Heinrich Himmler
| Heinrich Himmler |
|
| Birth | October 7 1900 3:30 p.m. (Munich, Germany) |
| Death | May 23 1945 11:14 p.m. (31a Ülzenerstraße Lüneburg, Germany) |
| Party | National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) |
Political positions
Reichsführer-SS (RF-SS) (Reich Leader of the SS) in the NSDAP (1929-1945)
Reichs- und Preussischer Minister des Innern (Reich & Prussian Minister of the Interior) of Germany (August 1943-1945)
Chef der Deutschen Polizei (ChdDtP) (Chief of German police) (June 1936-1945)
Chef der Heeresrüstung und Befehlshaber des Ersatzheeres (Ch H Rüst u.BdE) (Chief of Army Equipment and Commander of the Replacement Army) of Germany (July 1944-1945)
Reichskommissar für die Festigung des Deutschen Volkstums (RKV) (Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of Germanism) in the NSDAP (October 1939-1945)
Verein "Lebensborn e.V." (President of the Society "Fountain of Life") of the NSDAP (September 1936-1945)
Verein "Das Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft" (President of "The Ancestral Heritage Research & Teaching Society") of the NSDAP
Beauftragter der NSDAP für alle Volkstumsfragen (Nazi Party Commissioner for All Racial Matters)
Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung (Plenipotentiary General for Administration) of Germany (August 1943-1945) |
(
October 7,
1900 –
May 23,
1945) was the commander of the German
Schutzstaffel (
SS) and one of the most powerful men in
Nazi Germany. As
Reichsführer-SS he controlled the SS and the
Gestapo.
Himmler became a leading organizer of
the Holocaust. As founder and officer-in-charge of the
Nazi concentration camps and the
Einsatzgruppen death squads, Himmler held final command responsibility for implementing the industrial-scale
extermination of between 6 and 12 million people. This was aimed particularly at
Jews and
Slavs, but also against those of many other nationalities, races and conditions considered by him to be suitable for killing, or
Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") as
gas chamber murder was euphemistically known within the SS.
Born near
Munich,
Bavaria,
Germany, into a
middle-class family, he was the son of Gebhardt Himmler, a schoolmaster, and his wife Anna Heyder as the middle of three brothers; the eldest Gebhardt Jr. (b.
1898), the youngest Ernst (b.
1905). After leaving
Landshut High School in
1918, Himmler was appointed an
Officer Cadet and joined the 11th
Bavarian Regiment for service in
World War I. Shortly before he was due for commissioning as an officer the war ended, and he was discharged from the military without seeing combat. The following year, Himmler began studying
agronomy at the
Technische Hochschule in Munich. During his time as a student, he became active in the
Freikorps, private armies of ex-German Army men resentful of Germany's loss of the First World War. Himmler joined the
Reichkriegsflagge (Imperial War Flag) and, in
1923, applied to join the
Nazi Party, which were recruiting Freikorps members as potential members of the new Nazi
stormtrooper units known as the
Sturmabteilung (SA). He took part in the ill-fated
Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923.
|
Heinrich Himmler as Reichsführer-SS with Rank of an SS-Oberführer |
Himmler joined the SS in 1925 and by 1927 had been appointed as Deputy
Reichsführer-SS; a role he began to take very seriously. Upon the
resignation of SS Commander
Erhard Heiden, Himmler was appointed as the new
Reichsführer-SS in January 1929. At the time Himmler was appointed to lead the SS, it numbered only 280 members and was considered a mere
battalion of the much larger
SA. Himmler himself was considered only an SA-Oberführer, but after 1929 he simply referred to himself as the "Reichsführer-SS".
By
1933, when the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, Himmler's SS numbered 52,000 members, and the organization had developed strict membership requirements ensuring all members were of
Adolf Hitler's "
Aryan Herrenvolk" ("Aryan master race"). Now a
Gruppenführer in the SA, Himmler, along with his deputy
Reinhard Heydrich next began a massive effort to separate the SS from SA control; he introduced black
SS uniforms to replace the SA brown shirts in the fall of 1933. Shortly thereafter, he was promoted to
SS-Obergruppenführer und Reichsführer-SS and became an equal to the senior SA commanders, who by this time loathed the SS and the power it held.
