Heinrich Himmler and the 

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Himmler's Last Days

Being aware of the impending German defeat, Himmler tried to approach the Allies: Hungarian Jews would be released from KZs in exchange for allied trucks. In November 1944 he permitted the transfer of several hundred KZ prisoners to Sweden, ordered the end of the mass murder of Jews, and proposed surrender on the western front whilst continuing to fight in the East.

From 23 January 1945 Himmler had resided at the private nursing home of his medical adviser, Prof Dr Karl Gebhardt in Hohenlychen, 100 km north of Berlin.

Advised by SS-General Walter Schellenberg and encouraged by his masseur, Felix Kersten, Himmler tried to take up peace negotiations with the Allies (behind Hitler's back) via Count Folke Bernadotte, deputy chief of the Swedish Red Cross, who was mainly interested in obtaining concessions for Scandinavians in German KZs. On 22 April 1945 he met the Count in Hohenlychen, and again on 23/24 April in Lübeck. As a result 20,000 KZ prisoners were released and brought to Sweden.

 

On 26 April Himmler moved to Schwerin, 100 km east of Hamburg, together with his staff and some of his escort battalion. There he was near Admiral Karl Dönitz, the Commander-in Chief of the German Navy, and the most powerful man in north-west Germany in those days.

 

Meanwhile Himmler's negotiations had become known and after a related BBC broadcast on 28 April Hitler deprived him of all offices and ordered Himmler's arrest. On 29 April the Commander-in-Chief of the German Air Force, General Ritter von Greim, fled from embattled Berlin to Dönitz's new headquarters in Plön (60 km north of Hamburg), and handed over the arrest order. Dönitz had no power over Himmler and had even established his own bodyguard, consisting of submariners, instead of SS guards.

 

On 30 April Dönitz'was appointed Head of State following Hitler's suicide on the afternoon of that day. He told Himmler that he could not join the new government. Dönitz didn't like Himmler and his unwanted SS staff in his HQ and finally said to him:


"Anybody who is a traitor once, is ready to betray a second time."

 

On 6 May Himmler received a written order dismissing him from all offices. From that moment on Himmler was no longer Commander-in-Chief of the German Reserve Army, Chief of Police, and Reichsführer-SS. The newly appointed Minister of the Interior, Count Schwerin von Krosigk, advised Himmler "to drive straight to Montgomery's HQ and say that you are Heinrich Himmler and that you want to take full responsibility for everything the SS has done."

 


From 6 or 7 until 11 May 1945 Himmler and 5 attendants stayed at a farm near Satrup. Himmler decided to go to Bavaria, joined by a few SS-officers and perhaps 7 NCOs:

-His personal assistant Dr Rudolf Brandt,

-probably SS-Obergruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Waffen-SS Prof Dr Karl Gebhardt, chief SS surgeon and Himmler's personal medical adviser,

-probably SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei Otto Ohlendorf, chief of the RSHA Department III,

-SS-Sturmbannführer Josef Kiermayer, his personal aide and secretary,

-SS-Obersturmbannführer Werner Grothmann,

-SS-Sturmbannführer Heinz Macher,
-and probably 10 other SS men.

 

They removed all insignia from their uniforms and placed false documents in their pockets in the expectation that these would prove that they were recently released NCOs of the Geheime Feldpolizei. They did not know that even NCOs of this organization were also on the Allied Wanted List ("Immediate Arrest" category). Himmler’s papers identified him as "Ex-Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger of a Special Armoured Company, attached to the Secret Field Police, demobilized on 3 May 1945".

 

On 10 May the group left Dönitz's final HQ in Flensburg and drove southwards in 4 large cars. On 11 May the group appeared in Delve, a small village a few kilometres southeast of Friedrichstadt on the Eider River. On 12 May they probably abandoned their cars in Marne, and decided to continue their way on foot, towards the Elbe River. In the evening they found a fisherman who ferried them (allegedly for 500 RM) from Brunsbüttel across the Elbe River to Neuhaus, a small town at the mouth of the Oste River, at the south bank of the Elbe River. During the following 5 days the group slowly moved southwards. On their way they merged into the background as this area, already under British control, was teeming with German troops of all services.

 

From this point there are different possibilities re Himmler's route:

 

1. Farmhouse Waldstraße

On 18 May the group reached Bremervörde where they planned to cross the Oste River. They may have intended to walk through the sparsely inhabited countryside around the small town of Bremervörde, between Hamburg and Bremen. This provided the only possibility of avoiding the densely populated areas around Hamburg and Lübeck on their way southward.

