Heinrich Himmler biography

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The son of a Roman Catholic secondary-school master, Himmler studied agriculture after World War I and joined rightist paramilitary organizations. As a member of one of these, Ernst Rhm's Reichskriegsflagge (“Imperial War Flag”), he participated in November 1923 in Adolf Hitler's abortive Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. Himmler joined the Nazi Party in 1925, rose steadily in the party hierarchy, and was elected a deputy to the Reichstag (the German parliament) in 1930. The foundations of his future importance, however, were laid with his appointment as Reichsfhrer of the SS (Schutzstaffel; “Protective Echelon”), Hitler's elite bodyguard, which was nominally under the control of the Sturmabteilung (SA; “Assault Division”). Himmler immediately began expanding the SS, which reached a membership of more than 50,000 by 1933. After Hitler gained power on January 30, 1933, Himmler became head of the Munich police and soon afterward became commander of all German police units outside Prussia. As such, he established the Third Reich's first concentration camp, at Dachau.

In April 1934 Himmler was appointed assistant chief of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) in Prussia, and from this position he extended his control over the police forces of the whole Reich, assuming full command of them in 1936. He masterminded the June 30, 1934, purge in which the SS eliminated the SA as a power within the Nazi Party. This purge strengthened Hitler's control over both the party and the German army, which had viewed the SA as a serious rival. Himmler then began to build the SS into the most powerful armed body in Germany next to the armed forces. Under Himmler the SS acquired vast police powers in Germany and the territories it occupied, and it also gained primary responsibilities in the areas of security, intelligence gathering, and espionage.

World War II brought a vast extension of Himmler's empire and the resources at his command. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, Himmler was entrusted with the administration of the conquered territory with the goal of eliminating the Soviet system. He oversaw the deployment of the Einsatzgruppen (“deployment groups”) in the massacre of Jews and other victims at sites such as Baby Yar, in Ukraine, during the early war years. Himmler organized the extermination camps in German-occupied Poland at which millions