HIMMLER’S PAST
In this article, Peter Loewenberg delves deep into Himmler’s adolescence and upbringing, noting significant experiences and searching for a potential catalyst behind his forceful and merciless career as the Reichsführer of the SS. From teacher to violent leader, this article provides background information on Himmler that gives insight to his career and decisions.
What makes a man? Generally their past, childhood, and significant personal experiences. This secondary source article investigates Himmler’s past and tries to find truth in the adolescence of a man who often ‘readjusted’ truths about himself. Loewenberg mentions Himmler’s decision to own a farm and ‘parent’ animals–a strange case for a middle class German citizen–and Loewenberg suggests that this may have indicated that Himmler had displaced emotional priorities. Along with this are several other records extracted from Himmler’s personal journals and encounters with peers that suggest that he was anal-retentive and sought out physical and mental strength daily, also indicating his potential hunger for power and control.
Loewenberg, Peter. “The Unsuccessful Adolescence of Heinrich Himmler”. The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical Association, Vol. 76, No. 3 (Jun., 1971), pp. 612-641
(or access through google books:)
Life and Times of Heinrich Himmler
“Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945) was the Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the dreaded SS of the Nazi party from 1929 until 1945. Himmler presided over a vast ideological and bureaucratic empire that defined him for many — both inside and outside the Third Reich — as the second most powerful man in Germany during World War II. Given overall responsibility for the security of the Nazi empire, Himmler was the key and senior Nazi official responsible for conceiving and overseeing implementation of the so-called Final Solution, the Nazi plan to murder the Jews of Europe.”
This source is extremely significant for our site because it shows in more detail how Himmler became “the puppetmaster” of the SS and concentration camps during the WWII era. The site explains how Heinrich Himmler came to his position as second highest in command of the Nazi Regime, and further reiterates how good of a commander of the SS that he was. This source goes through the life of Himmler, so one can better understand his thought process and how he came to his power. It also examines the loyalty his SS had, and how in the end he was unable to fulfill his promise of responsibility to his men.
This source will help the reader connect how Himmler gained his power over the years, how he took the SS and created a “killing unit”. It will also underline the Himmler’s beginning of racism and how he was given permission from Hitler to begin the solution to the “Jew problem”.
- Hitler and Himmler
Summary:
Himmler was born into a conservative middle class Catholic family, and as a boy he dreamed of serving in WWI, and in 1918 he dropped out of high school to begin training for the war, later that year the armistice was signed signifying the end of war, and Himmler returned to graduate high school.
While in college, Himmler joined a German-nationalist fraternity and began to read racist novels. He sided on the side of the radical right wing politicians during this time (1920-1922). He soon graduated college and found an odd job (at a manure plant), Himmler joined the Nazi party in 1923 and soon after quit his job. In the same year he met Hitler, and other soon to be high officials, at the Beer Hall Putsch. This act failed to do anything to the German government, and jobless Himmler found a position as secretary to the man in charge of Nazi propaganda. This job gave Himmler the footing he needed in the party to make a name for himself. He was excellent in speaking, like Hitler, and organization. His speeches focused on: ““race consciousness,” cult of the German race, the need for German expansion and settlements, and the struggle against eternal enemies of Germany.” Right away he pinpointed the enemies as Jews, Marxism, Liberals, and Slavic people, in other words, communism, socialism, and anarchism.
In 1929 Hitler appointed Himmler head of the SS which consisted of 280 men, and by 1933 (Nazis gained power) there were over 52,000 men. Himmler took it upon himself to include internal security, and guardianship over racial purity as part of the SS duties. Also, in 1933, Himmler took over the police forces of Germany. Himmler is solely responsible for fusing together all public law offices and created the RSHA, the force whom he would give the task of beginning the Holocaust.
” Hitler — who was impressed with the Dachau concentration camp established by the SS in March 1933 — authorized Himmler to create a centralized concentration camp system. Though this SS Inspectorate of Concentration Camps reduced the number of concentration camps to four in 1937, the system grew in wartime to include 30-40 main camps and hundreds of subcamps.”
In 1934 Hitler granted the SS independence, meaning that Himmler was given control of his own group of Nazis, and that Himmler was subordinate only to Hitler. Ultimately giving Himmler power and the “ok” to do things as he saw fit. In 1941 Himmler’s power began to grow again as Hitler gave him control of the occupied Soviet Union. Himmler began to then enforce the measures that needed to be taken, within his powers of control, to initiate the “Final Solution of the Jewish Question”.
“Moreover, he understood his SS men and knew how to secure their loyalty to his own person and to the concept of the Nazi elite to which they belonged. His ability to give his subordinates leeway to exercise initiative to implement Nazi policy was a significant factor in the murderous success of many SS operations.”
