Heinrich Himmler - Reichsführer-SS Documentary

foreigner The man known to history as Heinrich Himmler was born on October 7, 1900 in the city of Munich in Bavaria, southern Germany. His mother Anna Maria Himmler Nahider came from a traditional Catholic family and, in addition to Heinrich, she was also the mother of two more children. Gabehyde Ludwig was born in 1898 and Ernst Tallman was born in 1905. Himmler's father, Yusuf Gerbart Himmler, known as Gebhart, was a 35-year-old schoolteacher at the time of Heinrich's birth and had previously earned a bachelor's degree in phonology and languages. at the University of Munich, after this he was appointed tutor to Prince Henry of Bavaria of the House of Wittelsbach, the most aristocratic family in southern Germany, before returning to Munich as a professor and teacher, a proud, organized and pedantic man, Gebhard took pride in the success of his career and would decorate the Himmler House with quality furniture, paintings and collectibles, including old German coins and memorabilia.

As a result of his success, both Heinrich and his two brothers enjoyed a middle-class upbringing. comfortable but strict, this was in stark contrast to previous generations of the Himmler family, for while Gerpart had achieved success, his father Heinrich's grandfather had been a poor soldier all his life, in contrast, the Himlas had largely survived. thanks to the support of Anna's family in Regensburg, southeastern Germany, as her father was a successful merchant there, which had allowed Himlas to move into a spacious second-floor apartment on Hildegard Strasse in Munich. , where Anna gave birth to their second son in 1900. This child they named after Gerbhard's former student Prince Heinrich, the prince also consented to become the atrocious godfather and therefore the middle child of the Himmler's children would grow up with some semblance of aristocratic pretensions, as was typical of children their age.

In German society, the Himmler brothers received a strictly regimented education that was only intensified by their mother's religious ardha and their father's occupation. The difficulty they had had in escaping their parents' attention was soon crushed when the three were sent to a primary school in Lanshoot, northeast of Munich. Here his father was the joint schoolmaster. It was during this time in suit that the young Himmler became interested in Germanic heritage. and history in general, a fascination that had perhaps been inspired by the castles of Bavarian cities and the countless old buildings that still dotted southern Germany at that time, after also beginning to show a great interest in souvenirs his father's historical records, Gebhard did his best to encourage him.

His son's new fascination The young Himmler returned his father's attention by becoming an obedient, methodical, and devoted son over the following months and years. Heinrich soon proved to be his father's son by becoming a hard-working child, although quiet and unimaginative, as the fragments demonstrate. from a surviving diary he began writing in 1910. In this one, instead of writing his daily accounts in sentences, Heinrich simply listed his trivial daily activities, such as meal times or when he bathed, and referred to adults by his full name or title, giving the I had the impression that from an early age Himmler was very organized and demanding, while Heinrich was growing up, his native Germany was heading toward war.

For decades, the continent had become increasingly volatile in its politics, much of this due to the unification of approximately 30 countries. The small German states became a German Empire in 1871. With this, Germany began its rise as the leading political, economic, and military power in continental Europe. Only Great Britain was more powerful. This event destabilized the balance of power in Europe and in the decades that followed the politics of the continent. Shortly after Henry's birth in 1900, they became increasingly conflictive and two major alliances emerged, one consisting of Great Britain, France and Russia, and the other consisting of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Nationalist tensions in regions such as the Balkans and colonial rivalry in the United States. The struggle for control of Africa beginning in the 1880s fueled this descent into war; The spark that lit it finally came in the summer of 1914, when a regional crisis in the Balkans escalated into a full-blown European war, such was the global presence of the countries involved. that he had colonies all over the world that this was considered a global conflict the first world war As Heinrich grew older, his diary entries became more descriptive, the most notable aspect of them was often his account of additions to his collecting stamps or holding religious services However, after the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Himmler began writing about events and battles he had read in the local press, as well as letters his father received from Henry's godfather. , Prince Henry, who had joined the German army. in 1901 as a lieutenant and who shortly after the outbreak of war was seriously wounded in action on the Western Front in northeastern France, it is evident that the prince was something of a hero to Himmler, as Heinrich wrote after reading the news of that his godfather had been injured. in his diary that he and his friends would like nothing more than to go fight against the British and the French.

Other accounts within his diary recall occasions when French prisoners of war arrived at the Lansford train station in Bavaria from these Frenchmen. However, Himmler spoke with some sympathy. Himmler had less compassion for the Russian prisoners of war brought to Germany, whom he described as vermin, in a surprisingly early sign of his racial animosity toward the people of Eastern Europe. It was also during this period that Himmler began preparing to join. The German army when deemed old enough exercised regularly and lifted weights in an effort to gain muscle mass. However, as much as the young Himmler wanted to appear like a strong young German during this period, he also complained of regular colds, stomach pains and other illnesses, these ailments were a cause of constant frustration and worry for him at school.

Heinrich proved to be a hard-working student who neither excelled nor failed in the various subjects he was expected to master, which included science, mathematics, history, geography, Latin and Greek, as well as piano lessons. In addition to piano lessons, he showed little natural talent for This musical training and, after many years of failure, he finally gathered enough courage to ask his parents, but they allowed him to quit. Overall, Heinrich's greatest interests during his childhood seemed to have been Considering German history and folklore, it is perhaps not surprising that in his diary there are several entries in which he continually states how much he wanted to join the German army and fight in the war. even though he was still a teenager due to his age.

Ultimately, he never had the opportunity to experience frontline combat before the end of World War I. It was in late 1915 that Himmler's diary entries began to dwindle in number, a gap that may have been perpetuated by the death in 1916 of Prince Henry of Bavaria. in the mountains of Romania, although this was undoubtedly a severe blow to both Heineike and his father, their reaction to the prince's death is not recorded, but it is likely that they were greatly affected by it, in fact we can glimpse the possible impact of the prince's death. Himmler's death in 1917 when his father wrote to the Bavarian royal house asking that his son be considered as a future officer cadet, but not before he reached maturity; meanwhile, Himmler was called up for training in 1917 in his mother's hometown of Regensburg, with However, the following year Himmler continued his military training in the 11th Bavarian Infantry Regiment, first as a machine gunner and later as an officer, despite his later claims that he saw action on the Western Front in World War I, records from the time clearly show that Heinrich never finished his military training before the end of hostilities, as he was discharged discharged in December 1918 without completing his officer training course.

The war had come to an end just over a month earlier. Germany had found itself without sufficient resources to keep its economy functioning and Britain and France had been helped by the entry of the United States into the war on their side in 1917. Thus, with the collapse of the government in Germany, the country was surrendered in early November 1918. After World War I, the German army was greatly reduced. Its size was largely due to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the peace agreement signed between Germany, on the one hand, and the victorious powers of Great Britain, France and the United States, on the other, the country's economy had also been decimated as a result of the war. that although Himmler still wished to join the army in emulation of his idol, Prince Henry, he was forced after the war to seek a civilian occupation in the short term, this led Himmler to obtain employment on a poultry farm as an apprentice near the city ​​of Ingolstadt, where his father had also taken up a teaching position;

However, while working there he began to feel ill and was soon diagnosed as having contracted paratyphoid fever caused by Salmonella poisoning, which in turn had been caused by ingesting unsanitary meat or water at his doctor's office. Himlo had advised him to stay away from agricultural work for at least a year, however he evidently wished to pursue a career in agriculture at the time, as he then enrolled in an Agronomy course at the Munich Technical Hoschula in October. from 1919, where he studied crops and land use until 1922. During this time he joined a fencing fraternity and even received the badge of honor which was a fencing scar on his face.

