Heinrich Himmler: The SS, Gestapo, His Life and Career - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Roger Manvell (Notes) #14

Notes

The primary published sources to which we have constantly turned during the preparation of this book are Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution and The S.S., The Kersten Memoirs, and The Schellenberg Memoirs, and also the transcript of the Trial of the Major War Criminals in Nuremberg; the edition of the latter referred to below as I.M.T. is that published by H.M.S.O. in London in twenty-two volumes. We have also drawn extensively on the documents used in evidence at the trial in the edition in German published in Nuremberg, and in the American edition in English known as Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression, referred to as N.C.A. below. Important secondary sources include Willi Frischauer’s Himmler, Charles Wighton’s Heydrich, H. R. Trevor-Roper’s The Last Days of Hitler, Rudolf Hoess’s Commandant of Auschwitz, Edward Crankshaw’s Gestapo, and Mitscherlich’s and Mielke’s The Death Doctors.

Throughout this book we have drawn on material from the copious files originating from Himmler’s headquarters and preserved now variously at the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the Berlin Document Centre, the Tracing Centre in Arolsen, the Rijksinstituut voor Oorlog Documentatie in Amsterdam, and the Wiener Library in London.

In these Notes the authors are referred to individually by their initials, R.M. and H.F.

CHAPTER I

We are grateful to Gebhard Himmler, the elder brother of Heinrich, who was our principal source of information for this initial period. We have also studied the microfilm of the surviving portions of Himmler’s early diaries kindly loaned us by the Library of the Hoover Institution at Stanford in California, and consulted the most valuable analysis of these diaries made by Werner T. Angress and Bradley F. Smith in the Journal of Modern History, Vol. 31, No. 3, Sept. 1959. The quotations from the diaries are in some instances derived from their translations, but in most cases we have used our own.

Other sources of information concerning Himmler’s youth include evidence from men who knew him as a student, in particular Dr Riss, head of the Erding law court, and Colonel Saradeth of Munich.

During Himmler’s infancy the family home was frequently changed. Himmler was born in a second-floor apartment at 2 Hildegardstrasse, Munich. In March the following year the family moved to a comfortable apartment over Liebig’s chemists’ establishment in the Liebigstrasse, a pleasant street in the city. From March 1902—4 the Himmlers were in Passau, a town near Munich, after which they returned to Munich and lived until 1913 at 86 Amalienstrasse. It was in this house, therefore, that Himmler’s boyhood was spent. From 1913-19 the family was in Landshut; from 1919-22 in Ingolstadt; then back again in Munich from 1922-30, when Himmler’s father retired at the age of 65. He died five years later, in 1935; Himmler’s mother died in 1941.

These are, of course, German pounds. Himmler’s weight at birth was 3.7 kilos.

Diary-writing was not common among the boys of the period, but Himmler was no doubt encouraged to keep one because his father was a meticulous diarist. A list of books noted by Himmler as read during his last years at school include Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, and works by Dinter and Bierbaum, which put the case both for and against the Teutonic ideal. Strangely enough, Himmler makes no comment about any of these books, merely listing their titles.

He made this claim to Count Bernadotte. See The Fall of the Curtain, p. 57.

These recollections are principally those of Dr Riss and Col Saradeth. Dr Riss was a member of the Apollo.

Dr George W. F. Hallgarten was later to emigrate from Germany to the United States where he works as an historian and sociologist. He published a pamphlet in German giving his recollections of Himmler at the school in Munich at which his father taught. He confirms Himmler’s diligence, his primness of nature, and his pathetic determination to succeed in sport and gymnastics, for neither of which he had any aptitude. For example, he could not complete a single ‘pull-up’ at the cross-bar. The school served as a preparatory establishment for the Pagerie, a school reserved exclusively for the sons of the Bavarian aristocracy who were eligible for service as pages in the Bavarian Court. Hallgarten claims that Himmler felt great resentment that he was not eligible by birth to attend the Pagerie. This however has been denied to H. F. by both Herr von Manz and the Baron Waldenfels, who knew the Himmler family and attended the Pagerie. For Prof. Hallgarten’s recollections see Mein Mitschüler Himmler (Wiener Library).

See Note 22, p. 211 of the article by Angress and Smith mentioned above.

Each state in Germany had, and still has, its own provincial parliament for the conduct of local affairs, to which deputies are appointed from the parties after local elections. The Reichstag represented, and still represents under its new name the Bundestag, the federal parliament, dealing with national policy and legislation. Deputies were elected to the Reichstag (as now to the Bundestag) on the basis of proportional representation, the various parties selecting their own deputies to fill the number of seats due to them after each election.

Gebhard Himmler recollects that the motor-cycle was a second-hand Swedish machine of which Himmler was inordinately proud.

We drew this conclusion from evidence originally given us by Otto Strasser when he was interviewed by H.F. in connection with our book, Doctor Goebbels.

See Kurt G. W. Ludecke, I Knew Hitler, p. 267.

See The Early Goebbels Diaries, pp. 78, 94, 116.

Otto Strasser told the story to H.F. that Himmler came into his office shortly before his marriage and solemnly admitted that he had lost his virginity. Strasser congratulated him. According to Gebhard Himmler, it was Marga’s blonde hair that was her outstanding attraction for Himmler. Himmler’s first meeting with her at Berchtesgaden came about through his clumsiness in pouring melting snow all over her frock when removing his Tyrolean hat with too generous a flourish as he entered the hotel lobby. His apologies led to making her acquaintance, and this in turn to long walks and longer conversations.

The initials S.S. also stood for Saal-Schutz, that is, ‘hall protection’. This is a reminder that the original duty of the S.S. was to act as ‘chuckers-out’ at political meetings.

Additional Note

Among the superfluity of personal papers meticulously preserved by Himmler and now held in the Federal Archives, there is an early essay written by Himmler as a very young man and revealing his idea on the economic and ideological aspects of agriculture. The date of this essay cannot be exactly determined, but according to the style and content there can be no doubt that he wrote it while studying at Munich. This impression is confirmed by his brother Gebhard. The essay is naïvely idealistic and visualizes what Himmler regarded at that time as a model farming community, entirely self-supporting, that is, living on the fruits of the soil and by their own labour, and having no use for money within the community itself. Money would only be required to repay the initial cost of machinery and other capital expenditure, and this would be obtained from the sale of surplus products from the land. When writing at this time Himmler deliberately used archaic terms such as Meister, Geselle and Lehrling for the hierarchy of his community; he advocated chastity and a deep communion with the soil, together with the revival of ancient folklore, folk-dancing, traditional music and so on. It is interesting to compare his concept for community living on the land with the economy and ideology of the contemporary Israeli kibbutz.

