HEINRICH "GESTAPO" MULLER:

Hitler's Man Without A Shadow

Heinrich Muller (party number 4583199) was after Heinrich Himmler and Reinhardt Heydrich, the most influential and feared man in the Third Reich, yet few then knew of him or had even heard of him, and I suspect that was just how he preferred it. However behind his back jealous colleagues and others christened him "Gestapo" Muller. Naturally never to his scowling face with those piercing eyes.

Heinrich Muller was I suspect born to be a policeman and for him there was no greater honour than to serve the State-whoever they may be-it was irrelevant to him. "He was non-political-non ideological." He served only "duty and discipline." One prisoner about to be interrogated by him remembered, that he was "a dapper looking fellow but also a cold disposing killer." Just the sort Heydrich would pluck from the Munich police desk and appoint him to his expanding staff.

It seems he rarely needed a vacation. He was simply a workaholic long before that word had been coined, but he certainly collected a mistress along the way. Yet this Roman Catholic and regular churchgoer somehow managed to cheat the rope in 1946 at Nuremberg and by 1950s he was the third most wanted Nazi after Martin Bormann and Adolph Eichmann. Speculation still continues about his fate. To date no positive conclusion has been satisfactorily offered of the mystery of Heinrich Muller the late unlamented chief of the notorious Gestapo.

Heinrich Muller was born in Bavaria in 1900 and would have been old enough to enlist in the war, which he did, even taking flying lessons. Because of these acts he collected a citation. (He seems to have collected as many as eleven medals along the way in Hitler's fiefdom, including the Nazi golden party badge. This always being awarded for long service party members but funnily enough he was never a paid up member of the Nazi elite. In fact he did not join until 1939 and then only under Himmler's suggestion or maybe was it gentle coercion. All very strange.)

However with the establishing of the post war Weimar republic that would later stumble into the fascist clutches of nazism, Muller would occupy a desk job in the Bavarian police department, then specialising in communist sympathisers trying to overthrow the fragile government. The Nazis were also doing the same thing and Muller had no time for them or Hitler it seems-when informed that the Nazis were attempting a putsch. (It failed with the death of nineteen people.) He warned a colleague in the force: "don't worry, we will soon see that rat pack off." Naturally many of the old beer hall members were surprised when promotion put him on a par with his benefactors Heydrich and Himmler.

During the lean 1930s he would later negotiate his way up the slippery nazi pole. If nothing else he was always ambitious. In 1938/9 he arrived as head of the Gestapo then located at number 10, Prinz Albrect Platz (a former girls school.) From now on during the war this building was his world until it was happily bombed by the RAF in 1945 and in fact the ruins can still be seen today as we can confirm when we visited Berlin some years ago.

Whilst presiding over his fiefdom of torture, fear and death Muller would adopt his own cruel peculiarities indicative to his trade either by the thumb screw, cosh or other more psychological means he practised seemed to get results. It was even joked he could make an Egyptian mummy talk during those years.

All death orders, arrest warrants were signed by him in heavy orange ink-can you believe it!

Through these interrogations his piercing eyes could stare through you like a sharpened knife one prisoner recalled with a shudder. Maybe the man even practised hypnotism in the art of gentle persuasion. I have to suggest there is something of the occult about his appearance and indeed his eyes are similar to that of Aleister Crowley and Anton Le Vay amongst others of that satanic ilk.

In the infamous conference held at 56/58 Wammsee in 1942 (interestingly this building was the headquarters of Interpol, so confided Simon Wiesenthal in his memoirs in 1988.) "Gestapo" Muller with the other Nazi elite now prepared for the "final solution of the Jewish question." Or as we prefer to call it "The Fuehrer Solution." Muller's phenomenal memory would help in oiling the Nazi machine of death. (As early as July 1941 Goering had issued orders for "the final solution" to be put into practise to Heydrich. Wanssee was to iron out any foreseeable problems in the extermination of eleven million Jews in Europe and Russia. Indeed On the 30th January 1939, Hitler speaking at the Reichstag, had called for "The extinction of the Jewish race in Europe." With these terrible words their fate was now sealed. The Fuhrer's paranoia would see to that and had he not hinted in Mein Kampf of his distaste for all but the Aryan race.

Attending this infamous arranged itinerary were some of Hitler's horrible henchmen including Reinhardt Heydrich (Muller's boss), and Adolph Eichman, (Heinrich Muller's number two.) Muller would often boast in the dying days of the war that: "If we had fifty Eichmann's then we would have won the war automatically." At Wannsee when an eager Adolph Eichmann offered some prepared calculations for future extermination Muller would between gulps of Brandy exclaim in amazement: "60,000 Jews a day up in smoke!" Yet within five months of this bizarre meeting General Heydrich, the so-called "beast of Prague," was exterminated by Czech commandos previously trained in London and Scotland. (It would later be argued that this operation was a tragic blunder especially for the town of Lidice)

And just a thought if Reinhardt Heydrich had not been gunned down in the beautiful city of Prague I suggest he would have been Hitler's natural successor. But now Muller was in charge of the Gestapo and with Himmler's blessing as well. Now let the extermination begin.

