Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (pronounced [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluˑɪtˌpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] (
listen) 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo (Secret State Police). Serving as Reichsführer and later as Commander of the Replacement (Home) Army and General Plenipotentiary for the entire Reich's administration (Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung), Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the persons most directly responsible for the Holocaust.[2][3][4]
As overseer of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (literally: task forces, often used as death squads operating to the rear of frontline troops to murder Jews, communists and 'untermensch' in occupied territories), Himmler coordinated the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Roma,[5][6] many prisoners of war,[7] and possibly another three to four million Poles, as well as other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live, including people with physical and mental disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, members of the Confessing Church, and homosexuals. Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender both Germany and himself to the Western Allies if he were spared prosecution. After being arrested by British forces on 22 May 1945, he committed suicide the following day before he could be questioned.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 to a conservative Roman Catholic middle-class family. His father was Gebhard Himmler, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder), a devout Roman Catholic. He had an older brother, Gebhard Ludwig Himmler, who was born in July 1898, and a younger brother, Ernst Himmler, born in 1905.
Heinrich was named after his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria of the royal family of Bavaria, who was tutored by Gebhard Himmler. Himmler attended a grammar school in Landshut where his father was deputy principal. It was there that the young Himmler made friends with Karl Gebhardt, a friendship that would last to the end of World War II. While he struggled in athletics, he did well in his schoolwork. Initially at the behest of his father, Himmler kept a diary from age 10, and continued to do so even after his father stopped checking. His health was poor, with lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments. He trained daily with weights as a youth and took other exercise in an attempt to grow stronger.
Himmler's diary entries show that he took a keen interest in the events of World War I. In 1915 he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father made attempts to get Heinrich accepted as an officer candidate, using his connections with the royal family, and he was finally accepted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917. His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat; he received the Iron Cross and was eventually promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918—while Himmler was still in training—the war ended with Germany's defeat, finishing any chance for Himmler to become an officer or see combat. On 18 December, he was discharged and returned to Landshut.
After the war, Himmler completed his grammar-school education, and was a member of the Freikorps at the time of the defeat of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. Again he missed out on a military career when his unit was not one of those incorporated into the Reichswehr. From 1919–1922, Himmler studied agronomy at the Munich Technische Hochschule (now Technical University Munich) following a short-lived apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness. He had still not given up his desire to have a military career, and this field of study enabled Himmler to maintain contacts with former army officers who were attending university as a way to prepare for employment until the next war broke out.
Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, though not yet radically so. He remained a devoted Catholic while a student, but enjoyed drinking with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo". He joined a Reichswehr reserve unit. In 1920, when Count Arco—the man who had murdered Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner—was sentenced to death, Himmler was immediately ready to work with right-wing elements to protest. He was both pleased and disappointed when the sentence was commuted to imprisonment, as a group of students had by then formulated rescue plans and a possible putsch. After the Reichswehr reserves were disbanded in 1920, he joined the Einwohnerwehr (Residents' Reserve) and a rifle club. 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 with the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time, via his rifle club, that he first met Ernst Röhm.
Despite an active social life, Himmler struggled to gain the acceptance he craved. He was unable to fully connect with people, and found his interpersonal relationships unrewarding. While he was able to form good friendships with women, he had little success in terms of relationships and clung to antediluvian, prudish views regarding men, women, sex, and marriage. He was critical of himself and his perceived social inadequacies, which included a tendency to talk too much, and made efforts to compensate for them, in part by learning to control his emotions with his strength of will. Nevertheless, these interpersonal problems, and his attempts to counterbalance them, would plague Himmler his whole life, and were the key reasons—along with his craving for order—for his enthusiasm for the military.
Diary entries for 1922 furnish increasing evidence of interest in the 'Jewish question'. 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 that summer, and his parents could no longer afford to keep all three sons in school. 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.
Himmler joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in August 1923. He also joined Röhm's Reichskriegsflagge, a paramilitary unit involved in the event that would set Himmler on a life of politics: the Beer Hall Putsch—an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the NSDAP to sieze power in Munich. Himmler was questioned about his role in the putsch, but he was not charged, as there was insufficient evidence. But he lost his job, and had to move in with his parents, then living in Munich; he was unable to find employment as an agronomist. Frustrated by these failures in his personal, professional, and political life, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.
In 1923–24, Himmler began searching for a world view, moving away from Catholicism and furthered his interest in the occult and antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, would eventually become a kind of substitute religion for him. After the failed putsch, he read about Hitler through two books.
