Heinrich Himmler: Hitler’s Architect of Terror | Full Documentary

Germany's so-called elite. The Führer's guard. A black order. The end result is a crime the likes of which the world has never seen. At the end of 1942, the Nazi regime still rules over large parts of Europe. But a German victory is becoming ever more distant. The final decision against Hitler's Wehrmacht is made on the Eastern Front. SS-Chief Himmler usually stays at his headquarters Hochwald. From there he writes to his family on Boxing Day. I have to work a lot, but that doesn't matter. The Hochwald bunker lies deep in East Prussia. In close proximity to Hitler's Wolfschanze headquarters. If you want to know what Hitler is thinking, you should look at what Himmler is doing. No one interprets and understands Hitler's desires in racial policy with a better track record of accuracy than Heinrich Himmler. What Himmler's working days looked like is revealed in his duty calendar, which was found in a Moscow archive in 2016. The appointments of the Reichsführer SS are noted here. Such as the inspection of the SS Sonderkommando, the codename for the Sobibor extermination camp in occupied Poland. Himmler wants to inspect the murder factory personally in February 1943. The camp management is forewarned and reports in advance. Due to a total transport blockade, the camp is currently not in full operation, but sufficient for intended observations. 200 Jewish girls and women are brought to Sobibor from the surrounding area. They think they are in a labor camp and have to undress to take a shower. Carbon monoxide is introduced into the shower rooms. The girls and women suffocate. At the dinner afterwards, Himmler praises the work of the perpetrators. Himmler, who came across as this sort of rather weak person, was in fact one of the most evil and one of the strongest people in the creation of this racial horror nightmare that was created by Nazi Germany. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler's most powerful accomplice. Why does he, of all people, become a mass murderer? Towards the end of the Second World War, Himmler is the most powerful German, apart from Hitler. Responsible for terror, occupation, despotism and the Holocaust. Millions fear his name. One who meets him at that time is Traudl Junge. From 1942, one of Hitler's private secretaries. She gets to know the SS chief and is surprised. Himmler actually appeared quite shy. Not at all self-confident or military or even brutal. He had rather the appearance of a somewhat shy bourgeois man. The murderer of the century has every chance of a middle-class life. He was born in Munich in 1900, into what seems to be an orderly world. In Bavaria, the king rules and in the family, the father rules. This is also the case with the Himmlers. His father, Josef, is a respected grammar school teacher. Mother Anna looks after the household and her three sons. Heinrich is the second eldest. His parental home, Catholic, conservative, educated. Then the First World War upsets the order. Heinrich Himmler, like so many others, is enthusiastic about the war and desperately wants to become a soldier. But he is too young. The fact that Germany loses the war in 1918 is, in Himmler's view, a national and personal catastrophe. It was bitter for Himmler that he, who had volunteered after his abattoir and wanted to take up an officer career, did not get to serve on the front line. That is, could no longer prove himself in this great war. Himmler has to bury his dreams. Throughout his life, he is driven by having to make up for what he has missed. Then, in November 1918, the revolution sweeps the monarchs from the throne. Germany becomes a democracy. Himmler believes in the lie that only the revolution led to defeat. In 1919, radical right-wing paramilitary units bloodily put down the Munich Soviet Republic. The men of the so-called national right fight against communists and Jews. In the wake of the war's defeat, people look for scapegoats and resort to conspiracy theories. And anti-Semitism is essentially nothing but a conspiracy theory. Some student fraternities no longer admit Jews because they are allegedly not of the German race. The University of Munich. Himmler studied agricultural sciences here from summer 1919 onwards. He became a member of a student fraternity. It was still less the anti-Semitism that appealed to him than the soldierly toughness. Himmler graduates in 1922. Afterwards, he is unemployed and disoriented. He leaves the Catholic Bavarian People's Party and joins the right-wing extremist military association Reichskriegsflagge. Shortly afterwards, he becomes a member of the NSDAP. November 1923. Adolf Hitler leads an attempted coup in Munich. Himmler's Wehrverband is in on it and seals off authorities on Ludwigstraße. Behind the barricades, Himmler as a proud bearer of the Reich war flag. He's a soldier now, if only for a brief