Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Himmler, an unremarkable looking man, was Hitler's top enforcer, in charge of the Gestapo, the SS, and the so-called Final Solution. We can only wonder, as biographer Peter Longerich asks, how could such a banal personality attain such an historically unique position of power ? How could the son of a prosperous Bavarian Catholic public servant become the organizer of a system of mass murder spanning the whole of Europe ?

In the first comprehensive biography of this murderous enigma, Longerich answers those questions with a superb account of Himmler's inner self and outward acts. Masterfully interweaving the story of Himmler's personal life and political career with the wider history of the Nazi dictatorship, Longerich shows how skillfully he exploited and manipulated his disparate roles in the pursuit of his far-reaching and grandiose objectives. Himmler's actual strength, he writes, consisted in redrawing every two or three years the master plans for his sphere of power. Himmler expanded that sphere with ruthless efficiency. In 1929, he took the SS—a small bodyguard unit—and swelled it into a paramilitary organization with elite pretensions.

By the end of 1934 he had become Reich Chief of the Political Police, and began to consolidate all police power in his own hands. As Germany grabbed neighboring territory, he expanded the Waffen SS and organized the "Germanization" of conquered lands, which culminated in systematic mass murder. When the regime went on the defensive in 1942, Himmler changed his emphasis again, repressing any opposition or unrest. The author emphasizes the centrality of Himmler's personality to the Nazi murder machine—his surveillance of the private lives of his men, his deep resentments, his fierce prejudices—showing that man and position were inseparable. Carefully researched and lucidly written, Heinrich Himmler is the essential account of the man who embodied Hitler's apparatus of evil.

ISBN-13: 9780199592326
Authors : Peter Longrich
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publication date: 13/01/2012

Editorial Reviews - Publishers Weekly

With access to new material, Longerich (Holocaust), professor of history at the University of London, delivers an exhaustive biography of the notorious Nazi. Himmler (1900–1945) grew up in a stable, middle-class family, entering adulthood deeply resentful of Germany’s defeat in WWI. Needy and self-critical, he was a good student and voracious reader whose belief in Aryan superiority was not rare in his generation. Joining the Nazis, he played a minor role in Hitler’s 1923 beer hall putsch. In 1929 Hitler appointed him head of the SS, a small organization of bodyguards which Himmler expanded to an elite force. The SS’s fierce loyalty to Hitler won Himmler command of all Nazi security (police, concentration camps, extermination camps, and mobile killing squads) when Hitler liquidated the rowdier, independent paramilitary SA in 1934. Longerich does not reveal why this modestly neurotic man committed so many unspeakable acts; his diligence may render earlier works obsolete, but he includes so many administrative details and political maneuvers that general readers may prefer the shorter (if not short) 2001 Peter Padfield biography. (Jan.)

Meet the Author

Peter Longerich is Professor of Modern German History at Royal Holloway University of London, and founder of Royal Holloway's Holocaust Research Centre. He has published extensively on Nazi Germany, including the acclaimed Holocaust: The Nazi Murder and the Persecution of the Jews, The Unwritten Order: Hitler's Role in the Final Solution, and The Systematic Character of the National Socialist Policy for the Extermination of the Jews.