Hitler's Third Reich and World War II in the News is a daily edited review of WWII news, providing thought-provoking collection of hand-picked WW2 information.

WW2 category: Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS  -- See latest WWII news here. See also 'Relics of Nazi Leaders', 'Goebbels', 'Goering', 'Waffen SS', 'WWII, SS Uniforms', 'Reinhard Heydrich'.

Heinrich Himmler's Third Reich Reichstag Gold Tapestry seized by 101st Airborne for sale     ww2f.com :: 2009-11-05
Affiliated Auction Galleries announces the sale of Heinrich Himmler's Third Reich Gold & Red Velvet Tapestry in its December military & firearm catalog auction. This rare U.S. 101st airborne war capture piece is an original one-of-a-kind museum quality German WWII antiquity. As provenanced in "World War II German War Booty" Volume II by Ltc Thomas M Johnson. Page 66. This piece hung in the Reichstag, but was relocated to Himmler's residence after the fire which destroyed a similar piece. The 7x9 feet tapestry was seized from Reichsführer-SS's residence in Berchtesgaden in 1945 by a member of the 506th Parachute Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division.    

Guy Bishop arrested SS chief Heinrich Himmler     riverdalepress.com :: 2009-05-14
Guy Bishop was born Günther Brüg on April 9, 1926, in Germany. 12 years later on Nov. 9, 1938, the Nazis launched Kristallnacht and in 1939 Günther's mother sent him to England. Günther enrolled in the British army in 1943 under the name Guy Bishop and trained with the elite Black Watch. Realizing Guy's fluency in German, the Black Watch recommended the British Intelligence Corps to take him. And they did, never finding out that Guy had been born in Germany. in May 1945, Guy was at a release camp near Zeven, when he saw 3 German men together, each wearing the long leather coats that German generals wore - and two of the men were very respectful to the third.    

SS chief Heinrich Himmler's knife for sale - Inscribed with Himmler's signature     dailymail.co.uk :: 2008-10-27
A hunting knife which belonged to Heinrich Himmler is to be auctioned off by Mullocks auctioneers in Ludlow. The horn-handled knife with 4-inch blade is inscribed with the SS chief's signature. Himmler gave it to his friend Herman Barth - a high-ranking Nazi responsible for the SS Education School in Berlin during World War II. After the Third Reich collapsed Himmler tried to escape, was caught, and committed suicide, but his friend lived until 2005. The blade comes with a letter from Himmler to Barth. Richard Westwood Brookes said it "serves as an artefact of historical importance as a significant reminder of the evil of the Nazis".     [World War II Knives]

British spy Tommy Sneum planned to kill Heinrich Himmler with longbow     timesonline.co.uk :: 2008-09-07
Tommy Sneum lay in ambush in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen armed with a bow and arrows to kill Heinrich Himmler. He planned to shoot from a penthouse of Danish actress Oda Pasborg, who he had seduced. Sneum chose a longbow because he did not want the sound of a bullet to be traced back to her flat. He had a quiver of arrows, marked April 9, 1940, the date the Nazis had invaded Denmark. SS boss was due to visit Copenhagen in Feb. 1941 en route to Berlin after seeing SS recruits in Norway. The exploits of Sneum are told in "The Hornet's Sting" by Mark Ryan, who interviewed Sneum before the former spy died aged 89.     [Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS]

The original Indiana Jones, Otto Rahn, worked with Heinrich Himmler     telegraph :: 2008-06-11
Not much is known about Otto Rahn. Like Indiana Jones, he was an archaeologist, like him he fell foul of the Nazis and like him he was obsessed with the Holy Grail. Rahn became confident that the Cathars held the secret to the Grail's location. He explored their Montsegur Castle in 1931. He didn't find the Grail, but he did find caves that the Cathars had used, and wrote "Crusade Against the Grail" about his quest. In 1933 Rahn got a telegram, from SS-chief Heinrich Himmler, offering him 1,000 reichsmarks a month to write the sequel to his book. Himmler was so sure of finding the Grail that he'd prepared Wewelsburg castle for its arrival.    

