Heinrich Himmler

The German National Socialist politician Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) commanded the SS, Hitler's elite troops, and was head of the Gestapo. He was perhaps the most powerful and ruthless man in Nazi Germany next to Hitler himself.

Born in Munich, Bavaria, on Oct. 7, 1900, Heinrich Himmler was the son of the former tutor of one of the Bavarian princes. In World War I he took his first opportunity to join the army (1917), but owing to his frail health he never reached the front. Yet he continued soldiering in veterans' bands after the war while a student at the university in Munich, and in November 1923 he marched in Hitler's ill-fated Beer Hall Putsch. After a brief flirt with the leftist Strasser faction of the Nazis, the young anti-Semitic fanatic joined Hitler in 1926 as deputy propaganda chief.

In January 1929 Himmler found his "calling" with his appointment as commander of the blackshirt SS (Schutzstaffel) —then still a small, untrained bodyguard. With characteristic drive and pedantic precision he rapidly turned this organization into an elite army of 50, 000— including its own espionage system (SD). After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Himmler took over and expanded the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei, secret police). In 1934 he liquidated Ernst Roehm, chief of the SA (storm troopers), and thus gained autonomy for the SS, which took charge of all concentration camps.

From this power base, to which he added the position of chief of all German police forces in June 1936 and that of minister of the interior in August 1943, Himmler coordinated the entire Nazi machinery of political suppression and racial "purification." From 1937 on, the entire German population was screened for "Aryan" racial purity by Himmler's mammoth bureaucratic apparatus. After the invasion of eastern Europe it became Himmler's task to "Germanize" the occupied areas and to deport the native populations to concentration camps.

After the plot of July 1944 against Hitler, Himmler also became supreme commander of all home armies. In 1943 he made contacts with the Western Allies in an attempt to preserve his own position and to barter Jewish prisoners for his own safety—an action which caused his expulsion from the party shortly before Hitler's death. On May 21, 1945, Heinrich Himmler was captured while fleeing from the British at Bremervoerde. Two days later he took poison and died.

Further Reading

Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, Himmler (1965), a carefully researched and fair-minded biography, is the best personal portrayal in English. Willi Frischauer, Himmler: The Evil Genius of the Third Reich (1953), is more concerned with the SS itself, as is Heinz Höhne, The Order of the Death's Head, translated by Richard Barry (1969). Felix Kersten, The Kersten Memoirs, translated by Constantine Fitzgibbon and James Oliver (1956), is a fascinating and invaluable close-up look at Himmler by his personal physician.

Additional Sources

Breitman, Richard, The architect of genocide: Himmler and the final solution, New York: Knopf: Distributed by Random House, 1991; Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1992.

Kersten, Felix, The Kersten memoirs: 1940-1945, New York: H. Fertig, 1994; Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1992.

Lee, Robert J., Fascinating relics of the Third Reich, Franklin, Tenn. (P.O. Box 465, Franklin 37065): R.J. Lee, 1985.

Padfield, Peter, Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS, New York: Holt, 1991. □

Himmler, Heinrich (1900–45).Son of a Catholic schoolmaster, who was Nazi head of the SS from 1929 to 1945, and Germany's minister of the interior from 1943 to 1945.

Born in Munich, Himmler trained as an officer cadet at the end of the First World War without seeing active service, then studied at Munich's technical college where he obtained an agricultural diploma. He worked as a fertilizer salesman then as a poultry farmer, joined the Nazi Party in 1925, served as a deputy Gauleiter, became deputy leader of the SS in 1927 and its head in January 1929, and was elected a member of the Reichstag the following year.

Using his position as head of the SS, Himmler now began to build a state within the state. At first he concentrated on expanding the organization (by January 1933 it numbered 53,000), then on establishing its autonomy within the Nazi Party, and lastly on ensuring its dominance in every sphere of state security and domestic policy. It was his vehicle for translating Nazi ideology into action and as early as March 1933, the same month as he became head of the Munich police, he established Dachau, one of the first Nazi concentration camps, and later founded the Lebensborn organization. By 1936 he had manoeuvred himself into a position where he was not only head of the SS but of a newly unified nationwide police.