 

From 18-22 May the group stayed at a farmhouse on Waldstraße, without telling the owner their true identity. From here Kiermayer investigated the situation at the guarded Oste River Bridge, not knowing that the group could have easily crossed the river via an unguarded ford some metres upstream. Twice he demanded passes from the district administration in Bremervörde but Landrat Dohrmann refused.

 

Lohse's Mill

When Kiermayer returned to the farmhouse and reported on the situation, the men decided to divide the group. The bulk would try to pass the British check-point at the bridge first. At 3 p.m. Kiermayer and Dr Gebhardt set off for the bridge. They intended to come back if there were no problems. One hour later they arrived at the check-point where they were stopped and taken to Sergeant Ken Baisbrown, a member of the Intelligence Corps, and on duty at the mill of Wilhelm Lohse, which served as an office. The British gave the men the impression that everything was in order, and they were sent back with 2 British Army lorries and an escort to bring in the rest of their "sick comrades" (most of whom were purportedly sick policemen on their way to Munich, supervised by Dr Gebhardt, who spoke English). Meanwhile Baisbrown went to the nearby office of the 1003 Field Security Reserve Detachment and told Staff-Sergeant John Hogg about these two suspicious men who allegedly belonged to the Secret Field Police GFP (Geheime Feldpolizei), in itself a reason for automatic arrest.

 

After a while Gebhardt returned to the check-point, but without Himmler and two others. Sergeant Arthur Britton detected that all their documents bore the same GFP stamp, dated after 1 May 1945. In addition, some members initially denied being part of the group although Dr Gebhardt claimed that the whole party was in his care. Therefore the men were segregated. Britton and Baisbrown grilled the youngest and after a short time he admitted that the GFP stamp was in fact an SD headquarters stamp and that the men belonged together. At 6 p.m. the men were arrested and brought to the Civil Internment Camp in Westertimke near Zeven. Together with Dr Gebhardt, Hogg drove back to the farmhouse, since some of the arrested had expressed concern about three other sick members of their group. Meanwhile Himmler and his two companions had left the farmhouse.

Now British intelligence personnel had been alerted that three more SD-sponsored policemen were on their way to an unknown destination. Because the others obviously had no problems in crossing the check-point, Himmler, Grothmann, and Macher hid for a further day before trying it themselves. On 22 May, walking on Bremervörde's main road toward the check-point, they were stopped by a patrol and brought to the office besides the mill. Arthur Britton received them at about 5 p.m. They showed their documents but the British were aware that they were forgeries. Corporal Richard Forrest searched their belongings, then they were probably brought to a British office at Dohrmann's bakery, a house on Bahnhofstraße in Bremervörde, for interrogation. Afterwards they were arrested at the mill. Himmler and his two companions spent the night on the first floor of the mill, sleeping on the grain (official report).

 

2. Himmler and his two companions were captured on 21 May by 3 Russians (who were assigned to a British post at the River Oste) in Meinstedt (20 kilometres south of Bremervörde, 2 km northeast of Zeven). Then they were brought to Bremervörde where they spent the night in the mill.

 

3. From Bremervörde the men went 6 km southward to the next bridge over the Oste River, located in Minstedt. 2.5 km south of Minstedt the POW Camp "Stalag XB" was located. This camp was liberated by the British Army on 29 April 1945. The British opened the gate and the fence so that the POWs could leave the camp. Therefore hundreds of Russian and Polish POWs crossed out the region in April, May, and June 1945. Some of them might have joined the British troops to look out for their former SS camp guards or soldiers. The British post, reinforced by a tank, could have been deployed on one of the hills near the river, together with the already mentioned 3 Russians, assigned to the post. The British brought Himmler and his companions to Bremervörde.

 

Be that as it may, Himmler was taken to the Civil Internment Camp in Westertimke.

At about 7 a.m. next morning, the three GFP suspects were duly driven by Arthur Britton and two guards in a 15 cwt truck to Westertimke for initial processing, a journey of some 30 km. En route, a stop was made at Zeven to report the arrest of three SD men to Captain Excell at 45 Field Security Section HQ. Sergeant Britton was told to continue to Westertimke cage for registration.

