Heinrich Himmler was the commander of the German Schutzstaffel (SS) and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. As founder and officer-in-charge of the Nazi concentration camps and the Einsatzgruppen death squads, Himmler was responsible for implementing the extermination of between 6 and 12 million people. Based on US documents handed over to the German Federal Archives and the testimonies of Himmler's family and staff, this book examines how the unprepossessing pedantic youth grew into the obsessively scrupulous man. His superstitious nature led him to adopt herbalism, astrology, racial purity, eugenic marriage and, finally, Aryan superiority. Himmler constantly sought more power and became head of the Gestapo and Minister of the Interior. By the time he died he was the second most powerful man in Germany and regarded himself as Hitler's natural successor, going so far as to attempt to negotiate independent peace with the Allies. He committed suicide in 1945 shortly after being recognised on the Danish border disguised as a soldier. A month before his death Himmler had made a bizarre attempt to secure the position of ?Minister of Police' in post-war Germany. In this classic study the flawed Nazi leader comes across not as a megalomaniac or sadist ? for to the end he remained utterly oblivious of the implications of his actions in terms of human suffering ? but as a weak man, too timid to take independent action, but completely possessed by a dangerous dream. In Heinrich Himmler, Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, co-authors of Doctor Goebbels and Goering (Greenhill Books), have brought together all the known facts about the private life, the activities and beliefs of one of the most sinister of the Nazi leaders. SELLING POINTS: Traces the life of the most murderous and neurotic Nazi leader ? Rare material on Himmler from archive sources and interviews with his friends and family ? Written by two acclaimed Nazi scholars 16 pages of plates
