Heinrich Himmler

{{Audio|de-Heinrich Himmler.ogg|Heinrich Himmler}} (October 7, 1900 – May 23, 1945) was the commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. As Reichsführer-SS, he controlled the SS and the Gestapo, and was the leading organizer of the Holocaust. As founder and officer-in-charge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads, Himmler was responsible for implementing the industrial scale murder of between six and twelve million of people. Among the victims were Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, Slavs, and Catholic priests.

Himmler and the Holocaust

After the Night of the Long Knives, the SS-Totenkopfverbände was given the task of organizing and administering Germany's regime of concentration camps and, after 1941, the extermination camps in occupied Poland. The SS, through its intelligence arm the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), was charged with finding Jews, Roma, priests, homosexuals, communists and those persons of any other cultural, racial, political or religious affiliation deemed by the Nazis to be either Untermenschen (sub-human) or in opposition to his regime, and placing them in concentration camps. Himmler now became one of the main architects of the Holocaust, using elements of mysticism and a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the mass murder and genocide of millions of victims.

Related Topics:
Totenkopfverbände - Concentration camp - 1941 - Extermination camp - Sicherheitsdienst - Jew - Roma - Priests - Homosexuals - Communists - The Holocaust - Mysticism - Racist - Ideology - Mass murder - Genocide

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