Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was born October 7, 1900 in Munich, Kingdom of Bavaria, German Empire - committed suicide May 23, 1945, Lüneburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. German military, political and statesman. Reichsfuehrer SS (1929-1945). He also served as Reich Minister of the Interior (1943-1945), Reichsleiter (1933), Chief of the RSHA (1942-1943). War criminal, one of the main organizers of the Holocaust.

In 1915, Himmler entered the Landshut Cadet Corps. Thanks to his father's connections, Heinrich was accepted there as an officer candidate. In December 1917, the cadet Himmler entered the reserve battalion of the 11th Bavarian Regiment. His brother Gebhard, who fought on the Western Front, was awarded the Iron Cross and promoted.

In November 1918, while Heinrich was still in training, the war ended - Germany was defeated. Thus, Himmler did not visit the battlefield and did not become an officer. Demobilized on December 18, he returned to Landshut, where he completed the gymnasium course.

In 1919-1922 he studied agronomy at the agricultural department of the Higher Technical School at the University of Munich. Before entering, he completed an internship on a farm, during which he suffered an illness.

Despite the elimination of discriminatory laws during the unification of Germany in 1871 - non-Christian groups of the population, including Jews, were subjected to it - anti-Semitism continued to spread in Germany and other European countries. At the time of entering the university, Himmler already shared similar views. Some of his classmates were also anti-Semites. During his student years, Himmler remained an exemplary Catholic. He spent most of his free time in the company of his comrades in the Apollo League fencing club. Despite the fact that the head of the circle and some of its members were Jews, Himmler, an increasingly convinced anti-Semite, was polite to them.

In his second year, he rushed with a vengeance to building a military career. Attempts did not bear fruit, but he managed to get close to many leaders of the paramilitary organizations in Munich. At the same time, he met Ernst Röhm, one of the early members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and co-founder of the Assault Detachments (SA). Himmler was imbued with respect for the past war Rem and, on his advice, joined the nationalist anti-Semitic organization "Society of the Imperial Banner".

In 1922, Himmler became interested in the "Jewish question". The diary reflects increasingly harsh judgments about the Jews. Himmler also recorded the contents of conversations about Jews with classmates. Among the literature with which Himmler became acquainted during this period, anti-Semitic pamphlets, Germanic myths and occult texts dominated.

On June 24, Foreign Minister Walter Rathenau was assassinated, after which Himmler's views became extremely radical. He took part in demonstrations against the system of the Versailles Treaty. Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic meant that Himmler's parents could no longer pay for the education of all three sons. Frustrated with his military ambitions, Heinrich graduated as an agronomist, but was then forced to find a low-paying job in the bureau, since Gebhard and Anna Maria did not have the means to pay for doctoral studies. Heinrich worked in the bureau until September 1923.

In August 1923, Himmler joined the NSDAP with party card number 14303. While in the division of Röhm, he took part in the events of the "Beer putsch" - an unsuccessful attempt by the Nazis to seize power in Munich. From now on, Himmler wanted to be a politician. He was subjected to police interrogation, but due to lack of evidence, he was released without charge. Nevertheless, he lost his job, could not find a job in his specialty and returned to his parents' house. Frustrated by the failures, he became irritable, aggressive and self-confident, moving away from both friends and relatives.

In 1923-1924, Himmler is in search of a new worldview. He deliberately rejected Catholicism, making the occult and anti-Semitism the center of his spiritual life. His new religion was Germanic mythology, supplemented with elements of the occult. The political aspect of his view of the world was quite consistent with the program of the Nazis. Initially, Himmler was not infatuated with Adolf Hitler and did not share the Fuhrer's personality cult. However, later, having carefully read the literature, Himmler began to consider the Fuhrer useful for the role of a party person. Subsequently, he began to respect and even revere Hitler.

In an effort to strengthen his position in the party, Himmler took advantage of the organizational disorder that ensued as a result of Hitler's arrest in connection with the Beer Putsch.

From mid-1924 he worked as party secretary and propaganda assistant to Gregor Strasser. Himmler traveled all over Bavaria, giving speeches and distributing literature. At the end of the year, Strasser put Himmler in charge of the NSDAP's Lower Bavarian bureau. In February 1925, the party was again registered, and Himmler's duties included the issue of expanding its membership.

Then Himmler joined the guard detachments with the rank of SS Fuhrer (certificate number - 168).

The SS organization was formed in 1923 as a division of the SA, which had the main task of Hitler's personal protection. After the failure of the putsch, the SS organization was re-formed in 1925 and henceforth was an elite, albeit extremely small, combat unit of the SA.

Since 1926, Himmler served as SS Gauführer in Lower Bavaria (at that time the hierarchy in the SS was very simple; a complex system of ranks was borrowed from the SA later, with the growth of the SS). In September 1926, Strasser appointed the ward deputy in charge of propaganda. In accordance with the organizational culture of the NSDAP, Himmler was quite free in decision-making, and over time this freedom became more and more. He began collecting statistics on the Jewish population, Freemasons, and political enemies of the Nazis. The fruit of his craving for universal control was the creation of a complex well-thought-out bureaucracy.

