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| Heinrich Himmler in 1942. (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-S72707 ) |
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was
a German Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th Reichsführer of
the Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi
Party, and one of the most powerful people in Nazi Germany. He was one of the
main architects of the Holocaust.
After serving in a reserve battalion during World War I
without seeing combat, Himmler went on to join the Nazi Party in 1923. In 1925,
he joined the SS, a small paramilitary arm of the Nazi Party that served as a
bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Himmler rose steadily through the SS's ranks
to become Reichsführer-SS by 1929. Under Himmler's leadership, the SS grew from
a 290-man battalion into one of the most powerful institutions in Nazi Germany.
Over the course of his career, Himmler acquired a reputation for good organizational
skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard
Heydrich. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal
Police) and Minister of the Interior, which gave him oversight of all internal
and external police and security forces (including the Gestapo). He also
controlled the Waffen-SS, a branch of the SS that served in combat alongside
the Wehrmacht (armed forces) in World War II.
As the principal enforcer of the Nazis' racial policies,
Himmler was responsible for operating concentration and extermination camps as
well as forming the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied Europe. In
this capacity, he played a central role in the genocide of an estimated 5.5–6
million Jews and the deaths of millions of other victims during the Holocaust.
A day before the launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, Himmler
commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost, which was approved by Hitler in
May 1942 and implemented by the Nazi regime, resulting in the deaths of
approximately 14 million people in Eastern Europe.
In the last years of World War II, Hitler appointed Himmler
as Commander of the Replacement Army and General Plenipotentiary for the administration
of the Third Reich (Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung). He was later
given command of the Army Group Upper Rhine and the Army Group Vistula. He
failed to achieve his assigned objectives, and Hitler replaced him in these
posts. Realizing the war was lost, Himmler attempted, without Hitler's
knowledge, to open peace talks with the western Allies in March 1945. When
Hitler learned of this on 28 April, he dismissed Himmler from all his posts and
ordered his arrest. Himmler attempted to go into hiding but was captured by
British forces. He died by suicide in British custody on 23 May 1945.
Early Life
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October
1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father was
Joseph Gebhard Himmler (1865–1936), a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria
Himmler (née Heyder; 1866–1941), a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two
brothers: Gebhard Ludwig (1898–1982) and Ernst Hermann (1905–1945).
Himmler's first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather,
Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family of Bavaria who had
been tutored by Himmler's father. He attended a grammar school in Landshut,
where his father was deputy principal. He did well in his schoolwork, but
struggled in athletics. He had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach
complaints and other ailments. In his youth he trained daily with weights and
exercised to become stronger. Other boys at the school later remembered him as
studious and awkward in social situations.
Himmler's diary, which he kept intermittently from the age
of 10, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, dueling, and
"the serious discussion of religion and sex". In 1915, he began
training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with
the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he
enlisted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December
1917. His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat,
receiving the Iron Cross and being promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918,
while Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat,
denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat. After his
discharge on 18 December, he returned to Landshut. After the war, Himmler
completed his grammar school education. From 1919 to 1922, he studied
agriculture at the Munich Technische Hochschule (now Technical University
Munich) following a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness.
Although many regulations that discriminated against
non-Christians—including Jews and other minority groups—had been eliminated
during the unification of Germany in 1871, anti-Semitism continued to exist and
thrive in Germany and other parts of Europe. Himmler was anti-Semitic by the
time he went to university, but not exceptionally so; students at his school
would avoid their Jewish classmates. He remained a devout Catholic while a
student and spent most of his leisure time with members of his fencing
fraternity, the "League of Apollo", the president of which was
Jewish. Himmler maintained a polite demeanor with him and with other Jewish
members of the fraternity, in spite of his growing anti-Semitism. During his
second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military
career. Although he was not successful, he was able to extend his involvement
in the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time that he first met
Ernst Röhm, an early member of the Nazi Party and co-founder of the
Sturmabteilung ("Storm Battalion"; SA). Himmler admired Röhm because
he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Himmler joined his anti-Semitic
nationalist group, the Bund Reichskriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag Society).
In 1922, Himmler became more interested in the "Jewish
question", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of anti-Semitic
remarks and recording discussions about Jews with his classmates. His reading
lists, as recorded in his diary, were dominated by anti-Semitic pamphlets,
German myths, and occult tracts. After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther
Rathenau on 24 June, Himmler's political views veered towards the radical
right, and he took part in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles.
Hyperinflation was raging, and his parents could no longer afford to educate
all three sons. Disappointed by his failure to make a career in the military
and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he was forced to
take a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He
remained in this position until September 1923.
Nazi Activist
Himmler joined the Nazi Party on 1 August 1923, receiving
party number 14303. As a member of Röhm's paramilitary unit, Himmler was
involved in the Beer Hall Putsch—an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the Nazi
Party to seize power in Munich. This event set Himmler on a life of politics.
He was questioned by the police about his role in the putsch but was not
charged because of insufficient evidence. However, he lost his job, was unable
to find employment as a farm manager, and had to move in with his parents in
Munich. Frustrated by these failures, he became ever more irritable, aggressive,
and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.
In 1923–24, Himmler, while searching for a world view, came
to abandon Catholicism and focused on the occult and anti-Semitism. Germanic
mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a religion for him. Himmler found
the Nazi Party appealing because its political positions agreed with his own
views. Initially, he was not swept up by Hitler's charisma or the cult of
Führer worship, but as he learned more about Hitler through his reading, he
began to regard him as a useful face of the party, and he later admired and
even worshipped him. To consolidate and advance his own position in the Nazi
Party, Himmler took advantage of the disarray in the party following Hitler's
arrest after the Beer Hall Putsch. From mid-1924 he worked under Gregor
Strasser as a party secretary and propaganda assistant. Travelling all over
Bavaria agitating for the party, he gave speeches and distributed literature.
Placed in charge of the party office in Lower Bavaria by Strasser from late
1924, he was responsible for integrating the area's membership with the Nazi
Party under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925.
That same year, he joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) as an
SS-Führer (SS-Leader); his SS number was 168. The SS, initially part of the
much larger SA, was formed in 1923 for Hitler's personal protection and was
re-formed in 1925 as an elite unit of the SA. Himmler's first leadership
position in the SS was that of SS-Gauführer (district leader) in Lower Bavaria
from 1926. Strasser appointed Himmler deputy propaganda chief in January 1927.
