Editing Heinrich Himmler (section)

== Final Solution, the Holocaust, racial policy, and eugenics ==
{{Further|Final Solution|the Holocaust|Nazism and race|Racial policy of Nazi Germany|Nazi eugenics}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 152-11-12, Dachau, Konzentrationslager, Besuch Himmlers.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|Himmler visiting the [[Dachau concentration camp]] in 1936]]
{{The Holocaust sidebar |Responsibility}}

Nazi racial policies, including the notion that people who were racially inferior had no right to live, date back to the earliest days of the party; Hitler discusses this in {{lang|de|[[Mein Kampf]]}}.{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=86}} Around the time of the [[German declaration of war against the United States|German declaration of war on the United States]] in December 1941, [[Reich Chancellery meeting of 12 December 1941|Hitler resolved that the Jews of Europe were to be "exterminated"]].{{sfn|Longerich, Chapter 17|2003}} Heydrich arranged a meeting, held on 20 January 1942 at [[Wannsee Conference|Wannsee]], a suburb of Berlin. Attended by top Nazi officials, it was used to outline the plans for the "[[Final Solution|final solution to the Jewish question]]". Heydrich detailed how those Jews able to work would be [[Extermination through labor|worked to death]]; those unable to work would be killed outright. Heydrich calculated the number of Jews to be killed at 11&nbsp;million and told the attendees that Hitler had placed Himmler in charge of the plan.{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=264}}

In June 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in [[Prague]] in [[Operation Anthropoid]], led by [[Jozef Gabčík]] and [[Jan Kubiš]], members of Czechoslovakia's army-in-exile. Both men had been trained by the British [[Special Operations Executive]] for the mission to kill Heydrich.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=280}} During the two funeral services, Himmler—the chief mourner—took charge of Heydrich's two young sons, and he gave the eulogy in Berlin.{{sfn|Manvell|Fraenkel|2007|p=129}} On 9 June, after discussions with Himmler and [[Karl Hermann Frank]], Hitler ordered brutal reprisals for Heydrich's death.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=280}} Over 13,000 people were arrested, and the village of [[Lidice]] was [[Lidice massacre|razed to the ground]]; its male inhabitants and all adults in the village of [[Ležáky]] were murdered. At least 1,300 people were executed by firing squads.{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|pp=280–285}}{{sfn|Kershaw|2008|p=714}} Himmler took over leadership of the RSHA and stepped up the pace of the killing of Jews in {{lang|de|Aktion Reinhard}} ([[Operation Reinhard]]), named in Heydrich's honour.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=570–571}} He ordered the {{lang|de|Aktion Reinhard}} camps—three [[extermination camp]]s—to be constructed at [[Belzec extermination camp|Bełżec]], [[Sobibor extermination camp|Sobibór]], and [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]].{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=282–283}}

Initially the victims were killed with [[Nazi gas van|gas vans]] or by firing squad, but these methods proved impracticable for an operation of this scale.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=256–257}} In August 1941, Himmler attended the shooting of 100 Jews at [[Minsk]]. A "military virgin", this was the first time he had heard a shot fired in anger or seen dead people and, while  looking into the open grave, his coat and perhaps his face were splashed by the brains of a victim. He went very green and pale and swayed. Karl Wolff jumped forward, held him steady and led him away from the grave.{{sfn| Trigg |2020 |p= 172}} Nauseated and shaken by the experience,{{sfn|Gilbert|1987|p=191}} he was concerned about the impact such actions would have on the mental health of his SS men.

He decided that alternate methods of killing should be found.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=547}}{{sfn|Gerwarth|2011|p=199}} On his orders, by early 1942 the camp at Auschwitz had been greatly expanded, including the addition of [[gas chamber]]s, where victims were killed using the pesticide [[Zyklon B]].{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=295, 299–300}} Himmler visited the camp in person on 17 and 18 July 1942. He was given a demonstration of a mass killing using the gas chamber in Bunker&nbsp;2 and toured the building site of the new [[IG Farben]] plant being constructed at the nearby town of [[Monowitz]].{{sfn|Steinbacher|2005|p=106}} By the end of the war, at least 5.5&nbsp;million Jews had been killed by the Nazi regime;{{sfn|Evans|2008|p=318}} most estimates range closer to 6&nbsp;million.{{sfn|Yad Vashem, 2008}}{{sfn|Introduction: Holocaust Memorial Museum}} Himmler visited the camp at Sobibór in early 1943, by which time 250,000 people had been killed at that location alone. After witnessing a gassing, he gave 28 people promotions and ordered the operation of the camp to be wound down. In [[Sobibor uprising|a prisoner revolt]] that October, the remaining prisoners killed most of the guards and SS personnel. Several hundred prisoners escaped; about a hundred were immediately re-captured and killed. Some of the escapees joined partisan units operating in the area. The camp was dismantled by December 1943.{{sfn|Evans|2008|pp=288–289}}

