Nearing the end of the Second World War, the situation in the entire European theatre was
chaotic. People went missing, never to be found again, others purposefully disappeared.
We’ve all probably heard of Nazis fleeing to Argentina to start a new life there or
about Operation Paperclip, the secret program to recruit German scientists, engineers and
technicians. Now, it is a bit more likely that you haven’t heard of the most senior
Nazi that vanished in the wake of the Second World War: Heinrich Müller, also known as
Gestapo-Müller. Presumed to have committed suicide or killed during the final days of
the Second World War, a series of events and KGB defectors in the 1960s suddenly cast much
doubt on his fate.
-intro-
Müllers life
Born in München, Bavaria in 1900 Müller volunteered for the German army in 1917, during
the last year of the First World War. He served as a pilot with distinction earning the Iron
Cross decoration. Following Germany’s defeat in 1918, he joined the police force of München.
The years of the Weimar Republic were incredibly tumultuous with violence from communists and
right-wing extremists alike. The police were, in theory, supposed to maintain peace and
order. But Bavarian police were notorious for collaborating with right-wing paramilitary
organisations. Müller rapidly rose through the ranks as a competent and ambitious policeman.
Because of police protocol, he could not join any ideological or political movement, and
he wouldn’t until after Hitler came to power. In 1929 Müller was promoted to secretary
of the ‘Politische Polizei’, a department of the Bavarian Police that was solely responsible
for combating communist organisations. Following Hitler’s power-grab in 1933 and him becoming
Führer in august 1934, Müller joined the Schutzstaffel, more commonly known as the
SS. This elite force was the principal agency of security and surveillance within Nazi-Germany.
As you can imagine, a man such as Müller with adequate experience prosecuting communists
was a valuable asset to the organisation. The SS leadership recognised him for his efficiency,
diligence and dedication. After joining the SS, he transferred to Berlin. There he started
working for the Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo. The literal translation of this body
was the secret state police. It had been created the year before under supervision of Hermann
Göring. In the next several years, the Gestapo would grow out to be one of the most efficient
and dangerous intelligence organisations the world has ever seen.
Müller quickly rose through the ranks of the Gestapo although he only joined the NSDAP,
Hitler’s party in 1938, because not being a member prevented him from rising as quickly
as he wanted to. Besides that, he also served as commander of the Sicherheitsdienst, which
was the intelligence department of the SS.
As a member of the SS Müller became the protegé of Reinhard Heydrich, the architect of the
holocaust and director of the Gestapo. In 1936 Müller was promoted to Chief of Operations
of the Gestapo, and in 1939 when Heydrich became director of the Reich Main Security
Office, Müller succeeded him as director of the Gestapo. As director Müller ensured
the tracking down, arresting and interrogation of enemies of the Nazi regime, which, well,
as we know, consisted of everyone not fiercely dedicated to the Nazi ideology.
One of the events he participated in was Kristallnacht in November 1938 - the notorious pogrom against
Jewish citizens throughout Germany by the Sturmabteilung paramilitary forces.
Within this capacity, Müller was a willing participant to many of the Nazis war crimes.
He attended the Wannsee conference. The meeting where the leaders of all administrative units
of Nazi Germany discussed and started the Final solution to the Jewish Question, or
the Holocaust. Müller was the representative of the Gestapo. Adolf Eichmann, the man that
was crucial for the logistical implementation of the holocaust, was the direct subordinate
of Müller. Throughout the war, Müller committed countless war-crimes against both Jews and
other ‘undesirables’ as the Nazis called them. He also orchestrated one of the most
successful counterintelligence operations during the war. The Rote Kapelle was a network
of several resistance circles that fed information to Soviet agents. Making clever use of double
agents, Müller ensured the Gestapo and Abwehr fed the Soviets disinformation. Eventually,
Müller’s Gestapo was instrumental in not just arresting large numbers of the German
resistance, but executing 143 of them.
Disappearance
Throughout the Second World War Müller remained a loyal and willing participant of the Nazi
regime. During the final days of the war, with the Soviets approaching on the East,
he was in the Führerbunker in Berlin together with other high-ranking Nazi officials and
Hitler himself. He was one of the most prominent Nazis the allies wanted to capture and stand
trial. The Counter Intelligence War Room even issued a memo to all US interrogators about
the top 5 Nazi officials to look out for - with Müller on that list.
The last sighting of Müller was on the 29th of April, one day before Hitler’s suicide,
after which there have been no concrete sightings of him. Documents reveal he refused to join
a group of Nazi officials that wanted to break out of Berlin. There are rumours that he assumed
a fake name, fled the bunker and hid in Austria. Other rumours state that the United States
recruited him. Although the United States recruited Nazi engineers through Operation
Paperclip, it is less likely that they’d recruit a man like Múller. The Allied powers
did look for him, though. But Heinrich Müller was such a common name in Germany that it
didn’t make tracking him down any easier. It was the reason Müller was called Gestapo-Müller
- to differentiate him from a SS general with the same name.
Now one of the most logical explanations for his disappearance would be that Müller simply
died or committed suicide during the final days of the war. And the general assumption
was that he had died in the last days of the Third Reich. That was, until 1963, when authorities
opened his supposed grave, and it turned out that Müller’s body wasn’t in there. It
wasn’t a coincidence authorities opened a grave, and it had to do with some Cold War
counter-intelligence and defectors that Müller came into the picture again.
In 1961 Lt. Colonel Michael Goleniewski, a Polish KGB agent defected to the West. He
provided names of many Soviet agents within Western intelligence apparatuses but also
claimed Müller was living in Moscow. The story goes that as the Red Army seized Berlin,
Müller defected to the Soviets and they recruited him to their counter-intelligence branch.
Now, that is just one story, but that same year Adolf Eichmann stood trial in Israel
for his war crimes. As we have seen he was a direct subordinate of Müller and he confirmed
that Müller had defected to the Soviets and fled to Moscow as well. To top it all off:
a third story, unrelated to the previous 2, said the same thing. During the 1960s an anonymous
KGB double-agent confirmed to the CIA that the Soviet Union recruited Müller to the
KGB in 1945. As such, an investigation into Müller’s
fate commenced. In 1945 a Berlin morgue attendant, Fritz Leopold, had told US investigators that
Müller had died and buried in a Berlin cemetery. Even Müllers family accepted this story and
had placed a headstone at the supposed grave. So imagine the surprise when authorities exhumed
the grave in 1963 and the body in there was not Müllers.
Related to the surprising revelation was a story that Múller did commit suicide during
the last days of the war. Reason for this assumption is that he was found, in uniform
and documents in his breast-pocket, and buried in a Jewish cemetery. The story is odd though
- if he wore his uniform and had personal records on him, why would he be buried in
a Jewish cemetery? Either way, because of the Cold War going on and the division between
east and west Germany, the investigators had no way of checking the Jewish cemetery in
Eastern berlin. An official CIA document from 1972, titled
“The Hunt for Gestapo Müller” states that there were strong indications he collaborated
with the Soviets. Still, there also were strong indications he had died in Berlin. Nobody
was for sure, but it was certain that in the wake of the second world war nobody had diligently
looked for him. There is no credible evidence for Müller’s survival, and in 2013 the
Jewish cemetery was checked. The investigation concluded that it was somewhat likely Müller
was in fact buried there, although it does seem incredibly strange that someone with
a full SS uniform would be carried and buried there.
Even if that was him, then why would multiple KGB double-agents and even Eichmann separately
confirm he worked for the Soviets?
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