Himmler and another of Hitler's right-hand men,
Hermann Göring, agreed that the SA and its leader
Ernst Röhm were beginning to pose a real threat to the German Army and the Nazi leadership of Germany. Röhm had strong
socialist views and believed that, although Hitler had successfully gained power in Germany, the "real"
revolution had not yet begun, leaving some Nazi leaders believing Röhm was intent on using the SA to administer a
coup.
With some persuasion from Himmler and Göring, Hitler began to feel threatened by this prospect and agreed that Röhm had to die. He delegated the task of Röhm's demise to Himmler and Göring who, along with
Reinhard Heydrich,
Kurt Daluege and
Walter Schellenberg, ordered the
execution of Röhm (carried out by
Theodor Eicke) and numerous other senior SA officials, as well as some of Hitlers personal enemies (like
Gregor Strasser and
Kurt von Schleicher) on
June 301934, in what became known as "The
Night of the Long Knives". The next day, Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became a rank to which he was appointed and the SS became an independent organization of the Nazi Party.
Consolidation of power
In
1936 Himmler gained further authority as the SS absorbed all of Germany's local
law enforcement agencies into the new
Ordnungspolizei, considered a headquarters branch of the SS. Germany's secret police forces were also under Himmler's authority in the form of the
Sicherheitspolizei, which would in 1939 expand into the much larger
Reichsicherheitshauptamt. The SS was also developing its military branch, known as the
SS-Verfügungstruppe, which would later become known as the
Waffen-SS.
After the Night of the Long Knives, the
SS-Totenkopfverbände was given the task of organizing and administering Germany's
regime of
concentration camps and, after
1941, the
extermination camps in occupied
Poland. The SS, through its intelligence arm, the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD), was charged with finding
Jews,
Roma,
priests,
homosexuals,
communists and those persons of any other cultural,
racial, political or
religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be either
Untermenschen (
sub-human) or in opposition to the regime, and placing them in concentration camps. Himmler opened the first of these camps near
Dachau (see picture) on March 22th, 1933. He became one of the main architects of
the Holocaust, using elements of
mysticism and a fanatical belief in the
racist Nazi
ideology to justify the
mass murder and
genocide of millions of victims.
On 4 October
1943, Himmler referred explicitly to the extermination of the Jewish people during a secret
SS meeting in the city of
Posen. The following are excerpts from a transcription of an
audio recording that exists of the speech:
''I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly.
It should be discussed amongst us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.... ''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.… |
Nazi governor of Poland Hans Frank (right) hosts head of SS Heinrich Himmler during a visit to Krakow |
Before the
invasion of Russia in
1941, Himmler began preparing 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, including
Danes,
Norwegians,
Swedes,
Dutch,
Belgians,
French,
Spaniards,
Algerians,
Moroccans,
Albanians,
Greeks and, after the invasion,
Ukrainians,
Latvians,
Lithuanians, and
Estonians, attracting the non-Germanic volunteers by declaring a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of Old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik Hordes".
In
1942,
Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler´s right hand, was killed in Prague after an attack by Czech assassins. Himmler immediately carried out reprisal killing all male population in the area.
In
1944, Himmler was granted still further power as the result of a bitter rivalry between the
Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and the
Abwehr, the
intelligence arm of the
Wehrmacht.
The involvement in the
July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler of many of the
Abwehr leaders, including its head,
Admiral Canaris, prompted Hitler to disband the
Abwehr and make the SD the sole intelligence service of the
Third Reich. This increased Himmler's already considerable personal power.