During this period of his life, Himmler enjoyed the rather stereotypical life of a student from the time when he learned to dance. Although he did not enjoy it while engaging in intellectual debates with his fellow students, at least when he was not practicing his fencing skills because the university did not provide meals for its students, Himmler dined at the home of a lady named Frau Lloyds whose Himmler soon became close to his daughter Maya, although his Diaries reveal that there was no romance between them. This platonic but also paternal pattern of relationships with women would be repeated in the following years on one occasion after meeting a young woman on a train.

Himmler revealed his views on relationships between men and women and also some of his sexual inclinations in his diary here he commented on her innocence and also expressed his belief that women should be loved in three ways like a child who should be punished when he is foolish but also protected because of his weakness, secondly as a loyal and devoted companion and thirdly as a wife whose feet he longed to kiss, it is also clear from Himmler's diary entries in the early 1920s that he felt insecure and even directionless, writing that he was only dedicated to his studies as he was gave him peace of mind and dispelled his doubts about his life.

He also stated that he had considered leaving Germany to travel through Europe, although he reveals that in his conversations with Maya he had confided that he believed Germany was entering a period of great change, he also longed to rejoin the army and with his small circle of friends. He often practices shooting. Everything told without a diary, as well as the stories transmitted to us by his fellow students at that time, paint the image of a traditional, methodical and even pedantic young man. man who appears to have taken his studies and his church very seriously and who took pride in Germanic culture and traditions while avoiding intimate relationships with young women because he believed they should be protected and prevented from going astray due to temptation. .

He even told his brother. Gebhart that she intended to remain a virgin until she married, these beliefs were no doubt formed, at least in part, due to her father's obedient and disciplinarian attitude combined with her mother's devout faith, as Himmler in that At the time he still regularly attended mass, it was during this period in In the early 1920s, Himmler's Diaries also revealed another possible influence on his worldview: the events unfolding in Russia, where a war had been underway. civil war since 1917. By the early 1920s, it was clear that the Bolshevik communists were victorious in this Himmler diary.

The entries revealed that he was deeply disturbed by the rise of a major communist power in Eastern Europe. His views in this regard had been shaped by the events of 1919, when Munich and Bavaria as a wholebecame a focus of communist agitation that ultimately led to the Bavarian revolution. in April 1919, after which a Soviet Republic was briefly established, it was soon crushed by the Nationalist Fry Corps, a paramilitary group that had emerged within Germany after the war and was composed primarily of army veterans and nationalists. who opposed the communists throughout the country towards the end. After his studies, Himmler joined the charging corps with whose nationalist spirit he clearly felt a kinship.

It was the beginning of his descent into extremist politics. It was also during this period that Himmler began spending much of his time in a student society called The League of Apollo which was largely made up of former soldiers and high-level graduates. Its president was a Jewish man named Abraham Hoffner. Although Himmler was initially raised with the Jewish members of society, it is clear that he was also forming strong anti-Semitic views at the time. He was involved in violent arguments while attending the Apollo League during the course of which he protested against the league's membership, including Jews, this stance soon earned him a reputation as a nationalist militarist on January 25, 1922 in In a meeting of his Rifle Club, Himmler met by chance a man who changed the course of his life and began a chain of events that would ultimately make him one of the most notorious individuals in human history.

The chance meeting was with a German army captain named Elmstrom Roma was one of the few officers who had been able to retain his position in the German army or exvia after the First World War Himmler and soon found common ground in their discussions as both were virulently opposed to the rise of communism in the East. In Europe, this meeting is considered the first hard evidence that Himmler became involved in organized nationalist politics after completing his agricultural studies in August 1922. Himmler joined the newly formed paramilitary Bund Rice Creek's Flagger or War Flag Society. Imperial of Rome, like the Fry Corps, this was a nationalist.

The paramilitary group at the time Himmler had also become aware of the growing influence of the Munich-based National Socialist German Workers Party or, as it was better known, the Nazi Party since 1921. These had been led by Adolf Hitler, whose bombastic speeches in the beer halls of Munich. They were attracting the admiration of local nationalists, including Aounstroom, as well as the hatred of communists, resulting in regular street battles in the city around this time, as Himmler became involved in Rome's organisations, supporting nationalist parties. was growing among certain sectors of the population in regions such as Bavaria, this was driven by Germany's economic problems.

Devastating economic reparations had been imposed on the country through the Treaty of Versailles and the French and Belgians had reserved the right to occupy Germany's industrial heartland in the Rua and Rhineland in the west of the country, if Germany defaulted on its payments. To compound the situation, inflation had become a problem, as had unemployment, many young people and middle-aged army veterans were attracted to nationalist parties like the Nazis with their message of revitalizing Germany and also their extreme tendency . antipathy towards the country's Jewish population, this was not necessarily unusual in Europe where anti-Semitism was unfortunately widespread in the 1920s, but the Nazis' views of the country's Jews were especially harsh believing that they were responsible for the Germany's defeat in the war, like many others.

Himmler decided to join the Nazis in 1923. He also remained a member of the Flagger Rooms Rice Krieg paramilitary group. This was around the same time that intense nationalist activity in Munich was beginning to attract the attention of the Bavarian regional government, resulting in Bavarian Prime Minister Oyegan Fong being cannulated. By banning political demonstrations in the region and declaring martial law on September 26, 1923, he appointed Gustav Fonkar as statistics commissioner or state commissioner, giving him free reign over the maintenance of law and order throughout Bavaria, in set. Colonel Hans Ritter Fonseiser was appointed as chief of the Bavarian police and Otto von Lossov as commander of the Bavarian branch of the reichsvier of the German army, his appointment was notable since Hitler had already formed the idea of ​​trying to emulate in Bavaria the fascist takeover of the power by Benito Mussolini with his march on Rome in October 1922, the Nazi leader's goal was to take control of the Bavarian government and then attempt a similar march on Berlin.

Plans to do so intensified in the fall of 1928, he even recruited general and World War I war hero Erik Ludendorff. In an attempt to gain advantage over Fonkar's government in Bavaria by gaining additional supporters, the coup attempt would be launched in early November 1923. Hitler received information during the planning process that Carr, along with Sisa and Lossov were to head to a public meeting. at the Burger in Munich on November 8, 1923. The Nazi leader perceived this as the opportunity he had been waiting for to seize the government of Bavaria. He and Nazi party leaders quickly forged a plan to attack the Burger Boy killer on November 8.

After which they planned to take the government leaders in Bavaria hostage and force them to hand over power to them, they would be aided in this by Anstroom, who had recently established a new paramilitary organization known as Sturm up tylon or sa, meaning Storm Detachment. like the army. wing of the Nazi party on the afternoon of November 8 Hitler together with a strong contingent of 600 members of the sa star locked themselves in a dome at the public meeting held by the head of the Bavarian government Gustav Fonkar in the beer hall Hitler proclaimed that there had A Ludendorff Revolution came shortly after, after which the triumvirate of police and army officers effectively handed over the government of Bavaria to Hitler and, after Ludendorff took over the brewery, Hitler made the mistake of leaving to attend to a crisis in another place and Carr and the other members of the group.

