Heinrich Himmler

by Roger Manvell

  Captain Selvester was obsessed by the thought of the missing phial. For the whole of the time Himmler was in his charge, he watched him as closely as possible. He has described the curiosity this strange man roused in him:

  ‘During the time Himmler was in my custody he behaved perfectly correctly, and gave me the impression that he realized things had caught up with him. He was quite prepared to talk, and indeed at times appeared almost jovial. He looked ill when I first saw him, but improved tremendously after a meal and a wash (he was not permitted to shave). He was in my custody for approximately eight hours, and during that time, whilst not being interrogated, asked repeatedly about the whereabouts of his “Adjutants”, appearing genuinely worried over their welfare. I found it impossible to believe that he could be the arrogant man portrayed by the press before and during the war.’

  Later that evening, around eight o’clock, Colonel Michael Murphy, the Chief of Intelligence on General Montgomery’s staff, arrived to interrogate Himmler. He told him that he intended to search him and his bodyguards. But Himmler re-asserted who he was, evidently expecting to receive special treatment. He had, he insisted, a letter for General Montgomery. Colonel Murphy cannot recollect ever seeing this letter.

  Apart from the phial found in the lining of his jacket, no other trace of poison was discovered on Himmler’s person. Colonel Murphy decided that Himmler should be taken over to Second Army Headquarters. He was taken there by car, a drive of about ten miles, escorted by Colonel Murphy and another Intelligence Officer. That was the last that Captain Selvester saw of him.

  Colonel Murphy writes:

  ‘It was clear to me that it was still possible for Himmler to have poison hidden about him, the most obvious places being his mouth and his buttocks. I therefore told him to dress, and wishing to have a medical search conducted, telephoned my second-incommand at my headquarters and told him to get a doctor to stand by at a house I had had prepared for such men as Himmler.’

  Himmler was taken to the interrogation centre which had been set up at a house in the Uelznerstrasse, and put in the charge of Sergeant-Major Edwin Austin, who was not told at first the identity of the prisoner. But, according to his own account which he broadcast the following day for the B.B.C., Austin recognized him immediately he saw him standing in the room to which he had been led.20 He still wore only the army blanket over his shirt and underpants.

  Austin, who had previously failed to prevent the S.S. General Pruetzmann from committing suicide when he had crushed a capsule of cyanide between his teeth, was determined not to allow Himmler to commit suicide by the same means. He pointed at once to a couch in the room.

  ‘That’s your bed. Get undressed’, he ordered, speaking in German.

  Himmler did not seem to understand. He stared at Austin, and then spoke to the interpreter.

  ‘He doesn’t know who I am’ he said.

  ‘Yes I do’, said Austin. ‘You’re Himmler. Nevertheless, that’s your bed. Get undressed.’

  Himmler still tried to stare him out, but the sergeant asserted his authority and stared back at him. Himmler dropped his eyes and gave in. He sat down on the couch and started to take off his underpants.

  Then Colonel Murphy and Captain C. J. L. Wells, an army doctor, came in to carry out the routine inspection of their prisoner. They still suspected that Himmler was carrying poison. When he had stripped, they searched all over his body — his ears, his armpits, his hair, his buttocks. Then the doctor ordered him to open his mouth, and, in the words of Colonel Murphy, ‘immediately he saw a small black knob sticking out between a gap in the teeth on the right hand side lower jaw’.

  ‘Come nearer the light’, said the doctor. ‘Open your mouth.’

  He put two fingers into the prisoner’s mouth. It was then that Himmler suddenly turned his head aside and bit down hard on the doctor’s fingers.

  ‘He’s done it’, shouted the doctor.

  Both the colonel and the sergeant jumped on Himmler and threw him to the ground, turning him on his stomach to prevent him swallowing. The doctor held him by the throat, trying to force him to spit out the poison. The struggle to preserve his life by using emetics and a stomach-pump lasted a quarter of an hour; every method of artificial respiration was used. ‘He died,’ said the sergeant, ‘and when he died we threw a blanket over him, and left him.’21

  Two days later, Himmler was buried in an unmarked place near Lüneburg; his body had been wrapped in army blankets and wound in camouflage netting secured with telephone wire. Sergeant-Major Austin, who in civilian life had been a dustman, dug him a secret grave.

  Appendix A: Adolf Eichmann’s Account of Himmler

  Prior to his trial in Israel, Adolf Eichmann voluntarily submitted to a very thorough examination, during the course of which hundreds of documents (most of them photostats of affidavits and of R.S.H.A. files) were sifted and discussed. The examination started on 29 May 1960 and continued in almost daily sessions to 15 January 1961; 76 tapes produced 3,564 pages of typescript, a verbatim account of the entire interrogation which, through the courtesy of the Israeli Embassy in London, we were given the opportunity to study.

  Eichmann proved eager to co-operate with his interrogators; he became as obsequious as he must once have been to his former superiors. He was proud of his punctiliousness in obeying orders, and he delighted in describing filing systems and other office routine in considerable detail. He claimed he had originally joined the S.S. during 1931—2 (he was not sure of the exact date) through the influence of Kaltenbrunner, whom he had known well since childhood. Later, he had applied to join the S.D. and was appointed a clerk in the ‘Freemason Museum’; subsequently, as we have seen, he became a specialist in Jewish affairs.

  During the interrogation, Eichmann emphasized again and again that it was Hitler who ordered the physical destruction of the Jews, while Himmler was charged with issuing the necessary orders. Eichmann first describes Himmler (pp. 38—9) as ‘always ready to oblige the Führer, liable to get bogged down in petty detail, but then again, quite impulsively, signing some far-reaching decree.’ On p. 146 Eichmann reverts to Himmler’s impulsiveness in giving these far-reaching orders whenever he was struck by some idea; as often as not such orders would be passed on to any officer who happened to be with him at the time and later held up by red tape as soon as they had reached the appropriate official channels.

  Eichmann mentions Himmler’s aversion to seeing fingers stained with nicotine. Officers ordered into Himmler’s presence were advised to use the lemon and pumice-stone available in the washroom of Himmler’s special train. Anyone failing to do so risked getting a three or six months’ Rauchverbot; this meant instant dismissal from the S.S. if he were caught smoking during that period.

  In Minsk Eichmann witnessed the mass-shooting of Jews straight into the ditch, and a little later (p. 240) he claims that Heydrich out of sheer bravado gave orders to kill Jews who were already being killed by Globocnik’s orders. Heydrich said, ‘I herewith authorize you to submit a further 150,000 Jews to the final solution [der Endlosung zuzuführen].’ Eichmann in fact seemed uncertain whether the figure might not have been 250,000 in this case. In the autumn of 1941 he was sent for by Himmler, along with Mueller, to report about these matters (p. 263). The interview took a mere five minutes.

  Eichmann has much to say about the S.S. euphemisms, such as ‘final solution’ and ‘special treatment’. Even at the notorious conference at Wannsee (see page 127) direct references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favouring the term Arbeitseinsatz im Osten (labour assignment in the East). Another point frequently mentioned by Eichmann (for example, on pages 135-6, 1020, 2028, 2167) is the fact that Himmler considered the camp at Theresienstadt very much his own domain, insisting on giving all the necessary orders for this place personally. As previously mentioned, he was very keen on maintaining the myth of Theresienstadt as the Altersghetto, suggesting it was a place where elderly Jews could live out their lives in peace and comfort, an
d was very angry whenever news leaked through of inmates from Theresienstadt being sent to the gas-ovens in Auschwitz and other extermination camps. Yet since the camp’s maximum capacity was 10,000, he did nothing to stop hundreds of thousands of victims from Theresienstadt being ‘evacuated’. He merely insisted on the strictest secrecy so as not to offend world opinion.

  At all times Himmler was specially interested in ‘prominent’ prisoners; hence (p. 2608) we find him giving special orders for Fray Glück, the sister of La Guardia, the Mayor of New York, to be taken out of a mass transport and to be transferred to the camp where Léon Blum, Odette Churchill and other important prisoners were held.

  On pp. 2456 et seq. Eichmann shows his surprise at documentary evidence of Himmler having devoted much time during the difficult years of 1943—4 to such petty details as the question of two or three Jews in one case and five or six in another being exempted from extermination on account of their expertise in metallurgy and diamonds respectively, experts in that field being required for the armaments industry and for the production of the highest grade of Knight’s Cross.

