Himmler became a leading organizer of the Holocaust. As founder and officer-in-charge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppendeath 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, but also against those of many other nationalities, races and conditions Nazi ideology considered to be suitable for killing, or Sonderbehandlung ("special treatment") as gas chamber murder was euphemistically known within the SS.

Heinrich Himmler was born in Munich to a Bavarianmiddle-class family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler, a secondary-school teacher and principal. His mother was Anna Maria Himmler (maiden name Heyder), a devout Roman Catholic and attentive mother. Heinrich had an older brother, Gebhard Ludwig Himmler (b. July 29, 1898), and a younger brother, Ernst Hermann Himmler (b. December 23, 1905).[1] Himmler's childhood was quite normal. One could even suggest he was privileged. His father and mother were strict but actively involved in the rearing of their three children.

Heinrich was named after his godparent, Prince Heinrich of Wittelsbach of the royal family of Bavaria, who was tutored by Gebhard Himmler[2]. This could possibly shed insight on Himmler's lifelong obsession with rank and status. In 1910, Himmler began attending elite Gymnasia secondary schools in Munich and Landshut, where studies revolved around classic literature. While he struggled in athletics, he was quite bright and did well in his schoolwork. Also, at the behest of his father, Heinrich kept a fairly extensive diary from age 10 until the age of 24. He also had various extracurricular activities he enjoyed: chess, harpsichord, stamp collecting and gardening. During Himmler's youth, and into adulthood, he was never quite at ease in his interactions with the opposite sex.[3]

In 1914World War I began, and Himmler's diaries from the time show that he was extremely interested in news pertaining to it. He began imploring his father to utilize his royal connections to land him a position as an officer candidate. His parents objected yet acquiesced, allowing him to train upon graduation from secondary school in 1918 with the 11th Bavarian Regiment. Since he was not athletic, he struggled throughout this military training. Later in that same year, the war ended with Germany's defeat. The Treaty of Versailles, which Germany signed limiting its military numbers, scuppered his aspirations of becoming a professional army officer, and he was discharged. He never saw battle.

In 1919 to 1922 Himmler studied agronomy at Munich Technische Hochschule after a short-lived apprenticeship on a farm and subsequent illness[4]. Himmler at this time was pursuing a chaste lifestyle when he became interested in a young girl who was the daughter of the owner of a place where he would eat. In his diary he compares his initial encounter with her as being akin to finding himself a sister. Later he experienced rejection when he let his true feelings be known to her. This is only a detail worth mentioning in order to demonstrate his awkwardness with women throughout life. Himmler viewed women through the scope of their role as it pertains to the needs of men, as this following diary excerpt demonstrates:

"A proper man loves a woman on three levels: as a dear child who is to be chided, perhaps even punished on account of her unreasonableness, and who is protected and taken care of because one loves her. Then as wife and as a loyal, understanding comrade who fights through life with one, who stands faithfully at one's side without hemming in or chaining the man and his spirit. And as a goddess whose feet one must kiss, who gives one strength through her feminine wisdom and childlike, pure sanctity that does not weaken in the hardest struggles and in the ideal hours gives one heavenly peace."[5]

Himmler also underwent religious turmoil during his studies at Munich Technische Hochschule. In his diaries he claimed to be a devout Catholic, and wrote that he would never turn away from the church. Yet he was a member of a fraternity which he felt to be at odds with the tenets of the church, other biographers uncovered Himmler's theology was that of Ariosophy, his own religious dogma of racial superiority of the hypothetical "Aryan race" and Germanic neopaganism partly from his interests in folklore and mythology of the ancient Teutonic tribes of Northern Europe. Himmler turned into a disbeliever in Christian doctrine as he was also very critical of sermons given by priests, but felt that the teachings of the church were of the utmost importance and valued by the "Aryans" that he felt a "supreme deity" chose the German people to rule the world. Himmler often embodied the very meaning of paradox. During this time Himmler became obsessed with the idea of becoming a soldier. He wrote that if Germany did not find itself at war soon, he would go to another country to seek battle.