In September 1927, he voiced to Hitler the idea of transforming the SS into a powerful racially pure and unconditionally loyal combat unit (however, it should be remembered that the legislation of the Weimar Republic did not allow members of the SS to have weapons, and they performed their duties in the SS after hours). Assessing Himmler's abilities, the party leader appointed him deputy Reichsführer SS with the rank of SS Oberfuehrer.

At this time, Himmler joined the "Artaman League" - a young group within the People's Movement (Völkisch). There, acquaintances took place with Rudolf Hess, the future commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and death camp, and Richard Darre, whose book The Peasantry as the Source of Life for the Nordic Race attracted Himmler's attention and subsequently led to the appointment of Darre as Minister of Food. Darre staunchly believed in the superiority of the Nordic race, and his philosophy significantly influenced Himmler.

In January 1929, the head of the SS, Erhard Heiden, resigned, and Himmler became the new Reichsführer, with Hitler's approval. At that moment, the position of the Reichsfuehrer SS was only a titular one and was not a military rank. Nevertheless, Himmler continued to work in the propaganda bureau. One of the first tasks assigned to him was to prepare the SS for the Nuremberg Party Congress, which was scheduled for September. During 1930, the number of SS increased from 290 to 3 thousand fighters. By this time, Himmler had convinced the Führer of the need to separate the SS from the SA, at least de facto. From now on, Himmler's office gained independence, although its legal subordination to the SA remained.

In 1930, Himmler was elected to the Reichstag of the 5th convocation from Upper Bavaria, and subsequently was repeatedly re-elected as a member of the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th convocations.

The Great Depression was used by the Nazis to rise to power. The coalition government of the Weimar Republic could not cope with the economic situation, and many voters began to sympathize with radical political forces, including the Nazis. Hitler used the rhetoric of populism, blaming the economic crisis on specific population groups, among which, of course, were Jews. In the 1932 elections, the Nazis received 37.3% of the vote, which gave them 230 seats in the Reichstag. On January 30, 1933, the country's president, Paul von Hindenburg, appointed Hitler chancellor, who led the short-lived NSDAP coalition with the UNPP. The new cabinet initially included only three members of the Nazi Party: Hitler, Hermann Goering (Minister without Portfolio and Minister of the Interior for Prussia) and Wilhelm Frick (Federal Minister of the Interior).

Less than a month later, the parliament building was set on fire. Hitler used the occasion to force von Hindenburg to sign the so-called. Decree on the protection of the people and the state, which deprived citizens of basic rights and allowed them to be taken into custody without a court order.

The Emergency Powers Act of 1933 transferred all legislative functions to the government - that is, Hitler. Germany actually became a dictatorship. On August 1, 1934, Hitler's cabinet passed a law according to which the institution of the presidency was to disappear with the death of von Hindenburg. In this case, all the powers of the president would be transferred to the chancellor. Von Hindenburg died the next morning, while Hitler became both head of government and head of state - "Führer and Reich Chancellor".

The seizure of power by the Nazis meant the inevitable strengthening of the SS and Himmler in particular. By 1933, the membership of the organization was 52 thousand people. Strict requirements for recruits assumed that all members would belong to the "Aryan" "master race". Those wishing to join the SS had to have "Nordic qualities" - in Himmler's words, "like a gardener who seeks to reproduce a good old breed that has been mixed and spoiled; we started with the principles of plant breeding and then pretty straight forward weeded out people we didn't think we could use to build the CC." Few dared to point out that Himmler did not live up to his own standards.

Himmler had an organized mind, was erudite, and this helped him in creating new departments in the structure of the SS. In 1931, he appointed Reinhard Heydrich as head of the new Intelligence Service (since 1932, Sicherheitsdienst, "Security Service"). Subsequently, Heydrich became Himmler's deputy for intelligence and state security. They got along well in work matters and respected each other. In 1933, Himmler and Heydrich began to withdraw the SS from the subordination of the SA. Together with Minister of the Interior Frick, they hoped to create a unified police service in Germany.

In March 1933, the Bavarian Imperial Commissioner Franz von Epp appointed Himmler as head of the Munich police. Himmler put Heydrich in charge of the Fourth Department - the political police. In that year, Hitler promoted Himmler to the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer, equalizing him in rank with the SA commanders. From that moment on, Himmler and Heydrich gradually gained control over the political police of all German lands - only the Prussian Gestapo remained under the jurisdiction of Goering.

Further, Himmler created the Main Directorate for Race and Settlement. The first leader was Darre, who at that time had the rank of SS Gruppenführer. The Office was involved in the implementation of racial policy and monitored the "racial integrity" of the organization. The origin of the personnel was the subject of scrupulous study. On December 31, 1931, Himmler introduced a "marriage regulation" that required marrying members of the SS to provide a family tree that proved that both families belonged to the "Aryan race" until 1800. If the investigation revealed at least one "non-Aryan" ancestor, the person was deprived of membership in the organization. A Sippenbuch, a pamphlet describing the owner's genealogy, was issued for each member of the SS.

