102 Facts About Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was of the, and a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany.

Heinrich Himmler studied agriculture at university, and joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS in 1925.

Heinrich Himmler was known for good organisational skills and for selecting highly competent subordinates, such as Reinhard Heydrich in 1931.

Heinrich Himmler controlled the Waffen-SS, the military branch of the SS.

Heinrich Himmler held an interest in varieties of occultism and Volkisch topics, and he employed elements of these beliefs to develop the racial policy of Nazi Germany and incorporated esoteric symbolism and rituals into the SS.

Heinrich Himmler attempted to go into hiding, but was detained and then arrested by British forces once his identity became known.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born in Munich on 7 October 1900 into a conservative middle-class Roman Catholic family.

Heinrich Himmler's father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler, a teacher, and his mother was Anna Maria Himmler, a devout Roman Catholic.

Heinrich Himmler had two brothers: Gebhard Ludwig and Ernst Hermann.

Heinrich Himmler had poor health, suffering from lifelong stomach complaints and other ailments.

Heinrich Himmler's father used his connections with the royal family to get Himmler accepted as an officer candidate, and he enlisted with the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment in December 1917.

In November 1918, while Heinrich Himmler was still in training, the war ended with Germany's defeat, denying him the opportunity to become an officer or see combat.

Heinrich Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so; students at his school would avoid their Jewish classmates.

Heinrich Himmler remained a devout Catholic while a student and spent most of his leisure time with members of his fencing fraternity, the "League of Apollo", the president of which was Jewish.

Heinrich Himmler maintained a polite demeanor with him and with other Jewish members of the fraternity, in spite of his growing antisemitism.

Heinrich Himmler admired Rohm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion Heinrich Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group, the.

In 1922, Heinrich Himmler became more interested in the "Jewish question", with his diary entries containing an increasing number of antisemitic remarks and recording a number of discussions about Jews with his classmates.

Heinrich Himmler's reading lists, as recorded in his diary, were dominated by antisemitic pamphlets, German myths, and occult tracts.

Heinrich Himmler joined the Nazi Party in August 1923, receiving party number 14303.

Heinrich Himmler was questioned by the police about his role in the putsch, but was not charged because of insufficient evidence.

Heinrich Himmler found the Nazi Party appealing because its political positions agreed with his own views.

Heinrich Himmler began to collect statistics on the number of Jews, Freemasons, and enemies of the party, and following his strong need for control, he developed an elaborate bureaucracy.

In September 1927, Heinrich Himmler told Hitler of his vision to transform the SS into a loyal, powerful, racially pure elite unit.

Around this time, Heinrich Himmler joined the Artaman League, a youth group.

In September 1930, Heinrich Himmler was first elected as a deputy to the Reichstag.

Heinrich Himmler's organised, bookish intellect served him well as he began setting up different SS departments.

Heinrich Himmler appointed Heydrich commander of Department IV, the political police.

Heinrich Himmler further established the SS Race and Settlement Main Office.

Heinrich Himmler appointed Darre as its first chief, with the rank of SS-Gruppenfuhrer.

On 31 December 1931, Heinrich Himmler introduced the "marriage order", which required SS men wishing to marry to produce family trees proving that both families were of Aryan descent to 1800.

Heinrich Himmler expected that each SS marriage should produce at least four children, thus creating a pool of genetically superior prospective SS members.

In March 1933, less than three months after the Nazis came to power, Heinrich Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau.

Heinrich Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke, a convicted felon and ardent Nazi, to run the camp in June 1933.

In 1936 Heinrich Himmler wrote in the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-Bolshevist Fighting Organization" that the SS were to fight against the "Jewish-Bolshevik revolution of subhumans".

Heydrich drew up a set of proposals and Heinrich Himmler sent him to meet with Frick.

Heinrich Himmler gained authority over all of Germany's uniformed law enforcement agencies, which were amalgamated into the new Ordnungspolizei, which became a branch of the SS under Daluege.

Shortly thereafter, Heinrich Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei as the umbrella organisation for all criminal investigation agencies in Germany.

In September 1939, following the outbreak of World War II, Heinrich Himmler formed the SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt to bring the SiPo and the SD together under one umbrella.

In contrast, Heinrich Himmler was honest in matters of money and business.

Longerich wrote that, while the Nazi movement as a whole launched itself against Jews and Communists, "by linking de-Christianisation with re-Germanization, Heinrich Himmler had provided the SS with a goal and purpose all of its own".

In early 1937, Heinrich Himmler had his personal staff work with academics to create a framework to replace Christianity within the Germanic cultural heritage.

When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the invasion of Poland in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Heinrich Muller masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler.

On 21 June 1941, the day before invasion of the Soviet Union, Heinrich Himmler commissioned the preparation of the Generalplan Ost ; the plan was finalised in July 1942.

Heinrich Himmler declared that the war in the east was a pan-European crusade to defend the traditional values of old Europe from the "Godless Bolshevik hordes".

Constantly struggling with the Wehrmacht for recruits, Heinrich Himmler solved this problem through the creation of Waffen-SS units composed of Germanic folk groups taken from the Balkans and eastern Europe.

Heinrich Himmler took over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in, named in Heydrich's honour.

Heinrich Himmler decided that alternate methods of killing should be found.

On his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded, including the addition of gas chambers, where victims were killed using the pesticide Zyklon B Himmler visited the camp in person on 17 and 18 July 1942.

Heinrich Himmler visited the camp at Sobibor in early 1943, by which time 250,000 people had been killed at that location alone.

In 1938, Heinrich Himmler issued an order in which he said that the "Gypsy question" would be determined by "race".

Heinrich Himmler believed that the Romani were originally Aryan but had become a mixed race; only the "racially pure" were to be allowed to live.

