Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)

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Discussion of the bomb attack in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich on November 8, 1939 by Georg Elser, from left to right: Franz Josef Huber , Arthur Nebe , Heinrich Himmler , Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller.

Heinrich Müller (" Gestapo-Müller "; born April 28, 1900 in Munich ; † probably in May 1945; declared dead on May 1, 1945 ) was a German employee of the Secret State Police (Gestapo, Office IV in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA)) and from October 1939 head of this authority, most recently in the rank of SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police.

Life

Heinrich Müller was born in Munich into a Catholic family. His father was a gendarmerie officer. After secondary school, he completed an apprenticeship as an aircraft fitter. In 1917, Müller joined the Bavarian army as a war volunteer and joined the air force . As a pilot he received several awards (including the Iron Cross 1st Class ) and in 1919 he was dismissed as a non-commissioned officer . In the same year, Müller was hired as an assistant at the Munich Police Department. From 1929 he worked there as a police secretary in the Munich Political Police and was entrusted with fighting communist organizations.

When Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich took control of the Bavarian police a few weeks after the National Socialist seizure of power in the spring of 1933, Müller was transferred to the newly founded Bavarian Political Police (BPP), whose task it was to fight against the ideological opponents of the National Socialists in the Bavarian region duration. After Heydrich was appointed head of the Secret State Police Office in Berlin - and thus head of the Political Police in Prussia, by far the largest German state - in April 1934 he took several of his employees from the Bavarian Political Police with him to Berlin, including Müller. The background to this measure was to consolidate his position in the Secret State Police Office by filling management positions there with familiar and loyal employees from his former Bavarian office.

In the Secret State Police Office (Gestapa), Müller, who at that time also joined the SS (SS-No.107.043), together with his former Munich superior Reinhard Flesch, initially took over the overall management of sub-division II 1 and the management of divisions II 1 A ( “Communist and Marxist movement and their subsidiary movements”) and II 1 H (“Affairs of the party and its affiliated associations”). In 1935 he was able to use the opportunity of Flesch's return to Munich to expand his position of power by also taking over the leadership of Section II 1 B (“ Confessional Associations, Jews, Freemasons , Emigrants”), which Flesch had previously held. In 1936 Müller was finally appointed deputy head of the Political Police Office in the Security Police Main Office, in which the Gestapa was absorbed in connection with the progressive pooling of police power at that time.

In 1939 he staged the alleged attack by Polish soldiers on the radio station Gleiwitz , which gave Hitler the pretext for the attack on Poland . From October 1939 he was chief of Office IV (Gestapo) of the Reich Main Security Office with the rank of SS Oberführer, his last rank was SS group leader and lieutenant general of the police from November 1941.

As head of the Gestapo, Müller played a leading role in almost all crimes that were planned, prepared and organized in the Reich Security Main Office.

From the beginning of September 1939 he gave instructions on the “ special treatment ” (murder) of political opponents. On April 5, 1945, he forwarded the commandant of the Dachau concentration camp , Eduard Weiter , the order to murder the resistance fighter Georg Elser .

Main culprit in the Nazi persecution of Jews

In 1939 Müller, who had also been a member of the NSDAP since 1939 (membership number 4.583.199), became the managing director of the “ Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration ”. She organized the robbery and deportation of the racially persecuted Germans who were allegedly first discriminated, then robbed and murdered because of their belonging to an inferior race, " the Jews ".

On January 20, 1942, he was one of 15 high-ranking participants in the Wannsee Conference in Berlin. He was also responsible for the “ Judenreferat ” headed by Adolf Eichmann (IV B 4). He was involved in the planning and execution of the genocide of the Jews in the Soviet Union in every detail. In Reinhard Heydrich's order, Müller formulated orders to the Einsatzgruppen and was responsible for drafting the “ incident reports”, to which the reports of the SS Einsatzgruppen were combined. Müller was one of the most powerful desk criminals in the Nazi regime.

Remaining after the end of the war

Müller has been considered missing since May 1945 . According to the information provided by six witnesses who were questioned by the West German police in 1961, Müller was last seen in the Reich Chancellery on May 1 and 2, 1945 - after Hitler's suicide . Müller's death in the fall of Berlin in early May 1945 is considered likely .

Reports that Müller fled to Switzerland by plane at the end of April 1945 and later worked for US secret services in South America are based on a book that was published in 1996 by the far-right Druffel Verlag . The book contains forged sources , has numerous contradictions and is "full of trivializing the Nazi extermination policy and at the same time full of degradation of the victims of the Nazi regime".