In November of 1923, Himmler took part in Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch under Ernst Röhm. In 1926 he met his wife in a hotel lobby while escaping a storm. Margarete Siegroth (née Boden) was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, seven years older than Himmler, divorced, and Protestant. She was physically the epitome of the Nordic ideal, though not exceptionally attractive. On July 3, 1928, the two were married and had their only child, daughter Gudrun, on August 8, 1929. Himmler adored his daughter, and called her Püppi (dolly). Margarete later adopted a son, in whom Himmler showed no interest. The marriage of Heinrich and Margarete was difficult, and they separated in 1940 without seeking a divorce. Heinrich was far too engulfed in militaristic ideology by this time to serve as a competent husband. Himmler started to become friendly with a staff secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who left her job in 1941 and became his mistress. He fathered two illegitimate children with her - a son, Helge (1942), and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (1944).

Himmler joined the SS in 1925, and by 1927 had been appointed deputy reichsführer-SS, a role he began to take very seriously. He grew up a child rapist. He enjoyed raping poor German children. His Jewish slave Tituba said "I keep all of his money while he goes out and rapes the children. He and Hitler once met and had a rape party telling the little jews that if they let them have sex with them they wouldnt die and neither would their families. (They were the first to die) Upon the resignation of SS Commander Erhard Heiden, Himmler was appointed as the new Reichsführer-SS in January 1929. At the time when Himmler was appointed leader of the SS, it had only 280 members, and was considered a mere battalion of the much larger SA. Himmler himself was only considered to be 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 "AryanHerrenvolk" ("Aryan master race"). Now a Gruppenführer in the SA, Himmler, along with his deputy Reinhard Heydrich, he next began a massive effort to separate the SS from SA control; he introduced black SS uniforms (designed by Hugo Boss) 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 of 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.

In 1936 Himmler gained further authority as all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei, whose main office became a headquarters branch of the SS as Himmler was accorded the title Chief of the German Police. Himmler, however, was never able to gain operational control over the uniformed police. The actual powers granted to him with the appointment were those previously exercised in police matters by the ministry of the interior, and not even all of those. It was only in 1943, when Himmler was appointed Minister of the Interior, that the transfer of ministerial power was complete. Indeed, his full title was Reichsfuhrer SS and Chief of the German Police in the Ministry of the Interior (abbreviated as RFSSuCdDPidMI), which clearly indicates the limits of his brief, and though Himmler tended to omit the idMI in correspondence, his powers remained as they were. Germany's political police forces came under Himmler's authority in 1934, when he organised them into the Gestapo as well as Germany's entire concentration camps complex. Once war began, though, new internment camps not formally classified as concentration camps would be established, over which Himmler and the SS would 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 so-called Politische Staffeln as its own political policing organ, destroying the Gestapo's nominal monopoly in this field. With his 1936 appointment, Himmler also gained ministerial authority over Germany's non-political detective forces, known as Kripo, which he attempted to combine with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei, placed under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, and thus gain operational control over Germany's entire detective force. But the merger remained a dead letter within the Reich, with Kripo remaining firmly under the control of the civilian administration and later the party apparatus as the latter annexed the civilian administration. However, in occupied territories not incorporated into the Reich proper it mostly proved effective. Following the outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office) wherein Gestapo, Kripo and the SD became departments. Attempts in 1940 to use the new RSHA structure to gain control over Kripo by giving RSHA regional officers command authority over Kripo offices in their jurisdictions were rebuffed. The SS was also developing its military branch, known as the SS-Verfügungstruppe, which would later become known as the Waffen-SS.

On 4 October1943, 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

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, 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 truth the "volunteers" from the occupied Soviet territories were mostly collaborator policemen pressed en-masse into the Waffen SS once their territories of origin were overrun by the Red Army. As long as they were employed against Soviet troops, they performed fanatically, expecting no mercy if captured. When employed against the Western Allies, they tended to eagerly surrender. Waffen SS recruitment in Western and Nordic Europe was abysmally unsuccessful.

In 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler's right hand man, was killed in Prague after an attack by Czech special forces. Himmler immediately carried out a reprisal, killing the entire male population in the village of Lidice where the soldiers had escaped.