In late 1944, Himmler became commander of army group
Upper Rhine, which was fighting the oncoming
United States 7th Army and
French 1st Army in the
Alsace region on the west bank of the Rhine. Himmler held this post until early
1945 when he was switched to command
army group Vistula facing the
Red Army to the East. As Himmler had no practical military experience as a field commander, he was quickly relieved of his field commands and appointed Commander of the
Home Army. At the same time, he was appointed as the German
Interior Minister and was considered by many to be a candidate to succeed Hitler as the
Führer of Germany. However, it became known after the war that Hitler never really considered Himmler as a successor even before his betrayal, believing that the authority that was his as head of the SS had caused him to be so hated that he would be rejected by the Party.
 |
Heinrich Himmler in 1945 |
In Winter 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 the spring of 1945 Himmler had lost faith in German victory, probably partially due to his discussions with his
masseur Felix Kersten and
Walter Schellenberg. He came to the realization that if the Nazi regime was to have any chance of survival, it would need to seek peace with
Britain and the United States. Toward this end, he contacted
Count Folke Bernadotte of
Sweden at
Lübeck, near the
Danish border, and began
negotiations to surrender in the West. Himmler hoped the British and Americans would fight their
Soviet allies with the remains of the Wehrmacht. When
Hitler discovered this, Himmler was declared a
traitor and stripped of all his titles and ranks the day before
Hitler committed suicide. At the time of Himmler's denunciation, he held the positions of Reich Leader-SS, Chief of the German Police, Reich Commissioner of German Nationhood, Reich Minister of the Interior, Supreme Commander of the
Volkssturm, and Supreme Commander of the Home Army.
Unfortunately for Himmler, his negotiations with Count Bernadotte failed. Since he could not return to
Berlin, he joined
Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who by then was commanding all German forces in the West, in nearby
Plön. Somehow, Hitler's orders concerning him never reached Dönitz. After Hitler's death, Himmler joined the short-lived
Flensburg government headed by
Dönitz but was dismissed on May 6, 1945 by its leader in a move Dönitz hoped would gain him favour with the Allies.
Himmler next turned to the Americans as a
defector, contacting the headquarters of
Dwight Eisenhower and proclaiming he would surrender all of Germany to the Allies if he was spared from
prosecution as a Nazi leader. In an example of Himmler's mental state at this point, he sent a personal application to General
Eisenhower stating he wished to apply for the position of "Minister of Police" in the post-war government of Germany. He also reportedly mused on how to handle his first meeting with the
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.
|
The dead self-poisoned Himmler after capture by Allied troops, 1945 |
Unwanted by his former colleagues and hunted by the Allies, Himmler wandered for several days around
Flensburg near the Danish border, capital of the Dönitz government. 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 doning an eye patch over his left eye
[[http://www.thirdreich.net/Himmler_by_Fest.html Heinrich Himmler - Petty Bourgeois and Grand Inquisitor by Joachim C Fest], in the hope that he could return to Bavaria. He had equipped himself with a full 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, Germany. Himmler was arrested on May 22, and in captivity, was soon recognized. Himmler was scheduled to stand trial with other German leaders as a major war criminal at
Nuremberg, but committed
suicide in
Lüneburg by swallowing a
potassium cyanide capsule before
interrogation could begin. His last words were
"Ich bin Heinrich Himmler!" ("I am Heinrich Himmler!")Conspiracy theories
There would be later claims that the man who committed suicide in Lüneburg was not Himmler but a
double. Statements allegedly attributed to
ODESSA were said to have asserted Himmler escaped to the tiny and rustic farming village of Strones in the Waldviertel, a hilly forested area in the northwest part of Lower Austria just north of Vienna, birthplace of
Alois Hitler, where he was running a reborn SS in
exile .
A recently-published book by American author, Joseph Bellinger,
Himmler's Death, offers another "
conspiracy theory" alternative to Himmler's death, stating that Heinrich Himmler was
assassinated by his British interrogators in May 1945 along with other high-ranking officers of the SS and Werewolf Resistance Organization. Bellinger's book was first published in Germany by Arndt Verlag,
Kiel. A similar book,
Himmler's Secret War, by Martin Allen makes similar claims: it is, however, based on forged documents smuggled into the (British)
National Archives (link to news report). Since a group of people had to get together both to forge the documents and smuggle them into the proper section of the archives (a process that involves an investment of time, money, research and expertise), the assertion that there was a conspiracy to spread confusion about the circumstances surrounding Himmler's death may be credible, and Allen's participation in the conspiracy, possibly as a means of discrediting and distracting from Bellinger's book before it was published.
