Heinrich Himmler

*Reichsleiter*

Heinrich Himmler
Reichsleiter; Heinrich Himmler
	Himmler in 1942
4th Reichsführer-SS
	In office; 6 January 1929 – 29 April 1945
Deputy	Reinhard Heydrich (de facto)
Preceded by	Erhard Heiden
Succeeded by	Karl Hanke
Chief of the German Police
	In office; 17 June 1936 – 29 April 1945
Preceded by	Office established
Succeeded by	Karl Hanke
Reichsminister of the Interior
	In office; 24 August 1943 – 29 April 1945
Chancellor	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Wilhelm Frick
Succeeded by	Paul Giesler
General Plenipotentiary for Administration of the Reich
	In office; 20 August 1943 – 29 April 1945
Appointed by	Adolf Hitler
Preceded by	Wilhelm Frick
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Additional positions
January–March 1945	Commander of Army Group Vistula
1944–1945	Commander of the Replacement Army
1944–1945	Commander of Army Group Upper Rhine
1942–1943	Acting Director of the Reich Security Main Office
1939–1945	Reich Commissioner ; for the Consolidation of German Nationhood
1933–1945	Member of the Prussian State Council
1933–1945	Reichsleiter of the Nazi Party
1933–1945	Member of the Greater German Reichstag
1930–1933	Member of the Reichstag
Personal details
Born	Heinrich Luitpold Himmler; 7 October 1900; Munich, Germany
Died	23 May 1945 (aged 44); Lüneburg, Germany
Cause of death	cyanide poisoning (suicide)
Political party	Nazi Party (1923–1945)
Other political; affiliations	Bavarian People's Party (1919–1923)
Spouse(s)	Margarete Boden (m. 1928)
Domestic partner	Hedwig Potthast (1939–1944)
Children	3, including Gudrun
Relatives	Gebhard Ludwig Himmler (older brother); Ernst Hermann Himmler (younger brother);
Education	Technical University of Munich
Signature
Military service
Allegiance	German Empire; Nazi Germany;
Branch/service	Bavarian Army; Schutzstaffel;
Years of service	1917–1918 (Army); 1925–1945 (SS)
Rank	Fahnenjunker; Reichsführer-SS;
Unit	11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment
Commands	Army Group Upper Rhine ; Army Group Vistula ; Replacement Army\|Replacement (Home) Army
Battles/wars	World War II
	Heinrich Himmler's voice Heinrich Himmler explaining Nazi views on racial purity; (Recorded October 1943)

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (German: [ˈhaɪnʁɪç ˈluːɪtˌpɔlt ˈhɪmlɐ] (listen); October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was a German high-ranking Nazi politician. He led the Schutzstaffel (SS) and the Gestapo before and during World War II.

Himmler played a central role in planning the Holocaust and making it happen. (So did his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich.) Himmler created and controlled the Nazi concentration camps,^[2] where millions of people died.^[3]

For his central role in the Holocaust, Himmler has been described as an "architect" of genocide, terror, and the Final Solution.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Of the top leaders in the Nazi Party, Himmler was one of the youngest. Most of them had fought in World War I but he was still in training to be an officer when the war ended. He was involved in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch; the 1934 Night of the Long Knives (where he and Heydrich^[6] organized the murder of SA leader Ernst Röhm); and Kristallnacht/Night Of The Broken Glass (1938).^[7]

Organizing the Holocaust

Under Himmler's direction, the SS-Totenkopfverbände (Death's Head Battalions)^[8] organized and managed the Holocaust.^[9] This included administering Germany’s regime of concentration camps and extermination camps.^[9]

The camp system

Between 1933-1945, the Nazis established a network of thousands of camps throughout Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories.^[3]^[10]^[11] Himmler had authority over all of them. Millions of people died in these camps.^[12]