moment. The coup attempt fails after only a few hours. From now on, the book lists that Himmler meticulously compiles more and more folkish and anti-Semitic writings and Germanic heroic sagas. He writes, Books about Hitler are now on his lists too. His verdict on Hitler in 1924. His speeches are splendid pieces of Germanism and Aryanism. Hitler sits in prison for nine months for high treason. He then refounds the NSDAP. He wants to come to power by winning elections. Himmler becomes a party member again and breaks with his parents' political ideas for good. He becomes an ardent Nazi and radical anti-Semite. In his younger days, it seems that Himmler wasn't particularly anti-Semitic, but he becomes much more anti-Semitic as he adopts the whole bigger Nazi ideological package. It's almost anti-Semitism follows being a Nazi rather than precedes it. Himmler makes politics his profession in 1925 and starts as a minor party secretary of the NSDAP. In 1927, he was already part of the extended leadership circle. Two years later, he took over the leadership of the so-called Schutzstaffel, Hitler's shield squadron. Himmler becomes Reichsführer SS. About 500 men for personal security, barrier services, hall marshals. More a group of bodyguards than an elite troop. The troop with the skull and crossbones on its cap is still rather insignificant, but Himmler has great goals. When Himmler takes over as the Reichsführer SS, he has an ambitious project to turn it into a kind of a racial aristocracy of the future Germany. Himmler develops admission criteria for the SS. Applicants must demonstrate characteristics of the Nordic type. They are to become the elite of the master race. Compassion or tolerance are not criteria. In January 1933, Hitler becomes Reich Chancellor. The Nazis are in power. Himmler and the SS are not initially among the winners of the hour. The Reichsführer SS initially remains in Munich. It is not until two months after the seizure of power that his chance comes. In March, the elected government of Bavaria is deposed from Berlin, and Hitler supporters take over the town hall. In the provisional Nazi government, Himmler is police chief of Munich, a springboard to power. Heinrich Himmler is certainly not a great charismatic. He is certainly not an embodiment of the SS ideal either. But Himmler is a brilliant and ruthless politician who always knows how to fill the right posts and to put the right followers in the right positions in order to get closer to his goals. As police chief, Himmler is in charge of the Politiker Police in Munich, a forerunner of the Gestapo. He fills leading positions with SS men. Their mission is violence. The first symbol of Himmler's rule is the Dachau concentration camp. The SS becomes an instrument of oppression. Himmler uses his control over Dachau, over arrests in Bavaria, to develop a proposition for policing throughout Nazi Germany, in which all the policemen and the SS will be united under his leadership. Himmler's organized terror in Bavaria makes an impression and secures him the support of Nazi officials throughout the Reich. His inconspicuous appearance deceives many a potential rival. In truth, Himmler is a ruthless tactician, a networker of power in the Nazi Reich. Heinrich Himmler accepted a great many state and party functionaries into the SS. He was able to equip these functionaries with fancy uniforms, high Führer racks, skull rings, honorary swords, and the like. This was very popular, because many Gauleiters, for example, liked to put on an SS general's uniform when they came into contact with Wehrmacht commanders, in order to be able to act and confer with them at eye level. Himmler's power has been growing steadily since 1933. Hitler appreciates the SS chief's loyalty and efficiency. Traudl Junge, the dictator's private secretary, witnesses Hitler's praise. I have only once seen Hitler bring up the subject of Himmler and concentration camps at table. And Hitler mentioned that Himmler was using a very clever system. He put a notorious arsonist in charge of the fire watch. And of course Himmler said, you can be sure, my Führer, that no fire will break out there. One had the feeling that this was a well-organized, psychologically skillfully managed labor camp. Nazi propaganda portrays Himmler's Dachau concentration camp as an institution of progress. But a powerful superior still stands in the way of the SS. SA chief Ernst Röhm. In his army of millions of SA men, the SS is only a small subunit. Himmler wants to distance himself from the notoriously undisciplined SA and works on the reputation of his SS. Unconditionally loyal to Hitler, obedient to death. Engraved on the SS dagger of honor is, my honor means loyalty. Hitler has an instrument in the SS that he can trust very strongly. Unlike, for example, the early SA under Röhm, which is not necessarily so centrally oriented towards him. The SS is his