"Himmler Telegram Kept and Destroyed by Me"

"Himmler Telegram Kept and Destroyed by Me." - 

Timewatch : Himmler, Hitler and the End of the Reich from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"During our interview the Prime Minister mentioned that [Heinrich] Himmler appeared to be trying to show that he wasn't so bad as painted, and [the] 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."

Personal Diary Entry,

Admiral Sir A B

First Sea Lord 

April 1945

"Further to our meeting yesterday morning, I have been giving some serious thought to the little H situation. 

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

Please give this matter some thought, as if we are to take action we will have to expedite such an act with some haste." 

Lockhart minuted two days later in handwriting: "I agree, I have arranged for Mr Ingrams to go for a fortnight. R B-L, 12/May/1945."

"On August 31, 1944, the head of MI6 forwarded to the prime minister, Winston Churchill, an intercepted coded signal. It was a telegram from the Reichsführer-SS and chief of German police, Heinrich Himmler. The telegram has not survived. But it must have been highly sensitive - in a handwritten reply to the head of MI6, Churchill noted: 

"Himmler telegram kept and destroyed by me."

 

Out of some 14,000 decrypts that the British prime minister personally saw, this was the only one he destroyed. 

And it was the only signal emanating from Himmler.

 

This tantalising piece of information has been discovered by the research team working on a new documentary on Himmler and his betrayal of Hitler. The story of the betrayal is, in its full extent, largely unknown, but this new evidence suggests that his secret dealings with the allies went much further than is commonly assumed.

 

Himmler had constructed his own path to power, and built the SS, the organisation he headed, upon unquestioned personal loyalty to the Führer. As the motto of the SS, he had chosen the words: "My honour is loyalty". But it now seems "the loyal Heinrich" (as Himmler was dubbed) was more prepared than any other Nazi leader to engage in mounting betrayal of his leader during the last eight months of the Third Reich.

 

We can only speculate on the content of the telegram. However, it is plausible to assume it was sent by Himmler to an intermediary who was putting out tentative peace feelers to the British on Himmler's behalf. Churchill, adamantly opposed to any negotations with the Germans, must have been anxious to head off rumours of a German peace with Britain, as it could jeopardise the vital alliance with the Soviet Union. By destroying the telegram, he was ensuring that the feelers were not pursued and all traces were erased.

 

This interpretation is hardened by circumstantial evidence. In August 1944 the Japanese had hinted that they were prepared to try to broker a separate peace between Germany and the Soviet Union. The Japanese ambassador in Berlin put the suggestion directly to Hitler at a meeting early in September. Hitler rejected the idea out of hand.

 

Himmler was not taken with the notion of overtures to Stalin, but was enough of a realist to see that Germany could not win the war. On September 12 he, too, met Hitler to discuss peace feelers to Russia or - his plain preference - to Britain. Clearly, he met the same response. Hitler was not interested.

 

Negotiations, he had always asserted, could be carried out only from a position of strength. He was now planning a last Canute-like attempt to turn the tide of war: an offensive through the Ardennes to throw the British and Americans "back into the Atlantic", then, with new weapons at his disposal, to attack the Russians.

 

Himmler realised that discussing possible peace feelers with Hitler was a lost cause. It was the beginning of the parting of the ways between the two men.

 

By the autumn of 1944, the allies were closing in on the Reich's borders to east and west. The end was plainly looming. Unlike Hitler, Himmler was not prepared to go under. On the contrary, he thought of saving his own neck, of life after Hitler, and of leading a post-Hitlerian Reich in the continued fight against Bolshevism. For these ends, he needed a negotiated settlement with the West, and as the August telegram suggests, he was already well on the way to finding an independent path out.

 

But Hitler still wielded mighty power, so Himmler had to tread with extreme caution. For months he played a double game - openly the "loyal Heinrich", secretly the increasingly desperate seeker of a way to avoid being sucked down in Hitler's self-destruction.

 

With the failure of the Ardennes offensive in December 1944, Hitler's illusion of victory evaporated. What was left was to fight on to the end. "We'll not capitulate. Never," Hitler stated. "We can go down. But we'll take a world with us."

 

This self-destructive urge had no resonance with Himmler. By December 1944 a liaison officer under the command of Walter Schellenberg, the head of the SS intelligence service, now confirms that he had learnt from his chief that Himmler was trying to arrange a separate peace deal.

