50 Fun Facts About Heinrich Himmler

Which poison did Heinrich Himmler bite into as a doctor tried to examine his mouth in Allied custody?

Cyanide from a pill hidden in his mouth killed him within about 15 minutes, despite efforts to save him. He had been detained two days earlier while travelling under a false name.

Which legendary relic did Heinrich Himmler ask about on a 1940 visit to Spain's Montserrat Abbey?

The Holy Grail had gripped Nazi occultists through the books of Otto Rahn. Himmler sponsored Rahn's own search for the relic, which came to nothing.

Which first official Nazi concentration camp did Heinrich Himmler set up near Munich in March 1933?

Dachau opened less than three months after the Nazis took power and at first held political opponents. Its regime of roll calls, work details and brutal discipline became the model for later camps.

Which secret police force did Hermann Göring hand over to Heinrich Himmler in April 1934?

The Gestapo had been founded in Prussia only the year before. Göring gave it up because he wanted someone ruthless enough to turn it against the rival SA.

Which German clothing company, later a luxury fashion house, made black uniforms for Heinrich Himmler's SS?

Hugo Boss was one of many firms licensed to supply Nazi uniforms, but it did not design them. The black SS uniform was the work of two SS members, Karl Diebitsch and Walter Heck.

To which Himalayan land did Heinrich Himmler sponsor a 1938 SS expedition led by zoologist Ernst Schäfer?

Tibet appealed to Himmler because of his fascination with Asian mysticism. He let the expedition go ahead on condition that every member joined the SS.

The double lightning-bolt badge of Heinrich Himmler's SS takes its two characters from which alphabet?

Runic signs for victory make up the badge. They come from a set devised by Guido von List, who renamed an ancient sun symbol 'Sieg'.

Hitler's nickname for Heinrich Himmler, 'der treue Heinrich', praised him for which quality?

Loyalty was the point of the nickname, which made the ending bitter. On learning of Himmler's secret peace talks in April 1945, Hitler called them the worst treachery he had ever known.

In the 1976 film The Eagle Has Landed, a fictional Heinrich Himmler backs a plot to kidnap which leader?

Winston Churchill is the target of the raid on a quiet Norfolk village. In the film Himmler launches the mission behind Hitler's back, then destroys the letter that authorised it.

Which subject did Heinrich Himmler study in Munich, later applying its ideas of selective breeding to people?

Agriculture earned him a diploma in 1922, though he ended up in a low-paid office job. As SS chief he proposed using what he had learned as a farmer to engineer the German population.

Which title did Heinrich Himmler hold from 1929 to 1945 as head of the SS, Hitler's black-uniformed elite?

Reichsführer was at first just the name of a post in a force of about 290 men. After 1934 it became the highest SS rank, equal to a field marshal in the army.

Which future deputy, assassinated in Prague in 1942, did Heinrich Himmler hire in 1931 to run SS intelligence?

Reinhard Heydrich built the SD and went on to head the whole Nazi security apparatus. At his funeral Himmler was chief mourner, gave the eulogy and took charge of his two young sons.

Which SA chief, once admired by the young Heinrich Himmler, was shot in the 1934 purge Himmler helped to plan?

Ernst Röhm refused the offer to kill himself and was shot by two SS officers. With his three-million-strong SA neutralised, the SS became independent and answerable only to Hitler.

Which admiral, named Hitler's successor in 1945, refused Heinrich Himmler a place in his short-lived government?

Karl Dönitz turned down Himmler's repeated offers to serve as his second-in-command. He dismissed him from all his posts on 6 May 1945, two days before Germany's surrender.

In which Christian tradition was Heinrich Himmler raised, before he set the SS the task of replacing Christianity?

Catholic belief stayed with him through his student years, but in 1923–24 he abandoned it for the occult and Germanic myth. He later said the SS must give Germans a non-Christian basis for their lives.

What was the original job of the SS, the small force Heinrich Himmler joined in 1925 and later made an empire?

Acting as bodyguards for Hitler was the task of the early SS, a small arm of the far larger SA. Under Himmler it came to run the police, the concentration camps and an army of its own.

Which mobile SS killing squads under Heinrich Himmler followed the German army into the Soviet Union?

Einsatzgruppen had begun as teams that secured government papers in newly occupied territory. Repurposed as death squads, they had already murdered some 65,000 civilians in Poland by the end of 1939.