 

The trio spent the greater part of the day - Wednesday 23 May 1945 - being moved about by British Army transport. During the afternoon, a trip was made (probably via Fallingbostel on Lüneburg Heath) to 031 Civil Interrogation Camp which had just moved to Kolkhagen Camp on the western side of the village of Barnstedt, south of Lüneburg. At 6:30 p.m. on 23 May 1945 "Sergeant Hitzinger" and his escorts were booked into 031 CIC Barnstedt. At this time ex-Gauleiter of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, a more moderate Nazi, was watching new arrivals from the inner compound of Kolkhagen Camp. He noted an odd figure in military boots and breeches and a civilian jacket and saw him go behind a bush, remove an eye patch, and reappear putting on glasses - he was immediately recognizable as Himmler, whom Kaufmann had met. This must have been the moment when Himmler decided to admit his identity.

 

At about 7:00 p.m., the camp commandant, Captain Thomas Selvester, was informed that three prisoners were insisting on seeing him, in itself an unusual request. Himmler had presumably re-disguised himself for effect, for when he appeared before the camp commandant, he was again wearing the eye patch.

 

Selvester thus described the scene: "The first man to enter my office was small, ill-looking and shabbily dressed, but he was immediately followed by two other men (Grothmann and Macher), both of whom were tall and soldierly-looking, one slim, and one well-built. The well-built man walked with a limp. I sensed something unusual, and ordered one of my sergeants to place the two men in close custody, and not to allow anyone to speak to them without my authority. They were then removed from my office, whereupon the small man, who was wearing a patch over his left eye, removed the patch and put on a pair of spectacles. His identity was at once obvious, and he said "Heinrich Himmler" in a very quiet voice."

 

Captain Selvester immediately informed HQ British Second Army at Lüneburg and Major Rice, an Intelligence staff officer, arrived at 7:30 p.m. to confirm Himmler's identity. The German was asked to sign his name and this was compared with a signature Major Rice had brought with him. The next step was a body search:

 

"This I carried out personally," said Captain Selvester, "handing each item of clothing as it was removed to my sergeant, who re-examined it. In his jacket I found a small brass case, similar to a cartridge case, which contained a small glass phial. I recognized it for what it was, but asked Himmler what it contained, and he said, 'that is my medicine. It cures stomach cramp.' I also found a similar brass case, but without the phial, and came to the conclusion that the phial was hidden somewhere on the prisoner's person. When all Himmler's clothing had been removed and searched, all the orifices of his body were searched, also his hair combed and any likely hiding place examined, but no trace of the phial was found. At this stage he was not asked to open his mouth, as I considered that if the phial was hidden in his mouth and we tried to remove it, it might precipitate some action that would be regretted. I did however send for thick bread and cheese sandwiches and tea, which I offered to Himmler, hoping that I would see if he removed anything from his mouth. I watched him closely, whilst he was eating, but did not notice anything unusual."

 

On 23 May Himmler was taken to the Security Force Headquarters at Ülzener Straße 31a in Lüneburg.

 

He had to undress himself and was inspected by the military doctor, Captain C. J. Wells, accompanied by Colonel Michael Murphy (Secret Service), Major Norman Whittaker, and Company Sergeant Major Edwin Austin.

 

When the doctor saw a dark object in a gap in Himmler's lower jaw, he ordered him to come closer to the light and tried to remove the glass capsule.

 

Suddenly Himmler bit on the cyanide capsule and at the doctor's fingers. Himmler fell to the ground (or: he was thrown to the ground) and someone shouted "The bastard's beat us!" The smell of prussic acid spread through the room. "We immediately upended the old bastard and got his mouth into the bowl of water which was there to wash the poison out", noted Major Whittaker in his diary. "There were terrible groans and grunts coming from the swine." Himmler's tongue was secured in an attempt to prevent him from swallowing the poison. Dr Wells tried resuscitation but it was in vain. After a quarter hour they stopped. "... it was a losing battle and this evil thing breathed its last at 23:14 hours." (Winston G. Ramsey: Himmler's Suicide. in: After the Battle No 14, London 15th August 1976, p. 35)


Werner Grothmann was born on 23 August 1915 in Frankfurt/Main. He served an apprenticeship as a banker and worked as bank clerk until approximately 1933, when he became member of the SS.


From 1933-1935 he was at the SS-Junkerschule in Braunschweig. On 20 April 1936 promoted SS-Untersturmführer, on 11 September 1938 SS-Obersturmführer, on 9 November 1940 SS-Hauptsturmführer, commanding the SS-Sturmbann 13 of the "SS-Standarte Deutschland", stationed in München. On 17 June 1940 he was wounded in France.

