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Heinrich Himmler And His Life Essay

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Heinrich Himmler was born on October 7th, 1900 in Munich to a middle-class Bavarian family. His father was Joseph Gebhard Himmler, a secondary-school teacher and principal. His mother was Anna Maria Himmler (maiden name Heyder), a devout Catholic and extremely attentive mother. Heinrich had an older brother, Gebhard Ludwig Himmler, and a younger brother, Ernst Hermann Himmler. Heinrich was named after his godparent, Prince Heinrich of Wittelsbach of the royal family of Bavaria, who was tutored by Gebhard Himmler. Educated at secondary school in Landshut, Himmler served as an officer cadet in the 11th Bavarian Regiment at the end of WW1, although he saw no active service. After working briefly as a salesman for a fertilizer manufacturing firm, Heinrich Himmler joined the Nazi party and in the November of 1923 participated in the Beer-Hall Putsch as a standard bearer at the side of Ernst Rohm. All of these roles combined together were a major reason for Heinrich Himmler being chosen for the jobs he received later in his militaristic life. It is surprising, that Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the primary architect of the Holocaust, has not attracted the attentions of more biographers. For all that he had taken part in for the history of the Third Reich, he appears to lack the “infamous charisma” of Heydrich or Hitler, and because of this lack of “infamous charisma” he has been presented only rarely as a primary subject for a book about the holocaust and the

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