Himmler expected that every marriage involving a member of the SS should bring the country four children, thereby forming a future layer of potential recruits. The results were much more modest: about 40% of the composition entered into marriage, and on average these families produced one child.

In March 1933, less than three months after the Nazis came to power, Himmler created the first concentration camp under the auspices of the SS - Dachau. Hitler declared that Dachau should not become just another prison. In June, Theodor Eicke, a fiery Nazi and former convicted criminal, was appointed commandant. Eicke created a special camp management system, which was subsequently implemented in concentration camps throughout the country. This system involved the isolation of prisoners from the outside world, thoughtful procedures for roll call and issuance of orders, strict disciplinary regulations for guards and the use of force - up to the death penalty - against prisoners. A uniform was issued for prisoners and guards, and on the collars of the latter (in the right buttonhole), instead of the "zig" runes, the "Dead Head" emblem was placed.

As a result of 1934, Himmler acquired control over the camps. Their functioning began to be provided by SS detachments with the same name - "Dead Head".

Later, Eike formed on their basis the SS military division "Dead Head". Initially, political opponents of the Nazis were housed in the camps. Later, other groups of German society that were undesirable for the NSDAP became prisoners: criminals, vagabonds, "perverts". By a decree of December 1937, Hitler allowed the placement in the camps of any person objectionable to the regime. This authorized the arrest of Jews, Gypsies, Communists, and other residents of Germany whose cultural, racial, political, or religious identity fell within the Nazi criteria of a subhuman. The concentration camps became a tool of social and racial engineering.

In the autumn of 1939, with the outbreak of World War II, there were six camps with 27,000 prisoners, among whom there was a high mortality rate. Later, at the initiative of Himmler, who patronizes scientific research, a system of experiments on people was built in the camps. Their purpose was set to facilitate the existence of the German soldier at the front in order to achieve victory in the war as soon as possible.

During the experiments, the effects of hypothermia on the human body, various diseases, in particular malaria, were studied, and in addition, work was carried out to improve old and develop existing methods of treatment, including blood transfusion, the introduction of vitamin mixtures and vaccinations, homeopathy. Work was also underway to create vaccines against homosexuality, and in parallel, with the aim of killing and completely destroying some peoples as such, tests of sterilization, euthanasia and the use of new gases were carried out on racially inferior, as the Nazis believed, prisoners of concentration camps.

In early 1934, Hitler and other party leaders were concerned about the threat of a coup d'état led by Röhm. The suspect held socialist and populist views and believed that the real revolution was ahead. The number of SA was about three million people, significantly surpassing the army in this indicator. According to Rem, the assault squads were to become the only armed organization in the country, while the army was to be included in the structure of the SA. Röhm persuaded Hitler to appoint him Minister of Defense in place of the conservative General Werner von Blomberg.

In 1933 Goering created the secret police in Prussia - Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo. Rudolf Diels was appointed head of this body. However, Göring quickly realized that Diels was not able to oppose the power of the Gestapo to the Rem organization, and already on April 20, 1934, he transferred control of the secret police to Himmler.

On the same day, Hitler placed Himmler in charge of the German police outside Prussia. The move ran counter to the long-standing German practice of law enforcement being supervised at the Länder and local level. On April 22, Himmler handed over the post of head of the Gestapo to Heydrich, while the latter retained leadership in the security service.

On June 21, Hitler decided to eliminate Röhm and eliminate the hegemony of the SA. On June 29, he sent Göring to Berlin, where he was to plan the operation with Himmler and Heydrich. Hitler led the Munich part of the operation - Röhm was arrested there, after which he faced a choice: suicide or execution. As a result, Rem, who refused to commit suicide, was shot dead by two SS officers. Between 30 June and 2 July, between 85 and 200 SA leaders and other political opponents were killed, including Gregor Strasser. The events went down in history under the name "Night of the Long Knives". Having neutralized the threat of the SA, the SS bureaucrats achieved the desired independence and from July 20, 1934, they answered directly to Hitler. The rank of Himmler - Reichsfuehrer SS - became the highest possible and was essentially equated with the rank of field marshal of the army. From now on, the assault detachments were a sports and training society.

On September 15, 1935, Hitler presented the Nuremberg Race Laws to the Reichstag. The acts imposed a ban on marriage between Jews and representatives of other ethnic groups in Germany, and also excluded the possibility of hiring non-Jewish women under the age of 45 by Jewish households. In addition, the laws deprived "non-Aryans" of the advantages of holders of German citizenship. These regulations were among the first laws in Nazi Germany to discriminate on the basis of race.