 

On 15 August 1940 Grothmann was assigned as 2nd adjutant of the Waffen-SS to Himmler's personal staff. On 1 April 1942 assigned as chief adjutant of Himmler. Promoted SS-Sturmbannführer on 1 June 1943.

 

Grothmann joined Himmler during his last days. He was captured together with him and Heinz Macher on 21 or 22 May 1945.

 

He talked with John Toland twice in 1971, and said about Himmler that he was a coward to choose the easiest way to avoid the culpability of the SS, and others had been left with the responsibility for the young soldiers and professionals. He stated:

 

"I said to Himmler that it was his responsibility to inform the Allies that the Waffen-SS and the guards in the KZs were different organizations, and he couldn´t leave the rest of the organization in the easy way that the others can't take (i.e. suicide)."

 

Grothmann and Macher were not present during Himmler´s interrogation.

 

After WW2 Grothmann was tried in 1962. Finally he worked as a businessman in Western Germany. He died in 2003.

 

Sources:

Witte Peter, Wildt Michael, Pohl Dieter and others, eds. Der Dienstkalender Heinrich Himmlers 1941/42, Hans Christians Verlag, Hamburg, 1999

 




Himmler, Gestapo chief and the most sinister figure in Germany, is dead. He committed suicide by taking poison, just after 11 p.m. on May 23 [1945] at the British Second Army HQ at Lüneburg. Heinrich Himmler, disguised with a black patch over one eye and with his moustache shaved off, was arrested at Bremervörde, north-east of Bremen detained, searched and questioned at a nearby internment camp[, and finally transferred to General Dempsey's HQ. There he was stripped for the fourth time in order to make quite certain he was not concealing poison. The medical officer asked him to open his mouth, but not being able to see sufficiently well, took the prisoner over to the window and told him to open his mouth again. It was as the doctor was putting a finger in Himmler's mouth that he saw the German bite on a black dot, which proved to be the top of a phial containing cyanide of potassium. Every effort was made to save Himmler's life, but without success. A message was then sent to Flensburg asking the Supreme H.Q. control party there to send representatives of the U.S and Russian Armies to view the body.
 



At least one death mask of Himmler was taken. On 25 May an autopsy was conducted, the teeth configuration compared, and the brain and part of his skeleton removed.

In the early morning of 26 May, four men (Whittaker, Austin, Weston, and Ottery) brought Himmler's corpse to a forest near Lüneburg and buried it.


Sources:

 

AFTER THE BATTLE Magazine. Issue No 14/1976, and 17/1977. 

Uwe Ruprecht: Das Grab im Wald
Gutman, Israel, ed. Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1990

Statement dated February 11, 1964, by former colonel (British Army) Michael Murphy on the death of Heinrich Himmler, May 1945 

 

 

Selkirk Panton was a Daily Express journalist who covered Berlin, like Louis Lochner and William Shirer, for twelve years. His papers are in the National Library of Australia. Attached to the British Second Army HQ, he witnessed the events after Himmler's death in May 1945



 

 


Rebuilding the Reich

Jonathan Glancey examines the theory that Himmler cheated death in The Strange Death of Heinrich Himmler
by Hugh Thomas
Saturday March 3, 2001

The Guardian

In 1946, M16's most talented, if treacherous, agent, Kim Philby, was not convinced that the story of Himmler's death made any sense at all. Philby realized that a man of Himmler's organizational genius, a plotter of great intricacy and sophistication who recognized Germany's inevitable defeat as early as 1943, was unlikely to have just blundered into the arms of the Allies. What really happened?

Hugh Thomas sets out to answer Philby's question and has uncovered a maze of corruption, high finance, political gambles, and international intrigue. This book unearths not just Himmler's grave, but reveals secrets that have long remained buried, and shadowy figures who would rather it stay that way.


Conspiracy theories concerning the fate of former Nazi German leaders are 10 a pfennig.

Did Martin Bormann, Hitler's secretary, live to a ripe old age somewhere in South America?

And what about Himmler? Is it just possible that the scrawny middle-aged man in glasses who committed suicide at the British camp at at Lüneburg after capture that same month was in fact a stand-in for the feared SS Reichsführer? That Himmler himself - who as late as May 5 had claimed that he, for one, "would never commit suicide" - had somehow slipped out of the Fatherland and set out on some not-so-vainglorious quest to set up a secret Fourth Reich?