Which last-ditch militia of boys and older men did Hitler order Heinrich Himmler to raise in September 1944?

Volkssturm units took in all males from sixteen to sixty, over the protests of Armaments Minister Albert Speer. Poorly armed and barely trained, about 175,000 of them died in the war's final months.

Soldiers of which Allied country were holding Heinrich Himmler prisoner when he killed himself in May 1945?

Britain's Second Army held him in northern Germany after former Soviet prisoners of war stopped him at a checkpoint. His forged papers bore a stamp that fleeing SS men were known to use.

What was the profession of Margarete Boden, seven years his senior, whom Heinrich Himmler married in 1928?

Nurse and part owner of a small private clinic, she shared his interest in herbal medicine and homoeopathy. She sold her share to buy the plot where the couple tried, mostly in vain, to raise livestock.

Which daughter of Heinrich Himmler, nicknamed Püppi, stayed devoted to his memory and later aided former SS men?

Gudrun never renounced her father and became a prominent figure in Stille Hilfe, which gave legal and financial help to former SS members. In the early 1960s she also worked for West German intelligence.

Hedwig Potthast, with whom Heinrich Himmler had two children, first joined his staff in 1936 in which role?

Secretary to Himmler from 1936, she became his mistress within a few years and left her job in 1941. His wife learned of the affair and chose to tolerate it for the sake of their daughter.

What was the job of Felix Kersten, who eased Heinrich Himmler's stomach pains and became a go-between in 1945?

Masseur Felix Kersten won Himmler's trust by relieving his chronic pain. Having moved to Sweden, he served as an intermediary in the SS chief's secret contacts with the Swedish Red Cross.

Which Swedish count did Heinrich Himmler ask in April 1945 to carry a surrender offer to the Western Allies?

Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, met him at the Swedish consulate in Lübeck. Himmler posed as Germany's provisional leader and offered to surrender in the west but not to the Soviets.

Which SS programme, founded by Heinrich Himmler, ran maternity homes to raise the number of 'racially pure' births?

Lebensborn, meaning 'fount of life', was set up to counter Germany's falling birth rate. It encouraged unmarried women to give birth anonymously and arranged adoptions by SS families.

Which SS research society did Heinrich Himmler found in 1935 to seek proof of an ancient Germanic master race?

Ahnenerbe means 'ancestral heritage'. Its academics were sent around the globe to find evidence that Germans descended from a superior Aryan race, a claim mainstream scholars rejected.

Which Renaissance castle in Westphalia did Heinrich Himmler take over in 1934 as a ceremonial centre for the SS?

Wewelsburg was leased for 100 years at a symbolic rent of one Reichsmark a year. Himmler meant to expand the triangular castle into the central cult site of the SS.

Which medieval military order did Heinrich Himmler treat as a model for the SS, seizing its Vienna church in 1939?

Teutonic Knights supplied the image Himmler wanted: he saw the SS as a chivalric order of new Germans. The real order had been outlawed by the Nazis a year earlier, in 1938.

Which skull-decorated item did Heinrich Himmler award to SS men and insist was returned when its owner died?

A ring bearing a death's head was Himmler's personal gift to SS men, engraved inside with his signature. From 1938 those of the dead were to be stored in a chest at an SS castle.

Which luxury goods did Allach, an SS-run factory prized by Heinrich Himmler, make with concentration camp labour?

Porcelain figurines of soldiers and animals from Allach were one of Himmler's favourite projects. The double-lightning mark on them has been described as a play on the crossed swords of Meissen.

Heinrich Himmler sent SS men to Italy in 1943 to seize a manuscript of which Roman historian's Germania?

Tacitus described the Germanic tribes in the Germania, and the Codex Aesinas preserves it. The SS detachment left empty-handed because the manuscript was hidden in a chest they overlooked.

Which tenth-century German king did Heinrich Himmler revere, holding SS ceremonies at his tomb in Quedlinburg?

Henry the Fowler was, to Himmler, the first German king, and he declared the tomb a site of pilgrimage. There are indications that Himmler even saw himself as the king's reincarnation.

Heinrich Himmler backed Hanns Hörbiger's discredited theory that the cosmos was built from which substance?

Ice made up moons, planets and even the ether in Hörbiger's cosmology, which had no scientific support. Himmler wanted the SS expedition he sponsored in Asia to gather evidence for it.

Heinrich Himmler set a team of SS researchers to collect records of which historical persecutions for nine years?

