On a summer day in 1936, a group of SS officers led by Heinrich Himmler arrived in one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Germany – Quedlinburg. They walked through its winding cobbled streets, past Nazi flags hanging on the walls, and up the city hill. Himmler stopped to admire the magnificent stone castle of Quedlinburg and then walked towards the great medieval cathedral, the main purpose of his visit. He despised Christianity, but Quedlinburg Cathedral had great symbolic significance for him – it is the tomb of the 10th century king Henry I. Heinrich Himmler was born in 1900 in Munich, in the family of a school teacher. Since childhood, he was a patriot and passionate about the ancient history of Germany, inheriting this passion from his father Himmler Sr. During his university years he specialized in philology, and later took an active part in the education of his sons. Often in the evenings he and his wife read books about German history or medieval sagas, myths and epics aloud to their children. Heinrich Himmler with his parents and brothers Heinrich fell in love with ancient stories of savage violence and revenge. Steeped in the dark lore of the Middle Ages, he painstakingly memorized the details of Germany’s most famous battles, and by the age of ten his knowledge of ancient weapons and warfare easily rivaled that of his schoolteacher friends. As the son of a teacher and vice-principal, he regularly reported his classmates’ school pranks to his father, resulting in severe disciplinary action. Probably, the children guessed about this, so they tried to avoid him and fell silent when he approached; the father organized excursions for his sons to the sites of archaeological and historical monuments in Germany. Together they searched for rune stones, collected coins and various artifacts for their family collection, which their father created in a separate room of his small apartment. Heinrich Himmler as a child with his father. Young Himmler enjoyed the process of organizing the chaos of antiquity. relics into a strict collection order, and the pleasure he got from it seems to have stayed with him for the rest of his life. He kept detailed records in his diary of the time when he found or acquired antiques, and then began to record all his affairs with the same care. Everything in his life needed to be accounted for, documented, organized and neatly laid out. Later, concentration camp officials under his leadership issued color-coded badges to prisoners, which helped place a person into one of 18 precise categories at a glance. from political prisoners to gypsies. Himmler during his rise to power As a student of medieval history, Himmler saw Germany’s feudal past as a model for its future glory, and later, once in power, he wanted all SS men to share his passion for history. Himmler paid tribute to the 10th century grave. The German king Henry I, who rests in Quedlinburg Cathedral, considered him a great leader of the nation who could serve as a model for Adolf Hitler. He dreamed of turning the dusty tomb of the cathedral into a shrine to the SS. Many scholars, historians, and senior Nazis ridiculed Himmler’s increased interest in Germany’s past as a foolish fanatic intoxicated with power. The chief architect of the Third Reich, Albert Speer, once even called him “half-teacher, half-crazy.” But Himmler was extremely serious about returning the Third Reich to the lost golden age of his imagination. In 1935, he founded an important SS research institute, staffed by more than a hundred German scientists with doctorates who studied Germany’s past and helped teach the SS men the ways of life of their ancestors. At the beginning of World War II, Himmler. moved the headquarters of the rapidly growing institute to a large villa in one of the richest areas of Berlin and provided it with decent funding. He equipped the institute with laboratories, libraries, museum workshops and personally supervised its work. At Himmler’s insistence, the institute’s staff studied a wide range of subjects, from ancient Germanic building styles to old “Nordic” horse breeds and primitive musical instruments. With this research, Himmler intended to transform the vast territory of the Reich into medieval fiefdoms ruled by SS lords, a plan he began to implement even before the outbreak of World War II. Heinrich Himmler was far from a dreamy romantic, immersed in his fantasies, and certainly not a stupid fanatic, but a cautious and decisive strategist, working on his plan as tirelessly as he worked on creating the concentration camp system and implementing the “Final Solution” of the Jewish Question . . These were the two ideas of his existence, the yin and yang of his world: the overcrowded concentration camps of the “subhumans” and the solar farms of the “true Aryans” “Himmler on the shooting range” As the leader of the SS, Himmler decided to settle as many of his soldiers and officers as possible in special agricultural settlements. He ordered high-ranking SS officials, based on the institute’s research, to prepare plans for such settlements, taking into account everything for a comfortable life. The settlements were supposed to have a standard form, with strong and spacious wooden houses for the families living there. At the center of each settlement it was planned