Well, maybe. Possibly. Perhaps. Anything is possible, after all, in the breathless aftermath of world war. Certain physical details of the dead man at Lüneburg do seem different from Himmler's: you can see them in the studious photos reproduced in this book. One nostril is larger than the other, whereas Himmler's were symmetrical. The corpse doesn't appear to sport a duelling scar, which means that unless the dead man was wearing make-up (popular among senior Nazis), he wasn't the son born to Anna and Dr Gebhard Himmler on October 7 1900.

Hugh Thomas is "a surgeon and forensic expert of international repute", says the blurb to this dense, fascinating yet ultimately bothersome book. "His first book, The Murder of Rudolf Hess , caused a worldwide furore. His second, Hess: A Tale of Two Murders  precipitated a six-month Scotland Yard inquiry that saw its report immediately suppressed." Thomas does have a scalpel-sharp eye for detail - as you would hope of a man of his profession. He also writes well when he allows himself to get beyond the weight of the obsessive detail that bogs parts of this book down like one of Panzer General Guderian's tanks attempting to advance on Moscow in December 1941. It was Guderian who commented that Himmler was "a man from another planet".

The central thesis of Thomas's book - and the evidence for it is vivid - is that Himmler was attempting to set up a Fourth Reich outside the boundaries of Hitler's Germany. Quite aware that Germany had effectively lost the war as early as 1943, Thomas's Himmler set about channelling the Croesan riches amassed by the SS and pro-Nazi German finance and industry into Swiss and South American bank accounts. An FBI/OSS report of November 1944, written by Senator Harley M Kilgore and backed by the US Treasury and State departments, noted: "The German aggressors have begun to pursue the strategy which they found successful a quarter of a century ago. They are already deploying their economic wares throughout the world in preparation for a third attempt at world domination." Which, of course, appeared to happen from the 1950s, when the Federal Republic's "economic miracle" astounded the nations that had borne the brunt of the fighting against Hitler, Himmler and the rest of their vile crew.

Thomas piles up a massively detailed case suggesting that Nazi money exported to safe financial havens in the late stages of the second world war was, to a previously underplayed extent, responsible for Germany's rise to economic power in the decade following Hitler's downfall. Well, maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. To his credit, Thomas uses these defusing words frequently in a book that might otherwise overstretch the imagination and, in turn, credit Himmler with too much intelligence and insight.

His portrait of Himmler is, in fact, the best part of SS-1, which suffers from being three books in one. There's an excellent mini-biography of Himmler, a Byzantine analysis of the links between Nazi and international finance during the war, and a forensic examination of the corpse that may or may not have been that of the Reichsführer.

The description of Himmler's childhood and youth is compelling. This "man of quiet, unemotional gestures, a man without words" was fastidious and possessed of a phenomenal memory; he kept a daily diary recording everything that happened to him. He put these skills to chilling use when he began to wipe out Europe's Jews and gypsies, communists and homosexuals. Everything the SS did was planned and recorded fastidiously. No one escaped the Reichsführer's eyes, beady behind those infamous rimless glasses. Everyone needed to be watched, especially Paula Stolzle, his elder brother's pretty and flirtatious fiancée. Disapproving of sexy women, shortly before he joined the Nazi party the puritanical young Himmler employed a private detective to follow Stolzle; he made the couple's lives so fraught that the engagement was called off.

Himmler went on to become a lot creepier and a lot more dangerous, although he did marry, losing his virginity at the age of 28 to a nurse seven years his senior who thought those rimless glasses - she persuaded him to wear them - rather fetching. It's just this sort of near-forensic detail that makes Thomas's book worthwhile. Quick as a Blitzkrieg, this bloodless young man is Reichsführer SS (in 1929, aged 28). The title SS-1 refers to Himmler's position as head of the Schutz Staffel; it was also the licence plate of his BMW staff car. According to Josef Göbbels, "except for Hitler, no one is entirely without fear of Himmler".

No one? German business certainly appears to have gone along with him. So too did business interests in Washington, London and Zurich. If there had been some shady Allied agreement to allow Himmler to escape the wrath of the Nuremberg trials and set up shop elsewhere while pretending that he had committed suicide, then it had surely been abandoned by May 1945. Himmler, the SS and German big business may well have been in cahoots with elements in Wall Street and the City of London; Britain's royal family, with its shareholding in German companies, was also that bit too close to him (Prince Christopher Mountbatten, says Thomas, was on Himmler's staff). Yet ultimately the SS Reichsführer was surely too ghastly to be acceptable to the international business and banking community.