One story Eichmann wrote about from his prison cell in Jerusalem in 1961 was that after the Wannsee conference had concluded, he Muller and Heydrich had after the others had departed, sat around a roaring log fire drinking and congratulating each other on the meetings success. As Eichmann remembered that evening the three of them it seems drank a toast to each other and then climbing on the heavy polished table they danced around laughing and toasting (maybe kissing.) What a hideous dance of the macabre this must have looked to any observer. He later informed his Mossad interrogators that Muller may have used the offered Vatican rat run as a means to escape post war Europe, then later settling in South America. Adolph Eichmann certainly believed that "Gestapo Muller" his old boss was still alive, somewhere. Eichmann may have had a point because he had nothing to gain from this new information. He must have known then what awaited him after the verdict of the court.

Of this evil chapter in Nazi history I am reminded of what the novelist Joseph Conrad once wrote: "The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary. Men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."

A Biblical parallel would be in the New Testament when the wicked lies and betrayal of the Lord Jesus by cunning Caiphas with his motley family and cronies to a vacillating Pontius Pilate recorded in the Gospels. I suspect that they too must have danced around their lavish palaces in their feminine robes. Later after Christ's betrayal by Judas and when the terrible beatings continued under the Roman soldiers they too would have toasted each other, then hugged and disgustingly slobbered over each others bodied, rather like the gruesome threesome at Wannsee in old Berlin in 1942 had done.

Today both unsaved Jews and Nazis suffer and wait in Hades for that terrible judgment yet to arrive concerning their deeds and actions.

In the closing months of the war Muller confided to Walter Schulenburg, "I haven't any intention of being taken prisoner by the Russians." Later he made a drunken reference to serving "Heil Stalin." Was all of this a dark secret that had slipped out in a drunken minute or was he indeed a double agent spying for Stalin since the 1930s

The distinguished Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal certainly suspected Muller had important dealings with the Russians. He even claimed that they willingly assisted Muller through the Russian area of Berlin later headed for Moscow in those last days of the war. Tantalizingly Wiesenthal even claims that Muller was later living in Egypt assisting the General Intelligence Service (GIS) in Cairo against Israel. Another popular destination for some of these wanted men was Syria. As previously mentioned not all took up the rat line offer for a one way trip to Argentina deciding instead to journey to the Middle east.

The second possible theory is that Muller somehow contacting the pro-Nazi Bishop Hudal, himself a Nazi who one had remarked of the allegations of sheltering fugitive nazis: "I'm a priest not a policeman." Muller now sought the assistance of the Pope to escape allied Justice. And I have to suspect that Muller's path would have crossed with that of Archbishop Pacelli in that turbulent German pre-war period. Archbishop Eugene Pacelli was then Nuncio to the German Government whilst Muller's police career was on the ascent in that city. Both men were Catholics of course. And did he later sail from Genoa as some have quoted to seek a new life in Lima, Peru, quickly escaping to friendly Bolivia when Mossad agents snatched Adolph Eichmann on his way home from work.

Again another suspicious sighting of Muller was seen in the USA when via Switzerland and with Alan Dulles assistance he arrived in Washington. Later to be employed by eager American spy chiefs in creating the new CIA. He even reached the position of Colonel and was involved in the highest intelligence meetings perhaps with President Harry Truman. Well, well! Or Maybe he later surfaced as the notorious "deep throat" as well. Muller or whatever his new name was died in 1973 or 1983 as an American naturalised American citizen happily married with two children. (Lord Janner, the distinguished Jewish QC himself, hinted this might even be true.) This notion is not to implausible because after all the Americans happily airlifted the top Nazi scientists to American soon after the war under code named "operation paperclip" to assist them in their space programme and we wont go into German technology putting a man on the moon if you don't mind. Muller's files would have been just as much value to the Americans as to the Russians.

Another strange story of Muller's demise in 1945 concerns a grave with his headstone over it situated in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin after an exhumation the bodies inside are not Mullers. (A full account appears in Charles Whiting's excellent book The search for Gestapo Muller.)

Today Muller is in cyber space starring in a 1999 video game entitled Medal of honour. I must remember to look out for it!

In 2011 Henrich Muller name still remains on the German wanted War criminal list. If he is still alive he would be 112 years old.

"And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment."

Footnote: In 2001 some controversial released declassified files reported that Heinrich Muller has been sighted all over the world, mainly in the usual locations. Interestingly one of the places reported was Portsmouth in New Hampshire. I e-mailed the local librarian about this information and she replied she knew nothing about him or the sightings. She very kindly checked her sources and sadly drew a blank about Muller in the town. However I was reminded of the 1946 Orson wells film The Stranger in which he plays a devious Nazi being sought by the allies, taking up a position of teacher in a small New England town. He quickly submerges himself into the towns tapestry. But Nazi Hunter Edward G. Robinson is close on finding him and unmasking him for what he really is-a cold-blooded killer. Well that's the plot.

So could I offer the suggestion that perhaps a CIA agent watched this film one night then went to work the next morning and mischievsly inserted the unlikely town of "Portsmouth" into a reported sighting sheet concerning Heinrich Muller. Maybe the agents own hometown was used. Oh well stranger things have happened haven't they.

PS. On 16 May 1945 the Nazi 1,600 tonne submarine (U-234) surfaced and surrendered at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. On board were apparently German scientists and other top military officials. This could be how the myth of how "Gestapo" Muller may have been sighted in the USA. Perhaps he came a shore disguised as one of the captured sailors who were quickly taken in to custody. The naval location does however remain intriguing concerning police chief Muller and his whereabouts.

Used reference books

The search for Gestapo Muller: Charles Whiting

Nazi Hunter: Simon Wiesenthal