Heinrich Himmler, the man who commanded the vast SS state with nearly a million men under arms and total control over Germany’s police and security apparatus, never once moved against Adolf Hitler. For years, this fact has confounded historians. Yet in the final months of the war, a plot did exist within the SS to remove Hitler and place Himmler in his place. It did not originate with Himmler himself.
It came from a small circle of top SS generals who had concluded that Hitler was no longer fit to lead and that the only hope for Germany lay in a separate peace with the Western Allies. The conspiracy began to take shape in January 1945, at a moment when Himmler was being humiliated by his own inadequacy. A man with no real military experience, he had been given command of Army Group Upper Rhine in Alsace in late 1944 to support Hitler’s last great offensive in the west, Operation Nordwind. That attack made limited gains, but Hitler promoted Himmler anyway, handing him command of Army Group Vistula on the Eastern Front on 25 January with orders to stop the Soviet advance into Pomerania.
Himmler, lacking both proper staff and experience, failed publicly and eventually resigned his post, citing illness brought on by stress. From that point, the relationship between Hitler and his Reichsführer was broken. It was during this same period that the plotting began. Four SS generals, all holding the rank of Obergruppenführer, would later be named as active conspirators from January 1945 until the surrender in May.
The first was Felix Steiner, commander of the 11th SS Panzer Army. The second was Richard Hildebrandt, Himmler’s chief liaison officer to Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner. The third was Curt von Gottberg, Himmler’s deputy in command of the Replacement Army. The fourth was Otto Ohlendorf, a former Einsatzgruppen commander who by 1945 headed Department 3 of the Reich Main Security Office.
Alongside them stood Walter Schellenberg, head of SS foreign intelligence, who was deeply involved in Himmler’s secret peace negotiations. The conspirators knew they could not act without Himmler, and they worried about his hesitation. Martin Bormann, Hitler’s powerful secretary, was identified as an obstacle who needed to be removed. Bormann had been encroaching on SS power over the security police and Gestapo, treading on the toes of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the feared Austrian head of the Reich Main Security Office, and he openly disliked Himmler.
Ohlendorf later told his interrogators that he had become aware of Steiner’s discussions about reorganizing the government as early as January 1945, but the key question remained whether the hesitant Himmler would act. By March 1945, the crisis had deepened. Colonel General Heinz Guderian, Hitler’s chief military advisor on the Eastern Front, confronted Himmler twice about removing Hitler. On 20 March, Guderian asked Himmler to act as a mediator and persuade the Führer to accept an armistice.
Himmler replied that it was still too early. The following day, walking privately with Himmler in the Reich Chancellery Garden, Guderian pressed him again, saying the war could not be won and that the only problem was how quickly to end the senseless slaughter. Himmler again refused. Guderian concluded that Himmler was simply afraid of Hitler.
Yet Himmler had already begun his own private moves. Two days later he told General Gotthard Heinrici, his successor at Army Group Vistula, that he had initiated peace feelers through a neutral country. On 28 March, a top secret Special Operations Executive report from a Danish agent reached London, claiming Himmler had initiated not one but three peace feelers, through Sweden, Switzerland, and the Vatican. The report noted that Himmler had hinted that the demand for Hitler’s deposition was not an obstacle to an understanding, even on the basis of capitulation, provided Himmler himself remained in place to represent the German nation and prevent chaos.
That same day, Winston Churchill received a decoded cable suggesting that while Hitler remained adamant about severe measures, Himmler had suddenly begun advocating leniency, and that the conflict between the two men was intense. On 13 April, Himmler and Schellenberg walked alone in the forest at Himmler’s headquarters in Wustrow. Himmler told Schellenberg that he did not think they could let the Führer go on any longer, and asked whether Schellenberg’s medical experts were sure of their private diagnosis that Hitler suffered from Parkinson’s disease. Schellenberg confirmed it and urged him to act.
But Himmler seemed incapable of taking that step. Schellenberg later wrote that Himmler asked him over and over what he could do. That same day in Berlin, armaments minister Albert Speer met with SS Obergruppenführer Hans Kammler, head of the V-weapons program. Kammler, usually confident, was visibly downcast.
He bluntly told Speer that efforts were being made within the SS to get rid of the Führer, and even more remarkably, he said he was prepared to hand over all files concerning Germany’s jet aircraft and V-weapons to the Americans in return for immunity and freedom. He invited Speer to join him. In London that same day, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, the First Sea Lord, met with Churchill and recorded in his diary that the Prime Minister had mentioned Himmler appeared to be trying to show he was not as bad as painted, and that Churchill would be prepared to spare even Himmler if it would save further expenditure of life. Cunningham suggested there were plenty of islands he could be sent to.