 

An obvious problem with any deal was Himmler's reputation. To gain credibility with the West, he now tried to show himself in the best possible light. In January 1945, through a Swiss intermediary acting for rabbis in America and Canada, he agreed to the release of 1,400 Jews a month from Theresienstadt in return for $250,000. No money, in fact, changed hands when 1,200 Jews were released in February. But Himmler stipulated that the press in America and Switzerland should report his "humanitarian" gesture.. It was correctly deduced in Washington that he was seeking contact.

 

But when Hitler learnt of the release of the Jews he was reputedly furious and banned any further releases. By now, Himmler's star was on the wane. He had been given a senior military command in January 1945 and had proved a disaster, withdrawing for much of the time on alleged grounds of illness to an SS hospital north of Berlin. But he continued scheming to engineer his own survival.

 

In one of the most bizarre incidents, he attempted to improve his standing with the western allies by agreeing to a secret rendezvous with a representative of the World Jewish Congress. There he conceded the release of female Jews from Ravensbrück, in direct contravention of Hitler's ban. Between February and April 1945 he had secret meetings with Count Folke Bernadotte, the vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, which eventually moved to the possibility of a German surrender in the west.

 

On April 22, in an outburst of hysterical fury, Hitler openly acknowledged that the war was lost and expressed his wish to die in the Reich capital. It eased any sense of betrayal when Himmler met Bernadotte the next evening and asked him to transmit an offer of surrender to the western allies.

 

On April 28 Hitler was given the news, broadcast by the BBC, that Himmler had proposed unconditional surrender to Britain and America. He exploded at this "most shameful betrayal in human history". Himmler was stripped of all his offices and despised beyond measure by the man he had for so long revered. For Hitler this, of all the treachery he saw surrounding him, was the worst. He began preparations to take his own life. Within two days, he was dead.

 

Admiral Dönitz inherited for a few days the shreds of power in the Third Reich. He needed no persuasion that Himmler could only be a liability, and rejected his overtures for inclusion in his short-lived cabinet. Himmler, his dreams of continued power shattered, shaved off his moustache, adorned himself with a black eye-patch, put on the uniform of a military police sergeant, and went on the run for a fortnight. 

[Where was he, who was he with and what was he doing?]

[Him, or the double?]

After falling into British hands, he killed himself on May 23, 1945, by crushing a cyanide capsule contained in a cavity in his teeth."

 

Ian Kershaw is professor of modern history at Sheffield University. Timewatch: Himmler, Hitler and the End of the Reich will be screened on BBC2 on January 19 at 9pm

The glass ampoule of potassium cyanide.  

"The poison phial, one of two he carried, surrendered by Himmler to the medical officer."

"During our interview the Prime Minister mentioned that [Heinrich] Himmler appeared to be trying to show that he wasn't so bad as painted, and [the] 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."

Personal Diary Entry,

Admiral Sir A B

First Sea Lord 

April 1945

"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 at Lüneburg is not to be recorded in any fashion, and we may conclude that the H.H. problem is ended."

Top of first page marked in ink: 

"Sep. Doc, Envelope 2387." 

and numbered: "HQ 0426"

THE CAPTURE OF HEINRICH HIMMLER AND OTHER LEADING NAZIS MAY 1945

[account by Sergeant Britton]

ON 6th May 1945 at Plön, Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer SS, C in C of the Reserve Army, Reichsminister of the Interior, and Chief of Police, was dismissed from his offices by Grand Admiral Doenitz, the new head of the German state after Hitler's suicide. The dreaded Himmler, one of Hitler's earliest and most trusted colleagues had become head of the SS, Hitler's elite bodyguard, and as Chief of Police and Interior Minister had been responsible for the SS -- Death's Head Concentration Camp guards -- the largest mass-murder organisation known in history. Admiral Doenitz hated and distrusted Himmler and would have no truck with him, so the SS leader decided to go South to his home in Bavaria, taking with him a few escorts, medical advisers and ADCs. Disguising themselves and holding false papers, the party 12 strong, left Flensburg on 10th May. Himmler had documents purporting to show that he was "Ex Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger of a Special Armoured Company, attached to the Secret Field Police, demobilised on 3 May 1945". This curiously unsuitable cover-name meant that he was still in an automatic arrest category. He wore a civilian jacket, shaved off his moustache, removed his pince-nez glasses, and donned an eye patch over his left eye.

Crossing the Elbe estuary by boat they then mixed with a great mass of German troops of all services who were hemmed into the peninsula formed by the Rivers Elbe and Ems and the North Sea Coast. They moved South by easy stages to Bremervörde, a small town on the little river Oste which they reached on 18th May; though they could have crossed this river elsewhere, they decided to use the bridge which was guarded by British troops of the 51st Highland Division. Acting on British 2nd Army reports, a check point had been established here by 45 Field Security Section (attached to HQ 30 Corps) based at Zeven a few kilometres further south.

Himmler and two of his escorts, a Waffen SS Lt Col and a Major walked through Bremervörde on 22 May towards the check point, and a bizarre sight they must have been. The two escorts in front were clearly military men in long green overcoats, while the dreaded mass-murderer himself looked insignificant in an odd selection of civilian garments with a blue raincoat on top. To make matters worse, the two officers glanced back from time to time to ensure that their charge was still with them. This odd trio was picked up by an alert British infantry patrol, not knowing who they were, and were brought in to the check point. Here Sergeants Arthur Britton [author of this postwar report] and Ken Baisbrown of 45 Field Security Section, and Staff Sergeant John Hogg of 1003 Field Security Reserve Detachment made out the arrest documents after a quick scrutiny of the false identity papers, and realisation that all three were in an automatic arrest category. The true identity of the second greatest German war criminal of them all did not come to light for another couple of days.

He was allowed some refreshment and a floor to sleep on at the check point that night and next morning, 23 May, was sent on to No 031 Civil Internment Camp at Barnstedt; Sgt Britton drove the truck with the three prisoners, and on the way checked in at HQ 45 FSS at Zeven, where the OC Captain Excell sent them straight on to the Internment Camp for full processing. Around 7 pm that night Himmler asked for an interview with the Camp Commandant, Captain Thomas Selvester, and for some reason revealed his true identity. An Intelligence Officer was quickly sent by HQ 2nd Army nearby, bearing a specimen signature of Himmler's which was checked against the prisoner's signature, and identification was complete.

Two body searches and a complete change of clothing failed to reveal any hidden poisons, and at 9.45 pm Colonel Michael Murphy, Chief of Intelligence at HQ 2nd British Army arrived to take personal charge of the prisoner. He immediately arranged for a medical search to be carried out at Luneburg and at 10.45 pm it was done by Captain Wells RAMC, the HQ Medical Officer, now deceased [Wells died on August 15, 1975], but who left a written account of the affair.

Having searched the prisoner thoroughly he came to the mouth, where he noticed a small blue tit-like object sticking out of the lower sulcus of the left cheek. He slipped his finger into the prisoner's mouth to sweep out what he had seen but Himmler immediately clamped down on the doctor's fingers, they struggled, he wrenched his head away, crushed the glass capsule between his teeth, and the cyanide did its deadly work in some ten minutes.

The arch criminal underwent autopsy and formal identification by Allied staff officers and was buried in an unmarked grave outside Lüneburg on 25 May 1945.

While these events were going on 61 FSS and troops of 11th Armoured Division arrested Grand Admiral Dönitz and members of his interim government at Flensburg on 22 May while 53 FSS [attached to] the VIII Corps HQ Section at Lübeck arrested the Commandant of Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Von Ribbentrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister was picked up to [sic] FS personnel in Hamburg at about the same time. 61 FSS had another big haul of wanted men on 23 May when they captured Colonel General Jodl, General Major Dethleffsen, Admiral Wagner, two Reichsministers and six State Secretaries. The Section's official report to GSI (b) at HQ VIII Corps described their difficulties in gathering in the bodies and their documents, as Press Teams and Shaef observers were wrongly allowed to accompany the arrest task force. These onlookers "lifted" souvenirs such as watches and wallets, which in the case of Category I arrests may well have contained highly important evidence.

Penciled note at foot of last page: "This story agreed by Mr Neil McDermott Q.C. formerly GSO1 (Int b) at HQ 21st Army Group, though he added that a gentle interrogation by M.I.5 reps also took place. TGR"

Each page is marked in ink, "Copy of document. Int. Corps Archives. A/E [Major (ret.) Alan Edwards] 7/10.05." Edwards states October 6, 2005: "I also found a most detailed report prepared by a Sgt Britton who arrested Himmler. This material was written at the time Mr Ramsey was preparing his article [for After the Battle Magazine]." 

