Setementor

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (listen (help·info) 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945) was a German high-ranking Nazi politician. He headed the Schutzstaffel (SS). By the end of the war he was the second-most powerful man in Nazi Germany, having displaced Hermann Göring. As Reichsführer-SS he oversaw all police and security forces including the Gestapo.

As overseer of the concentration camps, extermination camps, and Einsatzgruppen (death squads), Himmler coordinated and implemented the killing of approximately six million Jews, three million gypsies (or Roma) and millions of Soviet prisoners of war, communists or other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live, including homosexuals, short people, and people with physical and mental disabilities. Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender to the Allies if he was spared from prosecution. He was arrested by British forces and committed suicide before he could be questioned.

Contents [hide] 1 Early life 2 Rise in the SS 2.1 Early SS (1927–1934) 2.2 Consolidation of power 3 Himmler and the Holocaust 3.1 Posen speech 4 The Second World War 4.1 Interior minister 4.2 20 July plot 4.3 Commander-in-chief 4.4 Peace negotiations 5 Capture and death 5.1 Alternate theories 6 Allach porcelain 7 Historical views 8 In fiction 9 References 10 Sources 11 See also 12 External links

[edit] Early life Himmler was born in Munich to a Bavarian middle-class family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler, a secondary-school teacher and principal[1] of the prestigious Wittelsbacher Gymnasium. His mother was Anna Maria Himmler (née Heyder), a devout Roman Catholic and attentive mother. Heinrich had an older brother, Gebhard Ludwig Himmler, who was born on 29 July 1898; and a younger brother, Ernst Hermann Himmler, born on 23 December 1905.[2] Himmler’s childhood was quite normal for the time. His father and mother were strict but were actively involved in the rearing of their three children.[citation needed]

Heinrich was named after his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria of the royal family of Bavaria, who was tutored by Gebhard Himmler.[3] In 1910, Himmler attended Gymnasium in Landshut, where studies revolved around classic literature. While he struggled in athletics, he did well in his schoolwork. Also, at the behest of his father, Heinrich kept a diary from age ten until he was 24. He enjoyed chess, harpsichord, stamp collecting, gardening and other extracurricular activities. During Himmler’s youth, and into adulthood, he was never at ease in interactions with women.[4]

Himmler’s diaries (1914-18) show that he was extremely interested in war news. He implored his father to use his royal connections to obtain an officer candidate position for him. His parents eventually gave in, allowing him to train upon graduation from secondary school in 1918 with the 11th Bavarian Regiment. Since he was not athletic, he struggled throughout his military training. Later in 1918 the war ended with Germany’s defeat. Thus ended Himmler's aspirations of becoming a professional army officer. He was discharged without ever seeing battle. Though he claimed later to have served in combat, the closest he ever got to it was leading cadets around the parade grounds.

From 1919 to 1922 Himmler studied agronomy at the Munich Technische Hochschule following a short-lived apprenticeship on a farm and subsequent illness.[5] Himmler was pursuing a chaste lifestyle when he became interested in a young girl, the daughter of the owner of a place where he ate. In his diary, he compares his initial encounter with her as like finding himself a sister. Later he experienced rejection when he let her know his true feelings. His difficulty with women persisted throughout his life. His view of them is shown in a diary excerpt:

A proper man loves a woman on three levels: as a dear child who is to be chided, perhaps even punished on account of her unreasonableness, and who is protected and taken care of because one loves her. Then as wife and as a loyal, understanding comrade who fights through life with one, who stands faithfully at one’s side without hemming in or chaining the man and his spirit. And as a goddess whose feet one must kiss, who gives one strength through her feminine wisdom and childlike, pure sanctity that does not weaken in the hardest struggles and in the ideal hours gives one heavenly peace.[6]

Himmler underwent religious turmoil during his studies at Munich Technische Hochschule. In his diaries he claimed to be a devout Catholic, and wrote that he would never turn away from the church. However, he was a member of a fraternity which he felt to be at odds with the tenets of the church: biographers have defined Himmler’s theology as Ariosophy, his own religious dogma of racial superiority of the Aryan race and Germanic Meso-Paganism, partly from his interests in folklore and mythology of the ancient Teutonic tribes of Northern Europe. Himmler became a disbeliever of Christian doctrine and was very critical of sermons given by priests. During this time he became obsessed with the idea of becoming a soldier. He wrote that if Germany did not find itself at war soon, he would go to another country to seek battle.

