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SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_%28Gestapo%29
Heinrich Müller |
Nickname(s)
|
"Gestapo Müller"
|
Born
|
28 April 1900
Munich |
Died
|
May 1945 (assumed)
Berlin (assumed) |
Allegiance
|
Nazi Germany
|
Service/branch
|
Munich Police 1919–1933
Gestapo 1933–1945 |
Years of service
|
1933–1945
|
Rank
|
SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der Polizei
|
Commands held
|
Chief of the Gestapo 1939–1945
|
Battles/wars
|
World War I
World War II |
Awards
|
Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross with Swords
War Merit Cross 1st Class with Swords War Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords Iron Cross 1st Class with 1939 Clasp Iron Cross 2nd Class with 1939 Clasp Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords Golden Party Badge Sudetenland Medal Anschluss Medal Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 |
Heinrich Müller
(born 28 April 1900; date of death unknown, but evidence points to May 1945) was
a German police official under both the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. He
became chief of the Gestapo, the political secret state police of Nazi Germany,
and was involved in the planning and execution of the Holocaust. He was known
as "Gestapo Müller" to distinguish him from another SS general named
Heinrich Müller. He was last seen in the Führerbunker in Berlin on 1 May
1945 and remains the most senior figure of the Nazi regime who was never
captured or confirmed to have died.
Early
career
Müller
was born in Munich, Bavaria, the son of working class Catholic parents. After
service in the last year of World War I as a pilot for an artillery spotting
unit, during which he was decorated several times for bravery (including the
Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with
Swords and Bavarian Pilots Badge), he joined the Bavarian Police in 1919.
Although not a member of the Freikorps, he was involved in the
suppression of the communist risings in the early post-war years. After
witnessing the shooting of hostages by the revolutionary "Red Army"
in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he acquired a lifelong hatred of
communism. During the years of the Weimar Republic he was head of the Munich
Political Police Department, and became acquainted with many members of the
Nazi Party including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, although Müller in
the Weimar period was generally seen as a supporter of the Bavarian People's
Party (which at that time ruled Bavaria). On 9 March 1933, during the Nazi putsch
that deposed the Bavarian government of Minister-President Heinrich Held,
Müller had advocated to his superiors using force against the Nazis.
Ironically, these views aided Müller's rise as it guaranteed the hostility of
the Nazis, thereby making Müller very dependent upon the patronage of Reinhard
Heydrich, who in turn appreciated Müller's professionalism and skill as a
policeman, and was aware of Müller's past, making Müller rely upon Heydrich's
protection.
Historian
Richard J. Evans wrote: "Müller was a stickler for
duty and discipline, and approached the tasks he was set as if they were
military commands. A true workaholic who never took a holiday, Müller was
determined to serve the German state, irrespective of what political form it
took, and believed that it was everyone's duty, including his own, to obey its
dictates without question." Evans also records that Müller was a
regime functionary out of ambition, not out of a belief in National Socialism:
An internal [Nazi] Party memorandum ... could not understand how "so odious an opponent of the movement" could become head of the Gestapo, especially since he had once referred to Hitler as "an immigrant unemployed house painter" and "an Austrian draft-dodger."
On
4 January 1937, an evaluation by the Nazi Party's Deputy Gauleiter of
Munich-Upper Bavaria stated:
"Criminal Police Chief Inspector Heinrich Müller is not a Party member. He has also never actively worked within the Party or in one of its ancillary organisations. He was presented with an SS-Obersturmbannführer's uniform in honour of his employment in the Secret State Police; at the same time, he was permitted to wear the stripe (the sign of membership prior to the National Uprising).Before the seizure of power Müller was employed in the political department of the Police Headquarters. He did his duty both under the direction of the notorious Police President Koch [Julius Koch, the Munich Police President 1929–33], and under Nortz and Mantel. His sphere of activity was to supervise and deal with the left-wing movement. It must be admitted that he fought against it very hard, sometimes in fact ignoring legal provisions and regulations in the process. But it is equally clear that, if it had been his task to do so, Müller would have acted against the Right in just the same way. With his enormous ambition and his marked 'pushiness' he would win the approval of his superiors under the System [the Nazi name for the Weimar Republic] doing that too. In terms of his political opinions he belonged to the Nationalist camp and his standpoint varied between the German National People's Party and the Bavarian People's Party. But he was by no means a National Socialist.As far as his qualities of character are concerned, these are regarded in an even poorer light than his political ones. He is ruthless, uses his elbows, and continually tries to demonstrate his efficiency, but claims all the glory for himself.In his choice of officials for the Bavarian Political Police he was very concerned to propose either officials who were more junior than himself or only those who were inferior in ability to himself. In this way he could keep rivals at bay. In his choice of officials he did not take account of political considerations, he only had his own egoistical aims in mind ...The Gau leadership of Munich-Upper Bavaria cannot, therefore, recommend accelerated promotion for Müller because he has rendered no services to the National Uprising."