As was typical in the Nazi Party, he had considerable freedom of action in his
post, which increased over time. He began to collect statistics on the number
of Jews, Freemasons, and enemies of the party, and following his strong need
for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy. In September 1927, Himmler
told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially
pure elite unit. Convinced that Himmler was the man for the job, Hitler
appointed him Deputy Reichsführer-SS, with the rank of SS-Oberführer.
Around this time, Himmler joined the Artaman League, a
Völkisch youth group. There he met Rudolf Höss, who was later commandant of
Auschwitz concentration camp, and Walther Darré, whose book The Peasantry as
the Life Source of the Nordic Race caught Hitler's attention, leading to his
later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Darré was a firm
believer in the superiority of the Nordic race, and his philosophy was a major
influence on Himmler.
Rise in the SS
Upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden in
January 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's
approval;
he still carried out his duties at propaganda headquarters. One of his first
responsibilities was to organize SS participants at the Nuremberg Rally that
September. Over the next year, Himmler grew the SS from a force of about 290
men to about 3,000. By 1930 Himmler had persuaded Hitler to run the SS as a
separate organization, although it was officially still subordinate to the SA.
To gain political power, the Nazi Party took advantage of
the economic downturn during the Great Depression. The coalition government of
the Weimar Republic was unable to improve the economy, so many voters turned to
the political extreme, which included the Nazi Party. Hitler used populist
rhetoric, including blaming scapegoats—particularly the Jews—for the economic
hardships. In September 1930, Himmler was first elected as a deputy to the
Reichstag. In the 1932 election, the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the vote and 230
seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President
Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933, heading a short-lived coalition of his
Nazis and the German National People's Party. The new cabinet initially
included only three members of the Nazi Party: Hitler, Hermann Göring as minister
without portfolio and Minister of the Interior for Prussia, and Wilhelm Frick
as Reich Interior Minister. Less than a month later, the Reichstag building was
set on fire. Hitler took advantage of this event, forcing Hindenburg to sign
the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention
without trial. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, gave
the Cabinet—in practice, Hitler—full legislative powers, and the country became
a de facto dictatorship. On 1 August 1934, Hitler's cabinet passed a law which
stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be
abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hindenburg died
the next morning, and Hitler became both head of state and head of government
under the title Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).
The Nazi Party's rise to power provided Himmler and the SS
an unfettered opportunity to thrive. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members.
Strict membership requirements ensured that all members were of Hitler's Aryan
Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race"). Applicants were vetted for Nordic
qualities—in Himmler's words, "like a nursery gardener trying to reproduce
a good old strain which has been adulterated and debased; we started from the
principles of plant selection and then proceeded quite unashamedly to weed out
the men whom we did not think we could use for the build-up of the SS."
Few dared mention that by his own standards, Himmler did not meet his own
ideals.
Himmler's organized, bookish intellect served him well as he
began setting up different SS departments. In 1931 he appointed Reinhard
Heydrich chief of the new Ic Service (intelligence service), which was renamed
the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: Security Service) in 1932. He later officially
appointed Heydrich his deputy. The two men had a good working relationship and
a mutual respect. In 1933, they began to remove the SS from SA control. Along
with Interior Minister Frick, they hoped to create a unified German police
force. In March 1933, Reich Governor of Bavaria Franz Ritter von Epp appointed
Himmler chief of the Munich Police. Himmler appointed Heydrich commander of
Department IV, the political police. Thereafter, Himmler and Heydrich took over
the political police of state after state; soon only Prussia was controlled by
Göring. Effective 1 January 1933, Hitler promoted Himmler to the rank of
SS-Obergruppenführer, equal in rank to the senior SA commanders. On 2 June Himmler,
along with the heads of the other two Nazi paramilitary organizations, the SA
and the Hitler Youth, was named a Reichsleiter, the second highest political
rank in the Nazi Party. On 10 July, he was named to the Prussian State Council.
On 2 October 1933, he became a founding member of Hans Frank's Academy for
German Law at its inaugural meeting.
Himmler further established the SS Race and Settlement Main
Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA). He appointed Darré as its first
chief, with the rank of SS-Gruppenführer. The department implemented racial
policies and monitored the "racial integrity" of the SS membership.
SS men were carefully vetted for their racial background. On 31 December 1931,
Himmler introduced the "marriage order", which required SS men
wishing to marry to produce family trees proving that both families were of
Aryan descent to 1800. If any non-Aryan forebears were found in either family
tree during the racial investigation, the person concerned was excluded from
the SS. Each man was issued a Sippenbuch, a genealogical record detailing his
genetic history. Himmler expected that each SS marriage should produce at least
four children, thus creating a pool of genetically superior prospective SS
members. The program had disappointing results; less than 40 per cent of SS men
married and each produced only about one child.
In March 1933, less than three months after the Nazis came
to power, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau.
Hitler had stated that he did not want it to be just another prison or
detention camp. Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke, a convicted felon and ardent
Nazi, to run the camp in June 1933. Eicke devised a system that was used as a
model for future camps throughout Germany. Its features included isolation of
victims from the outside world, elaborate roll calls and work details, the use
of force and executions to exact obedience, and a strict disciplinary code for
the guards. Uniforms were issued for prisoners and guards; the guards' uniforms
had a special Totenkopf insignia on their collars. By the end of 1934, Himmler
took control of the camps under the aegis of the SS, creating a separate
division, the SS-Totenkopfverbände.
Initially the camps housed political opponents; over time,
undesirable members of German society—criminals, vagrants and deviants—were
placed in the camps as well. In 1936 Himmler wrote in the pamphlet "The SS
as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization" that the SS were to fight
against the "Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of sub-humans". A Hitler
decree issued in December 1937 allowed for the incarceration of anyone deemed
by the regime to be an undesirable member of society. This included Jews,
Gypsies, communists, and those persons of any other cultural, racial,
political, or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be Untermensch
(sub-human). Thus, the camps became a mechanism for social and racial
engineering. By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, there were six
camps housing some 27,000 inmates. Death tolls were high.
Consolidation of Power
In early 1934, Hitler and other Nazi leaders became
concerned that Röhm was planning a coup d'état. Röhm had socialist and populist
views and believed that the real revolution had not yet begun. He felt that the
SA—now numbering some three million men, far dwarfing the army—should become
the sole arms-bearing corps of the state, and that the army should be absorbed
into the SA under his leadership. Röhm lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister
of Defense, a position held by conservative General Werner von Blomberg.
