Heinrich Himmler's Journey to Power
Himmler was born on October 7, 1900 in Munich, Germany to a mother named Anna Maria and Gebhard Himmler's father. His father was a Catholic school principal and teacher for the family of Wittelsbach's nobles. He has a rather thin posture and has a hobby of playing chess and collecting stamps. It can be said he is the antithesis of an ideal Aryan race.
Even so, Himmler had a dream since he was young to grow up and become a soldier. At the age of 17 he became a volunteer force and underwent training in Regensburg.
After World War I, Himmler met prospective Nazi members in Freikorps, Germany's right-wing paramilitary. From the beginning he liked the idea of anti-Semitic Hitler and decided to join the German National-Socialist Workers' Party (Nazis) in 1925.
High loyalty, supported by administrative ability and assertiveness, led Himmler to be the head of Schutzstaffel (SS), Hitler's elite bodyguard and Nazi figures. As head of the SS, Himmler expanded the membership of the paramilitary organization to 50,000 people.
After Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, Himmler formed an intelligence agency without a uniform, Sicherheitsdienst (Sd).
In 1934, he organized the Night of the Long Knives, an operation to eliminate Sturmabteiling (SA) figures, led by Ernst Rohm. After the assassination of SA figures, Himmler then began to build the SS into the most powerful armed body in Germany in addition to the armed forces. The Nazis used it to eliminate their rivals and force the German population to comply.
In 1936, when Nazi rule became increasingly absolute, Himmler controlled the German secret police (Gestapo).
Operation Genocide Heinrich Himmler
Towards World War II or in 1939, Himmler was appointed as the Commissioner of the German Race Consolidation tasked with eliminating inferior races from German territory. In carrying out his duties, he expanded the concentration camps by arresting opponents, inferior races, Slavic and Jewish people. Thousands of people were sent to concentration camps in Poland, as a result many were killed, starved, or died of illness.
In May 1940, Himmler presented Adolf Hitler with a plan of genocide against the Jews. The plan was the final solution to rid Jews of Europe. Hitler, who from the beginning was very hated by Jews, immediately agreed to the plan.
The success of the plan was even greater, after Himmler was delegated to form the SS Einsatzgruppen special assassination squad. The force was tasked with carrying out the killing of millions of Jews, Gypsies, and Communists. To make killing more efficient, Himmler ordered concentration camps equipped with poison gas chambers.
In 1941, Jews were deported to more modern killing camps. The modern camps include Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec and Treblinka.
The Bergen-Belsen camp can house more than 60,000 Jews, around 35,000 died of starvation, disease and biological experiments.
The most famous death camp is Auschwitz-Birkenau. This camp was built by Himmler in May 1940 and since 1942 there have been seven gas chambers. An estimated 2.5 million people were killed (about 2 million of whom were Jews, Poles, Gypsies and Russian prisoners of war. Of that total only around 200,000 survived.
It did not stop there, in June 1942 Himmler ordered the deportation of 100,000 Jews from France and agreed to a plan to transfer 30 million Slavs to Siberia. The following month Himmler ordered a total clearance of Jews from the Polish government.
End of Life Heinrich Himmler
After the success of the Holocaust plan, Himmler was appointed interior minister in 1943. His power grew after Hitler disbanded military intelligence (Abwehr) and made Him the leader of Sd as the only intelligence in Germany in 1944.
However, his great power did not last long, after the same year the Allies repulsed German troops and began to push in from the west. This event marked the failure of Himmler as Military Commander of the Vistula Army.
Himmler, aware of the impending defeat, began to destroy the evidence of the Holocaust. In April 1945, he also tried to negotiate peace with the Allies by offering to form an alliance to stem the Soviet Union.
As a result of this action, Hitler branded him a traitor and ordered to arrest him. On his escape he was captured by Allied forces, but before his trial he committed suicide by taking cyanide pills on May 23, 1945.
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