Heinrich Himmler has long puzzled historians. As Reichsführer SS, he commanded an organization of some 900,000 men and controlled the police and security apparatus of Nazi Germany. Yet he never moved to oust Adolf Hitler and seize power for himself.
That does not mean no such plot existed. In the final months of the war, a conspiracy took shape inside the upper ranks of the SS to remove Hitler and replace him with Himmler. The plot did not originate with Himmler himself, but with senior SS generals who had concluded that Hitler was no longer fit to lead and that terms had to be sought with the Western Allies before Germany was destroyed.
The backdrop was military catastrophe. In late 1944, Himmler, a man with no real military experience, was given command of Army Group Upper Rhine in Alsace. He was tasked with supporting Hitler's last great offensive in the west, Operation Nordwind, launched on New Year's Day 1945 against weak US opposition. The aim was to relieve pressure on the stalled Ardennes Offensive further north.
Himmler's subsidiary attack went reasonably well and made limited gains. On 25 January 1945, Hitler promoted him to command of Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front, with orders to stop the Soviet advance into Pomerania. Himmler was wholly inadequate to the task and lacked a proper military staff. He failed publicly and eventually resigned his post, citing illness brought on by the stress of command.
From that point, the relationship between Hitler and Himmler was broken. Outwardly Himmler remained as loyal as ever, but he returned to secret efforts to make peace behind Hitler's back. It was during this period, around January 1945, that a conspiracy began to brew in the upper echelons of the SS to make Himmler Führer.
The plotting began with carefully sounding one another out. Various figures shared their dissatisfaction with how the war was being fought and with Hitler's evident incompetence. Four SS generals in particular were named after the war as active plotters from January 1945 until the German surrender in May. All four held the rank of SS Obergruppenführer, or lieutenant general.
The first was Felix Steiner, commander from 28 January 1945 of the 11th SS Panzer Army, part of Himmler's Army Group Vistula. The second was Richard Hildebrandt, Himmler's chief liaison officer to the commander in chief of Army Group Center, Generalfeldmarschall Ferdinand Schörner, and from April 1945 Higher SS and Police Leader of Bohemia and Moravia.
The third was Curt von Gottberg, who from December 1944 served as Himmler's deputy in his post as commander of the Replacement Army inside Germany. From March 1945, Himmler ordered von Gottberg to detain and execute any soldier found away from front-line units without proper permission. The fourth was Otto Ohlendorf, in 1945 chief of Department 3 of the Reich Main Security Office in Berlin. Ohlendorf had once commanded an Einsatzgruppen mass murder unit in the Soviet Union.
One other man was deeply involved. SS Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, head of SS foreign intelligence until the war's end, stood beside Himmler throughout his secret peace negotiations with the Allies. Others were part of this loose conspiracy as well.
As the war dragged into 1945 with no sign of the promised victory, dissolution grew in the highest ranks of the SS and the army. Martin Bormann, Hitler's powerful secretary and gatekeeper, was identified by the SS as someone who needed removing. Bormann was encroaching on SS power over the security police and the Gestapo, treading on the toes of SS Obergruppenführer Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the feared Austrian head of the Reich Main Security Office. It was no secret that Bormann disliked Himmler and sought to undermine him.
Otto Ohlendorf told his interrogator on 27 October 1945 that he had become aware of Felix Steiner's discussions with other plotters about a possible reorganization of the government as early as January 1945. Steiner and the others knew they could not act without Himmler, and Steiner worried whether the hesitant Himmler would move. Ohlendorf believed Kaltenbrunner would not support a coup to place his boss Himmler in Hitler's place. Despite his conflict with Bormann, Kaltenbrunner was increasingly in Hitler's favor and seemed interested only in advancing his own career.
Meanwhile, Himmler, through Schellenberg, had opened a fresh round of communications with the West via Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross and former Swiss President Musy. Himmler would ultimately use Jews from his concentration camp system as diplomatic pawns at the war's end, negotiating the release of certain groups in return for access to high Allied officials and politicians.
Himmler's calendar for 1945 shows several private meetings with Felix Steiner, on 24 January and 1 February, though these may have concerned only military affairs relating to Army Group Vistula. Suddenly, Himmler's machinations behind the Führer's back started a rumor that he was to be Hitler's replacement.
Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the propaganda minister, noted in his diary on 17 March 1945 news coverage from Sweden. He wrote that the really grotesque feature of the coverage was that Himmler, not the Führer, was presented as the guarantor of peace for Germany. A powerful German clique was said to have offered the Führer's head as a surety. Goebbels dismissed it all as untrue and claimed it had been cooked up by the British.
It was not only the SS that threatened Hitler. Once again, the army stirred. Colonel General Heinz Guderian, acting chief of the general staff of the Army High Command and Hitler's advisor on the Eastern Front, confronted Himmler twice over two days in March 1945 regarding Hitler's removal.
On 20 March, Guderian sounded out top Nazi leaders about making peace with the West. Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was evasive, stating that he was loyal to Hitler. Guderian then approached Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, commander of the navy, without success. Finally he spoke to Himmler, asking him to act as a mediator between Guderian and Hitler to get the Führer to see sense.
Himmler told Guderian on 20 March that it was too early for such a step and that his instincts told him the war would yet go well. The following day, Guderian met Hitler at the bunker in Berlin and afterwards walked privately with Himmler in the Reich Chancellery Garden.
Guderian told him bluntly what he had long known: the war could not be won, and the only problem now was how quickly to end the senseless slaughter and bombing. He reminded Himmler that, apart from Ribbentrop, he was the only man who still possessed contacts in neutral nations, and asked him to use them and to go with him to Hitler to urge an armistice.
Himmler replied, "My dear Colonel General, it is still too early for that." Guderian refused to back down. He said he did not understand Himmler, that it was not five minutes to twelve but five minutes past twelve, and that if they did not negotiate now they never would. He asked whether Himmler realized how pitiful their situation had become. For ten more minutes Guderian tried to get Himmler to act, but he would not. Guderian concluded there was nothing to be done with the man. He was afraid of Hitler.
Two days later, Himmler told Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici, who had replaced him at Army Group Vistula, that he had taken steps via a neutral country to begin peace feelers with the West. This was true, yet he had not divulged it to Guderian.
On 28 March 1945, a top secret Special Operations Executive report reached London from a Danish agent. It spoke of Himmler having initiated not one but three peace feelers, via Sweden, Switzerland and the Vatican. The report noted that Himmler had hinted the demand for the deposition of Hitler was not an obstacle to an understanding, even on the basis of capitulation, but that Himmler should remain, at all events for a time, on the grounds that he represented the German nation and could prevent chaos on capitulation.
The same day, Winston Churchill's daily briefing included a decoded cable from the Chinese diplomatic mission. It read that the Führer was still adamant on severe measures, a reference to the executions of deserters and defeatists, and also of Jews, but that Himmler had suddenly begun to advocate leniency, hoping to placate the United Nations. The conflict of opinion between the two was described as intense.
The SS conspirators believed Hitler's increasing ill health and frailty, not to mention his mental state, were cause for his removal. Walter Schellenberg reported to Count Bernadotte that Hitler had Parkinson's disease.
On 13 April 1945, Schellenberg met Himmler and the head of Nazi public health, Leonardo Conti. Afterwards, Himmler and Schellenberg walked alone in the forest at Himmler's Wustrow headquarters. Himmler said, "Schellenberg, I don't think that we can let the Führer go on any longer." He asked whether Schellenberg's medical experts were sure in their private diagnosis of Hitler's Parkinson's. Schellenberg replied that it had been two or three years since he had met Hitler, but from what he could judge of his recent behavior, he was convinced it was time for Himmler to act.
But this was the problem. Himmler seemed incapable of taking that step, as Guderian and others had found. Schellenberg wrote of Himmler that it was clear a breach between him and Hitler had begun, and that over and over he asked what he could do.
That same day in Berlin, Armaments Minister Albert Speer met in the early afternoon with the head of the V-weapons program, SS Obergruppenführer Dr. Hans Kammler. Usually a very confident man, Kammler seemed downcast. He bluntly told Speer that he was part of, or at least had knowledge of, a plot within the SS, and said efforts were being made in the SS to get rid of the Führer. Even more remarkably, Kammler told Speer he was prepared to hand over all files concerning Germany's jet aircraft and V-weapons to the Americans in return for immunity from prosecution and freedom. He invited Speer to join him.
