3 Top-Ranking Nazi Targets We Wish We’d Assassinated
Could the war have ended earlier? Could genocide have been prevented?
If you’ve seen the 2009 Quentin Tarantino film Inglorious Basterds, you know the alternate-history story of a scrappy Jewish-American commando unit who blew up a theater where high-ranking members of the Nazi government including Adolf Hitler himself were in attendance.
While most viewers are undoubtedly familiar with the basic facts of World War II and the Nazi occupation of France, the film went to some extra trouble pointing out the main targets of this assassination when they appeared on screen.
The benefits of killing Hitler are plainly obvious. And since Göbbels is introduced as “the number two man” and given plenty of screen time to characterize himself as pure racist evil in his role as Hitler’s chief propagandist, it’s pretty clear why killing him would’ve also been a big win for the Allies.
But what about the others?
Martin Bormann and Herman Göring were two top-ranking members of the Nazi government that administered vital operations of the Third Reich and reported directly to Hitler. There’s also one other member of this grisly gang that did not appear in Inglorious Basterds, whom in a conversation about killing the most notorious Nazis should not be left out: Heinrich Himmler.
Let’s take a look at each one of these fiends, their roles, their crimes and their fates in closer detail.
Marin Bormann
Martin Bormann was the head of the Nazi political party, with near complete control of domestic policies within Germany, Austria and other conquered territories. Bormann ordered the brutal treatment of Jews and Slavs under Nazi rule, as well as harsh policies for captured prisoners of war.
RIGHT: The Nazis visit France after its capitulation in 1940 (annotated by author). — WikiCC
Serving as Hitler’s personal secretary for several years, Bormann was often at the center of Nazi power. Had the war ended with a Nazi victory, Bormann may have been the next leader of Germany and ushered in a terrifying era of alternate history: According to a 1973 New York Times article, “[Bormann] held the same position under Hitler which Stalin held under Lenin.”
Bormann joined the Nazi party in 1927 and worked full-time as fund raiser and organizer for the party. In the following decades, he skillfully climbed through the ranks, positioning himself closer and closer to Hitler in order to gain more power and influence. By 1933 he was the second highest-ranking political official in the Nazi party; in 1935 he began acting as Hitler’s personal secretary; and in 1937 he joined the SS leadership, the organization within the Nazi government that was most influential in implementing the Holocaust.
Killing Bormann would’ve been a severe setback to the way the Nazi party operated during World War II. There was so much distrust, secrecy, competition and political in-fighting among Hitler’s inner circle that the absence of a powerful figure like Bormann—who was particularly adept at this kind of political maneuvering—would surely have created a power vacuum to spur further conflict.
After his death, Bormann’s responsibilities would’ve fallen to another high-ranking official, stretching thin the already beleaguered administration, or possibly to lesser experienced subordinates. Nazi Germany’s ability to continue persecuting those under its rule would’ve weakened and their inevitable defeat would’ve come all the sooner.
It’s too bad, then, that Bormann continued fulfilling his malevolent duties until the final days of the war. As the Soviets encircled Berlin and Hitler and Göbbels committed suicide, Bormann fled. For almost thirty years, the world did not know what became of him, believing him to be one of the Nazi’s that got away, living out the rest of his life as an old man in hiding.
But in 1973, a body with thirty years of decomposition was found buried near Berlin’s central train station. The cause of death was likely suicide and believed to be Martin Bormann according to dental records. In 1998, this was later confirmed definitively using DNA and the world breathed a sigh of relief knowing that one less brutal monster was walking the Earth.
Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring held the rank of Reichsmarschall, which made him the highest ranking military officer in Nazi Germany. He was also head of the Luftwaffe, the German air force, and President of the Reichstag, the head of the German legislature. Göring was a long-time friend and ally to Adolf Hitler, having stood should-to-shoulder with him and served the cause of Nazism for more than twenty years until his death.
RIGHT: The Nazis out for a walk at one of the Führer’s command posts in 1943 (annotated by author). — WikiCC
Göring joined the Nazi party in 1922. His reputation as a WWI ace fighter pilot (meaning that he shot down at least five planes in his career) attracted Hitler’s attention, leading to his appointment as head of the SA, the early paramilitary arm of the Nazi party. A year later, Göring was present at the Beer Hall Putsch, Hitler’s attempt to overthrow the government in 1923, which failed, leaving Göring seriously injured and Hitler in prison.
Hitler was later released and resumed his political career, the Nazi party earning ever more seats in parliament with each passing election. Göring became president of the Reichstag as Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. As Göring earned even more titles and parliamentary powers, he established the Gestapo, the infamous “secret state police” force that was instrumental in the Holocaust. And when World War II broke out in Europe with the invasion of Poland in 1939, Göring was appointed Hitler’s official successor to be come the next Führer.
Göring’s Luftwaffe and his leadership thereof was put to the test during the course of the war, starting with Battle of Britain. The Luftwaffe came incredibly close to defeating the Royal Air Force, but in the end could not defeat brilliant machines like the British Spitfire fighter plane. Having boasted that no Allied plane could ever drop bombs Berlin, Göring was soon humiliated as German cities were easily attacked, with some, most notably Dresden, almost completely destroyed. His reputation never recovered.
