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Heinrich Himmler was Reich leader of the SS, head of the Gestapo and the Waffen SS, minister of the interior from 1943 to 1945 and thought to be the most powerful man in Nazi Germany, second only to Adolf Hitler. Himmler was born in Munich in the year 1900. He was born into a middle class Catholic family. Educated at a secondary school in Landshut.
Heinrich joined the army as an officer cadet at the age of 17 to fight in the First World War. He was enthusiastic to fight for Germany as most boys were, but the war was ended before he completed training. After the war he drifted into one of the many right wing organisation that were very common at the time. It is here that he came into contact with Hitler. He took part in the Hitler putsch (the attempt to overthrow the government) in 1923. He married Margaret Boden in 1926, in that same year he also became assistant propaganda leader in the Nazi party.
He joined the SS a division of the SA in 1925. In 1929 Hitler appointed him head of the SS, whose primary role was to act as bodyguard to Hitler. The size of the SS in 1929 was 280 but due to Himmler s unrelenting enthusiasm and determination to impress Hitler, Himmler increased membership to 50, 000 by 1933. Hitler was always afraid of an internal uprising (putsch) by the SA Himmler took advantage of this. When Himmler discovered (often believed created), R hms plan for the uprising Himmler was quick to react, instigating the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. Which eliminated R hm (leader of the SA) and the SA as potential rivals for power and opened the way to the surfacing of the SS as an independent force.
From here the SS grew stronger, becoming one of the more powerful departments in the Reich. In 1936, he won control of the entire police force throughout the Third Reich, with the title of Reichsfuhrer-SS and Head of the German Police, He created a state within a state, using his power to terrorism all opponents of Hitler s dictatorship as well as his personal enemies. The killing of the Jews represented for Himmler the fulfilment of a mission. The Final Solution was the means to achieve the racial superiority of the Aryan and purify the world of contamination by subhumans (Jews, Gypsies, Criminals etc). Himmler was inspired by a combination of racism and the vision of Hitler s perfect world, caused him to establish concentration camps. His concern for racial purity led to the encouragement of special marriage laws that would increase the amount of children of perfect Aryan couples.
The establishment of the Lebensborn (Fountain of Life) institutions at which girls would couple with SS men, both selected for their perfect Aryan qualities for the same reason. He suffered, however, from psychosomatic illnesses that took the form of intestinal cramps and severe headaches. Himmler was squeamish, and on one occasion he almost fainted at the sight of a hundred Jews, including women, being shot to death at one of his concentration camps. This helped lead to the introduction of poison gas as a more humane and efficient means of execution. Himmler gained jurisdiction over the courts and the civil service as well.
He used these powers to exploit Jews as slave laborers, and to gas millions of Jews who could not work. He instituted medical experiments on subhumans, to determine their resistance to extremes of cold and decompression. This made Himmler one of the greatest mass murders in history. Towards the end of the War, in November 1944, he tried to conceal the evidence of mass murder in the extermination camps and permitted the transfer of several hundred camp prisoners to Sweden. He also tried to initiate peace negotiations with the Allies.
Himmler ordered a cessation of the mass murder of Jews at this time, and proposed surrendering to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower. This proposal infuriated Hitler, who stripped Himmler of all his offices. After the German surrender, Himmler assumed a false identity and tried to escape, but he was captured by British troops.
He committed suicide on May 23, 1945, before he could be brought to trial as one of the major war criminals. Himmler played a huge role in the War, and changed or ended many lives; it was his men that staged the phoney border incident that Hitler used to justify the invasion of Poland at the outbreak of World War II. He established many concentration camps where millions were massacred, shot, gassed and experimented on. He established laws of marriage and the Lebensborn (fountain of life) institution. All of which were done to fulfil Hitler s dream of a world were pure Aryans ruled. He used the SS to target Hitler s and his own opponents, he often bashed and jailed politicians who opposed Hitler s regime which made way for Hitler to become a dictator.
He eventually tried to negotiate a peace, which didn t work. And when he felt that hope was lost, he took his own life after taking so many others. BIBLIOGRAPHY Author Title Publishing details Breitman, Richard The Architect of Genocide: Alfred Knopf, New York 1991 Himmler and the final solution. Keegan, John The Second World War Century Hutchinson 1989 Web sites: web
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