From mid-1924, he became a secretary and propaganda assistant under Gregor Strasser. Himmler traveled all over Bavaria agitating for the Nazi party, Possibly as a reward for his work, the commencement of 1925 saw Himmler in charge of Nazi affairs for Lower Bavaria, and for integrating the area's membership with the NSDAP under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925, though Himmler was not swept into Hitler's inchoate Führer cult. In April 1926 he met Joseph Goebbels for the first time. Still with Strasser, Himmler was made his deputy in January 1927 after Strasser had been appointed the NSDAP's propaganda chief in November 1926. His role at Munich HQ was blessed from the outset with considerable freedom of action that increased still further after 1928. As deputy propaganda chief, Himmler's unquenchable thirst for control, his extraordinary arrogance, and his inability to tolerate criticism, opposition or minor deviations from his instructions did not make him a popular figure with Party subordinates and the rank and file. His attitude to superiors, on the other hand, was nothing short of obsequious.
In 1926, he met his future wife in a hotel lobby while escaping a storm. Margarete Siegroth (née Boden) was seven years his senior, divorced, and Protestant. On 3 July 1928, the two were married. During this time Himmler worked unsuccessfully as a chicken farmer.[53] On 8 August 1929, the couple had their only child, Gudrun. Himmler adored his daughter, and called her Püppi (English: "dolly"). Margarete later adopted a son, in whom Himmler showed no interest. Heinrich and Margarete Himmler separated in 1940 without seeking divorce. At that time, Himmler became friendly with a secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who left her job in 1941 and became his mistress. He fathered two children with her: a son, Helge (born 1942), and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (born 1944).[54]
Himmler joined the SS in 1925 as an SS-Führer (SS-Leader). His NSDAP number was 14,303 and his SS number was 168.[55] Himmler's first leadership position was that of SS-Gauführer (District Leader) in Bavaria. In 1927, he became Deputy–Reichsführer-SS, with the rank of SS-Oberführer, and upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden, in 1929, Himmler was appointed Reichsführer-SS (Reichsführer was, at that time, simply a title for the National Commander of the SS). The SS only had 280 members and was merely an elite battalion of the much larger Sturmabteilung (SA). Over the next year, Himmler began a major expansion of the organization and, in 1930, he was promoted to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer.[citation needed]
Himmler was also very interested in agriculture and the "back to the land" movement. He and his wife, Margarete had romantic ideals of making a farming life. He joined the Artamanen society, a sort of idealistic back-to-the-land youth group, but mixed with racist ideology. He became one of the leaders of this movement. Through this movement, he also apparently met Rudolf Höss,[57] who would later preside over Auschwitz, and Richard Walther Darré, who would later work in the RuSHA (race and resettlement office) of the SS. Darre's views on restoring racial purity to Germany, by breeding programs, were a deep influence on Himmler's view of the SS as a core of breeding men.
By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. The organization at that time enforced strict membership requirements ensuring that all members were of Hitler's Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race"). Applications had been scrutinized 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 qualify as an ideal Nordic.)
Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich began an effort to separate the SS from SA control. Black SS uniforms replaced the SA brown shirts in July 1932 and by 1934 enough quantities were manufactured for general use by all. In 1933, Himmler was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer. This made him an equal of the senior SA commanders, who by this time loathed the SS and envied its power.[citation needed]
Himmler, Hermann Göring, and General Werner von Blomberg agreed that the SA and its leader Ernst Röhm posed a threat to the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) and the Nazi leadership. Röhm had socialist and populist views, and believed that the real revolution had not yet begun. Röhm felt that the SA should become the sole arms-bearing corps of the state with the army being absorbed by the SA under his leadership. This left some Nazi, military and political leaders believing Röhm was intent on using the SA to undertake a coup.
Persuaded by Himmler and Göring, Hitler agreed that Röhm had to be eliminated. He delegated this task to Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege, and Werner Best, who ordered Röhm's execution (carried out by Theodor Eicke), along with the purge of the entire SA leadership and other political adversaries (including, Gregor Strasser and Kurt von Schleicher). These actions took place from 30 June to 2 July 1934, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. The great beneficiaries of the action were the SS and the German Army. They both celebrated the demise of their mutual rival, Röhm's SA. Officially, from 20 July 1934 forward, the SS became an independent organization responsible only to Hitler, and Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became the highest formal SS rank.
On 20 April 1934, Göring formed a partnership with Himmler and Heydrich. Göring transferred authority over the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei)—the Prussian secret police—to Himmler, who was also named chief of all German police outside Prussia. On 22 April 1934, Himmler named Heydrich the head of the Gestapo. Heydrich continued as head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: security service), as well.