Unlike Hitler, Himmler visited some of the camps, including Auschwitz, Dachau, Mauthausen, andSachsenhausen.^[5]^[13]^[14] In fact, he personally opened the first concentration camp at Dachau on the 22nd of March, 1933.^[5]

Under Himmler's authority, the Nazis built gas chambers in death camps like Auschwitz so they could kill people more efficiently.^[5] According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum:

Millions of people were imprisoned, mistreated, and murdered in the various types of Nazi camps. Under SS management, the Germans and their collaborators murdered 2.7 million Jews in the killing centers alone. Only a small fraction of those imprisoned in Nazi camps survived.^[11]

Victims of the camps

Through its Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), Himmler's SS hunted down anyone they thought were Untermensch (sub-human). This included (among others):^[15]^[16]^[17]

Jews
Roma and Sinti people
Communists and anarchists
LGBT people
Slavs and Soviet prisoners of war
Black people
People with disabilities
People of certain religions, like Jehovah's Witnesses
People who opposed the Nazi regime (or were suspected of opposing it)

Under Himmler's leadership, these people were deported to concentration camps or extermination camps, where millions of them died.^[15]

Posen speech

On 4 October 1943, Himmler spoke of the extermination of the Jewish people during a secret SS meeting in the city of Poznań (Posen). The following are parts from an audio recording of the speech:^[18]

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 are 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."

Death

Postage stamp with Himmler's face, the number 6 in both upper corners, and the words DEUTSCHES REICH at the bottom — Mail Stamp

As the war ended, Himmler tried to negotiate with the Allies, hoping to avoid prosecution by surrendering. The Allies refused, and Himmler was captured by the British Army.^[2]

Before he could be tried at Nuremberg, Himmler committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule. He died on 23 May 1945 at the age of 44.^[2] The location of his grave is unknown.

Portrayals

Himmler has been portrayed in various works of fiction. In the 1989 Steven Spielberg movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Himmler was portrayed by Ronald Lacey. In the TV series The Man in the High Castle, he appeared along with Reinhard Heydrich (who was actually assassinated in 1942). He was also portrayed for comic effect as "Mr. Bimmler" by Michael Palin in the Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch "Mr. Hilter," in which Himmler, Hitler and Joachim von Ribbentrop are in hiding in a boarding house in Minehead, Somerset and going by thin aliases, plotting to restore the Third Reich by getting Hitler elected to the British Parliament.

Related pages

References

↑ Manvell & Fraenkel 2007, p. 13.
1 2 3 "Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
1 2 Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A history of the Nazi concentration camps (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-374-11825-9.
↑ Breitman, Richard (1992). The architect of genocide: Himmler and the final solution. The Tauber institute for the Study of European Jewry series. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press. ISBN 978-0-87451-596-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
1 2 3 4 "An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. 2020-05-23. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
1 2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (May 17, 2021). "Reinhard Heydrich: In Depth". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 24, 2024.
↑ "Heinrich Himmler | Biography, Crimes, Death, & Facts | Britannica". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-09-16. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
↑ "Totenkopfverbände: German history". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-08-20. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
1 2 "SS | History, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-08-20. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
↑ Kupferberg Holocaust Center - CUNY. "Charts & Statistics – The Concentration Camps". The Concentration Camps: Inside the Nazi System of Incarceration and Genocide. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
1 2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Nazi Camps". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
↑ "History: Auschwitz-Birkenau". Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. 2024.
↑ "Heinrich Himmler during an inspection of the Dachau camp (Photo)". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
↑ "Himmler, Heinrich". Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu (Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum). 2015. Archived from the original on 2024-09-24. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
1 2 Berenbaum, Michael; Peck, Abraham J.; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, eds. (2002). The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined (1st ed.). Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21529-1.
↑ "Categories of Prisoners". Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. 2024. Retrieved September 23, 2024.
↑ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Prisoners of the Camps". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.
↑ Himmler, Heinrich. "Evacuation of the Jews (From a Speech by Himmler Before Senior SS Officers in Poznan, October 4, 1943)" (PDF). Yad Vashem SHOAH Resource Center.

