Himmler (Peter Padfield's Second World War)

by Peter Padfield

Himmler was among the many who advised him to leave at once, but what else he said to him, or what manner Hitler adopted towards his long-serving and most loyal Reichsführer, is not recorded. It was the last time they met. It was also Himmler’s last time in Berlin. Probably he conferred with ‘Gestapo’ Müller and gave instructions about the remaining political prisoners rounded up after the 20 July plot; it would have been unlike him not to leave his desk tidy.

As he climbed into the car, and held out his hand to Kersten, thanking him deeply for the years he had treated him with his ‘magic skill’, his eyes were moist – whether from self-pity or from the knowledge that he would never see his ‘Magic Buddha’ again is not revealed. ‘My last thoughts are for my poor family,’ he said before the car drove off.

Meanwhile in the Berlin bunker Hitler had broken down and admitted for the first time that the war was lost. The immediate trigger was the failure of SS-Obergruppenführer Felix Steiner, commanding what had been a reserve army group near Eberswalde rather under thirty miles north-east of the capital.

Steiner simply did not obey. Hitler, waiting with rising expectation for news of his attack, sent out repeated requests for information until in the middle of the afternoon situation conference on the 22nd word came that Steiner had not moved. The effect was electric. The blood drained from Hitler’s face and he flopped back in his chair trembling. His appearance and manner suggested a stroke or a heart attack. Moments later he ordered all adjutants and aides out. Only Keitel, Jodl, Krebs, General Burgdorf – Hitler’s chief military adjutant – Bormann and the stenographer, Gerhard Herrgesell, remained with him, and they witnessed an extraordinary scene as, alternately shouting and sobbing, suffused with colour or blanched, he released the pent-up tensions of months: he had been betrayed, the war was lost, the Third Reich a failure; he would give up the supreme command and merely conduct the battle of Berlin to its end; he would not surrender, but shoot himself; anyone who wanted to leave could do so.

The report had deeper meaning for Himmler than Fegelein could have guessed, for he had at last taken the decision to betray Hitler himself – at least he had despatched Schellenberg that afternoon to Lübeck, where he hoped he would find Bernadotte. He was to tell the Count that he (Himmler) was prepared to ask him officially and in his own name to take a message of surrender to Eisenhower.

Himmler said that on the last three occasions they had met, although the situation of the Reich had been hopeless, he had been unable to break his oath to the Führer and attempt to stop the fighting. Now, however, the position was different. Hitler was in Berlin, determined to die with its inhabitants, indeed it was probable that he was already dead – and if not he would certainly be dead within the next few days. He would have died in the struggle to which he had devoted his existence, the fight against Bolshevism.[13] In this new situation, he went on, he had a free hand. In order to protect as much of Germany as possible and prevent further bloodshed, he was prepared to capitulate on the western front and allow the Anglo-American forces to advance eastwards. And he asked Bernadotte to transmit this message to the Swedish government so they could convey it to General Eisenhower.[14] ‘To capitulate to the Russians, however, is impossible for us Germans and particularly for me. We shall continue fighting them until the front of the western powers has replaced the German front.’[15]

The early deadline set by Göring, and Himmler’s remark to Bernadotte that Hitler was probably already dead, indicate that, under the influence of the reports from the bunker, both expected Hitler to shoot himself sooner rather than later. However, Hitler had relapsed into what was probably amphetamine-induced tranquillity after the storm of the previous day, and resumed direction of his make-believe armies as if nothing had happened. Bormann was able to use Göring’s wire to persuade him that the Reichsmarschall was usurping his authority and was guilty of high treason. In view of his earlier services to the Party, Hitler was not willing to order the death penalty, but he did agree that Göring should be stripped of all offices and his title of Deputy Führer.

Churchill and the new President of the United States, Truman, predictably dismissed Himmler’s offer of capitulation in the west and, suspecting another attempt to split the alliance, informed Stalin.

It was nine that evening before the sensational news of Himmler’s earlier negotiation was received in the Führer bunker. It was picked up on Stockholm Radio by one of Goebbels’ staff, and handed to Bormann.

When the message was handed to Hitler, the eruption was spectacular. It was the ultimate betrayal – ‘der treue Heinrich’, longest-serving paladin, chief of his own guard, beside whom all other traitors paled. Hanna Reitsch described him raging like a madman with puce, distorted face and shuffling up and down the corridor of the bunker thrusting the scarcely credible report at everyone he met, all of whom reacted in an equally hysterical or stunned fashion. Finally Hitler retired to discuss the sensation with Bormann and Goebbels.

Afterwards Hitler went into the room where von Greim was lying and ordered him to fly out of the capital, first to organise a Luftwaffe attack on the Russian positions now less than a mile from the Chancellery, second to order Himmler’s arrest: ‘A traitor must never succeed me as Führer,’ he said, his voice hoarse and shaking, lips trembling.

Before my death I expel from the Party and from all his offices the former Reichsführer-SS and Reich Interior Minister, Heinrich Himmler.

Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide together that afternoon, 30 April. Afterwards the corpses were carried up to the garden, laid side by side and soaked with petrol; Russian artillery sounded nearby as the petrol was ignited and Bormann, Goebbels and the few other witnesses to the funeral spontaneously stiffened in the Hitler salute.

That evening Frau Goebbels administered poison to her six children, and some time afterwards she and the little club-footed doctor climbed the bunker steps and emerged into the darkness of the garden, where they took poison together. Like Hitler, Goebbels shot himself in the temple as he bit on his capsule.

After his fanatic edicts and rhetoric of fighting to the last man, Dönitz’s sudden conversion to reason came as such a surprise that some naval officers suspected that the enemy had penetrated the code and sent a fake signal. For Himmler, the cease-fire in the north marked the end of the road. His life’s work was finished; as he had told Kersten, only ruins remained. He had lost his Führer, thus the clear guiding principle – above all he had lost his Führer’s trust. The mystical symbol of authority had passed to Dönitz. There is ample testimony to his confusion in the weeks leading up to this moment, but surrounded by his entourage and the realities of title, uniform and power he had played up to the part expected of him. Now that Dönitz had given up the struggle against the west there was no more he could do. Hitler was no longer there to give him the ultimate backing he had always expected in crises. Moreover the oath which all members of the armed forces had pledged to the Führer was now due to Dönitz as his legitimate successor. Dönitz had claimed it in his first address to the armed forces immediately after his accession on 1 May. That was the trump card, and it was the card played by Himmler’s enemies, and all those around Dönitz desperate to avoid charges of war crimes by shifting the odium on to the SS and the person of the Reichsführer.

Still he did not let it show. The following evening, 5 May, the day of the cease-fire, he gathered his entourage, including Ohlendorf, Hans Prützmann of Werwolf, Rudi Brandt, his brother Gebhard, many departmental chiefs, police and Waffen-SS leaders, Rudolf Höss, formerly Kommandant of Auschwitz, and gave a final, farewell speech.

They had already been provided with false papers and positions in various arms of the Wehrmacht; the Concentration Camp Inspectorate seems to have ‘submerged’ en masse in the Navy. Höss’s chief, Glücks, went to a naval hospital post; Höss became Bosun’s Mate Franz Lang in the Navy Signal School on the island of Sylt. Like the others he carried a phial of cyanide with him.

When this message was received from Jodl, the most obstinate advocate of continuing the fight in the east, Dönitz and his Cabinet finally gave up. At 2.30 in the morning of 7 May, Jodl signed the formal end of the war on all fronts, effective from midnight, 8 May. The allied celebration parties were already under way.

Dönitz and his colleagues had one final task – to distance themselves and the armed services from the crimes of the regime they had served. ‘We have nothing to be ashamed of,’ Dönitz decreed. ‘We stand without a spot on our honour as soldiers and can with justice appear full of pride and honour .…’[57] And a few days later – after Keitel had been arrested – Jodl stressed to his staff that their attitude to the enemy powers had to be:

the most notorious of Hitler’s ministers had to be formally rejected. Thus Dönitz had letters of dismissal typed out for Goebbels, Bormann, Rosenberg, still Minister for the Occupied East, Thierack, Minister for Justice, and Himmler.

After Hitler, whose death was as yet unknown to the western allies, Himmler was the most wanted Nazi, and there were many rumours that he had been sighted, or was making his way with a picked SS band to the mountains.

His disguise, although theatrical, was effective, no doubt because the patch broke up the distinctive dark line of his brows. Nevertheless, on 21 May, he and his two adjutants were arrested as members of the Geheime Feldpolizei at a British control point near Bremervörde, midway between Hamburg and Bremen. They were transported to a camp at Westertimke, near Bremen, searched and interrogated. Himmler was not recognised, but since he and his party had come from Flensburg and possessed notes issued in Flensburg, they were sent to an interrogation centre at Barfeld, near Lüneburg, where those with even remote knowledge of the Nazi leadership were concentrated.

Himmler had still not been recognised – at least by the British – but he now declared himself. Why he did so remains a mystery. The answer probably lies in the state of his mind rather than any external pressures from fellow prisoners or his adjutants or the fear of discovery.