Word: himmlers
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...stood for Schutzstaffel, meaning protective echelon, or, as commonly translated, elite guard. The organization grew out of a small group of thugs recruited in 1923 to protect Hitler, and was originally the security arm of the Nazi Party. When it came under the leadership of Heinrich Himmler in 1929, the SS began to expand; by the war's end almost 1 million men had passed through its ranks. The Waffen combat units were formed in the late 1930s. It was members of the Totenkopf ("Death Head") SS who served as guards and executioners at the concentration camps, wearing black caps...
...said Himmler, was "to find out, to fight and destroy all open and secret enemies of the Führer, the National Socialist movement and our racial resurrection." Two of the guard's most notorious members were Adolf Eichmann, who was later executed for directing the deportation of Jews to concentration camps, and Josef Mengele, the evil Auschwitz doctor who is still thought to be at large. Known for their viciousness and fanaticism, SS squads rounded up Jews and resisters in villages in Germany and throughout the rest of Europe and shot them on the spot...
...German peace feeler was a desperate maneuver by Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, the police and the concentration camps, who had escaped from Berlin to the north German port of Lübeck. There he told a diplomat from neutral Sweden that Germany was willing to surrender to the Americans and British. At worst, Himmler thought, this would enable Germany to throw all its troops against the Soviets; at best, the Western Allies would join the German defense. Himmler seems even to have cherished the illusion that the Allies would support him, the lord of the Holocaust...
Truman's reaction to Himmler's offer was acerbic. "Has he anything to surrender?" the new President asked Churchill on the transatlantic telephone. The two quickly agreed to tell the Swedish diplomat (and to reassure " the ever suspicious Stalin) that Germany must surrender unconditionally to all the Allies. No more was heard from Himmler. Inside the Berlin bunker, Hitler denounced him as a traitor. He dismissed Himmler from his government positions and expelled him from the Nazi Party...
Then, after purges of Jewish professors and students had swept German universities in 1936, the Harvard administration sent a delegation to participate in the 550th anniversary celebration of the University of Heidelberg, alongside Joseph Goebbels and Heinrich Himmler. “Should not one be ready to build a scholarly bridge between two nations?” asked Harvard’s then-President James B. Conant ’14 in his autobiography...