In 1939, Heinrich Himmler ordered thousands of Gypsies to be sent to the Dachau concentration camp and by 1942, ordered all Romani sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.

Heinrich Himmler was one of the main architects of the Holocaust, using his deep belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims.

Heinrich Himmler believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through eugenics, to be Nordic in appearance within several decades of the end of the war.

Heinrich Himmler continued his plans to colonise the east, even when many Germans were reluctant to relocate there, and despite negative effects on the war effort.

Heinrich Himmler ordered that those who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labour.

Heinrich Himmler declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an "alien race".

Heinrich Himmler instructed that the German nation should view all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their German blood.

The next day, Heinrich Himmler formed a special commission that arrested over 5,000 suspected and known opponents of the regime.

Since the Replacement Army consisted of two million men, Heinrich Himmler hoped to draw on these reserves to fill posts within the Waffen-SS.

Heinrich Himmler appointed Hans Juttner, director of the SS Leadership Main Office, as his deputy, and began to fill top Replacement Army posts with SS men.

Heinrich Himmler was in charge of the Wehrmacht penal system, and controlled the development of Wehrmacht armaments until January 1945.

On 26 September 1944 Hitler ordered Heinrich Himmler to create special army units, the Volkssturm.

Heinrich Himmler established his command centre at Schneidemuhl, using his special train, Sonderzug Steiermark, as his headquarters.

Heinrich Himmler seldom left the train, only worked about four hours per day, and insisted on a daily massage before commencing work and a lengthy nap after lunch.

Heinrich Himmler argued that he was not ready to commit himself to a specific date.

Heinrich Himmler ordered the offensive to stop on the 18th by a "directive for regrouping".

Heinrich Himmler was unable to devise any viable plans for completion of his military objectives.

Under pressure from Hitler over the worsening military situation, Heinrich Himmler became anxious and unable to give him coherent reports.

Heinrich Himmler falsely claimed in the meeting that the crematoria at camps had been built to deal with the bodies of prisoners who had died in a typhus epidemic.

Heinrich Himmler claimed very high survival rates for the camps at Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, even as these sites were liberated and it became obvious that his figures were false.

Bernadotte asked Heinrich Himmler to put his proposal in writing, and Heinrich Himmler obliged.

Hitler had long considered Himmler to be second only to Joseph Goebbels in loyalty; he called Himmler "the loyal Heinrich".

Heinrich Himmler stripped Himmler of all of his party and state offices and expelled him from the Nazi Party.

Heinrich Himmler met Donitz in Flensburg and offered himself as second-in-command.

Heinrich Himmler maintained that he was entitled to a position in Donitz's interim government as Reichsfuhrer-SS, believing the SS would be in a good position to restore and maintain order after the war.

Heinrich Himmler had not made extensive preparations for this, but he carried a forged paybook under the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hizinger.

Heinrich Himmler admitted who he was, and Selvester had the prisoner searched.

Heinrich Himmler was taken to the headquarters of the Second British Army in Luneburg, where a doctor conducted a medical exam on him.

Heinrich Himmler was dead within 15 minutes, despite efforts to expel the poison from his system.

Shortly afterward, Heinrich Himmler's body was buried in an unmarked grave near Luneburg.

Heinrich Himmler was interested in mysticism and the occult from an early age.

Heinrich Himmler tied this interest into his racist philosophy, looking for proof of Aryan and Nordic racial superiority from ancient times.

Heinrich Himmler promoted a cult of ancestor worship, particularly among members of the SS, as a way to keep the race pure and provide immortality to the nation.

Heinrich Himmler began the process of replacing Christianity with a new moral code that rejected humanitarianism and challenged the Christian concept of marriage.

Heinrich Himmler modified a variety of existing customs to emphasise the elitism and central role of the SS; an SS naming ceremony was to replace baptism, marriage ceremonies were to be altered, a separate SS funeral ceremony was to be held in addition to Christian ceremonies, and SS-centric celebrations of the summer and winter solstices were instituted.

Heinrich Himmler placed particular importance on the death's-head rings; they were never to be sold, and were to be returned to him upon the death of the owner.

Heinrich Himmler interpreted the death's-head symbol to mean solidarity to the cause and a commitment unto death.

Accordingly, Heinrich Himmler placed himself in a position of subservience to Hitler, and was unconditionally obedient to him.

Heinrich Himmler considered Speer to be an especially dangerous rival, both in the Reich administration and as a potential successor to Hitler.

Heinrich Himmler was not a member of Hitler's inner circle; the two men were not very close, and rarely saw each other socially.

Heinrich Himmler socialised almost exclusively with other members of the SS.

Heinrich Himmler later obtained a large house in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, free of charge, as an official residence.

The couple saw little of each other as Heinrich Himmler became totally absorbed by work.

Heinrich Himmler arranged accommodation for her, first in Mecklenburg and later at Berchtesgaden.

Margarete, by then living in Gmund with her daughter, learned of the relationship sometime in 1941; she and Heinrich Himmler were already separated, and she decided to tolerate the relationship for the sake of her daughter.

Heinrich Himmler was close to his first daughter, Gudrun, whom he nicknamed Puppi ; he phoned her every few days and visited as often as he could.

Heinrich Himmler was captured by the Russians but later returned to Germany.

Heinrich Himmler later worked for the West German spy agency Bundesnachrichtendienst from 1961 to 1963.

Heinrich Himmler's strength lay in a combination of unusual shrewdness, burning ambition, and servile loyalty to Hitler.

Heinrich Himmler accepted Hitler and Nazi ideology and saw the SS as a chivalric Teutonic order of new Germans.

Heinrich Himmler adopted the doctrine of, whereby orders were given as broad directives, with authority delegated downward to the appropriate level to carry them out in a timely and efficient manner.