Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler met Margarete Boden in 1927, and the couple started dating and got married the next year. Margarete Boden gave birth to Himmler’s son, and the couple adopted one boy.

Although, he was in a happy marriage with Margarete, he got attracted to his secretary, Hedwig Potthast, and kept her as his mistress for a year in 1939. His wife protested, but eventually gave up and didn’t even consider a divorce, staying loyal to him. Meanwhile, Hedwig gave birth to two of his children - a son and a daughter. Both the women admired Himmler for what he did for his country and hence, remained loyal to him till the very end.

Heinrich Himmler was born on 7th October 1990 in a German Roman Catholic family at Munich. His father, Gebhard Himmler, was a school teacher and his mother, Anna Maria Himmler, was a devotee catholic woman. Heinrich received his education from a grammar school; his father was the principal of the school.

Himmler despised athletics as a kid and was a studious kid. He was shy and awkward as well and seeing that, his father forced him to work hard in sports in order to make him strong, but Heinrich never felt comfortable doing athletics. Instead, he dwelled himself in the studies of religion, mysticism and sex.

As a teenager, Himmler showed immense patriotism and wanted to serve his country in the ongoing First World War. At the age of 17, his father got him enrolled into the reserve Battalion of the 11th Bavarian regiment using his connections with the royal family. However, those were the very last days of the First World War and Germany was already on the verge of losing.

He continued with his education after the war and became seemingly interested in the mystic studies and German myths. Somehow, he wanted to be a doctor but his parents refused to pay for his education and he went on to attain a diploma in the agricultural studies. He did a few jobs here and there and quit everything in 1923, to fulfil his military aspirations.

He became interested in the actions of the rightist paramilitary organizations and went on to meet Ernst Rohm in 1923, joined Reichskriegsflagge, and participated in Hitler’s abortive Beer Hall Putsch, which took place in Munich in November 1923. He slowly moved up the ladder, joined the Nazi party in 1925 and was later elected as a deputy in the German Parliament, Reichstag. He was just 30 years old by then and this success was not small, but when he began his term as Reichsfuhrer for the SS (Hitler’s elite bodyguards), his stature further grew.

Under his command, SS became a strong force and its manpower increased to more than 50,000 within a very short period of time. When Hitler rose to political prominence in 1933, Himmler was made the head of Munich police and it didn’t take him much time to become the commander of all German police apart from Prussia. Doing his duties and following Hitler’s order, he came up with the first concentration camp for the Third Reich in Dachau.

Hitler appointed him the assistant chief of Gestapo in 1934, enabling him to attain the control of all the police forces in Germany. He also played a major role in SS vs SA, which the former won, giving Hitler the control of German army. Under his command, SS grew larger to be the most powerful armed body after the army, which also happened to be under Hitler’s command by then. They had become invincible and when finally the Second World War broke out, Germany looked up to Himmler, along with Hitler.

Meeting everyone’s expectations, Himmler grew SS to make it practically impenetrable and in 1941, Hitler ordered him to invade Soviet Russia. A widespread massacre took place when Himmler got the chance to do anything he willed in order to wipe out all the political enemies of the ‘Third Reich’. He organised extermination camps in the German occupied Poland, and systematically slaughtered millions of Jews. Another place where Jew murders took place was Babi Yar in Ukraine.

Until then, everything was fine but the downfall of Himmler started in 1943, when Hitler appointed him the interior minister of Reich administration. He then indulged in the expansion of Waffen SS, it grew as large as 35 divisions, close to army in terms of manpower. He also managed to attain the control of intelligence units, military armaments, Volkssturm and later a guerrilla force named Werwolf. He also got the command of two army groups.

Hitler ordered Himmler’s arrest, but he hid and while planning an escape disguising as a common soldier, he was caught, not by Hitler, but by the British Army. In their custody, he committed suicide by taking poison.