Himmler's diary, 1945 : a calendar of events leading to suicide

369 Pages·2014·3.81 MB·English

by  Himmler

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following friends and colleagues who
assisted with sources of information: Andrej Angrick, Rainer Fröbe, Peter Klein,
Dieter Pohl, Ian Whittaker and Michael Wildt. For providing some of the
illustrations, thanks also go to Michael Miller, Marc Rikmanspoel, Ian Sayer
and, especially, Max Williams. We are also indebted to the British Army’s
Medical Services Museum at Aldershot, for allowing us to use the photograph of
Himmler’s death mask.
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First published in the United Kingdom and United States of America 2014
Copyright © Peter Witte and Stephen Tyas 2014
ISBN 978-1-78155-257-5
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Methodology and Sources
A Biographical Introduction
ReichsführerSS Heinrich Himmler: Positions in 1945
Diary for January 1945
Diary for February 1945
Diary for March 1945
Diary for April 1945
Diary for May 1945
Picture Section
Endnotes
Abbreviations
Bibliography
Methodology and Sources
Methodology and Terminology
In presenting this research we have employed a three-fold methodological
approach. First, there is a statement about the military situation over which
ReichsführerSS Himmler had no control. On some days there were no changes
in the general military situation and therefore when this is the case these
statements are omitted. Secondly, we made extensive use of Himmler’s own
desk diary in which he noted his meetings and appointments. These are
handwritten entries by Himmler and can therefore be treated as entirely accurate.
Unfortunately with the quickening pace of Allied armies advancing across
Germany, Himmler made his last entry on 14 March 1945 before sending his
diary to safety at his home in southern Germany. Lastly we have noted “Events”
which are statements from various sources which involve actions and activities
that included Himmler. Primarily these are from similar wartime diaries
(Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann
who also acted as Hitler’s secretary), early postwar interrogations of Himmler’s
personal staff including his adjutants (Werner Grothmann and Heinz Macher)
and the later memoirs and biographies of Nazi leaders and others who met
Himmler during 1945.
In comparing and contrasting the widely different sources there is rarely
any dispute between the timings and occurrences taking place. Where dates and
times are obviously wrong, we have pointed this out. The timetable of events
leading up to Himmler’s death from the time of his capture has been
reconstructed from British army sources.
Any publication involving non-English sources is fraught with language pitfalls
and difficulties. To avoid making this terminology even more difficult we have
maintained throughout a certain amount of German terms that are self-
explanatory. For instance, ReichsführerSS has no pertinent or correct English
term and therefore we have maintained the original German term. To complicate
matters ReichsführerSS was abbreviated in different ways by individuals whose
works we have quoted; thus we have RFSS, RF-SS, RfSS, Rf.SS and Rf-SS and
all mean ReichsführerSS. Rather than change the quotations we decided to keep
to historical accuracy of the quoted work.
Similarly many works translated from German into English appear to have
created their own literary terminology. Typically this occurs with the German
word führer when used as a suffix, and seen translated as a capitalized noun
Fuhrer (quoted with and without umlaut) when attached to someone’s SS-rank.
Throughout we have quoted whatever has been
used.
This brings us to the German use of the Führer as an individual. It was
common parlance among Germans alike—from the man in the street to Heinrich
Himmler—that their shared use of the Führer always meant Adolf Hitler. The
diaries of Himmler, Goebbels and Bormann all mention meetings with the
Führer and no other information was necessary to indicate this meant Hitler. We
have endeavoured to keep to correct names where possible. It is Joseph
Goebbels and not Josef Goebbels, it is Adolf Hitler and not Adolph Hitler.
All SS ranks have no literal English translation, SS-Sturmbannführer may
translate as SS Storm Troop Leader but its more precise equivalent is SS-Major.
A list of SS ranks and their typical recognizable equivalents is included at the
end. Similarly a list of abbreviations is also included.
The Sources for this Work
The primary sources we have used in writing this book are freely available in
archives in Germany, Britain and the USA. Some were declassified decades ago;
some more recently. For the first time, we have brought them together in a
coherent chronology of events. In common with all government ministers,
