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Heinrich Müller (born April 28, 1900, officially declared to be dead as of May 1, 1945), aka "Gestapo Müller", was head of the Gestapo, the political police of Nazi Germany, and played a leading role in the planning and execution of the Holocaust. Events 1192 - Assassination of Conrad of Montferrat (Conrad I King of Jerusalem, in Tyre, two days after his title Year 1900 ( MCM) was an exceptional Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar Events 305 - Diocletian and Maximian retire from the office of Roman Emperor. Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar The ( contraction of ge heime Sta ats' po' lizei: "Secret State Police" was the official Secret police of Nazi Germany Nazi Germany and the Third Reich are the common English names for Germany under the regime of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers The Holocaust (from the Greek el ''ὁλόκαυστον'' (el-Latn holókauston holos, "completely" and kaustos, "burnt" also known as He was last seen leaving the Führerbunker in Berlin on April 29, 1945 and remains one of the few senior figures of the Nazi regime who was never captured or confirmed to have died. The Führerbunker ( German, literally meaning "shelter for the leader" or "the Führer's shelter" is a common name for a complex of subterranean rooms Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. Events 1429 - Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans. Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar In the context of this article the term ex-Nazi, or more correctly ex-Nazi Party member refers either to those few who were once Nazis and resigned from the Nazism, which was a short name for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus refers primarily to the Ideology and practices of the National Socialist German

Contents

Early career

Müller was born in Munich in Bavaria, the son of working-class Catholic parents. Munich (München; Minga is the capital city of Bavaria, Germany. Bavaria ( German:, with an area of 70553 Km² (27241 square miles and almost 12 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 (Iron Cross 2nd class), he joined the Bavarian police in 1919, and was involved in the suppression of the communist risings in the early postwar years. World War I (abbreviated WWI; also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All For other meanings please see Iron Cross (disambiguation The Iron Cross ( was a Military decoration of the Kingdom of Prussia 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. The Bavarian Soviet Republic, also known as the Munich Soviet Republic ( German: Bayerische Räterepublik or Münchner Räterepublik) was Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based [1] During the years of the Weimar Republic he ran the political department of the Munich police, and became acquainted with many members of the Nazi Party including Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich, although Müller himself in the Weimar period was generally seen as a supporter of the Bavarian People's Party (which at that time ruled Bavaria). The term Weimar Republic ( ˈvaɪmarɐ repuˈbliːk is used by historians to signify the democratic and Republican period of Germany from 1919 to 1933 The, officially National Socialist German Workers' Party, ( abbreviated NSDAP) was a Political party in Germany between 1919 and 1945 Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945 was a Nazi German politician and head of the Schutzstaffel (SS. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( 7 March 1904 &ndash 4 June 1942) was an SS - Obergruppenführer, chief The Bavarian People's Party (Bayerische Volkspartei was the Bavarian branch of the Centre Party, which broke off from the rest of the party in 1919 to pursue On March 9, 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[2]. Heinrich Held ( 6 June 1868 – 4 August 1938) was a Catholic Politician and Minister President of Ironically, these views aided Müller's rise as it guaranteed the hostility of the Nazis, thereby making Müller very dependent upon the patronage of Heydrich, who in turn appreciated Müller's professionism and skill as a policeman[3].

The 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. Professor Richard Evans (born 1947 is a British Historian of Germany. 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. "[1] Evans also records that Müller was a servant of the regime out of ambition, not devotion to Hitler:

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 January 4, 1937, a 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 on in one of its ancillary organizations. He was presented with an SS Obersturmbannführer's uniform in honour of his employement in the State Secret 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 won 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"[4].