The Bavarian government escaped, quickly took charge of the situation, and began sending military and police forces into the city to crush the revolt the next morning, after realizing that their coup was on the brink of failure. Hitler accompanied by Ludendorff agreed to march through the streets of Munich. with his followers there, they would join Rome's troops, including Himmler, who played a minor role in the push for The Beer Hall, as it later emerged, and so was present to see how the coup was quickly suppressed when Armed state troops arrived and opened fire on those gathered. The Nazis in Bavaria on November 9 quickly panicked and Hitler and his supporters fled the scene.

The last pockets of resistance throughout Bavaria surrendered in the following hours, ending the brief coup attempt. Hitler was subsequently arrested and tried for high treason in February 1924 and was sentenced to five years in Landsberg prison along with several other coup ringleaders, but Ludendorff was released without charge. Himmler was arrested but released due to lack of evidence, although his participation in the coup caused him to lose. Furthermore, his work since the Nazi Party and the SA were officially banned by the government after the coup. Himmler was forced to return home to his parents, although Hitler's initiative at the brewery had ended in humiliating failure.

Himmler still maintained contact with Elmstrom, who had also been imprisoned. in Stadelheim prison and even took the time to visit him in February 1924 on his motorcycle, shortly before the room was released on parole. This should have been the end of National Socialism and the Nazis in Germany. However, Hitler used his time in prison to begin planning a new way to seize power, first writing his infamous book Mein Kampf, a lengthy and paranoid political testament in which he blamed Germany's recent problems on a vast Jewish and communist conspiracy to destroy the country. He also determined at that time that henceforth the Nazis would seek to reclaim power.

In Germany, through peaceful means, they would do so by trying to grow as a political party and take over the country through the polls. Furthermore, he could undertake this mission sooner than expected, barely a year after being sent to Landsberg prison. He was released and soon after the Bavarian regional government unbanned the Nazi party in what was retrospectively one of the poorest political decisions in modern European history, so from the 19th to the 25th onwards the Nazis sought to seize power by elections to the reichstag. Himmler had no intention of abandoning his political activities in the mid-1920s;

He refused to look for a regular job, much to his parents' chagrin, and instead worked as a low-level activist for the National Socialist Freedom Movement during the 1925 elections, an organization that had Himmler tour the cities and towns of Bavaria making speeches. about the evils of capitalism and about the Jews as such, he became a leading member of the party and when the Nazis were allowed to reform in 1925 Himmler was among those who rejoined when he was 24 and joined the staff of the Greek and Otto Strasser, two of the most important members of the party as assistant general.

Himmler soon became indispensable to the Greek Strasser, who was also the leader of the Nazi party in Lower Bavaria. His brother Otto would later recall how Himmler at that time was put in charge of controlling the various weapons depots. that the Nazi Party had built around Bavaria and ensuring that they were not discovered by the regional government, Himmler's virulent personal anti-Semitism also became increasingly evident during these years; For example, it was around this time that he began compiling and publishing lists of local German Jews with the aim of shaming them in a region where anti-Semitism was proliferating during the 1920s, soon after he was promoted to Strasser's deputy in Lower Bavaria, Although Strasser continued to doubt Himmler's personal abilities, it was also in 1925 that Himmler joined an apparently shadowy bodyguard unit within the National Socialist Party.

Called schutz staffel or SS, meaning protection squad, it was initially a personal bodyguard unit for Hitler's protection. From the early days of the Nazi movement there were plans to form a bodyguard for Hitler largely because after the First World War there were as The first of these prototype bodyguard units was the so-called ordinal or butler troop, but as the formation of groups paramilitary had already been banned at that time, the group disguised itself as the party's sports division in early 1923. This was renamed shtos Hitler troop, which originally consisted of only eight men, including its commander Julius Schreck, who would eventually become Hitler's personal display sofa.

This organization adopted the policeman Toten's skull and crossbones symbol as its emblem, one that had previously been used by the elite Prussian hussars. of the Imperial German Army was later adopted by the SS along with the Nordic Victory Halls when it was formed in April 1925. Himmler was one of the first members of the new paramilitary units number 168 who would soon rise to become its leader and transform it One of the most brutal institutions in human history, the SS was initially established as a subgroup of the much larger SA; However, even from their earliest days they distinguished themselves as an elite unit, for example their members also wore caps with the skull and crossbones of policeman Toten. as a gray field uniform that differs considerably from the brown-shirted members of the sa, but despite already having different clothing from the main body of the sa, the SS would soon adopt the black German army-style uniforms with removed caps and polished boots that became noticeable in future years.

This uniform and insignia would become the unit's signature look for years to come and would truly distinguish them as the elite police and security force within Nazi Germany. Himmler was promoted within the SS in 1926. He was appointed SS Gau filler or district leader within Lower Bavaria. However, the head of the paramilitary organization Joseph Bergtold resigned as leader of the SS in 1927. He was replaced by Earhart Haydn, an ill-equipped bureaucrat who proved inadequate for the task. Haydn would eventually be replaced and, when he was, an opportunity would open for Himmler to become one of the leading figures of the Nazi movement.

In 1926, Himmler's salary was about120 marks a month and his SS duties consisted largely of canvassing members of the Bavarian public to subscribe to the party newspaper; He was also tasked with securing advertisements and it was this background in journalism that would see Gregos Trace promote Himmler in 1926 to become deputy head of propaganda within Bavaria, a position in which he often worked alongside another rising party member, Joseph Goebbels, who in his own diary professed that he liked Himmler, calling him intelligent and a good guy. It is unknown when Himmler first met Hitler in person, however it is likely that he caught the Fü

hrer

's attention even before he was sent to Landsberg prison after the beer hall hanger.

What is clear is that Himmler met Hitler in September 1927 and told the party leader of his idea of ​​turning the relatively insignificant SS into an elite paramilitary unit of the Nazi party, the idea evidently impressed Hitler and he was promoted to Himmler to become the deputy leader of the SS under Erhardt Haydn at the rank of ss oberfular. now the second in command of the SS, at this time the membership of the largest trial was increasing in size, while the membership of the SS had decreased from around a thousand to less than 300 members, much of this was due to the poor leadership of Erhard Haydn as soon as he became Haydn's deputy.

Himmler began to demonstrate his organizational skills by establishing separate SS jurisdictions throughout Germany. This activity soon made it clear to those who chose to watch that Himmler was far more capable than his SS superior, whom he soon began to outshine and outshine. Also around this time the Nazi party as a whole was beginning to expand its reach beyond its homelands of Bavaria, meaning that the attention or focus of its campaign became increasingly focused on Berlin, leading Himmler to embarking in 1927 on a lecture tour of the German capital on On one of these visits to the German capital, Himmler met his future wife, a 34-year-old nurse named Margaret Borden, owner of a nursing home in Berlin and, according to various accounts of Polish heritage, Himmler, who was only 27 years old at the time, was clearly formed.

