Nevertheless it was customary after the war, especially for officers of the regular services, to depict Himmler in the most grotesque light and invest him with every shortcoming. This was both a psychological and political necessity. By saddling him with the odium of crime, and in large measure the responsibility for disaster, they presented their own service as honourable, disguised their complicity and provided a scapegoat for the most terrible moral and material defeat suffered by the nation. There was no reason, in any case, for regular Army officers to be sympathetic towards the SS.
