How Himmler’s personality shaped the SS As head of the SS, chief
of police, ‘Reichskommissar for the Consolidation of
Germanness’, and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler
enjoyed a position of almost unparalleled power and
responsibility in Nazi Germany. Perhaps more than any other
single Nazi leader aside from Hitler, his name has become a
byword for the terror, persecution, and destruction that
characterized the Third Reich. His wide-ranging powers meant
that he bore equal responsibility for the repression of the
German people on the home front and the atrocities perpetrated
by the SS in the East. Yet, in spite of his central role in the
crimes of the Nazi regime, until now Himmler has remained a
colourless and elusive figure in the history of the period. In
Heinrich Himmler, the first-ever comprehensive biography of the
SS-Reichsführer, leading German historian Peter Longerich puts
every aspect of Himmler’s life under the microscope. In the
video below, Professor Longerich talks about how Himmler’s p