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 organizer, utterly ruthless, a man who lived for his work. "[5]

Gestapo chief

When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Reinhard Heydrich as head of the Security Service (SD) recruited Müller and his staff into his organisation. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( 7 March 1904 &ndash 4 June 1942) was an SS - Obergruppenführer, chief The Sicherheitsdienst (SD Security Service was primarily the Intelligence service of the SS and the NSDAP. He joined the SS in 1934 and quickly rose through its ranks: by 1939 he was a Gruppenführer (lieutenant general). The ( German for "Protective Squadron" abbreviated SS - or ( Runic)- was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Gruppenführer (literally “Group Leader” was an early Paramilitary Rank of the Nazi Party, first created in 1925 as a senior In September 1939, when the Gestapo and other police organizations were consolidated into the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Müller was chief of the RSHA "Office 4": the Gestapo. The RSHA, or Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Head Office was a subordinate organization of the SS. The ( contraction of ge heime Sta ats' po' lizei: "Secret State Police" was the official Secret police of Nazi Germany To distinguish him from several other officials called Heinrich Müller (a very common German name), he became known as "Gestapo Müller. "

As Gestapo 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. The Communist Party of Germany ( German Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands &ndash KPD) was a major political party in Germany between 1918 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. PLEASE TAKE NOTE************ Heinrich Luitpold Himmler ( 7 October 1900 – 23 May 1945 was a Nazi German politician and head of the Schutzstaffel (SS. Paul Joseph Goebbels (German pronunciation ˈɡœbəls English generally ˈɡɝbəlz (29 October 1897 1 May 1945 was a German politician and Reich Minister of Public Adolf Eichmann, who headed the Gestapo's Office of Resettlement and then its Office of Jewish Affairs, was Müller's subordinate. Reinhard Heydrich was Müller's direct superior until his assassination in 1942. Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich ( 7 March 1904 &ndash 4 June 1942) was an SS - Obergruppenführer, chief For the remainder of the war, Ernst Kaltenbrunner took over as Müller's superior. Ernst Kaltenbrunner (4 October 1903 &ndash 16 October 1946 was a senior Nazi official during World War II.

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 indeed a hotbed of activity for the German Resistance. World War II, or the Second World War, (often abbreviated WWII) was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including This article is a subset article of Intelligence cycle security. The Abwehr was a German intelligence organization from 1921 to 1944 Wilhelm Franz Canaris ( January 1, 1887 &ndash April 9, 1945) was a German Admiral and head of the Abwehr The German Resistance refers to those individuals and groups in Nazi Germany who opposed the regime of Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1945 In 1942 he successfully infiltrated the "Red Orchestra" network of Soviet spies and used it to feed false information to the Soviet intelligence services. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991

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 most of the organisational details of carrying this plan out. Thus, although his chief responsibility was always police work within Germany, he must have been aware of both the plan of its general outlines and many of its details. 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. Einsatzgruppen ( German: "task forces" "intervention groups" were Paramilitary groups formed by Heinrich Himmler and 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. The Wannsee Conference was a Meeting of senior officials of the Nazi German regime held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on

In May 1942 Heydrich was assassinated in Prague by Czech agents sent from London. Prague (ˈprɑːg Praha (ˈpraɦa see also other names) is the Capital and Largest city of the Czech Republic. Czechoslovakia may also refer to what is now the Czech Republic and Slovakia. London ( ˈlʌndən is the capital and largest urban area in the United Kingdom. Müller was sent to Prague to head the investigation into "Operation Anthropoid". Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the Assassination of top German leader Reinhard Heydrich. 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 Canaris was involved with the resistance - Himmler told him to drop the case. [6] Offended by this, Müller became an ally of Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, who was Himmler's main rival. Martin Ludwig Bormann (17 June 1900 – 2 May 1945 [7]

