Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS
All the Nazi leaders had a talent for self-dramatisation. None was more enamoured of the role he had chosen than Heinrich Himmler.
National socialism was a theatrocracy. Staging and role-playing lay at the heart of this tragic episode in the life of the German people. As Henry Pachter's contribution to the collective work, The Third Reich, has pointed out, Nazi propaganda tended to swallow up the Nazis themselves: the means became the end. Schwarzer Heinrich, Black Henry, the Reichsführer SS, epitomised the self-dramatisation of the leaders of Nazism.
On July 2nd, 1936, Heinrich Himmler made a speech in the cathedral at Quedlinburg in the Harz mountains. In doing honour and homage to Henry the Saxon ('The Fowler,' 919-936) under the auspices of his Schutzstaffel, Himmler was engaged in propaganda for himself and his Black Order.
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