Schellenberg (The Schellenberg Memoirs) ... Edited and translated by Louis Hagen (Mayflower-Dell paperback no.7653)

196 Pages·1965·2.101 MB·English

by  Walter Schellenberg

7653
HE WAS HITLER’S
SECRET SERVICE CHIEF
HIS ARE
THE MOST STARTLING CONFESSIONS
OF A MASTER-SPY EVER TOLD

SCHELLENBERG
WALTER SCHELLENBERG
Edited and translated by
Louis Hagen
introduction by Alan Bullock
A MAYFLOWER-DELL PAPERBACK
SCHELLENBERG
Walter Schellenberg
Copyright ©
First published in Great Britain by
Andre Deutsch Ltd. under the title of
"The Schellenberg Memoirs"
Published as a Mayflower-Dell Paperback 1965.
This book shall not, without the written
consent of the Publishers first given, be lent,
re-sold, hired out or otherwise disposed of
in any unauthorised way of trade.
MAYFLOWER-DELL BOOKS are published by
Mayflower Books Ltd.,
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Made and printed in Great Britain by
C. Nicholls & Company Ltd.,
The Philips Park Press, Manchester 11.
INTRODUCTION
BY
ALAN BULLOCK
Walter Schellenberg’s memoirs would be worth reading, if
for nothing else, as a first-rate collection of spy stories. For the
text does not belie the promise of the chapter-headings: the
plot to kidnap the Duke of Windsor, the affair of the Vietinghoff
brothers, the Polish agent K— and the spy-ring in the Man-
chukuoan Embassy, the capture of the British secret service
agents at Venlo, and the hunting down of the Communist
Rote Kapelle organization. All these are episodes not from
fiction but from the history of the last twenty years and they
are described by the man who became the head of Hitler’s
Foreign Intelligence Service.
When the Nazis came to power at the end of January 1933,
Walter Schellenberg was a young man of twenty-two looking
for a job. Three years at the University of Bonn, during the
course of which he changed from the study of medicine to that
of law, had left him with few qualifications. Like thousands of
other German university students he had only his wits to rely
on at a time when jobs were more difficult to get than ever
before. Like thousands of others in the same situation he joined
the Nazi Party, neither from conviction nor against it, but as
the obvious avenue to success.
Making the most of his education, Schellenberg took care to
join the black-shirted SS - in the SS one found the “better type
of people” - and leapt at the chance of a job in the SD, the
intelligence and security service set up within the SS by
Heydrich, another young man on the make.
For the rest of his career (it was over by the age of thirty-five)
this was Schellenberg’s world, the world of the secret service
and the secret police, a world in which nothing was too fan­
tastic to happen, in which normality of behaviour or simplicity
of motive were curiosities and nothing was taken at face-value,
a world in which lies, bribes, blackmail and false-papers, treach­
ery and violence were part of the daily routine.
All this, the spurious glamour of the spy and the secret agent,
Schellenberg enjoyed to the full. In writing his memoirs after
the war and reliving his exploits, he was able to recapture
temporarily the sense of excitement and activity, the depriva­
tion of which he felt as acutely as a drug addict. When he
comes to describe the room he occupied as head of the German
Foreign Intelligence Service everywhere, he writes with uncon­
cealed pride: “Microphones were hidden in the walls, under the
desk, even in one of the lamps, so that every conversation and
every sound was automatically recorded... . My desk was like a
small fortress. Two automatic guns were built into it which
could spray the whole room with bullets. All I had to do in an
emergency was to press a button and both guns would fire
simultaneously. At the same time I could press another button
and a siren would summon the guards to surround the building
and block every exit.... Whenever I was on missions abroad
I was under standing orders to have an artificial tooth inserted
which contained enough poison to kill me within thirty seconds
if I were captured. To make doubly sure, I wore a signet-ring
in which, under a large blue stone, a gold capsule was hidden
containing cyanide.”
Hollywood could not have asked for more, but the point
which it is only too easy to miss is that Schellenberg was not
exaggerating when he wrote this. The Third Reich was a gang­
ster empire. Its rulers behaved in a manner which continually
brings to mind the actors in a third-rate film and it was in the
hectic atmosphere described by Schellenberg that decisions of
the greatest importance were taken even when they involved
the “final solution” of the Jewish problem or the invasion of
Russia.