In 1923, Himmler took part in Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch under Ernst Röhm. In 1926 he met his wife in a hotel lobby while escaping a storm. Margarete Siegroth (née Boden) was blonde-haired and blue-eyed, seven years his senior, divorced, and Protestant. She was physically the epitome of the Nordic ideal. On 3 July 1928, the two were married and had their only child, daughter Gudrun, on 8 August 1929. Himmler adored his daughter, and called her Püppi (“dolly”). Margarete later adopted a son, in whom Himmler showed no interest. Heinrich and Margarete separated in 1940 without seeking divorce. Heinrich was too engulfed in Nazi activities to be a competent husband. Himmler became friendly with a secretary, Hedwig Potthast, who left her job in 1941 and became his mistress. He fathered two children with her — a son, Helge (born 1942), and a daughter, Nanette Dorothea (born 1944).

[edit] Rise in the SS

Photo of Heinrich Himmler wearing an early SS uniform (black tie and cap) in the rank of Oberführer.

[edit] Early SS (1927–1934) Himmler joined the SS in 1925 and in 1927 became deputy–Reichsführer-SS. Upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden, Himmler was appointed Reichsführer-SS in January 1929. The SS then had 280 members and was a mere battalion of the much larger Sturmabteilung (SA).

By 1933, the SS numbered 52,000 members. The organization enforced strict membership requirements ensuring that all members were of Adolf Hitler’s Aryan Herrenvolk (“Aryan master race”). Himmler and his deputy Reinhard Heydrich, began an effort to separate the SS from SA control. Black SS uniforms replaced the SA brown shirts in the autumn of 1933. Shortly thereafter, Himmler was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer und Reichsführer-SS and became an equal of the senior SA commanders, who by this time loathed the SS and its power.

Himmler, Hermann Göring, and General Werner von Blomberg agreed that the SA and its leader Ernst Röhm posed a threat to the German Army and the Nazi leadership. Röhm had socialist and populist views and believed that although Hitler had successfully gained power, the “real” revolution had not yet begun and that the SA should become the sole arms-bearing corps of the state. This left some Nazi leaders believing Röhm was intent on using the SA to undertake a coup.

SS chief Heinrich Himmler (left) with Adolf HitlerPersuaded by Himmler and Göring, Hitler agreed that Röhm had to be murdered. He delegated this task to Reinhard Heydrich, Kurt Daluege and Walter Schellenberg, who ordered the execution of Röhm (carried out by Theodor Eicke) and other senior SA officials, plus some of Hitler’s personal enemies (like Gregor Strasser and Kurt von Schleicher) on 30 June 1934, in what became known as the Night of the Long Knives. The next day, the SS became an independent organization.

[edit] Consolidation of power In 1936 Himmler gained further authority as all of Germany’s uniformed law enforcement agencies were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: “order police”), whose main office became a headquarters branch of the SS as Himmler was accorded the title Chief of the German Police. Himmler gained only partial control of the uniformed police. The actual powers granted to him with the appointment were those previously exercised in police matters by the ministry of the interior, and not even all of those. It was only in 1943, when Himmler was appointed minister of the interior, that the transfer of ministerial power was complete.

Germany’s political police forces came under Himmler’s authority in 1934, when he organized them into the Gestapo, as well as Germany’s entire concentration camp system. Once war began, though, new internment camps not formally classified as concentration camps were established, over which Himmler and the SS did not exercise control. In 1943, following the outbreak of popular word-of-mouth criticism of the regime as a result of the Stalingrad disaster, the party apparatus, professing disappointment with the Gestapo’s performance in deterring such criticism, established the Politische Staffeln (political squads) as its own political policing organ, destroying the Gestapo’s nominal monopoly in this field.

Heinrich Himmler (left) with, from left to right: Reinhard Heydrich, Karl Wolff and an unidentified assistant at the Obersalzberg, May 1939With his 1936 appointment, Himmler also gained ministerial authority over Germany’s non-political detective forces, the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo: crime police), which he attempted to combine with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei (Sipo: security police) under the command of Reinhard Heydrich, and thus gain operational control over Germany’s entire detective force. This merger was never complete within the Reich, with Kripo remaining firmly under the control of its own civilian administration and later the party apparatus as the latter annexed the civilian administration. However, in occupied territories not incorporated into the Reich proper, Sipo consolidation within the SS line of command proved mostly effective. Following the outbreak of World War II, Himmler formed the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA: reichs security headquarters) wherein Gestapo, Kripo and the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: security services) became departments. Attempts in 1940 to use the new RSHA structure to gain full control over the Kripo by giving RSHA regional officers command authority over Kripo offices in their jurisdictions were rebuffed.