On 17 June 1936, Himmler was named Chief of German Police after Hitler announced a decree that was to "unify the control of Police duties in the Reich". Traditionally, law enforcement in Germany had been a state and local matter. In this role, Himmler was nominally subordinate to Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick. However, the decree effectively merged the police with the SS, making it virtually independent of Frick's control.
Himmler gained authority as all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: "order police"), whose main office became a headquarters branch of the SS. Despite his title, Himmler gained only partial control of the uniformed police. The actual powers granted to him were some that were previously exercised by the ministry of the interior. It was only in 1943, when Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior, that the transfer of ministerial power was complete.[citation needed]
With the 1936 appointment, Himmler also gained ministerial authority over Germany's non-political detective forces, the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo: crime police), which he merged with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo: security police) under Heydrich's command, thus gaining operational control over Germany's entire detective force. This merger was never complete within the Reich, with Kripo remaining mainly under the control of its own civilian administration and later the party apparatus (as the latter annexed the civilian administration). However, in occupied territories not incorporated into the Reich proper, SiPo consolidation within the SS line of command proved mostly effective. In September 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: Reich Main Security Office) wherein the SiPo (Gestapo and Kripo) along with the SD became departments under Heydrich's command therein.
Himmler oversaw the entire concentration camp system. Once World War II began, however, new internment camps, which were not formally classified as concentration camps, were established over which Himmler and the SS did not exercise control. In 1943, following the outbreak of popular word-of-mouth criticism of the regime as a result of the Stalingrad disaster, the party apparatus, professing disappointment with the Gestapo's performance in deterring such criticism, established the Politische Staffeln (political squads) as its own political policing organ, breaking the Gestapo's monopoly in this field.[citation needed]
The SS during these years developed its own military branch, the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), which later evolved into the Waffen-SS. Even though 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, and served alongside the Heer (regular army) but was never formally part of it. Its units were involved in a number of notorious incidents of murdering civilians and prisoners of war. This was one of the reasons the International Military Tribunal declared the SS to be a criminal organization.[72]
After the Night of the Long Knives, the SS-Totenkopfverbände organized and administered Germany's regime of concentration camps and, after 1941, extermination camps in occupied Poland as well. The SS—through its intelligence arm, the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD)—dealt with Jews, Gypsies, communists and those persons of any other cultural, racial, political or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be either Untermensch (sub-human) or in opposition to the regime, and placed them in concentration camps. Himmler opened the first of these camps at Dachau on 22 March 1933. He was the main architect of the Holocaust, using elements of mysticism and a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims. Himmler had similar plans for the Poles; intellectuals were to be killed, and most other Poles were to be only literate enough to read traffic signs. On 18 December 1941, Himmler's appointment book shows he met with Hitler. The entry for that day poses the question "What to do with the Jews of Russia?", and then answers the question "als Partisanen auszurotten" (exterminate them as partisans").[73]
In contrast to Hitler, Himmler inspected concentration camps. As a result of these inspections, the Nazis searched for a new and more expedient way to kill, which culminated in the use of the gas chambers.[citation needed]
Himmler wanted to breed a master race of Nordic Aryans in Germany. His experience as a chicken farmer had taught him the rudiments of animal breeding which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, through eugenic selective breeding, to be entirely "Nordic" in appearance within several decades of the end of the war.
Main article:
Posen speechesOn 4 October 1943, Himmler referred explicitly to the extermination of the Jewish people during a secret SS meeting in the city of Poznań (Posen). The following is a translation of an excerpt from a transcription of an audio recording[75] that exists of the speech:
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 now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, to the extermination of the Jewish People. This is something that is easily said: 'The Jewish People will be exterminated', says every Party member, 'this is very obvious, it is in our program — elimination of the Jews, extermination, 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 swine, 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 . . . .
As Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood, Himmler was deeply involved in the Germanization program for the East, particularly Poland. Its purpose was to remove all non-Germanic peoples from German Lebensraum and to reclaim any Volkdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living there for Germany, as laid out in the Generalplan Ost. He declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind for an alien race.[76] Himmler continued his plans to colonize the east despite evidence that Germans did not want to relocate there, and that the activities hindered the war effort; several high-ranking Nazi officials found the latter point obvious.[77]
The plans began with the Volksliste, the classification of people deemed of German blood into those Germans who had collaborated before the war; those still regarding themselves as German, but who had been neutral; partially Polonized but Germanizable; and those Germans who had been absorbed into Polish nationality.[78] Any person classified as German who resisted was to be deported to a concentration camp.[79] Himmler oversaw cases of obstinate Germans, and gave orders for concentration camps, or separation of families, or forced labor, in efforts to break down resistance.[80]
His declaration that "it is in the nature of German blood to resist" led to the paradoxical conclusion that Balts or Poles who resisted Germanization measures were regarded as more suitable material than more compliant ones.[81]
This included the kidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany.[82] 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 culled, removed from all contact with Poles, and raised as Germans, with German names.[82] 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."[82] Acceptable children were to be adopted by German families.[79] Children who passed muster at first but were later rejected were used as slave labor or killed. Himmler ordered that parents who were registered on the Volksliste should lose their children if the parent impeded their Germanization.[83]
The colony of Hegewald was set up in the Reichskommisariat Ukraine at his command.[84] His original plans to recruit settlers from Scandinavia and the Netherlands were unsuccessful, and so it was settled with such ethnic Germans as had not been deported by the Soviet Union.[85]
For the Nazi leaders, the land which would provide sufficient Lebensraum for Germany was the Soviet Union. At the Nuremberg trial, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Erich von dem Bach testified that at a conference in Wewelsburg in 1941 Himmler told SS leaders that to make room for the Germans,[86] Germany would have to exterminate 30 million Slavs in the Soviet Union.[87]
On July 13, 1941, three weeks after the invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler told the group of Waffen SS men:
This is an ideological battle and a struggle of races. Here in this struggle stands National Socialism: an ideology based on the value of our Germanic, Nordic blood. ... On the other side stands a population of 180 million, a mixture of races, whose very names are unpronounceable, and whose physique is such that one can shoot them down without pity and compassion. These animals, that torture and ill-treat every prisoner from our side, every wounded man that they come across and do not treat them the way decent soldiers would, you will see for yourself. These people have been welded by the Jews into one religion, one ideology, that is called Bolshevism... When you, my men, fight over there in the East, you are carrying on the same struggle, against the same subhumanity, the same inferior races, that at one time appeared under the name of Huns, another time— 1000 years ago at the time of King Henry and Otto I— under the name of Magyars, another time under the name of Tartars, and still another time under the name of Genghis Khan and the Mongols. Today they appear as Russians under the political banner of Bolshevism.[88]
Polish prisoners from
Buchenwald awaiting execution in the forest near the camp.
For a time, the Polish population would be permitted to remain as slave labor.[82] Himmler forbade that this group, not suitable for Germanization, receive anything above a fourth-grade education.[83] The removal of the racially valuable types would deprive the population of leaders, and ensure that they were available for labor.[83]
He also prescribed that as many ethnic groups as possible be recognized in order to foment disunity.[83]
By this I mean that it is very much in our interest not only not to unite the people of the East but the reverse – to splinter them into as many parts and subdivisions as possible. We should also aim for a situation in which, after a longer period of time has passed, the concept of nationality disappears among the Ukrainians, Górale, and Lemki.
This is partly reflected in his views on blood and soil, where he came the closest of all Nazis to supporting the views of Alfred Rosenberg.[89] His interest in Richard Walther Darré stemmed from Darré's views on repopulating eastern regions with Germans.[90]
This also reflected Nazi policy on non-Germans.[91] The Posen speech also calls for the merciless use of all Slavonic forced labor on this ground:
What happens to a Russian, to a Czech, does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interest me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be rough and heartless when it is not necessary, that is clear. We Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our own blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When someone comes to me and says, "I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it will kill them", then I would have to say, "you are a murderer of your own blood because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug, German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood".
He also called for sexual relations between German women and Polish slave laborers to be punished by death for the man and a concentration camp for the woman.
