perhaps that is why he simplified Himmler’s extraordinary dilemma: it was not simply that his whole career and organisation had been constructed around loyalty to the Führer, it had also been constructed on absolute hostility to Bolshevism. He could no more consider surrendering to the Russians than Hitler could, and while the western allies insisted on unconditional surrender, east and west simultaneously, he felt himself unable to do any more than Hitler to stop the fighting. All his attempts at negotiating had been for an exclusively western solution.