The SS during these years developed its own military branch, the SS-Verfügungstruppe, which later became the Waffen-SS. Even though nominally under the authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a fully militarized structure of command and operationally were incorporated in the war effort parallel to the Wehrmacht. Few modern scholars regard the Waffen SS as in any sense an honorable military organization. Its units routinely murdered civilians and unarmed prisoners. For this reason, postwar war crimes tribunals declared the Waffen SS to be a criminal organization.

[edit] Himmler and the Holocaust

SS Chief Heinrich Himmler (front right, facing prisoner) on a personal visit to the Dachau Concentration Camp in 1936After the Night of the Long Knives, the SS-Totenkopfverbände organized and administered Germany’s regime of concentration camps and, after 1941, the extermination camps in Poland. The SS, through its intelligence arm, the Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD), hunted down Jews, Gypsies, communists and those persons of any other cultural, racial, political or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be either Untermensch (sub-human) or in opposition to the regime, and placing them in concentration camps. Himmler opened the first of these camps at Dachau on 22 March 1933. He was one of the main architects of the Holocaust, using elements of mysticism and a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims. Himmler had similar plans for the Poles. All intellectuals were to be killed and other Poles were to be only literate enough to read traffic signs.

In contrast to Hitler, Himmler inspected concentration camps. In August 1941 he witnessed a mass shooting of Jews in Minsk and was said to have turned green in the face after brain matter from a victim splashed onto his coat; his assistant Karl Wolff had to jump forward and hold him steady.[7] After that the Nazis searched for a new and more expedient way to kill which culminated in the use of the gas chambers.

Himmler wanted to breed a master race of Nordic Aryans in Germany. His experience as a chicken farmer had taught him the rudimentary basics of animal breeding which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, through selective breeding, to be entirely “Nordic” in appearance within several decades of the end of the war.[8]

[edit] Posen speech On 4 October 1943, Himmler referred explicitly to the extermination of the Jewish people during a secret SS meeting in the city of Poznań (Posen). The following are excerpts from a transcription of an audio recording that exists 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.”

[edit] The Second World War In 1939 Hitler masterminded the Operation Himmler, arguably the first operation of the WWII in Europe.

Before the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 (Operation Barbarossa), Himmler prepared his SS for a war of extermination against the forces of “Judeo-Bolshevism”. Himmler, always glad to make parallels between Nazi Germany and the Middle Ages, compared the invasion to the Crusades. He collected volunteers from all over Europe, including Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Dutch, Belgians, French, Spaniards, and, after the invasion, Ukrainians, Latvians, Lithuanians, and Estonians, attracting the non-Germanic volunteers by declaring a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of Old Europe from the “Godless Bolshevik Hordes”.

The “volunteers” from the occupied Soviet territories were mostly collaborator policemen pressed en-masse into the Waffen SS once their territories of origin were overrun by the Red Army. In the Baltic States many natives volunteered to serve in the Black Order of Himmler due to their loathing of oppression after the occupation by the Soviet Union. As long as they were employed against Soviet troops, they performed fanatically, expecting no mercy if captured. When employed against the Western Allies, they tended to surrender eagerly. Waffen SS recruitment in Western and Nordic Europe was unsuccessful, though a number of Waffen-SS Legions were founded, such as the Wallonian contingent led by Leon Degrelle, whom Himmler planned to appoint chancellor of a restored Burgundy controlled by the SS once the war was over.

In 1942, Reinhard Heydrich, Himmler’s right hand man was killed near Prague after an attack by Czech special forces. Himmler immediately carried out a reprisal, killing the entire male population in the village of Lidice.

[edit] Interior minister In 1943, Himmler was appointed Interior Minister. This was a pyrrhic victory. Himmler sought to use his new office to reverse the party apparatus' annexation of the civil service and tried to challenge the authority of the party gauleiters.

This hopeless aspiration was frustrated by Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary and party chancellor. It also incurred some displeasure from Hitler himself, whose long-standing disdain for the traditional civil service was one of the foundations of Nazi administrative thinking. Himmler made things much worse still when following his appointment as head of the Reserve Army (Ersatzheer, see below) he tried to use his authority in both military and police matters by transferring policemen to the Waffen-SS.

With Himmler about to ruin his career, Bormann could not give him the opportunity fast enough, initially acquiescing in the lunacy, until furious protests broke out. Then, destroying the scheme with a vengeance leaving Himmler much discredited, especially with the party, whose gauleiters now saw Bormann as their protector since Himmler was urged on by his SS and Police Leaders to cement the authority of the SS in the Reich at the expense of the party.

[edit] 20 July plot It was determined that leaders of German Military Intelligence (the Abwehr), including its head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, were involved in the 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler. This prompted Hitler to disband the Abwehr and make Himmler's Security Service (Sicherheitsdienst, or SD) the sole intelligence service of the Third Reich. This increased Himmler’s personal power.

General Friedrich Fromm, Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve (or Replacement) Army (Ersatzheer), was implicated in the conspiracy. Fromm’s removal, coupled with Hitler’s suspicion of the army, led the way to Himmler’s appointment as Fromm’s successor, a position he abused to expand the Waffen SS even further to the detriment of the rapidly deteriorating German armed forces (Wehrmacht).

Unfortunately for Himmler, the investigation soon revealed the involvement of many SS officers in the conspiracy, including some senior ones, which played into the hands of Bormann’s power struggle against the SS, as very few party cadre officers were implicated. Even more important, some senior SS officers began to conspire against Himmler himself, as they believed that he would be unable to achieve victory in the power struggle against Bormann. Among these defectors were Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Heydrich’s successor as chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, and Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, the chief of the Gestapo.

[edit] Commander-in-chief In late 1944, Himmler became Commander-in-Chief of the newly formed Army Group Upper Rhine (Heeresgruppe Oberrhein). This army group was formed to fight the advancing U.S. 7th Army and French 1st Army in the Alsace region along the west bank of the Rhine. The U.S. 7th Army was under the command of General Alexander Patch and the French 1st Army was under the command of General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny.

On 1 January 1945, Himmler launched Operation North Wind (Unternehmen Nordwind) to push back the Americans and the French. In late January, after some limited initial success, Himmler was transferred. By 24 January, Army Group Upper Rhine was inactivated after having gone over to the defensive. Operation North Wind officially ended on 25 January.

Elsewhere the German Army (Wehrmacht Heer) had failed to halt the Red Army’s Vistula-Oder offensive so Hitler gave Himmler command of yet another newly formed army group, Army Group Vistula (Heeresgruppe Weichsel) to stop the Soviet advance on Berlin. Hitler placed Himmler in command of Army Group Vistula despite the failure of Army Group Upper Rhine, and despite Himmler’s total lack of experience and his proven inability to command troops. This appointment may have been at the instigation of Martin Bormann, anxious to discredit a rival, or through Hitler’s continuing anger at the “failures” of the general staff.

As Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula, Himmler established his command centre at Schneidemühl. He used his special train (sonderzug) , Sonderzug Steiermark, as his headquarters. Himmler did this despite the train having only one telephone line and no signals detachment. Eager to show his determination, Himmler ordered an immediate counter-attack. The operation failed within a day and Himmler dismissed a corps commander and appointed Heinz Lammerding. His headquarters was also forced to retreat to Falkenburg. On 30 January, Himmler lost much of a battalion of irreplaceable Tiger tanks. When ordered to advance, they were still on their flat cars when caught by Soviet tanks near the Landsberg road. The same day he issued draconian orders: Tod und Strafe für Pflichtvergessenheit —“death and punishment for those who forget their obligations” to encourage his troops. The worsening situation left Himmler under increasing pressure from Hitler; he was unassertive and nervous in any conference. In mid-February the Pomeranian offensive by his forces was actually directed by General Walther Wenck, and after intense pressure from General Heinz Guderian on Hitler, although Himmler did intervene to forbid any evacuation of civilians from eastern Pomerania[vague]. By early March Himmler’s headquarters had moved west of the Oder River, although his army group was still named after the Vistula River. At conferences with Hitler, Himmler aped his leader’s line of increased severity towards German soldiers who retreated.