CHAPTER II

We are grateful to Frau Lina Heydrich, widow of the S.S. leader, for giving us facts concerning her husband’s early career and initial meeting with Himmler.

Darré’s conception of inferior races extended to the Latin peoples, Negroes and Asiatics. When the Rome-Berlin axis was widened to include the Japanese, this caused Himmler and the other racialists considerable embarrassment.

The text of the code appeared as document PS-2284 at I.M.T.

The word Sippe is a deliberate archaism which has no exact English equivalent, the nearest word being possibly ‘clan’. In using it, Himmler was anxious to stress the Teutonic ideals of ancestry.

In the evidence she gave H.F., Frau Heydrich denies the familiar story that the girl with whom Heydrich was previously in love was with child by him. She also denies that Heydrich had any Jewish blood in his ancestry; even so, the suspicion of it hung over him throughout his career in the Party. See also Chapter IV, note 3.

This account of Heydrich’s introduction to the Nazi Party and to Himmler was given us by Lina Heydrich. It is supported by Werner Best in evidence he gave H.F.

Frau Heydrich has stressed how extremely poorly paid her husband was, as well as other S.S. leaders. Since neither she nor Heydrich had significant private means, they lived very humbly. Frau Heydrich’s family gave them furniture and linen. They could afford no servants for several years. Frau Heydrich has also given us a number of interesting sidelights on Himmler’s character at this time. He insisted that she address him as Reichsführer, and not as Herr Himmler, which she thought more appropriate for a woman. She found him fussy, and still remembers with some amusement how, when he came to stay at her house, he carefully hung up his face-cloth to dry, and that it had a red rose embroidered upon it. He refused to eat potatoes, rice or spaghetti.

The term Junker is mostly misunderstood outside Germany. It is an archaic term implying descent from noble stock, an élite class. A Junkerschule, therefore, is an institution for the upper class, or so Himmler implied.

Nevertheless, Himmler seemed at first to welcome the idea of the return of Roehm, his former commanding officer, and not to see it as a threat to his own position. Roehm and Himmler corresponded while Roehm was in Latin America; during 1930 Himmler wrote to him at least twice, complimenting him on his escape from danger in campaigns against the Indians, and joking about him being an old hand at revolutions. He also urged him to raise money for the S.S. among the wealthy Latin Americans of German descent and said how he looked forward to their future co-operation on Roehm’s return to Germany. The letters are preserved at the Federal Archives at Koblenz.

Herr Riss, a friend of Himmler during his student days, told H.F. that when he met Himmler during 1931 and complimented him on becoming a Reichstag deputy, Himmler merely laughed at the ‘talking shop’ and claimed the Nazi deputies were only there to make use of the occasion for their own ends. What he was proud of, he said, was being Reichsführer S.S.

See Lüdecke, op. cit., p. 433.

See Gerald Reitlinger, The S.S. p. 27, William L. Shirer, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich pp. 144-5, and Nuremberg Case XI, transcript of judgment 28, 440-7; 28, 599; and 28, 794. Keppler was later to support Himmler’s so-called research into Aryan history by forming a circle of businessmen-patrons called ‘Friends of the Reichsführer S.S.’. Himmler is stated by Schroeder himself to have accompanied Hitler when he attended the famous Hitler-Schroeder meeting. See Alan Bullock, Hitler (Edition, 1952), p. 220 and Schroeder’s testimony at Nuremberg in N.C.A. II, 922-4.

LM.T. XX, p. 246.

Later, in 1936, he was to become head of the uniformed police (O.R.P.O.) and, after the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in 1942, Heydrich’s successor as Reich Protector.

This and subsequent accounts of Hoess’s extraordinary career and relationship to Himmler are taken largely from his own autobiography written in prison after the war — Commandant of Auschwitz.

See I.M.T. II, p. 361.

See I.M.T. documents PS-778; also Trial II, pp. 371 — 2. And compare Shirer, op. cit., p. 272.

Himmler worked fast; he became Chief of Political Police in Bavaria in April 1933, then in Hamburg the following October, and in Mecklenburg, Lübeck, Wuertemberg, Baden, Hessen, Thüringen and Amhalt in December. In January 1934, he assumed the same office in Oldenburg, Bremen, Saxony and Prussia. (Taken from the official file listing Himmler’s offices preserved at the Berlin Document Centre.)

CHAPTER III

Gebhard Himmler explained to H.F. that the boy Gerhard, who was a year or so older than Gudrun, was never formally adopted by his brother. He was the son of an S.S. officer called von Ahe who had been killed before the war, and he was brought up in Himmler’s household.

The estrangement was neither formally recognized nor privately acknowledged, even when Himmler much later set up a second household with his mistress Hedwig, who bore him the two children of whom he became the legal guardian. His love for his wife Marga cooled after a period of years, and his visits to Gmund became less and less frequent, though he was always deeply concerned over the welfare of Gudrun. Himmler and his wife continued to conduct the mere business of marriage throughout the rest of their lives, though Marga tacitly accepted Himmler’s relationship with Hedwig and all affection died between them. Marga’s term of address for her husband in her letters became Mein Lieber Guter, an untranslateable phrase which combines a kind of old-fashioned feminine effusiveness, with possessive sentimentality. As we shall see, Himmler’s relations with Marga’s interfering sister Bertha became very strained. It should be added that on rare occasions Himmler did allow Marga to accompany him on state occasions. For example, he took her to Italy; it is typical of him that, on this occasion, he insisted that all her expenses should be charged to his private account.

Himmler’s good relations with Roehm rapidly changed when his former superior officer stood in his way. It should, however, be realized that what finally drove Hitler to discard Roehm, of whom he was genuinely fond, was the implacable opposition to him and the S.A. that had developed among the very people whose support he felt at this stage he most needed — the generals and the industrialists. Hitler’s promise to Eden to reduce the S.A. fitted in well with this policy. These considerations, and not solely the pressure brought to bear on him by Goring and Himmler led to Hitler’s decision to strike down Roehm and destroy the influence of the S.A. For Frick’s affidavit see N.C.A. V, pp. 654-5. See also Reitlinger, S.S. p. 62 for further evidence from Roehm’s legal adviser that Himmler twisted every circumstance he could in order to incriminate Roehm in Hitler’s eyes.

