Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 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, where millions of people died.

For his central role in the Holocaust, Himmler has been described as an "architect" of genocide, terror, and the Final Solution. 

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 organized the murder of SA leader Ernst Röhm); and Kristallnacht/Night Of The Broken Glass (1938).  

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

 The camp system 
Between 1933-1945, the Nazis established a network of thousands of camps throughout Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied territories. Himmler had authority over all of them. Millions of people died in these camps. 

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

Under Himmler's authority, the Nazis built gas chambers in death camps like Auschwitz so they could kill people more efficiently. 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.

 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): 

 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.

 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:

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 
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.

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. 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

 Genocide
 Nazi Germany
 The Holocaust
 The Final Solution
 Nazi extermination camps
 Nazi concentration camps

References

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  of the Poznan speech
 Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation An essay by Himmler
 About Heinrich Himmler 

Category:1900 births
Category:1945 deaths
Category:SS officers
Category:Suicides by poison
Category:Suicides in Germany
Category:German war criminals
Category:Former Roman Catholics
Category:Holocaust perpetrators
Category:Politicians from Munich
Category:Antisemitism in Germany
Category:Nazis who committed suicide
Category:Politicians of the Nazi Party
Category:Murderers who committed suicide
Category:Government ministers of Nazi Germany
Category:Members of the Reichstag (Nazi Germany)
Category:German military personnel of World War I
Category:German military personnel of World War II
Category:Members of the Reichstag (Weimar Republic)
Category:Directors of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt