[OCTOBER 7, 1900–MAY 23, 1945]

Father of the concentration camp

Heinrich Himmler has been labeled the "architect of genocide," the Nazi leader who more than any other encouraged and facilitated Adolf Hitler's decision to implement the Final Solution to the Jewish question, as well as other programs of ethnic cleansing that destroyed untold millions of lives during World War II. Few understood, embraced, and exalted the Führer's evil dreams as thoroughly as Himmler. For him they were a moral imperative.

Himmler was born the second son of a secondary-school teacher and one-time tutor to the Bavarian royal family. None of Himmler's scholarly biographers trace his hate-filled, phobic prejudices to his formative years. He no doubt absorbed conventional prejudices about minorities and outgroups, but nothing virulent. Germany's defeat in World War I transformed his conservative nationalism, like that of many future...