to build an open amphitheater, known in German as Tingplatz. The idea was borrowed from antiquity. A Scandinavian tradition when residents of one settlement gathered on a common platform to elect leaders and resolve disputes. However, the SS Tingplatz area was supposed to be less democratic; Himmler imagined it as a place where SS families would hold torchlight rallies and celebrate the solstice. parties and stage their own propaganda plays. In each settlement a building will be built to house the governing bodies of the Nazi Party, SS, Hitler Youth, etc. and other Nazi organizations. In addition, each settlement had to have a stadium where young people could receive physical training in various sports. All residents of the settlement were expected to adhere to SS doctrine. Simply put, this meant maintaining the purity of their Nordic bloodlines at all costs and producing as many children as possible. To prove the purity of their ancestry, each family was required to keep a detailed genealogical chart of their ancestors, as well as a history. of your clan. In addition, Himmler intended that settlers would be encouraged to research and display their clan symbols and family crest. Under Himmler’s leadership, the ideas quickly took shape and in 1937 the SS began establishing the first model colony in an old historic village near Berlin. Part of the large farm was bought by the daughter of a Berlin industrialist, and the resulting property was divided into 12 families. The largest plot went to the family of the chief SS doctor. Soon the picturesque landscape near Berlin was lined with medieval farmhouses, each of which housed a Nazi family. But Himmler’s plans included the construction of such settlements not only in Germany; he had high hopes for the territories that the Third Reich could conquer during its campaign in the East. Even at the beginning of his membership in the Nazi Party, Himmler was amazed. Hitler’s ideas about the origin of the German people. The Nazi Party leader believed that many of his countrymen could trace at least part of their ancestry back to a primitive master race, the Aryans, who transformed a primitive world into a thriving civilization. Adolf Hitler argued that the world had lost its spark; the brilliant Aryans began to marry representatives of lower races, thereby diluting their “pure” Aryan blood. It was an absolute fabrication, which Hitler cleverly used to satisfy German vanity. But Himmler, realizing this, used his idea to implement his plans. They also agreed on the importance of the physical training of the “true Aryans,” which, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “will make a man strong, intelligent and courageous,” “strengthen him and teach him to endure difficulties.” They believed that such training would inevitably lead to the rebirth of a strong nation capable of defending the Nazi state. Himmler, like Hitler, was obsessed with the purity of the “Aryan race” and encouraged “Aryan breeding programs.” The Second World War allowed him to pursue another racial goal – the extermination of Jews and other so-called “subhumans.” Himmler visits a Soviet prison camp. After the German invasion of Poland, Himmler was given complete control over the annexed territories into which Jews were forced. exile replaced by German settlers. Until June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Himmler controlled not only the police, but also the political administration of the occupied territories, and through his control of the SS concentration camp system, Heinrich Himmler with his daughter and his wife. By the end of 1941, the Third Reich’s “invincible” army had covered much of Eastern Europe and much of the western Soviet Union, and Himmler’s dreams of transforming the rich countryside. In early 1942, Himmler began working closely with his institute’s senior planner, the agricultural scientist Konrad Meyer, to develop a detailed plan for the establishment of three large German colonies in Russia. Eastern, and gave it to Hitler. One colony was to be located near Leningrad, the second was to cover the northern part of Poland, Lithuania and southeastern Latvia, and the third was to cover Crimea and the rich fields of southeastern Ukraine. Himmler estimated that it would take the Reich 20 years to completely “Germanize” these three regions. Only ethnic Germans and those whom the Nazis considered racially valuable. In these regions, Himmler planned to establish small settlements, each with thirty to forty farmhouses, and give each farmer 300 acres of land. The rest of the area, according to Himmler’s plans, was to be planted with dense oaks and beeches that would reproduce the ancient forests of Germany, reminiscent of the countryside like Schleswig-Holstein, so that German farmers would not suffer from homesickness. He was well aware that such a colonization scheme would help motivate SS officers to carry out his murderous orders. Many SS men grew up in German cities, in small, crowded apartments, and craved what they saw as the life of a feudal lord: hunting, riding, eating plenty of fresh food. They all dreamed of big farms in the East. . promised them victory as the first fruits. But this victory did not happen, and Himmler’s plans were not destined to come true.
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