He had a close bond with Margarita, since, like him, she was very hard-working and shared his anti-Semitism, so just a few months after their first meeting, Margarita sold her nursing home, bought a house in the countryside near Munich and married Himmler in July 1928. As Himmler was still on a modest salary at this stage, the couple supplemented their income by keeping around 50 chickens and selling produce, although Himmler had little to do with this modest enterprise, however, has given rise to the idea that Himmler was a chicken farmer when in fact it was his wife who looked after the small number of livestock, as he was away on party business most of the time.The following year, 1929 , would prove to be one of the most important in Himmler's life, as in August both he and Margaret greeted their only daughter, Goodwin, to the world in a more significant way.

That same year, Erhard Haydn was fired by Hitler due to his general incompetence and was replaced as head of the SS by Himmler, although the SS was small compared to the SA in 1929, its main function being to protect senior party officials. gave Himmler direct access to the top of the National Socialist Party and it was clear that Himmler's vision of transforming the SS into an elite Praetorian divine force had met with Hitler's approval from the beginning, which meant that he could now He proceeded to effectively mold and expand this unit into what he saw as the ideal Germanic warriors whose racial loyalty, purity, physical fitness and courage were surpassed by none and feared by all.

This also occurred when circumstances were developing that would allow the Nazis secure power in Germany. In the fall of 1929, a severe economic crisis hit America and Europe after the Wall Street stock exchanges in New York. Nazi popularity soared after the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression that followed as ordinary Germans They found themselves unemployed and impoverished in the process. Hitler soon became one of Germany's most prominent political leaders along with Hermann Goering and the new propaganda chief within the party, Joseph Goebbels, for the time being Himmler remained in the background, continuing with his initial strategy of quietly accumulating power. and expand the influence and membership of his SS, which grew from 300 to 3,000 in the space of just 12 months at the beginning.

In the 1930s this reflected the political rise of the Nazis, who in the 1930 Reichtag elections won 17 percent of the vote nationally and then, in the following elections in the summer of 1932, became the party largest in the country with just under two of each. For every five German voters who supported them, in early 1931 Himmler began to create an SS counterintelligence division. One of the candidates for admission was an unemployed former Navy officer named Reinhard Heide, who had recently been dismissed from the Navy. Due to several affairs with married women, Himmler interviewed him and was so impressed that he hired him.

Heidelic grew rapidly and soon became the head of a new organization called zika heidstein store SD, which means security service in the hands of heydrich, this body would come to act as the covert espionage and surveillance arm of the SS in the process. Heidi would become the second person in the SS only surpassed by Himmler himself and one of the most powerful men in the Third Reich. As a result, following the summer 1932 Eichstag elections, the Nazis had become the largest political party in Germany, yet the centrist, center-right political establishment of the German Republic was generally unwilling to allow Hitler became chancellor of Germany, the party's political manifesto was considered too extreme and there were many who were rightly suspicious of the fact that they had attempted a military coup in Bavaria in 1923.

Consequently, a technocratic government was formed mid-1932 to prevent Hitler from becoming leader of the government; However, in the winter it became clear that he lacked the political support necessary to cope. Consequently, the country's seemingly endless economic problems in January 1933 Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany and several government ministries were assigned to Nazi officials. Following this, Hitler immediately sought to claim full control of the country and dissolve parliament so new elections could be held. In March, before they could be held, a fire in the Reichstag in February 1933 was used as justification for suspending all basic civil rights and allowing detention without trial.

The fire was attributed to the German Communist Party, which was practically closed down in the coming years. Shortly after, Reichstag deputies met at the Choral Opera and voted on an enabling law that gave Hitler de facto control over Germany for a period of four years and allowed him to pass laws without the consent of the country's parliament by voting in favor of this law. The Reichstag effectively signed its own death warrant when the passage of the bill made Hitler the dictator of Germany in all but name, meaning that German democracy was now dead. In the months that followed, all political opposition was crushed with the help of Himmler's SS throughout the country.

Forced to close and anyone who was considered any kind of threat was arrested and placed in either prisons or temporary detention centers they were soon sent to new concentration camps that were being built by the Nazis throughout Germany. This video is sponsored by World of Tanks, the amazing free game available for any beginner or professional on PC, console and mobile. Download World of Tanks using the first link in the description to interact with a global community of players who share your passion. From December 1st to January 9th, World of Tanks will host its largest gaming event of the year, Holiday Ops. , the perfect time to start World of Tanks and Arnold Schwarzenegger is back from last year, but this time he is not alone.

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By 1933, SS membership had skyrocketed to over 50,000 members, all of whom were now Subject to strict entry rules such as checks on their ancestry, physical fitness and height to ensure that only the most Nordic-looking Germans gained admission to Himmler's Elite Force, and conversely, those within the Third Reich who were considered undesirables or were political or racial enemies of Nazism, like half the country. A million Jews, Roma, Gypsies, homosexuals or disabled people soon began to feel the full implications of Himmler's planned purge of the German population. Of course, the irony of all this was that Himmler, who was becoming one of the leading proponents of the idea of ​​a blue blonde.

The dark-eyed, black-haired, frail-physique German race was as far removed as possible from the racial ideal their SS were trying to promote. One of the first stages of this program of racial cleansing under the Nazis was the creation of the SS main race and its settlements. This office was tasked with maintaining high entry standards for members of the SS, for example members wishing to marry were required to present a complete family tree dating back several generations to prove that they were of sufficiently pure German blood once they If they passed this test and were actually married, they were also expected to father many children to propagate the German race along with instigating measures designed to ensure the purity of SS membership.

Himmler after Hitler's rise to power in 1933 also began to adopt other measures to contain and even persecute those he considered of impure blood, all enemies of the burgeoning Nazi State, which culminated in the establishment of concentration camps such as Dachane, near Munich, which were initially designed to hold political prisoners, but years later and under his direction they would become At the centers of one of the most brutal genocides ever seen in Berlin, now only two obstacles stood between the minor Adolf Hitler and absolute power in Germany, one of which was President Paul of Hindenburg, who technically remained Hitler's superior, the second was the army or, rather, the Army High Command, which was now increasingly expressing its concerns regarding Ernst Gloom's enormous essay, which by 1933 had grown to more than 2 million members.

This all culminated in Hindenburg telling Hitler that he had to reign in the SA and that their leader, Hitler was inclined to do so. So by now Rome was not only a direct threat to the army but to the government and to Hitler himself, for some time Hitler and the other Nazi leaders began to worry that Room was planning to take power himself, since who by 1933 was becoming increasingly arrogant and insulting in his behavior towards Hitler himself as a result in the spring of 1930 4 an operation was launched codenamed Operation Hummingbird headed by Hermann Goering one of the top Nazi ministers along with Himmler and his accomplice Heidi's plan was to behead the SA leaders and realign them with Hitler's goals, the operation began on June 30 and would lead to three days of violence that later became known as the Night of the Dead. long knives, thousands of the Nazis' political enemies and prominent supporters in the These essays were arrested or killed in coordinated attacks across the country, including Rome itself and also figures such as Himmler's former boss in the mid-1920s on Greek Street, who during the Great Depression had begun to publicly distance himself from Hitler.