Had Göring been assassinated at some point during the war, a key element of ultra loyal, top-ranking military power would’ve disappeared from the Nazi leadership, as well as Hitler’s official successor. This may have left the Luftwaffe less organized, but since Göring appears to have repeatedly blundered in the leadership of the German air force, it’s hard to know for sure. His death would certainly have been a vicious attack on the morale of the German military and likely would’ve weakened the administration as a whole with competition to be Hitler’s next successor ramping up.
In the end, Göring survived the war and surrendered to Allied forces, later becoming the most high-profile of the accused war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials. During the proceedings, Göring was arrogant and unrepentant as he was convicted of a litany or war crimes and crimes against humanity and finally sentenced to death. However, in the hours before the execution, he used a hidden cyanide capsule to kill himself.
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler was Reichsführer-SS, putting him in command of the Gestapo and the Schutzstaffel (SS), the police and paramilitary forces that rounded up Jews, homosexuals, gypsies, Slavs and political enemies and built concentration camps to have them murdered en masse. Himmler is generally considered to be the architect of the Holocaust and is the source of the bizarre occultism and pseudoscientific racial theories that came from Nazi Germany. Simply put, he was a really, really bad apple.
RIGHT: Hitler and Himmler standing before the Reich Chancellory in 1937 (annotated by author). — WikiCC
Himmler was a university-educated young man who served in the German army during WWI. He joined the Nazi party in 1923 in time to participate in the unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch from which he escaped injury and prosecution for treason. He was, however, a victim of a kind of Weimar-era cancel culture that ruined his reputation, leaving him jobless and forcing to live with his mother. In this period of dejection and pennilessness, Himmler began to form much of his hateful racial ideology and discovered an interest in the occult.
Once Hitler was released from prison and the wheels of the Nazi party were set back in motion, Himmler remained loyal and rose through the ranks. He gravitated towards the paramilitary organizations, particularly the newly formed SS, which was designed as Hitler’s personal protection force. Himmler was eventually appointed head of the SS and over the course of a decade, grew it into a powerful military organization with over a million members and an independent command structure.
As World War II started with the invasion of Poland, units of Himmler’s SS acted as “death squads” that killed civilians and terrorized locals into complete submission to German authority. The SS also began to round up the ‘undesirables’ of the Nazi worldview and move them into ghettos as part of long-term plan to expel the peoples of Eastern Europe from their land and resettle the entire region with millions German citizens.
In the years that followed, the German army conquered all of Eastern Europe and for at least a brief moment was poised to capture Moscow, as well. Through his deputy Reinhard Heydrich (another high-ranking Nazi official famous for presiding over the Wannsee Conference and who really was assassinated in 1943), Himmler initiated the full scale relocation, imprisonment, forced labor and mass murder of Jews, gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and political enemies. The trains, concentrations camps, gas chambers and ovens were all part of his design, and he made frequent trips to camps in Austria, Poland, Latvia, Belarus, Russia and those within Germany in order to to inspect the facilities and attend public executions.
If Himmler could’ve been killed at any point in his career, it would no doubt have saved many, many lives—possibly millions. Without his leadership, the SS may never have grown to become the brutal, sadistic organization that it was and may have stuck closer to its original directive as a small protection force for the Führer. Though Hitler was ultimately the source of the racist, anti-semitic worldview that led to the Holocaust, its horrific realization was made possible by fanatics like Himmler who shared the same twisted dream of a ‘racially pure’ Europe under German rule.
But would killing Himmler have ended the war any sooner? While there were enough credible reports to know that mass murder and crimes against humanity were occurring in German-occupied regions, the full scale of the Holocaust and the aims of its chief architect were not known until after the war when concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe were liberated.
This is probably why Himmler was not a main target included in Inglorious Basterds, since the main goal of “Operation Kino” was to kill a selection of influential leaders that together would’ve caused the German government to collapse, resulting in its immediate or soon-to-follow defeat. The idea of Göring, Bormann, Göbbels and Hitler himself gathering at a single location in an occupied territory was already wishful thinking. Adding Himmler into the mix would’ve been hard to believe, and even the fictional Nazi leaders who attended Minister Göbbels’ film premiere would likely have avoided creating such a juicy target for the Allies or local resistance groups.
Himmler met his fate in the final months of the war as the Allies were invading German territory from the west and the Soviets were encircling Berlin in the east. He and a small entourage with forged identites attempted to flee to northern Germany but were captured at a Soviet checkpoint. Himmler was handed over to British intelligence agents to whom he admitted his identity, then bit into a cyanide capsule and killed himself.
“Like the snows of yesteryear…”
There you have it, an in-depth look at the not-so-well-known Nazi targets the Allies would’ve wanted to assassinate. Hitler, too, had his share of assassination attempts and other threats to his life, but in the end, the killing of Reinhard Heydrich was the only successful state-sponsored assassination of the whole war.
And if you’ve never seen Inglorious Basterds, or if it’s simply been a while (the film is already thirteen years old!), I highly encourage you to find it on your favorite streaming service and give it a re-watch. It’s Quentin Tarantino at his best and delivers an extremely satisfying ending.
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