervals around the ring.
Note Himmler’s own Totenkopf ring worn on his cigar hand.
The whole creepy package.
In 1944 production of the rings ceased due to increasing wartime economic shortages. Once the war was over, the ring was no longer a status symbol but a sign to Allied forces that the bearer was a Nazi criminal worthy of arrest. Allied troops took the rings from the German SS they captured. American soldier Iolo Lewis acquired a Totenkopf ring in the wake of the WW2. He said: “I was one of a team involved in seeking out SS personnel mingling in anonymously with ordinary German soldiers. I disarmed a man, taking his pistol, which I kept, and I also took a ring. It was what we did in those days.” Knowing the ring`s history, Mr Lewis decided the only home for it would be the museum, but many others have found their way into the collector’s market, commanding high prices.
Where did Himmler’s need to bond so closely with his SS men come from? According to Eliot H. Boden, The Enemy Within: Homosexuality in the Third Reich, 1933-1945, “Himmler was one of the most rabid advocates of the complete extermination of homosexuals. He fiercely believed that homosexuality was a contagion that endangered the unity of the German nation and posed a unique threat to his police forces. In his infamous speech at Bad Tölz, Himmler lamented that draconian punishments for homosexuality had long been discontinued and that homosexuals were no longer simply tied up and drowned in swamps, as in pre-modern Germany.” But it was okay for him to gift his favorite men with his special rings? This is a fascinating book on the subject (above) if you want to know more about Himmler’s ring.