Another victim was Rita Fonkar, the former leader of the Bavarian government at the time of the coup.brewery state, who was dragged into a forest and hacked to death with axes, a large proportion of these attacks were carried out by Himmler's SS and as a result, Himmler's paramilitary organization now began to politically replace the sa he was allowed to continue after Rome's death but whose political importance was considerably reduced from the summer of 1934 onwards, as well as now being head of the main paramilitary and security force in all of Nazi Germany from the mid-1930s. 1930 onwards.

Himmler was also increasingly monopolizing control over Germany's police services back in 1933. Hermann Gering had formed his own police force called the gahaimashtaz polizzai or gestapo; However, starting in 1934 the Nazi state began to rearm itself in anticipation of a future war of revenge. Consequently, against the European powers, Gering's attention was diverted to the establishment of a new Air Force called the Luftwaffe and in April 1934 he handed over control of the Gestapo to Himmler. The SS chief quickly placed it in Heydrich's capable hands and that same day Hitler rewarded Himmler's loyalty. and efficiency by placing him in charge of all of Germany's police forces outside of Prussia itself, meaning he now had control over the close protection of the Nazi elite, the secret services and the police, in many ways this effectively made Himmler the second most powerful man in the country.

Germany after Hitler himself, thus, in just under five years, Hinori Himmler had gone from relative obscurity as an official of the Nazi Party in Lower Bavaria to controlling the interior of practically the entire German State. In the mid-1930s, the Nazis began implementing their extreme anti-Semitic measures. Policies in Germany this began with the introduction of the so-called Nuremberg Laws which prohibited marriage between Jews and non-Jews and deprived Jews of German citizenship. They also prohibited Jews from hiring non-Jewish Germans. The introduction of these laws marked the beginning of a series of increasingly harsh government measures designed to persecute German Jews that would eventually culminate in what many considered one of the worst periods of mass murder in world history.

Himmler would be instrumental in these events and their development over the years that followed in the meantime. Himmler's power over the interior of the Third Reich or German Empire reached even greater heights in June 1936, when Hitler decreed the unification of all state police forces within Germany and appointed Himmler head of all German police forces, placing them effectively under the umbrella of As a result, now that the SS controlled Germany's police forces and secret services, Himmler, perhaps in an effort to fulfill his dreams of a military career, began the formation of a new fighting arm of the SS.

SS who would eventually become one of the most feared of the SS. Throughout World War II, this Branch would eventually become the Evaphan SS or Armored SS whose origins can be found as early as 1933, when a unit called Commander Zonda was formed in Berlin under the leadership of Septitri, who initially acted as a bodyguard. elite for Adolf. Hitler promised him loyalty and obedience until death; However, after the 10th anniversary of Hitler's brewery coup in 1933, this unit was renamed leipstand Atta Adolf Hitler, making it Hitler's elite paramilitary bodyguard. A year later, Himmler renamed it leibestandata SS Adolf Hitler after himself. he wanted it to be clear that the unit was composed of National Socialists and was not part of the German armed forces; leibstant Atta would eventually form the first of 38 SS military divisions, each consisting of between 15,000 and 20,000 elite troops;

The Vaffan SS grew to include the 5th SS Panza Viking Division which was composed of men from Norway, Denmark, Sweden and other Scandinavian countries, while the 13th Raffan Mountain Division was composed of Bosnians, Slavs and Croats; In addition, there were even divisions made up of French, Belarusian, Flemish, Hungarian and Dutch. as Latvians, meaning that the total manpower of the Waffen SS was in the region of 900,000 men at its peak in the early 1940s, although Himmler is well known for being head of the police and security services. intelligence of Nazi Germany, a lesser-known aspect of his character is his fascination with Norse mythology, as there are records of him approving expeditions and research projects to find ancient relics, as well as evidence of the existence of Germanic cultures before the expansion. of Christianity which, despite his mother's fervent Catholicism, he had come to believe was a threat to the morality and purity of the German-speaking peoples, these antiquarian interests included a wide range of dark and even fanciful projects and expeditions, such as sending German scientists to Japan to determine if genealogical links existed between Asian and Germanic peoples and also sought evidence from the German Ancestry Research Society for Ancient Intellectual History which carried out archaeological and research projects throughout Europe and further in an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the area's breed.

Historians also surmised that Himmler's intention was to replace Christianity entirely within the Third Reich. After all, Jesus was therefore a Jew. Himmler felt that the Aryan peoples should return to those ancient Norse pagan roots over which he and the SS would have jurisdiction, giving Himmler another method of control that he and the Nazi elite could use to bend the German population to their will. The replacement of Christianity manifested itself in the SS when its members had to renounce their faith for the new Suda religion of the SS, which consisted of replacing Christmas with winter solstice festivals and exchanging Christian weddings for pagan ceremonies.

These were devised by Himmler, who in 1933 purchased a Renaissance-style castle in Weaversburg, Bavaria, which Himmler initially intended to convert into an SS training center, but which soon became a venue for holding SS dinners and ceremonies. pagan An example of Himmler's reverence for Norse history and mythology is the SS logo, which was designed by an SS graphic designer named Valter Heck in 1933 and consisted of two Scandinavian Sikh runes that originally represented the sun, However, these were misinterpreted in 19th century Germany as meaning Victory, as the German word for victory is search, therefore the infamous SS logo not only means such a staffel, but is also assumed to mean victory victory, in fact the cry seek Heil was soon adopted by the masses during Hitler's rallies in which they gave the Nazi salute while shouting seek Heil, meaning victory, hail as Himmler was establishing the Waffen SS and completing his takeover can.

Of all the police and security services in Germany, Hitler was making preparations for a new war which, the Nazis saw, would bring retaliation for the humiliation Germany had suffered at the end of World War I; In this, his objective would be to recover the lands. had lost in 1918, in addition to having acquired vast new territories in Eastern Europe that would be used as labensrem or living space for colonization by the Germans, a massive rearmament program had already begun with the newly formed wehrmacht in the spring of 1935. German o The Armed Forces expand far beyond the 100,000 men that Germany was supposed to limit its military forces to under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles in 1935.

Hitler and his generals began recruiting hundreds of thousands of men for a new Air Force as previously seen under the command of Hermann Goering was also created and the German Navy or Krieg's Navy was also expanded; Then in 1936 the Nazis reoccupied the demilitarized Rhineland in a new show of aggressive intentions, however Britain and France had no desire for war and allowed Hitler to continue these bullish methods. Ultimately, although the stage was set for a war in Europe in the following years, Hitler and other senior Nazi leaders, such as Himmler, had originally planned to wait until the early 1940s, perhaps until 1942 or 1943, to launch their new war, however, as the 1930s progressed and they saw that Great Britain and France were unable to rearm or prepare for the conflict, these plans advanced, so from the beginning of 1938 a more intense program of aggression began. diplomat;

In the spring of that year, Austria was forcibly annexed to a greater Germany. Himmler was deeply involved here ensuring that the SS rapidly expanded into new regions of the Reich and at the same time rapidly expanded his control over police services in Vienna and elsewhere. As soon as this was done, Hitler made claims to parts of Czechoslovakia again Britain and France bowed to Hitler's aggression and handed over parts of the country's west to him in September 1938, but when the Germans invaded and annexed the rest of the country in In the spring of 1939, both London and Paris made it clear that any further act of aggression.

