Heinrich Himmler Research Paper

Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Himmler was the Reich Leader of the SS and Gestapo of the Nazi Party from 1929 up until 1945. Himmler was essentially Adolf Hitler’s right hand man throughout World War II and was the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany. He was the man that was in charge of the Holocaust, and the man who over saw the mass killing of the Jews (Heinrich Himmler). Although Adolf Hitler is credited with the full responsibility of exterminating six-million Jews, it is a little known fact that Heinrich Himmler was the mastermind behind the Holocaust who essentially carried out the executions and created the plans of the mass killing of six-million Jews; known as the Final Solution. Heinrich Himmler was born into a conservative,
middle class, Catholic family on October 7, 1900 in Munich, Germany. He attended Landshut High School where his father was the assistant principal (Worth, 1). “An intelligent youngster with good capacity for organization, young Himmler was fervently patriotic” (Heinrich Himmler). He had always dreamed of serving for his country on the front lines. As soon as he became of age, he left high school for training. But World War I had already ended before he had even finished his training. He then went on to receive an agricultural degree from the Munich Technical School. While in school Himmler became interested in the ideas of Adolf Hitler, he became fond of ideas like Anti-Semitism and the belief in the Aryan race. He became a devoted political activist following the ideas of the Nazi party. After school, he took a job at a Fertilizer company working as a salesman. In 1923, shortly after joining a Para-military nationalist organization, he quit his job and joined the Nazi party. Shortly after joining, young Himmler marched at the Beer Hall Putsch against the German Government along with powerful Nazi leaders like Hitler, Rohm, and Herman Goring. Heinrich Himmler became known in the Nazi party as a powerful speaker and organizer. In 1928, he married a young woman named Margarete Boden who he had a daughter with. For the time being he was a secretary and assistant to higher up leaders like Gregor Strasser and was well recognized in the party. In 1929, Adolf Hitler appointed Himmler as the head of his personal bodyguard’s which was otherwise known as the SS. Himmler would now begin to carry out Hitler’s orders of the Holocaust (Heinrich Himmler). The Holocaust was arguably the most horrific and devastating genocide that the world has ever seen, which took place from 1933 to 1945. During this Holocaust, Nazi Germany under Hitler was determined to kill of all people in Europe that are not the accepted race; known as the Aryan race. The Aryan race was typically defined as blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. The German’s viewed the Jews as an inferior race and a threat to the superior race. Nazi Germany executed six million Jews during this time period; along with 200,000 Gypsies, Slavic people, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah’s witnesses, homosexuals, and even German citizens with mental illnesses were killed. These people would be shipped off in train carts like animals, to labor camps. The camps were referred to as Concentration Camps where most of the victims either died of malnourishment and exhaustion, or were executed upon arrival in the gas chambers and crematory ovens (Heinrich Himmler). Between 1941 and 1944 Nazi Germany carried out their “Final Solution.” As the Germans knew that they were being defeated, they called for the mass scavenging of all Jews throughout Europe. During these 3 years the Nazi’s killed millions of Jews by sending them to their execution camps, where Jews died by the thousands everyday while living amongst themselves in the Ghetto’s of places like Auschwitz-Birkenau; one of the many camps where women, children, husbands, and fathers were all separated and brutally murdered. These years were some of the bloodiest years that the world has ever seen. It is still to this day the largest Genocide in the World, and Heinrich Himmler had a great deal to do with it (Holocaust History). When Himmler was appointed to the head of the SS, it only contained 280 men. By the time he had created his elite set of troops it consisted of over 52,000 and were trained in high guardianship of racial purity and the Aryan race. In 1933, five years after the Nazi party took control of Germany, Hitler appointed Himmler Chief of the German police forces where he fused all forces together including the Gestapo, SA, Security police, and SS. This would be the force that would implement the Holocaust, under the order of Heinrich Himmler. The Concentration camps already existed in Germany to lock up political enemies of the Nazi’s set up by the SS. Hitler liked the idea and put Himmler in charge of broadening the number of camps in a centralized system, after 4 years he had constructed 30-40 main camps along with hundreds of smaller sub-camps. In July 1941, Hitler ordered Himmler to begin the mass killing of the Jews, known as the Final Solution. Himmler spoke of this during one of his most famous speeches on October 4, 1943:
“In front of you here, I want to refer explicitly to a very serious matter….I mean here…the annihilation of the Jewish people…. Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses lie side by side, or 500 or 1,000…. This page of glory in our history has never been written and will never be written….We had the moral right, we were obligated to our people to kill this people which wanted to kill us” (Heinrich Himmler).

Himmler was in total control of what happened in the concentration camps, and once he was appointed Minister of the Interior in 1943; he was able to create the Waffen SS.
Although Hitler only permitted four divisions in the Waffen SS, Himmler built it into over 20 divisions consisting of over 500,000 soldiers to rival the German army. In February 1944, Himmler and his men took control of the German Armed Forces Intelligence Service, and later that year he was appointed to Commander-in-chief of the Upper Rhine in southwestern Germany before they were defeated (Heinrich Himmler). During the winter of 1944-1945, Himmler decided to try to negotiate a peace with the allied powers while still fighting the Soviet Union. In April of 1945, he offered surrender to the commander-in-chief of the Allied powers, Dwight D. Eisenhower. When Hitler had found out what Himmler had done, he stripped him of all his ranks and ordered his arrest. Himmler ran from his identity by dressing in a Field Police uniform and an eye patch with the name Heinrich Hitzinger. Russian soldiers eventually captured him on May 20, 1945; where he was turned over to the British. On May 23, 1945, while under heavy interrogation by the British intelligence agency he swallowed a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth, after confessing his identity (Heinrich
Himmler). Himmler was the true undermining of the killing of the Jews and the carrying out of the Holocaust. “Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe” (Heinrich Himmler). He grew up a normal boy in a catholic home, but was influenced by Hitler at a very young age. He carried out the killings of six million Jews throughout his ruling. Although Adolf Hitler is credited with the full responsibility of exterminating six-million Jews, it is a little known fact that Heinrich Himmler was the mastermind behind the Holocaust who essentially carried out the executions and created the plans of the mass killing of six-million Jews; known as the Final Solution.

Works Cited
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"Holocaust History." Heinrich Himmler. UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2013. .

Wistrich, Robert S. "Heinrich Himmler." Heinrich Himmler. Jewish Virtual Library, n.d. Web. 10 Feb. 2013. .

Worth, Richard. Heinrich Himmler: Murderous Architect of the Holocaust. Berkeley Heights, NJ: Enslow Pub., 2005. Print.