Assess Himmler's role and significance in WWII conflict

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Himmler fueled by his extreme racial ideology of the destiny of a Great German Empire and his rooted hatred for Jews was one of the key mechanisms for which established his role and significance within the conflict of WWII as the architect of genocide through the propagandistic manipulation of the SS mentality in calcifying them against the sheer immorality of the elimination of the Jews. His philosophical belief of the war as a struggle of races nevertheless were occasionally compromised by the necessity of military personnel towards the end of the war and economic necessities which the Jewish population had the potential of providing. This leads to his role in directly implementing policies to fund the SS and thus ensure its ongoing influence throughout the war, as well as assisting the war effort through forced labour over building roads and canals. Despite this, Himmler’s key contribution to the nature of the war was the elimination of the Jews.

        

Himmler throughout the course of WWII maintained the fundamental and powerful racial ideology of the superiority and inevitable conquest of the Germanic-Nordic. The rooted hatred of Jews was the ultimate racial and ideological foe of Hitler, as he stated himself in a speech in 1943 to the SS “This is a struggle of races.” It is through this belief of the war as a means of conquering a racial enemy and through such asserting German power with Lebensraum provided the basis for which established Himmler’s role within the conflict as the man who significantly orchestrated the attempted extermination of the Jewish race. The genocide which Himmler facilitated in implementing was the expression of one of Hitler’s key war aims to conquer the Jewish threat, and assert racial superiority of the Aryan race, of which Himmler undoubtedly shared and was, delegated the task of administering the racial polices. Thus, Himmler monitored a campaign of which involved his own private army, designed to wipe out the enemies of Nazism behind the lines- that is, in the Eastern areas already conquered by the troops. The need for the future was to incorporate all the Nordic peoples into the Germanic Reich and eliminate those who were alien and inferior of which did not only comprise of Jews but also Mongols and the Asiatic race. This resulted in the ghettoisation and eventual resettlement of Jews, for example in 1942 Himmler ordered the total resettlement in concentration camps of the Polish Jews of which ultimately resulted in over three-quarters of the Warsaw Gehtto’s inhabitants being transported to Treblinka, the death camp. As a main architect of Genocide, he established Auschwitz which resulted in the mass extermination of two million Jews. Therefore, a large part of Himmler’s significance was his ability to implement into practice the mentality and ideals of Hitler and consequently be responsible for the enormity of human deaths and genocide.

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Himmler was also given the instruction to and was responsible for the Germanisation of conquered territory which consistent of his obsession with racial superiority inherently involved the elimination of unassimilable races. In Holland, Himmler’s deportation orders removed almost three-quarters of the Jewish population. In Yugoslavia and Greece, the proportion of Jewish losses by deportation was extremely heavy. The attempted racial cleansing of conquered- foreign nations demonstrate Himmler’s role within the conflict as not only attempting to eliminate an entire race, but also forcefully imposing Nazi racial ideologies and interest upon other nations, regardless of whether they had being won ...

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