Gisevius, the former Gestapo official who joined the resistance movement and whose book, To the Bitter End, is one of the most revealing and colourful sources of information about the Nazi regime, claims to have seen the report on this incident prepared by Daluege on orders from Himmler. Daluege was much more amused than concerned about the hole in the windscreen, which his report claimed was made by a stone thrown up by a passing car. This explanation was also given to H.F. by Bodenschatz, who was present at the ceremony. According to Gisevius, Himmler, ‘white, trembling, excited’, held up the interment while he insisted that forty Communists should be shot at once as a reprisal; later he had two S.A. brigade leaders executed for making an attempt on his life. Frischauer, in his biography of Himmler (p. 64) is inaccurate in claiming that Himmler was travelling to Carinhall in the same car as Hitler after their conference on Roehm in Berlin, and that he was actually wounded in the arm.

I.M.T. XX, p. 249.

This was Papen’s own view as he expressed it to H.F.

I.M.T. XII, p. 278.

The oath demanded of the S.S. officers was more exacting: for example, the oath for a Lieutenant-General ran: ‘Being an S.S. Lieutenant-General, I undertake to see to the best of my ability that, with complete disregard of whatever merits his parents or ancestors may have, only such men are to be accepted into the S.S. who comply fully with its high standard. I will see to this even if it means rejecting my own sons or daughters or those of my Sippe. I further undertake to see to it that in every year one quarter of S.S. candidates consists of men who are not sons of S.S. men. I swear to live up to these obligations in loyalty to our Führer Adolf Hitler and to the honour of my ancestors: so help me God.’ The text of this oath is preserved in the Federal Archive at Koblenz. It is significant because it reveals Himmler’s deep distrust of aristocrats exploiting the ‘merits of their ancestors’.

Schellenberg’s Memoirs, p. 10.

See I.M.T. III, p. 130.

A considerable file of correspondence survives in the Federal Archive dealing with the coats-of-arms the S.S. officers were expected to produce for formal emplacement at Wewelsburg. Since for the most part S.S. men were of middle-class origin, they had some difficulty in concocting ‘authentic’ coats-of-arms to satisfy Himmler’s Teutonic snobbery. See below, Chap. IV, Note 12.

A letter is preserved in the Federal Archive in which a schoolboy called Fritz Brüggemann wrote in January 1937 directly to Himmler for an authoritative statement as to whether or not Jesus was a Jew. Himmler sent the answer through a member of his staff: ‘Most certainly, dear boy, Jesus was not a Jew.’ Himmler favoured adapting Christian ceremonies and festivals to Teutonic forms — for example, ceremonies for christening and burial stressing the affinity between the individual and the nation. He turned Christmas into a Teutonic feast, and he gave a Teutonic form of candlestick, called a Jul-Leuchter, as his normal Christmas present.

Ahnenerbe first appears as an official organization in an order signed by Himmler at Gmund on 9 August 1937. A record of this is held at the archives at Amsterdam.

Hoess, the future commandant of Auschwitz, records that Himmler held ‘a grand inspection’ of Dachau in 1936, and adds that ‘Himmler was in the best of spirits because the whole inspection has gone off without a hitch. Dachau … is also going well.’ Himmler asked after Hoess’s family, and shortly afterwards promoted him an S.S. Second Lieutenant. Following his usual practice at these inspections, Himmler picked out a few prisoners and interviewed them in front of the Gauleiters and high Nazi officials who accompanied him.

For Frick’s attempts at intervention, see I.M.T. XII, pp. 203-6, 266.

Höttl, Behrends and Schellenberg.

The police under Himmler were divided into the uniformed police (O.R.P.O.) and the secret, plain-clothes police (S.I.P.O.). Himmler’s security police were placed under Heydrich, and embodied the Gestapo, their colleagues in Kripo (the criminal police, or C.I.D.) and the Security Service, the S.D., which was still a Party, not a state, organization. In September, a further stage was reached in merging the S.S. and the Police by making S.S. leaders of each district the Chief of Police for their areas, and the operations of the Gestapo, which were still nominally confined to Prussia, extended to the whole of Germany. It was not until two years later, however, in June 1938, that all members of the Security police had to become members of the S.S., so closing the gap in Himmler’s dual control in the state. (See Crankshaw, Gestapo, p. 90.)

In his speech, Himmler described the strategy of the Saxon duke called Henry the Fowler, who became Heinrich I, founder of the German state. He made a pact with the Hungarians, who threatened his newly-formed kingdom, in order to give himself time to prepare to resist them. Himmler did not share the normal German admiration for Charlemagne, whom he regarded as representative of an inferior race.

It is necessary in connection with the Lebensborn movement to make it quite clear that the homes were no more than large maternity establishments to care for mothers some of whom were bearing legitimate and some illegitimate children. The rumour soon got around that they were stud farms where suitable men and women were mated in order to breed even more suitable children. This was not so, though there are records of women applying to the Lebensborn homes saying that they ‘wanted to give the Führer a child’. One of the official replies to such women reads: ‘We are not a matrimonial agency.’ The Lebensborn movement was officially founded ‘by the will of the Reichsführer S.S.’ in 1936, and registered in Munich on 24 March 1938. For further details of Lebensborn, see the Bulletin of the Wiener Library, July 1962, p. 52. Cp. Chap. IV, Note 13.

In 1944 Himmler was to be formally recognized as the father and official guardian of his illegitimate son and daughter. See Chap IV, Note 14. Himmler’s relationship with Hedwig, who was known affectionately as Häschen, amounted to a form of bigamous marriage, and there is no doubt that she represented the lasting love of Himmler’s life. Frau Heydrich told H.F. that Himmler’s whole manner changed when he developed this relationship with Hedwig; he became for a while more relaxed and human. As a result of her situation, Hedwig lived a very enclosed life, but she was both liked and respected by all who came in contact with her. At one stage, Himmler wanted to divorce his wife and marry Hedwig, but she refused to let him do so for Gudrun’s sake. In conversation with H.F., Schwerin-Krosigk, Hitler’s Minister of Finance, reported that Hanna Reitsch, the famous Nazi woman aviator, had told him of her experiences immediately after the war when she was confined for questioning along with Hedwig. Himmler’s mistress told her how much she had loved Himmler, and how good he had been to her. Hedwig is now married and wishes to forget the past; her two children by Himmler were given other surnames.

The five ‘required’ sports which caused so much trouble for the older men who were expected to qualify in them, just as Himmler desired to do, were sprinting, swimming, long-distance running, the high or long jump, and putting the shot or javelin. Achieving a sports badge was made obligatory for all S.S. men, and Himmler, after months of training mostly at the Junkerschule at Bad-Toelz, had to be deliberately deceived by his subordinates that he had in fact passed the necessary tests. When men, such as Baldur von Schirach, regarded as valuable over-strained themselves to fulfil Himmler’s sports requirements Hitler became annoyed with the idea.