The Nazis also targeted [[Romani people|Romani]] (Gypsies) as "asocial" and "criminals".{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=229}} By 1935, they were confined into special camps away from ethnic Germans.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=229}} In 1938, Himmler issued an order in which he said that the "Gypsy question" would be determined by "race".{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=230}} Himmler believed that the Romani were originally Aryan but had become a mixed race; only the "racially pure" were to be allowed to live.{{sfn|Lewy|2000|pp=135–137}} In 1939, Himmler ordered thousands of Gypsies to be sent to the Dachau concentration camp and by 1942, ordered all Romani sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=230, 670}}

Himmler was one of the main architects of the Holocaust,{{sfn|Zentner|Bedürftig|1991|p=1150}}{{sfn|Shirer|1960|p=236}}{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=3}} using his deep belief in the racist Nazi ideology to justify the murder of millions of victims. Longerich surmises that Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich designed the Holocaust during a period of intensive meetings and exchanges in April–May 1942.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|p=564}} The Nazis planned to [[Intelligenzaktion|kill Polish intellectuals]] and restrict non-Germans in the General Government and conquered territories to a fourth-grade education.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=429, 451}} They further wanted to breed a [[master race]] of racially pure Nordic Aryans in Germany. As a student of agriculture and a farmer, Himmler was acquainted with the principles of [[selective breeding]], which he proposed to apply to humans. He believed that he could engineer the German populace, for example, through [[Nazi eugenics|eugenics]], to be Nordic in appearance within several decades of the end of the war.{{sfn|Pringle|2006}}

=== Posen speeches ===
{{main|Posen speeches}}

On 4 October 1943, during a secret meeting with top SS officials in the city of [[Poznań]] (Posen), and on 6 October 1943, in a speech to the party elite—the ''[[Gauleiter]]s'' and ''[[Reichsleiter]]s''—Himmler referred explicitly to the "extermination" ({{langx|de|Ausrottung}}) of the Jewish people.{{sfn|Sereny|1996|pp=388–389}}

A translated excerpt from the speech of 4 October reads:{{sfn|Posen speech (1943), audio recording}}
{{blockquote|
I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. Just as we did not hesitate [[Night of the Long Knives|on 30 June 1934]], to perform our duty as ordered and put comrades who had failed up against the wall and execute them, we also never spoke about it, nor will we ever speak about it. Let us thank God that we had within us enough self-evident fortitude never to discuss it among us, and we never talked about it. Every one of us was horrified, and yet every one clearly understood that we would do it next time, when the order is given and when it becomes necessary.

I am talking about the "Jewish evacuation": the extermination of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. "The Jewish people is being exterminated", every Party member will tell you, "perfectly clear, it's part of our plans, we're eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter." And then they turn up, the upstanding 80&nbsp;million Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say the others are all swines, but this particular one is a splendid Jew. But none has observed it, endured it. Most of you here know what it means when 100 corpses lie next to each other, when there are 500 or when there are 1,000. To have endured this and at the same time to have remained a decent person—with exceptions due to human weaknesses—has made us tough, and is a glorious chapter that has not and will not be spoken of. Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war. If the Jews were still part of the German nation, we would most likely arrive now at the state we were at in 1916 and '17&nbsp;...{{sfn|Posen speech (1943), transcript}}{{sfn|IMT : Volume 29|p=145f}}
}}

Because the Allies had indicated that they were going to pursue criminal charges for German war crimes, Hitler tried to gain the loyalty and silence of his subordinates by making them all parties to the ongoing genocide. Hitler therefore authorised Himmler's speeches to ensure that all party leaders were complicit in the crimes and could not later deny knowledge of the killings.{{sfn|Sereny|1996|pp=388–389}}