Spelling and transcription errors have been corrected here. 

Items in brackets [ ] were inserted by this website 2005 and 2010.

Real History and the end of Heinrich Himmler

Statement dated February 11, 1964, by former colonel (British Army) Michael Murphy on the death of Heinrich Himmler, May 1945 (written to biographer Heinrich Fraenkel) (Univ of New Mexico, Heinrich Fraenkel papers). 

---

Monkham, Exford, Minehead, Somerset

[All handwritten:]

11 Feb 64

Dear Mr Fraenkel,

Thank you for your letter of 7th [March 1964] re Himmler. I enclose a note of what I remember of this man's last hours & you may take it they are accurate.

Mr Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote about this in a book some years ago but he is not accurate in all details. I wrote and told him so but I got no acknowledgement.

If I can be of any further assistance, let me know.

Yours sincerely

Michael Murphy.

[Colonel L M Murphy]

---

I remember very well the last hours of Himmler. There is no question that Himmler spent some time at the Intelligence Suspects Camp [Westertimke] where Capt Sylvester [sic. Selvester] met him and interrogated him. When I got there about 8 pm no attempt had been made to search Himmler and he and his officers were sitting at a table smoking cigars! He had two bodyguards [Werner Grothmann and Heinz Macher] (very big men) with him, and they had not been searched either. I turned the bodyguards out of the room and had them searched and confined. I then told Himmler I intended to search him, and told him to strip. He refused, saying, "I am Himmler." "I carry a letter for General Montgomery." I confess I don't know what happened to the letter. I never saw it. I told Himmler I did not care who he was, I intended to search him and take away his clothes. He asked what he could wear instead of his own clothes. I told him Battle Dress. Himmler said he wouldn't be seen dead in British Battle Dress. I then told him I intended to take him after searching to Army H.Q. -- about a 10 mile car ride., and if he didn't put on British Battle dress he would have to travel naked and might be rather cold! He then agreed. Stripped & his clothes were searched. The phial of cyanide was found in the lining of his jacket. During all my time with Himmler he had no form of refreshment.

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 G-II at my H.Q. and told him to get a Doctor to standby at a house I had had prepared for such men as Himmler. I and another officer then accompanied Himmler on the drive to this house.

On arrival we met the Doctor and told him what was wanted. Himmler stripped again and was naked except for his socks and boots. The Doctor started his examination with the mouth. He said, "Open" and H opened and immediately he saw a small black knob sticking out between a gap in the teeth on the right-hand side -- lower jaw. He shut his mouth at once. Once again the Dr said "Open" and H. opened. The Dr went closer, and with his fingers extended and closed inserted them into H's mouth. Immediately he bit hard -- hurt the Doctor and broke the phial. I dived for H's feet and threw him to the ground. We turned him on his tummy to try and stop him swallowing, and I 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. But it was no good, with many convulsions H died in about 15 minutes.

I telephoned Gen Dempsey [British 2nd Army] to get permission to let the Press know H was dead, and we covered him with a blanket where he lay. D. said I must first get Russian approval. It was 24 hours before they arrived to view the body. Photos I have taken they would not believe. When they arrived they grudgingly agreed it might be Himmler.

As regards the capsule, this was minute -- certainly not an inch in Diameter [sic]. Himmler had no food or dinner in my presence and there is no doubt in my mind that from the time I met him to the time of his death one capsule was in his mouth. So far as I 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 23/24 but I cannot be sure. I have no recollection of the autograph incident. H, was sure of himself & arrogant to the end. He was quite convinced that he would be taken to see Montgomery & was surprised at the firm treatment I gave him in getting rid of his bodyguard & searching him. I should have received a German General with more courtesy!

---

Comments by David Irving:

I am puzzled by Murphy's reference to taking the prisoner to "a house I had had prepared for such men as Himmler". Why not to his G-2 headquarters, or to 2nd Army headquarters? For that matter why not leave him at Selvester's camp for interrogation? We are entitled to suspect what the real purpose of the house was. Himmler was not the only high ranking war criminal to leave it dead. 

This account differs in significant terms from the account given by Capt T Selvester. A point at issue appears to be whether Selvester's officers conducted a proper search of Himmler and his two men before Colonel Murphy arrived, and -- not unreleated -- whether Himmler had anything to eat after his identification. Other sources state that he ate sandwiches. Murphy alone says (above) that he ate nothing. But others also described Himmler as chatting volubly with them on the drive over to 2nd Army.