Schellenberg continued to push the plot forward. On 19 April, the day before Hitler’s last birthday, he arranged a meeting between Himmler and Finance Minister Count von Krosigk at Himmler’s Berlin office. Von Krosigk was blunt: Himmler should seize power himself and force Hitler to read a proclamation announcing a plebiscite and the formation of a second party. Labor Minister Franz Seldte spoke with Schellenberg for two hours and then repeated the message to Himmler, telling him he must act, that only he had any means of influencing the Führer, and that the substance of the entire German people was at stake.
Two days later, on 21 April, with Berlin already under direct Soviet attack, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring had his last meeting with Himmler. Göring had been Hitler’s legal successor since 1941. Himmler told him that Count Bernadotte had come to see him and that he believed the Swede was a negotiator sent by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Allied Supreme Commander.
Göring doubted it, but Himmler insisted he had proof that he was considered abroad to be the only person who could maintain peace and order. Over the next two or three hours, Himmler returned to the same subject repeatedly: the succession following Hitler’s death. He asked what would happen if Göring were unable to take over, and eventually asked Göring to nominate him as Chancellor. Göring said he could not legally do so.
Himmler then asked if he could have the job if anything prevented Göring from succeeding. Two days later, Göring was arrested by the SS on Hitler’s orders, charged with attempting to take power while Hitler was still alive. He had done no such thing, but Bormann had connived his downfall. Göring appealed to Himmler to order the SS guards holding him to release him.
Himmler declined, saying the detention had been ordered by the Führer and that it must all be a mistake. Presumably Himmler believed he was about to be named Hitler’s new legal successor. He was wrong. As the battle for Berlin raged, the SS plotters continued to hasten Hitler’s end.
On 22 April, General Steiner categorically refused to launch an attack to relieve Berlin despite repeated orders from the Führer, citing a lack of proper troops and armor. He had no reason to see Hitler survive. That same day, Himmler sat at his Hohenlychen headquarters with an escort battalion of six hundred well-equipped SS troops but showed no intention of marching to Berlin. When Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger, a Hitler loyalist, arrived and demanded to know why, Himmler seemed unsure what to do.
Berger shouted at him, demanding he speak to Hitler in person and lead his battalion to the capital. Himmler obeyed, and on 23 April he met privately with Hitler, who refused to leave Berlin. Himmler then returned to Hohenlychen, leaving his battalion behind. That same day, Schellenberg met again with Count Bernadotte in Flensburg.
He told Bernadotte that Hitler was finished, that he would not live more than a couple of days, and that Himmler had decided to meet General Eisenhower to inform him he was willing to give orders to German forces in the west to capitulate. On 24 April, the British ambassador to Sweden reported that Himmler was calm and coherent, that Hitler was desperately ill and would be dead within two days, and that Himmler now claimed full authority to act. He wanted to meet Eisenhower to capitulate the entire Western Front while continuing to fight the Soviets, but Bernadotte told him this was unacceptable to the Allies. Earlier that day, Speer visited Himmler and found him drawing up plans for his future governance.
Himmler declared that Europe could not manage without him, that he would be needed as Minister of Police, and that after spending an hour with Eisenhower, the Americans would realize they were dependent on him or face hopeless chaos. He said he was organizing his cabinet and invited Speer to join it. Then the British struck. On 27 April, they deliberately leaked details of Himmler’s secret peace negotiations with the Western Allies.
By the following day, the German people knew. The leak was designed to preserve Allied unity, to keep the Soviet Union satisfied, and to destabilize the Nazi regime. Churchill, who had seemed to entertain the possibility of a deal with Himmler, now slammed the door in his face. Bormann presented Himmler’s actions to Hitler as barefaced treason, and on 28 April Himmler was stripped of all his offices of state and formally disgraced.
The SS, however, continued to follow his orders. Ohlendorf saw Himmler shortly afterward and wrote that he was no longer the same man, that he asked the queerest questions and made the most absurd proposals, that he seemed to have lost his self-confidence, his aim, and his ambition. On 30 April, Himmler moved his headquarters near Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz’s command at Plön. That day he summoned Dönitz to a meeting in Lübeck.
The building was full of senior SS leaders, and Himmler kept the Grand Admiral waiting. Dönitz later wrote that Himmler seemed to regard himself as head of state, and that when questioned about his contacts with the Allies through Bernadotte, Himmler flatly denied it. The hammer fell that evening. At 18:07, a message arrived from the Führerbunker.
Hitler was dead. He had named Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor as Reich President. Later that night, Dönitz telephoned Himmler and asked him to come to Plön. Himmler arrived about midnight, escorted by six heavily armed SS officers.
Dönitz handed him Bormann’s telegram and watched as an expression of astonishment and consternation spread over his face. All hope seemed to collapse. Himmler went very pale, then stood 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.
The plot had failed. Himmler did not assert his claim to the succession. He placed himself unreservedly at Dönitz’s disposal, and twenty-two days later he would be dead in British custody, his own end as strange and contested as the coup that never was.