Heinrich Himmler
Engineer of the Holocaust
The SS and the machinery of murder.
Reactionary NaziOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Nazi hall →- Role
- SS Reichsführer
- Era
- 1900–1945
- Region
- Germany
- Social band
- Reactionary
- Placement
- +20 · +97 · −82
§ Where Heinrich Himmler stands
3 axesHimmler's economics served a racial project of conquest. The SS built a business empire on prisoner labour, from the DEST quarries founded in 1938 to the WVHA, which from 1942 ran the camps and hired out inmates to private firms such as IG Farben at Auschwitz-Monowitz. Most industry stayed private, and his Generalplan Ost imagined German farmers settled on conquered eastern land, keeping him slightly right of centre.
No Nazi did more to build the police state. As Munich police chief Himmler opened Dachau in March 1933; he took over the Gestapo in 1934, became chief of all German police in 1936 and minister of the interior in 1943, and in 1944 also took command of the Replacement Army. His SS was a state within the state, answerable only to Hitler.
Himmler was an obsessive racial ideologue who mixed antisemitism with Germanic mysticism. He founded the Lebensborn maternity homes and the Ahnenerbe research institute in 1935, created a Reich office to combat homosexuality and abortion in 1936, ordered the deportation of Roma to Auschwitz in December 1942 and directed the murder of Europe's Jews.
How close are you to Heinrich Himmler?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
HistoricalHeinrich Luitpold Himmler (1900–1945) commanded the SS and the German police and was the leading organiser of the Holocaust. Born in Munich into the Catholic family of a schoolmaster, he studied agriculture, took part in the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch and rose through the Nazi Party as a propagandist and administrator. Appointed Reichsführer-SS in 1929, when the SS numbered fewer than 300 men, he turned it into a vast organisation that ran the concentration camps, the political police and, by 1943, the interior ministry.
Under Himmler the SS built and ran the extermination camps, and his police and Einsatzgruppen carried out mass shootings across occupied Europe; the Holocaust killed some six million Jews, alongside Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and other victims of Nazi racial policy. In October 1943 he spoke openly to SS officers at Posen about exterminating the Jews. As defeat neared he sought a separate peace with the Western Allies, and Hitler expelled him. Captured by British troops, he killed himself with cyanide on 23 May 1945.
Notable for
- 01Commanded the SS
- 02Administered the concentration camps
- 03Chief organiser of the Holocaust
Key works & moments
- 1923Takes part in Hitler's failed Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
- 1929Appointed Reichsführer of the SS, then a bodyguard unit of fewer than 300 men.
- 1933Opens Dachau, the model SS concentration camp, as acting police chief of Munich.
- 1936Becomes chief of all German police, fusing the police apparatus with the SS.
- 1943Tells SS officers at Posen in October that the Jewish people are being exterminated.
- 1945Expelled by Hitler for seeking a separate peace; kills himself in British custody on 23 May.
In their own words
“I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people.”
§ Minds closest to Heinrich Himmler
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§ Also in the Nazi hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat was Heinrich Himmler's political ideology?
Heinrich Himmler was a Nazi: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Reactionary Nazi. Economically he sat slightly right of centre (+20), running an SS business empire built on slave labour inside an economy that stayed largely private. On governance he was at the authoritarian extreme (+97), commanding the SS, the Gestapo and the camps, and socially he was at the reactionary pole (−82), an obsessive racial ideologue and the chief organiser of genocide.
Was Heinrich Himmler left-wing or right-wing?
Right-wing, on the extreme right. Himmler came to politics through the nationalist paramilitaries of post-1918 Bavaria, and his ideas mixed racial antisemitism, agrarian romanticism and a cult of Germanic ancestry. He destroyed the organised left, sending Communists and Social Democrats to Dachau from 1933, and he never sought economic equality. His goal was a racially purified German empire ruled by an SS elite, the furthest point of the authoritarian, reactionary right.
What was Heinrich Himmler's role in the Holocaust?
He was its chief organiser. As Reichsführer-SS and chief of police, Himmler commanded the Einsatzgruppen that shot Jews across the occupied Soviet Union from 1941, and his SS ran the extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Sobibor, Belzec, Chełmno and Majdanek. He inspected killing operations in person, including a mass shooting near Minsk in August 1941, and in his Posen speeches of October 1943 he told senior officials plainly that the Jewish people were being exterminated. He killed himself before he could be tried.
Which minds are closest to Heinrich Himmler?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Heinrich Himmler are Reinhard Heydrich (99% alike), Joseph Goebbels (99% alike) and Hans Landa (98% alike). The furthest is Emma Goldman (0% alike).