Himmler's
biographer Peter Padfield wrote: "He [Müller] was an archetypal middle
rank official: of limited imagination, non-political, non-ideological, his only
fanaticism lay in an inner drive to perfection in his profession and in his
duty to the state—which in his mind were one ... A smallish man with
piercing eyes and thin lips, he was an able organiser, utterly ruthless, a man
who lived for his work." Müller became a member of the Nazi Party in 1939
for the purely opportunist reason of improving his chances of promotion and
only after Himmler insisted he do it.
Gestapo
chief
After
the Nazis came to power in 1933, Reinhard Heydrich as head of the Security
Service (SD) recruited Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Albert
Meisinger referred to as the "Bajuwaren-Brigade" (Bavarian
Brigade). Müller joined the SS in 1934. By 1936, with Heydrich head of the
Gestapo, Müller was its operations chief. Müller continued to rise quickly
through the ranks of the SS: in October 1939 he became an SS-Oberführer,
in November 1941 - Gruppenführer and Lieutenant General of the police.
In September 1939, when the Gestapo and other police organizations were
consolidated under Heydrich into the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Müller
was chief of the RSHA "Amt IV" (Office or Dept. 4): Gestapo. To
distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller (a very common
German name), he became known as "Gestapo Müller".
As
Gestapo chief of operations and later (after 1939) its chief, Müller played a
leading role in the detection and suppression of all forms of resistance to the
Nazi regime. Under his leadership, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating and to
a large extent destroying the underground networks of the Communist Party and
the Social Democratic Party by the end of 1935. He was also involved in the
regime's policy towards the Jews, although Heinrich Himmler and Propaganda
Minister Joseph Goebbels drove this area of policy. Adolf Eichmann headed the
Gestapo's Office of Resettlement and then its Office of Jewish Affairs (the Amt
IV section called Referat IV B4). He was Müller's subordinate. Reinhard
Heydrich was Müller's direct superior until his assassination in 1942. For the
remainder of the war, Ernst Kaltenbrunner took over as Müller's superior.
During
World War II, Müller was heavily involved in espionage and counter-espionage,
particularly since the Nazi regime increasingly distrusted the military
intelligence service—the Abwehr—which under
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was a hotbed of activity for the German Resistance. In
1942 he successfully infiltrated the "Red Orchestra" network of
Soviet spies and used it to feed false information to the Soviet intelligence
services.
Müller
occupied a position in the Nazi hierarchy between Himmler, the overall head of
the Nazi police apparatus and the chief architect of the plan to exterminate
the Jews of Europe, and Eichmann, the man entrusted with arranging the
deportations of Jews to the eastern ghettoes and death camps. Thus, although
his chief responsibility was always police work within Germany, he was fully in
charge and thus responsible to execute the extermination of the Jews of Europe.
During 1941 he dispatched Eichmann on tours of inspection of the occupied
Soviet Union, and received detailed reports on the work of the Einsatzgruppen,
who killed an estimated 1.4 million Jews in 12 months. In January 1942 he
attended the Wannsee Conference
at which Heydrich briefed senior officials from a number of government
departments of the plan, and at which Eichmann took the minutes.
In
May 1942 Heydrich was killed in Prague by Czech soldiers sent from London.
Müller was sent to Prague to head the investigation into Operation
"Anthropoid". He succeeded through a combination of bribery and
torture in locating the assassins, who killed themselves to avoid capture.
Despite this success, his influence within the regime declined somewhat with
the loss of his original patron, Heydrich. During 1943 he had differences with
Himmler over what to do with the growing evidence of a resistance network
within the German state apparatus, particularly the Abwehr and the
Foreign Office. In February 1943 he presented Himmler with firm evidence that Wilhelm Canaris was involved with the
resistance; however, Himmler told him to drop the case. Offended by this,
Müller became an ally of Martin Bormann,
the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, who was Himmler's main rival.
After
the assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler on 20 July 1944, Müller was
placed in charge of the arrest and interrogation of all those suspected of
involvement in the resistance. Over 5,000 people were arrested and about 200
executed, including Canaris. In the last months of the war Müller remained at
his post, apparently still confident of a German victory — he told one of his
officers in December 1944 that the Ardennes offensive would result in the
recapture of Paris. In April 1945 he was among the last group of Nazi loyalists
assembled in the Führerbunker in central Berlin as the Red Army fought
its way into the city. One of his last tasks was the sharp interrogation of
Hermann Fegelein in the cellar of the Church of the Trinity. Fegelein was
Himmler's liaison officer to Hitler and was shot after Hitler had Himmler
expelled from his posts for negotiating with the western allies behind Hitler's
back. Hitler then committed suicide on 30 April 1945. On 2 May 1945, the
commander of the Berlin Defence Area, General Helmuth Weidling, surrendered to the Red
Army.
