Heinrich Himmler was born on October 7, 1900 in Munich. His father worked as a high school teacher until 1913. Then he was transferred to Landshut, and the family was forced to move to a new place.
Himmler from childhood demonstrated good organizational skills and passionate patriotism. When the First World War broke out, Himmler dreamed of serving in the army and wanted to go to the front. Having applied for training in the Navy, Henry was refused due to poor eyesight, then he turned to his father for help. His father reluctantly took advantage of his connections in the government so that young Himmler could learn military science. Despite this, Henry did not have time to get to the front, since the war ended before he completed his studies.
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Contact with the National Socialists
Germany signed a peace treaty and the war was over. Realizing that his dreams of an army were not destined to come true, Himmler entered the Munich Technical University. There he began to get involved in racist and nationalist literature and joined the German national student fraternity. By the time he graduated from university in 1922, he was already a staunch nationalist fanatic and political activist.
While working in a manure factory in Schleichslam, Himmler made contact with the National Socialists through his chief of staff, Ernst Rohm. In August 1923 he joined the party and subsequently devoted his entire life to it. A month later, Himmler quit his job and on November 9 took part in organizing the famous "Beer Putsch" with the aim of seizing state power.
The coup failed, but the party leadership, seeing the potential in Himmler, appoints him as secretary to Gregor Strasser's personal assistant, appointed by Hitler to conduct Nazi propaganda. Himmler already had a reputation in the party as a good speaker and organizer. In his speeches, he focused on the themes of "racial consciousness", the superiority of the German nation, the unification of German lands and the struggle against the "eternal enemies of Germany." They in his understanding were socialist, communist and liberal-democratic forms of government. Also in the list of enemies were the Jewish and other peoples.
When Himmler was already an established political figure and had a certain authority in the party, he decided to marry. His wife was Margaret Boden, who later gave him a daughter, Gudrun (1929).
Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler
Storm squads have existed since the inception of the Nazi party. Their number was insignificant (less than 300 people), and they served mainly for the personal protection of Hitler and his entourage. Himmler, who was appointed head of the SS, completely changed this situation. He made a full-fledged elite paramilitary unit out of the security detachment, thanks to which the NSDAP was able to finally take power into its own hands.
In the period from 1929 to 1933, the SS numbered more than 52 thousand people. Himmler was able to make the most of all the opportunities that his new position opened up for him. Soon Himmler was no longer just running the party's paramilitary units. He resolved issues of internal security and monitored the "purity" of the Germanic race.
German Internal Security Service
In 1931, mass uprisings of those who disagreed with Hitler's policies took place in the ranks of the assault detachments. They tried to overthrow the Fuhrer, but Himmler effectively suppressed the riots. After the riots, he decides to create the Sicherheitsdienst service, which was supposed to prevent similar phenomena in the future.
This service becomes, in fact, the only body of political intelligence in Germany, in addition, it is engaged in internal investigations in the ranks of the Third Reich. Individuals who disagreed with Hitler's ideas were tracked down and promptly eliminated. In 1934, Rudolf Hess made a statement that the Sicherheitsdienst now has an official status and serves as the internal security service of Germany.
In the winter of 1931, Himmler establishes the SS Investigation Department. The main responsibility of this unit was to study the documents of citizens submitted to the registry office. In accordance with the recently adopted "Decree on Marriage", the SS now have the right to decide whether a person is a "purebred" Aryan, and with whom he should start a family in order to maintain "racial purity."
Citizens of the occupied territories, who were recognized as "purebred", received certain freedoms and privileges. They were supposed to have a decent diet, housing and household utensils. If the subject did not pass the exam for "racial purity", an unenviable fate awaited him. In a broad sense, the issue of ethnicity could take away or save a person's life.
When the Nazis finally took power into their own hands in 1933, Himmler made the SS an invincible organization that completely controlled all police structures in Germany. On March 9, he was appointed to the post of interim chief of police in Munich. Within three weeks, Himmler was in command of the entire Bavarian police. By the end of 1934, Himmler's influence had spread to all police forces in the country. Himmler decided to unite them into a single structure, which was called the "Secret State Police".
One of the most powerful people in the country
After 1936, Himmler had already managed to centralize all the investigative structures of the country under the jurisdiction of the "General Directorate of Reich Security". It was this unit that was later entrusted with the implementation of the Holocaust. From 1937, the SS gained control of the people's liaison office, serving the needs of ethnic Germans living outside Germany. German national communities were organized, and items of clothing, appliances and household utensils taken from Jews imprisoned in camps were sent to them. Himmler made the SS a service that controlled all the law enforcement agencies of the country and the entire system of executive power in Germany. This made him one of the most powerful people in the country.