Forgeries in the National Archives: Heinrich Himmler murdered on Winston Churchill's orders     timesonline :: 2008-05-04
The (British) National Archives admitted that it had been the victim of a master forger and its reputation had been endangered after the discovery that 29 documents from 12 separate files were all forgeries inserted into its records. The forged documents all relate to alleged British perfidy in World War II. The archive says the papers had supported stunning allegations by Martin Allen, in 3 recent books. These include claims that the Duke of Windsor was a traitor and that British agents had murdered SS boss Heinrich Himmler, on Winston Churchill's orders.     [Fake Militaria]

Portrait of the SS commander Heinrich Himmler     telegraph.co.uk :: 2008-01-29
Charles Saatchi's acquisition, a portrait of the SS chief Heinrich Himmler, has generated protests and made headlines. However, Saatchi, who is of Jewish descent, has not purchased the painting for shock value, he simply liked it. The portrait is part of The Beauty Show, an exhibition of paintings by British artist Jasper Joffe, which opened at the V22 gallery in east London. One room focuses paintings inspired by Vogue fashion models in the 1970s; the other to portraits of "ugly" people, such as Heinrich Himmler.     [Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS]

Katrin Himmler - Out of the Attic: Family Memoirs With a Nazi Past     wsj :: 2007-11-07
As a young girl, Katrin Himmler asked her grandmother about the man in a photograph hanging on living-room wall. Her grandmother didn't say much, but she cried. The man in the picture was Ernst, a brother of Nazi SS chief Heinrich Himmler. The little that Katrin's family did tell her about her grandfather, who disappeared during fighting in Berlin in 1945, was that he was apolitical. Decades later she discovered that her family's story was untrue. Her father encouraged her in 1997 to go dig in wartime archives that the U.S. had returned to Germany. She learned that Ernst Himmler joined Hitler's Nazi Party as early as 1931. Two years later, he joined the SS.    

How Himmler's daughter Gudrun Burwitz helps Nazi death-camp guard     scotsman :: 2007-11-02
A group of Nazi sympathisers is aiding a former death-camp guard Erna Wallisch to avoid prosecution. Silent Help, which claims to be a charity, is partly run by Heinrich Himmler's daughter Gudrun Burwitz. It has helped some of the Third Reich's most prominent officers, including Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke. Gudrun - the only child of Heinrich Himmler who nicknamed her "Puppi" (little doll) - is fêted by SS veterans and has attended one of their rallies in Austria. Like the children of Martin Bormann and Hermann Göring, she knows the infamy attached to having such a man as a father, but unlike them she keeps alive the memory of her father.    

Katrin Himmler - Yes, I'm related to Heinrich Himmler     timesonline :: 2007-07-08
Katrin's surname suddenly struck one of her classmates during a history lesson. "Are you related to the Himmler?" When Katrin managed to stammer out "Yes", the rest of the class, until then bored by the endless detailing of Nazi atrocities, turned round as one and stared at her. -- Her book "The Himmler Brothers" has been acclaimed in Germany, but not all of her relatives are willing to cope with its contents head-on. Heinrich Himmler's daughter Gudrun, his legitimate offspring with wife Marga, declined to cooperate with the book. The other two children, a son and daughter by his mistress Hedwig, found anonymity when she married after 1945, and have clung to it.     [Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS]

Inside Heinrich Himmler's spooky Wewelsburg castle - SS Shrine     timesonline.co.uk :: 2007-06-07
Wewelsburg Castle: Inside the guard house museum are displays of the plans Heinrich Himmler had for Wewelsburg. "He wanted to make Wewelsburg the centre of the SS world. ...it appears he wanted to make the north tower of the castle into an SS shrine of some sort. Where people could remember the SS dead. It would be at the centre of a new SS village. This would be where the Germanic elite group would live." We stop at a cabinet with a copy of an SS "death head" ring, an SS belt buckle "My honour is my faith" written on it, and a copy of a letter written by Himmler signed off with "Heil Hitler!" Normally tours can't come into the swastika crypt...    

USHMM pictures of Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler, Gudrun Himmler     ushmm :: 2007-04-11
Photographs related to Reichsfuehrer-SS Heinrich Himmler (Margarete Himmler, Gudrun Himmler, in the company of Waffen-SS Armored Division Wiking chief SS-Brigadefuehrer and Major General Felix Steiner, etc) from the photo archives of USHMM.    

