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Heinrich Himmler

1900 – 1945 German Reichsfuhrer-SS and chief architect of the Holocaust

SS chief who organized the machinery of the Holocaust and the concentration camp system.

Religion
Raised in a conservative Catholic family; in the early 1920s he abandoned Catholicism for a self-styled Germanic neo-paganism laced with occult and racial mysticism, and he drove the SS's program to displace Christianity.
Affiliations
Nazi Party; head of the SS and Gestapo. Member of the Artaman League; founded the Ahnenerbe research body and made Wewelsburg Castle an SS ceremonial center. The 'Nazi occult' legend is part real (Ahnenerbe pseudo-scholarship, Wewelsburg rites, his interest in runes and Germanic paganism) and part postwar exaggeration.

Himmler built the SS into a state within the state and was the principal organizer of the genocide of Europe's Jews and the murder of Roma, Poles, Soviet prisoners and others. He cultivated an esoteric Germanic mysticism and sought to replace Christianity with a racial-pagan cult inside the SS. Captured in 1945, he killed himself with cyanide before he could be tried.

Connections

  • associate of Adolf Hitler — Gave Himmler control of the SS and police apparatus that ran the camps.
  • associate of Adolf Hitler — Owed his vast police power directly to Hitler's trust.
  • associate of Ernst Kaltenbrunner — Ran the security apparatus under Himmler.
  • rival of Ernst Rohm — Himmler's SS carried out the purge that destroyed him.
  • rival of Ernst Rohm — The SS he led broke free of Rohm's SA in the 1934 purge.
  • rival of Hans Frank — Clashed with the SS over control of occupied Poland.
  • associate of Josef Mengele — Part of the SS medical apparatus Himmler oversaw.
  • associate of Leon Degrelle — Served in the Waffen-SS Himmler commanded.
  • associate of Odilo Globocnik — One of Himmler's most trusted executors of the genocide.
  • associate of Reinhard Heydrich — Himmler's chief lieutenant in the SS security apparatus.
  • associate of Reinhard Heydrich — His deputy who ran the SD and chaired the Wannsee Conference.
  • associate of Rudolf Hoss — Received orders and inspection visits from Himmler.
  • ally of Walther Darre — Fellow Artaman and 'Blood and Soil' ideologue who helped staff the early SS.
  • ally of Walther Darre — Fellow Artaman who shaped the SS's racial-agrarian ideology.

In the timeline

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