instrument. In June 1934, Hitler has Ernst Röhm and parts of the SA leadership murdered by men of the SS. Behind the scenes, Himmler had been instrumental in directing the intrigue against Röhm. Hitler rewards Himmler's betrayal of the SA and lifts the SS out of its shadow. Himmler becomes directly subordinate to Hitler as Reichsführer SS. It is typical of Himmler that he was never an outwardly acting alpha leader, but that he always defined himself in the serving role, the role of working towards Hitler. And it is precisely this working towards Hitler that makes it possible for him and also enables his organization to rise as it does. Unconditionally devoted to Hitler and internally in the growing empire of the SS, an autocrat who wants to regulate even the smallest details personally. Himmler wants to build the SS on the model of Germanic heroes. For the men, this meant constant military drill and lots of sport. SS men are supposed to be strong and true to party lines. Himmler sets a good example. As a right-hander, he practices shooting with his left hand and trains doggedly for the Reich sports badge in silver, which he finally achieves in 1936. It was not enough for gold. The demands on his SS men are higher. The distant vision is actually via the SS as a nucleus, as a model, that of a kind of breeding elite, to actually renew the German people. So to weed out what he perceived as bad racially and to bring people back to this Nordic ideal. The SS as a breeding order. For the preservation of the Germanic Nordic master race, as Himmler put it. A concrete mission. The order of the SS. At the center was blood, German blood. We swear by German blood. As early as 1931, Himmler gives his SS men the order to marry. In the interests of preserving racially and hereditarily good blood, as he writes. But no SS man is allowed to marry without permission. Anyone who disobeys the order is removed from the troop. Every potential bride is checked for her value to the SS. For Aryan origin, hereditary health and racial purity. The race and settlement office, which also examines the SS candidates for their suitability, is responsible for the examination. But Himmler himself had the final say on the suitability of the brides. Himmler interferes in the private lives of the relatives, gives advice. In the case of childlessness, for example, he gives the women advice on what fertility treatments they should have. He makes sure that mothers attend training courses and that the brides are politically reliable. Only then does he grant a marriage license. Himmler knows all about married life. He has been married since 1928. His wife Margarete is blonde, blue-eyed, a nurse and seven years older than him. Daughter Gudrun is born in 1929. Himmler presents himself as a devoted family man, even from a distance. He regularly telephones and writes to his wife Margarete, as in the summer of 1942. I will be in Lublin, Zamosch, Auschwitz-Lemberg in the next few days, and then in the new quarters. I'm curious to know if and how it will work with the telephone. Well, have a wonderful time with our daughter. Many warm greetings and kisses. Yours, Papi. Since Margarete can't have any more children, the Himmlers take in a foster child in 1933. The son of a deceased SS man. Himmler's efforts to urge SS men to become fathers are rather unsuccessful. Of the 250,000 SS men in 1938, only 39.7% were married. The number of children per SS man is one. Far below the desired target. In view of the low birth rate, Himmler has the Lebensborn Association founded in 1936. The first Lebensborn home is opened near Munich. Others follow. They are discrete maternity homes, not only for SS couples. Himmler wanted to prevent children from being aborted for fear of an illegitimate birth. And that is why he created maternity homes in his Lebensborn where unmarried women could go to give birth to their illegitimate children. Afterwards, if they wanted to, they could give them up for adoption and then go back to their lives without loss of reputation. The Lebensborn gives preference to SS families for children born out of wedlock. The project is financed by compulsory levies on SS men. The highest amount is paid by the childless. Around 9,000 babies are born in Lebensborn homes by the end of the war. Offspring for the self-proclaimed master race. Only those suitable for racial politics are admitted to a Lebensborn. When the war began, Himmler went one step further. At the end of 1939, he issued a procreation order directly to the SS men. Among them in Poland, the young theologian Geryon Goldman. Goldman, who becomes a Franciscan monk after the war, witnesses the order being proclaimed. And then he reads to us, so many young Germans died in the Polish campaign, they have to be replaced. And in Germany, droves of good German girls are waiting for the soldiers who will then sleep with them, so that the Führer will have