That same day in London, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the First Sea Lord, met Churchill. He recorded the exchange in his diary. The Prime Minister mentioned that Himmler appeared to be trying to show he was not so bad as painted, and said that if it would save further expenditure of life, he would be prepared to spare even Himmler. Cunningham replied that he suggested there were plenty of islands Himmler could be sent to.
Schellenberg's plan advanced further on 19 April 1945, the day before Hitler's last birthday, when he organized a meeting between Himmler and Nazi Finance Minister Count von Krosigk at Himmler's Berlin office. Nazi Labor Minister Franz Seldte also met separately with von Krosigk. While Himmler and von Krosigk had a private discussion, Schellenberg spoke to Seldte.
The Finance Minister was blunt. He felt Himmler should seize power himself and force Hitler to read a proclamation to the German people on his birthday, announcing a plebiscite, the formation of a second party, and the abolition of the People's Courts, the latter set up after the July plot. Seldte spoke on these matters to Schellenberg for two hours, then met Himmler and repeated what he had said. He told Himmler he must act, that only he had any possible means of influencing the Führer, and that it was no longer a matter of individuals but of the substance of the entire German people.
Even more bizarre was Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring's last meeting with Himmler on 21 April 1945 in shattered Berlin, by then under direct Soviet ground attack since the day before. Göring had been Hitler's legal successor as Führer since 1941.
Himmler told Göring that Count Bernadotte had come to see him at his headquarters at Hohenlychen, and that he believed Bernadotte to be a negotiator sent by none other than General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander. Göring replied that he could not believe it and doubted whether the Allies would accept Himmler as a negotiator. Himmler answered airily that he had undeniable proof that he was considered abroad to be the only person who could maintain peace and order.
Göring recalled that Himmler kept returning to the same subject at least ten times during the two- to three-hour meeting: the succession following Hitler's death. Himmler asked what would happen if something befell the Führer and Göring were unable to take over. Eventually Himmler asked Göring to nominate him as his Chancellor upon becoming Hitler's successor, which Göring said he could not legally do. Himmler then asked whether he could have the job if anything prevented Göring from becoming successor.
Two days later, Göring was arrested by the SS on Hitler's orders, relayed via Bormann, on the charge of attempting to take power while Hitler was still alive. Göring had not attempted anything of the sort, but his enemy Bormann was happy to connive at his downfall. Göring appealed to Himmler to order the SS guards at his Obersalzberg home to release him, but Himmler said his detention had been ordered by the Führer and must be a mistake, and told him to sit tight.
As Hitler sought to control the battle for Berlin from his bunker, SS plotters continued to hasten his end. On 22 April, General Steiner categorically refused to attack with his forces to try to relieve Berlin despite repeated orders from the Führer, citing a lack of proper troops and armor. He was, after all, a plotter alongside Ohlendorf, Hildebrandt and von Gottberg who wanted Himmler to take over. Letting the Soviets finish Hitler in Berlin would lead to such an outcome.
Himmler also showed reluctance to aid the Führer in his hour of greatest need. On 22 April he was at his Hohenlychen headquarters with an escort battalion of 600 well-equipped SS troops. Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, a Hitler loyalist, arrived and was aghast that Himmler had not marched to the sound of the guns in Berlin. Himmler seemed unsure what to do and asked Berger's advice.
Berger did not mince words. He told Himmler to go straight to Berlin with his escort battalion, that he had no right to keep a battalion there when the Führer intended to remain in Berlin and defend the Reich Chancellery, and that it was his duty to go. Himmler telephoned his liaison officer at the bunker, Gruppenführer Hermann Fegelein, but Berger lost his cool and shouted, "What kind of Reichsführer are you? Why don't you speak to the Führer in person?" Himmler then did so. Hitler allowed Himmler to bring himself and his battalion to the city, along with Berger, for whom he had a separate job.
On 23 April, Himmler and Berger went to the Führerbunker, and Berger alleged that Himmler had a long private meeting with Hitler. Himmler said he tried to get Hitler to leave Berlin, but he refused, saying he would die in the capital. Himmler then returned to Hohenlychen, leaving his escort battalion behind to stiffen the defenses of the government quarter.
That same day, Schellenberg met Count Bernadotte again, this time at the Swedish Consulate in Flensburg in northern Germany. A meeting with Himmler was planned for a few hours later. Schellenberg told Bernadotte that Hitler was finished and was thought unlikely to live more than a couple of days. He said Himmler had decided to bring about a meeting with General Eisenhower to inform him that he was willing to give orders to the German forces in the west to capitulate. Schellenberg asked Bernadotte to take this message to Eisenhower.
