A program of public works, rearmament and forced labor helps bring the economy under control. Inflation comes down, the currency is stabilised and full employment achieved. Himmler is made commander of all German police units outside Prussia. controls the Prussian units. Together with Göring, Himmler sets up concentration camps for the interment of opponents.
1934 - In April Himmler is made assistant chief of the Gestapo, the Prussian secret state police established and led by Göring. He plays a key role in the 'Night of the Long Knives' massacre of rebellious leaders of the SA on the night of 30 June. With opposition from the SA removed, Himmler gives sweeping powers to the SS, enabling policing, security, intelligence gathering and espionage.
1936 - Himmler assumes full control of the Gestapo and concentration camps across all of Germany when all authority for the Prussian secret state police is transferred from Göring on 17 June. Himmler now has control of all the political and criminal police forces throughout the Third Reich, allowing the SS to infiltrate the regular police.
1938 - Support for Hitler is further buoyed by his policy of foreign expansion. Austria is annexed on 13 March. The Sudetenland in the north of is ceded to Germany on 30 September.
1939 - Bohemia and Moravia are occupied by Germany in March, while Slovakia is made a puppet state. German troops invade on 1 September. and France declare war on Germany two days later. The Second World War has begun. Germany invades France and quickly takes control of Western Europe.
In October Himmler is appointed Reich commissar for the strengthening of German nationhood and given absolute authority in the newly annexed Polish territory. In these positions he oversees the dispossession and internment of Polish Jews and advocates the use of eugenics to breed an Aryan "master race" sired by SS men mated to "German women and girls of good blood".
1940 - The 'Battle of Britain' rages in the skies as the British Royal Air Force (RAF) desperately combats wave after wave of aerial attacks and bombing raids by the while launching counteroffensive bombing missions into Germany. Though outnumbered by four to one the RAF is able to inflict enough damage to the German forces for Hitler to suspend 'Operation Sealion', the proposed invasion of Britain by sea. By the end of September, the 'Battle of Britain' is effectively over. Germany has suffered its first major defeat of the war.
1941 - Germany invades the on 22 June. Himmler is appointed the chief administrator of the occupied Soviet territory and charged with the elimination of the Soviet communist system from the region.
1942 - On 20 January the Nazis complete the planning for the Endlosung ('Final Solution'), the extermination of the Jews, Gipsies, Slavs, homosexuals, communists, and other "undesirables" and "decadents" in death camps run by the SS and controlled by the Gestapo. About 6 million European Jews die in the following 'Holocaust'. Most (about 4.5 million) of those killed come from Poland and the Soviet Union. About 125,000 are German Jews.
Himmler oversees the mass murder of Jews, communists and other opponents in the Ukraine. He organizes the systematic exploitation and slaughter of millions of Jews in extermination camps in Poland. After fainting at the sight of 100 Jews being shot on the eastern front, he orders a "more humane means" of execution - the use of poison gas in specially constructed chambers disguised as shower rooms.
1943 - Himmler is made minister of the interior and plenipotentiary for Reich administration, giving him control of the courts and civil service. He expands the Waffen-SS (armed SS) until, with 35 divisions, it rivals the army. He gains control of the intelligence network, military armaments, the Volkssturm ('People's Storm Troop'), and later the Werewolf, guerrillas force intended to continue the struggle after the war.
The war turns against Germany in the winter of 1942-43 when the Soviets win victory at Stalingrad. When the German forces laying siege to the city are encircled and trapped by a Soviet counteroffensive Hitler refuses to allow them to attempt an escape. They surrender on 2 February 1943. The German Sixth Army has been effectively destroyed in what is at the time the most catastrophic military defeat in German history. Over 500,000 of the German-led troops are dead. By the end of 1943, the Soviets have broken through the German siege of Leningrad and recaptured much of the Ukrainian Republic.
The Western Allies take Africa in 1943, land in Sicily and Italy, and prepare for the 'D-Day' landings on the Normandy beaches in France on 6 June 1944 and the invasion of Germany six months later. Soviet troops, meanwhile, advance from the east. The Nazis call for "total war" against the Allies.
On 4 October 1943, in a speech given to SS group leaders in Pozan in Poland, Himmler publicly admits the reality of the 'Holocaust', saying, "… I shall speak to you here with all frankness of a very serious subject. We shall now discuss it absolutely openly among ourselves; nevertheless we shall never speak of it in public. I mean the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It is one of those things that are easy to say. 'The Jewish race is to be exterminated,' says every party member. 'That's clear, it's part of our program, elimination of the Jews, extermination, right, we'll do it.' … This is a glorious page in our history that has never been written and shall never be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if … we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers. … We have taken from them what wealth they had. I have issued a strict order … that this wealth should, as a matter of course, be handed over to the Reich without reserve. We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us."
1944 - In July, following an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler, Himmler is made director of home front operations and chief of the German armed forces operating within Germany.
1945 - In March, as the Western forces reach the Rhine River, Soviet armies overrun most of Czechoslovakia and press on toward Berlin. By April an Allied victory in Europe is certain. When Hitler discovers that Himmler has been conducting clandestine negotiations for surrender, he is stripped of all offices and expelled from the Nazi Party. He attempts to flee arrest but is captured by British troops near Bremen on 21 May. Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker on 30 April as Soviet troops storm the capital. On 7 May Germany surrenders unconditionally. Himmler suicides by taking poison on 23 may in Lüneburg in Germany.
About 51 million people have died in Europe during the war, including over 26 million Soviets, about seven million Germans, almost seven million Poles, nearly two million Yugoslavs, a million Romanians, 810,000 French, 750,000 Hungarians, 525,000 Austrians, 520,000 Greeks, 410,000 Italians, 400,000 Czechs, 390,000 British, and 250,000 Dutch.
Comment: Himmler, the architect of the 'Holocaust'. These days you might expect to find someone with Himmler's ambition, cunning and organizational abilities at the head of a bank, or insurance company, ruthlessly extracting profits from the weak, the marginalised, and the dupes of the latest round of economic propaganda. Of course, this person would, or perhaps does, have a locked desk drawer full of the most unutterable trash, and a psychotic obsession with preserving his caste's "precious bodily fluids".
