Another entry on a visit to the Buchenwald camp noted: “Took a snack in the cafe at the SS casino”, according to The Sun.
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Heinrich Himmler (left) with Adolf Hitler.
The authenticity of the diaries has been verified by experts of the German Historical Institute, a state institution in Moscow, which thoroughly analyzed the records and compared them with Himmler’s other documents and known facts. “Hitler was furious and stripped Himmler of all his offices”.
The books, more than 1,000 pages covering the years 1938, 1943 and 1944, were discovered at a defence ministry archive in the town of Podolsk, near Moscow.
“Heinrich Himmler is a beast full of contradictions”, Britain’s Daily Mail cites Dr. Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute as saying.
Elsewhere he describes witnessing the “effectiveness” of the diesel engines at the Sobibor death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland after 400 people were murdered.
The diaries, in part, reveal the daily schedule of Himmler, the commander of the Nazi’s Schutzstaffel, or SS, Germany’s major paramilitary force at the time.
A member of the DHI team who has been examining the diaries told the newspaper, “The archive documents are the key to fully understanding Himmler and his cruel works”.
The journals for 1941 and 1942 were already discovered in 1991 in Russian Federation, which holds 2.5 million documents from the Wehrmacht, the Nazi-era German military.
They aim to have Himmler’s diary published in two volumes by the end of 2017. “He was very careful about his wife and daughter, as well as his affair with his secretary”. The researchers believe that his meetings with her are referred to innocuously but frequently in his diary as “inspection” or “en route”.
He also wrote of playing card game Doppelkopf (double head) as well as curling and watching the stars at night. According to The Guardian, the documents were found in a property that belongs to the Himmler family in Gmund, near the Tergernsee Lake, Bavaria.
“It’s particularly impressive the large number of contacts he had and how he tried to hold close to him important authorities in the party, government, military and industry”, said Uhl.
“The most interesting thing for me is that combination”, he said.
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“This shows what a monstrosity he was”, Katzer said.