It's true that the British dug up the corpse for reidentification, and it's true that several members of British intelligence, Kim Philby among them, were not immediately convinced that Himmler was dead. Yet if he weren't, we would surely have heard something about it by now.

Wouldn't we?

1945: THE STRANGE DEATH OF HEINRICH HIMMLER


Of all the luminaries in Hitler's Germany, Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler is probably the least well-known. He was "Hitler's hangman" and the architect of the Holocaust, but he was also one of the foremost European mystics of the Twentieth Century.

Military cadet, street-corner revolutionary, chicken farmer, devotee of the Bhagavad Gita, eugenics advocate, Lord of Atlantis and a kind of Teutonic King Arthur, Himmler's life was pretty strange.

And now it looks as if his death in May 1945 was equally strange.

Documents discovered in Britain's Public Records Office, Kew, London, confirm revisionist claims that Himmler was liquidated by the British secret service on (Winston S.) Churchill's orders, and did not commit suicide shortly after his capture, as conformist historians have long maintained.

According to British author David Irving, who has written a new biography of Himmler:

Winston Churchill had long agitated in his War Cabinet for a secret plan to be approved between the Allied leaders ordering the execution without trial of a number of the enemy leaders, including Himmler.

Meeting at Hyde Park (New York state) in September 1944, Churchill had readily persuaded (USA president) Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign on to this plan for lynch justice, but, after Churchill carried the document to Moscow in October 1944, (Soviet Union prime minister) Josef Stalin surprisingly refused to agree, insisting instead on proper trials for all enemy war criminals.

Rumours emerged last year (2004) that Churchill had personally ordered the silencing of Benito Mussolini, and that the order had been handed to an SOE (Special Operations Executive) officer to Italian partisans soon after. Mussolini and his entire Cabinet were liquidated by machine gun squads without trial in the closing days of World War II in Europe.

In April 1945, Himmler moved to northern Germany and began negotiations with the Allies through his own Intelligence chief Walter Schellenberg and Count (Folke) Bernadotte, the Swedish emissary, to end the bloodshed in Europe.

The negotiations went through Sir Victor Mallet, the British minister in Stockholm. Stalin was by this time pathologically suspicious of any separate negotiations between the Allied governments and the Nazi leadership.

For a while Churchill was inclined to deal with him (Himmler). Admiral Cunningham, Britain's First Sea Lord, visited Churchill on April 13, 1945 and wrote this startling passage in his diary afterwards: 'During our interview the PM (Prime Minister, i.e. Churchil) mentioned that Himmler appeared to be trying to show that he wasn't so bad as painted and PM said if it would save further expenditure of life he would be prepared to spare even Himmler. I suggested there were plenty of islands he could be sent to.

According to Himmler biographer Peter Padfield:

On 10 May 1945, two days after Germany's surrender, he left Häschen, and accompanied by Brandt, Ohlendorf, Professor Gebhardt, Heinz Macher and his military adjutant, Werner Grothmann, set out by car to make his way to Bavaria ...to join those many other SS- Führers who had gone southeast to establish Werwolf in the Alps."

[Werwolf was an SS guerrilla organization designed to continue the war through a nationwide insurgency. Werwolf attacks were sporadic but kept occupied Germany in turmoil until the end of 1947. The name is German for Werewolf]
                                                                                                                                                                                                     

After crossing the Elbe River, Himmler, Macher and Grothmann had to leave the cars and continue on foot, mixing in the straggles of refugees and soldiers making their way home, sleeping in the open or in railway stations or in farmers' haylofts. Himmler had shaved off his moustache, donned a black patch over his right eye and wore the uniform of a sergeant in the Geheime Feldpolizei; his two adjutants were disguised as privates in the same organization--a hierarchy that was, perhaps, indicative of his need to be superior. In the event it led to his downfall, for the Geheime Feldpolizei was one of the organizations on the Allied black list, and sergeants and above were subject to automatic arrest.

On May 21, 1945, Himmler 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 recognized, 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. He and his two adjutants arrived there some time after noon on (May) 23rd.

