Himmler further established the SS Race and Settlement Main Office ( Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA ), a racist and antisemitic organisation.

In addition to his military ambitions, Himmler established the beginnings of a parallel economy under the umbrella of the SS.

In February / March 1945 the SS Reichsführer, Heinrich Himmler, established the Harz Fortress to defend central Germany from the western allies.

In February 1945, the head of the Swedish office of the WJC, Hilel Storch, established contact through an intermediary with SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Gregor Strasser established and commanded the Sturmbataillon Niederbayern (), with young Heinrich Himmler as his adjutant.

They also managed to prevent the archives being taken to Berlin and absorbed in Himmler ’ s Ahnenerbe organization, and established that the Institute was the private property of Hörbiger's sons.

On 1 January 1932, Reichsführer-SS Himmler appointed him chief of the newly established SS Race and Settlement Main Office ( Rasse-und Siedlungshauptamt or RuSHA ), a racist and antisemitic organization.

* Ahnenerbe " Ancestral Heritage "-a think tank established under the patronage of Heinrich Himmler to research the history of the Aryan race and prove its superiority.

The SS-VT was renamed the " Waffen-SS " in a speech made by Adolf Hitler in July 1940 ; on 1 August Himmler established the Kommandoamt der Waffen-SS ( Waffen-SS Command Office ) within the new SS-Führungshauptamt ( FHA ) under Gruppenführer Hans Jüttner.

Himmler took Rascher's side and a Human Cancer Testing Station was established at Dachau.

Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei ( Kripo: Criminal Police ), merging it with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei ( SiPo: Security Police ), under Heydrich's command.

The SS became an independent organisation under the command of the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler.

Late in World War II, Hitler charged Himmler with the command of the Army Group Upper Rhine and the Army Group Vistula ; he failed to achieve his assigned objectives and Hitler replaced him in these posts.

Shortly thereafter, Himmler created the Kriminalpolizei ( Kripo: criminal police ), merging it with the Gestapo into the Sicherheitspolizei ( SiPo: security police ), under Heydrich's command.

Nominally under the authority of Himmler, the Waffen-SS developed a fully militarised structure of command and operations.

As second in command of the SS and then Reichsführer-SS, Himmler was in regular contact with Hitler to arrange for SS men as bodyguards ; Himmler was not involved with Nazi Party policy-making decisions in the years leading up to the seizure of power.

Himmler adopted the doctrine of Auftragstaktik (" mission command "), whereby orders were given as broad directives, with authority delegated downward to the appropriate level to carry them out in a timely and efficient manner.

Himmler worsened his own position when he attempted to hold a military command during the last months of the war and proved totally incompetent as a field commander.

** All the police forces in Germany come under the command of Heinrich Himmler.

Himmler set up four Einsatzgruppen under the overall command of Reinhard Heydrich.

In 1944 Milch sided with Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler in attempting to convince Adolf Hitler to remove Göring from command of the Luftwaffe following the failed invasion of the Soviet Union.

Shortly thereafter, Himmler officially named Eicke chief of the Inspektion der Konzentrationslager ( Concentration Camps Inspectorate or CCI ) and promoted him to the rank of SS-Gruppenführer in command of the SS-Wachverbände.

Himmler personally requested Kaminski's assistance, and the latter obliged by gathering a task force of 1, 700 unmarried men and sending them ( some sources mentioned that they had four T-34 tanks, one SU-76 and few artillery pieces ) to Warsaw as a mixed regiment under field command of Kaminski's brigade chief-of-staff, SS-Sturmbannführer Yuri Frolov.

In 1941, just prior to Operation Barbarossa, Himmler selected Nebe to command Einsatzgruppe B behind Army Group Center in the east.

By 1937 he was an SS-Gruppenführer and considered third in command of the entire SS ( after Himmler and Heydrich ).