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. Hi and welcome to Wikipedia! Please understand that this article is frequently vandalized and vandalism is reverted immediately Events 1304 - Wars of Scottish Independence: Fall of Stirling Castle - King Edward I of England takes the last rebel stronghold Year 1944 ( MCMXLIV) was a Leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. 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. The Ardennes Offensive (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945 was a major German offensive launched towards the end of World War II through the forested Ardennes Mountains Paris (ˈpærɨs in English; in French) is the Capital of France and the country's largest city [8] 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. The Führerbunker ( German, literally meaning "shelter for the leader" or "the Führer's shelter" is a common name for a complex of subterranean rooms Berlin is the capital city and one of sixteen states of Germany. The Red Army ( Russian: Рабоче-Крестьянская Красная Армия R aboche- K rest'yanskaya K rasnaya A rmiya One of his last tasks was the arrest and execution of Hermann Fegelein, Himmler's liaison officer to Hitler, after Hitler had Himmler expelled from his posts for negotiating with the western allies behind Hitler's back. SS- Obergruppenführer Hans Georg Otto Hermann Fegelein ( 30 October 1906 –c

Disappearance

Müller was last seen in the bunker on April 29, 1945, the day before Hitler's suicide. Events 1429 - Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans. Year 1945 ( MCMXLV) was a Common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, later quoted Müller as saying, "We know the Russian methods exactly. Hans Baur ( June 19, 1897 &ndash February 17, 1993) was German dictator Adolf Hitler 's pilot during his political campaigns 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 about whose fate nothing is known. This has naturally given rise to decades of speculation. There are three possible explanations for his disappearance:

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. near as long as it used to be several months ago It has been actively summarized and split into sub-articles and there is a dynamic talk page discussion of all The Freedom of Information Act ( FOIA) is the implementation of freedom of information legislation in the United States 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 United States National Archives and Records Administration ( NARA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government charged 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. "[8]

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 Office of Strategic Services ( OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. The search was complicated by the fact that "Heinrich Müller" is a very common German name. The 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. " [8]

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. Cold War is the state of conflict tension and competition that existed between the United States and the Soviet Union (USSR and their respective allies from the By this time the conclusion seems to have been reached that Müller was most likely dead.

The seizure in 1960 and subsequent trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann sparked new interest in Müller's whereabouts. For a topic outline on this subject see List of basic Israel topics. 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, Francis William Keith was accused of being Heinrich Mueller, the former head of the Gestapo, West German diplomats pressed Panama to extradite to Berlin for trial. German prosecutors said Mrs. Sophie Mueller, 64, identified the man as her husband. However he was released once fingerprints revealed he was in fact not Mueller. [9]

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 Volkssturm (lit "Folkstorm" "People's" or "National Militia" Sturm lit 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. East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990 German reunification (Deutsche Wiedervereinigung took place twice after 1945 first in 1957 the Saarland was permitted to join the Federal Republic of Germany

The CIA also conducted an investigation into Müller's disappearance in the 1960s, prompted by the defection to the West of Lieutenant-Colonel Michal 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 Czech [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 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. "[8]

Fictional portrayal

Footnotes

  1. ^ a b Richard Evans, The Third Reich in Power, Allen Lane 2005, 97
  2. ^ Noakes, Jeremy & Pridham, Geoffrey (editors) Nazism 1919-1945 Volume 2 State, Economy and Society 1933-39 - A Documentary Reader, Exeter : University of Exeter, 1983 pages 500-501.
  3. ^ Noakes, Jeremy & Pridham, Geoffrey (editors) Nazism 1919-1945 Volume 2 State, Economy and Society 1933-39 - A Documentary Reader, Exeter : University of Exeter, 1983 pages 500-501.
  4. ^ Noakes, Jeremy & Pridham, Geoffrey Nazism 1919-1945 Volume 2 State, Economy and Society 1933-39 - A Documentary Reader, Exeter : University of Exeter, 1983 page 501.
  5. ^ Peter Padfield, Himmler: Reichsführer SS, Papermac 1995, 145
  6. ^ Padfield, Himmler, 422
  7. ^ Padfield, Himmler, 427
  8. ^ a b c d Timothy Naftali and others, "Analysis of the Name File of Heinrich Mueller", U. S. National Archives and Records Administration (available online here)
  9. ^ RG 263 Detailed Report, Heinrich Mueller

References


See also

In the context of this article the term ex-Nazi, or more correctly ex-Nazi Party member refers either to those few who were once Nazis and resigned from the
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