The ten days following Adolf Hitler’s death were not a period of quiet resignation for Heinrich Himmler, but a final, frantic bid for power and survival that history has largely overlooked. Passed over as the Führer’s successor, the former Reichsführer SS refused to accept his diminished role, instead maneuvering aggressively around the new head of state, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, while continuing his own secret attempts to negotiate a separate peace with the Western Allies. Himmler met Dönitz at Plön and immediately asked to be his second-in-command, effectively prime minister of the shrinking Reich. Dönitz refused, but he had to tread carefully.
Himmler still commanded the loyalty of thousands of SS troops stationed in Schleswig-Holstein, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway—enough local muscle to forcibly remove Dönitz if he had chosen to. Yet again, Himmler shrank from violence and instead tried to secure a legitimate position through political maneuvering, forcing Dönitz to dismiss Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, one of his personal enemies. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was, at this point, still playing a secret and dangerous game with Himmler. On the 1st of May, 1945, Churchill sent a top-secret telegram to Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, relaying information from MI6 chief Sir Stewart Menzies that they were, in Churchill’s words, “perhaps only a day or two from surrender on all fronts through Himmler.
” This belief proved to be wildly optimistic, but it illustrates the strange position Himmler still held in the eyes of the Allies. That same day, Himmler issued orders to SS-Obergruppenführer Hans Adolf Prützmann and radioed SS-Obergruppenführer Gottlob Berger in Bavaria, commanding him to “defend the entrances to the Alps for me. ” This military order makes sense when considering Himmler’s later decision to move south, viewing the semi-mythical Alpine Redoubt as a potential last refuge for the SS, a mountainous fortress that would be a nightmare for the Americans to capture—though it ultimately proved to be largely a propaganda exercise. At a meeting on the 2nd of May, Dönitz proved himself a realist, stating, “The military situation is hopeless.
At this stage, the main objective of the government must be to save as many German people from annihilation by the Bolsheviks. ” His focus was on Operation Hannibal, the naval rescue of German soldiers and civilians trapped on the Baltic coast. Later that day, he and Himmler agreed to allow the Gauleiter of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann, to surrender the city to the British, sparing the population from further destruction. As British forces approached Plön, Dönitz evacuated his headquarters to the Naval Academy at Flensburg-Mürwik, near the Danish border.
Himmler trailed after him, an unwelcome shadow government. On the night of the 2nd to 3rd of May, he drove to Flensburg with SS-Obergruppenführer Dr. Werner Best, the civil administrator of Denmark, whom he filled in on recent events, lamenting that Hitler was “no longer the same” and blaming Martin Bormann for the intrigues against him. He said, “If I could just talk to Eisenhower for 2 hours, then I would convince that together we need to go against the Russians.
” Best carefully observed Himmler and found him nervous, absent-minded, moody, and despondent, noting that he did not intend to become a prisoner defending a lost cause. Himmler set up his new headquarters at the requisitioned Lorenzen farm, 10 kilometers southeast of Flensburg. This location would become the focus of a massive British search effort after his death, as one of his bodyguards told interrogators that Himmler had buried important files there. The farmer and his daughter were intensively interrogated, but the files appeared to have been moved, and searches of the property came up empty-handed.
On the 3rd of May, Himmler convened meetings with high-ranking SS officials and even gatecrashed a meeting between Dönitz and the German leadership in Norway, where he suggested surrendering the 350,000-man garrison to Sweden for internment. That night, he met privately with Dönitz as negotiations to surrender German forces in northwest Europe were ongoing. He also sent orders for the remnants of the concentration camp inspectorate to report to him, including Rudolf Höss, the former commandant of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Himmler greeted Höss cheerfully and ordered the senior concentration camp officers to disguise themselves as army NCOs and cross into Denmark as military stragglers.
He advised SS-Gruppenführer Richard Glücks, one of the principal organizers of the Holocaust, to go into hiding for some weeks, promising that “all grievances would be forgotten. ” Höss remarked that Himmler seemed hale and hearty and in the best of humor, shaking each of them by the hand before they dispersed with fake papers. On the 4th of May, Himmler visited Generalfeldmarschall Ernst Busch at his new headquarters and, incredibly, demanded an army paybook that he could use for identification. Busch refused.
It was clear Himmler was already thinking about fleeing. Albert Speer revealed that Himmler was considering flying to Prague, where he still had a power base, and that his Focke-Wulf Condor aircraft was being held at Neumünster Airfield for such an eventuality. At 6:30 p. m.
that evening, General Admiral von Friedeburg signed the surrender of German forces in northwest Europe to Field Marshal Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath. The surrender came into effect at 8:00 a. m. on the 5th of May.
The signal for Germany’s defeat was also the signal for the liberation of German-occupied countries; Denmark was finally free after five years of occupation. Himmler’s defeat did not stop his scheming. On the 5th of May, he held his last conference with his Obergruppenführers, his cabal of SS lieutenant generals. He told them he intended to establish a reformed government in Schleswig-Holstein that could negotiate peace with the Western powers on its own territory.
One attendee, Maximilian von Herff, later said Himmler was unduly optimistic, believing the SS would be used as a police force and that their worth would be acknowledged by the English. Another, Hans Jüttner, recalled that Himmler stated he had no intention to end his own life, but was full of vitality and wanted only an interview with Montgomery. They got the impression that Himmler intended to strike a bargain with the Western Allies to save his own life. At this point, Himmler prepared a letter to Field Marshal Montgomery.
His adjutant, Heinz Macher, saw the letter on the 5th or 6th of May. It recognized that Himmler was defeated, but suggested a meeting to re-establish order in Germany. Werner Grothmann added that Himmler wanted to place the Waffen SS at Montgomery’s disposal for the fight against the Soviet Union. On the 6th of May, Himmler ordered the King of the Belgians, held hostage with his family, to be driven to the Swiss frontier and released—another gesture toward the Allies.
That afternoon, Dönitz formally dismissed Himmler, no longer recognizing him as Minister of the Interior, Chief of the Replacement Army, or Head of the Police, confident enough that the surrender was imminent to end the charade. Colonel General Jodl arrived at Eisenhower’s headquarters at Reims on the afternoon of the 6th to sign the capitulation documents for all German armed forces. Himmler asked Jodl for advice on whether he should fly to southern Germany, where SS troops remained under arms. He transferred his headquarters to another farm near Satrup, closer to Busch’s command, while members of his staff made frequent trips to Flensburg for news.
At 2:21 a. m. on the 7th of May, Jodl signed the unconditional surrender, effective the following day. On the 8th of May, Dönitz made his radio address announcing the end of the war, and Himmler signed an order for all troops under his command on the western front to surrender.
Himmler also handed his letter to Montgomery to Jodl for delivery. Albert Speer later said the letter included a plea for safe conduct, with Himmler expecting to be treated as a high-ranking general under the laws of war. But the letter was never delivered—Jodl later admitted he had torn it up. Unaware of this betrayal, Himmler decided to go into hiding while awaiting a reply.
On the 9th or 10th of May, he gave orders to go to the Harz Mountains in central Germany, where he had a stash of gold coins and foreign currency hidden in a local bank to finance his evasion. On the 10th of May, his party—the Reichsführer and just over a dozen armed officers and men—drove south in four large fuel cars. Grothmann was explicit: Himmler wanted to remain at liberty and speak to Montgomery as a free man, not a captive.
If no reply came, Himmler planned to eventually move down to the Alps, determined to stay out of Allied hands as long as possible.