By now again in agreement with Himmler on the issue of futility of continuing the war, from February 1945 Wolff under Operation Sunrise took over command and management of intermediaries including Swiss-national Max Waibel, in order to make contact in Switzerland with the headquarters of the U. S. Office of Strategic Services, under Allen W. Dulles.

He was then chosen by Himmler to oversee the creation of, and then command the volunteer SS Division, SS-Division Wiking.

After the early war campaigns, Steiner was chosen by SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler to oversee the creation of, and then command the new volunteer SS Division, SS-Division Wiking.

The Police Battalions were organizationally and administratively under Chief of Police Kurt Daluege but operationally they were under the authority of regional SS-und Polizeiführer ( SS and Police Leaders ), who reported up a separate chain of command, bypassing Daluege, directly to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler.

To this end, Himmler took command first of the Gestapo ( itself developed from the Prussian Secret Police ) and later of all the regular and criminal investigation police, assuming the title Chef der Deutschen Polizei ( Chief of the German Police ).

The purpose of the Higher SS and Police Leader was to be a direct command authority for every SS and police unit in a given geographical region with such authority answering only to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler.

Moreover, these battalions were to be under the operative command and disposal of Reichsfuhrer of SS Heinrich Himmler.

: All German police forces come under the command of Heinrich Himmler.

This trio – Goebbels, Himmler and Speer – became the real centre of German government in the last year of the war, although Bormann used his privileged access to Hitler to thwart them when he could.

Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring at the meeting to formally hand over control of the Gestapo ( Berlin, 1934 ).

As facilitator and overseer of the concentration camps, Himmler directed the killing of some six million Jews, between 200, 000 and 500, 000 Romani people, and other victims ; the total number of civilians killed by the regime is estimated at eleven to fourteen million people.

Himmler was antisemitic by the time he went to university, but not exceptionally so ; students at his school would avoid their Jewish classmates.

During his second year at university, Himmler redoubled his attempts to pursue a military career.

Himmler admired Röhm because he was a decorated combat soldier, and at his suggestion, Himmler joined his antisemitic nationalist group, the Reichskriegsflagge.

Upon the resignation of SS commander Erhard Heiden in 1929, Himmler assumed the position of Reichsführer-SS with Hitler's approval ; he still carried out his duties at propaganda headquarters.

Himmler expected that each SS marriage should produce at least four children, thus creating a pool of genetically superior prospective SS members.

In March 1933, less than three months after the Nazis seized power, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau.

Himmler and Heydrich wanted to extend the power of the SS ; thus, they urged Hitler to form a national police force overseen by the SS, to guard Nazi Germany against its many enemies at the time — real and imagined.

Himmler expected that it would take twenty to thirty years to complete the plan, at a cost of 67 billion Reichsmarks.

Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11 million, and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan.

In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at Minsk.

Himmler visited the camp at Sobibor in early 1943, by which time 250, 000 people had been killed at that location alone.

By this time Himmler, who had been under the care of his doctor since 18 February, had fled to a sanatorium at Hohenlychen.

Himmler and two aides were stopped at a checkpoint on 21 May and detained.

* Heinrich Himmler at the Holocaust Research Project

* Register of the Heinrich Himmler Papers, 1914-1944 at the Hoover Institution Archives

Himmler at Henry's grave, 1938

The alliance was shaky at best, mainly because during this period Himmler was still cooperating with Bormann to gain more power at the expense of Göring and most of the traditional Reich administration ; Göring's loss of power had resulted in an overindulgence in the trappings of power and his strained relations with Goebbels made it difficult for a unified coalition to be formed, despite the attempts of Speer and Göring's Luftwaffe deputy Field Marshal Erhard Milch, to reconcile the two Party comrades.

However, the inability of Himmler to persuade Hitler to cease his support of Bormann, the defection of SS generals such as Obergruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt and his powerful subordinate Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo, to Bormann, soon persuaded Goebbels to align himself with the Secretary to the Führer at the end of 1944, thus accepting his subordinate position.

Leni Riefenstahl with Heinrich Himmler at Nuremberg in 1934