Himmler and Heydrich further sought to increase the influence of the SS. So, they turned to Hitler with a proposal to create a nationwide police force that would be accountable to the SS. Minister of the Interior Frick also spoke in favor of the creation of a federal police, but he saw his own ministry as the controlling body, and Kurt Daluge for the post of chief. Hitler preferred to step aside from the discussion and left the SS leaders to negotiate with Frick themselves. As part of these negotiations, they had a significant advantage: among their allies was a long-time enemy Frick Goering. Heydrich formulated several proposals, after which he was sent by Himmler to meet with his opponent. Frick relented, and on June 17, 1936, Hitler issued a decree on the unification of all police forces in Germany, and Himmler became the chief of the new service.

If nominally the head of the police was still subordinate to Minister Frick, then in practice the law enforcement forces were an SS division and were not subordinate to the ministry. In particular, Himmler received control of the entire operational resource of Germany. The police bureaus were included in the new order police (German: Ordnungspolizei, Orpo). Dalyuge became the first chief of this SS unit. Himmler soon organized a criminal police (German: Kriminalpolizei, Kripo), which included all German crime investigation bureaus. Then the criminal police and the Gestapo were united in the structure of the security police (German: Sicherheitspolizei, Sipo), headed by Heydrich. In September 1939, Himmler created the Reich Security Main Office (German: SS-Reichssicherheitshauptamt, RSHA), an umbrella agency containing both the State Security Police (Sipo) and the Party Security Service (SD). Heydrich was again at the helm.

Within the framework of the SS, their own military units were formed - "Parts of reinforcement" (German: Verfügungstruppe, SS-VT), which later formed the basis of the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the organization. The SS troops were a full-fledged military formation with developed systems of command and conduct of operations. At the dawn of its existence, the organization had three regiments; during the Second World War, 38 divisions were formed in its composition - both purely German and from the peoples of the conquered countries. The SS troops acted jointly with the army, but were never formally part of it.

Satisfying military ambitions, Himmler also sought to create a parallel economic system within the SS. In 1940, Oswald Pohl, who was engaged in this direction, built a holding company called "German Economic Enterprises". Operating under the auspices of the SS Main Administrative and Economic Directorate, this company owned other firms, factories and publishing houses. The unscrupulous administrator Paul often used his official position for personal gain. Himmler, on the other hand, was scrupulous in business and lived only on his salary.

Even earlier, in the mid-1930s, Himmler won over to his side a group of influential bankers and entrepreneurs who financially supported the NSDAP. The group, originally known as the Circle of Friends of Economics or the Circle of Keppler, after Wilhelm Keppler, later became known as the Circle of Friends of the Reichsführer SS. This money was used, in particular, for expeditions and research by the SS.

In 1938, in preparation for war, Hitler terminated the alliance with China. The more developed Japan became Germany's new ally in the Far East. Also in 1938, the Anschluss of Austria and the annexation of the Sudetenland in accordance with the Munich Agreement took place. Hitler's main motivation for military action was the conquest of living space in the East, which, in the Nazis' view, was inhabited by racially inferior peoples. The second goal was to destroy the representatives of these peoples - mainly Jews and Gypsies - on the territory of the Reich. In 1933-1938 hundreds of thousands of German Jews emigrated to the USA, Palestine, Great Britain and other countries. Some of them converted to Christianity.

In 1939, Hitler was looking for an excuse to attack Poland. A group of Himmler, Heydrich and Heinrich Müller devised a plan for a false flag operation that was codenamed "Himmler". German soldiers, dressed in Polish military uniforms, provoked a series of cross-border skirmishes. These events, allegedly proving the fact of Polish aggression, formed the basis of propaganda materials that were supposed to justify the invasion of the territory of the eastern neighbor. Hitler authorized his troops to exterminate civilians, including Jews. Einsatzgruppen - SS special forces - were formed by Heydrich to protect government documents and institutions in the occupied territories. Nevertheless, Himmler's order approved by Hitler gave the Einsatzgruppen the functions of death squads.

During 1939, the squadrons following the army massacred about 65,000 Polish citizens, largely representatives of the intelligentsia. The army and militia also took part in these killings. In addition, the Einsatzgruppen were engaged in the search for and imprisonment of Jews in ghettos and concentration camps.

Germany then attacked Denmark and Norway, the Netherlands and France, after which it proceeded to bombard the UK in anticipation of the planned ground operation.

On June 21, 1941, the day before the attack on the USSR, Himmler initiated the development of the Ost master plan, which was completed by July 1942. According to this plan, the Baltic states, Poland, Western Ukraine and Belarus were to come under the control of the Reich and colonized by 10 million German citizens. The current population - approximately 31 million people - was planned to be pushed further east, starved to death or used for forced labor. As a result, the eastern border of the Reich was supposed to be pushed a thousand kilometers deep into Eastern Europe. Himmler expected the execution of the plan within 20-30 years at the cost of 67 billion Reichsmarks. He openly declared that the upcoming war would be ruthless and, together with a lack of food, would take the lives of 20-30 million Slavs and Jews.