=== Germanization policies and ''Generalplan Ost'' ===
{{main|Germanization|Generalplan Ost}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 183-B01718, Ausstellung "Planung und Aufbau im Osten".jpg|thumb|[[Rudolf Hess]], Himmler, [[Philipp Bouhler]], [[Fritz Todt]], [[Reinhard Heydrich]], and others listening to [[Konrad Meyer]] at a {{lang|de|[[Generalplan Ost]]}} exhibition, 20 March 1941]]
As [[Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Nationhood]] (RKFDV) with the incorporated [[Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle|VoMi]], Himmler was deeply involved in the [[Germanization]] program for the East, particularly Poland. As laid out in ''[[Generalplan Ost]]'', the aim was to enslave, expel or exterminate the native population and to make {{lang|de|Lebensraum}} ("living space") for {{lang|de|Volksdeutsche}} (ethnic Germans). He continued his plans to colonise the east, even when many Germans were reluctant to relocate there, and despite negative effects on the war effort.{{sfn|Cecil|1972|p=191}}{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=543}} Approximately 11 million Slavic and 3.4&nbsp;million Jewish inhabitants of Eastern Europe were killed in Nazi Germany's extermination campaigns during the implementation of ''Generalplan Ost''.{{sfn|Lens|2019}}{{sfn|Naimark|2023|pp=359, 377}}

Himmler's racial groupings began with the {{lang|de|[[Volksliste]]}}, the classification of people deemed of German blood. These included Germans who had collaborated with Germany before the war, but also those who considered themselves German but had been neutral; those who were partially "Polonized" but "Germanizable"; and Germans who were of Polish nationality.{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=544}} Himmler ordered that those who refused to be classified as ethnic Germans should be deported to concentration camps, have their children taken away, or be assigned to forced labour.{{sfn|Nicholas|2006|p=247}}{{sfn|Lukas|2001|p=113}} Himmler's belief that "it is in the nature of German blood to resist" led to his conclusion that Balts or Slavs who resisted Germanization were racially superior to more compliant ones.{{sfn|Cecil|1972|p=199}} He declared that no drop of German blood would be lost or left behind to mingle with an "alien race".{{sfn|Overy|2004|p=543}}

The plan also included the [[Kidnapping of children by Nazi Germany|kidnapping of Eastern European children by Nazi Germany]].{{sfn|Sereny|1999}} Himmler urged:
{{blockquote|
Obviously in such a mixture of peoples, there will always be some racially good types. Therefore, I think that it is our duty to take their children with us, to remove them from their environment, if necessary by robbing, or stealing them. Either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people,&nbsp;... or we destroy that blood.{{sfn|Kohn-Bramstedt|1998|p=244}}
}}

The "racially valuable" children were to be removed from all contact with Poles and raised as Germans, with German names.{{sfn|Sereny|1999}} Himmler declared: "We have faith above all in this our own blood, which has flowed into a foreign nationality through the vicissitudes of German history. We are convinced that our own philosophy and ideals will reverberate in the spirit of these children who racially belong to us."{{sfn|Sereny|1999}} The children were to be adopted by German families.{{sfn|Lukas|2001|p=113}} Children who passed muster at first but were later rejected were taken to {{lang|de|[[Kinder KZ]]}} in [[Łódź Ghetto]], where most of them eventually died.{{sfn|Sereny|1999}}

By January 1943, Himmler reported that 629,000 ethnic Germans had been resettled; however, most resettled Germans did not live in the envisioned small farms, but in temporary camps or quarters in towns. Half a million residents of the annexed Polish territories, as well as from Slovenia, Alsace, Lorraine, and Luxembourg were deported to the [[General Government]] or sent to Germany as slave labour.{{sfn|Longerich|2012|pp=578–580}} Himmler instructed that the German nation should view all foreign workers brought to Germany as a danger to their German blood.{{sfn|Rupp|1979|p=125}} In accordance with German racial laws, sexual relations between Germans and foreigners were forbidden as {{lang|de|[[Rassenschande]]}} (race defilement).{{sfn|Majer|2003|pp=180, 855}}