new children. He really said that publicly. Himmler unequivocally calls on SS men to father offspring outside of marriage. The SS would take care of illegitimate children. This order was, especially by the Wehrmacht leadership, interpreted as asking the German women to cuckold their men who had been drafted into the Wehrmacht with SS men. There were considerable protests. Even the SS men do not want to procreate on Himmler's orders. Himmler himself should see to it, the Reichsführer, that he gets enough children. That was the reaction. Oh, they were furious. Himmler has to rescind the order. But he sticks to his ideas. Secretly. Since 1939, he has had a mistress. His secretary, Hedwig Potthast, 12 years his junior. She gives the mass murderer two more children. In view of stagnating birth rates in Germany, Himmler pursues a new project. The Germanization of children from the occupied eastern territories. The only criterion, racially good blood. And inhuman by conviction. In these mixed peoples, there will always be some racially good guys. Here, I think, we have a task to take the children from them to us, to get them out of the environment, and if we have to rob these children... Himmler gives orders to hunt for blonde and blue-eyed children. Children like Alois Swadecki. At the age of three, he was targeted by Himmler's henchmen. In the middle of the night, SS men order his mother to wake Alois, dress him and take him, under guard, to the next station. When they arrive at the trains, the children are taken away from their mothers and distributed among the wagons. For little Alois, the beginning of a new life. The first thing the stolen Polish children do is undergo a physical examination. According to Nazi racial doctrine, 21 characteristics, such as eye color or body hair, count. The result decides their future. The children were divided into 10 or 12 racial groups. I belong, thank God, to this super Aryan race, number one. Alois is considered fit to be a German and is given up for adoption. First, however, he and hundreds of others are placed in children's homes in the Reich. Homes like the Lebensborn home Sonnenwiese, sunny meadow in Chorenzales in Saxony. From 1942, stolen children from Poland also live here. They're only allowed to speak German, are given a new past, a new name. Afterwards, I was told that my father had been an SS officer murdered by Polish bandits. Alois becomes Alfred, the stolen Polish child, a convinced German Nazi who detests the Poles. I really felt like a German boy, I did. We worshipped Hitler, of course. The greatest thing for us was the SS. Alois is adopted by a family from Koblenz, who are true to the Nazi cause. For him, they soon become his parents. But the real mother in Poland never stops looking for him. When he learns the truth after the war, a world collapses for him. He visits his mother and has to stay in Poland against his will. Zwardecki remains scarred by Himmler's program for the rest of his life. Child stealing in general, and I was also a victim of it, is one of the most serious offences, not only for the nation, for the family, but also for the individual. And of course, it will always leave scars inside, even if you don't notice them on the outside. Himmler has tens of thousands of children deported to Europe to, as it is called, refresh Germanic blood. Many never find out where they really come from. The SS. Identifying marks, black uniform and white rune. Symbols that Himmler wanted to stand for toughness and Germanic heroism. Heinrich Himmler is the father of this organization. It was only when he became Reichsführer in 1929 that this unique mixture of political extremism, racist insanity and occult cultic rituals took shape. All that makes up the SS is shaped by him. Himmler wants to take the SS back to the supposedly glorious times of the Nordic race. Historically, this is nonsense. But the SS chief eagerly invents corresponding laws, symbols and rites, such as the solstice celebrations. The glorified Germanic cult becomes a pseudo-religion. The SS is supposed to be an order that determines the whole life of its men. Himmler has his own cult objects designed for this purpose, such as the so-called Juhl lamp, supposedly of Nordic origin. It is produced in the SS's own porcelain factory in Munich, Allach. A central element of the black cult. Instead of Christmas, SS members are supposed to celebrate Juhl. Himmler gives the SS men, the SS families, this Juhl lamp as a present to create this cult. This is all part of Himmler's attempts to hold the association together, to glue it together through a unique worldview, but also by inventing new rituals. The collegiate church of Quedlinburg, built as the burial place of the German King Henry. In 1936, on the thousandth anniversary of his death, Himmler visits the medieval complex on the Castle Hill. For Himmler, the King is more than just a namesake. And