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Heinrich Himmler: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler was born on the 7th of October 1900 in Munich into a conservative middle-class Catholic family, yet he would become the primary architect of the Holocaust. His early life was marked by poor health and a lack of athletic prowess, leading him to spend his youth training with weights to build a physique he felt he lacked. He attended a grammar school in Landshut where he was remembered as studious and socially awkward, struggling with the physical demands that his peers found easy. His father, a teacher, used his connections to secure Himmler's acceptance as an officer candidate, but the end of World War I in November 1918 denied him the chance to see combat or become an officer. Disappointed by his failure to make a military career and unable to afford doctoral studies, he took a low-paying office job after obtaining an agricultural diploma. This background in agriculture would later inform his obsession with selective breeding and racial purity, as he viewed human populations through the lens of a nursery gardener trying to reproduce a good old strain.
Rise of the Black Order
Himmler joined the Nazi Party on the 1st of August 1923 and participated in the Beer Hall Putsch, an unsuccessful attempt to seize power in Munich that set him on a lifelong path of politics. He abandoned Catholicism in 1923, 24, focusing instead on the occult and antisemitism, finding Germanic mythology to be a religion for him. In 1929, he assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS, transforming a force of about 290 men into one of the most powerful institutions in Nazi Germany. He appointed Reinhard Heydrich to head the intelligence service, creating a partnership that would dominate the security apparatus of the Third Reich. Himmler's organizational skills were legendary, and he developed an elaborate bureaucracy to control every aspect of the SS. By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members, and he began setting up different departments to enforce racial policies. He introduced the marriage order on the 31st of December 1931, requiring SS men to produce family trees proving Aryan descent to 1800, ensuring that only those with pure bloodlines could marry and reproduce within the order.
The Night of the Long Knives
In 1934, Hitler and other Nazi leaders became concerned that Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, was planning a coup d'état. Röhm believed the SA should become the sole arms-bearing corps of the state, and he lobbied Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defence. Hitler decided on the 21st of June that Röhm and the SA leadership had to be eliminated. He sent Hermann Göring to Berlin to meet with Himmler and Heydrich to plan the action. Röhm was arrested and given the choice to die by suicide or be shot; when he refused, he was shot dead by two SS officers. Between the 30th of June and the 2nd of July 1934, between 85 and 200 members of the SA leadership and other political adversaries were killed in these actions, known as the Night of the Long Knives. With the SA neutralized, the SS became an independent organization answerable only to Hitler on the 20th of July 1934. Himmler's title of Reichsführer-SS became the highest formal SS rank, equivalent to a field marshal in the army. This event marked the beginning of Himmler's consolidation of power, as he took control of the Gestapo and the entire German police force.
When was Heinrich Himmler born and where did he grow up?
Heinrich Himmler was born on the 7th of October 1900 in Munich into a conservative middle-class Catholic family. He attended a grammar school in Landshut where he was remembered as studious and socially awkward.
What role did Heinrich Himmler play in the Holocaust and when did he become Reichsführer-SS?
Heinrich Himmler became the primary architect of the Holocaust and assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS in 1929. He transformed the SS from a force of about 290 men into one of the most powerful institutions in Nazi Germany.
How did Heinrich Himmler consolidate power during the Night of the Long Knives?
Heinrich Himmler consolidated power between the 30th of June and the 2nd of July 1934 by neutralizing the SA leadership. The SS became an independent organization answerable only to Hitler on the 20th of July 1934, and Himmler took control of the Gestapo and the entire German police force.
What specific plans did Heinrich Himmler create for the extermination of Slavs and Jews?
Heinrich Himmler commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost on the 21st of June 1941, which called for the conquest and resettlement of Eastern Europe. The plan stated that 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews would perish through military actions and crises of food supply.
How did Heinrich Himmler die and when did his death occur?
Heinrich Himmler died on the 23rd of May 1945 after biting into a hidden potassium cyanide pill during an interrogation by Captain Thomas Selvester. He collapsed and was dead within 15 minutes, and his body was buried in an unmarked grave near Lüneburg.
