Crackdown on Edelweiss Pirates

Date: October 25, 1944 • Location: Berlin, Germany

Heinrich Himmler ordered a crackdown on the Edelweiss Pirates, a nonconformist youth group that assisted army deserters and others hiding from the Nazis.

Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was a German Nazi politician, police administrator, and military leader. He was the fourth and longest-serving Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, serving from 1929 to 1945. He was a leading member of the Nazi Party and one of the most powerful figures in Nazi Germany. He was also one of the main architects of the Holocaust, the genocide of European Jews during World War II.