See Kersten’s Memoirs, pp. 294, 306.

See N.C.A. IV, pp. 616-34 for the text of this speech.

In our book Hermann Göring, we followed Wheeler-Bennett in his Nemesis in placing this challenge as being sent after the hearing. It seems more likely, according to Reitlinger, that the challenge was sent during February. The story of the challenge came originally from Otto John.

Memoirs, p. 32.

It is possible that Eichmann was already in Vienna. See Reitlinger, The Final Solution, pp. 25-6, and Lord Russell, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, p. 186.

During the winter of 1938-9, Himmler formed two companies, Deutsche Ausruestungswerke and Deutsche Erd- und Steinwerke for this purpose. They were administered by the business management department of the S.S. under Oswald Pohl, who had been a Paymaster-Captain in the Navy. See Reitlinger, The S.S., p. 257.

See Henderson, Failure of a Mission, p. 111.

See I.M.T. III, pp. 191-2.

CHAPTER IV

Gisevius in To the Bitter End, Kersten in the Memoirs, and Hoettl in The Secret Front, pp. 44 et seq.

After the war, H.F. interviewed Madame Kitty in Berlin to obtain further details of this exclusive and specialized establishment. By no means all the women who worked there were high-class professional prostitutes; some were young society women who volunteered for service, posing as patriots. Kitty told H.F. that though Ribbentrop was a frequent visitor, Goebbels only came once; he exuded charm, viewed a lesbian display, but declined to patronize any of the girls. Neither Himmler nor Goring thought fit to visit a place of this kind.

In conversation with H.F., Werner Best, who also had to work closely with Heydrich, confirmed his insatiable ambition, his intelligence and his ruthless energy. He is certain Heydrich aimed to supplant Himmler, and even possibly Hitler himself. He deliberately set out to terrorize his subordinates, and he was always making sarcastic remarks to Best on account of his legal training. However, he made something of a confidant of Best and spoke to him on one occasion about his supposed Jewish ancestry. There was, said Heydrich, a man called Suss among his forebears, but he claimed, quite reasonably, that Suss was not an exclusively Jewish name. (See also Chapter II, note 4). Wolff’s view of Heydrich given to H.F. during an interview, is that he was able and efficient, but a most unpleasant man.

Frau Heydrich has denied to H.F. that she ever had intimate relations with Schellenberg. Nor does Schellenberg himself claim as much. No doubt it was one of Heydrich’s sadistic exercises to try to make it seem that his wife was unfaithful and his subordinate guilty. Though at the start of his career, Schellenberg may have been associated with interrogations involving torture, he managed after the war to dissociate himself completely from the worst excesses of the S.S. and Gestapo. Nevertheless, when he was sentenced in 1949 to six years’ imprisonment dating from 1945, he was regarded by his judges as involved in the execution without trial of a group of Russian prisoners. He was released in 1951 because of his ill-health, and died of a kidney disease in Turin in 1952. He began to write his lengthy memoirs while in hiding in Sweden after the war, and resumed them again as soon as he was released. His wife negotiated their posthumous publication in England in 1956, and H.F. read the original typescript which ran to some 3,000 pages. The memoirs as published have had much inessential and repetitive material deleted.

Not to be confused with R.U.S.H.A., the original S.S. marriage office, which was later also concerned with kidnapping children of Nordic blood for German upbringing.

For the origin of the Einsatzgruppen in Heydrich’s S.D. offices as early as 1938, see Crankshaw’s Gestapo, pp. 146-52, Reitlinger’s S.S., p. 126 et seq,. and Shirer, op. cit., pp. 958-64.

Himmler was frequently forced to discipline the greed for land of these new German settlers, uprooted from their homes and anxious to win the most they could out of their new circumstances.

See Cohen, op. cit. pp. 106-8. The figure of 60,000 was Brack’s own estimate for Germany. The Czechoslovak War Crimes Commission estimated some 275,000 mental patients and old people exterminated. For the details of procedure in Germany, see The Death Doctors, p. 236 et seq.

See Shirer’s Berlin Diary, pp. 569 et seq.

See The Death Doctors, p. 265.

Himmler’s famous edict exhorting S.S. men to procreate before leaving for the front was issued in printed form on 28 October 1939. ‘Let us never forget that victory by our swords and the blood shed by our soldiers make no sense at all unless they are succeeded by the victory of our children and the occupation of new earth’, said Himmler. Throughout the war, Himmler was deeply concerned about the sex relations of his S.S. men. Documents held at the Federal Archive at Koblenz show that in 1942 he would only permit sexual relations between S.S. men and Polish women provided the women were officially assigned to a brothel and that there was no question of procreation or emotional entanglement. This is stated in a secret order signed by Himmler and dated 30 June 1942. On 7 March the following year, he signed a further top secret order given by the Führer himself that any S.S. man caught in homosexual activities with another S.S. man would be liable to the death penalty. On the other hand, an increase in the number of illegitimate children of the right stock was favoured; there could not be too many of them. But orphaned children of racially undesirable parents were, by an order signed by Himmler on 1 June 1943, to be taught ‘obedience, diligence and unconditional submission to their German masters’, and given only sufficient low-grade education to make them useful as unskilled labour. Himmler also developed very early on a horror of venereal disease developing among his men, primarily because it might bring on impotence. Everything was done to encourage men with the disease to submit themselves for early treatment.

Himmler did not consider designs for his own Reichsführer S.S. seal until the beginning of 1944, when drawings were submitted to him for both a large and a small seal combining the Reich eagle, the S.S. death’s head, oakleaves and gothic lettering. See above Chapter III, Note 11.

The files concerning Lebensborn held at Arolsen, now the centre of the International Red Cross Tracing Service for Lost Persons, show that these homes were a constant source of trouble, gossip and scandal, The women, for example, complained officially that their excess milk was siphoned off and that this might spoil the shape of their breasts and make them less desirable. There was trouble over the chocolate allocations, about the medical care, about the way the women were addressed (Frau was the rule), about artificial insemination, about gratuities for especially prolific mothers, and endless fuss about illicit relations and racial impurity. (Compare Chapter III, Note 18). Underlying everything was Himmler’s sentimental attachment to blond children. On one occasion he excused a man who had blocked his way on the road because his car was full of beautiful, fair-haired progeny.

In order to regularize as far as possible his fatherhood of Hedwig’s children, Himmler in a legal document dated 12 September 1944 acknowledged himself their father and became co-guardian with Hedwig of the boy Helge, then aged two, and the baby girl, Nanette Dorothea. Nanette’s birth certificate, dated 20 July, names Himmler as the father, and adds that he had already appeared before an S.S. judge on 25 June to claim official recognition of his paternity.