What Schellenberg gives us is a picture of the Nazis seen, not
by the Opposition, not by the generals or by politicians like
Papen and Schacht, anxious to underline their disapproval, but
by one of themselves. This is the value of his book as a piece of
historical evidence, for none of those who have so far published
their memoirs of this period were in as good a position to
know and to have seen at first hand what took place at the
centre of power.
CHAPTER ONE
I was born in 1910, early enough to know the terrors of the
First World War. We lived in Saarbruecken, and when I was
only seven I had my first experience of an air raid when the
French bombed the town. The hard winter of that year, the
hunger, the cold and the misery, will always remain in my
memory.
The French occupied the Saar after the defeat of 1918, and
our family business - my father was a piano manufacturer -
suffered through the subsequent economic decline of the
region. By 1923 things were so bad that my father decided
to move to Luxembourg where there was another branch of
the business. Thus, very early in life, I made contact with the
world outside Germany and gained a knowledge of western
Europe, and especially of France and the French.
In the summer of 1929, I entered the University of Bonn.
During the first two years I studied medicine and then changed
over to law, which both my father and I agreed would serve as
the best basis either for a commercial career or, for a career in
the Foreign Service. It was also with my father’s approval that
instead of joining the Union of Catholic Students, I joined one
of the student corps that had, as so many of them did, a code
of honour and duelling.
This was in the spring of 1933, the year when Hitler came to
power. The judge who dealt with my application suggested that
my chances of securing the grant would increase appreciably if
I were a member of the Nazi Party and of one of its formations
the SA or the SS.
At this time thousands of people with widely differing back­
grounds were rushing to join the National Socialist movement,
though often for widely different reasons. I was certain, as were
the majority of these people, that Hitler was a political realist
and that having gained power he would now drop the more
extreme and unreasonable aspects of his programme - such as
the measures against the Jews. These might have been useful
to gain adherents in the past, but they certainly could not
serve as principles on which to run a modem state.
All young men who joined the Party had to join one of its
formations as well. The SS was already considered an “dlite”
organization. The black uniform of the Fuehrer’s special guard
was dashing and elegant, and quite a few of my fellow-students
had joined. In the SS one found the “better-type of people” and
membership of it brought considerable prestige and social ad­
vantages, while the beer hall rowdies of the SA were beyond
7
the pale. In those days they represented the most extreme,
violent, and fanatical elements of the Nazi movement.
I cannot deny that at the age of twenty-three such things as
social prestige and, shall we say, the glamour of a smart uni­
form played quite a large part in my choice. However, I found
the reality considerably less glamorous than I had imagined.
The monotonous military drill that formed the chief activity
of the ordinary SS did not appeal to me. We had to report for
duty three evenings a week, and on Saturdays - and Sundays
there were long and arduous cross-country marches, often with
a full pack. These were supposed to temper the young Nazi
manhood for the great tasks that lay ahead.
However, I soon managed to secure a more suitable form of
activity. It had been realized that the SS would have to offer
more to the students of a university town than merely marching
and drill and I was presently assigned to the task of conducting
indoctrination talks and giving lectures, mostly of an historical
nature, dealing with the development of Germanic law and at
the same time directly attacking the Catholic Church. These
lectures were for both students and workers and soon became
quite popular. It was my first lecture, to which I gave an out­
spoken anti-Catholic bias, that first aroused the attention of the
chief of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich.
One evening I noticed at the back of the audience two older
men dressed in SS uniforms without any special insignia. At the
end of the lecture they introduced themselves: both were pro­
fessors. at Bonn University, one a philologist, the other an
educationalist. They said they had found my lecture very in­
teresting and wanted to talk to me about other fields of activity
in the SS.
They asked me whether I would like to join one of these de­
partments, I having told them of my keen interest in foreign
affairs and foreign policy. They explained, however, that before
I could get into foreign secret service work I would have to
put in a spell at the Ministry of the Interior. They suggested
that I should continue with my legal career, my status -with
the SD remaining a purely “honorary” one without obligations
on either side, and meanwhile, I would be freed from all
other duties for the SS. I had no hesitation in agreeing to join
the SD and enrolled immediately. But I still had to do one last
spell of duty as an SS guard, and a fateful and unforgettable
one it turned out to be.