Göring had created a Prussian secret police force, the
Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo in 1933 and appointed Rudolf Diels as its
head. Göring, concerned that Diels was not ruthless enough to use the Gestapo
effectively to counteract the power of the SA, handed over its control to
Himmler on 20 April 1934. Also on that date, Hitler appointed Himmler chief of
all German police outside Prussia. This was a radical departure from
long-standing German practice that law enforcement was a state and local
matter. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also
continued as head of the SD.
Hitler decided on 21 June that Röhm and the SA leadership
had to be eliminated. He sent Göring to Berlin on 29 June, to meet with Himmler
and Heydrich to plan the action. Hitler took charge in Munich, where Röhm was
arrested; he gave Röhm the choice to die by suicide or be shot. When Röhm refused
to kill himself, he was shot dead by two SS officers. Between 85 and 200
members of the SA leadership and other political adversaries, including Gregor
Strasser, were killed between 30 June and 2 July 1934 in these actions, known
as the Night of the Long Knives. With the SA neutralized, the SS became an
independent organization answerable only to Hitler on 20 July 1934. Himmler's
title of Reichsführer-SS became the highest formal SS rank, equivalent to a
field marshal in the army. The SA was converted into a sports and training organization.
On 15 September 1935, Hitler presented two laws—known as the
Nuremberg Laws—to the Reichstag. The laws banned marriage between non-Jewish
and Jewish Germans and forbade the employment of non-Jewish women under the age
of 45 in Jewish households. The laws also deprived so-called
"non-Aryans" of the benefits of German citizenship. These laws were
among the first race-based measures instituted by the Third Reich.
Himmler and Heydrich wanted to extend the power of the SS;
thus, they urged Hitler to form a national police force overseen by the SS, to
guard Nazi Germany against its many enemies at the time—real and imagined.
Interior Minister Frick also wanted a national police force, but one controlled
by him, with Kurt Daluege as his police chief. Hitler left it to Himmler and
Heydrich to work out the arrangements with Frick. Himmler and Heydrich had
greater bargaining power, as they were allied with Frick's old enemy Göring.
Heydrich drew up a set of proposals and Himmler sent him to meet with Frick. An
angry Frick then consulted with Hitler, who told him to agree to the proposals.
Frick acquiesced, and on 17 June 1936 Hitler decreed the unification of all
police forces in the Reich and named Himmler Chief of German Police and a State
Secretary in the Ministry of the Interior. In this role, Himmler was still
nominally subordinate to Frick but in practice the police were now effectively
a division of the SS, and hence independent of Frick's control. This move gave
Himmler operational control over Germany's entire detective force. He also
gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies,
which were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: "order
police"), which became a branch of the SS under Daluege.
Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei
(Kripo: criminal police) as an umbrella organization for all criminal
investigation agencies in Germany. The Kripo was merged with the Gestapo into
the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo: security police), under Heydrich's command. In
September 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the
SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: Reich Security Main Office) to bring the
SiPo (which included the Gestapo and Kripo) and the SD together under one
umbrella. He again placed Heydrich in command.
Under Himmler's leadership, the SS developed its own
military branch, the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which later evolved into the
Waffen-SS. Nominally under the authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a
fully militarized structure of command and operations. It grew from three
regiments to over 38 divisions during World War II, serving alongside the Heer
(army), but never being formally part of it.
In addition to his military ambitions, Himmler established
the beginnings of a parallel economy under the umbrella of the SS. To this end,
administrator Oswald Pohl set up the Deutsche Wirtschaftsbetriebe (German
Economic Enterprise) in 1940. Under the auspices of the SS Economy and
Administration Head Office, this holding company owned housing corporations,
factories, and publishing houses. Pohl was unscrupulous and quickly exploited
the companies for personal gain. In contrast, Himmler was honest in matters of
money and business.
In 1938, as part of his preparations for war, Hitler ended
the German alliance with China and entered into an agreement with the more
modern Empire of Japan. That same year, Austria was annexed into Nazi Germany
in the Anschluss, and the Munich Agreement gave Nazi Germany control over the
Sudetenland, part of Czechoslovakia. Hitler's primary motivations for war
included obtaining additional Lebensraum ("living space") for the
Germanic peoples, who were considered racially superior according to Nazi
ideology. A second goal was the elimination of those considered racially
inferior, particularly the Jews and Slavs, from territories controlled by the
Reich. From 1933 to 1938, hundreds of thousands of Jews emigrated to the United
States, Palestine, the United Kingdom, and other countries. Some converted to
Christianity.
Anti-church Struggle
According to Himmler's biographer Peter Longerich, Himmler
believed that a major task of the SS should be "acting as the vanguard in
overcoming Christianity and restoring a 'Germanic' way of living" as part
of preparations for the coming conflict between "humans and sub-humans".
Longerich wrote that, while the Nazi movement as a whole launched itself
against Jews and Communists, "by linking de-Christianization with
re-Germanization, Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all of
its own". Himmler was vehemently opposed to Christian sexual morality and
the "principle of Christian mercy", both of which he saw as dangerous
obstacles to his planned battle with "sub-humans". In 1937, Himmler
declared:
We
live in an era of the ultimate conflict with Christianity. It is part of the
mission of the SS to give the German people in the next half century the
non-Christian ideological foundations on which to lead and shape their lives.
This task does not consist solely in overcoming an ideological opponent but
must be accompanied at every step by a positive impetus: in this case that
means the reconstruction of the German heritage in the widest and most
comprehensive sense.
In early 1937, Himmler had his personal staff work with
academics to create a framework to replace Christianity within the Germanic
cultural heritage. The project gave rise to the Deutschrechtliches Institut,
headed by Professor Karl Eckhardt, at the University of Bonn.
World War II
When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the
invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Heinrich Müller masterminded
and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler. German
soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms undertook border skirmishes which
deceptively suggested Polish aggression against Germany. The incidents were
then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening
event of World War II. At the beginning of the war against Poland, Hitler authorized
the killing of Polish civilians, including Jews and ethnic Poles. The
Einsatzgruppen (SS task forces) had originally been formed by Heydrich to
secure government papers and offices in areas taken over by Germany before
World War II. Authorized by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and
Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units—now repurposed as death squads—followed the
Heer (army) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65,000
intellectuals and other civilians. Militias and Heer units also took part in
these killings. Under Himmler's orders via the RSHA, these squads were also
tasked with rounding up Jews and others for placement in ghettos and
concentration camps.
