When it came time for Hitler to order the annihilation of the Jews, who better to select to carry it out than the man who was at once his most loyal follower and also in control of the apparatus necessary for its execution? And that is what Hitler did. The is not known, but what is known is that Himmler obeyed the order he received with his customary thoroughness and efficiency. Interestingly enough, for a man who has been demonized as the incarnation of evil, Himmler makes it clear in several speeches that he was not particularly antisemitic. He simply blindly obeyed, displaying almost more amorality than immorality.
Whatever misgivings Himmler may have had, he carried out his orders with an efficiency and a zeal that at once astonish and repel. The first murders were carried out by by shooting. As deadly as these shootings were, a more "efficient" method had to be found, one that would accelerate the killing and would at the same time spare the SS men the necessity to murder women and children in cold blood. The decision was made to use poison gases (hydrocyanic acid and carbon monoxide) in both stationary and mobile gas chambers in Poland. It is estimated that around 6 million Jews were killed during the Final Solution, along with as many as another 6 million non-Jews.
At the end of the war, Himmler made attempts to negotiate peace through the World Jewish Congress. Attempting to flee in disguise in May 1945, he was captured by British forces and admitted his identity. When a doctor was ordered to search him to ensure he did not have poison secreted on his person, he bit down on a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth and was dead in a few minutes. Like Hitler, he chose suicide as his way to exit the world.
ARYAN RACE
The idea of an Aryan race is certainly not the idea of the Nazis. It was put forward as early as in the middle of the 19th century by the French writer and diplomat, Arthur de Gobineau, in his work in four volumes, Dissertation on the Inequality of the Human Races. This work rapidly became very popular among the German national romantics who made its doctrines a part of the foundation of German Nationalism. However, it was not before the work of the English-German philosopher, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, The Foundation of the 19th Century, that was published in 1899, that the Aryan idea got the meaning which usually is associated with the German nazism.
The word Aryan originates from Sanskrit and means noble and is mentioned for the first time in connection with the Central Asiatic people that app. 1700 BC invaded and conquered the North Western India. The ancient Indian civilisation was like the ancient Persian created by Indo-European White conquerors who called themselves Aryans (Sanskrit: Aryas). The Caste system in India was later created, among other things, in order to prevent the Aryans from becoming racially mixed up with the subjugated Non-White majority. In Sanskrit the word for caste (varna) also means colour. In Indian scriptures (by Patanjali) from as late as the centuries around the birth of Christ the highest caste, that is the Brahmins, is described as having tawny hair, and in other old scriptures (sastras) the skin colour of the Brahmins is described as white.
The ancient Indian (Aryan) civilization exerted great influence on the rest of Asia. For example are the famous temples, Angor Vat in Cambodia and Borobudur on Java built according to Indian model. In Connection with the introduction of Buddhism in China followed a very strong and profound influence of Indian culture. Buddhism came into being in India where it originated from the ancient old Aryan (Vedic) religion and philosophy just like present Hinduism. In the west the Arabs learned from the Brahmin India, together with a lot of basic Mathematics, the numerals that we apply in the West today.
In spite of the harsh Indian caste system the castes, however, got more or less mixed, and the result is the chaotic India, we know it today.
It should thus be easy to understand that it was not the German Nazis who invented the Aryan idea. It is also important to understand that there was neither immigration to nor immigrants in Germany from the third world in 1920ies, 1930ies and 1940ies*. The German National Socialism was in fact first and foremost about asserting Germany and the German people (e.g. in relation to the Versailles Treaty with it's harsh consequences for the German people) whereas the idea of race was of much lesser importance. Hitler said several times that National Socialism knows only Germany and is not meant for export. Even the hostility toward the Jews seems to be rooted mostly in classical anti-Semitism with the allegation of a secret Jewish world conspiracy where the matter of race seems to play a lesser clear part.
It is also interesting that the best friends and allies of Nazi-Germany were Italy, Japan, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Finland who all except Japan dispatched considerable military forces to the eastern front to fight on German side. If the campaign against the Soviet Union really as chief purpose had had German expansion (Lebensraum), it is difficult to understand what interest these countries had had in participate on German side.
In the Waffen-SS nearly half of the soldiers were foreigners at the end of the war. E.g. there was SS-division Galizien (Galicia) which was composed of Ukrainian volunteers, as well as SS-division Handschar which was composed of Bosnian Muslim volunteers. Waffen-SS was thus the first German multicultural army and to this day the most cosmopolitan. Apart from that there were in the regular German army the Indian Legion which was composed of 4000 Indian volunteers as well as an Arabic Corps named Freies Arabien. Spain dispatched to the eastern front the Azul-division which among others was composed of General Franco's Moroccan elite troops who some years before had taken part in getting the fascist regime to power in Spain.
The conclusion is therefore that the campaign against the Soviet Union was first and foremost an ideological crusade against communism. In Nazi usage communism was called "Jewish Bolshevism" as it was believed that the Jews were behind communism. It was therefore, according to the Nazis, necessary to clamp down particularly hard on the Jews because communism was regarded the greatest danger to Germany and the humanity.
The picture above shows Bosnian Muslim SS-soldiers in their Handschar Muslim uniforms. Please note the SS skull on their Muslim Fez. The runic SS letters on the collar has been replaced with the Muslim scimitar and a swastika. The Muslim SS-soldiers were served food without pork and could pray according to Islamic precept. So much for Nazi ethnic intolerance.
The picture above shows the Arabic Great Mufti of Jerusalem in front of Muslim SS-soldiers. The Great Mufti was granted political asylum i Nazi-Germany and was thus one of the first Palestinian political refugees in Germany. This proves, however, that there were a few people from the third world in Germany, and they were all approved by the Nazi-regime.