The date was 30th June, 1934. We were sent to guard the
fashionable Hotel Dreesen at Bad Godesberg. All day strange
and disquieting rumours had reached my unit. There were said
to be plots, divisions in the Party, and impending disasters. It
8
was whispered that the highest leaders of the Party were
coming to the hotel and I was posted outside the French win­
dows that led from the terrace to the dining-room, from which
point I could look down over the valley of the Rhine to the
mountains beyond. Inside the dining-room preparations had
been made for a conference, and before long “they” arrived:
it seemed the rumours were true. In the dining-room were
assembled the highest leaders of the Nazi movement, among
them I recognized Hitler, Goebbels and Goering. I could see
their changes of expressions and the movement of their lips,
though I could not hear what they said.
Meanwhile, black clouds had been gathering over the valley
and now the storm broke. As the rain poured down, I pressed
myself back into the shelter of the building. Lightning forked
across the sky, illuminating the scene with a weird and frighten­
ing glow. From time to time Hitler would come to the window
and stand staring at the tempest with unseeing eyes. He was
clearly labouring under the burden of weighty and difficult
decisions.
After dinner the meeting was resumed, then finally with a
brusque gesture Hitler brought the discussion to an end: a
decision had been made. At once the huge black Mercedes cars
drove up and Hitler and his companions got in. Trucks arrived
for the guards and we clambered inside, then roared after the
cars into the night towards the airport at Hangelar near Bonn,
where waiting aircraft took off for Munich as soon as the
leaders were aboard.
The great purge of Roehm and his followers in the SA had
begun.
I soon started my secret work for the SD. The information I
had to obtain concerned academic matters and political and
personal relationships at various universities. I was told to go
to the lodgings of a Professor H—, a professor of surgery at
the University, who would personally hand me my orders. They
came in sealed green envelopes directly from the central office
of the SD in Berlin. I never received any acknowledgements,
however, of my written reports and was left with a feeling of
working in the dark; the whole thing began to appear mysteri­
ous and unreal.
Presently, without any warning I was sent to France for four
weeks, with orders to discover the political views of a certain
professor at the Sorbonne, whom I had once mentioned in one
of my reports. Shortly after my return from France I was called
to Berlin to continue my training in the Ministry of the Interior.
I reported to the Personnel Bureau of the Ministry, and was
directed to see Dr. Schaefer, the Personnel Director of the
9
Gestapo, who handed me a meticulous printed schedule of my
future work and activities, including all the places I should
have to visit for further instruction and information.
It was an extremely interesting period for me. Officials at all
levels were most friendly and courteous and every door was
opened to me as though some unseen power was working silent­
ly through the complex channels of this huge machine.
One day I was told to report to SS Oberfuehrer Dr. Best.
Immediately after this first visit to Dr. Best, I went to see SS
Oberfuehrer Mueller, who was virtually chief of the Gestapo.
The contrast between the personalities of Best and Mueller was
most striking. Best was a cultivated man, tending almost too
much towards the intellectual, while Mueller was dry and
laconic. Short and broad, with the squarish skull of a peasant
and a jutting forehead, he had tense, narrow lips and pene­
trating brown eyes, hooded by nervously twitching eyelids. His
hands were wide and massive, with fingers as square as a match­
box.
This man, who had started his career as an ordinary detective
in Munich, was to play a very important role in my life.
Although he had worked his way up to the top, he could never
forget his origin. He once said to me in his crude Bavarian
accent, “One really ought to drive all the intellectuals into a
coal mine and then blow it up.” Any form of real conversation
with him was almost impossible; it consisted on his part al­
most entirely of coldly-phrased questions and was largely an
interrogation. Yet all the while he sought to establish an at­
mosphere of frankness, and by his broad Bavarian speech to
suggest a natural geniality. Our first conversation ended by his
saying, “Heydrich likes your reports. You’ve only been sent
to us as a matter of routine. Actually you’ll work in the main
office of the SD, which comes under the Party rather than the
government. A pity - I could make better use of you in my
department.” In spite of the friendly gesture with which he
said good-bye, his eyes and expression remained quite cold. At
that time I did not know the extent of his resentment of the SD.
CHAPTER TWO
Not long after I had begun my work at Headquarters I was
called to my first interview with Heydrich, the formidable
chief of the SD. It was with considerable apprehension that
I walked over to the Gestapo building where he had his
office. Now perhaps I would find out what plans he had for
me.
When I entered his office Heydrich was sitting behind his
io