Himmler was close to his first daughter, Gudrun, whom he nicknamed Püppi (" dolly "); he phoned her every few days and visited as often as he could.

He visited Hitler's mountain retreat at Berchtesgaden and interviewed many leading Nazis, including Hitler himself, Schutzstaffel or " SS " leader Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.

Reichsfuhrer Himmler visited Zamość in August 1942 and ordered that the buildings of the old city be demolished immediately and replaced by a " German town ".

Himmler visited the Wewelsburg for the first time on 3 November 1933.

Kolo remained a transfer point for Jews deported to Łódź, and Nazi officials, including Heinrich Himmler, visited the town.

Höss testified that Himmler visited the camp in 1942 and " watched in detail one processing from beginning to end ".

On 30 June 1941 Himmler visited the newly-formed Bezirk Bialystok district and pronounced that more forces were needed in the area, due to potential risks of partisan warfare.

Before and during World War II, he was sympathetic to Nazi Germany, which he visited in 1937 at the invitation of Heinrich Himmler.

Heinrich Himmler visited Norway in 1941.

Numerous future members and leaders of the Nazi Party had served in the Freikorps, including Ernst Röhm, future head of the Sturmabteilung, or SA, Heinrich Himmler, future head of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, and Rudolf Höß, the future Kommandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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

Himmler appointed Theodor Eicke, a convicted felon and ardent Nazi, to run the camp in June 1933.

Himmler, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, and other SS officials visiting Mauthausen concentration camp in 1941

Himmler inspects a prisoner of war camp in Russia, circa 1941

On 21 April, Himmler met with Norbert Masur, a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress, to discuss the release of Jewish concentration camp inmates.

50 stills from the filming in Krün near Mittenwald were later found and from these, surviving prisoners were able to identify 29 camp inmates who worked for Riefenstahl and were then deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in the first weeks of March 1943 following Himmler ’ s December 1942 decree.

The camp commander responsible was demoted by Himmler to the regular rank of soldier and sent to the Hungarian front ; he died there in 1945.

On 13 October 1941, Heinrich Himmler gave SS and Police Leader Lublin, SS Brigadeführer Odilo Globocnik, two orders which were closely connected with each other: to start Germanizing the area around Zamość and to start work on the first German Nazi extermination camp in the General Government near Bełżec.

On April 11, 1945 Himmler agreed to have the camp handed over without a fight.

On 13 October 1941, SS and Police Leader Odilo Globocnik ( headquarters in Lublin ) received a verbal order from Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to start immediate construction work on the first Aktion Reinhard camp at Bełżec, in the General Government, Poland ( operational March 1942 ).

Begun on June 17, 1940, the camp was completed the following year and named after Niederhagen Forest, the name Himmler had given to the forest outside the castle several years earlier.

Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as " the first concentration camp for political prisoners.

Heinrich Himmler, Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as " the first concentration camp for political prisoners.

Himmler is talking to Franz Ziereis, camp commandant.

Also during the same month, Himmler set up the first official concentration camp at Dachau.

Following Hitler's 22 August 1943 order for Heinrich Himmler to use concentration camp workers for A-4 production, 107 inmates arrived at Nordhausen from Buchenwald on 28 August 1943, followed by 1, 223 on 2 September.

Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police of Munich, officially described the camp as " the first concentration camp for political prisoners.

He succeeded Arthur Liebehenschel, considered by Himmler to be too " soft " with the prisoners, as the third and final commandant of Auschwitz from May 11, 1944 until the final dissolution of the camp in early 1945.

During the earlier part of the fighting in the Soviet Union, the RSHA also had operational control of certain Waffen-SS units which Himmler had withheld from the Army High Command ( OKH ); these units, the 1st and 2nd SS Infantry Brigades and the SS Cavalry Brigade, were formed from former Standarten of the Totenkopfverbände or concentration camp service.

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.

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 established his command centre at Schneidemühl, using his special train, Sonderzug Steiermark, as his headquarters.

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