Himmler declared the march to the east to be a matter for the whole of Europe, as the Reich opposed the "godless Bolshevik hordes" trampling on traditional European values. Constantly competing with the Wehrmacht for conscripts, Himmler recruited ethnic Germans from the Balkans and Eastern Europe into the Waffen-SS. Recruits from the western and northern countries, whose culture the Nazis attributed to the Germanic area, also played a vital role: the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Denmark and Finland. The Waffen-SS also fought immigrants from Spain and Italy. The number of volunteers from the west varied greatly: if the number of Dutch recruits was about 25 thousand, then only 300 soldiers were attracted from Sweden and Switzerland. Among the eastern donors, Lithuania was in the lead (50 thousand), while the Bulgarian recruits numbered only 600. After 1943, most soldiers from Eastern Europe were liable for military service. The Waffen-SS detachments, manned by residents of Eastern Europe, showed themselves much worse in battle.

At the end of 1941, Hitler appointed Heydrich and. O. Reich Protector in the newly created Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Heydrich immediately set about racial decomposition of the Czech Republic, sending many inhabitants to concentration camps. The fighters of the growing resistance were destroyed, thanks to which Heydrich acquired the reputation of the "Butcher of Prague". The new appointment strengthened the ties between Heydrich and Himmler. The head of the SS was content with the fact that the organization received an entire state in control. Despite the emergence of a direct connection with Hitler, the new leader of the Czech Republic remained unshakably loyal to Himmler.

On the eve of the invasion of the USSR, Hitler approved the restoration of the SS Einsatzgruppen. In March 1941, he addressed his generals, expressing his intention to crush the Soviet Union and destroy its intellectual and political elite. His "Instructions in Special Areas" to Directive No. 21 report on certain tasks that the Reichsfuehrer SS must perform on the territory of the USSR, and on giving Himmler complete freedom in the framework of the implementation of these orders. In this way, Hitler tried to prevent internal clashes like those that arose during the Polish campaign: some generals tried to hold Einsatzgruppen commanders accountable for war crimes.

The Einsatzgruppen penetrated the territory of the Soviet Union following the army. There they exterminated Jews and other inhabitants who were considered undesirable for the Reich. Hitler received regular reports of what was happening. During the eight months of 1941-1942, 2.8 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German camps. The greatest number of lives were claimed by hunger, inhuman and barbarous treatment and executions. During the war years, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war became victims of concentration camps; most died from the bullets of the guards and in the gas chambers.

By the beginning of 1941, Himmler created 10 concentration camps, the prisoners of which were forcibly forced to work. Both camps and ghettos served to contain Jews who were exterminated throughout Germany and the countries occupied by the Reich. In December 1941, German troops were thrown back from Moscow, which indicated the failure of the blitzkrieg strategy. The leadership of Germany, intending to deport the Jews further and further east during the advance of its troops across Soviet territory, now doomed them to death as "useless eaters." Local SS officers, who had been exposed to anti-Semitic propaganda for a long time, took an active part in the killings.

The racial policy of the Nazis, including the idea of underdeveloped races subject to extermination, goes back to the early ideologemes of the party. Hitler described the racial program of his party in the book "My Struggle".

In December 1941, Germany declared war on the United States - around the time Hitler decided that Europe's Jewry must be "extirpated". On January 20 of the following year, Heydrich organized a meeting on the Wanza, the minutes of which anticipated the policy of the Final Solution. Heydrich described in detail how Jews able to work would be exterminated through labor, and those unable would be killed. According to the announced calculations, the destruction of 11 million people was supposed. Hitler appointed the head of the SS responsible for the implementation of the plan.

In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague by Josef Gabczyk and Jan Kubiš, exiled Czechoslovak army fighters trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Himmler performed two funeral ceremonies in the role of chief mourner, took Heydrich's two sons under guardianship, and read a eulogy to him in Berlin. On June 9, Hitler, after consulting with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, authorized brutal reprisals - retribution for the murder. More than 13 thousand people were arrested, the village of Lidice was razed to the ground. All the male inhabitants of Lidice, as well as the adult population of the village of Ležáky, were killed. The firing squads killed at least 1,300 people. Himmler took command of the RSHA and accelerated the extermination of the Jews as part of Operation Reinhard. He created the first death camps: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.

Prisoners of the death camps were shot or placed in gas cars. The Nazis soon realized that such methods would not allow them to carry out an operation of such a large scale. In August 1941, Himmler watched the execution of a hundred Jews in Minsk. Disgusted and shocked, he was seriously concerned about the impact of mass executions on the psyche of his subordinates. Himmler decided to look for new methods of killing. His orders at the beginning of 1942 led to a significant enlargement of the Auschwitz camp, where gas chambers appeared. Prisoners were executed by poisoning with the Zyklon B pesticide. At the end of the war, at least 5.5 million Jews were exterminated by the Hitler regime, but most estimates are close to 6 million.The racial policy of the Nazis, including the idea of underdeveloped races subject to extermination, goes back to the early ideologemes of the party. Hitler described the racial program of his party in the book "My Struggle".