After
the war, a dictated order by Müller dated 20 April 1945 was discovered. It set
out Müller's plan for Hitler's transportation to Barcelona, Spain. Hitler was
to have been flown there by Georg Betz in a Ju 290 long-range aircraft.
However, due to the insistence of Hitler to remain in Berlin, these plans came
to nothing.
Disappearance
Müller
was last seen in the bunker on the evening of 1 May 1945, the day after
Hitler's suicide. Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, later quoted Müller as saying, "We
know the Russian methods exactly. I haven't the faintest intention of being
taken prisoner by the Russians." From that day onwards, no trace of
him has ever been found. He is the most senior member of the Nazi regime whose
fate remains a mystery. Possible explanations for his disappearance include:
- That he was killed or committed suicide, during the chaos of the fall of Berlin, and his body was not found.
- That he escaped from Berlin and made his way to a safe location, possibly in South America, where he lived the rest of his life undetected, and that his identity was not disclosed even after his death.
- That he was recruited and given a new identity by either the United States or the Soviet Union, and employed by them during the Cold War, and that this has never been disclosed.
The
Central Intelligence Agency's file on Müller was released under the Freedom of
Information Act in 2001, and documents several unsuccessful attempts by U.S.
agencies to find Müller. The U.S. National Archives commentary on the file
concludes: "Though inconclusive on Müller's ultimate fate, the file is
very clear on one point. The Central Intelligence Agency and its predecessors
did not know Müller's whereabouts at any point after the war. In other words,
the CIA was never in contact with Müller."
The
CIA file shows that an extensive search was made for Müller, among many other
wanted Nazi officials, in the months after the German surrender. The search was
led by the counterespionage branch of the U.S. Office of Strategic Services
(forerunner of the CIA). The search was complicated by the fact that
"Heinrich Müller" is a very common German name. (It translates as
"Henry Miller".) The U.S. National Archives comment: "By the end
of 1945, American and British occupation forces had gathered information on
numerous Heinrich Müllers, all of whom had different birth dates, physical
characteristics and job histories ... Part of the problem stemmed from the
fact that some of these Müllers, including Gestapo Müller, did not appear to
have middle names. An additional source of confusion was that there were two
different SS generals named Heinrich Müller."
The
U.S. was still looking for Müller in 1947, when agents searched the home of his
wartime mistress Anna Schmid, but found nothing suggesting that he was still
alive. With the onset of the Cold War and the shift of priorities to meeting
the challenge of the Soviet Union, interest in pursuing missing Nazis declined.
By this time the conclusion seems to have been reached that Müller was most
likely dead. The Royal Air Force Special Investigation Branch also had an
interest in Müller with regards to the Stalag Luft III murders, for which he
was presumed to have responsibility given his position in the Gestapo.
The
seizure in 1960 and subsequent trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann sparked new
interest in Müller's whereabouts. Although Eichmann revealed no specific
information, he told his Israeli interrogators that he believed that Müller was
still alive. This prompted the West German office in charge of the prosecution
of war criminals to launch a new investigation. The West Germans investigated
the possibility that Müller was working for the Soviet Union, but gained no
definite information. They placed his family and his former secretary under
surveillance in case he was corresponding with them.
In
1967 in Panama City, Francis Willard Keith was accused of being Müller. West
German diplomats pressed Panama to extradite him for trial. West German
prosecutors said Sophie Müller, 64, had seen photos of Keith and identified him
as her long-missing husband. However, Keith was released once fingerprints
proved he was not Müller.
The
West Germans investigated several reports of Müller's body being found and
buried in the days after the fall of Berlin. None of the sources for these
reports were wholly reliable; the reports were contradictory, and it was not
possible to confirm any of them. The most interesting of these came from Walter
Lüders, a former member of the Volkssturm, who said that he had been
part of a burial unit which had found the body of an SS general in the garden
of the Reich Chancellery, with the identity papers of Heinrich Müller. The body
had been buried, Lüders said, in a mass grave at the old Jewish Cemetery on
Grosse Hamburger Strasse in the Soviet Sector. Since this location was in East
Berlin in 1961, this gravesite could not be investigated, nor has there been
any attempt to excavate this gravesite since the reunification of Germany in
1990.
