Himmler: Hitler's Henchman

By Ian Baxter

Heinrich Himmler has a strong claim to be Adolf Hitler's most powerful subordinate. He was certainly the main architect of the Holocaust. Appointed Reichsfuhrer-SS in 1929 he built the SS into a million strong paramilitary force and took control of the Nazi concentration camps system. From 1943 he became Chief of German Police and Minister of the Interior with command of the Gestapo as well as the Einsatzgruppen, who committed appalling atrocities and murder in occupied Eastern Europe and Russia. Despite his lack of military experience in the closing stages of the War he was appointed by Hitler as Commander of Army Group Vistula. Realising the war was lost, Himmler attempted to open peace talks with the Allies. Learning of this, Hitler dismissed him of all his posts in April 1945. Detained and arrested by British forces, he committed suicide on 22 May 1945. The wartime career of this cruel and capable man is captured brilliantly with contemporary fully captioned images in this Images of War series work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781399096645

Ian Baxter

IAN BAXTER is a military historian who specialises in German twentieth century military history. He has written more than twenty books and over one hundred articles. He has also reviewed numerous military studies for publication, supplied thousands of photographs and important documents to various publishers and film production companies worldwide. He also lectures to schools, colleges and universities throughout the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland.

Book preview

Introduction

The Early Years

Heinrich Himmler, a bespectacled former chicken farmer, joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in August 1923, receiving party number 14303. That same year he joined the Schutzstaffel (SS) or Guard Detachment as an SS-Führer (SS Leader). The SS was initially part of the much larger SA (Sturmabteilung) or Storm Troopers and was formed in 1923 for Hitler’s personal protection. By 1925 it was re-formed as an elite unit of the SA. Himmler’s first leadership position in the SS was district leader (SS-Gauführer). Over the next couple of years Himmler excelled in the realms of the SS, but required a position of strong control and freedom of action in order to expand what he saw as a ‘new SS order’. In September 1927, Himmler told Hitler of his idea to transform the SS into a faithful, controlling, racially-pure elite unit. His Führer welcomed the vision and soon appointed him Deputy Reichsführer-SS.

By 1929 Himmler had risen through the ranks of the Nazi Party to become leader of Adolf Hitler’s personal bodyguard: the SS. Many party comrades found Himmler to be a dull, pedantic and humourless man, but one with a reputation for thoroughness and efficiency. To Himmler, his cherished SS was to become the elite of the German race. All prospective members were to be racially pure, physically fit and, above all, loyal and willing to obey and sacrifice their own lives for Hitler. By the early 1930s the SS had undoubtedly become a select body within the Nazi hierarchy. Himmler viewed the SS as a strict system of beliefs and values based on military virtues of obedience and self-discipline. For some time he made considerable efforts to recruit members of the old German elite. Through a tactful combination of pressure and adulation, he often chose men of what became known as the black order of the new SS Staat. These SS men sought not only the chance of becoming a racial-ideological elite, but the opportunity of becoming part of an organization that could possibly control the course of Germany’s path to recovery.

In the early 1930s this recovery saw Himmler not only increasing his own political influence but carrying out police functions, running concentration camps, creating military units and taking control of agricultural and industrial enterprises that were all run by the SS. It also saw him organize and set up in 1932 different SS departments including the Intelligence Service, which was renamed the Sicherheitsdienst (SD: Security Service). He later officially appointed Reinhard Heydrich his deputy. Around the same time he further established the SS Race and Settlement Main Office (Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA). The department implemented racial policies and monitored the ‘racial integrity’ of the SS membership.

In March 1933, two months after the Nazis came to power, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau. Hitler had outlined that he did not want it to be just another prison or detention camp. Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke, a convicted felon and devoted Nazi, to run the camp in June that year.

In June 1936 Himmler was formally named chief of the German police and used a uniformed law enforcement agency to be amalgamated into what was known as the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo: ‘Order Police’). Over the course of three years he was given freedom by Hitler to expand the SS, which often saw his own extreme policies and laws overriding government agencies.

By November 1938, Himmler announced that new policies would be implemented to utilize his SS Death’s Head or Totenkopf units for the growing concentration camp system. He also lobbied for a Totenkopf military formation that would be well-equipped and superior, both ideologically and militarily. Soon these soldiers were given the name Waffen-SS (Armed SS).

In addition to his military aspirations, Himmler established the beginnings of a parallel economy under the umbrella of the SS. However, even as war loomed against Poland in 1939, the core of his ambition was how to deal with the ideological struggle against the Jews. He stressed to his SS leaders that they would have to carry out harsh policies against the Jews without sympathy if they were going to save the German Volk (people). This would include rounding up and isolating Jews and sending them to work camps and removing many of them by force, even if it meant mass murder or genocide.

However, as Himmler pondered his barbaric racial policy of dealing with the Jews, Hitler required the Reichsführer to undertake an operation for him that was needed to prove that the Polish military had started the war with Nazi Germany first. Himmler’s plan would be the pretext for launching his Führer’s long-awaited attack against Poland in September 1939.

The plan comprised a well-prepared simulated Polish attack at Pitschen and the principal one at Gleiwitz. This remained the only trumped-up deed that Hitler had left to suggest that Poland, not Germany, had fired the first shots of the war.

Chapter One

Invasion of the East 1939–41

Plans for the hoax attack that Hitler needed as a pretext to launch his assault against Poland were left to Himmler. In

Reviews for Himmler

[pomo58 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Himmler: Hitler's Henchman, by Ian Baxter, is a chilling look at the person who on the outside looks like a bland administrator yet was internally driven to orchestrate cruel and inhuman atrocities.

While the sections that place the photographs in context is interesting, this is first and foremost a collection of photographs. Looked at alongside a history offers the reader a number of startling perspectives. What I mean by that is that I think readers will largely take slightly different thoughts away from this book. For me, it just kept stopping me in my tracks to see such mundane looking men coordinating such an evil organization. I think other readers may well be struck by other aspects.

I want to have this book handy and reread a biography of Himmler, probably Longerich's biography. I think having these newly available photographs will add to what I read. It is so easy to picture evil as a bunch of monsters, but evil can look like the man walking down the street or losing a reelection bid.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.