The head of the SD foreign intelligence service, Walter Schellenberg , is considered to be one of the originators of rumors that Müller had worked for the USSR before 1945 and was in contact with Soviet secret services via radio. Schellenberg, who is said to have a bitter rivalry with Müller, expressed such suspicions in 1945 during interrogations by the US intelligence service OSS . Schellenberg's statements were disputed both by Ernst Kaltenbrunner , Müller's direct superior, and by his subordinate Heinz Pannwitz . Heinz Pannwitz, himself in Soviet custody for several years , told the CIA in 1959 that he had been told repeatedly during interrogations in the USSR that Müller was dead.

CIA records on Müller were released on September 26, 2000 under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act of 1998. The files have now been evaluated by a group of historians on behalf of the US government . According to the documents, the capture of Müller immediately after the end of the war was of great importance, but it was not possible to track him down. The search was also made difficult by the frequency of the surname Müller . Most reports indicated that the wanted man had been in Berlin at the end of the war. A house search of Müller's mistress carried out in 1947 brought no evidence that Müller was still alive at the time. At the beginning of the Cold War , the US intelligence services assumed Müller's death.

After the kidnapping of Adolf Eichmann from Argentina to Israel in May 1960, Müller's whereabouts again came into public interest. Müller's relatives, his lover and his former secretary were observed and interrogated. House searches provided no evidence that Müller - as suspected by the West German police - lived abroad and was in contact with his relatives. In September 1963, the police came across what was supposed to be a grave of Müller in Berlin's Lilienthalstrasse cemetery . The examination of the remains found showed that it could not be Müller. References to a burial of Müller in a mass grave in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Mitte were not investigated, as this was in the eastern part of Berlin . At about the same time, the CIA resumed its investigations into Müller: Defectors from the Eastern Bloc reported that Müller had been arrested after the end of the war and brought to the USSR. Also in the 1960s, various newspaper reports appeared that Müller suspected in Romania, Albania, South Africa or South America. A CIA report issued in December 1971 assumed a disinformation campaign by the eastern side during the Cold War. Immediately after the end of the war, Müller was not searched for with the necessary vigor. There are clear indications, but no evidence, that Müller cooperated with the Soviet side. There are also clear indications that Müller died in Berlin in 1945, according to the CIA report.

According to Johannes Tuchel , head of the German Resistance Memorial Center , Müller died shortly before the end of the war: The evaluation of contemporary documents confirms that his body was found in August 1945 in a makeshift grave near the former Reich Aviation Ministry , clearly identified and then all in one in Berlin Mass grave in the Jewish cemetery in Grosse Hamburger Strasse, which was cleared away by the Gestapo in 1943 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Heinrich Müller  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Death certificates from the registry office in Berlin-Mitte 1959 and 1961, in: Institute for Contemporary History Munich-Berlin, archive signature ED 404, holdings Heinrich and Sophie Müller.
  2. ^ Gerhard Paul, Klaus-Michael Mall: The Gestapo. Myth and Reality. Primus Verlag, special edition. 2003, pp. 255/256.
  3. ^ Gestapo Müller. Not a Nazi . In: Der Spiegel . No. 42 , 1963 ( online ).
  4. ^ A b Corresponding: Timothy Naftali, Norman JW Goda, Richard Breitman, Robert Wolfe: Analysis of the Name File of Heinrich Mueller. In: archives.gov; Jürgen Zarusky : Denial of the Holocaust. The anti-Semitic strategy after Auschwitz. In: BDjS-Aktuell. Official bulletin of the Federal Testing Office for writings harmful to minors. ( Memento of November 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Special edition Annual Conference 1999, p. 5–15, here p. 11 f. (PDF; 544 kB).
  5. ^ Gregory Douglas: Gestapo-Müller secret files. Documents and testimonials from the US secret archives .
  6. ^ Zarusky: Denial of the Holocaust. 1999, p. 11.
  7. ↑ a b Naftali et al. a .: Analysis of the Name File of Heinrich Mueller. 1999.
  8. ↑ Date at CIA Documents / Files Declassified and Released to NARA as of 17 Mar 2004 (PDF; 117 kB) at George Washington University . For the release of files, see also H-Soz-u-Kult.
  9. ↑ Publications of the evaluation: Richard Breitman, Norman JW Goda, Timothy Naftali, Robert Wolfe (eds.): US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-61794-4 ; as well as Naftali et al. a .: Analysis of the Name File of Heinrich Mueller. 1999. The following information on the research into Müller at Naftali.
  10. ↑ Michael Brocke : The stones of Berlin-Mitte. In: Jüdische Allgemeine . November 21, 2013, p. 17.
  11. ↑ Gestapo chief was buried in the Jewish cemetery. In: Tagesspiegel . October 31, 2013, accessed October 31, 2013 .
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Heinrich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gestapo miller
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German police officer, Chief of Office IV (Geheime Staatspolizei) in the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) during the Nazi era
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH uncertain: May 1945