Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Catholic family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler (1865–1936), a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder; 1866–1941). Heinrich had two brothers: Gebhard Ludwig (1898–1982) and Ernst Hermann (1905–1945).

Himmler's first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family of Bavaria who had been tutored by Himmler's father. He attended a grammar school in Landshut, where his father was deputy principal. He did well in his schoolwork, but struggled in athletics. Himmler had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and various other ailments. In his youth, he trained daily with weights and exercised to become stronger. Other boys at the school later remembered him as studious and awkward in social situations.

Himmler's diary, which he kept intermittently from the age of 10, shows that he took a keen interest in current events, duelling, and "the serious discussion of religion and sex". In 1915, he began training with the Landshut Cadet Corps. His father used his connections with the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he enlisted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917. His brother, Gebhard, served on the western front and saw combat, receiving the Iron Cross and being promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918, while Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat. After his discharge on 18 December, he returned to Landshut. After the war, Himmler completed his grammar school education. From 1919 to 1922, he studied agriculture at the Technische Hochschule München (now Technical University of Munich) following a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness.

Although many regulations that discriminated against non-Christians—including Jews and other minority groups—had been eliminated during the unification of Germany in 1871, antisemitism continued to exist and thrive in Germany and other parts of Europe. Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so; students at his school would avoid their Jewish classmates. …

Upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden in January 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's approval; he still carried out his duties at propaganda headquarters. One of his first responsibilities was to organise SS participants at the Nuremberg Rally that September. Over the next year, Himmler grew the SS from a force of about 290 men to about 3,000. By 1930 Himmler had persuaded Hitler to run the SS as a separate organisation, although it was officially still subordinate to the SA.

To gain political power, the Nazi Party took advantage of the economic downturn during the Great Depression. The coalition government of the Weimar Republic was unable to improve the economy, so many voters turned to the political extreme, which included the Nazi Party. Hitler used populist rhetoric, including blaming scapegoats—particularly the Jews—for the economic hardships. In September 1930, Himmler was first elected as a deputy to the Reichstag. In the 1932 election, the Nazis won 37.3 percent of the vote and 230 seats in the Reichstag. Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg on 30 January 1933, heading a short-lived coalition of his Nazis and the German National People's Party. The new cabinet initially included only three members of the Nazi Party: Hitler, Hermann Göring as minister without portfolio and Minister of the Interior for Prussia, and Wilhelm Frick as Reich Interior Minister. Less than a month later, the Reichstag building was set on fire. Hitler took advantage of this event, forcing Hindenburg to sign the Reichstag Fire Decree, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The Enabling Act, passed by the Reichstag on 23 March 1933, gave the Cabinet—in practice, Hitler—full legislative powers, and the country became a de facto dictatorship. On 1 August 1934, Hitler's cabinet passed a law which stipulated that upon Hindenburg's death, the office of president would be abolished and its powers merged with those of the chancellor. Hindenburg died the next morning, and Hitler became both head of state and head of government under the title Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor).

The Nazi Party's rise to power provided Himmler and the SS an unfettered opportunity to thrive. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. …

When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Heinrich Müller masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler. German soldiers dressed in Polish uniforms undertook border skirmishes which deceptively suggested Polish aggression against Germany. The incidents were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening event of World War II. At the beginning of the war against Poland, Hitler authorised the killing of Polish civilians, including Jews and ethnic Poles. The Einsatzgruppen (SS task forces) had originally been formed by Heydrich to secure government papers and offices in areas taken over by Germany before World War II. Authorised by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units—now repurposed as death squads—followed the Heer (army) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65,000 intellectuals and other civilians. Militias and Heer units also took part in these killings. Under Himmler's orders via the RSHA, these squads were also tasked with rounding up Jews and others for placement in ghettos and concentration camps.

Germany subsequently invaded Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands, and France, and began bombing Great Britain in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the planned invasion of the United Kingdom. On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East); the plan was approved by Hitler in May 1942. It called for the Baltic States, Poland, Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million German citizens. The current residents—some 31 million people—would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labour. The plan would have extended the borders of Germany to the east by one thousand kilometres (600 miles). Himmler expected that it would take twenty to thirty years to complete the plan, at a cost of 67 billion ℛ︁ℳ︁. …

Nazi racial policies, including the notion that people who were racially inferior had no right to live, date back to the earliest days of the party; Hitler discusses this in Mein Kampf. Around the time of the German declaration of war on the United States in December 1941, Hitler resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be "exterminated". Heydrich arranged a meeting, held on 20 January 1942 at Wannsee, a suburb of Berlin. Attended by top Nazi officials, it was used to outline the plans for the "final solution to the Jewish question". Heydrich detailed how those Jews able to work would be worked to death; those unable to work would be killed outright. Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan.

In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in Operation Anthropoid, led by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš, members of Czechoslovakia's army-in-exile. Both men had been trained by the British Special Operations Executive for the mission to kill Heydrich. During the two funeral services, Himmler—the chief mourner—took charge of Heydrich's two young sons, and he gave the eulogy in Berlin. On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, Hitler ordered brutal reprisals for Heydrich's death. Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village of Lidice was razed to the ground; its male inhabitants and all adults in the village of Ležáky were murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads. Himmler took over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in Aktion Reinhard (Operation Reinhard), named in Heydrich's honour. He ordered the Aktion Reinhard camps—three extermination camps—to be constructed at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka.

Initially the victims were killed with gas vans or by firing squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale. In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk. This was the first time he had heard a shot fired in anger or seen dead people and, while looking into the open grave, his coat and perhaps his face were splashed by the brains of a victim. He went very green and pale and swayed. Karl Wolff jumped forward, held him steady and led him away from the grave. …

On 20 July 1944, a group of German army officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg and including some of the highest-ranked members of the German armed forces attempted to assassinate Hitler, but failed to do so. The next day, Himmler formed a special commission that arrested over 5,000 suspected and known opponents of the regime. Hitler ordered brutal reprisals that resulted in the execution of more than 4,900 people. Though Himmler was embarrassed by his failure to uncover the plot, it led to an increase in his powers and authority.

General Friedrich Fromm, commander-in-chief of the Replacement Army (Ersatzheer) and Stauffenberg's immediate superior, was one of those implicated in the conspiracy. Hitler removed Fromm from his post and named Himmler as his successor. Since the Replacement Army consisted of two million men, Himmler hoped to draw on these reserves to fill posts within the Waffen-SS. He appointed Hans Jüttner, director of the SS Leadership Main Office, as his deputy, and began to fill top Replacement Army posts with SS men. By November 1944, Himmler had merged the army officer recruitment department with that of the Waffen-SS and had successfully lobbied for an increase in the quotas for recruits to the SS.

By this time, Hitler had appointed Himmler as Reichsminister of the Interior, succeeding Frick, and General Plenipotentiary for Administration (Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung). At the same time (24 August 1943) he also joined the six-member Council of Ministers for the Defense of the Reich, which operated as the war cabinet. In August 1944 Hitler authorised him to restructure the organisation and administration of the Waffen-SS, the army, and the police services. As head of the Replacement Army, Himmler was now responsible for prisoners of war. He was also in charge of the Wehrmacht penal system, and controlled the development of Wehrmacht armaments until January 1945.