Germany subsequently invaded Denmark and Norway, the
Netherlands, and France, and began bombing Great Britain in preparation for
Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the United Kingdom. On 21 June 1941,
the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the
preparation of the Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East); the plan was
approved by Hitler in May 1942. It called for the Baltic States, Poland,
Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million
German citizens. The current residents—some 31 million people—would be expelled
further east, starved, or used for forced labor. The plan would have extended
the borders of Germany to the east by one thousand kilometers (600 miles).
Himmler expected that it would take twenty to thirty years to complete the
plan, at a cost of 67 billion RM Himmler stated openly: "It is a question
of existence, thus it will be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course
of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews will perish through military actions
and crises of food supply."
Himmler declared that the war in the east was a pan-European
crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless
Bolshevik hordes". Constantly struggling with the Wehrmacht for recruits,
Himmler solved this problem through the creation of Waffen-SS units composed of
Germanic folk groups taken from the Balkans and eastern Europe. Equally vital
were recruits from among the Germanic considered peoples of northern and
western Europe, in the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. Spain
and Italy also provided men for Waffen-SS units. Among western countries, the
number of volunteers varied from a high of 25,000 from the Netherlands to 300
each from Sweden and Switzerland. From the east, the highest number of men came
from Lithuania (50,000) and the lowest from Bulgaria (600). After 1943 most men
from the east were conscripts. The performance of the eastern Waffen-SS units
was, as a whole, sub-standard.
In late 1941, Hitler named Heydrich as Deputy Reich
Protector of the newly established Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.
Heydrich began to racially classify the Czechs, deporting many to concentration
camps. Members of a swelling resistance were shot, earning Heydrich the
nickname "the Butcher of Prague". This appointment strengthened the
collaboration between Himmler and Heydrich, and Himmler was proud to have SS
control over a state. Despite having direct access to Hitler, Heydrich's
loyalty to Himmler remained firm.
With Hitler's approval, Himmler re-established the
Einsatzgruppen in the lead-up to the planned invasion of the Soviet Union. In
March 1941, Hitler addressed his army leaders, detailing his intention to smash
the Soviet Empire and destroy the Bolshevik intelligentsia and leadership. His
special directive, the "Guidelines in Special Spheres re Directive No. 21
(Operation Barbarossa)", read: "In the operations area of the army,
the Reichsführer-SS has been given special tasks on the orders of the Führer,
in order to prepare the political administration. These tasks arise from the
forthcoming final struggle of two opposing political systems. Within the
framework of these tasks, the Reichsführer-SS acts independently and on his own
responsibility." Hitler thus intended to prevent internal friction like
that occurring earlier in Poland in 1939, when several German Army generals
(including Johannes Blaskowitz) had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders
to trial for the murders they had committed.
Following the army into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen
rounded up and killed Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi state.
Hitler was sent frequent reports. In addition, 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of
war died of starvation, mistreatment or executions in just eight months of
1941–42. As many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners of war died or were executed in
Nazi concentration camps over the course of the war; most of them were shot or
gassed. By early 1941, following Himmler's orders, ten concentration camps had
been constructed in which inmates were subjected to forced labor. Jews from all
over Germany and the occupied territories were deported to the camps or
confined to ghettos. As the Germans were pushed back from Moscow in December
1941, signaling that the expected quick defeat of the Soviet Union had failed
to materialize, Hitler and other Nazi officials realized that mass deportations
to the east would no longer be possible. As a result, instead of deportation,
many Jews in Europe were destined for death.
Final Solution, the Holocaust, Racial Policy, and Eugenics
Nazi racial policies, including the notion that people who
were racially inferior had no right to live, date back to the earliest days of
the party; Hitler discusses this in Mein Kampf. Around the time of the German
declaration of war on the United States in December 1941, Hitler resolved that
the Jews of Europe were to be "exterminated". Heydrich arranged a
meeting, held on 20 January 1942 at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. Attended by
top Nazi officials, it was used to outline the plans for the "final
solution to the Jewish question". Heydrich detailed how those Jews able to
work would be worked to death; those unable to work would be killed outright.
Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million and told the
attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan.
In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in
Operation Anthropoid, led by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, members of
Czechoslovakia's army-in-exile. Both men had been trained by the British
Special Operations Executive for the mission to kill Heydrich. During the two
funeral services, Himmler—the chief mourner—took charge of Heydrich's two young
sons, and he gave the eulogy in Berlin. On 9 June, after discussions with
Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered brutal reprisals for Heydrich's
death. Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village of Lidice was razed to
the ground; its male inhabitants and all adults in the village of Ležáky were
murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads. Himmler took
over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in
Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard), named in Heydrich's honor. He ordered the
Aktion Reinhard camps—three extermination camps—to be constructed at Bełżec,
Sobibór, and Treblinka.
Initially the victims were killed with gas vans or by firing
squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale.
In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk. This was
the first time he had heard a shot fired in anger or seen dead people and,
while looking into the open grave, his coat and perhaps his face were splashed
by the brains of a victim. He went very green and pale and swayed. Karl Wolff
jumped forward, held him steady and led him away from the grave. Nauseated and
shaken by the experience, he was concerned about the impact such actions would
have on the mental health of his SS men.
He decided that other methods of killing should be found. On
his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded,
including the addition of gas chambers, where victims were killed using the
pesticide Zyklon B. Himmler visited the camp on 17 and 18 July 1942. He was
given a demonstration of a mass killing using the gas chamber in Bunker 2 and
toured the building site of the new IG Farben plant being constructed at the
nearby town of Monowitz. By the end of the war, at least 5.5 million Jews had
been killed by the Nazi regime; most estimates range closer to 6 million.
Himmler visited the camp at Sobibór in early 1943, by which time 250,000 people
had been killed at that location alone. After witnessing a gassing, he gave 28
people promotions and ordered the operation of the camp to be wound down. In a
prisoner revolt that October, the remaining prisoners killed most of the guards
and SS personnel. Several hundred prisoners escaped; about a hundred were
immediately re-captured and killed. Some of the escapees joined partisan units
operating in the area. The camp was dismantled by December 1943.
The Nazis also targeted Romani (Gypsies) as
"asocial" and "criminals". By 1935, they were confined into
special camps away from ethnic Germans. In 1938, Himmler issued an order in
which he said that the "Gypsy question" would be determined by
"race". Himmler believed that the Romani were originally Aryan but
had become a mixed race; only the "racially pure" were to be allowed
to live. In 1939, Himmler ordered thousands of Gypsies to be sent to the Dachau
concentration camp and by 1942, ordered all Romani sent to Auschwitz
concentration camp.
