Heinrich Himmler

Biography

Heinrich Himmler was born in 1900 and grew up in Bavaria. He trained as an officer cadet late in the First World War but saw no combat, then studied agriculture at the Technical University of Munich from 1919 to 1922. Drawn into nationalist and antisemitic paramilitary circles, he joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and took part in the Beer Hall Putsch.

He joined the SS in 1925 and became its Reichsfuhrer in 1929, turning a small bodyguard unit into a vast organisation. In 1933 he set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau, and in 1936 he became chief of all German police. In 1939 he helped stage the false-flag incidents used as a pretext for invading Poland.

Himmler was a principal architect of the Holocaust. He organised the Einsatzgruppen killings, was placed in charge of the Final Solution, ordered the Operation Reinhard extermination camps and the expansion of Auschwitz, directed the persecution of Roma, and in his 1943 Posen speeches spoke openly of exterminating the Jews. He also commissioned Generalplan Ost and became interior minister in 1943.

Late in the war he commanded the Replacement Army and army groups with little success. His secret attempt to negotiate with the Western Allies led Hitler to strip him of all offices in April 1945. Captured by British troops, he killed himself in custody at Luneburg on 23 May 1945.