Portrait: AI-generated imagined likeness
Politician · Military leader
A leader of the SS in Nazi Germany and a person deeply involved in the Holocaust. The police, concentration camps, and SS organizations were integrated, and violent rule was institutionalized. This is important when considering 20th century totalitarianism.
View in catalogMunich
Birth
Berlin
Work
The Holocaust
1941–1945
War · Leader
Map: Natural Earth (PD)
Born in Munich, he became involved in right-wing movements in the unstable German society after World War I. He demonstrated his organizational management skills within the Nazi Party and promoted the expansion of the SS.
He took control of the SS and police organization and supported the concentration camp system and the extermination of Jews. By linking the state bureaucracy with the party organization, he created the core of his reign of terror.
Himmler presented himself as an orderly bureaucrat and proceeded with genocide as an administrative procedure. It points to the danger that modern organizational capabilities can be used for violence.
When you study Himmler, you realize that the Holocaust was not just the madness of a few, but an organized crime involving the administration, railways, police, and record-keeping. This will help us think about the relationship between modern states and violence. We can also learn about the dangers in which the system supported the genocide.
