What was himmlers job

In , after finishing school, he enlisted to fight in World War I, but the war ended before he saw combat. He then earned a degree in agriculture from the technical university in Munich and found work as a fertilizer salesman. He joined the Freikorps , private armies of right wing veterans who were resentful of Germany's loss in World War I.

Yet it was reestablished 15 months later along with the SS, which protected Nazi Party leaders throughout Germany. In January Himmler was appointed head of the SS, a small body of men that he would soon transform into the racist and deadly army of the Nazi police state. By Himmler's SS numbered 52, members of Hitler's "master race. To distinguish his troops, he introduced black SS uniforms that were unlike the SA's brown shirts. As a result, Himmler became chief of the German Police, including the Gestapo, the secret police.

Holocaust Administrator Coupling his power with a fanatical belief in the racist Nazi ideology, Himmler then organized and administered Nazi Germany's extermination camps. Himmler acted as the Nazi party's propaganda leader between and In , he was appointed head of the SS, Adolf Hitler's personal bodyguard, and the following year was elected to the Reichstag. After the Nazis came to power in Germany in , Himmler became police president in Munich and head of the political police in Bavaria.

He used his position to build a state within a state, expanding the SS and establishing its autonomy within the Nazi party and its dominance in Germany. In , he set up Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp. By , he had manoeuvred himself into a position where he was head of a newly unified national police.

Himmler was obsessed with racial purity in Germany and encouraged Aryan 'breeding programmes'. The outbreak of World War Two allowed Himmler to pursue another racial goal - the elimination of Jews and other so-called 'sub-humans'.

After Germany's invasion of Poland, Himmler was given total control of the annexed parts of the country. Within a year more than one million Poles and , Jews had been forced out to be replaced with German settlers.

Despite appearances to the outside, Himmler was not all-powerful in the Third Reich. His most significant and powerful rival during the last year of the war was Martin Bormann, Hitler's Secretary and chief of the Nazi Party Chancellery. The Nazi Party apparatus, anchored in the political power of the Nazi Party District Leaders Gauleiter who also held positions in the State as Regional Defense Commissars, became more significant with the invasion of the Allied armies toward the end of the war.

A skilled organizer and a capable manager who understood how to obtain and use power, Himmler was the ideological and organizational driving force behind the rise of the SS. Moreover, he understood his SS men and knew how to secure their loyalty to his own person and to the concept of the Nazi elite to which they belonged.

His ability to give his subordinates leeway to exercise initiative to implement Nazi policy was a significant factor in the murderous success of many SS operations. When he took over the SS, Himmler recognized the importance of internal security and determination of racial purity for the Nazi movement and successfully expanded the functions of the SS to meet these ideological and practical needs. Himmler understood the importance of police power separated from legal constraint and state supervision; he persuaded Hitler—over the arguments of powerful rivals in the party and the state—that fusion of SS and police would forge the instrument for the Nazi regime to achieve its core, long-term ideological goals.

It was Himmler whom Hitler entrusted with the planning and implementation of the "Final Solution. I mean here…the annihilation of the Jewish people…. Most of you will know what it means when corpses lie side by side, or or 1,….

This page of glory in our history has never been written and will never be written…. We had the moral right, we were obligated to our people to kill this people which wanted to kill us. After the failure of the July 20, , attempt to assassinate Hitler, Himmler toyed with the idea of negotiating a separate peace with the western Allies while continuing to fight the Soviet Union. During the winter of , he considered using concentration camp prisoners as a bargaining chip to initiate such negotiations.

In part because the Allies would not negotiate with a man so implicated in Nazi crimes, and, in part because Himmler could not quite separate himself from Hitler or the belief that somehow the Germans would win the war, his half-hearted feelers came to nothing. Eisenhower, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces.

News of the offer reached Hitler in encircled Berlin on the night of April , In one of his last official acts, Hitler stripped Himmler of all of his offices and ordered his arrest. Despite having continuously assured his SS officers and men that he ultimately would take responsibility for all of their actions, the end of the war found Himmler dressed in Secret Field Police uniform with papers in the name of Heinrich Hitzinger.

Captured by Russian soldiers on May 20, , he was turned over to the British, to whom he eventually confessed his identity.

While undergoing a body search on May 23, , Himmler killed himself by biting down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth for that very purpose.

We would like to thank Crown Family Philanthropies and the Abe and Ida Cooper Foundation for supporting the ongoing work to create content and resources for the Holocaust Encyclopedia. View the list of all donors. Trending keywords:. Featured Content. Tags Find topics of interest and explore encyclopedia content related to those topics. Browse A-Z Find articles, photos, maps, films, and more listed alphabetically.

For Teachers Recommended resources and topics if you have limited time to teach about the Holocaust. Wise — International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. About This Site.