Obsessed with the idea of racial purification of the German nation (and with a population growth policy), he came up with the “Lebensborn” programme (promoting the growth of Germany’s “Aryan” population) and “Germanization” (the location, abduction, false registration and “re-education” of Aryan-looking children in occupied territories). In his secret memorandum to Hitler from 25 May 1940, titled “Reflections on the Treatment of Peoples of Alien Races in the East”, among others things, he wrote:
“For the non-German population of the East there must be no higher school than the four-grade elementary school … Simply arithmetic up to 500 at the most; writing of one’s name; the doctrine that it is a divine law to obey the Germans and to be honest, industrious, and good. I don’t think that reading is necessary … whether the child is racially perfect and conforming to our conditions. If we acknowledge such a child to be as of our blood, the parents will be notified that the child will be sent to a school in Germany and that it will permanently remain in Germany … The parents of such children of good blood will be given the choice to either give away their child; they will then probably produce no more children so that the danger of this subhuman people of the East [Untermenschenvolk des Ostens] obtaining class of leaders which, since it would be equal to us, would also be dangerous for us, will disappear--or else the parents pledge themselves to go to Germany and to become loyal citizens there. The love toward their child, whose future and education depends on the loyalty of the parents, will be a strong weapon in dealing with them … I consider it as a matter of course from an emotional as well as from a rational viewpoint that the moment children and parents come to Germany they are not treated like lepers in the schools and in everyday life, but, after having changed their names, they should, in full confidence, be incorporated into the German life, although attention and vigilance must be exercised with regard to them … namely, that on one side one wants to win the people as Germans, and on the other side one constantly hurts and repudiates their human value, their pride and honor through distrust and insults. Insults like “Polack” and “Ukrainian” or something like that must be made impossible.”
At the end of the war, on May 20, 1945, Heinrich Himmler was captured by Russian soldiers who turned him over to the British. It was under their control that he committed suicide by biting own on a cyanide capsule hidden in his mouth.