Himmler is quoted as saying, in a speech at Poznan to a group of SS regarding the final solution:
““In front of you here, I want to refer explicitly to a very serious matter….I mean here…the annihilation of the Jewish people…. Most of you will know what it means when 100 corpses lie side by side, or 500 or 1,000…. This page of glory in our history has never been written and will never be written….We had the moral right, we were obligated to our people to kill this people which wanted to kill us.”
By the end of the regime in 1945, Himmler asked to transmit a surrender to the U.S, and when Hitler heard of this he took all his power, offices, and ordered his arrest. One of his acts to his men was to assure them that he would take “full responsibility” for their actions when the time came. Of course this would not happen, Himmler dressed himself as a regular police official and stole another mans papers and fled. He was picked up by the Russians and once the confirmed who he was he was handed to the British.
“Himmler killed himself by biting down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth for that very purpose. “
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Heinrich Himmler.” Holocaust Encyclopedia. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007407. Accessed on Nov 10, 2011.
picture:
The SS and Concentration Camps
In the early days of concentration camps, they were run by various authorities scattered throughout Germany. The Dachau concentration camp was established by the SS, and Hiter was extremely impressed by Himmler’s leadership there. In 1933, Hitler gave Himmler the authority to centralize all the camps with the SS at the lead. Although there were only four camps in 1937, by 1944 Himmler and his SS men had created roughly 30 main camps, with hundreds of sub-camps located throughout German occupied land.
The purpose of these camps was not only to imprison those who resisted German policies, but to create a large supply of workers for the SS to use at a moment’s notice. These forced laborers created building materials and the very settlements that they were to be imprisoned in.
By the end of the war the SS had brutally taken the lives of nearly two million prisoners, including Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and homosexuals. Their system was morally repulsive yet efficient. Without Himmler, the concentration camp system likely never would have reached the prominence that it did.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “SS And The Camp System.” Holocaust Encyclopedia.http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10005143. Accessed on Nov. 10, 2011.
Einsatzgruppen
Einsatzgruppen translates to “Mobile Killing Units”. It was largely comprised of SS men whose task was to kill any person found to be an enemy behind German lines in occupied Soviet Union. “Enemies” were essentially those that were different, whether it be racially, politically, mentally, or physically. This group has been considered by many to be an early step in the so-called “Final Solution”, the plan to be rid of all European Jews.
In June of 1941, the Soviet Union was invaded, with the Einsatzgruppen falling in close behind. On this occasion they were to commit mass murders directly in the Jewish communities and homes. Initially, the SS shot only men, but by 1941, they were taking down any person in their path, man, woman, or child.
The bodies of these victims would be careless thrown into mass graves, or holes in the ground.
- “A German policeman prepares to complete a mass execution by shooting two Jewish children, who were shot with the others in connection with the liquidation of the Mizocz ghetto”
Himmler, the man in charge of the SS was concerned for the mindset of his men in the Einsatzgruppen. He worried about the psychological consequences of mass shootings. So, he ordered that a different method of killing be developed. Himmler wanted a less personal way of taking a life so that his men would feel no remorse. Late in 1941, the gas van was introduced, in which its victims would be exterminated by the carbon monoxide fumes from the van itself.
More than one million Soviet Jews’ lives had been taken by spring of 1943; however, these methods were inefficient. The German authorities began working on a better form of murder, one that would become closely related to the horrors of the Holocaust-the gas chamber.
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005130
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Einsatzgruppen (Mobile Killing Units).” Holocaust Encyclopedia.http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/?ModuleId=10005143. Accessed on Nov. 10, 2011.
picture:
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thers%20in%20connection%20with%20the%20liquidation%20of%20the%20Mizocz%20ghetto.html
Himmler’s Efforts to “Solve” Homosexuality in SS
Giles, Geoffrey. “The Denial of Homosexuality:Same Sex Incidents in Himmler’s SS and Police” (University of Texas Press, 2002)., accessed on Oct. 26, 2011.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_the_history_of_sexuality/v011/11.1giles.html
The SS was the organization meant to embody the highest National Socialist values, and it played a central role in the most public homosexual scandal of the entire regime, the murder of the chief of staff of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung (SA), Ernst Röhm. As the leader of the SS and the police, Himmler himself deserves special attention. His speeches and writings dealt more obsessively with homosexuality than did those of any other Nazi leader, and his comments were broadly consistent in their sharp condemnation of homosexuality.
Comments: This excerpt argues how Himmler attempted to “solve the problem” of homosexuality in his regime. The fight against homosexuality was a key value in the SS. The persecution of homosexuality was the SS’s attempt to promote population growth, but more importantly Himmler’s attempt to spread his power.