Himmler was one of the main architects of the Holocaust,
using his deep belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions
of victims. Longerich surmises that Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich designed the
Holocaust during a period of intensive meetings and exchanges in April–May
1942. The Nazis planned to kill Polish intellectuals and restrict non-Germans
in the General Government and conquered territories to a fourth-grade
education. They wanted to breed a master race of racially pure Nordic Aryans in
Germany. As a student of agriculture and a farmer, Himmler was acquainted with
the principles of selective breeding, which he proposed to apply to humans. He
believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through
eugenics, to be Nordic in appearance within several decades of the end of the
war.
Posen Speeches
On 4 October 1943, during a secret meeting with top SS
officials in the city of Poznań (Posen), and on 6 October 1943, in a speech to
the party elite—the Gauleiters and Reichsleiters—Himmler referred explicitly to
the "extermination" (German: Ausrottung) of the Jewish people.
A translated excerpt from the speech of 4 October reads:
I
also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now
very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this
publicly. Just as we did not hesitate on 30 June 1934, to perform our duty as
ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them,
we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God
that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among
us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every
one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given
and when it becomes necessary.
I
am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the
Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish
people is being exterminated", every Party member will tell you,
"perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews,
exterminating them, ha!, a small matter." And then they turn up, the
upstanding 80 million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the
others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. But none has
observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses
lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have
endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person—with
exceptions due to human weaknesses—has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter
that has not and will not be spoken of. Because we know how difficult it would
be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and
rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with
the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we
would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and '17 ...
Because the Allies had indicated that they were going to
pursue criminal charges for German war crimes, Hitler tried to gain the loyalty
and silence of his subordinates by making them all parties to the ongoing
genocide. Hitler therefore authorized Himmler's speeches to ensure that all
party leaders were complicit in the crimes and could not later deny knowledge
of the killings.
Germanization Policies and Generalplan Ost
As Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German
Nationhood (RKFDV) with the incorporated VoMi, Himmler was deeply involved in
the Germanization program for the East, particularly Poland. As laid out in
Generalplan Ost, the aim was to enslave, expel or exterminate the native
population and to make Lebensraum ("living space") for Volksdeutsche
(ethnic Germans). He continued his plans to colonize the east, even when many
Germans were reluctant to relocate there, and despite negative effects on the
war effort. Approximately 11 million Slavic and 3.4 million Jewish inhabitants
of Eastern Europe were killed in Nazi Germany's extermination campaigns during
the implementation of Generalplan Ost.
Himmler's racial groupings began with the Volksliste, the
classification of people deemed of German blood. These included Germans who had
collaborated with Germany before the war, but also those who considered
themselves German but had been neutral; those who were partially "Polonized"
but "Germanizable"; and Germans of Polish nationality. Himmler
ordered that those who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be
deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned
to forced labor. Himmler's belief that "it is in the nature of German
blood to resist" led to his conclusion that Balts or Slavs who resisted Germanization
were racially superior to more compliant ones. He declared that no drop of
German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an "alien
race".
The plan also included the kidnapping of Eastern European
children by Nazi Germany. Himmler urged:
Obviously
in such a mixture of peoples, there will always be some racially good types.
Therefore, I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to
remove them from their environment, if necessary by robbing, or stealing them.
Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a
place in our people, ... or we destroy that blood.
The "racially valuable" children were to be
removed from all contact with Poles and raised as Germans, with German names.
Himmler declared: "We have faith above all in this our own blood, which
has flowed into a foreign nationality through the vicissitudes of German
history. We are convinced that our own philosophy and ideals will reverberate
in the spirit of these children who racially belong to us." The children
were to be adopted by German families. Children who passed muster at first but
were later rejected were taken to Kinder KZ in Łódź Ghetto, where most of them
eventually died.
By January 1943, Himmler reported that 629,000 ethnic
Germans had been resettled; however, most resettled Germans did not live in the
envisioned small farms, but in temporary camps or quarters in towns. Half a
million residents of the annexed Polish territories, as well as from Slovenia, Alsace,
Lorraine, and Luxembourg were deported to the General Government or sent to
Germany as slave labor. Himmler instructed that the German nation should view
all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their German blood. In
accordance with German racial laws, sexual relations between Germans and
foreigners were forbidden as Rassenschande (race defilement).
20 July Plot
On 20 July 1944, a group of German army officers led by
Claus von Stauffenberg and including some of the highest-ranked members of the
German armed forces attempted to assassinate Hitler, but failed to do so. The
next day, Himmler formed a special commission that arrested over 5,000
suspected and known opponents of the regime. Hitler ordered brutal reprisals
that resulted in the execution of more than 4,900 people. Though Himmler was
embarrassed by his failure to uncover the plot, it led to an increase in his
powers and authority.
General Friedrich Fromm, commander-in-chief of the
Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) and Stauffenberg's immediate superior, was one of
those implicated in the conspiracy. Hitler removed Fromm from his post and
named Himmler as his successor. Since the Replacement Army consisted of two
million men, Himmler hoped to draw on these reserves to fill posts within the
Waffen-SS. He appointed Hans Jüttner, director of the SS Leadership Main
Office, as his deputy, and began to fill top Replacement Army posts with SS
men. By November 1944, Himmler had merged the army officer recruitment department
with that of the Waffen-SS and had successfully lobbied for an increase in the
quotas for recruits to the SS.
By this time, Hitler had appointed Himmler as Reichsminister
of the Interior, succeeding Frick, and General Plenipotentiary for Administration
(Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung). At the same time (24 August 1943)
he also joined the six-member Council of Ministers for the Defense of the
Reich, which operated as the war cabinet. In August 1944 Hitler authorized him
to restructure the organization and administration of the Waffen-SS, the army,
and the police services. As head of the Replacement Army, Himmler was now
responsible for prisoners of war. He was also in charge of the Wehrmacht penal
system, and controlled the development of Wehrmacht armaments until January
1945.
Command of Army Group
On 6 June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed in northern
France during Operation Overlord. In response, Army Group Upper Rhine
(Heeresgruppe Oberrhein) group was formed to engage the advancing US 7th Army
(under command of General Alexander Patch) and French 1st Army (led by General
Jean de Lattre de Tassigny) in the Alsace region along the west bank of the
Rhine. In late 1944, Hitler appointed Himmler commander-in-chief of Army Group
Upper Rhine.