Murphy's description of the capsule (of thin metal, no glass) is not only improbable but also unlike the standard issue Nazi suicide-capsule, e.g. the one found in Hermann Göring's property, which raises the possibility that Murphy did not in fact see it. It is possible that the one taken from Himmler's jacket was merely the empty screw-cap brass container; which they decided not to risk opening, and they did not realize that the glass ampoule had been removed. But would Himmler have retained the give-away brass casing, instead of throwing it aside? 

Since he did eat more than one thick British Army sandwich, it is unlikely he would have concealed the ampoule in his mouth. Finally, no other source, either at the time or later, confirms Murphy's remarkable story about piercing Himmler's tongue with needle and cotton.

This is an interesting question - given that what Himmler we can say now with absolute certainty was actually doing was engaging in High Treason, I suspect he may have burnt his copy as soon as it was sent. What is VERY interesting is that use of the word "Telegram" - it doesn't say "Signal", or "Telex", and there is no mention or reference implicit in the context of the minute by Churchill which suggests what was intercepted by MI6 was in any sort of (standard) code, like ENIGMA; it doesn't say "decrypt" or "intercept", it says "Telegram". The implication is that this was a private message Himmler sent personally to someone, two months after D-Day and four weeks after the Staufenberg bomb plot/abortive coup by going down to the post office or the Western Union and sending it completely outside of the apparatus of the Nazi State - which is *remarkable*..... It's very clear that in some way, Himmler was trying to negotiate a surrender to the British and the Americans for almost the entire last year of World War II - the idea being that he would allow the anti-Nazi plotters in Berlin to Assassinate Hitler (which they almost did, at least 20 times), whereupon the SS would seize control, arrest all the disloyal officers and anti-Nazi pustchists, assume control of the government and command of the military, whereupon Himmler would offer an immediate ceasefire and truce with the Western allies and form a grand coalition to eject the Red Army from Prussia and Eastern Europe - which is what everyone from Hitler to George Patton to Churchill to Stalin presumed would naturally happen once the hardcore Hitler loyalists (there weren't many) at the very top were purged. Unfortunately for Himmler, the anti-Nazi resistance led by Beck (all of whom Himmler had under constant watch and surveillance, and was therefore actively PROTECTING, right up UNTIL they successfully assassinated Hitler, which they never managed to do) proved resolutely incapable or incompetent in terms of actually doing so. Himmler and the Gestapo were actively protecting the anti-Nazi resistance leaders in Berlin and keeping them out of jail or the concentration camps, even when they were openly travelling to Switzerland to confer with Alan Dulles of the OSS or MI6, from at least the beginning of 1942. There were arrests for low level stringers and hangers-on, but only when they did something monumentally stupid that made it impossible for the Gestapo not to pick them up and jail them, and one is forced to conclude either that NONE of these low-level gofers cracked under severe interrogation and gave up the names of all the resistance leaders and their plans, or else the Gestapo either never bothered to ask or follow up on the information extracted from their prisoners - all of which are preposterous on their face. Himmler knew precisely what they were up to and what they were planning and by some miracle managed to escape blame for failing to prevent the July 20th bomb plot or round up and arrest the participants months ahead of time, which he certainly could, and should have easily been able to do, since that was his entire job. I think Himmler must have quickly concluded that the only hope for Germany was for the SS to assume control of both the State and the war effort (which they were certainly perfectly well able and capable of doing), once Hitler himself had been removed, and under such circumstances, Churchill in particular would be much more willing to accept a Western truce and a negotiated surrender - the only obstacle in the path of carrying out that plan (which made sense) was the need for Hitler himself to be violently killed and martyred in an assassination by someone else; specifically, the very people who would be most implacably opposed to a new, hardline SS led leadership, the liberals, moderates, "pacifists" and "defeatists" who would need to be rounded up and purged in the new order as the cause for the recent military defeats and misfortunes. By 1944, Himmler realised that Hitler was far more valuable an asset to Nazi Germany dead that he could ever again hope to be alive, but paradoxically, he himself was completely incapable of openly harming or opposing - someone else had to Martyr him, publicly and violently. "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 at Lüneburg is not to be recorded in any fashion, and we may conclude that the H.H. problem is ended."