25 Facts About Margarete Himmler

Margarete "Marga" Himmler was the wife of Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler.

Margarete Himmler had three sisters and a brother.

Margarete Himmler trained and worked as a nurse during the First World War followed by a stint at a German Red Cross hospital at the war's end.

Margarete Himmler sold her share of the clinic and used the proceeds to buy a plot of land in Waldtrudering, near Munich, where they put up a prefabricated house.

Margarete Himmler later gained a large house in the Berlin suburb of Dahlem free of charge as an official residence.

The couple now saw each other rarely as Margarete Himmler became absorbed by work.

Margarete Himmler joined the Nazi Party as early as 1928.

Margarete Himmler saw it as her duty to invite the wives of the senior SS leaders over for coffee and tea on Wednesday afternoons.

Former Hitler Youth leader Baldur von Schirach wrote in his memoirs that Heinrich Himmler was constantly "henpecked", essentially had zero influence at home, and had to yield to Margarete's will.

Margarete Himmler was described as a "narrow-minded, humorless, blonde-haired woman" who suffered from agoraphobia.

Margarete and Himmler were already separated, and she decided to tolerate the relationship for the sake of her daughter.

Once World War II began, Margarete Himmler helped operate a military hospital affiliated with the German Red Cross.

In March 1940, Margarete Himmler recorded a business trip to German-occupied Poland, so she was certainly a witness to events there.

Heinrich Margarete 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.

Margarete and Heinrich Himmler last saw one another in April 1945, sharing time together with Gudrun at their Gmund residence.

In September 1945, Margarete Himmler was again interrogated, but this time it was during the Nuremberg trials.

Margarete Himmler's stay there was expressly endorsed by the Executive Board of the Bethel Institution, but this was not without controversy.

Margarete Himmler was categorized in 1948 at Bielefeld as a lesser offender and was to be denazified accordingly.

In 1950, Margarete Himmler retained a lawyer to challenge this classification, since she claimed that her early Nazi Party membership was no more than "nominal" and that her high rank resulted from her early service with the German Red Cross, in which she had served since 1914.

Margarete Himmler maintained that while she had been the wife of the Reichsfuhrer-SS, she remained far from the spotlight.

Margarete Himmler's lawyer insisted during the follow-on appeals process that Margarete could not be held responsible for the actions of her husband and countered that the official decision was guided by the idea of Sippenhaft, which meant she was responsible by familial connections.

Margarete Himmler lost her pension rights and the right to vote.

Margarete Himmler's adopted son Gerhard lived with them in her apartment.

Peter Longerich notes that Margarete Himmler probably did not know about the official secrets or planned projects of her husband during the Nazi era.

Margarete Himmler said after the war she did not have any knowledge of Nazi crimes, but she remained a committed National Socialist and was certainly anti-Semitic.