Original subtitles

(ominous music)

(feet stomping)

(crowd cheering)

- [Narrator] Germany's so-called elite.

(ominous music)

The fuhrer's guard.

(ominous music)

A black order.

(ominous music)

The end result is a crime,

the likes of which the world has never seen.

(ominous music)

(machine gun firing)

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.

(artillery explodes)

(ominous music)

(tank fires)

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."

(ominous music)

The Hochwald bunker lies deep in East Prussia,

in close proximity to Hitler's Wolfsshanze 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.

- [Narrator] 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 Reichefuhrer-SS are noted here,

such as the inspection of the SS Sonderkommando,

the code name 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.

- [Narrator] Heinrich Himmler,

Hitler's most powerful accomplice,

why does he, of all people, become a mass murderer?

(ominous music)

(camera shutter snapping)

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.

(camera shutter clicks)

(Traudl speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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.

(Traudl speaking German)

(camera shutter clicks)

- [Narrator] 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, Joseph, 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's too young.

(guns firing) (artillery exploding)

The fact that Germany loses the war in 1918 is,

in Himmler's view, a national and personal catastrophe.

(Dr. Hein speaking German)

- [Interpreter] It was bitter for Himmler that he,

who had volunteered after his adventure,

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.

- [Narrator] Himmler has to bury his dreams.

Throughout his life, he's driven by having to make up

for what he has missed.

(camera shutter clicks)

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.

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] Some student fraternities no longer admit Jews

because they are allegedly not of the German race.

(ominous music)

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.

(camera shutter clicks)

Himmler graduates in 1922.

Afterwards, he's unemployed and disoriented.

He leaves the Catholic Bavarian People's Party

and joins the right wing extremist military association,

the 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.

(ominous music)

Behind the barricades, Himmler,

as a proud bearer of the Reichswehr 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, "I feel that I belong to these Teutons,

but today, however, I am very alone in feeling this."

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.

(camera shutter clicks)

- 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.

- [Narrator] 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 Reichfuhrer-SS,

about 500 men for personal security, barrier services,

hall marshals, more a group of bodyguards

than an elite troop.

The troop with a skull and crossbones on its cap

is still rather insignificant, but Himmler has great goals.

- When Himmler takes over as the Reichfuhrer-SS,

he has an ambitious project

to turn it into a kind of a racial aristocracy

of the future Germany.

- [Narrator] 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.

(ominous music)

(crowd cheering)

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 Reichfuhrer-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.

(ominous music)

(Dr. Hein speaking German)

- [Interpreter] Heinrich Himmler is certainly

not a great charismatic.

He's 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.

- [Narrator] As police chief,

Himmler's in charge of the political police in Munich,

a forerunner of the Gestapo.

He fills leading positions with SS men.

Their mission is violence.

(ominous music)

The first symbol of Himmler's rule

is the Dachau concentration camp.

(ominous music)

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.

- [Narrator] 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's a ruthless tactician,

a networker of power in the Nazi Reich.

(Prof Bajohr speaking German)

- [Interpreter] Heinrich Himmler accepted a great many state

and party functionaries into the SS.

He was able to equip these functionaries

with fancy uniforms, high fuhrer ranks,

skull rings, honorary swords, and the like.

This was very popular,

because many (indistinct) 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.

(Prof Bajohr speaking German)

- [Narrator] 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.

(Traudl speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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 Fuhrer,

that no fire will break out there."

One had the feeling that this was a well-organized,

psychologically skillfully managed labor camp.

(Traudl speaking German)

- [Narrator] 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 Rohm.

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."

- [Interpreter] Hitler has an instrument in the SS

that he can trust very strongly,

unlike, for example, the early SA under Rohm,

which is not necessarily so centrally oriented towards him.

The SS is his instrument.

- [Narrator] In June, 1934,

Hitler has Ernst Rohm and parts of the SA leadership

murdered by men of the SS.

Behind the scenes, Himmler had been instrumental

in directing the intrigue against Rohm.

(crowd cheers)

Hitler rewards Himmler's betrayal of the SA

and lifts the SS out of its shadow.

Himmler becomes directly subordinate to Hitler

as Reichfuhrer-SS.

(camera shutter clicks)

(Dr. Hein speaking German)

- [Interpreter] It is typical of Himmler

that he was never an outwardly acting alpha leader,

but that he always defined himself in a 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.

- [Narrator] Unconditionally devoted to Hitler,

and internally, in the growing empire of the SS,

an autocrat who wants to regulate

even the smallest details personally.

(camera shutter clicks)

(ominous music)

(camera shutter clicks)

Himmler wants to build the SS

on the model of Germanic heroes.