On March 13, Himmler abandoned his command, and, claiming illness, retired to a sanatorium at Hohenlychen. Guderian visited him there and carried his resignation as Commander-in-Chief of Army Group Vistula to Hitler that night. On March 20, Himmler was replaced by General Gotthard Heinrici.

As defeat loomed, Himmler was considered by some to be a candidate to succeed Hitler as the Führer of Germany. However, it became known after the war that Hitler never really considered Himmler as a successor, even before his betrayal (see below), believing that the authority that was his as head of the SS had caused him to be so hated that he would be rejected by the party.[citation needed]

[edit] Peace negotiations

Heinrich Himmler in 1945.In the winter of 1944–45, Himmler’s Waffen-SS numbered 910,000 members, with the Allgemeine-SS (at least on paper) hosting a membership of nearly two million. However, by the spring of 1945 Himmler had lost faith in German victory, probably partially due to his discussions with his masseur Felix Kersten and Walter Schellenberg.[9] He realized that if the Nazi regime was to survive, it needed to seek peace with Britain and the United States. Toward this end, he contacted Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden at Lübeck, near the Danish border, and began negotiations to achieve a peace treaty with the Allies. Himmler hoped the British and Americans would fight their Soviet allies with the remains of the Wehrmacht.

When Hitler discovered this, he declared Himmler to be a traitor. He stripped him of his titles and ranks (Reichsführer-SS, chief of the German police, Reich commissioner of German nationhood, Reich minister of the interior, supreme commander of the Volkssturm, and supreme commander of the Home Army) the day before Hitler committed suicide. Hitler’s successor as chancellor of Germany was Joseph Goebbels, an enemy of Himmler's. Hitler also saw Hermann Göring as a traitor.

Himmler’s negotiations with Count Bernadotte failed. Since he could not return to Berlin, he joined Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, who by then was commanding all German forces within the northern part of the western front, in nearby Plön. Dönitz sent Himmler away, explaining that there was no place for him in the new German government.

Himmler next turned to the Americans as a defector, contacting the headquarters of General Dwight Eisenhower and proclaiming he would surrender all of Germany to the Allies if he was spared from prosecution. He asked Eisenhower to appoint him “minister of police” in Germany's post-war government. He reportedly mused on how to handle his first meeting with the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) commander and whether to give the Nazi salute or shake hands with him. Eisenhower refused to have anything to do with Himmler, who was subsequently declared a major war criminal.

[edit] Capture and death

Himmler’s corpse after his suicide by poison in Allied custody, 1945Unwanted by his former colleagues and hunted by the Allies, Himmler wandered for several days around Flensburg near the Danish border. Attempting to evade arrest, he disguised himself as a sergeant-major of the Secret Military Police, using the name Heinrich Hitzinger, shaving his moustache and donning an eye patch over his left eye,[10] in the hope that he could return to Bavaria. He had equipped himself with a set of false documents, but someone whose papers were wholly in order was so unusual that it aroused the suspicions of a British Army unit in Bremen. Himmler was arrested on May 22 by Sergeant Arthur Britton, and in captivity, was soon recognized. Himmler was scheduled to stand trial with other German leaders as a war criminal at Nuremberg, but committed suicide in Lüneburg by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule before interrogation could begin (all High ranking Nazis had a pouch with a Cynanide Capsule sewn into their Hats if there ever became a time to do so). His last words were Ich bin Heinrich Himmler! (“I am Heinrich Himmler!”). Shortly afterwards, Himmler’s body was buried in an unmarked grave on the Lüneburg Heath. The precise location of Himmler’s grave remains unknown.

[edit] Alternate theories There were later claims that the man who committed suicide in Lüneburg was not Himmler but a double. Statements allegedly attributed to ODESSA were said to have asserted that Himmler escaped to the rustic farming village of Strones in the Waldviertel, a hilly forested area in the northwest part of Lower Austria just north of Vienna, where he was running a reborn SS in exile.[citation needed]

The probability of a double was taken up in the book SS-1: The Unlikely Death of Heinrich Himmler by Hugh Thomas, published in 2001 by 4th Estate. Thomas gained access to the autopsy records which were so thorough, they recorded such details as the amount of hair in the ears of the corpse (p. 172), yet made no mention of a v-shaped scar which Himmler was known to have had; the remnants of a wound above his left cheekbone, sustained in a fencing duel in his youth.