Schellenberg is exaggerating when he claims that Himmler actually lived with Hedwig. Rather, he set her and her children up in their own establishment and visited them just as he continued to visit his wife and daughter in Gmund. Nor need he have gone short of money with which to maintain these households. It was only his own meticulous honesty in matters of finance that prevented him from using expense-accounts, let alone accumulating ill-gotten wealth like the other Nazi leaders. He lived strictly within his official income.

For the text of this speech at Metz, see N.C.A. IV, pp. 553-8.

Many of these were used in evidence during the Doctors’ Trial, and are quoted in The Death Doctors, from which our own quotations are derived.

See Ribbentrop Memoirs, pp. 81-2.

See I.M.T. VI, p. 179.

N.C.A. V, p. 341.

See I.M.T. IV, pp, 29 and 36. For Wolff, compare Frischauer op. cit. p. 149.

See below Chap. V, p. 150, and Chap. VI, p. 184.

See The Final Solution, pp. 21-2, 76-9, and the Dutch edition of Kersten’s Memoirs, Klerk en Beul (1947), pp. 197-8.

See Manvell and Fraenkel, Göring, p. 244.

See Russell, The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, p. 205.

I.M.T. III, p. 278.

See Hoess’s Memoirs, written in captivity after the war.

See Cohen, op. cit., p. 114.

For our account of this last phase of Heydrich’s life we have relied mainly on Wighton’s biography and Schellenberg’s Memoirs.

CHAPTER V

These instructions, as far as we know, have not previously been published. They exist as a three-page typescript, marked secret, with marginal corrections in Himmler’s hand, and they are held now at the Federal Archives. The pedantic instructions exactly match Himmler’s style; he details, for example, the exact distance at which the execution squads should stand from the prisoner, and whether or not his eyes should be bandaged or his face turned to the wall.

I.M.T. XVII, pp. 19-20.

See Reitlinger’s The S.S., p. 263. Official S.S. statistics showed that between June and November 1942, 136, 700 prisoners had been taken into the camps, and that 70,610 had died, 28,846 had been ‘transferred out’ (i.e., gassed), 9,267 executed, and 4,711 released.

See N.C.A. III, pp. 467-9.

A vivid description of this repulsive hoard is given by Reitlinger in The Final Solution, p. 453.

Files of correspondence and memoranda held in the Instituut in Amsterdam, for example, set down the hard deals which the S.S. were negotiating for the sale of Jewish liberties, the minimum price of which was eventually increased from 50,000 to 100,000 Swiss francs.

For the text of this speech, see N.C.A. IV, pp. 558-78.

Various terms were used to camouflage genocide. These included Aussiedlung (desettlement), Abbeförderung (removal), and Auflockerung (loosening-up). Such terms were in keeping with the fiction that ghettoes such as that at Theresienstadt had the status of an ‘Alters-Ghetto’, that is, a place of pleasant retirement for elderly Jews, and so called in order to give a favourable impression. Himmler was very angry when he heard that the true nature of the ghetto at Theresienstadt had leaked out.

This story has been most eloquently told by John Hersey in his book, The Wall. A full account of the revolt appears in The Final Solution, p. 274 et seq.

The bare notes for this speech have, however, been preserved. See I.M.T. documents, PS 910, and The Final Solution, p. 256.

I.M.T. document, PS 1061.

See The Final Solution, p. 490. For comparison, it may be of interest to note that in a speech fourteen months later, on 25 May 1944, Himmler quoted to an audience of legal men, including the principal judges, the numbers in the concentration camps as 50,000 Germans and 300,000 aliens.

The facts for this brief survey of the fate of the Jews in various parts of Europe over which Germany exercised control is derived from The Final Solution.

In conversation with R.M. in Stockholm, Frau Irmgard Kersten recalled how she accompanied her husband and Himmler to Italy on this occasion; this was the only time she had any direct dealings with Himmler, whom she always tried to avoid. After lunch one day in Rome, Himmler made a special point of talking to her about the need to be rid of the Jews and the Jehovah Witnesses, and even delayed his departure on an official journey to continue the lecture he gave her. He evidently felt the need to make an ally of Kersten’s German wife of whom he saw so little.

Hoess’s Memoirs, p. 148.

The Jehovah Witnesses, apart from their pacificism, exacted some response in Himmler’s nature. He openly admired their fanaticism, their sobriety and their desire for hard work. It irritated him profoundly that such good people should refuse to co-operate.

Himmler never used his special train as a centre for self-indulgence after the manner of Goring. The surviving record of the food taken aboard on 12 December 1942 is extremely modest: it’s cost amounted to 20 marks, 75 pfennigs.

In a recent book which makes a study of Hitler’s medical record, it is only fair to point out that the document seen by Kersten testifying to Hitler’s alleged syphilis is not mentioned. See Dr Johann Rechtenwald, Woran hat Hitler gelitten. Indeed, it now seems certain that Hitler was not suffering from the after-effects of syphilis but, as has often been stated, from Parkinson’s disease (paralysis agitans).

Another intimate adviser was, of course, the former S.S. General, Karl Wolff, who acted as Himmler’s liaison officer at Hitler’s headquarters until 1943, when he was appointed Military Governor of Northern Italy. Prior to his recent sentence he was held in custody at Stadelheim prison in Munich, and there H.F. was allowed to interview him on several occasions. He is a man of some charm and humour, and Himmler always addressed him affectionately as Wölfchen.

Officially, Mueller has for some time been regarded as dead, but an excavation of his grave during 1963 has revealed that it contained the remains of three men, all younger than Mueller at the time of their deaths. This deception seems only to confirm the original suspicion that he has escaped to Russia.

Schellenberg in his Memoirs (pp. 395 and 432) writes as if he responded quite independently of Himmler to an invitation from Kersten to visit Stockholm and discuss peace proposals with Hewitt. When Kersten reported his discussions to Himmler, he was, says Schellenberg, ‘aghast’. Later, however, he encouraged Schellenberg to maintain contact with Hewitt.

Hitler’s and Himmler’s racial prejudices lost the Germans, until it was too late, the opportunity to draw on Russian reinforcements alleged to amount to some 800,000 men of the Cossack élite regiments. Led by the Ukrainian General, Vlassov, their price would have been equality with the German soldiers and independence for the Ukraine. Hitler failed to develop the Ukraine into an anti-Stalinist, pro-German stronghold. See also Chapter VII, p. 203.

