Heinrich Himmler Quotes

Heinrich Himmler delivers stark, ruthless reflections on history, war and politics.

61 quotes

1. Ich bin Heinrich Himmler. (I am Heinrich Himmler.)

2. The best political weapon is the weapon of terror. Cruelty commands respect. Men may hate us. But, we don't ask for their love; only for their fear.

3. I still lack to a considerable degree that naturally superior kind of manner that I would dearly like to possess.

4. My honor is my loyalty.

5. In the brief monthly reports of the Security Police, I only want figures on how many Jews have been shipped off and how many are currently left.

6. One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S.S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. 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 interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand 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. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood....' Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....

7. Most of you know what it means when a hundred corpses are lying side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand. 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.... We had the moral right, we had the duty to our people, to destroy this people which wanted to destroy us.

8. 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 this same way anti-Semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness.

9. We won't waste much time on the Jews. It's great to get to grips with the Jewish race at last. The more that die the better; hitting them represents a victory for our Reich. The Jews should feel that we've arrived. We want to put half to three-quarters of all Jews east of the Vistula. We will crush these Jews wherever we can. Everything is at stake. Get the Jews out of the Reich, Vienna, everywhere. We have no use for Jews in the Reich. Probably the line of the Vistula, behind this line no more. We are the most important people here.

10. I hope to see the very concept of Jewry completely obliterated.

11. Germans who wish to use firearms should join the SS or the SA - ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.

12. Every SS man has the right and the duty to defend his honor with his crew.

13. It is my firm intention to collect all the dispersed German blood in the world.

14. An oath is not sufficient. It is also essential that every man is a devout person and expels sin from deep within one's own mind.

15. The Fuhrer knows the value of the SS. We are his preferred and most precious organization, because we have never abandoned him.

16. It is truly sad that my new assignment only puts me in close contact with the more vile representatives of humanity...with criminals, Hebrews, and enemies of the State, when all my thoughts and my energies are for the purity of our race. But the Fuhrer has assigned this task to me. I will not pull back.

17. Those who abandon their duties do not deserve from the native land even a piece of bread. The German women and adolescents are invited to receive them, not with compassion, but instead with depreciation and ridicule, and especially heavy, vigilant blows to their foreheads with broomsticks.

18. The Fuhrer has ordered the final solution to the Jewish problem. Those of us in the SS must execute these plans. This is a hard job, but if the act is not carried out at once, instead of us exterminating the Jews, the Jews will exterminate the Germans at a later date.

19. Whether they live in comfort or die from starvation, only concerns me if they can be used as slaves for our culture. Otherwise it's no concern to me when a anti tank ditch is being dug 10,000 Russian women collapse from exhaustion, the only thing that concerns me is when the ditch is complete for Germany.

20. In my eyes, Himmler was worse than Hitler. The assassination attempt should have been directed against Himmler in the first place.

21. At the time of the shooting of these 120, there was a young Jewish boy of twenty who had a Nordic appearance, with blue eyes and blond hair. Himmler called that boy aside from the pit where he was to be shot and asked him if he were Jewish, whether his grandparents were all Jewish. The boy replied that as far as he knew, his entire family was Jewish. Then Himmler said that he couldn't help the boy, and the boy was executed along with the others. You could see how Himmler tried to save the boy's life.

22. He was not a man who was hard-hearted in the sight of blood. He was hard-hearted by reason of a fanatic ideology. But he was undoubtedly soft and cowardly.

23. In Krakow, a Criminal Police officer, over fifty years of age, shook hands with a Jew. Himmler was informed and ordered a two-year term in Dachau for this employee. This was at the time of the battle of Stalingrad. It shows that Himmler had time to think of these ridiculous things.

24. Himmler was the most feared man in Germany by everyone, including the most loyal German.

25. Himmler hated Poles and Slavs and was quite capable of not only making such a statement but of putting it into practice if given the opportunity.

26. Himmler was not sadistic - he was a stingy, small person. He was formerly a schoolteacher and he was always of that kind of mentality. He obtained pleasure from punishing others, like a schoolteacher who hits a child with a cane more than necessary and derives pleasure from it.

27. The only difficulty with Himmler was that he was of a sneaky nature. I never knew whether I would be alive or imprisoned the next day. But I gained new strength from my firm idea that Germany - that I must save Germany from chaos.

28. Himmler hated Russia but I had him convinced that Russia could not be defeated.

29. Himmler was such a coward he refused or was afraid to act because of Kaltenbrunner and Hitler.

30. He was a schoolmaster type outwardly, and that was as far as his foreign political horizon went. Therefore, in the field of foreign affairs I had an easy time convincing him. As far as other things are concerned, Himmler was a sphinx, hard to understand. He was a coward, not a brave man.

31. There was also Himmler the crusader and visionary, the man who built a romantic castle in a German forest where the knights of the S.S., many of whom could hardly read or write, were required to repair at intervals to contemplate the glory of their order and establish spiritual contact with the heroes of mediaeval Germany.

32. For him the Russian war offered a glorious opportunity for comparative anatomy: while immense armies were manoeuvring over the frozen plains and smashing each other to pieces, Himmler set himself the urgent task of building up a collection of skulls of Jewish-Bolshevik Commissars: such things were impossible to come by in Germany.

33. He had a pale, round, expressionless face, almost Mongolian, and a completely inoffensive air. Nor in his early years did I ever hear him advocate the race theories of what he was to become the most notorious executive.

34. He looked to me like an intelligent elementary schoolteacher, certainly not a man of violence. I could not for the life of me see anything outstanding or extraordinary about this middle-sized, youthfully slender man in grey S.S. uniform. Under a brow of average height two grey-blue eyes looked out at me, behind glittering prince-nez, with an air of peaceful interrogation. The trimmed moustache below the straight, well-shaped nose traced a dark line on his unhealthy, pale features. The lips were colourless and very thin. Only the inconspicuous, receding chin surprised me. The skin of his neck was flaccid and wrinkled. With a broadening of his constant, set smile, faintly mocking and sometimes contemptuous about the corners of the mouth, two rows of excellent white teeth appeared between the thin lips. His slender, pale, and almost girlishly soft hands, covered with blue veins, lay motionless on the table throughout our conversation.

35. Mohammed knew that most people are terribly cowardly and stupid. That is why he promised two beautiful women to every courageous warrior who dies in battle. This is the kind of language a soldier understands. When he believes that he will be welcomed in this manner in the afterlife, he will be willing to give his life, he will be enthusiastic about going to battle and not fear death. You may call this primitive and you may laugh about it, but it is based on deeper wisdom. A religion must speak a man's language.

36. Today, Germany is on the borders of Europe everywhere.

37. Roughly 7 to 8 percent of men in Germany are homosexual. If that is how things remain, our nation will fall to pieces because of that plague. Those who practice homosexuality deprive Germany of the children they owe her.

38. You men of the einsatzgruppen are called upon to fulfill a repulsive duty. But you are soldiers who have to carry out every order unconditionally. You have a responsibility before God and Hitler for everything that is happening. I myself hate this bloody business and I have been moved to the depths of my soul. But I am obeying the highest law by doing my duty. Man must defend himself against bedbugs and rats, against vermin.

39. Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound. God may have made men and women, but Colt made them equal. Anon totalitarian regimes and genocides can't happen without gun control Ordinary citizens don't need guns, as their having guns doesn't serve the State.

40. These clashes are the only evolu-tionary possibility which will enable us one day, now that Fate has given us the Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, to create the Germanic Reich.

41. Perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them. Ha! A small matter.

42. One thing is certain: wherever the enemy lands, if once we can get to grips with him on the Continent, where we are not dependent on supplies from overseas, that ought to be, and will be, all right with us.

43. Atheism is the only world-view or religious view that is not tolerated within the SS.

44. I have not tolerated an atheist in the ranks of the SS. Every member has a deep faith in God, in what my ancestors called in their language Waralda, the ancient one, the one who is mightier than we are.

45. We shall not rest until we have rooted out Christianity .

46. The only thing that matters is that we stand firm.

47. In the course of history periods of capitalism and socialism alternate with one another; capitalism is the unnatural, socialism the natural economic system... The National Socialists and the Red Front have the same aspirations. The Jews falsified the Revolution in the form of Marxism and that failed to bring fulfilment.

48. It will undoubtedly happen, that the enemy will make the attempt, today, tomorrow or the next day, at some time, to break into this fortress of Europe at one point or another. That will undoubtedly be the case.

49. All of us, who are members of the Germanic peoples, can be happy and thankful that once in thousands of years fate has given us, from among the Germanic peoples, such a genius, a leader, our Fuehrer Adolf Hitler, and you should be happy to be allowed to work with us.

50. The fortress of Europe with its frontiers must be held and will be held too, as long as is necessary.

51. Let us assume that the Turks in whose ranks Europeans were fighting as well, even in high positions, would have conquered Vienna and Europe in 1683 instead of having been forced to withdraw. If the Mohammedans would have gained the victory at the time and Islam would have swept victoriously over Europe, then the Christian churches would have been depoliticized. (...) For the Turks were religiously tolerant, they allowed each religion to continue to exist, provided it was no longer involved in politics - otherwise it was finished.

52. We shall have to pass through many a valley, many a narrow defile. Many will grow tired on the way. Of course they will mostly be those who have no reason to do so.

53. We shall solve this problem, and afterwards Warsaw as the Capital and the pool of intelligentsia of that nation will be destroyed.

54. I know there are some people in Germany who become sick when they see these black uniforms, we understand the reason for this, and do not expect we shall be loved by all that number of people; those who come to fear us in any way or at any time must have a bad conscience towards the Fuhrer and the nation. For these persons we have established an organisation called the Security Service.

55. Perhaps we shall also have to hold in check other coloured peoples who will soon be in their certain prime, and thus preserve the world, which is the world of our blood, of our children and of our grandchildren.

56. The decision, therefore, lies here in the East; here must the Russian enemy, this people numbering two hundred million Russians, be destroyed on the battle field and person by person, and made to bleed to death .

57. I would like to give it a name: it is the great fortress of Europe.

58. I am not making spiteful assertions now but merely stating the facts-that, for instance, among Hungarian generals there is such a considerable percentage of men of German origin, who of course had, in most cases, to alter their names if they wanted to get anywhere.

59. We have only one task, to stand firm and carry on the racial struggle without mercy.

60. We know that these clashes with Asia and Jewry are necessary for evolution.

61. Now it is just this world we like the best, the Germanic world, the world of Nordic life.