It was lunchtime, by the recollection of one of the intelligence officers at Barfeld camp, Chaim Herzog--later president of the State of Israel--when the Sergeant-Major reported to the commanding officer, Captain (Thomas) Selvester, that three of the newly-arrived prisoners were insisting on seeing him; one claimed to be Heinrich Himmler.

Selvester went to his office and had the men sent in. As he recollected twenty years later (in 1965), one was small and ill-looking, the other two tall and bearing themselves like soldiers--Grothmann and Macher. Sensing something unusual, he ordered the two large ones taken away and held apart from the other prisoners. The smaller one then removed an eyepatch he was wearing and put on a pair of spectacles. 'His identity was at once obvious,' Selvester recalled, 'and he said, 'Heinrich Himmler' in a very quiet voice.'

Selvester then sent for an intelligence officer to interrogate him and called (British Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law) Montgomery's chief of intelligence, Colonel Michael Murphy, at Second Army headquarters, Lüneburg. While waiting for Murphy to drive over, Himmler's signature was tested against a facsimile, and he was stripped and given a full body search. Two small brass cases were found in his clothes, one containing a glass phial which he claimed was medicine for his stomach cramps. Selvester assumed it was poison and guessed the phial from the empty case was in his mouth.

In any case, he ordered thick bread and cheese sandwiches and tea for Himmler and watched him closely as he ate. He noticed nothing.

While they waited for Col. Murphy to arrive, Selvester's intelligence people tried to get a rise out of Himmler by showing him photographs of the piled corpses and living skeletons the British had found at Buchenwald.

Himmler remained unmoved by the sight. "Am I responsible for the excesses of my subordinates?" he asked Selvester, "Did you hang Robespierre for the excesses of the sans-culottes?"

[Maximilien Robespierre, a.k.a. the Incorruptible, was the leader of the short-lived "Republic of Virtue" during the French Revolution. He launched the Reign of Terror in 1792. No need to hang him. He was captured by his Illuminati political enemies during "the coup of Thermidor" in July 1794 and guillotined with his brother, Augustin, the following day].

According to Padfield:

Colonel Murphy arrived at about eight that evening and had Himmler taken out unceremoniously in his blanket and bundled into his car. According to Herzog, Murphy was 'using all forms of epithets, including 'Come on, you bastard!' and 'We'll teach you!'"

Himmler was taken to (British) Second Army headquarters outside Lüneburg, where an interrogation centre had been established in a red-roofed villa at No. 33 Ülznerstrasse...There, in a room on the first floor, Sergeant-Major Austin gave him much the same (rough) treatment.

New research into the evening's events "revealed that the official files on his (Himmler's) death had oddities, discrepancies and inconsistencies.

(1) "The autopsy performed on the corpse did not give the cause of death;"
(2) "A vital page had been retyped;" and
(3) "There was no message in the files of 21st Army Group, Field-Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's headquarters, reporting the event to London."

According to David Irving:

Now come documents from the (UK) Public Record Office (Record Group F 800, file 868) which provide more than just a smoking gun.

The first, dated May 10, 1945, is a Personal and Secret letter on (UK) Foreign Office stationery from Sir John Wheeler-Bennett, later a noted Establishment and Royal historian, to the famous British agent Sir Robert Bruce-Lockhart, of the Political Intelligence Department-- which conducted Black propaganda against the enemy.

Sir John wrote:

Further to our meeting yesterday morning (May 9, 1945) I have been giving some serious thought to the little H situation.

We cannot allow Himmler to take to the (witness) stand in any prospective prosecution, or indeed allow him to be interrogated by the Americans. Steps will therefore have to be taken to eliminate him as soon as he falls into our hands.

["Little H" was British intelligence's nickname for Himmler. "Big H" was Adolf Hitler].

On May 12, 1945, Lockhart replied in handwriting:

I agree. I have arranged for Mr. Ingrams to go for a fortnight .

Irving wrote:

The former Reichsführer-SS was carrying a letter to Field-Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, the British field commander (which has vanished--D.I.) His only cyanide capsule was found in his clothing after he had been ordered to strip naked, and it was handed to (Col.) Michael Murphy, head of British Intelligence at the Second Army.

According to 'The Illustrated London News' story a few days later, a 'second' capsule was surrendered to the medical officer at Himmler's final destination, the ominous house at No. 31a Ülznerstrasse in Lüneburg, which raises a number of obvious questions.

After his identification, according to the official accounts, Himmler had answered questions, eaten a thick British Army (cheese) sandwich, and been driven to the house in Lüneburg--from which he emerged dead.

