Heinrich Himmler was the head of the SS and one of the chief architects of the Holocaust, the cold bureaucrat of mass murder who built the Nazi police state and oversaw the machinery of genocide. Born in Munich to a middle-class Catholic family, he was a fussy, unimposing man — a former chicken farmer with a fascination for the occult and Germanic mythology — who joined the Nazi movement in its early days.
From 1929 Himmler led the SS, transforming it from a small bodyguard into the most powerful and feared organization in the Third Reich. He took control of the entire German police apparatus, including the Gestapo, built a private army in the Waffen-SS, and made himself the master of a vast empire of terror.
It was Himmler, acting on Hitler's will, who organized the systematic extermination of Europe's Jews. He oversaw the network of concentration and death camps, the Einsatzgruppen killing squads, and the entire apparatus of the "Final Solution," pursuing the murder of millions with chilling administrative diligence while preaching "hardness" to his subordinates.
As the war neared its end, Himmler secretly attempted to negotiate with the Western Allies, leading an enraged Hitler to strip him of his offices. Captured by British forces while trying to escape in disguise, he killed himself with a cyanide capsule in 1945 before he could be brought to justice.