Himmler’s speech to German Officers
Overview: This is a speech Henrich Himmler gave in 1937 to a group of German Officers. He is covering the importance, background, and operational duties of the SS. Many of the German Officers were unused to fighting alongside a political entity like the SS.
Himmler first talks about the racial requirements of the candidates for the SS units. It is a very exclusive group in which a candidate must be able to prove he had pure racial blood, even requiring men to have family histories dating back to the 1750s. The importance of this pure blood was an obsession for Himmler and it is quite obvious to tell from this speech. Things such as height, ability to stand at attention, and being athletic were all very important in the recruitment policies.
The part of this speech that really helps explain how important the Nazi’s racial ideology was to them, is Himmler’s explanation that,
“In a future war we shall have not only an army front on land, a navy front at sea, and an airforce front. . . but we shall also have a fourth theater of war, namely internal Germany. . . lest the three combat brancehs of Germany be stabbed in the back again.”
Himmler believed that the Bolsheviks and Jewish people were a threat to Germany’s war effort, and he rates the importance of internal security to that of the actual war front. Himmler, even in 1937, was looking ahead to the eventual war and the eventual subjugation of people inside of Germany that did not follow what the Nazi’s believed in.
Another important aspect of the speech was Himmler’s focus on, and his proud in, the multiple concentration camps throughout the country. The political prisoners plus those, “people who are cross-eyed, deformed, half-Jewish, and a number of racially inferior products.” Himmler believes their needed to be a growth in the number of concentration camps so people could be put away, and, as he believes, not in justly. These people were not only seen as racially inferior, but also intellectually inferior and that was reason enough to lock them away in concentration camps.
Himmler’s obsession with racial purity is clearly seen throughout this speech. His strict requirements for SS recruitment was his way to build the perfect Aryan army that would march across Europe. The SS would be important not only militarily, but it seems that their main job would be to defend the internal security of Germany. From guards at concentration camps, to the round-up of those racially impure was focused on by Himmler. The SS was the ultimate form of die-hard Nazis during their entire time in power, and they were an integral part in the foundations of the Third Reich.
Source: 1992-A-PS, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, (Red Series), Vol. IV. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1946), pp.616-634. accessed 10/17/11 from http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Himmler%20Jan%2037%20Speech.htm
A Chronicle: The Necessity and Impossibility of
“Making Sense” at and of Auschwitz*
- “The article examines the controversy of Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. It is considered as the largest extermination camp for the Jewish people and operated by the Nazi and Heinrich Himmler, the camp commanding officer. While, on its entire operation it had accommodated 700 prisoners who tried to escape with only 300 attempts that are successful. According to the author, the existence of the concentration camp stands alone in the human experience as itself to be reckoned with sincerity and humility. Its factual existence is available only through documents and other artifacts. Meanwhile, a chronicle of the survivors reveals a terrifying experience.”
- This source explains the terrifying and torturing ways of Heinrich Himmler at his concentration camp of Auschwitz. Jews were tattooed with numbers as names and were also referred “robots,” “puppets,” “wretches,” “scarecrows,” “slaves,” and “guinea pigs.” Himmler and his troop make it clear that every Jew in the concentration camp will not leave there alive.
- Stein, Andre. “Jewish Social Studies.” Indiana University Press. Indiana University Press, 1983. Web. 14 Nov 2011. <http://www.jstor.org.www2.lib.ku.edu:2048/stable/4467233>.
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg
Military Tribunals
Extract from Himmler’s address to party comrades, September 7 1940.
Trials of War Criminals Before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals – Washington, U.S Govt. Print. Off., Vol. IV, p. 1140:access, http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/resource/document/DocHimml.htm, Oct. 17, 2011
If any Pole has any sexual dealing with a German woman, and by this I mean sexual intercourse, then the man will be hanged right in front of his camp. Then the others will not do it. Besides, provisions will be made that a sufficient number of Polish women and girls will come along as well so that a necessity of this kind is out of the question.
The women will be brought before the courts without mercy, and where the facts are not sufficiently proved–such borderline cases always happen–they will be sent to a concentration camp. This we must do, unless these one million Poles and those hundreds of thousands of workers of alien blood are to inflict untold damage on the German blood. Philosophizing is of no avail in this case. It would be better if we did not have them at all– we all know that–but we need them.
Comments: This excerpt discusses how fear will be used as a means to control and keep the rules enforced. The intermixing of Pols and Germans is discussed and also forbidden and the consequences are stated. The damage, or imperfect bloodline of the Germans is what is at stake. The Pols are still needed though, so the Germans cannot get rid of them all, but they will put limitations on what they can and can not do. If these rules are broke concentration camps are used to ensure that others will not mess up.
PUPPETMASTER 
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