Heinrich Himmler's Last Days - The commander of the German SS     deathcamps.org :: 2007-03-20
7-11 May 1945 Heinrich Himmler and 5 attendants stayed at a farm near Satrup. Himmler decided to travel to Bavaria, joined by a few SS-officers and perhaps 7 NCOs. They removed all insignia from their uniforms and placed false documents in their pockets in the expectation that these would prove that they were recently released NCOs of the Geheime Feldpolizei. Himmler's papers identified him as "Ex-Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger of a Special Armoured Company, attached to the Secret Field Police, demobilized on 3 May 1945". ... Himmler and his two companions were captured on 21 May by 3 Russians (assigned to a British post at the River Oste) in Meinstedt.    

Angora - Nazi rabbit project by SS chief Heinrich Himmler     wpr.org :: 2007-02-09
The bound volume covered in woven gray wool, titled "Angora," in the Wisconsin Historical Society's collections is chilling. It belonged to Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS in Nazi Germany. Himmler's "Angora" album, which he hid in his Alpine villa with his other papers near the end of World War 2, tells the story of the angora rabbit project. Photographs, charts and maps from Heinrich Himmler's "Angora" are now among the 25,000 WHS images that are on its site, and will be featured in an online gallery. The rabbits were raised for their warm fur, which was used for the linings of jackets for Luftwaffe pilots.    

Heinrich Himmler's secret quest to locate the Aryan Holy Grail     independent :: 2007-02-06
Heinrich Himmler, the head of the Nazi SS, made a secret wartime mission to Montserrat abbey in Spain in search of the Aryan Holy Grail. According to a book The Desecrated Abbey, by Montserrat Rico Góngora, the Reichsführer-SS thought if he could lay claim to the Holy Grail it would help Nazi Germany win the war and give him supernatural powers. A former monk Andreu Ripol Noble was ordered to greet Himmler during the visit in 1940. Ripol related how Himmler came to Montserrat inspired by Richard Wagner's opera Parsifal, which mentions the Holy Grail could be in kept in "the marvellous castle of Montsalvat in the Pyrenees".    

The Master Plan: Himmler's Scholars and SS Ahnenerbe     straight.com :: 2006-04-14
"Nazi Science": the phrase sounds absurd. But for Heinrich Himmler, the stargazing Reichsfuhrer who ran the SS, Hitler's elite praetorian guard, Nazi science was going to build a future world full of genetically pure Aryans. Himmler insisted that science had to serve the Nazi party. He set up the SS Ahnenerbe institute to scientifically prove Nordic racial superiority. Himmler brought together a motley collection of fanatics, madmen and opportunists under the auspices of the Ahnenerbe. In its early stages, the institute sent archaeologists to search the globe for documentation of the origins of Nazism in a mythical ancient Aryan civilization.     [Ahnenerbe]

Auction: Rare Photo Album of SS Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler     infoZine :: 2006-01-23
Manion's International Auction House has recently listed a rare photo album assembled by a witness to one of SS leader Heinrich Himmler's official wartime meetings with the command staff of the feared 2nd SS Panzer Division (Das Reich). The album provides a candid glimpse 'behind the scenes' at one of the Third Reich's most infamous personalities. It includes 38 original black and white photos chronicling the meeting. Himmler is clearly visible in about 90% of the shots. The album even includes a shot of him in a strange and rather jaunty pose, the caption detailing his 'good mood.'     [Nazi Photos]

Heinrich Himmler's ring part of Nazi memorabilia stolen from museum     scotsman.com :: 2005-12-10
The silver death's head ring that once belonged to the SS leader, Heinrich Himmler, has been stolen from a museum in Adolf Hitler's holiday town of Berchtesgaden. The ring is signed inside by Himmler. Also seized was a 1938 medallion commemorating Hitler's visit to the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini. The two items are worth thousands to Nazi memorabilia collectors. The Documentation Centre has proved one of the biggest tourist draws in Bavaria since it was opened up. Last month Adolf Hitler's gold Nazi party badge was stolen from a Moscow archive.     [Nazi Ring]

Katrin's choice: how do I tell my son about great-uncle Heinrich     TimesOnline :: 2005-11-13
Frau Himmler, a political scientist, is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, head of Hitler's SS and mastermind of the concentration camp system. She is married to an Israeli whose family was confined to the Warsaw ghetto, which was burned to the ground by troopers acting on her great-uncle's orders. Sometime soon her son will have to be told of the 20th-century tragedy that is part of his heritage.     [Famous Nazi Descendants: Reich ancestry]

The Nazi Expeditions- Himmler's search for the remnants of the original master race     SMH :: 2005-11-12
Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe, the ancestral heritage research foundation, whose specific purpose was to furnish a scientific underpinning for the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority. The Ahnenerbe was a vast organisation with thousands of staff: 100 researchers were employed simply to look at the role of the forest in German culture. Soon, sycophant scholars were falling over themselves to find proof of the Nazis' Aryan superiority.     [Nazi Occult, Ahnenerbe, Wewelsburg castle]

Files on Himmler "murder" exposed as fake     fpp.co.uk :: 2005-07-02
Documents from the National Archives used to substantiate claims that British intelligence agents murdered Heinrich Himmler in 1945 are forgeries. The allegation that the SS leader was murdered, with the knowledge of Churchill and War Cabinet ministers, appeared in Himmler's Secret War, published in May.     [Heinrich Himmler: Reichsfuhrer-SS]

Wewelsburg Castle - Himmler's Fortress of Fear     forteantimes.com :: 2005-06-04
Rumours of prominent Nazis' involvement with the realm of the occult have persisted for decades. Nick Brownlow and Jonathan Turner visited the SS headquarters at Wewelsburg Castle to unearth the truth behind SS-Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler's vision of an ancient and noble Aryan prehistory that verified the superiority of the Master Race.     [Nazi Occult, Ahnenerbe, Wewelsburg castle]

Himmler's Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition to Tibet     phayul :: 2003-08-04
Christopher Hale's gripping and well-researched tale of an SS-sponsored scientific mission to Tibet in 1938-39 has the whole shebang: mad occult beliefs, mountains and strange characters. In 1935, the Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler founded an organisation called Ancestral Heritage to uncover the hidden past of an imaginary Aryan race he and his Führer regarded as the noblest and most vital force in human history. The claim that Sanskrit underlay most modern languages focused 19th-century minds on the general area of northern India and Tibet as the ancestral home of the mythical Aryans.     [India in World War II]

Heinrich Himmler's daughter Gudrun     thirdreichpages :: 2002-03-10
Article no longer available from the original source.
[Link no longer active, and we cannot find this story from our archive] -- A charity partly run by Heinrich Himmler's daughter to help ex-SS veterans is rallying support for a former concentration camp guard who faces prosecution for war crimes. The group Stille Hilfe (Quiet Aid) supports former high-ranking Nazis, and in the past it has helped some of the Third Reich's most prominent officers, including Klaus Barbie and Erich Priebke. Gudrun Burwitz daughter of Adolf Hitler's leading henchman, does not deny that she is currently involved with Stille Hilfe.     [Famous Nazi Descendants: Reich ancestry]

I told Margherita Himmler that her husband, Heinrich Himmler, has committed suicide     guardian :: 2000-01-01
Ann Stringer met Margherita Himmler at the end of the war. This is an extract of the recently unearthed interview. -- I visited Margherita Himmler, wife of the most hated man in the world, after Hitler. She has been interned by the allied authorities and now lives in a luxurious villa in the suburbs of Rome. With her is her 15-year-old daughter, Gudrun. I tell her the news. She receives my words with the same indifference as if I had announced the death of the household cat. I then ask her if she knew the activities of her husband in his capacity of chief of the secret police. She answers 'certainly'.     [End of WW2 - Aftermath]

See also:
'Relics of Nazi Leaders'
'Goebbels'
'Goering'
'Waffen SS'
'WWII, SS Uniforms'
'Reinhard Heydrich'.

Although the articles linked from Adolf Hitler's Third Reich 1933-1945 and World War II in the News are reviewed and specially selected, they do not necessarily represent the views of the editor, who is not responsible for the content of any external sites. This service is © Joni Nuutinen 2005-2010. All rights reserved.