On 26 September 1944, Hitler ordered Himmler to create
special army units, the Volkssturm ("People's Storm" or
"People's Army"). All males aged sixteen to sixty were eligible for
conscription into this militia, over the protests of Armaments Minister Albert
Speer, who noted that irreplaceable skilled workers were being removed from
armaments production. Hitler confidently believed six million men could be
raised, and the new units would "initiate a people's war against the
invader". These hopes were wildly optimistic. In October 1944, children as
young as fourteen were being enlisted. Because of severe shortages in weapons
and equipment and lack of training, members of the Volkssturm were poorly
prepared for combat, and about 175,000 of them died in the final months of the
war.
On 1 January 1945, Hitler and his generals launched
Operation North Wind. The goal was to break through the lines of the US 7th
Army and French 1st Army to support the southern thrust in the Battle of the
Bulge (Ardennes offensive), the final major German offensive of the war. After
limited initial gains by the Germans, the Americans halted the offensive. By 25
January, Operation North Wind had officially ended.
On 25 January 1945, despite Himmler's lack of military
experience, Hitler appointed him as commander of the hastily formed Army Group
Vistula (Heeresgruppe Weichsel) to halt the Soviet Red Army's Vistula–Oder
offensive into Pomerania – a decision that appalled the German General Staff.
Himmler established his command centre at Schneidemühl, using his special
train, Sonderzug Steiermark, as his headquarters. The train had only one
telephone line, inadequate maps, and no signal detachment or radios with which
to establish communication and relay military orders. Himmler seldom left the
train, only worked about four hours per day, and insisted on a daily massage
before commencing work and a lengthy nap after lunch.
General Heinz Guderian talked to Himmler on 9 February and
demanded that Operation Solstice, an attack from Pomerania against the northern
flank of Marshal Georgy Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front, should be in progress
by the 16th. Himmler argued that he was not ready to commit himself to a specific
date. Given Himmler's lack of qualifications as an army group commander,
Guderian convinced himself that Himmler tried to conceal his incompetence. On
13 February Guderian met Hitler and demanded that General Walther Wenck be
given a special mandate to command the offensive by Army Group Vistula. Hitler
sent Wenck with a "special mandate", but without specifying Wenck's
authority. The offensive was launched on 16 February 1945, but soon stuck in
rain and mud, facing mine fields and strong antitank defenses. That night Wenck
was severely injured in a car accident, but it is doubtful that he could have
salvaged the operation, as Guderian later claimed. Himmler ordered the
offensive to stop on the 18th by a "directive for regrouping". Hitler
officially ended Operation Solstice on 21 February and ordered Himmler to
transfer a corps headquarter and three divisions to Army Group Center.
Himmler was unable to devise any viable plans for completion
of his military objectives. Under pressure from Hitler over the worsening
military situation, Himmler became anxious and unable to give him coherent
reports. When the counter-attack failed to stop the Soviet advance, Hitler held
Himmler personally liable and accused him of not following orders. Himmler's
military command ended on 20 March, when Hitler replaced him with General
Gotthard Heinrici as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula. By this time
Himmler, who had been under the care of his doctor since 18 February, had fled
to the Hohenlychen Sanatorium. Hitler sent Guderian on a forced medical leave
of absence, and he reassigned his post as chief of staff to Hans Krebs on 29
March. Himmler's failure and Hitler's response marked a serious deterioration
in the relationship between the two men. By that time, the inner circle of
people Hitler trusted was rapidly shrinking.
Peace Negotiations
In March 1945, the German war effort was on the verge of
collapse and Himmler's relationship with Hitler had deteriorated. Himmler
considered independently negotiating a peace settlement. His masseur, Felix
Kersten, who had moved to Sweden, acted as an intermediary in negotiations with
Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. Letters were exchanged
between the two men, and direct meetings were arranged by Walter Schellenberg
of the RSHA.
Also in March 1945, Himmler issued a directive that Jews
were to be marched from the South-east wall (Südostwall) fortifications
construction project on the Austro-Hungarian border, to Mauthausen. He desired
hostages for potential peace negotiations. Thousands died on the marches.
Himmler and Hitler met for the last time on 20 April
1945—Hitler's birthday—in Berlin, and Himmler swore unswerving loyalty to
Hitler. At a military briefing on that day, Hitler stated that he would not
leave Berlin, in spite of Soviet advances. Along with Göring, Himmler quickly
left the city after the briefing. On 21 April, Himmler met with Norbert Masur,
a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress, to discuss the release
of Jewish concentration camp inmates. As a result of these negotiations, about
20,000 people were released in the White Buses operation. Himmler falsely
claimed in the meeting that the crematoria at camps had been built to deal with
the bodies of prisoners who had died in a typhus epidemic. He also claimed very
high survival rates for the camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, even as these
sites were liberated and it became obvious that his figures were false.
On 23 April, Himmler met directly with Bernadotte at the
Swedish consulate in Lübeck. Representing himself as the provisional leader of
Germany, he claimed that Hitler would be dead within the next few days. Hoping
that the British and Americans would fight the Soviets alongside what remained
of the Wehrmacht, Himmler asked Bernadotte to inform General Dwight Eisenhower
that Germany wished to surrender to the Western Allies, and not to the Soviet
Union. Bernadotte asked Himmler to put his proposal in writing, and Himmler
obliged.
Meanwhile, Göring had sent a telegram, a few hours earlier,
asking Hitler for permission to assume leadership of the Reich in his capacity
as Hitler's designated deputy—an act that Hitler, under the prodding of Martin
Bormann, interpreted as a demand to step down or face a coup. On 27 April,
Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin, Hermann Fegelein, was
caught in civilian clothes preparing to desert; he was arrested and brought
back to the Führerbunker. On the evening of 28 April, the BBC broadcast a
Reuters news report about Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western
Allies. Hitler had long considered Himmler to be second only to Joseph Goebbels
in loyalty; he called Himmler "the loyal Heinrich" (German: der treue
Heinrich). Hitler flew into a rage at this betrayal, and told those still with
him in the bunker complex that Himmler's secret negotiations were the worst
treachery he had ever known. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest, and Fegelein was court-martialed
and shot.
By this time, the Soviets had advanced to the Potsdamer
Platz, only 300 m (330 yd) from the Reich Chancellery, and were preparing to
storm the Chancellery. This report, combined with Himmler's treachery, prompted
Hitler to write his last will and testament. In the testament, completed on 29
April—one day before his suicide—Hitler declared both Himmler and Göring to be
traitors. He stripped Himmler of all of his party and state offices and
expelled him from the Nazi Party.