This was exactly what happened when Hitler ordered the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. . World War II had begun. The outbreak of war saw Himla with Hydrox Aid establishing a new SS element, these were called einsatz kulipin, meaning task groups or deployment groups, they were effectively squads of SS members who were established to travel on the rear of the main German army and acted as death squads when they moved into Poland in the first weeks. At the end of the war, the einsatz gluten began murdering thousands of Polish intellectuals and political leaders who had been identified as potential leaders of a Polish resistance movement and these were only the first of the actions undertaken by Himmler's einsteopen in the In subsequent years, they would be widely used.

In action throughout central and eastern Europe, committing enormous atrocities wherever they went, for example after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the einsatz kropen were responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the entire war, such as that of Babi already in Ukraine, at the end of September 1941, some 33,000 Jews were executed by the einsatzkopen in the space of two days. All of these activities were overseen and directed by Himmler, but this was in the future, in the immediate term, Germany's goal was to conquer Poland and then shift to Western Europe to get the French and British out of the war.

Everything initially went very well for the Nazis. Poland was conquered in a matter of weeks in September and October 1939 and then, after a long period of inaction, Denmark and Norway were occupied in In the spring of 1940, before a massive invasion of France in early summer, this was a dizzyingly rapid military campaign and within six weeks Paris was occupied and the British expeditionary force was forced to flee across the channel to Britain, but not London was defeated, but the island. The nation held out in the following months against a German naval blockade and bombing campaign and it was at this time that Hitler made the fatal decision to leave Britain alone and instead turn east to invade the ideological enemy of the Nazism, the communists of the Soviet Union.

In the summer of 1941 he ordered the invasion of Russia in what was the largest military campaign ever undertaken. Millions of men entered Russia in what was called Operation Barbarossa. The war in the East initially went very well for Germany, again hundreds of kilometers of territory were captured. In the early months of the war, as the German armies approached Moscow and Leningrad, however, as the Russians mounted a stronger defense in early winter, the Germans stalled outside these cities. It was the first time that a German army was controlled during the war and it was the beginning of a major reversal of fortunes for the Nazis in the war effort as the German Armed Forces advanced into Ukraine, eastern Poland, the Baltic States and Russia.

Starting in the summer of 1941, the actions of the cotton einsatz commanded by Himmler became increasingly brutal, as we have already seen, tens of thousands of people were massacred in the space of a few days in some regions, among them Jews, Roma , disabled Soviet prisoners of war, and almost anyone else who was considered racially inferior or a direct political enemy of the Third Reich's proof of these massacres can be found in a report sent by the einsatzguben commander based in the present-day Baltic states of France , Walter Schtalacker,to Reinhardt Heidelich in January 1942, which detailed the number of Jews who had been killed by his units since the beginning of the German invasion and even included a map listing the exact number of Jews killed in each of the Baltic states, it is estimated that the number of people killed amounted to more than 220,000 men, women and children in this region.

At the end of the war alone the Einzatz Globen were responsible for the mass murder of over 2 million people, the vast majority of them in Eastern Europe, of these approximately 1.3 million were Eastern European Jews, including women. and children who were often shot at point-blank range, however, the sheer logistics of murder. So many Jews used these methods, combined with the psychological effects on SS soldiers, who often had to shoot children, soon led Himmler and Hyde to turn the extermination of the Jews into an industrialized process. German expansion into Eastern Europe had subdued millions of additional Jews. German rule between 1939 and 1941.

Originally, the Nazis had intended simply to coerce German Jews to leave the country, robbing them of their rights as citizens and persecuting them through programs such as Kristallnacht in late 1938, when thousands of Jewish businesses, synagogues and homes were attacked throughout Germany and Austria; However, there were only half a million Jews in Germany, while millions more lived in countries such as Poland, Ukraine, and other parts of Nazi-controlled or influenced Europe such as Hungary, a new way of dealing with what the Nazis considered that the Jewish question or the Jewish problem was necessary once the war began, initially after the invasion of Poland, areas in the center of the country's cities were walled off which were then populated by the country's Jews, most famously which were Warsaw and the Warsaw ghettos.

Conditions inside were grim. The inhabitants suffered systematically from hunger from the 1940s onwards, receiving only a few hundred calories of food a day, soon the weak and firm were left dead or dying in the streets, while families were often forced to live with dozens per room. . without heat or running water, but soon even this barbaric policy would be eclipsed and Himmler and his SS were at the center of these events in August 1941. Himmler traveled eastwards, to those parts of the former Soviet Union that had been occupied by The Nazis after At the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, his destination was Minsk, where he witnessed the mass executions of an unknown number of Jews, but as he watched the firing squads carrying out their horrendous work followed by the place where the corpses fell into pre-prepared graves, the SS leader was deeply affected, according to his chief of staff, Carl Wolf, who later testified after many volleys.

I could see that Himmler was shaking. He ran his hand over his face as he swayed. His face was almost green. He immediately vomited and complained that he had a piece of brain. had been splattered on his face after the murders stopped Himmler told an eight to quote to devise a less gruesome means of mass execution instead of simply shooting people this change in policy regarding mass executions quickly led to that experiments were carried out in which Jews were loaded into vans and effectively gassed to death by pumping car exhaust into the vehicle; However, these experiments were still considered inefficient and so plans were drawn up in early 1942 to add gas chambers to some of the existing concentration camps that had been erected throughout Nazi-occupied Europe to house political prisoners, six camps were eventually identified as those that would act as extermination camps where Jews from the mainland would be sent to be gassed to death.

They were all in a confined location in Poland and consisted of Auschwitz birkenau Treblinka. Sobibor Bierge and the Maidanic Concentration Camps These plans for what became known as the Final Solution were formulated by Himmler's deputy Reinhard Heideck, who on January 20, 1942 summoned Nazi party officials from various departments in the now infamous Vanza conference that was held in the suburb. de vanze on the outskirts of Berlin here described the SS plan for the so-called final solution to the Jewish question in territories under German control and the coordination of all government departments for this purpose to more than a dozen senior Nazi bureaucrats the orders for the final solution had reached Himmler and Heideli in the late summer of 1941.

Shortly after Hitler and several other high-ranking Nazis, such as Hermann Gering, began their invasion of the Soviet Union, however, over the next four years , it was Himmler and, at first, covertly, who were responsible for carrying out the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe, the police services that Hydra oversaw throughout Europe, such as the Gestapo, would be responsible for identifying and arresting all Jews from the continent, while Adolf Eichmann, a logistician with a knack for organizing the movement of hundreds of thousands. of people from one place to another would oversee the actual deportation of the Jews from the mainland to the six extermination camps, but it wasn't the SS who ran things inside the camps, it was them who selected who would die immediately and who would be used as slave labor when people arrived in the camps and it was the SS supervised by Himmler that carried out the final solution for the next three years.