Although the British military files appear meticulous, even listing with suspicious detail every person in the room at the moment of death, many facts did not fit into place.

The prisoner's nose had been broken [presumably by Sgt.-Major Austin], according to 'The Illustrated London News' artist who sketched the body.

How had he (Himmler) obtained the cyanide capsule he had allegedly been hiding in his mouth (let alone answer questions and bite into that sandwich)?

The capsule descriptions varied, and bore no resemblance to what the standard issue (Nazi) capsule actually looked like."

According to Padfield, the official time of Himmler's death was 11:04 p.m. on May 23, 1945.

At 2:50 a.m. that night (it was now May 24, 1945-- D.I.) 'Mr. Thomas' wired from Bremen to the Foreign Office for Bruce-Lockhart in a Top Secret code: 'Further to my orders, we successfully intercepted H.H. last night at Lüneburg before he could be interrogated. As instructed, action was taken to silence him permanently. I issued orders that my presence in Lüneburg is not to be recorded in any fashion, and we may conclude that the H.H. problem is ended.

Bruce-Lockhart significantly noted on this telegram, 'copy to PM'--i.e. to Churchill--May 25.

Two days later, on May 27, 1945, Churchill's confidant, Brendan Bracken, wrote to Lord Selborne at the Ministry of Economic Warfare: 'Further to the good news of the death of Little H, I feel that it is imperative that we maintain a complete news blackout on the exact circumstances of this most evil man's demise. I am sure that it it were to become public knowledge that we had a hand in this man's demise, it would have devastating repercussions for this country's standing.'

'I am also sure,' (continued Bracken) 'that this incident would complicate our relationship with our American brethren; under no circumstances must they discover that we eradicated 'Little H,' particularly so since we know they were keen to interrogate him themselves.'

"Quite so," David Irving commented, "Britain's secret agents had secretly and criminally liquidated one of the most wanted men in history, for whose proper public trial and punishment the blood of millions of his victims cried out; and for no other visible reason than to conceal that for a few days toward the end of the war, Churchill had negotiated with him on peace terms."

But is that the reason why Churchill had Himmler murdered?

What if the motive was related not to diplomacy but to Himmler's New Age ties and background? There may have been certain topics Churchill did not wish to see aired at the Nuremberg trials. Such as Himmler's boyhood association with the theosophist Dr. Friedrich Wichtl; groups like the Thule Society, the Vril Society and the Artamen; Himmler's court sorcerer, Karl-Maria Wiligut; the SS castle at Wewelsburg; the SS-Ahnenerbe and their strange archaeological excavations throughout Europe; and the real purpose of the 1938 SS expedition to the Himalayas.

New Age beliefs also linked Himmler with the top strata of British society. Did Himmler correspond with Jiddu Krishnamurti and his mentor, Theosophical Society leader and mystic Annie Wood Besant, during the 1920s and 1930s? What ties, if any, did Churchill and his American-born mother, the former Jennie Jerome of New York City, have with Mrs. Besant at the beginning of the Twentieth Century?

[Jennie was the daughter of Leonard Jerome, a Wall Street "plunger" or stock speculator of the Gilded Age USA.]

See

The International Campaign for Real History releases for June 3 and June 5, 2005, "It's official. British secret service did murder SS chief Heinrich Himmler." Also, Himmler by Peter Padfield, MJF Books, New York, N.Y., 1990

On May 23, 1945 Britain's secret agents had secretly and criminally liquidated one of the most wanted men in history, for whose proper public trial and punishment the blood of millions of his victims cried out

 


It was Jewish members of the British field police who captured Himmler, whose captor happened to be none other than a future President of Israel, Chaim Herzog.

 

In an article by Michael Freedland, a writer for the English Newspaper, The Observer. which appeared on March 15, 1998, and which bears the caption, "The Jewish Executioner," the journalist interviews former DIN assassin Joseph Harmatz.

 

In a rare moment of pure candidness, Harmatz expands upon the role of the so-called "Jewish Brigade."

 

He says, Some of their members would, before long, personally execute SS personnel.

 

In one operation, dressed as military policemen, they "took in for questioning" all the members of a Nazi cell-and strangled them-except for one SS man who was thrown, alive, off a cliff.

 

Curiously, it was also members of this same "Jewish Brigade" who captured Heinrich Himmler, who was later officially classified as a "suicide".