  There are several references (such as those on pp. 1249, 1290 and 1318) to Himmler’s orders of October 1941 stopping any emigration of Jews, ‘except in isolated instances beneficial for the Reich’ (which refers to Jews wealthy enough to pay a minimum of 100,000 Swiss francs). In July 1944 Himmler issued an order that the emigration of certain Hungarian Jews to Palestine must be stopped ‘because they are biologically potent, so their survival is not desirable in the interests of the Reich.’ But in April 1942 (p. 478) Himmler wrote to the Chief of the S.D. stating that while the Führer’s orders for the ‘final solution’ must be carried out ruthlessly, he wanted those Jews and Jewesses still capable of work to be exempted for the time being and set to work in the concentration camps. In July 1942 neither Eichmann not his chief Mueller dared to decide about the fate of French Jewish children still cared for by French welfare organizations (p. 701—2). Mueller asked Himmler for a decision, and the Reichsführer’s personal order came for ‘sending all of them East’, that is, having them killed. On pp. 660 et seq. there are details about Himmler’s personal orders for a Grossabschiebung (mass removal) of French Jews eastwards for the ‘final solution’.

  The last time Eichmann saw Himmler was during the spring of 1945, when Himmler told him that in the case of future negotiations with Eisenhower he wanted some 200 to 300 prominent Jews ‘for hostage purposes’. Eichmann was to collect them in various camps, and see Gauleiter Hofer in Innsbruck about allocating some evacuated villages for them. Eichmann dutifully reported the Reichsführer’s order to Kaltenbrunner, who, according to Eichmann, ‘showed little interest, since nothing really mattered any longer’.

  Appendix B: The Frankfurt Trial 1964-5

  By the time this book is published, the Auschwitz Trial at Frankfurt will have been in session for almost a year, and yet be nowhere near its end. Similar trials (such as that of Eichmann’s associates, Hunsche and Krumey, in Budapest) have been or are running concurrently in Frankfurt and elsewhere, while others are being prepared.

  The long delay in holding these trials by the German Public Prosecutors is due to the fact that the relevant files have only been handed over in recent years by the Allies, who took possession of them after the war. The Public Prosecutor’s Office specially set up to deal with German war crimes only began to function round 1957 in Ludwigsburg, near Stuttgart. Another cause of delay has been that many of the men now being indicted have lived in hiding using false names: others have fled abroad, and negotiations for their extradition have been prolonged — some, like those concerning the notorious Dr Mengele, with little hope of success.

  Twenty-three men finally stood in the dock at Frankfurt in 1964. Evidence has been produced which shows that they have been guilty of the most appalling crimes. The character of the men employed by Himmler and his staff is revealed, for example, in the behaviour of Oswald Kaduk, whose noted fondness for children extended to issuing Jewish children in the camp with toy balloons (an ‘organized’ issue, to quote from the terms of the evidence) before they were ‘squirted’ (abspritzen) with a phenol injection in the heart at the rate of ten children a minute. ‘Papa Kaduk’, as he was later known because of his love for children, had worked as a male nurse after the war until his identification and arrest.

  When a former S.S.Judge was heard as a witness, he appeared both elegant and at ease as he enunciated his slick, evasive answers to the questions put to him by the President and the Prosecutor, reviving once again the verbiage of death: ‘special treatment’, ‘desettlement’, ‘the general line’ and even ‘sovereign acts beyond the reach of the judiciary’, all S.S. terms for murder. Then suddenly one of the less intelligent men in the dock, Stefan Baretzki, asked leave to speak. It was obvious he could no longer stand this evasion of the truth. The President gave him leave to come forward. We had to do the dirty-work, said Baretzki in effect, while these men talked, and when we complained about being ordered to kill children we were told to be silent about something we could not understand, and obey our orders. He then walked back to his seat.

  This outburst reveals the process of Nazi genocide. The men who carried out the killings were encouraged not to think what they were doing, but to accept it as a necessary mission for the Führer and the German people. After this, the readiness to be tough, ruthless and efficient in the destruction of people regarded as subhuman was the virtue most to be valued in those chosen to carry out their Führer’s orders.

  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.

  1

  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 returne
d 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.

  2

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

  3

  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.

  4

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

  5

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

  6

  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).