It is clear that by the spring of 1942 the plans for the final solution had been finalized and were ready to be put into practice. but one of the main instigators of the Holocaust, Reinhardt Heidrich, never saw the final solution come true as he died of a bacterial infection on June 4, 1942 after two Allied-trained Czechoslovak agents attacked him in his chauffeured car in Prague on May 27, 1942, thousands of Czech citizens were killed in retaliation for Haido's death. Himmler personally took command of the implementation of the final solution, although he finally did so in January 1943. He appointed a new head of the security services as Heidi's successor, an Austrian member of the SS named Ernst Kaldenbrenner during the course of 1942. , 1943 and 1944 more than 4 million Jews were murdered en masse in the extermination camps run by Himmler's SS, the most famous of which was of course Auschwitz Birkenau, the expansion of which Himmler had ordered in early 1942 with the addition of gas chambers and ovens, they were Jews, Roma, Gypsies, homosexuals and those the Nazis called undesirables were murdered using a pesticide called Cyclone B, their bodies were then quickly cremated on purpose.

Crematoriums were built nearby. In total, it is estimated that more than 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust, either in the death camps or by the einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe. The Hemless SS was front and center in his assassination, however, because the Third Reich and the Hemless SS in particular were careful to cover their tracks, there has been great skepticism in some circles since the war that The Holocaust took place despite the previously mentioned einsert scrutiny reports sent to Reinhardt Heinrich, as well as photographic evidence of the mass murders of Einstein's group. the signed confession of Adolf Eichmann at his trial in Israel in the early 1960s and quotes from Himmler's Chief of Staff, Carl Wolf, who confirmed that he had been present at mass murders with Heinrich Himmler during the war, not to mention the countless eyewitness statements of the survivors. of the Holocaust, whether Jewish or not, perhaps the most damning evidence came from Himmler himself, as on October 4, 1943, during a secret meeting with SS officers in the city of Poznan, Himmler expressly referred to the murder in mass of the members of the Region.

Jews, the Poznan speeches and others that Himmler gave in 1944 were recorded and are debt-free. The voice of Heinrich Himmler, if you know, the capitals of the iron countries, here for Enon, there is dirt, foreign programs to achieve a racially pure nation would prove nothing more than counterproductive, since his insistence and obsession with purging the Third Reich of racial impurity simply wasted enormous amounts of resources that could otherwise have been used to greater effect on the fronts fighting the Russians and Western Allies; In short, the National Socialist hatred of the Jews proved to be one of their Achilles heels; in essence, Hitler Himmler and Hyde diverted hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of Reichsmarks from the war effort into genocidal projects that did nothing more than weaken the Nazi state as a whole, for example, 50,000 guards served. in the concentration camp system and hundreds of thousands more Germans and their allies were involved in this program of mass murder in one way or another, whether trying to identify Romani Jews and other enemies of the regime who were hiding in cities like Paris.

Amsterdam or Vienna or in the management of the ghettos of Warsaw, Riga and other cities or simply in the management of the railway systems and the administrative branches of the concentration camp system, all this involved a massive bureaucracy that immobilized hundreds of thousands of Germans. This labor was very necessary. By 1944, it was evident elsewhere that Hitler's attempt to secure European domination had failed miserably after the German Armed Forces bogged down outside Moscow and Leningrad in the winter of 1941. The Russians had begun pumping millions of men in the war effort of the war in the East. The front now became one of attrition while, at the same time, the United States finally ended World War II after being attacked in December 1941 by Germany's ally, the Empire of Japan, and since late 1941 Thereafter a new and powerful Alliance of Great Britain, the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as other allies such as Canada and the Free French, had joined together to fight against Germany and its allies. 1942 did not bring a breakthrough, but the Germans were simply losing too many men against a numerically superior enemy.

Hitler's hopes now rested on seizing the city of Stalingrad in southwestern Russia and with it the oil fields of the Caucasus, in which the Russians lacked oil, this finally failed in the winter of 1942, in the first major defeat of a German war army. From there, downhill for the Nazis, in the spring of 1943 the combined forces of Italy, Germany and North Africa, which had attempted to seize the Suez Canal in Egypt and with it control of the Middle East, were pushed towards Tunisia. and finally expelled from the North. In Africa as a whole, the Western Allies followed up this victory by opening a new southern front in Italy through the invasion of Sicily that summer.

On this occasion, the Italian fascist government removed its Hitler-allied dictator, Benito Mussolini, from power and surrendered unconditionally to the allies, whatever they might be. There was no quick end to the war there, as Hitler established a puppet regime headed by Mussolini in the north of the country and continued to resist the Allied movement in the North, but this in turn diverted resources from Eastern Europe and eventually 1943, the Russians were beginning to put pressure on the Russians. The Germans returned to Poland in 1944, making rapid advances westward, a situation that was exacerbated when the Western Allies opened a Western Front in France that summer after the D-Day Landings.

The days of the Third Reich were numbered. The massive setbacks suffered by the German army and the Soviet Union, as well as the Allied landings on D-Day, led Hitler to order the creation of new army units composed of all the able-bodied men the German state could muster. As a result, Himmler finally realized his childhood dream of becoming a soldier when he was appointed commander of the Upper Rhine Army Group in the winter of 1944, and in addition Hitler ordered Himmler to facilitate the creation of the so-called folkstorm units, which were little more than armed civilians or militias in the desperate hope of stopping the advance.

However, these units, although almost half a million strong, were largely made up of teenagers and retirees who were equipped with improvised weapons and who, despite their best efforts, were unable to offer much resistance against the Soviets, who in As a result, in the winter of 1944 the Allies were massing in eastern France and the Netherlands for an assault on the Rhineland in early 1945, while the massive armies of the Soviet Union had spread across Poland and were preparing for their own entry intoEast Germany. Now it was simply a question of which side would capture Berlin first. Himmler's time as army commander in West Germany overseeing the Upper Rhine Army Group coincided with the final Nazi offensive of the war, when Hitler attempted to launch a counterattack against the Western Allies in the Arden Forest, straddling Luxembourg, Belgium and eastern France, was launched in mid-December 1944, although operational command was in the hands of Field Marshal von Runstadt's guard and there is little evidence to suggest that Himmler played a major role in the operation which was considerably successful.

In the early days of it, but was soon repulsed, soon afterward Himmler was transferred to command of the newly formed army group Vistula, named after the Vistula River in Poland, near the front lines where they were now located. the Russians in this capacity. Himmler was accused of contributing to the defense. of northeastern Germany, the Pomeranian region from the imminent attack of the Red Army. Himmler's appointment to oversee an important aspect of Germany's military defense and the route to Berlin was heavily criticized by career generals within the German army, but Hitler, who held many of his most capable commanders, responsible for the German defeat in the war at that time, they refused to change their decision.

Himmler proved incompetent in this role. He set up his headquarters on a train with few resources available. He was known to work only a few hours a day. and when Army Group Vistula was sent into action in February 1945, its forces were bogged down in rain and mud; Within days he was revoked from his command, an ignominious end to his short career as a military commander. One might wonder at this juncture why he turned himself in to Himmler. command of two considerable military forces at this critical moment in the effort to stop the Allied advance towards Berlin the answer lies in his personal relationship with Hitler from the beginning Himmler made it clear that he would obey Hitler's orders without question, in addition to his position as leader of what was originally Hitler's personal bodyguard unit and gave him personal access to the Fü

hrer

.