A recently-published book by American pro-Nazi writer, Joseph Bellinger, Himmler’s Death, offers another alternative theory to Himmler’s death, stating that Himmler was assassinated by his British interrogators in May 1945 along with other high-ranking officers of the SS and Werewolf Resistance Organization. Bellinger’s book was first published in Germany by Arndt Verlag, Kiel. A similar book, Himmler’s Secret War, by Martin Allen makes similar claims: it is, however, based on forged documents smuggled into the (British) National Archives.[11] Doubts still remain over this, however, and the author Martin Allen has continually defended the legitimacy of the documents. David Irving also claimed Himmler was beaten and killed by British interrogators.

[edit] Allach porcelain Main article: Allach (concentration camp) The porcelain factory Porzellan Manufaktur Allach was established as a private concern in 1935 in the small town of Allach, near Munich, Germany. In 1936 the factory was acquired by the SS. Heinrich Himmler saw the acquisition of a fine porcelain factory as a way to establish an industrial base for the production of works of art that would be representative, in Himmler's eyes, of truly Germanic culture. Allach porcelain was one of Himmler’s favorite projects and produced various figurines (soldiers, animals, etc.) to compete in the small but profitable German porcelain market.

High-ranking artists were locked into contract. The program of the factory included over 240 porcelain and ceramic models. As output at the Allach factory increased, the Nazis moved production to a new facility near the Dachau concentration camp. The fact that the factory might have been taking advantage of a pool of slave labor provided by the Dachau camp was strongly denied by the factory managers at the Nuremberg Trials. Initially intended as a temporary facility, Dachau remained the main location for fine porcelain manufacture even after the original factory in Allach was modernized and reopened in 1940. The factory in Allach was instead retrofitted for the production of ceramic products such as household pottery.

Allach was a sub-camp of the Dachau concentration camp near Munich, located approximately 10 miles from the main camp at Dachau. According to Marcus J. Smith, who wrote "Dachau: The Harrowing of Hell," the Allach camp was divided into two enclosures, one for 3,000 Jewish inmates and the other for 6,000 non-Jewish prisoners. Smith was a doctor in the US military, assigned to take over the care of the prisoners after the liberation. He wrote that the typhus epidemic had not reached Allach until April 22, 1945, about a week before the camp was liberated.[12]

Hitler unlike Himmler did not seem to care as much for Allach porcelain. He is quoted as saying, “It’s like looking for ghosts in your attic. What culture can be found in a clay pot?”[13] about Himmler’s efforts at finding evidence about the ancient origins of the Germanic people. What he said could also show his true feelings about Allach porcelain.

The fall of the Third Reich brought an end to the Allach concern. The Allach factories were shut down in 1945 and never reopened.

[edit] Historical views Historians are divided on the psychology, motives, and influences that drove Himmler. Some see him as a dupe of Hitler, fully under his influence, seeing himself essentially as a tool, carrying Hitler’s views to their logical conclusion, the executor of Hitler’s direct orders. Others see Himmler as a rabid antisemite in his own right, a willing racial murderer. Still others see Himmler as power-mad, devoted to self-aggrandisement, the accumulation of power and influence. There are elements of truth in all three of these claims.

Himmler to some extent accepted the "Hitler's dupe" view, saying if Hitler were to tell him to shoot his mother, he would do it and “be proud of the Führer’s confidence”. This unconditional loyalty was the driving force behind Himmler’s unlikely career. But most commentators agree that Himmler was also a murderous racist, of his own accord a willing mastermind of genocide and the Holocaust. And most commentators agree that Himmler was power mad.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Himmler’s decisive innovation was to transform the race question from “a negative concept based on matter-of-course anti-Semitism” into “an organizational task for building up the SS ... It was Himmler’s master stroke that he succeeded in indoctrinating the SS with an apocalyptic ‘idealism’ beyond all guilt and responsibility, which rationalized mass murder as a form of martyrdom and harshness towards oneself.” [1]

The wartime cartoonist Victor Weisz saw Himmler as a terrible octopus, wielding oppressed nations in each of his eight arms. [2]

Wolfgang Sauer, historian at University of California, Berkeley, felt that “although he was pedantic, dogmatic, and dull, Himmler emerged under Hitler as second in actual power. His strength lay in a combination of unusual shrewdness, burning ambition, and servile loyalty to Hitler.” [3]