(military music)

For the men, this meant constant military drill

and lots of sports.

SS men are supposed to be strong and true to party lines.

(ominous music)

(gun fires)

Himmler sets a good example.

As a right-hander, he practices shooting with his left hand

and trains doggedly for the Reich's sports badge in silver,

which he finally achieves in 1936.

It was not enough for gold.

The demands on his SS men are higher.

(ominous music)

(Dr. Hein speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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 idea.

- [Narrator] The SS as a breeding order,

for the preservation of the Germanic Nordic master race,

as Himmler put it, a concrete mission.

(gentle music)

(Father Goldmann speaking German)

- [Interpreter] The order of the SS,

at the center was blood, German blood.

We swear by German blood.

- [Narrator] 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.

(Prof Heinemann speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Interpreter] "I will be in Lublin, Zomsc.

I'll switch 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, Pappi."

- [Narrator] Since Margarete can't have any more children,

the Himmlers take in a foster child in 1933,

the son of a deceased SS man.

(ominous music)

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.

(ominous music)

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.

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

- [Interpreter] Only those suitable for racial politics

are admitted to a Lebensborn.

- [Narrator] 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, Gereon Goldmann.

Goldmann, who becomes a Franciscan monk after the war,

witnesses the order being proclaimed.

(Father Goldmann speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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 Fuhrer will have new children.

He really said that publicly."

- [Narrator] Himmler unequivocally calls on SS men

to father offspring outside of marriage.

The SS would take care of illegitimate children.

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] Even the SS men

do not want to procreate on Himmler's orders.

- [Interpreter] Himmler himself should see to it,

the Riechfuhrer, that he gets enough children.

That was the reaction.

Oh, they were furious.

- [Narrator] 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.

(Heinrich Himmler speaking German)

- [Narrator] Himmler gives orders

to hunt for blonde and blue-eyed children,

children like Alojzy Twardecki.

At the age of three, he was targeted by Himmler's henchman.

In the middle of the night,

SS men order his mother to wake Alojzy, 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 Alojzy, 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.

- [Interpreter] The children were divided

into 10 or 12 racial groups.

I belonged, thank God, to the super-Aryan race, number one.

- [Narrator] Alojzy 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,

Sonnige Wiesen, Sunny Meadow, in (indistinct), in Saxony.

From 1942, stolen children from Poland also live here.

They are only allowed to speak German,

are given a new past, a new name.

- [Interpreter] Afterwards, I was told that

my father had been an SS officer

murdered by Polish bandits.

- [Narrator] Alojzy becomes Alfred, the stolen Polish child,

a convinced German Nazi who detests the Poles.

- [Interpreter] I really felt like a German boy. I did.

We worshiped Hitler, of course.

The greatest thing for us was the SS.

- [Narrator] Alojzy 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.

Twardecki remains scarred by Himmler's program

for the rest of his life.

(ominous music)

- [Interpreter] Child stealing in general,

and I was also a victim of it,

is one of the most serious offenses,

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.

- [Narrator] 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.

(ominous music)

The SS, identifying marks, black uniform,

and white rune,

symbols that Himmler wanted to stand for toughness

and Germanic heroism.

(Heinrich Himmler speaking German)

- [Interpreter] Heinrich Himmler is the father

of this organization.

It was only when he became Reichfuhrer in 1929

that this unique mixture of political extremism,

racist insanity, and occult Celtic rituals took shape.

All that makes up the SS is shaped by him.

- [Narrator] 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 rights,

such as the solstice celebrations.

(man speaking German)

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 Yule 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 Yule.

- [Interpreter] Himmler gives the SS men, the SS families,

this Yule 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

(ominous music)

(man speaking German)

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 Muller,

witness a lie about the bones of the king.

(Heinz speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] 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's happy with every kind of support.

In 1935, he founds the Ahnenerbe Association.

Archeologists 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.

(man speaking German)

Scientifically, most of it is worthless.

- [Interpreter] 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 Germanicness.

- [Narrator] Germanic jugglery,

drilled into the SS men in training courses.

What Himmler's black order still lacks

is a ritual meeting place.

The Wewelsburg, 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 Wewelsburg was to become

a spiritual and strategic center.

- [Interpreter] In particular,

the highest level of SS leadership,

that is, the SS Obergruppenfuhrer,

were to meet regularly at Wewelsburg

to negotiate future issues.

- [Narrator] Himmler visits the Wewelsburg regularly,

as he writes in his pocket diary,

to inspect the renovation work.

(ominous music)

The more comprehensive his claim to power,

the more monumental his plans.

After the final victory,

the Wewelsburg is to become the center of a huge complex.