The
CIA also conducted an investigation into Müller's disappearance in the 1960s,
prompted by the defection to the West of Lieutenant-Colonel Michael
Goleniewski, the Deputy Chief of Polish Military Counter Intelligence.
Goleniewski had worked as an interrogator of captured German officials from
1948 to 1952. He did not claim to have met Müller, but said he had heard from
his Soviet supervisors that sometime between 1950 and 1952 the Soviets had
picked up Müller and taken him to Moscow. The CIA tried to track down the men
Goleniewski named as having worked with Müller in Moscow, but were unable to
confirm his story, which was in any case no more than hearsay. Israel also
continued to pursue Müller: in 1967 two Israeli operatives were caught by West
German police attempting to break into the Munich apartment of Müller's wife.
The
CIA investigation concluded: "There is little room for doubt that the
Soviet and Czechoslovak [intelligence] services circulated rumors to the effect
that Müller had escaped to the West ... to offset the charges that the
Soviets had sheltered the criminal ... There are strong indications but no
proof that Müller collaborated with [the Soviets]. There are also strong
indications but no proof that Müller died [in Berlin]." The CIA apparently
remained convinced at that time that if Müller had survived the war, he was
being harboured within the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in
1991 and the Soviet archives were opened, no evidence to support this
contention emerged. By the 1990s it was in any case increasingly unlikely that
Müller, who was born in 1900, was alive even if he had survived the war.
The
U.S. National Archives commentary concludes: "More information about
Müller's fate might still emerge from still secret files of the former Soviet
Union. The CIA file, by itself, does not permit definitive conclusions. Taking
into account the currently available records, the authors of this report conclude
that Müller most likely died in Berlin in early May 1945."
In
2008, the German historian Peter Longerich published a biography of Heinrich
Himmler, which appeared in English translation in 2012. Longerich asserts that
Müller was with Himmler at Flensburg on 11 May, and accompanied Himmler and
other SS officers in their unsuccessful attempt to escape capture by the Allies
and reach Bavaria on foot. Longerich states that Himmler and Müller parted
company at Meinstadt, after which Müller was not seen again. Longerich provides
no source for this claim, which contradicts previous accounts of Müller's
disappearance. The source for Longerich's account appears to be the
interrogation of one of Himmler's adjutants, Werner Grothmann, the transcript
of which contains references to "Müller."
Fictional
portrayal
- Is historical protagonist in "The Report Müller" novel by Antonio Manzanera, (Umbriel 2013) working with the declassification of important documents in U.S.
- In the Soviet TV series Seventeen Moments of Spring, Müller was portrayed by Jewish actor Leonid Bronevoy. The TV series became extremely popular in the Soviet Union and Müller became a subject of many Russian jokes along with his counterpart Stirlitz.
- In the 2001 TV movie Conspiracy about the Wannsee Conference, he was played by Brendan Coyle.
- In Philip Kerr's book A German Requiem, Müller has survived the war and is a spy.
- The Barnes Review has alleged he was hired by the CIA after the war.
- As Thomas Hauser's chief in Jonathan Littell's docudrama Les Bienveillantes.
- In James Patterson's 1979 book The Jericho Commandment (republished in 1997 as See How They Run), Müller is the number 1 man in La Arana, the Fourth Reich's Latin arm.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller
- Soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.
- Quoted in "The SS, Alibi of a Nation, 1922-1945" - Page 33 - by Gerald Reitlinger - History - 1989
- If we had fifty Eichmann's, we would have won the war.
- About Adolf Eichmann's devotion. Quoted in "And the Crooked Shall be Made Straight" - Page 37 - by Jacob Robinson - Jews - 1965
- We know the Russian methods exactly. I haven't the faintest intention of being taken prisoner by the Russians.
- April 29, 1945. Quoted in "U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis" - Page 150 - by Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe - History - 2005
- You are a very interesting case, General. Do you know what fat file of evidence we have against you here?
- To General Walter Dornberger, 1944. Quoted in "Gestapo: Instrument of Tyranny" - by Edward Crankshaw
- You are in the hands of the Gestapo. Don't imagine that we shall show you the slightest consideration. The Fuhrer has already shown the world that he is invincible and soon he will come and liberate the people of England from the Jews and Plutocrats such as you. It is war and Germany is fighting for her existence. You are in the greatest danger and if you want to live another day must be very careful.
- To Captain Best, quoted in "Heinrich Müller: Gestapo Chief" - Page 59 - by Mark Beyer - 2001
- One should herd the entire intelligentsia into a mine and then blow it sky-high.
- Quoted in The Third Reich: A New History (2001) - Page 191
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