Hitler's henchmen - Almost as evil as their boss!

Let's look briefly at some of the top Nazis who served Hitler They were:

Hermann Goering
Heinrich Himmler
Reinhard Heydrich
Josef Goebbels
Martin Bormann

There were others, of course, but these were the worst, most-evil, & the bosses of most of the others. Obviously, Hitler was the most-evil person who ever lived, but these men were right behind him. However, their evil didn't show forth til they came under Hitler's spell.

HERMANN WILHELM GOERING - 1893-1946 - Reichsmarschall of Germany, 2nd-in-command under Hitler, Goering was a decorated & famous WW1 aviator, with 22 victories & winning the Blue Max.
Goering fell under Hitler's spell in 1922 when he heard the then-unknown head of the then-small NSDAP party make a speech, & Hitler liked him as well. He was with Hitler during the "Beer Hall Putsch" of 1923 & was shot in the leg; the after-effects of which caused him to become a morphine addict. This lasted til 1927, when amnesty for the arrested Nazis was declared, & he returned to working in the aircraft industry til he was elected to the Reichstag in 1928. When the Nazis became the majority party in 1932, they elected Goering President of the Reichstag. When Hitler became Chancellor, he gave Goering several high offices. And in 1934, he plotted with Himmler & Heydrich to eliminate Ernst Roehm, head of the SA & a long list of Hitler's political opponents. Hitler further promoted him, including making him head of the new Luftwaffe.
Goering used his authority to carry out many projects against the Jews & political enemies to please Hitler, & many of Goering's subordinates carried out their own works against the Jews to please Goering. Also, Goering looted art treasures from all the terrritoies the Nazis occupied. No need to try to list ALL the evils he worked against innocent victims, as we don't have the space, but let us simply say he was condemned at Nuremburg after the war, but escaped the hangman's noose by using cyanide the night before he was to be hanged.

HEINRICH LUITPOLD HIMMLER - 1900-1945 - He became anti-Semitic at an early age, but, contrary to popular belief, he was not a chicken farmer; he had a degree in agrarianism, but held a low-paying office job, while joining the Nazis in 1923.After the "Beer Hall Putsch", he was questioned, but released by the police for lack of evidence. However, he lost his job, finally finding work under the Nazis' Gregor Strasser as a secretary & public speaker while Hitler was in prison. In 1925, he drew Hitler's favor by merging the Bavarian NSDAP with the main body under Hitler, while joining the SS that same year. He soon was able to convince Hitler that he could transform the SS into an elite bodyguard unit for Hitler, keeping it racially pure. Hitler appointed him Deputy Commander under Erhard Heiden. However, Heiden was not a loyal Nazi, was dismessed from his post in 1933, & replaced by Himmler, who soon made the SS into a powerful, elite unit, totally loyal to Hitler.
Himmler was the main architect of the Holocaust, as well as that of the concentration camps, & thus responsible for the murders of MILLIONS, not just Jews, but of POWs, especially Russians & Poles, & many political opponents of Hitler's.
When the war was over, he tried to simply merge into the general German population. However, he was captured by some former Russian POWs who didn't quite recognize him, but knew he was an important official of some sort. He was turned over to the British & was interrogated by a Capt. Selvester, to whom he divulged his true ID. When Selvester ordered him searched, he bit into a glass cyanide container he'd stowed in his mouth & was dead within 15 minutes.

(Cont. Next Post)

 