In December 1941, Germany declared war on the United States - around the time Hitler decided that Europe's Jewry must be "extirpated". On January 20 of the following year, Heydrich organized a meeting on the Wanza, the minutes of which anticipated the policy of the Final Solution. Heydrich described in detail how Jews able to work would be exterminated through labor, and those unable would be killed. According to the announced calculations, the destruction of 11 million people was supposed. Hitler appointed the head of the SS responsible for the implementation of the plan.

In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in Prague by Josef Gabczyk and Jan Kubiš, exiled Czechoslovak army fighters trained by the British Special Operations Executive. Himmler performed two funeral ceremonies in the role of chief mourner, took Heydrich's two sons under guardianship, and read a eulogy to him in Berlin. On June 9, Hitler, after consulting with Himmler and Karl Hermann Frank, authorized brutal reprisals - retribution for the murder. More than 13 thousand people were arrested, the village of Lidice was razed to the ground. All the male inhabitants of Lidice, as well as the adult population of the village of Ležáky, were killed. The firing squads killed at least 1,300 people. Himmler took command of the RSHA and accelerated the extermination of the Jews as part of Operation Reinhard. He created the first death camps: Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka.

Prisoners of the death camps were shot or placed in gas cars. The Nazis soon realized that such methods would not allow them to carry out an operation of such a large scale. In August 1941, Himmler watched the execution of a hundred Jews in Minsk. Disgusted and shocked, he was seriously concerned about the impact of mass executions on the psyche of his subordinates. Himmler decided to look for new methods of killing. His orders at the beginning of 1942 led to a significant enlargement of the Auschwitz camp, where gas chambers appeared. Prisoners were executed by poisoning with the Zyklon B pesticide. At the end of the war, at least 5.5 million Jews were exterminated by the Hitler regime, but most estimates are close to 6 million.

In early 1943, Himmler visited the Sobibor camp, where at that time 250,000 people had already been killed. After witnessing the gassing, he promoted 28 members of the SS and ordered a curtailment of activities. In October, the prisoners of the camp mutinied, liquidating almost the entire guard corps. Three hundred prisoners managed to escape, but only two hundred of them managed to get to safe places - the rest were killed. Some of the survivors joined local partisan units. The camp was closed in December.

On October 4, 1943, a secret meeting of the leaders of the SS was held in Posen (now Poznan), and on October 6, Himmler delivered a speech to the party elite - Gauleiters and Reichsleiters.

In this speech, he spoke directly about the “extermination” of the Jewish people: “I want to discuss with you with the utmost frankness one difficult issue. This time we will talk about it openly with each other, but we will never admit it publicly. Just as on June 30, 1934, we did our duty without delay, put our stumbled comrades against the wall and shot them, and after that we did not talk, did not discuss what happened and will not do it in the future - this, thank God, is our natural, natural sense of tact - never talk about it among themselves. The operation then shocked each of us, but at the same time it was clear to everyone that he would do it again if he was ordered to do so next time. In this case, I mean the expulsion of the Jews, the destruction of the Jewish people. It's easy to say: "The Jewish people will be destroyed" - so says every member of the party - this is clearly written in our theory: the liquidation of the Jews, their destruction - and we will do it. But suddenly they all come, eighty million honest Germans, and each has his own decent Jew. Of course, all the other pigs, but his Jew is excellent. Of all those who say this, not one has seen with his own eyes and has not experienced, unlike most of you, what a hundred corpses lying nearby, or five hundred, or a thousand, are. To endure it and, except for individual cases of human weakness, to remain decent - that's what tempered us. This is a beautiful page in our history that has never been written and will never be written. We know how much more difficult our situation would be if now, during the bombings, the difficulties and deprivations of the war, in every city there were Jews living in secret supplies, propaganda and slander. Probably, we would have reached the stage of 1916-1917, when the Jews still inhabited the body of the German nation.”

For Himmler, these speeches were a way to convey his intentions to each of the party leaders. None of them could claim to know anything about the massacres. The Allies had warned of the imminent pursuit of German war criminals, and Himmler, by making each of his associates involved in the genocide, tried to win their silence and loyalty.

Sincerely believing in the ideology of Nazism, Himmler became the main architect of the Holocaust. In 2020, Heinrich Himmler's diary for 1943-1945 was found in the archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. According to historian Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, who published the notes, the document shows Himmler's personal involvement in the massacres, his active promotion of the ideas of the Holocaust. Himmler personally visited the death camps, the ghettos, and resented the insufficient pace of executions. The Nazis intended to eradicate the Polish intelligentsia as a class and limit the right of the inhabitants of the General Government to education (no more than four years). "Purified" from foreign impurities, the Germans were to become a "race of masters" - "Nordic Aryans". The agronomist Himmler was familiar with the principles of artificial selection, which he proposed to extend to humans. He believed that eugenics would help completely transform the face of Germans in the post-war decades.