Himmler’s new position in fact gave him few additional powers to those he already held; his control over Frick had always been tight. Bormann, according to that acute observer of Nazi character and intrigue, Albert Speer, ‘did not take long to stalemate Himmler as Minister of the Interior’. If the regional police came under Himmler, the civilian authorities, the local Gauleiters, were responsible to Bormann. This was the source of Bormann’s power in the nation itself, just as his position as Hitler’s personal secretary was the root of his power at the Führer’s headquarters.

Dornberger’s initial encounters with Himmler are described in his book, V.2, pp. 172 et seq.

We are grateful not only to Dr Otto John but to the former S.S. General Wolff for giving us evidence on the Langbehn-Popitz attempt to approach Himmler. Both agree there was only one meeting between Popitz and Himmler, not two as has been frequently alleged. Wolff confirms that Langbehn stayed talking with him while Popitz went in to see Himmler. Otto John told H.F. that Popitz explained to him that he began the interview with Himmler by voicing his anxiety about Göring’s indolence, and then vaguely hinted that, for the sake of the fatherland, even the leadership at the top required shaking up.

Another very important group of high-minded members of the resistance who had links with the Abwehr — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Joseph Müller and Hans von Dohnanyi — had been arrested in April 1943.

Additional Note

We have received useful information about Himmler from Doris Mähner, who at the age of twenty-two joined Himmler’s secretarial staff in 1943, her particular recommendation being that she, like Himmler, was Bavarian. She was well treated, but paid only 300 marks a month. She was expected to live on Himmler’s special train for days and nights on end. He dictated to her fluently in his broad Bavarian accent, but irritated her by plucking at his left eyebrow with his left hand. As a man she found him utterly unimpressive, but he was always very considerate, giving the girls who worked for him small presents on their birthdays and at Christmas. He had a careful system of reminders to keep him up to the mark. Similarly, his correspondence, which was voluminous, was carefully docketed to ensure he received the replies he asked for. Frl. Mähner noticed his love for Hedwig; he kept her photograph hidden in his desk and often looked at it while he was working. The girls joked about his obsession concerning blond men and women; Frl. Mähner often watched him studying the photographs of prospective S.S. brides before making a decision as to their suitability for his men.

CHAPTER VI

The references in this chapter are all to Kersten’s Memoirs (Hutchinson, London, 1956). The many sheets from Himmler’s desk diary that survive in the Federal Archive at Koblenz show how much time Himmler spent in the care of his captive masseur; he normally set aside as much as two hours at a time, morning or afternoon, for the treatment that became increasingly essential to him. It should be remembered that Kersten was by no means popular with such men as Müller and Kaltenbrunner; he was, too, regarded as ‘interfering’ by some of those who were seeking to bring about peace through neutral Sweden. There was, no doubt, a certain element of vanity in Kersten’s nature. His negotiations were bitterly resented by Count Bernadotte, who wanted to keep all the credit for the attempts to bring about peace for himself. Since the war, Kersten’s leading protagonists have included his biographer Kessel, Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper and Achim Besgen, who published a book on Kersten, Der Stille Befehl, in 1960. At one stage after the war, Kersten was being actively considered in Sweden for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Memoirs, pp. 311-12.

Memoirs, pp. 256-7.

Memoirs, pp. 257-8.

Memoirs, p. 177.

Memoirs, p, 178.

Himmler did not want to be considered an agnostic. He invented a special term for the form of belief he favoured — gottgläubig, implying belief in a form of godhead distinct from anything Christian. Himmler was against priesthood as a profession. He did not want, he said, a new form of ‘popery’ to grow up in the S.S.

Memoirs, p. 120.

Memoirs, pp. 306-7.

CHAPTER VII

The full story of the attempt on Hitler’s life and of the failure of the military coup d’état on 20 July 1944 is told in the authors’ book The July Plot.

Himmler said this to von Krosigk, who later repeated it to H.F.

The list of 161 proven victims who were executed is given in Wheeler-Bennett’s Nemesis, p. 744.

See The S.S., pp. 300-1.

See The S.S., p. 268. According to evidence submitted at the I.M.T., Himmler formally witnessed the execution of Russian officers at Mauthausen during September 1944. See I.M.T. V, pp. 170, 174, 231.

See Dulles, Germany’s Underground, p. 163.

The evidence at Koblenz, Amsterdam and Warsaw (which H.F. visited during 1963) in particular carries innumerable documents which testify to the commercialization of the Jewish persecution. These include the sale of emigration permits which in Amsterdam, for example, goes back to April 1942. Elderly Jews were favoured who represented no security risk and who were willing to hand over money, securities or industrial plants. Other documents list in painstaking detail the disposal of looted treasure which was to be distributed among various Army, Navy and S.S. units.

See Schellenberg’s Memoirs, p. 430.

See The Final Solution, p. 462. Becher’s affidavit was produced during the hearing of Case XI at Nuremberg, Doc. No. N.G. 2675.

Eichmann refused to obey orders received from Himmler by telephone to stop the deportations; he claimed he must have them in wirting. See The Trial of Adolf Eichmann, p. 170.

See I.M.T. XI, p. 306.

See The S.S., p. 385.

Quoted by Milton Shulman in Defeat in the West, p. 218.

See Domberger, V.2, pp. 187-201.

See Guderian, Panzer Leader, p. 355.

For the dispute surrounding this episode, see The S.S., p. 377.

For Vlassov and the significance of Himmler’s refusal to make use of him, see above, Chapter V, note 22.

Werwolf, the so-called German resistance movement against the Allies, was largely a propaganda device prepared by Goebbels and Himmler.

See The S.S., p. 381.

According to von Oven, Mit Goebbels bis zum Ende (Vol. II, p. 161) Goebbels proposed to Hitler that Himmler should be made officially Minister of War.

For quotations, see The Bormann Letters.

Fegelein and Burgdorff, these men with whom Bormann seems so friendly, have their modest place in history. Fegelein, Himmler’s uncertain representative at Hitler’s headquarters, was married to Eva Braun’s sister, but nevertheless was executed by Hitler for desertion during the last days of the war. Burgdorff’s claims to distinction include the sinister fact that it was he who handed Rommel the poison with which he was required to kill himself.

See Westphal, The German Army in the West, p. 172.

Westphal, op. cit., p. 188.

Guderian, op. cit., p. 403.

An interesting picture of Himmler as commander-in-the-field is given by the well-known German journalist, Jürgen Thorwald, in his two books, one on the Vistula campaign, Es begann an der Weichsel, and the other on the Elbe campaign, Das Ende an der Elbe.

man synthetic oil industry had suffered severely from Allied bombing. Hitler believed that at all costs he must preserve the Austrian and Hungarian oil wells which were still in his hands.

