Himmler, Heinrich

(1900–1945)

   Himmler, as head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) and chief of the Gestapo, was responsible for constructing the Nazi terror state. A veteran of the failed Hitler beer hall putsch in 1923, Himmler joined the SS in 1925, and became its head in 1929. In 1933, Himmler established the first concentration camp at Dachau, which served to incarcerate political opponents of the government. Himmler was obsessed with race and the occult and believed in the racial superiority of the Aryan people. It was this concern with racial purity that motivated him to found the Lebensborn organization. It was also his belief in racial superiority that moved him to implement Adolf Hitler’s war against the Jews, Slavs, and other groups that he deemed inferior. As the architect of the Holocaust, it was Himmler who was responsible for the construction of the German concentration camp system as well as the building of the death camps in Poland. In Auschwitz, Himmler authorized medical experiments on Jews, Gypsies, and asocial camp prisoners. Himmler was also responsible for using the camps to exploit Jews and other prisoners for slave labor.

   The Final Solution, however, was for Himmler the culmination of his life’s work. He viewed the Jews as the primary obstacle to Nazi Germany’s objective of attaining racial hegemony over the “inferior” peoples of Europe. For Himmler the Final Solution represented a racial Armageddon whereby the destruction of the Jews was a precondition for the triumph of the Aryan race. In planning the Final Solution, he approached his task with efficiency and dispatch, and rarely departed from the objective of annihilating Europe’s Jews. Himmler, in his selection of Reinhard Heydrich as his second-in-command, chose someone who shared his views about Jews and the necessity of implementing the Final Solution. Toward the end of the war, and after failing to negotiate with the Allies for a separate peace, a disguised Himmler was captured by Allied soldiers. Before he could be tried at the Nuremberg Trials, however, he committed suicide.