Other websites

List of Himmler speeches A very detailed list of Himmler speeches including online sources and material in the U.S. National Archives.
audio recording Archived 2012-05-07 at the Wayback Machine of the Poznan speech
Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation An essay by Himmler
About Heinrich Himmler Archived 2013-10-12 at the Wayback Machine

[FOOTNOTEManvellFraenkel200713-1] Manvell & Fraenkel 2007, p. 13.

[:3-2] 1 2 3 "Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) | American Experience | PBS". www.pbs.org. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[:0-3] 1 2 Wachsmann, Nikolaus (2015). KL: A history of the Nazi concentration camps (1st ed.). New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 15. ISBN 978-0-374-11825-9.

[4] Breitman, Richard (1992). The architect of genocide: Himmler and the final solution. The Tauber institute for the Study of European Jewry series. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England for Brandeis University Press. ISBN 978-0-87451-596-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)

[:4-5] 1 2 3 4 "An Architect of Terror: Heinrich Himmler and the Holocaust". The National WWII Museum | New Orleans. 2020-05-23. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[:5-6] 1 2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (May 17, 2021). "Reinhard Heydrich: In Depth". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved September 24, 2024.

[7] "Heinrich Himmler | Biography, Crimes, Death, & Facts | Britannica". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-09-16. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[8] "Totenkopfverbände: German history". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-08-20. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[:2-9] 1 2 "SS | History, Meaning, & Facts | Britannica". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024-08-20. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[10] Kupferberg Holocaust Center - CUNY. "Charts & Statistics – The Concentration Camps". The Concentration Camps: Inside the Nazi System of Incarceration and Genocide. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[:6-11] 1 2 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Nazi Camps". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[12] "History: Auschwitz-Birkenau". Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. 2024.

[13] "Heinrich Himmler during an inspection of the Dachau camp (Photo)". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[14] "Himmler, Heinrich". Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu (Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum). 2015. Archived from the original on 2024-09-24. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[:1-15] 1 2 Berenbaum, Michael; Peck, Abraham J.; United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, eds. (2002). The Holocaust and history: the known, the unknown, the disputed, and the reexamined (1st ed.). Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21529-1.

[16] "Categories of Prisoners". Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. 2024. Retrieved September 23, 2024.

[17] United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Prisoners of the Camps". Holocaust Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2024-09-24.

[18] Himmler, Heinrich. "Evacuation of the Jews (From a Speech by Himmler Before Senior SS Officers in Poznan, October 4, 1943)" (PDF). Yad Vashem SHOAH Resource Center.

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v t e The Hitler Cabinet (30 January 1933 – 30 April 1945)
Adolf Hitler (Chancellor and Führer)
Franz von Papen (ind) • Konstantin von Neurath • Joachim von Ribbentrop • Wilhelm Frick • Heinrich Himmler • Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk (ind) • Alfred Hugenberg (DNVP) • Kurt Schmitt • Hjalmar Schacht (ind) • Hermann Göring • Walther Funk • Franz Seldte • Franz Gürtner (DNVP) • Franz Schlegelberger • Otto Georg Thierack • Werner von Blomberg (ind) • Wilhelm Keitel (ind) • Freiherr von Eltz-Rübenach (ind) • Julius Dorpmüller • Wilhelm Ohnesorge • Richard Walther Darré • Herbert Backe • Joseph Goebbels • Bernhard Rust • Fritz Todt • Albert Speer • Alfred Rosenberg • Hanns Kerrl • Hermann Muhs • Otto Meißner (ind) • Arthur Seyß-Inquart • Hans Frank • Hans Lammers • Martin Bormann • Karl Hermann Frank • Rudolf Hess • Ernst Röhm
All ministers were NSDAP members except where indicated ("ind" = nominally independent). Most of them later became NSDAP members, except Von Papen, Hugenberg and Von Eltz-Rübenach.