Quedlinburg is less of a church than an Aryan shrine. The Saxon King Henry is glorified as an Aryan ancestor. King Henry founded the German Empire, fought against Slavs, and conquered territories in the East. Goals also pursued by the Nazis. King Heinrich and his wife were buried in the crypt of the cathedral in the Middle Ages. But the body is missing. A disgrace for Himmler. The SS chief gives orders to dig, without success. The inhabitants of Quedlinburg, like Heinz Müller, witness a lie about the bones of the King. And so they took bones out of the catacombs of the crypt below, from the collegiate ladies who'd been buried there, and then, a year later, passed them off as Henry's remains. In 1937, Himmler solemnly had the fake King's bones buried in the crypt. From 1938, the SS take over the cathedral and the monastery. Church services are no longer possible. Himmler turns the cathedral into a place of pilgrimage for the SS. In the search for Nordic-Germanic heritage, Himmler is happy with every kind of support. In 1935, he founds the Ahnenerbe Association. Archaeologists and amateurs are commissioned by the SS to find evidence of early Aryan times, to prove the superiority of the Nordic race. Here, too, in the environs of Berlin, they dig on behalf of the SS. Scientifically, most of it is worthless. In the end, it was more of a kind of Germanic idolatry, because it wasn't about researching how the Germanic tribes actually lived, but rather an attempt to project one's own views back onto an imaginary Germanic-ness. Germanic jugglery, drilled into the SS men in training courses. What Himmler's Black Order still lacks is a ritual meeting place, the Wievelsburg near Paderborn. The location alone made the castle interesting for Himmler, in the middle of the supposed heartland of the Germanic tribes. In 1934, the SS took possession of the Renaissance castle. The Wievelsburg was to become a spiritual and strategic center. In particular, the highest level of SS leadership, that is the SS Obergruppenführer, were to meet regularly at Wievelsburg to negotiate future issues. Himmler visits the Wievelsburg regularly, as he writes in his pocket diary to inspect the renovation work. The more comprehensive his claim to power, the more monumental his plans. After the final victory, the Wievelsburg is to become the center of a huge complex. Gigantomania for the SS. Himmler has a ring of honor made for his officers and veterans, with a skull as a sign of contempt for death, runes as symbols of Germanism, and Himmler's signature, including the date of the award. After the death of their wearers, all rings are to be kept in Wievelsburg Castle. Construction work on the castle begins in 1939. Concentration camp prisoners are deployed as laborers. Among them was Max Holvig in 1943. Holvig is a Jehovah's Witness, then called Bible Scholars. The denomination with its magazine, The Watchtower, is persecuted by the Nazis. Like all Jehovah's Witnesses, Max Holvig is a conscientious objector. He is arrested, taken to concentration camps, and used in the reconstruction of Wievelsburg Castle. On the ground floor of the North Tower, the SS-Obergruppenführer Hall is being built. Himmler wants to meet with his SS generals in a pseudo-medieval ambience. He has a marble mosaic worked into the middle of the floor. Of course, the work was also done by concentration camp prisoners. We polished the marble floors in the worship space, the portico, by hand. The labor at the Wievelsburg, as here in the quarry, brings death to hundreds. SS work slaves like Max Holvig have no value in the world of Himmler's Germanic elite order. On September 1st, 1939, German troops invade Poland. Five weeks later, the Germans celebrate themselves as victors in destroyed Warsaw. The enemy is defeated. The campaign is over. For Hitler and Himmler, it is about living space for the Germans in the East. The first step towards this is the partition of Poland. The Soviet Union takes over the eastern part. The West is to become German and is annexed by the Reich. The rest comes under brutal German occupation as the so-called General Government. The new Reich districts are Germanised. According to Hitler's specifications, Himmler immediately sets to work without any consideration for the inhabitants. Himmler's view that for a territory to become German, not only do you have to include it legally in the Third Reich by shifting boundaries, but you have to transform it demographically. You have to change the population of the people living there. So the initial plan that Himmler proposes in the fall of 1939 is to expel, we now would say ethically cleanse, eight million people from Western Poland. Himmler's plans are so radical that Hitler immediately entrusts him with further tasks. The SS chief becomes responsible for the, quote, consolidation of German nationality and thus for the entire German settlement policy