Concentration camps appeared in Germany as early as 1933; they contained political prisoners and opponents of the regime. Hitler was so enthusiastic about their work (especially the Dachau camp) that he commissioned Himmler to create a new centralized concentration camp management system. Himmler created a camp inspection service within the SS, and as a result of his inspections, many camps were closed and the number of institutions of this type was reduced to 4. However, during the war years, the system grew so much that it included dozens of camps with hundreds of cells. During this entire period, the SS administration will kill millions of people in the camps - Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, political prisoners, homosexuals and many others.
Hitler expressed his gratitude to Himmler for his special services in suppressing the uprising of the storm troops. Hitler announced that the SS was now gaining full independence and was subject only to him as the Fuehrer of Germany. This took his powers beyond state legal restrictions. This type of control became the foundation of the enormous power that Himmler tirelessly built up during the entire period of the war. He received permission from the Fuhrer to pursue an ideological policy that contradicted the laws of the state. This ideology, built on the cult of Hitler's personality, allowed the Nazis to indefinitely imprison unwanted people and carry out massacres. Nazi leaders supported this illegal policy, justifying their actions with the emergency that Germany found itself in thanks to the war.
Final Solution to the Jewish Question
In 1939, following the completion of the partition of Poland, Himmler was appointed Commissioner for the Strengthening of the Ethnic German Foundation. Himmler now had the right to control the resettlement and migration of the German people in the occupied territories. The SS decided who could be called German and who could not, and where "racially pure" Germans should live. Now they were deciding which peoples should be completely destroyed so that the Germans could populate the liberated lands, and which ones were worthy to leave them alive. In July 1941, Himmler's powers extended to the occupied lands of the USSR. Himmler was personally responsible for security on the front lines. In the SS, mobile units were formed, which initiated and carried out massive purges of Jews, Russians, Gypsies and other categories of people who fall into the lists of prohibited. With the permission of Hitler SS, a plan for the "final solution of the Jewish question" was developed and implemented. A large-scale extermination of people was carried out, which claimed millions of lives.
In 1943, Hitler made Himmler Minister of the Interior. Perhaps this step was taken to be able to control the growing power of the SS. This appointment did not in any way affect the balance of political forces in the government.
After victorious battles in late 1939, Himmler convinced Hitler to create an elite military force within the SS structure. The corps was called the Waffen SS and initially consisted of only 4 divisions. Ultimately, it grew to 20 divisions and began to have more than half a million combat personnel. The Waffen SS had reached such a level that, if desired, could easily compete with the German army.
Good organizer
Himmler also created a separate structure for disciplinary investigations in the Waffen SS, as neither the civilian nor the military courts had the authority to intervene in this unit.
As the German army began to give up its positions, Hitler began to lean more and more towards the Waffen SS. After the unsuccessful military coup in 1944, Himmler received the post of army commander with the right to personally deal with the issues of prisoners of war.
Despite the tremendous power that Himmler concentrated around him, he was not an influential person in the German government. His most significant rival was Martin Bormann. Himmler was considered by many to be insane. He was seriously interested in the occult, tried to search for the Tibetan origins of the Germanic race and believed that he was the reincarnation of a medieval German king. Himmler paid too much attention to the appearance and privacy of officers, soldiers and other SS personnel, but the party leaders were quite happy with this eccentricity. Thanks to her, they were able to direct the actions of Himmler.
It was easy for shadow leaders to manipulate him into believing they supported his ideas. In addition, Himmler was a good organizer who knew how to gain and use power. He was able to win loyalty from each of the SS officers and knew how to make them appreciate their belonging to the German elite. Himmler knew how to tune the work of internal security as his unit and the entire state. Himmler was valued for these abilities, and the tool he created (SS) made it possible in the future to realize all the main tasks of the Nazi regime.
Death of Himmler
When there was no doubt about the defeat of the German army, he began to consider the possibility of negotiating with the countries of the West. He decided to use his trump card in the form of concentration camp prisoners. Shortly before the end of the war, Himmler arranged a meeting with Hillel Storch of the World Jewish Congress to discuss the possibility of a deal, but the attempt failed. Himmler appealed to the Vice-President of the Red Cross, Count Bernadotte, with a request to convey a message to the Western front, American General Eisenhower, that Germany was ready to surrender. The news of this act of Himmler reached Hitler, who was at that time in besieged Berlin. One of his most recent decrees was to strip Himmler of all powers and order his arrest.
Himmler constantly stated that if something happened he was ready to take responsibility for all his crimes. The reality turned out to be completely different. Himmler disgracefully fled with forged documents, but was captured by the Soviet military on May 20, 1945. Himmler was handed over to the British for interrogation, during which he confessed everything. On May 23 of the same year, during a search, Himmler committed suicide by biting through a cyanide capsule, which he kept in his mouth in case of his exposure.