Himmler told his personal masseur Felix Kersten that he always carried with him a copy of the ancient Aryan scripture, the Bhagavad Gita because it relieved him of guilt about implementing the final solution; he felt that like the warrior Arjuna, he was simply doing his duty without attachment to his actions.[14]

In an extract in the Norman Brook War Cabinet Diaries[4], Winston Churchill took a view towards Himmler widely shared during the war, advocating his assassination. According to Brook, responding to a suggestion that Nazi leaders be executed, “this prompted Churchill to ask if they should negotiate with Himmler ‘and bump him off later’, once peace terms had been agreed. The suggestion to cut a deal for a German surrender with Himmler and then assassinate him with support from the Home Office. ‘Quite entitled to do so’, the minutes record [... Churchill] as commenting.” [5]

A main focus of recent work on Himmler has been the extent to which he competed for, and craved, Hitler’s attention and respect. The events of the last days of the war, when he abandoned Hitler and began separate negotiations with the Allies, are obviously significant in this respect.

Himmler appears to have had a distorted view of how he was perceived by the Allies; he intended to meet with US and British leaders and have discussions “as gentlemen”. He tried to buy off their vengeance by last-minute reprieves for Jews and important prisoners. According to British soldiers who arrested Himmler, he was genuinely shocked to be treated as a prisoner.

[edit] In fiction In Douglas Niles and Michael Dobson’s alternative-history novel Fox on the Rhine (ISBN 0-8125-7466-4), in which Hitler is killed in the attempted Bomb Plot of 20 July 1944, Himmler assumes command of the Third Reich by a series of assassinations of the conspirators planning to form a new government and, most prominently, of Hermann Göring, who was appointed the official new Führer. Thus Himmler, as the highest-ranking official remaining, takes up the position as leader of Nazi Germany, which enables him to execute “Operation Carousel”—a new offensive against the Allies. Himmler also features in Fox at the Front (ISBN 0-641-67696-4), the sequel to Fox on the Rhine. Himmler is played by Donald Pleasence in the movie The Eagle Has Landed, which is based on a novel by Jack Higgins (ISBN 0-425-17718-1). He is also featured in several other Jack Higgins books, including The Eagle Has Flown, the sequel to The Eagle Has Landed. He also appears in Return to Castle Wolfenstein as an SS chief overseeing the resurrection of Heinrich I and the occult during Operation Resurrection. He and his team were successful in the ordeal, but Heinrich I and his dark knights were quickly defeated by Agent Blazkowicz. He watched in horror that “This American, he has ruined everything” before he was told that he needed to go back to Berlin to report to Hitler. In the Colonization alternative history/sci-fi novel series by Harry Turtledove, Himmler is the Führer of the Greater German Reich in the 1960s, following the death of Hitler in the 1950s of a seemingly natural heart attack. Himmler dies of a stroke while working at his desk in 1965. He was succeeded shortly thereafter by Ernst Kaltenbrunner, who proceeded to adopt Himmler’s plan of invading Poland, which is occupied by aliens referred to as The Race, with catastrophic consequences. In Turtledove’s stand-alone novel In the Presence of Mine Enemies, in which Germany won World War II and which is set in 2010, Himmler had succeeded Hitler as Führer at an unspecified date, and remained so until his death in 1985—though some say he died in 1983 and the Reich was secretly ruled by a junta until a successor could be agreed upon. The plot of Anthony Burgess’s novel Earthly Powers hinges on an episode in which the narrator, a homosexual British novelist, accidentally saves Himmler from assassination by falling in front of him when the assassin shoots. As a result he takes the bullet, but survives. The Nazis praise him as a hero for shielding Himmler. The Spear by James Herbert deals with a neo-Nazi cult in Britain and an international conspiracy which includes a right-wing US general and a sinister arms dealer, and their obsession with and through the occult with resurrecting Himmler. Himmler also made an appearance in the Gordon Stevens book And All The Kings Men about German Operation Sea Lion succeeding and Britain being invaded. Himmler is the key background figure in the controversial alternative history drama Bogart's Sleeping by Belfast playwright Tom Kline. Himmler is depicted as negotiating escape to South America for himself with his Allied captors, who are presumed then to have faked his death. Himmler is the godfather of Herr Otto Flick, a fictitious Gestapo officer in the BBC comedy 'Allo 'Allo. Himmler appears briefly in Jerry Spinelli’s book Milkweed. Himmler is depicted as a vampire who ultimately faked his death in the White Wolf, Inc. publication for Vampire: the Masquerade entitled Berlin by Night. Himmler is played by Michael Palin in the sketch-show Monty Python's Flying Circus In James Rollins Black Order, Himmler is depicted as a mystic and head of the black order. He oversaw the device called " the bell", which accelerated evolution to create near-perfect humans. Featured in Philip K. Dick's post-WWII alternate history novel, The Man in the High Castle His brain preserved and launched in a rocket to the moon, Himmler threatened to destroy the world but was defeated and killed by the Justice Society of America in a three-part series of comic books, JSA Classified #29-31 (2007).

[edit] References ^ Andersch, A.: Der Vater eines Mörders (The father of a murderer). Diogenes, 2006. ISBN 978-3257236088 ^ Höhne, Heinz (1972). The Order of the Death’s Head: The Story of Hitler’s SS. London: Pan Books Ltd. ISBN 0-330-02963-0. ^ Breitman, p. 9 ^ Breitman, p. 11 ^ Breitman, p. 12 ^ Breitman, p. 13 ^ Obergruppenführer-SS Karl. Retrieved on 2007-07-22. ^ Pringle, Heather: The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust. Hyperion, New York, 2006. ISBN 0786868864 ^ Crocker, Harry (2001-11-13). Triumph: A 2,000 Year History of the Catholic Church. Prima Lifestyles. ISBN 0761529241. ^ Heinrich Himmler - Petty Bourgeois and Grand Inquisitor by Joachim C Fest ^ “Himmler forgeries book still on sale”, The Daily Telegraph, 1 August 2005. ^ Liberation of Allach, a Dachau sub-camp,http://www.scrapbookpages.com/Dachauscrapbook/DachauLiberation/Allach.html ^ “The Private Voice of Hitler”, program shown on the History Channel. ^ Padfield, Peter Himmler New York:1990--Henry Holt Page 402

[edit] Sources Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Heinrich HimmlerWikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Heinrich HimmlerStuart Russell, "La fortezza di Heinrich Himmler - Il centro ideologico di Weltanschauung delle SS - Cronaca per immagini della scuola-SS Haus Wewelsburg 1934-1945" (original title: "Heinrich Himmlers Burg - Das Weltanschauliche Zentrum Der SS - Bildchronick der SS-Schule Haus Wewelsburg 1934-1945"), Editrice Thule Italia, Roma 2007. ISBN 9788890278105 Thomas, Hugh W., M.D.: Strange Death of Heinrich Himmler: A Forensic Investigation Padfield, Peter (2001). Himmler. Reichsführer-SS. Cassel & Co, London. ISBN 0-304-35839-8. Himmler, Katrin (2005). Die Brüder Himmler. Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. ISBN 3-10-033629-1. (in German — Heinrich Himmler was a grand-uncle of the author) Hale, Christopher (2003). Himmler’s Crusade: The true story of the 1938 Nazi expedition into Tibet. Transworld Publishers, London. ISBN 0-593-04952-7. Breitman, Richard (2004). Himmler and the Final Solution: The Architect of Genocide. Pimlico, Random House, London. ISBN 1-84413-089-4. Pringle, Heather (2006). The Master Plan: Himmler’s Scholars and the Holocaust. Hyperion, New York. ISBN 0786868864. Haiger, Ernst: “Fictions, Facts, and Forgeries: The ‘Revelations’ of Peter and Martin Allen about the History of the Second World War” in The Journal of Intelligence History, Vol 6 no. 1 (Summer 2006 [published 2007]), pp. 105–117 Padfield, Peter Himmler New York:1990--Henry Holt

[edit] See also Nazi mysticism Germanic neopaganism — Himmler was a neopagan adherent Karl Maria Wiligut - Called "Himmler's Rasputin" Gudrun Burwitz (Formerly Gudrun Himmler) - Himmler's beloved Daughter Ernst Kaltenbrunner - RSHA and SD chief under Himmler. Held responsible for Gestapo and SS activities after Himmler's suicide. Racial policy of Nazi Germany — Himmler’s involvement Operation Himmler - A false flag project to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany

[edit] External links List of Himmler speeches A very detailed list of Himmler speeches including online sources and material in the U.S. National Archives. Article numbers in the archives are listed for professional scholars. Die Schutzstaffel als antibolschewistische Kampforganisation An essay by Himmler About Heinrich Himmler