Hitler named Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor.
Himmler met Dönitz in Flensburg and offered himself as second-in-command. He
maintained that he was entitled to a position in Dönitz's interim government as
Reichsführer-SS, believing the SS would be in a good position to restore and
maintain order after the war. Dönitz repeatedly rejected Himmler's overtures
and initiated peace negotiations with the Allies. He wrote a letter on 6
May—two days before the German Instrument of Surrender—dismissing Himmler from
all his posts.
Capture and Death
Rejected by his former comrades and hunted by the Allies,
Himmler attempted to go into hiding. He had not made extensive preparations for
this, but he carried a forged paybook under the name of Sergeant Heinrich
Hizinger. On 11 May 1945, with a small band of companions, he headed south to
Friedrichskoog, without a final destination in mind. They continued to Neuhaus,
where the group split up. On 21 May, Himmler and two aides were stopped and
detained at a checkpoint in Bremervörde set up by former Soviet POWs. Over the
following two days, he was moved around to several camps and was brought to the
British 31st Civilian Interrogation Camp near Lüneburg, on 23 May. The
officials noticed that Himmler's identity papers bore a stamp which British
military intelligence had seen being used by fleeing members of the SS.
The duty officer, Captain Thomas Selvester, began a routine
interrogation. Himmler admitted who he was, and Selvester had the prisoner
searched. Himmler was taken to the headquarters of the Second British Army in
Lüneburg, where a doctor conducted a medical exam on him. The doctor attempted
to examine the inside of Himmler's mouth, but the prisoner was reluctant to
open it and jerked his head away. Himmler then bit into a hidden potassium
cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes,
despite efforts to expel the poison from his system. Shortly afterward,
Himmler's body was buried in an unmarked grave near Lüneburg. The grave's
location remains unknown.
Mysticism and Symbolism
Himmler was interested in mysticism and the occult from an
early age. He tied this interest into his racist philosophy, looking for proof
of Aryan and Nordic racial superiority from ancient times. He promoted a cult
of ancestor worship, particularly among members of the SS, as a way to keep the
race pure and provide immortality to the nation. Viewing the SS as an
"order" along the lines of the Teutonic Knights, he had them take
over the Church of the Teutonic Order in Vienna in 1939. He began the process
of replacing Christianity with a new moral code that rejected humanitarianism
and challenged the Christian concept of marriage. The Ahnenerbe, a research
society founded by Himmler in 1935, searched the globe for proof of the
superiority and ancient origins of the Germanic race.
All regalia and uniforms of Nazi Germany, particularly those
of the SS, used symbolism in their designs. The stylized lightning bolt logo of
the SS was chosen in 1932. The logo is a pair of runes from a set of 18 Armanen
runes created by Guido von List in 1906. The ancient Sowilō rune originally symbolized
the sun, but was renamed "Sieg" (victory) in List's iconography.
Himmler modified a variety of existing customs to emphasize the elitism and
central role of the SS; an SS naming ceremony was to replace baptism, marriage
ceremonies were to be altered, a separate SS funeral ceremony was to be held in
addition to Christian ceremonies, and SS-centric celebrations of the summer and
winter solstices were instituted. The Totenkopf (death's head) symbol, used by
German military units for hundreds of years, had been chosen for the SS by
Julius Schreck. Himmler placed particular importance on the death's-head rings;
they were never to be sold, and were to be returned to him upon the death of
the owner. He interpreted the death's-head symbol to mean solidarity to the
cause and a commitment unto death.
Relationship with Hitler
As second in command of the SS and then Reichsführer-SS,
Himmler was in regular contact with Hitler to arrange for SS men as bodyguards;
Himmler was not involved with Nazi Party policy-making decisions in the years
leading up to the seizure of power. From the late 1930s, the SS was independent
of the control of other state agencies or government departments, and he
reported only to Hitler.
Hitler promoted and practiced the Führerprinzip. The
principle required absolute obedience of all subordinates to their superiors;
thus Hitler viewed the government structure as a pyramid, with himself—the
infallible leader—at the apex. Accordingly, Himmler placed himself in a
position of subservience to Hitler, and was unconditionally obedient to him.
However, he—like other top Nazi officials—had aspirations to one day succeed
Hitler as leader of the Reich. Himmler considered Speer to be an especially
dangerous rival, both in the Reich administration and as a potential successor
to Hitler.
Hitler called Himmler's mystical and pseudo-religious
interests "nonsense". Himmler was not a member of Hitler's inner
circle; the two men were not very close, and rarely saw each other socially.
Himmler socialized almost exclusively with other members of the SS. His
unconditional loyalty and efforts to please Hitler earned him the nickname of
der treue Heinrich ("the faithful Heinrich"). However, in the last
days of the war, when it became clear that Hitler planned to die in Berlin,
Himmler left his long-time superior to try to save himself.
Marriage and Family
Himmler met his future wife, Margarete Boden, in 1927. Seven
years his senior, she was a nurse who shared his interest in herbal medicine
and homoeopathy, and was part owner of a small private clinic. They were
married in July 1928, and their only child, Gudrun, was born on 8 August 1929.
The couple were also foster parents to a boy named Gerhard von Ahe, son of an
SS officer who had died before the war. Margarete sold her share of the clinic
and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in Waldtrudering, near Munich,
where they erected a prefabricated house. Himmler was constantly away on party
business, so his wife took charge of their efforts—mostly unsuccessful—to raise
livestock for sale. They had a dog, Töhle.
After the Nazis came to power the family moved first to
Möhlstrasse in Munich, and in 1934 to Tegernsee, where they bought a house.
Himmler also later obtained a large house in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, free
of charge, as an official residence. The couple saw little of each other as
Himmler became totally absorbed by work. The relationship was strained. The
couple did unite for social functions; they were frequent guests at the Heydrich
home. Margarete saw it as her duty to invite the wives of the senior SS leaders
over for afternoon coffee and tea on Wednesday afternoons.
Hedwig Potthast, Himmler's young secretary starting in 1936,
became his mistress by 1939. She left her job in 1941. He arranged
accommodation for her, first in Mecklenburg and later at Berchtesgaden. He
fathered two children with her: a son, Helge (born 15 February 1942,
Mecklenburg) and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (born 20 July 1944,
Berchtesgaden). Margarete, by then living in Gmund with her daughter, learned
of the relationship sometime in 1941; she and Himmler were already separated,
and she decided to tolerate the relationship for the sake of her daughter.