Guderian, op. cit., p. 413.

See The S.S., p. 406.

See Guderian, op. cit., p. 422.

Count Bernadotte, in The Fall of the Curtain, a book largely ghost-written by Schellenberg who took refuge with him after the collapse of Germany, deleted all Schellenberg’s references to Kersten. Nor are there any references to the work of the Swedish Foreign Minister, Christian Günther, who had planned the negotiations which Kersten so resolutely carried through with Himmler. See the attack on Bernadotte’s attitude to Kersten made by Trevor-Roper in his Introduction to The Kersten Memoirs. Dr de Jong, director of the Rijksinstituut in Amsterdam and a distinguished historian, who knew Kersten personally, assures us that while Kersten undoubtedly did good, he was a man of great vanity who tended to exaggerate his influence, an example being his claim that he practically saved the entire Dutch nation from evacuation to the East. Kersten and Bernadotte were unable to tolerate each other.

See Semmler, Goebbels, the Man next to Hitler, pp. 178-9.

In The Fall of the Curtain, the date of the final meeting with Himmler is given on p. 41 as 12 February. This is plainly an oversight, since on page 20 Bernadotte states he flew to Berlin on 16 February. Schellenberg states (p. 435) that he took Bernadotte to see Himmler two days after the meeting with Kaltenbrunner. In The Last Days of Hitler, Prof. Trevor-Roper wrongly accepts 12 February as the date of the meeting, and Reitlinger variously gives it as 17 February in The Final Solution, p. 462 and 18 February in The S.S., p. 415.

See The S.S., p. 414. The source is von Oven, op. cit. II, pp. 252-4.

See Prof Trevor-Roper’s Introduction to Kersten Memoirs, pp. 15-16, and The S.S., p. 416.

See Thorwald, Das Ende an der Elbe, p. 25, and The S.S., p. 413.

See I.M.T. XIV, p. 374, and The Final Solution, p. 446.

Quoted by Shulman, Defeat in the West, p. 280.

During the course of this talk, Count Schwerin-Krosigk said that he felt the only justification for the sacrifices which Hitler had imposed on the German people would be to break the alliance between the Western Allies and the Russians. Himmler agreed and, according to Schwerin-Krosigk, openly admitted that great mistakes had been made. As for the Jews, they had now become very important as ‘barter in all future negotiations’. Himmler was not prepared to say anything disloyal about Hitler; he merely said that ‘the Führer had a different conception’. Speaking of himself, Himmler added that ‘while his reputation was that of a gay and godless person, in the depths of his heart he was really a believer in Providence and in God’. It was God who had spared the Führer on 20 July last; it was God who had brought a thaw to the frozen waters of the Oder and delayed the Russian crossing at the moment when he had been in despair about the collapse of their defence; it was God who had taken Roosevelt’s life at the very moment when the Russians were closing in on Berlin. (See Shirer, End of a Berlin Diary, p. 197 et seq.)

Additional Note

Frau Heydrich has given us a striking picture of Himmler at the turn of the years 1944-5. She was still living in the castle near Prague, but by now she was sheltering many refugee German women and their children from East Prussia, all of them connected in one way or another with the S.S. Himmler visited her unannounced some time after she had written to him for advice on what she should do. He was evasive, as usual, about the situation, and referred vaguely to Hitler’s miracle weapons (Wunderwaffen). When he stroked her son’s blond hair and said with a sigh, ‘Ach, Heider’, she sensed there was nothing to be done but resign herself to her fate. When she spoke to him about the problems of evacuation, all he said was that there were plenty of edible mushrooms in Bavaria. He shook hands with the women at her request, and after he had gone (it was the last time she was to see him), Frau Heydrich organized the evacuation of her household and the refugees in three lorries.

CHAPTER VIII

In this chapter we are specially indebted to Colonel Michael Murphy and Captain Tom Selvester, the British officers who had charge of Himmler, to Josef Kiermaier, Himmler’s bodyguard, and to Dr Werner Best, for the special evidence they have given us concerning the last days of Himmler’s life.

‘Let bygones be bygones’, he is reported to have said to Masur.

Kersten Memoirs, p. 288.

Kersten managed to get a flight from Tempelhof to Copenhagen the following day, 22 April; after this he travelled surface to Stockholm and reported to Günther on the evening of 23 April.

The account of this meeting between Himmler and Bernadotte is taken primarily from Bernadotte’s own account in The Fall of the Curtain.

Himmler was so pre-occupied that, according to Bernadotte, he drove his car straight into some barbed wire. He frequently preferred to drive himself rather than be driven, even during these last days of strain.

For the various opinions on Himmler’s claim to the succession, see Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler, pp. 101, 182-3; Semmler, op. cit., p. 178, Alan Bullock, Hitler, pp. 705, 709, and, for Schwerin-Krosigk, Shirer’s End of a Berlin Diary, p. 203.

This statement by Winocaur was published for the first time in 1963 in Amateur Agent, by Ewan Butler. Ewan Butler also tells the story (pp. 157 et seq.) of the forged German stamps printed in London and valued at 20 pfennigs; they bore the effigy of Himmler instead of Hitler, and agents were instructed to put them into use in Germany during the last months of the war. American collectors after the war were offering $10,000 for cancelled copies of these stamps. Ewan Butler himself ‘borrowed’ through an agent 150 pages of typescript of Schellenberg’s diary, items for which he posted daily from Germany for safe-keeping in Sweden. The sheets were microfilmed, and Butler translated the diary for the Foreign Office in London. (See pp. 182—3).

Hanna Reitsch. See Shirer, End of a Berlin Diary, p. 168-9.

In the will he dictated and signed during the small hours of 29 April, Hitler referred expressly to Himmler’s treachery: ‘Before my death I expel from the Party and from all his offices the former Reichsführer S.S. and Reich Minister of the Interior, Heinrich Himmler. In his stead I appoint Gauleiter Karl Hanke as Reichsführer S.S. and Chief of the German Police, and Gauleiter Paul Giesler as Reich Minister of the Interior.’

