In April, 1919, Himmler joined one of the many Freikorps army units that were determined to crush the Communist movement. During the next two years he served in various paramilitary organizations that were on the march against democracy, the shameful Treaty of Versailles and the Marxist dictatorship. Young Himmler had been frustrated that he had not got to fight in the front lines during the war and, lacking any direction, he now sought a cause that he could embrace and a leader that he could respect.

Himmler’s family had not been inherently anti-Semitic. In his early twenties, however, he began reading the Jew bashing pamphlets that were circulating around Munich. He also got ahold of the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, a faked document that purported to contain details of a Jewish world conspiracy.