Psychopaths, Sadists, Misfits, and Murderers - Part 2

Early in 1934 the running of the Gestapo and the concentration camps was taken over by Heinrich Himmler. From photographs and people's descriptions of him, he looked like a clerk in the civil service but, at the time he joined the Party in 1925, he was a chicken farmer. He showed himself a capable administrator and rose in the ranks where he caught the attention of Hitler, to whom he was fanatically devoted. In 1929 Hitler gave him command of the SS. In those days it numbered about 200 men and acted as Hitler's personal bodyguard; by 1933 it had grown to 50,000 and rivaled the SA. In the June 1934 purge, Himmler used the SS to eliminate many of the SA leaders not dealt with by Hitler or Goring, and thereafter the SS became the dominant body. In 1936 Himmler took over full control of the Gestapo. From this time on, he was the single most powerful man in Germany, after Hitler. It is told that, though he ordered the torture and death of millions he never personally murdered anyone, and that the first time he was taken to see a concentration camp, he vomited. Apocryphal or not, it would be quite in character for the thugs around Hitler. During the war Hitler appointed him administrator of many countries and areas, and in June 1941 he was made responsible for the murder of the whole of European Jewry, a responsibility he passed on to Heydrich and Eichmann. He also started the Waffen-SS as a sort of rival to the army; it eventually consisted of 25 divisions, but Himmler showed that he was no military commander. Like Goring in 1939, in April 1945 he started negotiations to try to end the war in order that Germany and Britain should join forces against Russia. Hitler was told of this by others, and he stripped him of all rank. In attempting to escape from both Allied and German forces, he was captured by the former and committed suicide before coming to trial.

Deputy to Himmler for some time and close collaborator was Reinhard Heydrich who was to become the target of Czech nationalists because of the atrocities he committed in their country and elsewhere. But it was he, with the assistance of Eichmann, who organized the 'Final Solution' , the mass murder of millions of European Jews, and set it in motion before he was assassinated in May 1942. Before this, however, he had demonstrated his abilities at deceit by manufacturing the 'evidence' that enabled Hitler to dismiss von Fritsch, one of the last of the old-school Generals, who refused to obey or work with any of Himmler's SS thugs.

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