REINHARD TRISTAN EUGEN HEYDRICH (1904-1942) is regarded by some chroniclers as the most-evil of Hitler's underlings, surpassed only be Hitler himself.
He was born into an honorable & wealthy family of prominent musicians However, as a teen, he became anti-semitic, as some had accused him of being a Jew, and, given his musical ability, called him "Moses Handel".
He jouned the German Navy in 1922, rising rapidly in rank (rare in peacetime) due to his abilities. However, he bacame known for numerous romantic affairs, and Adm. Raeder dismissed him from the Navy for breaking an engagement in favor of another, His new interest was Lina Von Osten, who was already a member of the Nazis. They were married in 1931. When his navy dismissal became official that year, he immediately joined the Nazis, and 6 weex later, joined its SS, which Himmler had already founded. Himmler wanted to form a counter-intelligence unit within it, & interviewed Heydrich, who so-impressed him that he was immediately hired. Swiftly, Heydrich set up a network of internal spies & informants who used murder when necessary. In 1933, Goering turned the Gestapo, which he had founded, over to Himmler, who made Heydrich its head at once. Heydrich was also head of the SD security service, which he'd made into an instrument of terror & intimidation. Almost soon as Hitler became Fuehrer, the first concentration camps were set up. By 1934, there were over 50 of them.
Hitler had decided that the SA(Brownshirts) were no longer any use to him, & he requested Goering & Himmler to crush them. They sat down with Heydrich & Viktor Lutze & drew up a list of over 200 SA officials & other political enemies to be killed, & in July 1934, the gestapo & SS together carried out the killings & mass arrests, deporting those not immediately killed to concentration camps.
Heydrich then made the Gestapo into the instrument of terror still remembered today. With Hitler's help, they were given the authority to arbitrarily arrest anyone any time, a power they exercised liberally. (Arrest almost always meant death, or concentration camp confinement.)
In 1936, Hitler appointed Himmler head of all German police, with Heydrich as his assistant. Meanwhile, Hitler assigned Heydrich to organize the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games, which he did, with great success, pleasing Hitler immensely.
in 1937, Heydrich began organizing Nazi rallies & terrorism in Austria, which was resisting anschluss(merger) with Germany.
As Germany conquered most of western Europe, Heydrich formed the Einsatzgruppen, special execution squads that roamed the conquered territories, killing both people on lists they'd been given, and whoever else they chose. They killed at least 1.2 million Jews thruout Europe. Also, Heydrich was central in the "Wannsee Conference" where the holocaust was planned here, There, Heydrich coined the dread phrase "the final solution".
Hitler appointed Heydrich Deputy Reichsprotector of Bohemia & Moravia in 1941 to help bolster its production of war materials & to suppress anti-Nazi activity. He even managed to win some admiration from some of the Czechs for his labor reforms, but he was a person greatly feared & hated by most. Late in May, 1942, he was the object of an assassination attempt, where he was severely wounded by a bomb tossed into his open car. he died 4 June, 1942, of his injuries.
By the time of his death, Heydrich had become an arrogant, icy figure, feared almost as much by even many top Nazis as by the general public.
After the war, his wife Lina was cleared of any war crimes, & was eventually granted a substantial pension by West Germany. She died age 74 in 1985.
The world was lucky that this evil man was killed early in the war, as he would certainly have invented many more evil, deadly schemes !

 

PAUL JOSEF GOEBBELS (1897-1945)
Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, he came from a modest background. He had several childhood illnesses, & was almost a midget, but he was a top student & was adored by many women due to his speaking ability. (He continued having affairs even after his 1931 marriage. while Hitler generally frowned upon adultery, he overlooked it in Goebbels, who was too important to him to concern himself with his "hobby".)
Goebbels earned a PHD in 1921, In 1924, he joined the Nazis because he'd heard Hitler speak, & came under his spell. His ability soon made him a gauleiter or party leader. He came to the attention of Gregor Strasser, an early Nazi & leader, who put him to work as party speaker for Rhineland-Westphalia. But Strasser began disagreeing with Hitler, until Hitler took the action of calling a meeting with the Northern German party leaders, including Goebbels, offering his hand in reconciliation & winning Goebbels over completely. When Goebbels did well in organizing some party rallies, Hitler publicly praised him, which won Goebbels over completely to his side to the death.
Goebbels practiced his speechmaking & gestures in front of a mirror as Hitler did, & was permitted to give speeches in Berlin. After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, he made Goebbels Minister of Propaganda, a newly-created office, a post he held til the 3rd Reich fell. Goebbels took control of German radio, realizing its power as a propaganda tool, and soon began spreading anti-Semitic material over the air, as well as Hitler's speeches live, & his own as well.
Goebbels took over the media of the nations Germany conquered, controlling all news & radio traffic. He was also active in plotting many anti-Jewish projects, including the "final solution".
When Hitler killed himself, Herr & Mrs. Goebbels decided they didn't want to live in a world without Hitler & neither should their children. A dentist gave all 5 children morphine to render them painlessly unconscious, & they were then killed with cyanide. Mrs. Goebbels was one of the cyanide givers. Then, the pair walked into the Chancellery garden, where they bit into cyanide capsules. When they collapsed, a soldier, following orders, fired several shots into their bodies, which didn't move. The bodies were then burned, but not completely, & were found by the Russians. (The childrens' bodies were not burned.)
Goebbels was responsible for many anti-Jewish projects & for the promotion of many others, including death camps & Einsatzgruppen murders. His final monstrosity was the killing of his own children. (A stepchild, Harald Quandt, by Mrs. Goebbels' first marriage was away in the military & was spared. He & his half-brother ran the industrial empire which includes BMW (Bavarian Motor Works). He was cleared of any wrongdoing during the war, as he didn't live with Goebbels during his days of evil, living til 1967.)