In 1943, Himmler was appointed German Interior Minister. This was very much a Pyrrhic victory. Himmler sought to use his new office to reverse the party apparatus' annexation of the civil service, and in the process fulfill his long cherished dream of gaining real power over the non-Gestapo police. This hopeless aspiration was easily frustrated by Martin Bormann, Hitler's 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 Ersatzheer (Replacement Army) (see below) he tried to use his authority in both military and police matters by "bestowing" automatic SS membership on all policemen and then "transferring" them to the Waffen SS. With Himmler about to hang himself Bormann could not give him the rope fast enough, initially acquiesing in the lunacy, until furious protests broke out, then destroying the scheme with a vengeance leaving Himmler much discredited, and his and the SS' relations with the police badly compromised.

The involvement in the July 20, 1944, plot against Hitler of leaders of the Abwehr (German military intelligence), including its head, Admiral Wilhelm 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. It also soon emerged that General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Replacement Army was implicated in the conspiracy. Fromm's removal, coupled with Hitler's great suspicion of the army led the way to Himmler's appointment as Fromm's successor, a position he predictibly abused to enormously expand the Waffen SS even further to the detriment of the rapidly deteriorating Wehrmacht.

Unfortunately for Himmler, the investigation soon revealed the involvement of many SS Officers in the conspiracy, including some senior ones, which played into the hands of Bormann's power struggle against the SS, as very few party cadre officers were implicated.

In late 1944, Himmler became Commander-in-Chief of army groupUpper Rhine, which was fighting the oncoming United States7th Army and French 1st Army in the Alsace region on the west bank of the Rhine. Himmler held this post until early 1945 when, after the Wehrmacht's failure to halt the Red Army's Vistula-Oder offensive, Hitler placed Himmler in command of the newly formed Army Group Vistula. As Himmler had no practical military experience as a field commander, this choice proved catastrophic and he was quickly relieved of his field commands, to be replaced by General Gotthard Heinrici.

As the war was drawing to a German defeat, Himmler 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.

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 the spring of 1945 Himmler had lost faith in German victory, probably partially due to his discussions with his masseurFelix Kersten and Walter Schellenberg2. 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 CountFolke 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 AdmiralKarl 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 6 May 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 General 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 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 donning an eye patch over his left eye [6], 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!"). Shortly afterwards, Himmler's body was secretly buried in an unmarked grave on the Lüneburg Heath. The precise location of Himmler's grave remains unknown.

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 that 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, the birthplace of Alois Hitler, where he was running a reborn SS in exile.[citation needed]

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.[7]David Irving also claimed Himmler was beaten and killed by the British interrogators. He also claimed his nose was broken by the beating.

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."1

The 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 with support from the Home Office. 'Quite entitled to do so,' the minutes record it (eg, Churchill) as commenting." 5

A 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.

In Douglas Niles's and Michael Dobson's alternative history novel Fox on the Rhine (ISBN 0-8125-7466-4), 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 0-641-67696-4), the sequel to Fox On The Rhine.

He also appears in Return to Castle Wolfenstein as an SS chief overseeing the resurrection of Heinrich I and the occult during Operation Resurrection. He and his team were successful in the ordeal, but Heinrich I and his dark knights were quickly defeated by Agent Blazkowicz. He watched in horror that "This American, he has ruined everything" before he was told that he needed to go back to Berlin to report to Hitler.

In the Colonization alternative history/sci-fi novel series by Harry Turtledove, Himmler is the Führer of the Greater German Reich in the 1960's, following the death of Hitler in the 1950's of a seemingly natural heart attack. Himmler dies of a stroke while working at his desk in 1965. He was succeeded shortly thereafter by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who proceeded to adopt Himmler's plan of invading Race-occupied Poland, with catastrophic consequences.

In Turtledove's stand-alone novel, In the Presence of Mine Enemies, in which Germany won World War II and which is set in 2010, Himmler had succeeded Hitler as Führer at an unspecified date, and remained so until his death in 1985--though some say he died in 1983 and the Reich was secretly ruled by a junta until a successor could be agreed upon.