Heinrich Himmler
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Reichsführer-SS and Chief of the German Police · Germany
On the regime page: Nazi Germany
6 quotes, oldest first. Filter with other speakers.
Content note: Order and justification of mass shootings of Polish civilians. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“Very frequently the member of the Waffen-SS thinks about the deportation of this people here. These thoughts came to me today when watching the very difficult work out there performed by the Security Police, supported by your men, who help them a great deal. Exactly the same thing happened in Poland in weather 40 degrees below zero, where we had to haul away thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands; where we had to have the toughness— you should hear this but also forget it again immediately — to shoot thousands of leading Poles, where we had to have the toughness, otherwise it would have taken revenge on us later.”
English: Office of United States Chief of Counsel, translation of Nuremberg document 1918-PS. Original-language text not found.
Speech to Leibstandarte officers referring in the past tense to the winter of 1939-40 in Poland and, in the present, to ongoing deportations. The Nuremberg document gives no date; the prosecution said it was delivered some time after Poland had been overrun.
Address to officers of the SS-Leibstandarte 'Adolf Hitler' on the 'Day of Metz' (presentation of the historical Nazi flag), document 1918-PS, in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (US Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. 4, p. 553
Content note: Plans to erase Jewish identity and for population division and forced labour in the East. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“I hope that the concept of Jews will be completely extinguished through the possibility of large-scale emigration of all Jews to Africa or some other colony. [...] Cruel and tragic as every individual case may be, this method is the mildest and best if, out of inner conviction, we reject the Bolshevist method of physical destruction of a people as un-Germanic and impossible.”
English: English as excerpted by the Jewish Virtual Library from Yad Vashem documentation (translator not named). Original-language text not found.
Secret memorandum on policy towards the non-German populations of occupied Poland, drawn up as Germany attacked in the West. It was handed to Hitler, who is reported to have approved it.
Memorandum 'Einige Gedanken über die Behandlung der Fremdvölkischen im Osten', Himmler to Hitler, 25 May 1940, document NO-1880 (Nuremberg Military Tribunals), as excerpted at the Jewish Virtual Library (source given as Yad Vashem) Source
Content note: Antisemitic dehumanising language (Jews as lice); refers to the killing of Jews. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“We have, — I would say, as very consistent National Socialists, taken the question of blood as our starting point. We were the first really to solve the problem of blood by action, and in this connection, by problem of blood, we of course do not mean anti-semitism. Anti-semitism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology. It is a matter of cleanliness. In just the same way, antisemitism, for us, has not been a question of ideology, but a matter of cleanliness, which now will soon have been dealt with. We shall soon be deloused. We have only 20,000 lice left, and then the matter is finished within the whole of Germany.”
English: Office of United States Chief of Counsel, translation of Nuremberg document 1919-PS. Original-language text not found.
Speech to the commanders of three SS divisions after the recapture of Kharkov in the spring of 1943, covering the war situation and SS policy. The Nuremberg document gives the date only as April 1943.
Speech of the Reichsführer-SS at Kharkov, April 1943, to SS divisional commanders, document 1919-PS, in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (US Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. 4, p. 574
Content note: Describes the extermination of the Jews; dehumanising language. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“I mean the clearing out of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race. It's one of those things it is easy to talk about — "The Jewish race is being exterminated", says one party member, "that's quite clear, it's in our program — elimination of the Jews, and we're doing it, exterminating them." And then they come, 80 million worthy Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. Of course the others are vermin, but this one is an A-1 Jew. Not one of all those who talk this way has witnessed it, not one of them has been through it. Most of you must know what it means when 100 corpses are lying side by side, or 500 or 1000. To have stuck it out and at the same time — apart from exceptions caused by human weakness — to have remained decent fellows, that is what has made us hard. This is a page of glory in our history which has never been written and is never to be written, for we know how difficult we should have made it for ourselves, if — with the bombing raids, the burdens and the deprivations of war — we still had Jews today in every town as secret saboteurs, agitators and trouble-mongers.”
English: Office of United States Chief of Counsel, translation of Nuremberg document 1919-PS. Original-language text not found.
Closed speech of about three hours to roughly ninety senior SS officers, recorded on disc. In it Himmler described the killing of Jews as a task already carried out and said it should never be spoken of publicly.
Speech to SS Major-Generals (Gruppenführer) at Posen, 4 October 1943, document 1919-PS, in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (US Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. 4, p. 563
Content note: Justifies the extermination of Jews; compares them to bacteria. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us. But we have not the right to enrich ourselves with so much as a fur, a watch, a mark, or a cigarette or anything else. Because we have exterminated a bacterium we do not want, in the end, to be infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not see so much as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it may form, we will cauterize it. Altogether however, we can say, that we have fulfilled this most difficult duty for the love of our people. And our spirit, our soul, our character has not suffered injury from it.”
English: Office of United States Chief of Counsel, translation of Nuremberg document 1919-PS. Original-language text not found.
Continues the passage on the killing of Jews, with a warning against SS men keeping property taken from victims. Himmler said those who took property would be punished by death.
Speech to SS Major-Generals (Gruppenführer) at Posen, 4 October 1943, document 1919-PS, in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (US Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. 4, p. 564
Content note: Contempt for the lives of Russians and Czechs; endorses forced labour and kidnapping of children. The words are shown as they were said or written. Why
“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the man: we must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and to nobody else. What happens to a Russian, to a Czech does not interest me in the slightest. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type, we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death [verrecken — to die — used of cattle] interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our Kultur; otherwise, it is of no interest to me. Whether 10,000 Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.”
English: Office of United States Chief of Counsel, translation of Nuremberg document 1919-PS. Original-language text not found.
Part of the same Posen speech, setting out the conduct expected of the SS towards non-Germanic peoples, in particular Russians, while forced labour was being used in the war economy.
Speech to SS Major-Generals (Gruppenführer) at Posen, 4 October 1943, document 1919-PS, in Office of United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (US Government Printing Office, 1946), vol. 4, p. 559