Himmler's Haunting Letters From Final Days

The letters of Heinrich Himmler to his wife, Marga —published for the first time in English, along with her responses— combine to constitute a comprehensive correspondence from their first encounter in 1927 to the end of the war in 1945. The early letters at first seem extremely trite; nothing suggests that the Heinrich Himmler of 1927 would later develop into a mass murderer. Two rather unpretentious people, one a party functionary of the NSDAP and the other a divorced nurse, meet at the end of the 1920s and declare their love for each other in numerous letters. They marry, establish a self- sufficient business [poultry farming— Trans.] in the country, have a children and later take in a foster child. During the following years, while the husband is mostly traveling on official business, the wife stays at home, cares for the children and the house, and looks after the business of the farm. Over time the letters become more earnest: the husband's career is prospering; the couple corresponds about daily worries; they telephone each other almost every day, even after the husband has had a mistress for a long time and conceived children with her. The war appears only sketchily in these letters: she writes of nights during the bombardments of Berlin; he writes about the “lot of work” he has to do on the Eastern Front.