Himmler (behind flag) with Hitler (only back, left of the flag) in Poland in September 1939
In 1939, Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, masterminded and carried out Operation Himmler (also known as Operation Konserve or Operation Canned Goods), arguably the first operation of World War II in Europe. It was a false flag project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, which was subsequently used by Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland.[93]
Before the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), Himmler prepared his SS for a war of extermination against the forces of "Judeo-Bolshevism". Himmler, always glad to make parallels between Nazi Germany and the Middle Ages, compared the invasion to the Crusades. He collected volunteers from all over Europe, especially those of Nordic stock who were perceived to be racially closest to Germans, like the Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Icelanders, and the Dutch. After the invasion, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonian volunteers were recruited, attracting the non-Germanic volunteers by declaring a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik hordes". Thousands volunteered and later many thousands more were conscripted.[citation needed]
Racial restrictions were relaxed to the extent that Tatars, Arabs, Albanians from Kosovo, Central Asian and Bosnian Muslims, and even Indians and Mongols were recruited.[94]
In the Baltic states, many natives were willing to serve against the Red Army due to their loathing of their oppression after the occupation by the Soviet Union. These men were conscripted into the Waffen-SS. Employed against Soviet troops, they performed acceptably.[95] Waffen-SS recruitment in Western and Nordic Europe collected much less manpower, though a number of Waffen-SS Legions were founded, such as the Wallonian contingent led by Léon Degrelle, whom Himmler planned to appoint chancellor of an SS State of Burgundy within the Nazi orbit once the war was over.[citation needed]
Himmler inspects a prisoner of war camp in Russia, circa 1941
Preceding Operation Barbarossa, Himmler stated openly at a meeting of senior SS officers:
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.[96]
Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42.[97] It is estimated that as many as 500,000 Soviet prisoners of war died or were executed in Nazi concentration camps, most of them by shooting or gassing.[7]
In 1942, Heydrich (Himmler's right hand man) was assassinated in Prague after an attack by British Special Operations Executive (SOE), trained soldiers, Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš of Czechoslovakia’s army-in-exile. Himmler ordered brutal reprisals. Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village of Lidice was razed to the ground; the male inhabitants there and in the village of Ležáky were murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads after Heydrich's death.[98]
In 1943, Himmler was appointed Reich Interior Minister, replacing Frick, with whom he had engaged in a turf war for over a decade. For instance, Frick had tried to restrict the widespread use of "protective custody" orders that were used to send people to concentration camps, only to be begged off by Himmler. While Frick viewed the concentration camps as a tool to punish dissenters, Himmler saw them as a way to terrorize the people into accepting Nazi rule.[citation needed]
Himmler's appointment effectively merged the Interior Ministry with the SS. Nonetheless, Himmler sought to use his new office to reverse the party apparatus's annexation of the civil service and tried to challenge the authority of the party gauleiters.[citation needed]
This aspiration was frustrated by Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary and party chancellor. It also incurred some displeasure from Hitler himself, whose long-standing disdain for the traditional civil service was one of the foundations of Nazi administrative thinking. Himmler made things much worse still when following his appointment as head of the Reserve Army (Ersatzheer, see below) he tried to use his authority in both military and police matters by transferring policemen to the Waffen-SS.[citation needed]
With Himmler threatening his power base, Bormann could not give him the opportunity fast enough, initially acquiescing in the policies, until furious protests broke out. Then, Bormann came out against the scheme, leaving Himmler discredited, especially with the party, whose gauleiters now saw Bormann as their protector.[citation needed]
It was determined that leaders of German Military Intelligence (the Abwehr), including its head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, were involved in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. This prompted Hitler to disband the Abwehr and make Himmler's Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) the sole intelligence service of the Third Reich. This increased Himmler's personal power.[citation needed]
General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve (or Replacement) Army (Ersatzheer), was implicated in the conspiracy. Fromm's removal, coupled with Hitler's suspicion of the army, led the way to Himmler's appointment as Fromm's successor, a position he abused to expand the Waffen-SS even further to the detriment of the rapidly deteriorating German armed forces (Wehrmacht).[citation needed]