In October 1939 he was given total control of the annexed parts of Poland and within a year more than a million Poles and 300,000 Jews had been pushed eastwards to be replaced by Volksdeutsche. He then became Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Nationhood, to oversee all racial matters, and in August 1943 was appointed minister of the interior in which post he oversaw the Final Solution, administered the system of forced labour, and authorized the medical experiments of SS doctors.

The July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler (see Schwarze Kapelle) further strengthened Himmler's hand (though he behaved with extreme deviousness during the crisis) and the army was obliged to accept him as Fromm's successor as C-in-C of the Replacement Army (see Germany, 6(b)); and despite his lack of military experience in January 1945 he was even given command of the newly-activated Army Group Vistula, though he was soon replaced by General Gotthard Heinrici. During the last months of hostilities Himmler, who had for some time suspected the eventual outcome of the war, realized that it was now lost for Germany. He ordered a halt to the Final Solution and by various methods attempted to start peace negotiations with the Allies. But his grip on reality was beginning to slip for he really believed the Allies would endorse him as Germany's new leader once Hitler had been deposed and peace restored.

Just before he killed himself, Hitler, on learning of Himmler's latest efforts to contact the Allies, via Count Bernadotte, dismissed him from all his posts and ordered his arrest. When Dönitz became head of state Himmler offered his services, which were declined. After Germany surrendered Himmler tried to escape in disguise, but was captured and on 23 May 1945 killed himself with poison.

Bibliography

Smelzer, R., and Zitelmann, R. (eds.), The Nazi Elite (London, 1992).

Heinrich Himmler , 1900–1945, German Nazi leader. An early member of the National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) party, Himmler took part in Adolf Hitler's "beer-hall putsch" of 1923, and in 1929 Hitler appointed him head of the SS, or Schutzstaffel, the party's black-shirted elite corps. When Hitler came to power he made Himmler head of police in Munich and then chief of the political police throughout Bavaria. After the party purge of June, 1934, which eliminated Ernst Roehm , head of the SA, or Nazi militia, Himmler's SS became the major police organ of the state. In 1936, Himmler was named chief of the German police; this brought him formal control over the Gestapo, the secret police that had been set up in 1933 by Hermann Goering . From his preeminent position Himmler terrorized his own party hierarchy as well as all German-held Europe, establishing and overseeing concentration camps and ordering incarceration and death for millions, particularly after the beginning of World War II. A superb bureaucrat and one of the most cold-blooded of the Nazi leaders, he was a fanatic racist. In Aug., 1943, he became minister of the interior, and after putting down the conspiracy against Hitler in July, 1944, he was the virtual dictator of German domestic policy. In Apr., 1945, just before Germany's defeat in World War II, Himmler secretly attempted to negotiate German surrender, hoping to save himself. Upon hearing of this, Hitler expelled him from the party. Himmler attempted to escape, but was arrested by British troops in May, 1945, and committed suicide by swallowing poison.

Bibliography: See biographies by W. Frischauer (1953), R. Marvell and H. Fraenkel (1965, repr. 1972), and B. F. Smith (1971).

Himmler, Heinrich (b. 7 Oct. 1900, d. 23 May 1945). Leader of the SS Born in Munich, he studied agriculture and took part in the Hitler Putsch of 1923. He joined the SS in 1925, and headed it from 1929. After the Nazis took power in 1933, he managed to submit the German police to SS control and create a security network which cancelled out most of the German opposition and murdered millions of Jews, Eastern Europeans, and other groups that did not conform to his fanatic image of a ‘pure, Aryan’ German race. During the last months of World War II he sought to negotiate a peace with the Western Allies so as to be able to continue fighting the Soviet Union. After Germany's capitulation he dressed up as a policeman, and was imprisoned by the British. He committed suicide when he was recognized.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900–45) German leader, chief of the ss (1929–45) and of the Gestapo (1936–45). He established and oversaw the programme of systematic genocide of more than 6 million Jews and other disfavoured groups between 1941 and 1945. He was captured by British forces in 1945, and committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule.

Himmler, Heinrich (1900–45) German Nazi leader. In 1929, he became head of the SS. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Himmler assumed control of the German Gestapo and of the concentration camps. Captured by the British in 1945, he committed suicide before the Nuremberg Trials.