in the East. Another increase in power for the SS. And a very personal success for Himmler because even as a young man, he dreamed of a life as a settler in the East. In the beginning of his Nazi career, at the age of 25, he joined the Artemanns, a folkish settlers' association that was mainly active in Eastern Germany. The Artemanns was a society that had what we call a blood and soil ideology. They really thought that the agricultural life was the only good life, the only decent life, the only really German life. You need to have farm settlement expanding across Central and Eastern Europe. In the 1920s, members of the Artemanns set up their own settlements in Pomerania and Mecklenburg. They want to return to their origins, far away from the problems of modernity, to a life in the countryside as self-supporters. Ideas that Himmler shared throughout his life. Before 1933, he had a farm in Bavaria with his wife Margarete with chickens, rabbits, pigs and a sheepdog, just like his ancestors. After the takeover, Himmler no longer had time for the farm. He was on the road too much. But even as a top Nazi, he remains connected to agriculture. The studied agricultural economist lets his SS research plants, nature as a source of strength. Even before the war, Himmler founded the German Research Institute for Nutrition and Food. Its headquarters are in Dachau, not far from the concentration camp fences. Concentration camp prisoners set up the so-called herb garden here, a complex with administrative buildings and greenhouses. Here, Himmler had research into natural healing methods and farming without artificial fertilizers carried out. Eco, under the sign of the SS. They were actually attempts to return to a way of farming that was perceived as natural. As I said, today one would possibly call it organic farming. But it was this idea, this agrarian romantic of a farmer on his clod, so to speak. Himmler was able to realize his old dreams of Germanic land grabbing in the conquered Eastern territories from 1939 onwards. Under the slogan, Home to the Reich, all Germans living as minorities east of the Reich border, are to be settled in the new Reich districts. So-called ethnic Germans from the Ukraine, Romania, or the Baltic States. More than 300,000 ethnic Germans leave their old homeland and settle in the annexed territories by 1941. But only racially superior people are to be given a farm in the east. Himmler has Volksdeutsche and Pols checked. Something that is created as an instrument of the SS, this racial selection procedure, is transferred to civilians in the occupied territories. Ethnic Germans as well as non-Germans in order to decide who is or isn't a good racial person. Thus, at least for the non-Germans, it becomes a decision of life and death. For Himmler has space made in the new Reich districts. The police and the SS make sure that the so-called Pols who cannot be deported, among them mainly Jews, are identified and removed from the conquered territories by resettlement or murder. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, Himmler transfers his inhuman Germanization program to the newly conquered territories behind the front. For him, Slavs, like the Red Army soldiers in the prisoner of war camp here, or these peasant women near Minsk, are inferior human beings useful only as labor slaves. Politics based on racial mania. The greatest race on earth were the Aryans and the worst race on earth from which all of the evil ideas, whether it's Christianity or Bolshevism or capitalism, whatever it might be, this all came from the Jews. And so for him, the removal of the Jews from Aryan society was absolutely paramount in his worldview. In the years to come, genocide becomes Himmler's main task. First perpetrated by mobile firing squads, then by a perfidious system of collection and death camps. Auschwitz-Birkenau. Over 1 million people are murdered here by the SS. For October 4th, 1943, Himmler's service calendar records a visit to the Gruppenführer Tagung Posen. The SS chief speaks openly about the burden and self-image of the perpetrators. To have endured this, and yet, apart from being a human exception, has made us tough and is a never-mentioned and never-to-be-mentioned heroic deed. Their task of murder, torture, in an objective way, was something that was necessary in the interests of the German race, not for personal gain or personal enjoyment. He was very, very keen on this appearance of decency, but of course it was a myth. Private photos of a camp commander give an idea of the reality in the camps. Arbitrariness reigns here. Some of Himmler's men shamelessly enrich themselves. Others beat and torture. SS guards in Sobibor select individuals from among the Jews who have arrived to make them dance. Only then do they herd them into the gas chamber. In Himmler's view, his men should, as he says, remain decent. Only those who enrich