Heinrich Himmler found his life in government was not always his own and
therefore there was a need to regulate his life through his desk diary. There are
many diaries by Himmler that have proved invaluable to historians when
documenting his life from the early days through to 1945, though the last entry is
14 March 1945. The diary entries quoted are little more than lines on a page with
his occasional mistakes. For historians they show where Himmler was and, just
as importantly, who he was with. A combination of times and people can
establish why. Himmler regarded his diaries as part of his archive and for
security reasons he had them sent south to Bavaria where they were lodged at his
home in Gmund on the Tegernsee. Discovered when US troops searched the
house after the war, they were recovered as part of the American Captured
German records programme. In the 1950s, these records were returned to the
West German government and placed in the Federal German Archives
(Bundesarchiv). These original paper diaries of Heinrich Himmler are today
lodged in the archives at Berlin-Lichterfelde.
The second and no less unique primary source we have used are the
German police decrypts held at the National Archives at Kew (London). These
decrypts are the only remaining record of German messages from the 1945
period still in existence, the originals having been either destroyed by air-raid
damage or purposely burned at the time. Because British and American air raids
on German cities and installations destroyed, among other things, the
communications infrastructure that enabled teleprinter operations, the SS and
police became reliant on radio operations capable of being intercepted in the
ether. British wireless operators intercepted thousands of German messages and
this particular stream of German police decrypts, deciphered at Bletchley Park,
have proved extremely useful in tracking Himmler’s movements and orders sent
by radio. These German radio messages were originally declassified in 1997; a
second series of separate German radio messages assembled by Britain’s Secret
Intelligence Service (MI6) were declassified several years later along with
another unique set of deciphered radio messages entitled ‘Decrypts of
Intercepted Diplomatic Communications’. These diplomatic messages have a
value in showing how Hitler and Himmler varied their responses to different
foreign audiences; for example, we have quoted examples of Chinese and
Japanese diplomatic messages that reveal information not provided by German
sources.
In the immediate postwar period, Himmler’s two adjutants, Grothmann and
Macher, were extensively interrogated by British intelligence officers. From
these interrogation reports we have added a good deal of extra material to show
Himmler’s movements in April and May 1945. It is our opinion that additional
interrogation reports of Grothmann and especially Macher are still in the
possession of Britain’s intelligence agencies. In searching files declassified by
these agencies at the UK’s National Archives there are several references to the
‘Himmler Book’; this, too, has not been declassified despite his death in British
custody sixty-eight years ago.
It is worth noting that almost all of Himmler’s personal staff maintained a
loyal silence after release from US and British postwar internment. Many years
ago, Peter Witte interviewed Werner Grothmann at his home but he said nothing
that was not already in the public domain. Macher died in 2001, Grothmann in
2002.
Wartime documents have also been examined and quoted, especially those
used by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, 1945-46.
Kaltenbrunner’s defence attempted to mitigate his involvement in mass murder
by using testimony from delegates of the International Committee of the Red
Cross in the rescue of Jews in April 1945. Such testimony illustrated
Kaltenbrunner’s attempts at stopping Himmler’s own rescue arrangements.
Kaltenbrunner went to the gallows in 1946.
We have also made use of the wartime diaries of Joseph Goebbels and
Martin Bormann, published in translation and the original German, as well as the
postwar memoirs of Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, Minister Albert Speer and SS
General Walter Schellenberg. We have taken their words at face value,
especially in the case of Schellenberg, whose memoirs are a mix of personal
aggrandisement and avoidance of guilt. Schellenberg cut a poor figure under
interrogation in London in 1945, his examiners declaring that he ‘has not
produced any evidence of outstanding genius as appears to have been attributed
to him’. For Himmler’s SD Chief of Foreign Intelligence, hardly a glowing
report. However, Count Folke Bernadotte, representative of the Swedish Red
Cross in Germany in 1945, also published a memoir which can be judged against
Schellenberg’s view of the Himmler–Bernadotte meetings and negotiations.