David Irving also claimed Himmler was beaten and killed by the British interrogators. He also claimed his nose was broken by the beating.
Most historians discount these claims.
Historians are divided on the psychology, motives and influences that drove Himmler. Some see him as a willing dupe of Hitler, fully under his influence and seeing himself essentially as a tool, carrying Hitler's views to their logical conclusion, in some cases (such as in the views propounded by
David Irving) possibly without Hitler's direct orders or agreement. A key issue in understanding Himmler is to what extent he was a primary instigator and developer of anti-Semitism and racial murder in Nazi Germany in his own right, and not totally within Hitler's control, or was simply the executor of Hitler's direct orders. A related issue is the extent to which anti-semitism and racism were primary motives for him, over and above self-aggrandisement, accumulation of power and influence.
Himmler to some extent answered this himself saying if Hitler were to tell him to shoot his mother, he would do it and 'be proud of the Führer's confidence'. It was this unconditional loyalty that was the driving force behind Himmler's unlikely career. Most commentators agree that commitment to Hitler's murderous racism made Himmler the mastermind of ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust.
According to the
Jewish Virtual Library, 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." 1The famous wartime cartoonist
Victor Weisz saw Himmler as a terrible octopus, wielding oppressed nations in each of his 8 arms.
2.
Wolfgang Sauer, historian at
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."
3.
In an extract in the
Norman Brook War Cabinet Diaries
4,
Winston Churchill took a view towards Himmler widely shared during the war, advocating his assassination. According to Brook, responding to a suggestion that the 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 won support from the Home Office. 'Quite entitled to do so,' the minutes record it (eg, Churchill) as commenting."
5A main focus of recent work on Himmler has been the extent to which he competed for, and craved, Hitler's attention and respect, along with other Nazi leaders. The events of the last days of the war, when he abandoned Hitler and began separate negotiations with the Allies, are obviously significant in this respect.
Himmler appears to have had a completely distorted view of how he was perceived by the Allies; he intended to meet with US 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 Himmler, he was genuinely shocked when treated as a prisoner.
He was survived by his wife Marga and natural
daughter Gudrun (Burwitz) (b.
1929), who still resides in Germany, and by his illegitimate son Helge (b.1942) and daughter Nanette Doreathea (b.1944) from a relationship with his personal assistant Hedwig Potthast. Catharine Himmler, a
great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, is married to an
Israeli, the son of Holocaust survivors who survived the
Warsaw Ghetto [
1].
*In
Douglas Niles's and
Michael Dobson's alternative history novel
Fox on the Rhine (ISBN 0812574664), in which Hitler is killed in the attempted
Bomb Plot of 20 July, 1944, Himmler assumes command of the Third Reich by a series of assassinations of the conspirators planning to form a new government and, most prominently, of Hermann Göring, who was appointed the official new Führer. Thus, Himmler, as the highest-ranking official remaining, takes up the position as leader of Nazi Germany, which enables him to execute "Operation Carousel" — a new offensive against the Allies. Himmler also features in
Fox At The Front (ISBN 0641676964), the sequel to
Fox On The Rhine.
*Himmler is played by
Donald Pleasance in the movie
The Eagle Has Landed, which is based on a novel by
Jack Higgins (ISBN 0425177181). He is also featured in several other Jack Higgins novels, including
The Eagle Has Flown, the sequel to
The Eagle Has Landed.
*Himmler was briefly featured in the "Wolfenstein" series of computer games, where he headed an occult experiment conducted by the SS.
* Heinz Höhne,
The Order of the Death's Head: The Story of Hitler's SS, London: Pan Books Ltd. 1972 (ISBN 0330029630)
*Crocker, Harry, "Triumph: A 2,000 Year History of the Catholic Church"
*
ibid.*
ibid.* Peter Padfield:
Himmler. Reichsführer-SS. Cassel & Co, London 2001, ISBN 0304358398.
* Katrin Himmler:
Die Brüder Himmler. Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2005, ISBN 3-100-33629-1. (in german â€" Heinrich Himmler was a grand-uncle of the author)
*
Heinrich HimmlerReferences