Unfortunately for Himmler, the investigation soon revealed the involvement of many SS officers in the conspiracy, including senior officers, which played into the hands of Bormann's power struggle against the SS because very few party cadre officers were implicated. Even more importantly, some senior SS officers began to conspire against Himmler himself, as they believed that he would be unable to achieve victory in the power struggle against Bormann. Among these defectors were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich's successor as chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and Gruppenführer Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.[citation needed]
In late 1944, Himmler became Commander-in-Chief of the newly formed Army Group Upper Rhine (Heeresgruppe Oberrhein). This army group was formed to fight the advancing U.S. 7th Army and French 1st Army in the Alsace region along the west bank of the Rhine. The U.S. 7th Army was under the command of General Alexander Patch and the French 1st Army was under the command of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.[citation needed]
On 1 January 1945, Himmler's army group launched Operation North Wind (Unternehmen Nordwind) to push back the Americans and the French. In late January, after some limited initial success, Himmler was transferred east. By 24 January, Army Group Upper Rhine was deactivated after going over to the defensive. Operation North Wind officially ended on 25 January.[citation needed]
Elsewhere, the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) had failed to halt the Red Army's Vistula-Oder offensive, so Hitler gave Himmler command of yet another newly formed army group, Army Group Vistula (Heeresgruppe Weichsel) to stop the Soviet advance on Berlin. Hitler placed Himmler in command of Army Group Vistula despite the failure of Army Group Upper Rhine and despite Himmler's total lack of experience and ability to command troops. This appointment may have been at the instigation of Martin Bormann, anxious to discredit a rival, or through Hitler's continuing anger at the "failures" of the general staff.[citation needed]
As Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula, Himmler established his command centre at Schneidemühl. He used his special train (sonderzug), Sonderzug Steiermark, as his headquarters. Himmler did this despite the train having only one telephone line and no signals detachment. Eager to show his determination, Himmler acquiesced in a quick counter-attack urged by the general staff. The operation quickly bogged down and Himmler dismissed a regular army corps commander and appointed Nazi Heinz Lammerding. His headquarters was also forced to retreat to Falkenburg. On 30 January, Himmler issued draconian orders: Tod und Strafe für Pflichtvergessenheit —"death and punishment for those who forget their obligations", to encourage his troops. The worsening situation left Himmler under increasing pressure from Hitler; he was unassertive and nervous in conferences. In mid-February, the Pomeranian offensive by his forces was directed by General Walther Wenck, after intense pressure from General Heinz Guderian on Hitler. By early March, Himmler's headquarters had moved west of the Oder River, although his army group was still named after the Vistula. At conferences with Hitler, Himmler echoed Hitler's line of increased severity towards those who retreated.[citation needed]
On 13 March, Himmler abandoned his command and, claiming illness, retired to a sanatorium at Hohenlychen. Guderian visited him there and carried his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula to Hitler that night. On 20 March, Himmler was replaced by General Gotthard Heinrici.[citation needed]
In the winter of 1944–45, Himmler′s Waffen-SS numbered 910,000 members, with the Allgemeine-SS (at least on paper) hosting a membership of nearly two million. However, by early 1945 Himmler had lost faith in German victory, likely due in part to his discussions with his masseur Felix Kersten and with Walter Schellenberg.[99] He realized that if the Nazi regime were to survive, it needed to seek peace with Britain and the U.S. He also believed by the middle of April 1945 that Hitler had effectively incapacitated himself from governing by remaining in Berlin to personally lead the defence of the capital against the Soviets.
To this end, he contacted Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden at Lübeck, near the Danish border. He represented himself as the provisional leader of Germany, telling Bernadotte that Hitler would almost certainly be dead within two days. He asked Bernadotte to tell General Dwight Eisenhower that Germany wished to surrender to the West. Himmler hoped the British and Americans would fight the Soviets alongside the remains of the Wehrmacht. At Bernadotte's request, Himmler put his offer in writing. On April 21, 1945, Himmler met with Norbert Masur, a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress, in Berlin for a discussion concerning the release of Jewish concentration camp inmates. During the meeting, Himmler stated that he wanted to "bury the hatchet" with the Jews.[100]
On the evening of 28 April, the BBC broadcast a Reuters news report about Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western Allies. When Hitler was informed of the news, he flew into a rage. A few days earlier, Hermann Göring had asked Hitler for permission to take over the leadership of the Reich — an act that Hitler, under the prodding of Bormann, interpreted as a demand to step down or face a coup. However, Himmler had not even bothered to request permission. The news also hit Hitler hard because he had long believed that Himmler was second only to Joseph Goebbels in loyalty; in fact, Hitler often called Himmler "der treue Heinrich" (the loyal Heinrich). Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest and had Hermann Fegelein (Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin) shot. After Hitler calmed down, he told those who were still with him in the bunker complex that Himmler's act was the worst act of treachery he'd ever known.