Hitler appointed Himmler Minister of the Interior and Plenipotentiary General for Imperial Administration (German: Generalbevollmächtigter für die Verwaltung). In August 1944, Hitler instructed him to reorganize the Waffen-SS, army and police services. Together with the post of Commander-in-Chief of the Reserve Army, Himmler took over the maintenance of prisoners of war. Finally, he led the prison service of the Wehrmacht and oversaw the development of weapons until January 1945.

On June 6, 1944, the Normandy operation began - the landing of allied troops in northern France. The response step was the formation of the Upper Rhine Army Group. The group was supposed to hold back the advance of the US 7th Army (commander - General Alexander Patch) and the French 1st Army (commander - Jean de Latre de Tassigny), which moved along the west bank of the Rhine in Alsace.

In late 1944, Hitler appointed Himmler commander-in-chief of the Upper Rhine Army Group. On October 17, 1944, the Fuhrer ordered his new commander to organize the Volkssturm detachments. The entire male population between the ages of 16 and 60 was subject to conscription into the new militia. The idea was opposed by the Minister of Armaments and Ammunition, Albert Speer, since the call for skilled workers undermined the work of the entire industry.

Hitler was sure that the mobilization would give the front 6 million soldiers and "ignite a people's war against the invader." Hitler was overly optimistic. In October 1944, the militia was replenished with young men from 14 years old. Due to the colossal shortage of weapons and ammunition and the lack of combat skills, the Volkssturm units were extremely ineffective. In the last months of the war, approximately 175,000 militias were killed.

On January 1, 1945, the Reich military command launched Operation North Wind. The purpose of the operation was to break through the American-French defense lines and support the Ardennes operation in the south - the last major offensive of the Germans. The first successes remained with the Germans, but the American troops interrupted the offensive. On January 25, Operation North Wind was officially ended.

Also on January 25, 1945, Hitler appointed Himmler commander of the hastily formed Army Group Vistula. Deprived of rich experience, Himmler had to stop the Soviet troops rushing to Pomerania as part of the Vistula-Oder operation. Inspector General of the Armored Forces, Heinz Guderian, considered Himmler's appointment "idiocy" and his officers "equally incapable of carrying out the tasks assigned to them." Guderian expected Himmler to use all the help available to him, so he appointed General Walter Wenck—an experienced staff officer—as his chief of staff.

Himmler located his command center in Schneidemühl, and the special train Sonderzug Steiermark served as his headquarters. The train was equipped with only one telephone line, the maps were inaccurate, there were no signal services and radio devices that would allow contact with the outside world and relay orders. Himmler rarely left the train, worked no more than four hours a day, required daily massages, and slept long afternoons.

On February 16, 1945, Operation Solstice began, an attack on the northern flank of Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian Front in Pomerania. Himmler did not manage to advance far, he was opposed by the 61st Army of Pavel Belov and the 2nd Guards Tank Army of Semyon Bogdanov. Zhukov sent two tank armies to help them. Five days later, the Red Army reached the Baltic coast, preventing the trapped Germans from escaping by sea. Himmler was unable to build viable plans for the war. Under pressure from Hitler, he lost his composure and stopped giving him coherent reports.

Hitler did not want to admit a personnel error. Strongly arguing with Guderian, who insisted on removing Himmler from command of the Vistula, Hitler sent Wenck to his special train, which was intended to take command of the counteroffensive. Hitler then realized that the implementation of Guderian's plan - a double "pincer" attack by the Red Army from the surrounding provinces - was impossible due to the limited mobility of German troops. When the counterattack failed, Hitler held Himmler personally responsible for the failure and accused him of disobeying orders.

On March 20, Himmler was relieved of his post, General Gotthard Heinrici became the new commander-in-chief of the Vistula. Himmler, who had been under medical supervision since February 19, went to the Hohenlichen sanatorium. On March 29, Hitler placed Guderian on forced leave for health reasons, handing over his post as chief of staff to Hans Krebs. Himmler's failure and the Führer's ensuing reaction destroyed their relationship. The circle of people whom Hitler could trust was shrinking rapidly.

By the beginning of 1945, the German military machine was in a deplorable state. An equally deep crisis was experienced by Himmler's relationship with the head of state. He decided to personally launch peace talks with Western countries. The mediator was his masseur Felix Kersten, who moved to Sweden. The opposite side was represented by Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler and Bernadotte began to correspond. After that, Walter Schellenberg of the RSHA arranged for them to meet in person. The last conversation between Himmler and Hitler took place on April 20 in Berlin, the latter's birthday.

Then Himmler swore absolute loyalty to the Fuhrer. At a military conference, Hitler announced that he would not leave the capital. Shortly after the meeting, Himmler and Göring left the city. On April 21, Himmler met with Norbert Masur, the Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress, to discuss the release of concentration camp prisoners. The negotiations resulted in the release of 20,000 prisoners. Himmler assured Mazur that the camp crematoria needed to be built because of the typhus epidemic. The survival rate in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen was, according to him, quite high - as it turned out after the liberation of these camps, Himmler was lying.