themselves must fear punishment. An empty threat. In reality, the Camp SS enriches itself at all levels from the victims' possessions. Self-service already reigns on arrival, usually before the formal registration of valuables. What does not officially exist cannot be embezzled. Himmler is aware of the abuses, but seldomly allows them to be prosecuted. The image of the SS as an elite must not be damaged. The longer the war lasts, the more Himmler is on the road. His daily routine is a long string of meetings, all neatly listed in the duty calendar. In total, thousands of conversations in between business lunches and meetings with the Führer. Hitler has a high opinion of Himmler in 1944. He considers him a quite outstanding personality of the Reich. But Himmler still suffers from a flaw. He was now surrounded by Waffen-SS leaders on all occasions. Who had now received the highest decorations. There they were with the medals flashing away on their chest. And he himself stood there wearing only the Gold Party badge. It was only towards the end of the war that Himmler was allowed to feel like a soldier. In January 1945, he was given supreme command of Army Group Vistula. Three armies deployed on the collapsing Eastern Front. The war reaches German borders. Himmler's army group is to stop the advance of the Red Army, from which hundreds of thousands are already fleeing. Himmler is a military amateur, but he has no illusions. Himmler was astute enough to realize, in 1944 at the latest, that Germany was losing the war. And so he began to seek a way out. The Horn-Lüchsen sanatoriums in the Jokermark, a well-known Reich sports sanatorium in the 1930s. During the war, it becomes a military hospital. For many Nazi celebrities, Horn-Lüchsen stands for relaxation. Heinrich Himmler is often treated here. Stomach pains. In mid-February 1945, he secretly meets Count Volker Benedotter here, the deputy head of the Swedish Red Cross. Himmler wants to make contact with the Allies and is prepared to compromise. He agrees to have Scandinavian political prisoners taken from concentration camps by the Swedish Red Cross. The freed concentration camp prisoners travel north through the war zone in white buses. Himmler releases 15,000 Scandinavian prisoners as an advance payment for hoped-for peace negotiations with the Allies. It was completely incomprehensible that Himmler had apparently moved into a world beyond reality. How could he imagine, after all the terrible things he'd done and after this horrible trail of blood that lay behind him, that an ally would negotiate with him? In April 1945, Soviet troops are at the gates of Berlin. Hitler blames Himmler and withdraws his military command. The dictator, here the last film shot, entrenches himself in the Führerbunker in Berlin. On April 11, 1945, US troops liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar. Reports of the horror go through the world press. Himmler continues to believe that the Allies are negotiating with him. Himmler believed that the West wanted to fight the Bolsheviks rather than the Nazis. Therefore, he saw himself fit for this position. He did not understand that the Nazis had gone much too far. During the Battle of Berlin, Himmler continues his efforts to negotiate with the West. Then the BBC reports. According to a report, Himmler offered unconditional surrender to Great Britain and the United States, but not to the Soviet Union. In the Berlin underground, Hitler learns of Himmler's high-handed advance. The loyal Heinrich, the most important accomplice, commits treason. Bernd Freitag von Loringhofen is present in the Führerbunker as adjutant of the general staff. A world shattered. The most faithful of the faithful, Himmler, on whom he had always relied so much, he had betrayed him, as he put it. The following day, Hitler escapes responsibility by committing suicide in the end. In his political will, he expels Himmler from the party and takes away all his offices. Himmler had followed Hitler for more than half his life. Now his murderous madness ends. He is 45, wanted by the victors and empty-handed. Himmler goes into hiding, shaves off his beard and puts on an eye patch. He goes on the run with forged papers. The once most powerful man, after Hitler, joins the army of defeated German soldiers. He is sent to a British camp for German prisoners of war, further unrecognised. Then he reveals his identity and is taken to the headquarters of the British security service in Lüneburg. A military doctor is to examine him. As the doctor checks his mouth, Himmler bites down on a cyanide capsule. The murderer of the century dies on May 23rd, 1945. His body is buried by the British near Lüneburg. The exact spot is unknown. While other Nazi greats continue to be revered by the incorrigible after their deaths, even old Nazis and SS veterans turn their backs on Himmler. The end too inglorious, the guilt too great.