Himmler's treachery—combined with reports the Soviets were only 300 m (330 yd) (about a block) from the Reich Chancellery—prompted Hitler to write his last will and testament. In the Testament, completed the day before he committed suicide, he declared Himmler and Göring to be traitors. He also stripped Himmler of all of his party and state offices: Reichsführer-SS, Chief of the German Police, Commissioner of German Nationhood, Reich Minister of the Interior, Supreme Commander of the Volkssturm, and Supreme Commander of the Home Army. Finally, he expelled Himmler from the Nazi Party and ordered his arrest.[citation needed]
Himmler's negotiations with Count Bernadotte failed. However, the negotiations helped secure the release of some 15,000 Scandinavian prisoners from the remaining concentration camps in the White Buses operation. Himmler joined Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who by then was commanding all German forces within the northern part of the western front, in nearby Plön. Dönitz sent Himmler away, explaining that there was no place for him in the new German government.[citation needed]
Himmler next turned to the Americans as a defector, contacting Eisenhower's headquarters and proclaiming he would surrender all of Germany to the Allies if he were spared from prosecution. He asked Eisenhower to appoint him "minister of police" in Germany's post-war government. He reportedly mused on how to handle his first meeting with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander and whether to give the Nazi salute or shake hands with him. Eisenhower refused to have anything to do with Himmler, who was subsequently declared a major war criminal.[citation needed]
Himmler's corpse in Allied custody after his suicide by poison, 1945
Unwanted by his former colleagues and hunted by the Allies, Himmler wandered for several days around Flensburg near the Danish border. Attempting to evade arrest, he disguised himself as a sergeant-major of the Secret Military Police, using the name Heinrich Hitzinger, shaving his moustache and donning an eye patch over his left eye,[105] in the hope that he could return to Bavaria. He had equipped himself with a set of false documents, but someone whose papers were wholly in order was so unusual that it aroused the suspicions of a British Army unit in Bremen. Himmler was arrested on 22 May by Major Sidney Excell and soon recognized while in captivity. Himmler was scheduled to stand trial with other German leaders as a war criminal at Nuremberg, but on 23 May[107] committed suicide in Lüneburg by means of a potassium cyanide capsule before interrogation could begin. His last words were Ich bin Heinrich Himmler! ("I am Heinrich Himmler!"). Another version has Himmler biting into a hidden cyanide pill embedded in one of his teeth, when searched by a British doctor, who then yelled, "He has done it!" Several attempts to revive Himmler were unsuccessful. Shortly afterward, Himmler's body was buried in an unmarked grave near Lüneburg. The precise location of Himmler's grave remains unknown.
In a 2005 book, Martin Allen claimed that Himmler had secretly negotiated with the UK as early as 1943, and that he may have been killed on Churchill's order to cover up this fact. The book was based on forgeries of documents at the National Archives. In May 2008 a British police investigation identified 29 forgeries that had been slipped into 12 files to support claims in Allen's three World War II books.[109][110]
Historians are divided on the psychology, motives, and influences that drove Himmler. Some see him as dominated by Hitler, fully under his influence and essentially a tool carrying Hitler's views to their logical conclusion. Others see Himmler as extremely anti-Semitic in his own right, and even more eager than his boss to commit genocide. Still others see Himmler as power-mad, devoted to the accumulation of power and influence.[citation needed]
According to Robert S. Wistrich, Himmler's decisive innovation was to transform the race question from "a negative concept based on matter-of-course anti-Semitism" into "an organizational task for building up the SS ... It was Himmler's master stroke that he succeeded in indoctrinating the SS with an apocalyptic ‘idealism’ beyond all guilt and responsibility, which rationalized mass murder as a form of martyrdom and harshness towards oneself."[111]
The wartime cartoonist Victor Weisz depicted Himmler as a giant octopus, wielding oppressed nations in each of his eight arms.[112]
Wolfgang Sauer—historian at University of California, Berkeley—felt 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."[113]
In an extract of Norman Brook's War Cabinet Diaries,[114] Winston Churchill took a view towards Himmler widely shared during the war, advocating his assassination. According to Brook, responding to a suggestion that Nazi leaders be executed, "this prompted Churchill to ask if they should negotiate with Himmler 'and bump him off later', once peace terms had been agreed. The suggestion to cut a deal for a German surrender with Himmler and then assassinate him met with support from the Home Office. ‘Quite entitled to do so’, the minutes record [ ... Churchill] as commenting."[115]
A main focus of recent work on Himmler has been the extent to which he competed for and craved Hitler's attention and respect. The events of the last days of the war, when he abandoned Hitler and attempted to enter into separate negotiations with the western Allies (an attempt which was rebuffed), are obviously significant in this respect.[citation needed]
Himmler appears to have had a distorted view of how he was perceived by the Allies; he intended to meet with U.S. and British leaders and have discussions "as gentlemen". He tried to buy off their vengeance by last-minute reprieves for Jews and important prisoners. According to British soldiers who arrested him, Himmler was genuinely shocked to be treated as a prisoner.[citation needed]
In 2008, Himmler was named "the greatest mass murderer of all time" by German news magazine Der Spiegel, reflecting his role as architect of the Holocaust.[4]
Heinrich Himmler served in the SS for a total of twenty years, sixteen of which as Reichsführer-SS. In contrast to other contemporary Nazis, such as Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler was presented with few decorations and never was awarded a combat medal.[citation needed]
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- ^ a b Source: Der Spiegel, Issue dated 3 November 2008: Hitlers Vollstrecker – Aus dem Leben eines Massenmörders
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- ^ Biondi, Robert, ed., SS Officers List: SS-Standartenführer to SS-Oberstgruppenführer (As of 30 January 1942), Schiffer Military History Publishing, 2000, p. 7
- ^ Hoess and Paskuly, p. 203
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- ^ Bauer, Yehuda Rethinking the Holocaust Yale University Press, 2000, p. 5
- ^ Poznań speech
- ^ Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, p 543, ISBN 0-393-02030-4
- ^ Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology, p 191, ISBN 0-396-06577-5
- ^ Richard Overy, The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, p 544, ISBN 0-393-02030-4
- ^ a b Richard C. Lukas, Did the Children Cry? Hitler's War against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939–1945. Hippocrene Books, New York, 2001.
