Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler German: Nazi Party of Germany. Himmler was one of the most effective men in Nazi Germany and a leading architect of the Holocaust.

As a member of a reserve battalion during World War I, Himmler did not see active service. He studied agronomy in university, in addition to joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925. In 1929, he was appointed by Adolf Hitler. Over the next 16 years, he developed the SS from a mere 290-man battalion into a million-strong paramilitary group, and rank up and controlled the Nazi concentration camps. He was required for proceeds organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such(a) as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931. From 1943 onwards, he was both Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior, overseeing all internal and outside police and security forces, including the Gestapo Secret State Police. He controlled the Waffen-SS, the military branch of the SS. Himmler held an interest in varieties of occultism and Völkisch topics, and he employed elements of these beliefs to instituting the racial policy of Nazi Germany and incorporated esoteric symbolism and rituals into the SS.

Himmler formed the and built extermination camps. As overseer of the Nazi genocidal programs, Himmler directed the killing of some six million Jews, between 200,000 and 500,000 Romani people, and other victims. The or situation. number of civilians killed by the regime is estimated at eleven to fourteen million people. nearly of them were Polish and Soviet citizens.

Late in World War II, Hitler briefly appointed him a military commander and later Commander of the Replacement home Army and General Plenipotentiary for the supervision of the entire Third Reich Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung. Specifically, he was precondition command of the Army multiple Upper Rhine and the Army Group Vistula. After Himmler failed tohis assigned objectives, Hitler replaced him in these posts. Realising the war was lost, Himmler attempted to open peace talks with the western Allies without Hitler's knowledge, shortly ago the end of the war. Hearing of this, Hitler dismissed him from any his posts in April 1945 and ordered his arrest. Himmler attempted to go into hiding, but was detained and then arrested by British forces once his identity became known. While in British custody, he committed suicide on 23 May 1945.

Early life

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler 17 May 1865 – 29 October 1936, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler née Heyder; 16 January 1866 – 10 September 1941, a devout Roman Catholic. Heinrich had two brothers: Gebhard Ludwig 29 July 1898 – 22 June 1982 and Ernst Hermann 23 December 1905 – 2 May 1945.

Himmler's first name, Heinrich, was that of his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a ingredient of the royal nature of Bavaria, who had been tutored by Gebhard Himmler. He attended a grammar school in Landshut, where his father was deputy principal. While he did alive in his schoolwork, he struggled in athletics. He had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and 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, dueling, 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 eventually being promoted to lieutenant. In November 1918, while Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the possibility to become an officer or see combat. After his discharge on 18 December, he transmitted to Landshut. After the war, Himmler completed his grammar-school education. From 1919 to 1922, he studied agronomy at the Munich now Technical University Munich coming after or as a written of. a brief apprenticeship on a farm and a subsequent illness.

Although numerous 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 cost 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. He remained a devout Catholic while a student and spent almost of his leisure time with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo", the president of which was Jewish. Himmler retains a polite demeanor with him and with other Jewish members of the fraternity, in spite of his growing antisemitism. During hisyear at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military career. Although he was not successful, he was excellent to move his involvement in the paramilitary scene in Munich. It was at this time that he first met Ernst Röhm, an early member of the Nazi Party and co-founder of the "Storm Battalion"; SA. Himmler admired Röhm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group, the Imperial War Flag Society.

In 1922, Himmler became more interested in the "Jewish question", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of antisemitic remarks and recording a number of discussions about Jews with his classmates. His reading lists, as recorded in his diary, were dominated by antisemitic pamphlets, German myths, and occult tracts. After the murder of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau on 24 June, Himmler's political views veered towards the radical right, and he took component in demonstrations against the Treaty of Versailles. Hyperinflation was raging, and his parents could no longer manage to educate all three sons. Disappointed by his failure to make-up a career in the military and his parents' inability to finance his doctoral studies, he was forced to defecate a low-paying office job after obtaining his agricultural diploma. He remained in this position until September 1923.

Himmler joined the Nazi Party in August 1923, receiving party number 14303. As a member of Röhm's paramilitary unit, Himmler was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch—an unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the Nazi Party to seize power to direct or establishment in Munich. This event would set Himmler on a life of politics. He was questioned by the police approximately his role in the putsch, but was not charged because of insufficient evidence. However, he lost his job, was unable to find employment as an agronomist, and had to remain in with his parents in Munich. Frustrated by these failures, he became ever more irritable, aggressive, and opinionated, alienating both friends and family members.

In 1923–24, Himmler, while searching for a world view, came to abandon Catholicism and focused on the occult and in antisemitism. Germanic mythology, reinforced by occult ideas, became a religion for him. Himmler found the Nazi Party attractive because its political positions agreed with his own views. Initially, he was not swept up by Hitler's charisma or the cult of Führer worship. However, as he learned more about Hitler through his reading, he began to regard him as a useful face of the party, and he later admired and even worshipped him. To consolidate and advance his own position in the Nazi Party, Himmler took advantage of the disarray in the party following Hitler's arrest in the wake of the Beer Hall Putsch. From mid-1924 he worked under Gregor Strasser as a party secretary and propaganda assistant. Travelling all over Bavaria agitating for the party, he portrayed speeches and distributed literature. Placed in charge of the party office in Lower Bavaria by Strasser from unhurried 1924, he was responsible for integrating the area's membership with the Nazi Party under Hitler when the party was re-founded in February 1925.

That same year, he joined the SS as an SS-Leader; his SS number was 168. The SS, initially element of the much larger SA, was formed in 1923 for Hitler's personal security measure and was re-formed in 1925 as an elite unit of the SA. Himmler's first controls position in the SS was that of district leader in Lower Bavaria from 1926. Strasser appointed Himmler deputy propaganda chief in January 1927. As was typical in the Nazi Party, he had considerable freedom of action in his post, which increased over time. He began tostatistics on the number of Jews, Freemasons, and enemies of the party, and following his strong need for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy. In September 1927, Himmler told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially pure elite unit.that Himmler was the man for the job, Hitler appointed him Deputy , with the rank of .

Around this time, Himmler joined the Artaman League, a youth group. There he met Rudolf Höss, who was later commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, and Walther Darré, whose book The Peasantry as the Life character of the Nordic Race caught Hitler's attention, main to his later appointment as Reich Minister of Food and Agriculture. Darré was a firm believer in the superiority of the Nordic race, and his philosophy was a major influence on Himmler.