Working as a nurse for the German Red Cross during the war, Margarete was
appointed supervisor in one of Germany's military districts, Wehrkreis III
(Berlin-Brandenburg). Himmler was close to his first daughter, Gudrun, whom he
nicknamed Püppi ("dolly"); he phoned her every few days and visited
as often as he could.
Margarete's diaries record that Gerhard left the National
Political Educational Institute in Berlin due to poor examination results. At
16 he joined the SS in Brno and fought on the Eastern Front. He was captured by
the Russians but was later returned to Germany.
Hedwig and Margarete both remained loyal to Himmler. Writing
to Gebhard in February 1945, Margarete said, "How wonderful that he has
been called to great tasks and is equal to them. The whole of Germany is
looking to him." Hedwig expressed similar sentiments in a letter to
Himmler in January. Margarete and Gudrun left Gmund as Allied troops advanced
into the area. They were arrested by American troops in Bolzano, Italy, and
held in various internment camps in Italy, France, and Germany. They were
brought to Nuremberg to testify at the trials and were released in November
1946. Gudrun emerged from the experience embittered by her alleged mistreatment
and remained devoted to her father's memory. She later worked for the West
German spy agency Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) from 1961 to 1963.
Historical Assessment
Peter Longerich observes that Himmler's ability to
consolidate his ever-increasing powers and responsibilities into a coherent
system under the auspices of the SS led him to become one of the most powerful
men in the Third Reich. Historian Wolfgang Sauer says that "although he
was pedantic, dogmatic, and dull, Himmler emerged under Hitler as second in
actual power. His strength lay in a combination of unusual shrewdness, burning
ambition, and servile loyalty to Hitler." In 2008, the German news
magazine Der Spiegel described Himmler as one of the most brutal mass murderers
in history and the architect of the Holocaust.
Historian John Toland relates a story by Günter Syrup, a
subordinate of Heydrich. Heydrich showed Syrup 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.
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Regard to Occupied Poland, 1939–1945. Baltimore; London: Johns Hopkins
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Nazi Leader. London: Skyhorse.
Manvell, Roger;
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Trial of The
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Further Reading
Frischauer,
Willi (2013) [1953]. Himmler: The Evil Genius of the Third Reich. Unmaterial
Books.
Haiger, Ernst
(Summer 2006). "Fiction, Facts, and Forgeries: The 'Revelations' of Peter
and Martin Allen about the History of the Second World War". The Journal
of Intelligence History. 6 (1): 105–117.
Hale,
Christopher (2003). Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi
expedition into Tibet. London: Transworld.
Himmler, Katrin
(2005). Die Brüder Himmler. Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte [The Brothers
Himmler: A German Family History] (in German). S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a.
M.
Himmler, Katrin
(2016). The Private Heinrich Himmler. New York: St. Martin's Press.
Höhne, Heinz
(1972). The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS. Translated
from German by Richard Barry. London; New York: Penguin Classic.
Höss, Rudolf
(2000) [1951]. Commandant of Auschwitz: The Autobiography of Rudolf Hoess.
London: Phoenix Press.
Morgan, Ted
(1990). An Uncertain Hour: The French, the Germans, the Jews, the Klaus Barbie
Trial, and the City of Lyon, 1940–1945. London: The Bodley Head.
Reitlinger,
Gerald (1981) [1956]. The SS: Alibi of a Nation 1922–1945. Englewood Cliffs,
NJ: Prentice Hall.
Russell, Stuart
(2007). La fortezza di Heinrich Himmler – Il centro ideologico di
Weltanschauung delle SS – Cronaca per immagini della scuola-SS Haus Wewelsburg
1934–1945 [The Fortress of Heinrich Himmler: The Center of SS Ideology: A
Chronicle With Pictures of the SS Haus Wewelsburg School, 1934–1945]. Rome:
Editrice Thule Italia.
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| Himmler as a child. |
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| Himmler in 1929. (Bundesarchiv Bild 146II-783) |
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| Himmler and Rudolf Hess in 1936, viewing a scale model of Dachau concentration camp, 8 May 1936. (Bundesarchiv Bild 152-08-35) |
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| Heinrich Himmler visiting Mauthausen which was opened on August 8, 1938, a few months after the Anschluss of Austria and Germany on March 12, 1938, which marked the beginning of Adolf Hitler's drive through Europe. The site for the camp was chosen by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS , and the man who had authority over all the camps. The location was in farm country, but near the Wienergraben, a municipal quarry which supplied the city of Wien (Vienna) with granite stones. The quarry was near the city of Linz - April 1941. Depicted people: Himmler, Heinrich: Reichsführer der SS; Kaltenbrunner, Ernst Dr. jur.: SS, später (1943) Chef des Reichssicherheitshauptamtes; Eigruber, August: Gauleiter in Oberdonau/Ostmark, Österreich; Ziereis, Franz: SS-Sturmbannführer, Lagerkommandant des KZ Mauthausen; Bachmayer, Georg: SS-Hauptsturmführer, Kommandant im KZ Mauthausen; Josef Kiermaier (Himmler's bodyguard and driver). (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-45534-0005) |
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| Himmler with commander-in-chief of the Finnish Defense Forces, C.G.E. Mannerheim, in Mikkeli, July 1942. |
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| Himmler with Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose on 15 July 1942. (Bundesarchiv Bild 101III-Alber-064-03A) |
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| The late morning of 15 August 1941, when Himmler visited Minsk and inspected a POW camp. (US National Archives and Records Administration, cataloged under the National Archives Identifier (NAID) 540164) |
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| Inspection by the Nazi party and Himmler inspecting the Protective Custody Camp Dachau on 8 May 1936. (Bundesarchiv Bild 152-11-12) |
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| Rudolf Hess, Himmler, Philipp Bouhler, Fritz Todt, Reinhard Heydrich, and others listening to Konrad Meyer at a Generalplan Ost exhibition, 20 March 1941. (Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B01718) |
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Himmler (at podium) with Heinz Guderian and Hans Lammers in October 1944. (Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1987-128-10)
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| Himmler in 1945. (NARA) |
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| The body of Heinrich Himmler lying on the floor of British 2nd Army HQ after his suicide on 23 May 1945. (Imperial War Museum BU 6738) |
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| Himmler with his wife Margarete and daughter Gudrun. (Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1969-056-55) |
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