- ^ Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web, p 247, ISBN 0-679-77663-X
- ^ Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology, p 199, ISBN 0-396-06577-5
- ^ a b c d Gitta Sereny (November 1999). "Stolen Children". Talk. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/children.html.
- ^ a b c d "HITLER'S PLANS FOR EASTERN EUROPE"
- ^ Lynn H. Nicholas, Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web, p 336
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- ^ William J. Duiker (2009). Contemporary World History. Cengage Learning. p.132. ISBN 0-495-57271-3
- ^ George H. Stein (1984). "The Waffen SS: Hitler's elite guard at war, 1939–1945". Cornell University Press. p.126. ISBN 0-8014-9275-0
- ^ Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p119 ISBN 0-396-06577-5
- ^ Robert Cecil, The Myth of the Master Race: Alfred Rosenberg and Nazi Ideology p165 ISBN 0-396-06577-5
- ^ Edwin P. Hoyt, Hitler's War p279 ISBN 0-07-030622-2
- ^ Zaloga, Steven J. (2002), Poland 1939: The Birth of Blitzkrieg, p. 39
- ^ Canfield, Robert L. Turko-Persia in Historical Perspective (p. 212) – "The majority of Central Asian soldiers taken prisoner opted for the enemy – a fact still hidden from the Soviet public today – although systematic starvation and cruel treatment in German hands, which resulted in appalling losses, must have been one of the major inducements to change sides. As Turkistanis they joined the so-called "Eastern Legions," which were part of the Wehrmacht and later the Waffen SS, to fight the Red Army (Hauner 1981:339-57). The estimates of their numbers vary between 250,000 and 400,000, which include the Kalmyks, the Tatars and members of the Caucasian ethnic groups (Alexiev 1982:33)."
- ^ Toomas Hiio, Peeter Kaasik (2006). "Estonian Units in the Waffen-SS". in Toomas Hiio, Meelis Maripuu, & Indrek Paavle. Estonia 1940–1945: Reports of the Estonian International Commission for the Investigation of Crimes Against Humanity. Tallinn. pp. 927–968
- ^ David Cesarani. Holocaust: From the persecution of the Jews to mass murder, Routledge. 2004 p.366. ISBN 0-415-27511-3
- ^ Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners (p. 290) – "2.8 million young, healthy Soviet POWs" killed by the Germans, "mainly by starvation ... in less than eight months" of 1941–42, before "the decimation of Soviet POWs ... was stopped" and the Germans "began to use them as laborers".
- ^ Burian, Michal; Aleš (2002). "Assassination — Operation Arthropoid, 1941–1942" (PDF). Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic. http://www.army.cz/images/id_7001_8000/7419/assassination-en.pdf. Retrieved 7 July 2011.
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- ^ Penkower, Monty Noam (1988). The Jews Were Expendable: Free World Diplomacy and the Holocaust. Wayne State University Press. p. 281. ISBN 0-8143-1952-1.
- ^ Heinrich Himmler – Petty Bourgeois and Grand Inquisitor by Joachim C Fest
- ^ http://www.fpp.co.uk/Himmler/Panton/Man0554.html
- ^ "Forgeries revealed in the National Archives". The Sunday Times. 4 May 2008. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article3867853.ece.
- ^ Historic Forgery and Fraud
- ^ Robert S. Wistrich, Who's Who in Nazi Germany, Routledge 1997.
- ^ Heinrich Himmler : Nazi Germany
- ^ GI – World War II Commemoration
- ^ News | Cabinet Secretaries´ Notebooks from World War Two at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk
- ^ Doward, Jamie. "Hitler must die without trial — Churchill." The Observer 1 January 2006.
- Breitman, Richard (2004). Himmler and the Final Solution: The Architect of Genocide. Pimlico, Random House, London. ISBN 1-84413-089-4.
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| Persondata |
| Name |
Himmler, Heinrich |
| Alternative names |
Himmler, Heinrich Luitpold |
| Short description |
Nazi officer, Commander of the SS |
| Date of birth |
7 October 1900 |
| Place of birth |
Munich, Germany |
| Date of death |
23 May 1945 |
| Place of death |
Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany |
