The service record of Heinrich Himmler was a collection of official SS documents maintained at the SS Personalhauptamt in Berlin from 1934 until the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945. Prior to 1934, Himmler's SS records were maintained at the Brown House, the Nazi Party headquarters in Munich.
Berlin is the capital and largest city of Germany by both area and population. Its 3,723,914 (2018) inhabitants make it the second most populous city proper of the European Union after London. The city is one of Germany's 16 federal states. It is surrounded by the state of Brandenburg, and contiguous with its capital, Potsdam. The two cities are at the center of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region, which is, with 6,004,857 (2015) inhabitants and an area of 30,370 square km, Germany's third-largest metropolitan region after the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main regions.
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the Gleichschaltung legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire (800–1806) and the German Empire (1871–1918). The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
The National Socialist German Workers' Party, commonly referred to in English as the Nazi Party, was a far-right political party in Germany that was active between 1920 and 1945, that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party, existed from 1919 to 1920.
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, and a leading member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) of Germany. Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and among those most directly responsible for the Holocaust.
A service record is a collection of either electronic or printed material which provides a documentary history of a person's activities and accomplishments while serving as a member of a given organization. Service records are most often associated with the military, but are commonly found in other groups, such as large corporations or for use by employees of a civilian government.
The German Federal Archives or Bundesarchiv (BArch) are the National Archives of Germany. They were established at the current location in Koblenz in 1952.
Summary of SS service
SS number: 168
Nazi Party number: 14303
Primary position: Reichsführer-SS und Chef der Deutschen Polizei
Previous SS positions: SS-Leader (1925), SS-District Leader (1926), Deputy-Reichsführer (1927)
Waffen-SS service: Supreme Commander by default as Reichsführer-SS. Exercised little operational authority.
Reichsführer-SS was a special title and rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945 for the commander of the Schutzstaffel (SS). Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933, and from 1934 to 1945 it was the highest rank of the SS. The longest serving and most noteworthy Reichsführer-SS was Heinrich Himmler.
Reichsleiter was the second highest political rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), next only to the office of Führer. Reichsleiter also served as a paramilitary rank in the Nazi Party and was the highest position attainable in any Nazi organisation.
Dates of rank
Himmler as Deputy Reich Leader of the SS, circa 1928. In this photograph, he wears the insignia of an SS-Oberführer
Himmler joined the SS in the summer of 1925, during the group's earliest stage of existence. SS ranks at this point were very simple. Himmler was appointed as an "SS-Leader" and assigned to work in the Nazi headquarters in Munich. A year later, he was appointed as the "SS-District Leader" for Bavaria and, a year after that, appointed as a Deputy to the National Leader of the SS, Erhard Heiden.
The uniforms and insignia of the Schutzstaffel were paramilitary ranks and uniforms used by the Schutzstaffel (SS) between 1925 and 1945 to differentiate that organization from the regular German armed forces, the German state, and the Nazi Party.
Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a landlocked federal state of Germany, occupying its southeastern corner. With an area of 70,550.19 square kilometres, Bavaria is the largest German state by land area. Its territory comprises roughly a fifth of the total land area of Germany. With 13 million inhabitants, it is Germany's second-most-populous state after North Rhine-Westphalia. Bavaria's capital and largest city, Munich, is the third-largest city in Germany.
Erhard Heiden was an early member of the Nazi Party and the third commander of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the paramilitary wing of the Sturmabteilung. He was appointed head of the SS, an elite subsection of the SA in 1927. At that time the SS numbered less than a thousand men and Heiden found it difficult to cope under the much larger SA. Heiden was not a success in the post, and SS membership dropped significantly under his leadership. He was dismissed from his post in 1929, officially for "family reasons". He was arrested after the Nazis came to power in 1933 and executed that same year.
Between 1925 and 1927, Himmler wore a variety of Nazi paramilitary uniforms. His first recognizable SS uniform may be seen in photographs from 1928, when Himmler wears the double oak leaf insignia of an SS-Oberführer. In 1929, Himmler was appointed to succeed Heiden and after this point referred to himself solely by his title of "Reichsführer" (this was not an actual rank until 1934). In a Nazi rally photograph from 1930, Himmler can be seen wearing an SS uniform with a striped swastika armband, with three stripes denoting his position as Reichsführer-SS. The armband stripe system was in fact utilised before the introduction of collar patches and it is uncertain why Himmler would have reverted to this insignia for one particular rally.
Oberführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) dating back to 1921. Translated as "senior leader", an Oberführer was typically a NSDAP member in charge of a group of paramilitary units in a particular geographical region. From 1921 to 1925, the phrase Oberführer was used as a title in the Sturmabteilung (SA), but became an actual SA rank after 1926.
Between 1929 and 1933, Himmler wore insignia for the SS ranks of Oberführer, Gruppenführer, and in 1933 was promoted to SS-Obergruppenführer (the highest SS rank at the time). In June 1934, Himmler's position of Reichsführer-SS became an actual rank and Himmler began wearing the wreathed three leaf insignia which he would display for the rest of his career in the SS.
Gruppenführer was an early paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party (NSDAP), first created in 1925 as a senior rank of the SA. Since then, the term Gruppenführer is also used for leaders of groups/teams of the police, fire departments, military and several other organizations.
Obergruppenführer was one of the Third Reich's paramilitary ranks, first created in 1932 as a rank of the Sturmabteilung (SA), and adopted by the Schutzstaffel (SS) one year later. Until April 1942, it was the highest commissioned SS rank, inferior only to then Reichsführer-SS Translated as "senior group leader", the rank of Obergruppenführer was senior to Gruppenführer. A similarly named rank of Untergruppenführer existed in the SA from 1929 to 1930 and as a title until 1933. In April 1942, the new rank of SS-Oberst-Gruppenführer was created which was above Obergruppenführer and below Reichsführer-SS.
Himmler's official SS record does not list his promotions prior to that of Reichsführer-SS, instead simply backdating to Himmler's original appointment date in January 1929.[1] Alternate and photographic evidence, however, offer the following dates of rank.
As head of the SS, Himmler was in the unique position of having the ability to award himself many Nazi military, civil, and political decorations. However, Himmler's official awards and decorations qualified him for mainly service decorations and qualification badges, this being apparently by design.[2] Himmler was never awarded the Knight's Cross, German Cross, Iron Cross or the War Merit Cross, the last of which his duties as Chief of the SS and Police would have qualified.[3]
Himmler's authorized decorations were as follows:[4]
Himmler was granted foreign awards from Germany's allies, Romania, Italy and Croatia[5] which bestowed Himmler with high ranking orders. Himmler held claim to several German state decorations, most significantly from Bavaria, where he had previously served as Police President. Himmler rarely wore these additional medals, except at the most formal of state functions, when a full dress uniform was required.
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