Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born on 7 October 1900 in Munich, into a conservative, middle-class Catholic household. His father, Joseph Gebhard Himmler, worked as a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler. He had two brothers, Gebhard Ludwig and Ernst Hermann. His first name came from his godfather, Prince Heinrich of Bavaria, a member of the royal family whom his father had once tutored. Himmler attended grammar school in Landshut, where his father served as deputy principal. He performed well academically but struggled with sports, and he suffered from chronic stomach problems and other health issues throughout his life. To compensate, he trained daily with weights. Classmates later described him as studious and socially awkward. From age ten, he kept a diary that showed interest in current events, dueling, and serious discussions of religion and sex. In 1915, he joined the Landshut Cadet Corps. Through his father’s royal connections, he became an officer candidate and enlisted in the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917. His brother Gebhard saw combat on the western front, earned the Iron Cross, and became a lieutenant. Himmler, however, remained in training when the war ended in November 1918, so he never saw combat or became an officer. After his discharge on 18 December, he returned to Landshut, finished grammar school, and from 1919 to 1922 studied agriculture at the Technical University of Munich, following a short farm apprenticeship and an illness.

Antisemitism persisted in Germany after unification in 1871, despite the removal of many discriminatory laws. Himmler was antisemitic by the time he entered university, though not exceptionally so—students at his school typically avoided Jewish classmates. He remained a Catholic and spent most of his free time with his fencing fraternity, the League of Apollo, whose president was Jewish. Despite his growing antisemitism, he maintained a polite manner toward that president and other Jewish members. In his second year, he intensified efforts to pursue a military career, without success, but he expanded his involvement in Munich’s paramilitary scene. There he first met Ernst Röhm, an early Nazi and co-founder of the SA. Himmler admired Röhm as a decorated combat soldier, and at Röhm’s suggestion, he joined the antisemitic nationalist group, the Imperial War Flag Society. By 1922, his diary entries showed increasing antisemitic remarks and a growing focus on the “Jewish question.”

After World War I, Himmler joined the Nazi Party in 1923. He entered the SS in 1925, when it was still a small paramilitary bodyguard unit for Adolf Hitler. Rising steadily through the ranks, he became Reichsführer-SS in 1929. Under his leadership, the SS expanded from a 290-man battalion into one of Nazi Germany’s most powerful institutions. He gained a reputation for organizational skill and for choosing capable subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943, he served as both Chief of the Criminal Police and Minister of the Interior, giving him control over all police and security forces, including the Gestapo. He also oversaw the Waffen-SS, a combat branch that fought alongside Germany’s regular armed forces in World War II.

As the chief enforcer of Nazi racial policy, Himmler ran the concentration and extermination camps and formed the Einsatzgruppen death squads in German-occupied Europe. He played a central role in the Holocaust, the genocide of an estimated 5.5 to 6 million Jews, along with millions of other victims. One day before Operation Barbarossa began in June 1941, he commissioned the drafting of Generalplan Ost, which Hitler approved in May 1942. Its implementation caused the deaths of roughly 14 million people in Eastern Europe.

In the final years of the war, Hitler appointed Himmler Commander of the Replacement Army and General Plenipotentiary for the administration of the Third Reich. He later commanded Army Group Upper Rhine and Army Group Vistula, but failed to meet his objectives, and Hitler removed him from those posts. Realizing Germany would lose the war, Himmler secretly tried to open peace talks with the western Allies in March 1945. When Hitler learned of this on 28 April, he stripped Himmler of all positions and ordered his arrest. Himmler attempted to hide but was captured by British forces. He committed suicide while in British custody on 23 May 1945.