Doenitz and Himmler met during the morning of 30 April to consider the best action to take to prevent Kaufmann, the Gauleiter of Hamburg, from surrendering the city to the British. Doenitz in the end sent his own messages to Kaufmann, considering Himmler’s too pathetic and impractical. Doenitz’s own guarded account of his dealings with Himmler is given in his autobiography, Zehn Jahre und Zwanzig Tage (1958), p. 439 et seq. He refers first of all to a meeting with Himmler on 28 April at Rheinsberg, at which Himmler openly asked him if he would be ‘available’ in case Himmler were appointed Hitler’s successor; Doenitz replied he would be for any legal government out to stop bloodshed. He also claims that he received a signal from Bormann on 30 April which referred to Himmler directly: ‘New treason afoot. According enemy broadcasts Himmler offered capitulation via Sweden. Führer expects you to deal with all traitors fast as lightning and hard as steel. Bormann.’ Doenitz observes that he was in no position to cope with Himmler, who was still surrounded by S.S. men and police. He says that he met Himmler again on 30 April at a police station in Lübeck, because, he says, ‘I wanted to know what he was up to’. Himmler kept him waiting and seemed to behave as if he were already the Führer. But the meeting remained friendly; Himmler denied that he had had any dealings with the Allies. Only after this meeting was concluded did Doenitz learn from Bormann that he was to succeed as Führer.

This meeting, according to Doenitz, took place at Ploen at midnight. Himmler arrived with six armed officers. Doenitz claims to have received him with a loaded gun hidden under his papers. Himmler was appalled at the news that he had been displaced.

Hanna Reitsch records a conversation she had with Himmler after the news of Hitler’s death in which she claims she challenged him to his face with high treason. Himmler seems to have made no attempt to deny that he had undertaken the negotiations; on the contrary, she says that he stated Hitler was insane and that history would interpret the negotiations as an attempt to save Germany from further bloodshed. See Shirer’s End of a Berlin Diary, pp. 171-2.

Degrelle has left his own account of this meeting in his book, Die Verlorene Legion. See also The S.S., pp. 442-3.

Best gave his own account of this meeting in conversation with H.F. Himmler’s act of thoughtfulness on behalf of his women secretaries was confirmed to H.F. by Doris Mähner. She also recalls the moment when he said goodbye a few days later. He thanked her, and told her to go back to Bavaria and rest. Soon, he said, they would meet again, and then there would be a great deal of work to do.

Schwerin-Krosigk in conversation with H.F.

The copy of this note was found in one of Doenitz’s files. According to Prof. Trevor-Roper, it remains uncertain whether the original was actually delivered to Himmler, or whether Doenitz told him of his dismissal personally. (See The Last Days of Hitler, p. 246, note.) Doenitz does not clarify this point in his memoirs, but he claims that had he known about the atrocities in the concentration camps he would never have let Himmler go free. (See pp. 466~8) ‘Now, most clearly’, he writes, ‘I recognized the evil side of National Socialism and so changed my attitude to the form of state created by it.’

Arolsen has now become the headquarters of the International Red Cross Tracing Service financed by the Bonn government.

For details of this journey we are grateful to Josef Kiermaier, who accompanied Himmler almost up to the time of his arrest by the British. Kiermaier recalls suggesting to Himmler that they fly south while they still had an aircraft at their disposal; then at least, said Kiermaier, they could see their womenfolk before the end came. Himmler turned this suggestion down on the grounds that in times as adverse as these, no man should indulge his personal desires.

Information on the following events from Colonel Michael Murphy and Captain Tom Selvester.

The following account is taken from the B.B.C. broadcast by Sergeant-Major Austin in a programme introduced by Chester Wilmot from Luneberg on May 24 1945, shortly after Himmler’s death.

Colonel Murphy writes that as part of the effort to keep Himmler alive he ‘shouted for a needle and cotton, which arrived with remarkable speed. I pierced the tongue and with the cotton threaded through held the tongue out.’ There seems no doubt that, since the normal action of cyanide produces a quick death, Himmler’s long death agony was caused by the interference with the penetration of the poison into his system. After Himmler’s death, Colonel Murphy says that it was some twenty-four hours before the Russians sent their representatives to view the body and agree, ‘grudgingly’, that ‘it might be Himmler’. Only after this examination was Himmler’s body buried. Gebhard Himmler, who was in the south, was not brought in to identify the body, as Frischauer claims in his book, p. 257. Gebhard Himmler, in conversation with H.F., has confirmed this.

Colonel Murphy has some interesting comments to make on the poison capsule. Himmler, he said, had not eaten in his presence, ‘and there is no doubt in my mind that from the time I met him to the time of his death the capsule was in his mouth. So far as I can remember from the one taken from his clothes, this was of thin metal — strong enough to withstand careful mastication and liquids, especially if the other side of the mouth was used, but not strong enough to withstand a decision to break it. I think the time of death was midnight May 23—4, but I cannot be sure. Himmler was sure of himself and arrogant to the end. He was quite convinced that he would be taken to see Montgomery and was surprised at the firm treatment I gave him in getting rid of the bodyguards and searching him. I should have received a German General with more courtesy’!

Additional Notes

¹ We are grateful to Karl Kaufmann, the former Gauleiter of Hamburg, for giving us an account of his own observation of Himmler’s arrest. During the morning of 23 May, Kaufmann, along with Brandt and other prisoners stood at the barbed-wire fence of Camp 031 at Kolkhagen, near Nienburg on the river Weser. They were watching lorries from Fellingbosdel Camp (Lüneberg Heath) driving up. Among those who got out was Himmler, minus his moustache and with a patch over one eye. He stood in the right wing of the group, wearing boots, field grey trousers and some sort of civilian jacket. He did not recognize Kaufmann and the others, but they saw him suddenly disappear behind a nearby rhododendron bush, where he removed the eye-patch. He reappeared almost instantly putting on his glasses; he was immediately recognizable. This was the time he decided to give himself up, in Kaufmann’s opinion. A few minutes later there was quite a commotion; extra guards with tommy-guns and machine guns appeared; extra sentries were posted at the gate. Soon the cause of the excitement was being passed through the grapevine of the camp. The British soldiers seemed overjoyed that Himmler was among their prisoners.

² We are indebted to Count Schwerin v. Krosigk for some additional facts he recalled when reading the first impression of this book. On the evening of 1 May, at Himmler’s urgent request, the Count went to see him at his H.Q. between Plön and Eutin. Himmler had learned that next day Schwerin was to be appointed Foreign Secretary; and he earnestly tried to convince him that at no time was that office more important than just then. By joining the Western Allies they would have a splendid chance of expanding their eastern borders as far as the Urals; they had, in fact, never been so near to that most desirable aim of German foreign policy. Himmler seemed utterly unable to grasp realities; he was convinced that his own future as ‘the second man in the Dönitz administration’ was assured. ‘All I want’, he added, ‘is a brief chat with Montgomery and Eisenhower. It should be easy enough to convince them that I and my S.S. are an indispensable Ordnungsfaktor [guarantee of law and order] in the struggle against Bolshevism.’