 

MARTIN LUDWIG BORMANN (1900-1945) was the least-visible of Hitler's henchmen, preferring to work "behind the scenes".

He studied agriculture, & served late in WW1 as he reached legal age, but saw no action. Then, he worked managing a large estate, but as hyper-inflation made money worthless, stored foodstuffs became valuable, & many estates had friecorps to guard them. Bormann joined the one where he worked, & became a section leader & treasurer.

in 1924, Bormann went to prison for a year for participating in the murder of a man who'd ratted out" a fellow friecorps member who was sabotaging the French occupying the Rhineland.

He joined the Nazis in 1927, & soon impressed Himmler with his secretarial skills. He joined the SS in 1937 Not being a good public speaker, he stuck to clerical duties, keeping Himmler's and Heydrich's favor. He set up & ran a party insurance fund, from which he paid party members who were injured while working for the party.

After the Nazis gained power, he became Rudolf Hess' secretary. In this position, he attracted Hitler's attention, & Hitler soon named him Reichsleiter, the highest rank in the party, & made him a Reichstag deputy. Soon, he was accompanying Hitler everywhere he went, becpming his most-trusted confidante. Hitler placed him in charge of renovation his home, the Berghof, and impressed Hitler greatly with his work, so Hitler made him his personal secretary. In this post, he controlled what info & intel Hitler received. Soon, he also controlled who else had access to Hitler.

Hitler used Bormann to pit members of the inner circle against each other, to help prevent them from coordinating any plot against him. This made many of them Bormann's enemies, but he didn't care, long as Hitler was happy.

After Hess flew to Britain in 1941, Hitler assigned his duties to Bormann, making him in effect the #2 man in the govt. after Hitler. In this position, he ran several projects against the Jews , Christian churches, Slavic people, & others Hitler disliked. he provided funds & people to carry out Himmler's & Heydrich's schemes against the Jews. All this time, Bormann remained out of the public eye. He was not well-known to the German public, which suited him fine.

When the war went against Germany, Bormann accompanied Hitler to Berlin, & was one of the witnesses of his last will & testament. He sought to flee Berlin, but realized he was cut off, & committed suicide with cyanide. His body was buried, & not found til 1973, where it was IDd by dental records & old injuries that scarred some bones. But his body wasn't POSITIVELY IDd til 1999 when it was done by DNA. The Russians, who had the body, burned it & scattered the ashes into a river to prevent any shrines to be made for him.

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Yes, Hitler's henchmen were as evil as their boss in many ways. They carried out his evil schemes. Hes, Hitler brought out the worst in all of them ! That's why I say he was the most-evil man who ever lived. While Judas committed the one worst sin of all, Hitler's life was one big binge of evil.

 

Well, actually, I didn't mention Hess cuz he wasn't one of the "Big 5" super-evil henchmen. he wasn't involved in the holocaust, concentration camps, etc. His worst act was signing the "Nuremburg Laws" into effect, which stripped the Jews of most of their rights in Germany, & helping Hitler's war plans. For these acts, he received life inprisonment. He hanged himself in Spandau Prison at age 93 in 1987. (Spandau Prison was demolished after the death of Hess, its last inmate, so it wouldn't become a neo-nazi shrine.)

I only wrote brief bios about the five most-evil of Hitler's toadies. There were many other evil men who followed Hitler, such as Julius Streicher, Adolf Eichmann, Hans Frank, Vidkun Quisling, Wilhelm Keitel, Alfred Jodl, Josef Mengele, Sigmund Rascher, & Ilse Koch to name a few. Other people may have their own list of the most-evil Nazis; this one is merely mine.

I WELCOME ANYONE ELSE'S CONTRIBUTION TO THIS LIST OF EVIL NAZIS, & JUST REQUEST THAT A BRIEF BIO ACCOMPANY ANYONE ELSE'S CANDIDATE(S).