Two days later, Himmler visited the Swedish consulate in Lübeck, where Bernadotte was waiting for him. Presenting himself as the interim leader of the German state, he assured his interlocutor of the imminent (it was a question of several days) death of Hitler. Hoping that the British and Americans, along with the remnants of the Wehrmacht, would start a war against the USSR, he asked to tell Dwight Eisenhower that Germany was surrendering to the West. Bernadotte asked Himmler to fix the message in writing, and he did so.

However, a few hours earlier, Goering sent a telegram to Hitler asking for permission to lead the Third Reich. Spurred on by Martin Bormann, Hitler took the dispatch as a declaration of a coup d'état and a demand to surrender. On April 27, Hermann Fegelein, the SS representative at Hitler's headquarters, was caught trying to defect. Detained in civilian clothes, Fegelein was arrested and returned to the Fuhrerbunker. On the evening of April 28, the BBC broadcast a news report from Reuters, which reported on Himmler's attempt to negotiate with the countries of the West. Hitler, who for many years believed in the unwavering loyalty of the “devoted Heinrich” (German der treue Heinrich), who was second only to Goebbels in loyalty, was furious. To those who were still around him, he announced the greatest betrayal of his life and ordered the arrest of the traitor. Fegelein appeared before the tribunal and was shot.

At that time, Soviet troops had already reached Potsdamer Platz, just 300 meters from which the Reich Chancellery was located. The impending assault and Himmler's betrayal prompted Hitler to write his will. On April 29 (the day before his suicide), he completed work on a text in which he denounced both Himmler and Goering as traitors. Himmler was removed from all party and state positions, deprived of his party card and all awards.

Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz as his successor. Himmler met with Dönitz in Flensburg, offering himself as a deputy, urging him to be included in the provisional government, he appealed to the power of the SS necessary to establish order in post-war Germany. Doenitz repeatedly refused Himmler, while simultaneously conducting peace negotiations with the anti-Hitler coalition. On May 6, two days before the signing of the act of surrender, Doenitz signed a decree dismissing Himmler from all posts.

Rejected by his former comrades-in-arms and pursued by the anti-Hitler coalition, Himmler tried to flee. On May 5, he dismissed his headquarters, finally making a farewell speech in which he called on the officers to "dissolve in the Wehrmacht" and "wait in the wings." Having no time for full-fledged training, he had with him a passbook in the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger, who was shot for defeatist rumors a few days before the end of the war.

On May 10, Himmler, accompanied by a small group of officers in four vehicles, left Flensburg and headed south. The closest target was Friedrichskog, while the final point of the route remained undefined. Then the group moved to Neuhaus, after which it dispersed.

On May 21, at approximately 19:30, Himmler and the two assistants who remained with him (childhood friend, doctor Karl Gebhardt and personal secretary Rudolf Brandt) were detained in the British zone of occupation of Germany on the outskirts of the village of Mainstedt by a patrol organized by the British military authorities from British soldiers and reinforced by volunteers from the number of released Soviet prisoners of war.

Himmler was directly detained by the former Red Army soldiers, 29-year-old V.I. Gubarev and 25-year-old I.E. Sidorov, who were in this patrol, and during the arrest the Germans tried to escape and Gubarev fired a warning shot into the air from a rifle. First, they were all placed in the guardroom of the collection and transit point for citizens of the USSR No. 619 in the town of Seedorf, and the next day they were handed over to the British authorities, who sent the detainees to the city of Bremerferde.

On the evening of May 23, Himmler was taken to the civilian detention camp No. 031 near Lüneburg. In Western and Russian perestroika and post-Soviet literature, it is stubbornly stated that Himmler was arrested by British servicemen, and the circumstances of his detention vary greatly among different authors.

Himmler was interrogated by the officer on duty, Captain Thomas Selvester. The procedure took place in a routine manner, but Himmler gave his true name, after which he was searched. He was taken to the headquarters of the British Second Army in Lüneburg, where he was examined by Dr. Wells.

During the inspection, Himmler refused to open his mouth, jerking his head back every time. He eventually cracked open the cyanide capsule in his mouth, immediately collapsing to the floor. After 15 minutes, the fact of death was established. The body was buried in an unmarked grave near the city. The location of the remains is still unknown.

According to the verdict of the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg on October 1, 1946, the SS was used for criminal purposes, including “the persecution and extermination of Jews, atrocities and murders in concentration camps, excesses committed in the administration of the occupied territories, the implementation of the program for the use of slave labor and cruel treatment of prisoners of war and their murder”, in view of which all persons “who became members of this organization or remained its members, knowing that this organization is used to commit acts defined as criminal”, are criminals. Himmler did not appear before the tribunal because of his death and was not prosecuted.