Witch trials, Himmler hoped, would prove that the Church had tried to wipe out the German heritage. The planned propaganda book never appeared, and one historian dubbed the regime Europe's first 'pro-witch' government.

In which occupied city did Heinrich Himmler give secret 1943 speeches that spoke openly of exterminating the Jews?

Poznań, then called Posen, heard two such speeches in October 1943, one to SS officers and one to party leaders. Hitler authorised them so that no senior Nazi could later deny knowing of the killings.

In which Soviet city did Heinrich Himmler turn pale and sway while watching a mass shooting in August 1941?

Minsk was the first place he had seen people killed, and an aide had to steady him. Shaken, and worried about the effect on his men, he decided that other methods of killing should be found.

Which camp did Heinrich Himmler tour in July 1942, also inspecting a new IG Farben plant being built nearby?

Auschwitz had been greatly expanded on his orders, and during the two-day visit he was shown a mass killing in a gas chamber. The chemical plant was going up in the nearby town of Monowitz.

Which scheme did Heinrich Himmler commission in 1941 to clear conquered lands for millions of German settlers?

Generalplan Ost called for some 31 million people to be expelled, starved or used as forced labour so that ten million Germans could take their land. Himmler expected it to take twenty to thirty years.

What did SS men posing as Poles seize at Gleiwitz in 1939, in a false-flag scheme named after Heinrich Himmler?

A radio station on the border was stormed so that a short anti-German message could be broadcast in Polish. The invasion of Poland, with the staged raids as its pretext, began the next day.

Which failed attempt to kill Hitler led to Heinrich Himmler taking over the two-million-man Replacement Army?

The 20 July plot implicated the Replacement Army's own commander, General Friedrich Fromm, so Hitler gave Himmler the post. Embarrassed at missing the conspiracy, Himmler had over 5,000 suspects arrested.

Which river gave its name to the army group Heinrich Himmler led against the Red Army in early 1945?

Vistula was the name of the hastily formed army group he took over in January 1945, to the dismay of the General Staff. He had no military experience, and Hitler replaced him within two months.

What served as Heinrich Himmler's headquarters in 1945 while he commanded an army group against the Soviets?

A special train named Steiermark was his command post, with one telephone line, poor maps and no signal unit. He seldom left it, worked about four hours a day and took a long nap after lunch.

Which panzer general and army chief of staff urged Hitler in 1945 to sideline Heinrich Himmler in the field?

Heinz Guderian demanded that General Walther Wenck be given charge of the counter-attack known as Operation Solstice. It bogged down within days, and Hitler sent Guderian himself on forced medical leave in March.

What was Heinrich Himmler disguised as when he fled in May 1945 with forged papers in the name Hitzinger?

A sergeant called Heinrich Hitzinger was the identity in his forged paybook. He had made few other preparations and set off with a small band of companions and no final destination in mind.

In which north German town did Heinrich Himmler die in May 1945, at the headquarters of an Allied army?

Lüneburg housed the army headquarters where he was taken once he admitted who he was. He had spent the previous two days being moved between prisoner camps.

What happened to the body of Heinrich Himmler after his death in Allied custody in 1945?

He was buried in an unmarked grave soon afterwards, and its location remains unknown. Hitler had already expelled him from the party and stripped him of every office, so he died without rank or title.

Which SS liaison officer between Heinrich Himmler and Hitler, Eva Braun's brother-in-law, was shot for desertion?

Hermann Fegelein was caught in civilian clothes preparing to desert, the day before news of Himmler's secret peace talks reached the bunker. He was court-martialled and shot.

Which failed 1923 uprising in Munich did Heinrich Himmler join, an event that set him on a life in politics?

Beer Hall Putsch involvement cost Himmler his job. Police questioned him but lacked the evidence to charge him, and he had to move back in with his parents.

Katrin Himmler, author of a critical book on her great-uncle Heinrich Himmler, married a man from which country?

Israel was the homeland of the man she married. She is the granddaughter of Himmler's younger brother Ernst and traced the lives of all three siblings in The Himmler Brothers.

Which Gauleiter of Lower Silesia did Hitler's last will name to replace Heinrich Himmler as head of the SS?

Karl Hanke had impressed Hitler with his fanatical defence of besieged Breslau. He held the SS title only briefly: captured in May 1945, he was killed by his guards the following month during an escape attempt.