On 24 April, Sir Victor Mallet, the British Ambassador to Sweden, telegraphed London. Himmler, though tired and admitting Germany was finished, was still calm and coherent. Himmler said Hitler was desperately ill, that he might be dead already, and in any case would be so within two days. General Schellenberg of Himmler's staff told Bernadotte it was a hemorrhage of the brain. Himmler stated that while Hitler was still alive he would not have been able to take the step he now proposed, but as Hitler was finished he was now in a position of full authority to act. Himmler wanted to meet Eisenhower to capitulate the whole Western Front, and hoped to continue fighting on the Eastern Front at least for a time. Bernadotte told him this was not acceptable to the Allies.
Earlier that day, Albert Speer had visited Himmler at his headquarters at Hohenlychen. He found Himmler drawing up a plan for his future governance. Himmler said Europe could not manage without him in the future, that they would go on needing him as Minister of Police, and that after an hour with Eisenhower the general would approve that fact. Himmler told Speer that he and Göring had a long-standing agreement that Himmler would be his premier, which was untrue. Himmler said he was organizing his cabinet and that many people had been to see him, including Grand Admiral Dönitz, the new military commander in the north. He invited Speer to join his cabinet.
Speer left and overheard the arrival of Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Keitel from Berlin, Hitler's head of the armed forces. Speer recalled Keitel swearing his complete loyalty to the Reichsführer SS, which must have further convinced Himmler that he was about to be named Hitler's successor.
Then, on 27 April, the British deliberately leaked details of Himmler's secret peace negotiations with the Western Allies. By the following day, the German people knew of them. The British acted to preserve Allied unity and keep the Soviet Union happy, since a separate peace between Germany and Britain and America would never have been acceptable to Stalin. The other reason was to further destabilize the Nazi regime. Churchill had effectively led Himmler up the garden path and now slammed the door in his face, leaving him exposed.
On 28 April, Himmler was officially stripped of all his offices of state and completely disgraced. Martin Bormann had finally brought down his number one opponent by presenting Himmler's actions to Hitler as barefaced treason. However, the SS actually continued to follow Himmler's orders.
General Ohlendorf saw Himmler shortly afterwards and wrote that he was no longer the same man. He asked the queerest questions and made the most absurd proposals and plans. Ohlendorf could no longer understand him. He seemed to have lost his self-confidence, his aim and his ambition.
At this point, Himmler considered death in battle. On 30 April, he and his headquarters moved to Schloss Kaukhorst, not far from Dönitz's headquarters at Ploen. Later that day, Himmler summoned Dönitz to a meeting at the police barracks in Luebeck. The building was full of senior SS leaders, and Himmler kept the Grand Admiral waiting.
Dönitz wrote that Himmler seemed to regard himself as head of state. Dönitz asked whether the report was true that Himmler had sought contact with the Allies through Count Bernadotte. Himmler asserted it was not true, and said that in his opinion it was essential in these last days of the war that discord among themselves should not create further chaos in the country. They parted amicably.
Then the hammer fell. At 18:07 hours, Bormann sent a message from the Führerbunker. The Führer was dead. He had named his new successor as Reich President, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz.
Later that evening, Dönitz telephoned Himmler and asked him to come to Ploen. He arrived about midnight, escorted by six heavily armed SS officers. Dönitz handed him Bormann's telegram and said, "Please read this."
Dönitz recalled the effect. As Himmler read, an expression of astonishment, indeed of consternation, spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse within him. He went very pale. Finally he stood up and bowed. "Allow me to become the second man in your state," he said. Dönitz replied that it was impossible. Himmler left at 1:00 a.m. on 1 May 1945.
According to General Ohlendorf, who was with him at his headquarters at the time, after Hitler had bestowed his mantle on the Grand Admiral, Himmler changed his plans. He did not attempt to assert his claim to the succession of the Nazi Führer-ship, but placed himself unreservedly at the disposal of Dönitz.
Himmler's machinations were apparently at an end. Yet he was not quite done. In the days following Dönitz's promotion and Himmler's flight south, his last efforts to find a role for himself post-Hitler would play out, ending with his demise in British custody 22 days after his meeting with Dönitz.