Himmler was responsible for operating concentration and extermination camps as well as forming the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied Europe. In 1933, he set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau, appointing Theodor Eicke to run it. Eicke devised a system that was used as a model for future camps throughout Germany, featuring isolation of victims, elaborate roll calls, and a strict disciplinary code for the guards. By the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, there were six camps housing some 27,000 inmates, with death tolls that were high. Himmler commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost on the 21st of June 1941, which was approved by Hitler in May 1942. The plan called for the Baltic States, Poland, Western Ukraine, and Byelorussia to be conquered and resettled by ten million German citizens, while the current residents, some 31 million people, would be expelled further east, starved, or used for forced labour. Himmler stated openly that it would be a racial struggle of pitiless severity, in the course of which 20 to 30 million Slavs and Jews would perish through military actions and crises of food supply.
The Final Solution
In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague in Operation Anthropoid, led by Jozef Gabčík and Jan Kubiš. During the funeral services, Himmler, the chief mourner, took charge of Heydrich's two young sons and gave the eulogy in Berlin. Hitler ordered brutal reprisals for Heydrich's death, and over 13,000 people were arrested, with the village of Lidice razed to the ground. Himmler took over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in Operation Reinhard, named in Heydrich's honour. He ordered the three extermination camps to be constructed at Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka. Initially, 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, where he was so shaken by the experience that he went very green and pale and swayed. Karl Wolff jumped forward, held him steady, and led him away from the grave. Nauseated and shaken, Himmler decided that other methods of killing should be found, leading to the expansion of Auschwitz with gas chambers using the pesticide Zyklon B.
The Posen Speeches
On the 4th of October 1943, during a secret meeting with top SS officials in the city of Poznań, and on the 6th of October 1943, in a speech to the party elite, Himmler referred explicitly to the extermination of the Jewish people. Hitler authorized Himmler's speeches to ensure that all party leaders were complicit in the crimes and could not later deny knowledge of the killings. A translated excerpt from the speech of the 4th of October reads that the extermination was a necessary part of the war against the Jews. Himmler's racial groupings began with the Volksdeutsche, the classification of people deemed of German blood. He ordered that those who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labour. Himmler's belief that it is in the nature of German blood to resist led to his conclusion that Balts or Slavs who resisted Germanisation were racially superior to more compliant ones. He declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an alien race.
The Last Betrayal
In March 1945, the German war effort was on the verge of collapse, and Himmler's relationship with Hitler had deteriorated. Himmler considered independently negotiating a peace settlement, using his masseur Felix Kersten as an intermediary in negotiations with Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler and Hitler met for the last time on the 20th of April 1945, Hitler's birthday, in Berlin, and Himmler swore unswerving loyalty to Hitler. On the 27th of April, Himmler's SS representative at Hitler's HQ in Berlin, Hermann Fegelein, was caught in civilian clothes preparing to desert and was arrested. On the evening of the 28th of April, the BBC broadcast a Reuters news report about Himmler's attempted negotiations with the western Allies. Hitler flew into a rage at this betrayal, calling Himmler's secret negotiations the worst treachery he had ever known. Hitler ordered Himmler's arrest, and Fegelein was court-martialled and shot. Hitler declared both Himmler and Göring to be traitors in his last will and testament, completed on the 29th of April, one day before his suicide.
The End of the Reichsführer
Rejected by his former comrades and hunted by the Allies, Himmler attempted to go into hiding. He carried a forged paybook under the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hizinger. On the 11th of May 1945, with a small band of companions, he headed south to Friedrichskoog. On the 21st of May, Himmler and two aides were stopped and detained at a checkpoint in Bremervörde set up by former Soviet POWs. Over the following two days, he was moved around to several camps and was brought to the British 31st Civilian Interrogation Camp near Lüneburg on the 23rd of May. The duty officer, Captain Thomas Selvester, began a routine interrogation. Himmler admitted who he was, and Selvester had the prisoner searched. Himmler then bit into a hidden potassium cyanide pill and collapsed onto the floor. He was dead within 15 minutes, despite efforts to expel the poison from his system. Shortly afterward, Himmler's body was buried in an unmarked grave near Lüneburg, the location of which remains unknown. His death marked the end of a life that had transformed him from a bookish, health-stricken student into one of the most powerful and brutal figures in history.