Gigantomania, or the SS?

(ominous music)

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 Wewelsburg Castle.

Construction work on the castle begins in 1939.

Concentration camp prisoners are deployed as laborers.

Among them was Max Hollweg in 1943.

Hollweg 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 Hollweg is a conscientious objector.

He is arrested, taken to concentration camps,

and used in the reconstruction of Wewelsburg Castle.

On the ground floor of the north tower,

The SS Obergruppenfuhrer 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.

(Max Hollweg speaking German)

- [Interpreter] We polished the marble floors

in the worship space,

the portico, by hand.

- [Narrator] The labor at the Wewelsburg,

as here in the quarry, brings death to hundreds.

SS work slaves like Max Hollweg have no value

in the world of Himmler's Germanic elite order.

(ominous music)

On September 1st, 1939, German troops invade Poland.

Five weeks later,

the Germans celebrate themselves as victors

in destroyed Warsaw.

(boots stomping)

(man speaks German)

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 Germanized

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 this fall of 1939 is to expel,

we now would say ethically cleanse,

8 million people from Western Poland.

- [Narrator] 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 (indistinct),

a folkish settler's association

that was mainly active in Eastern Germany.

- The (indistinct) 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.

- [Narrator] In the 1920s,

members of the (indistinct) 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 sheep dog,

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.

(men chatting)

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.

(camera shutter clicks)

- [Interpreter] 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 cloud,

so to speak.

- [Narrator] Himmler was able to realize

his old dreams of Germanic land grabbing

in the conquered Eastern Territories from 1939 onwards.

(hooves clopping)

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.

(man speaking German)

More than 300,000 ethnic Germans leave their old homeland

and settle in the annexed territories by 1941.

(train chugging)

(chickens clucking)

But only racially superior people

are to be given a farm in the East.

Himmler has Volksdeutsche and Poles checked.

- [Interpreter] 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.

(people yelling)

- [Narrator] For Himmler has space made

in the new Reich districts.

The police and the SS make sure that

the so-called Poles who cannot be deported,

among them mainly Jews,

are identified and removed from the Concord 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.

- [Narrator] 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.

(somber music)

Auschwitz-Birkenau.

(somber music)

Over one million people are murdered here by the SS.

(somber music)

For October 4th, 1943,

Himmler's service calendar records a visit

to the Gruppenfuhrer-Tagung, Posen.

The SS chief speaks openly about the burden

and self image of the perpetrators.

(Heinrich Himmler speaking German)

- Their task of murder, torture, in an objective way

was something that was necessary

in the interest of the German race,

not for personal gain or personal enjoyment.

He was very keen on this appearance of decency,

but of course it was a myth.

- [Narrator] 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.

(Himmler speaking German)

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's aware of the abuses,

but seldomly allows them to be prosecuted.

The image of the SS as an elite must not be damaged.

(ominous music)

The longer the war lasts, the more Himmler's 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 Fuhrer.

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.

(Bernd Loringhoven speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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 chests,

and he himself stood there

wearing only the gold party badge.

- [Narrator] It was only towards the end of the war

that Himmler was allowed to feel like a soldier.

(Nazis cheer)

In January, 1945, he was given supreme command

of army group Vistula,

three armies deployed on the collapsing Eastern Front.

(artillery firing)

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.

(people screaming)

(somber music)

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.

- [Narrator] The Hohenlychen Sanatoriums in the Uckermark,

a well-known Reich sports sanatorium in the 1930s.

During the war, it becomes a military hospital.

For many Nazi celebrities,

Hohenlychen stands for relaxation.

Heinrich Himmler is often treated here. Stomach pains.

In mid-February, 1945,

he secretly meets Count Folke Bernadotte 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.

(Bernd Loringhoven speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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 laid behind him,

that an ally would negotiate with him?

- [Narrator] 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 Fuhrerbunker in Berlin.

On April 11th, 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.

(somber music)

(Prof Zimmermann speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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.

(artillery exploding) (gun firing)

- [Narrator] During the battle of Berlin,

Himmler continues his efforts to negotiate with the West.

Then the BBC reports-

- [Broadcaster] 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 Freytag von Loringhoven is present in the Fuhrerbunker

as adjutant of the general staff.

(Bernd Loringhoven speaking German)

- [Interpreter] 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.

- [Narrator] 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's 45, wanted by the victors, and empty handed.

Himmler goes into hiding,

shaves off his beard, and puts on an eyepatch.

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 unrecognized.

Then he reveals his identity

and is taken to the headquarters

of the British Security Service in Luneburg.

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 Luneburg.

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.

(ominous music)