He also had ambitions to succeed Hitler one day. She was 11 years older than him and in poor health. Therefore, she cultivated his relationship with him as much as she could from the late 1920s onwards. The result of all this was that Hitler trusted the SS chief to refer to him as the faithful Heinrich and consequently promoted him in 1943 to the position of interior minister, in addition to his already considerable list of titles and positions. , However, this is not so. to suggest that the relationship was always close and, while Hitler considered Himmler one of his most loyal followers, he otherwise despised many of the SS leaders' beliefs and did not count him among his inner SS social circle.

Thus, when Goebbels came to the conclusion that Himmler had failed him in command of Army Group Vistula, the SS leader quickly fell in the eyes of Hitler in the weeks following his dismissal. , as the noose tightened around the neck of the Third Reich. Just one of many high- and mid-ranking Nazi officials who attempted to initiate peace negotiations, some of them, as his second-in-command within the SS from early 1943, Ernst Kaltenbrunner attempted to do so through the Red Cross stationed in the neutral Switzerland. Himmler's efforts also focused on a country that had remained neutral throughout the war: Sweden in the final weeks of the war, while the Russians surrounded Berlin and Hitler remained in his bunker in the center of the city and refused to accept surrender, Himmler contacted Nicolas Masur. a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress at these negotiations discussed the possible release of tens of thousands of Jews from the concentration camps that were still controlled by the SS to Scandinavia through this action the man who had witnessed the Holocaust freed twenty thousand Jews In the last days of the war, while planning some way to save himself, as a result of this gesture of good faith, Himlo was able to meet with Count Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, on April 23, 1945.

Here he claimed to act as head of the German government even though Hitler was still alive and submitted a written proposal that he wished to be sent to the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe, American General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in which he offered Germany to surrender. to the Western allies, but his proposals were quickly rejected. News of Himmler's peace offer was broadcast by the British Broadcasting Corporation on April 28, 1945. Once he learned that his loyalist Heinrich Heinrich had betrayed him and had tried to negotiate Germany's surrender , Hitler was furious. He then stripped Himmler of all his positions and titles and issued a warrant for his arrest.

This was not incongruous and Hitler turned against many other high-ranking Nazis in the final weeks of the war, either for supporting the peace negotiations or because he could shift some of the blame. Because of the fall of the Third Reich at his feet, his decision to remove Himmler from office was one of his last important actions. Shortly afterwards, on April 30, 1945, the Nazi leader whom Himmler had first met more than 20 years earlier in Bavaria committed suicide. In the Reich Chancellery bunker in Central Berlin, his designated successor, Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, did the same the next day and the German army and the provisional government began peace negotiations.

In this way, World War II in Europe came to an end on May 8. 1945. Hereafter known as Victory in Europe or VE Day, in the final weeks and days of the war, large numbers of Nazi leaders had fled Berlin for northern Germany. Here they formed an interim government in the town of Flensburg, on the Danish border, the target. The idea for escaping here was that this region was relatively unaffected by the war and they would be captured by the Western Allies instead of the Russians. Himmler had headed to the German-Danish border in the Hamburg region, but he had no illusions that he would avoid arrest and During his trial, perhaps more than anyone else, he had been responsible for the Holocaust of six million Jews on the continent and the mass murder of millions of Soviet Roma and other prisoners of war in central and eastern Europe;

It was the SS that he turned into an army within the Reich that staffed the Einzatz Corpen and ran the concentration camp system. In fact, by the time the war came to an end, the Allies had determined that most of the Germans would not be punished for the war, but that all members of the SS and in particular their officer class were prime targets as such. Himmler, like many other members of the paramilitary organization he led, went into hiding in the first days of May. Himmler attempted to hide by posing as an ordinary German soldier traveling with some companions, however, his efforts did not last long.

As Allied troops spread across Germany, Himmler and his comrades were detained at Bremer Voda in Lower Saxony at a checkpoint set up by former Soviet prisoners of war on May 21, 1945. However, their captors did not know who he was at that time. Over the next two days, Himmler was moved between several internment camps before being taken to a British civilian interrogation camp near Lunenburg on May 23 during an interview here. Himmler, without further indication, openly admitted who he was. His captors probably found this unusual. leader of the famous SS, the man who would be tried before the International Military Tribunal that was scheduled to be held in Nuremberg, there he would meet justice with figures like Gering, who was still alive among the Nazi hierarchy.

After this confession, he was transferred to the headquarters of the British Second Army in Lunenburg, where a doctor began a medical examination. of him, but when the doctor tried to look into Himmler's mouth, he resisted and a few seconds later collapsed to the floor despite efforts to revive him. Himmler died 15 minutes later. It was later determined that he had bitten into a potassium cyanide capsule that the SS leader had likely been carrying for weeks with the intention of committing suicide if he was arrested shortly after the former Reich sphera's body was buried in an unmarked grave in Lunenburg, whose location remains a mystery to this day due to his suicide and the murder of Reinhardt Heinrich near Prague in 1942.

Ernst Carlton Brunner would be included in the primary trial at Nuremberg as the highest-ranking surviving figure within the SS. Heinrich Himmler was undoubtedly one of the most important figures within the Nazi regime, while Hitler will forever be the supreme figure. Associated with the crimes of National Socialism were a handful of individuals who are always considered almost as important in the regime, three in particular stand out: Helm and Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. What is unusual about this is that Himmler rose from fairly humble origins within the party, while Gering, for example, was an important figure already at the time of the brewery drive in 1923.

Himmler became a member of the Nazi party only a few months before the coup attempt in Munich, in which he played an insignificant role. After the Insurrection and even in the years that followed, he can hardly be said to have been an important figure within Nazism; However, all that began to change starting in the late 1920s as he gradually gained control over the SS after becoming its leader in 1929 and as the Nazis came to power in the early 1930s, He used his significant administrative capabilities to turn the organization into the main paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.

Not only did he manage to replace Holmes in this regard, but he also used the SS to monopolize control over the police and the police. The security services within Germany in the mid-1930s, aided considerably by their brutal comrade Reinhardt Heidech, in the late 1930s the SS, which had originally been a small bodyguard unit when Himmler joined it , they effectively became a small ideological army within the Third Reich, formed around the Aryan race. popular German ideology and history, however Himmler's creation was already monstrous, by the late 1930s it was beginning to become a brutal instrument of Nazi terrorism that was used to surveil Germany and then ask Austria to eradicate those who were considered racial and ideological enemies of Nazism.

Many of them were already being rounded up and sent to concentration camps at the time, but things got even worse once World War II began in September 1939, as soon as the German army crossed into Poland, they were accompanied by the einsatzkopen detachments of fanatical SS members who acted as death squads, no matter how bad their actions in Poland were, were overshadowed by what happened after the invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 in the following years, although mainly in the first six months of the invasion, these SS death squads acting under orders other than themselves murdered over one and a half million people as the German army advanced eastwards and this was just the prelude to the implementation of the final solution through the concentration camp system which, after all, was run by the SS.

And in fact, the SS murdered over 10 million people during World War II through the camp system and their actions on the Eastern Front. Himmler did not create the SS but he did turn them into the killing machine that he became as such. There is an argument. He was arguably more responsible for the crimes of the Third Reich than any other individual within it. What do you think of Heinrich Himmler? Was he the worst of all the Nazis whose crimes are surpassed only by Hitler himself? Please let us know in the comments section and in the meantime thank you very much for watching foreign foreign foreign thank you foreign