Heinrich Himmler

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler served in a reserve battalion in World War I without seeing combat, then joined the Nazi Party in 1923 and the SS two years later. By 1929 he led the SS, transforming it from a small paramilitary group into one of Nazi Germany's most powerful institutions through what became known as strong organisational skill and the selection of subordinates like Reinhard Heydrich. From 1943 he controlled all German police and security forces as Chief of the Kriminalpolizei and Minister of the Interior, as well as the combat-deployed Waffen-SS. He operated the concentration and extermination camps, formed the Einsatzgruppen death squads, and commissioned Generalplan Ost in June 1941 - a plan approved by Hitler that led to approximately 14 million deaths in Eastern Europe. Given military commands late in the war, he failed at each; in March 1945 he opened secret peace talks with the western Allies, and when Hitler learned of it on 28 April he ordered Himmler's arrest. Captured by British forces while in hiding, he killed himself in custody on 23 May 1945.