Roger Manvell - Heinrich Himmler

Various glimpses we get of Langbehn’s contacts and relationships with Himmler reveal little more of Himmler’s intentions. The woman Gestapo agent responsible for investigating Haushofer’s connections with Britain became his friend and retailed some gossip to him just prior to Heydrich’s assassination in May 1942, to the effect that Heydrich hoped to supplant Himmler. Haushofer thought this information might be useful in gaining Himmler’s confidence, and Langbehn passed it on to the Reichsführer, who thanked him formally and then had the woman agent arrested for spreading false rumours. Also early in 1943, Himmler warned Langbehn to keep clear of taking any legal part in a spy trial in which he might find himself supporting the interests of Ribbentrop against those of the Reichsführer S.S.

By the middle of 1942, Schellenberg felt he had risen sufficiently in Himmler’s confidence to risk discussion of the possibilities of achieving some form of negotiated peace. With Goring ‘more or less in disgrace’, Himmler in Schellenberg’s estimation ‘was, and remained to the very end, the most powerful man in the regime’. He considered a total victory was now no longer possible, and in August 1942 he had a preliminary conversation at Zhitomir with Kersten (who, on Himmler’s recommendation, was treating him for nervous strain), about the best way to broach the matter with Himmler. He discovered that he had an ally in Kersten, and the following day he asked Himmler for a special appointment to discuss ‘a matter that involves a most important and difficult decision’. Sometime after lunch, at which Himmler ‘changed from being the cool executive to being an amusing and pleasant host’, Schellenberg secured his interview. He made an elliptical approach to the difficult subject in order to prepare the ground; he began by quoting precedents for the wisdom of considering alternative solutions to every kind of problem, and then asked Himmler directly if he had in mind any alternative solutions for bringing the war to an end. After a full minute’s silence, Himmler gave way to surprise and indignation, but after a while he began to listen to Schellenberg’s argument that the rulers of Germany would be better advised to strike a good bargain from the vantage-ground of their present strength than wait until Germany had become so weakened by war on all fronts that her present advantages were lost. Then he joined in the argument himself:

‘In my present position I might have some chance of influencing Hitler. I might even get him to drop Ribbentrop if I could be sure of Bormann’s support. But we could never let Bormann know about our plans. He’d wreck the whole scheme, or else he’d twist it round into a compromise with Stalin. And we must never let that happen.

‘He spoke almost as if to himself, at one moment nibbling his thumbnail, then twisting his snake ring round and round — sure signs that he was really concentrating. He looked at me questioningly, and said, “Would you be able to start the whole thing moving right away — without our enemies interpreting it as a sign of weakness on our part?”

‘I assured him that I could.

‘“Very well. But how do you know that the whole business won’t act as a boomerang? What if it should strengthen the Western Powers’ determination to achieve unity with the East?”

‘“On the contrary, Reichsführer”, I said. “If the negotiations are started in the right way, it will prevent just that contingency.”

‘“All right,” said Himmler, “then exactly how would you proceed?”’

Schellenberg explained that very tentative negotiations should be conducted ‘through the political sector of the Secret Service’. Himmler, he said, must appoint an agent who had real authority behind him, and meanwhile himself work on Hitler to remove Ribbentrop and appoint a more tractable Foreign Minister. Then they looked at a map of Europe and agreed that, with certain exceptions, Germany might well have to relinquish the greater part of the territory she had occupied since September 1939 in order to retain full rights within all those areas that could be rightfully regarded as German. According to Schellenberg, when they parted in the small hours of the morning, ‘Himmler had given me full authority to act… and had given me his word of honour that by Christmas Ribbentrop would no longer be at his post.’

Schellenberg’s calculations, however, were made without sufficient regard for Himmler’s extraordinary caution. He played as little part as possible in the machinations of the other leaders, and quietly resisted the open intrigues of such men as Goebbels. He preferred, as always, the secret road to power, the back way up. He was, however, according to Schellenberg, ‘very discreetly striving to create a new leadership for the Reich, naturally with Hitler’s approval. This policy was to ensure that all those who held leading posts in the Reich ministries, in industry, commerce and trade, in science and culture… should be members of the S.S.’ Meanwhile he sank himself in work, absorbed himself in details, the clerk in high office hidden behind a pyramid of files. The result was that at the end of the year he refused to take advantage of the notorious memorandum on the mental instability of Ribbentrop compiled by Martin Luther, an under-secretary at the Foreign Office, who had formerly been Ribbentrop’s confidant, but partly through the intrigues of Schellenberg had turned violently against him.

The time chosen by Luther to produce his report was indeed an unfortunate one; Himmler fell back into one of his moods of indecision because at that particular moment he believed Hitler’s confidence in him had been shaken. In the struggle for power in Rumania, Hitler on Ribbentrop’s advice had chosen to support Antonescu, whereas Himmler and Heydrich had favoured Horia Sima, Leader of the Iron Guard who, encouraged by Heydrich, had been responsible for an unsuccessful putsch against Antonescu in January 1941 at a time when Hitler wanted to strengthen his relations with Rumania before the coming invasion of Russia. By agreement with Antonescu, Sima had been kept a prisoner by the S.D., who managed to let him escape. Mueller did not dare to inform Himmler of the escape for a fortnight, and it was some while before the fugitive was captured. Hitler was led by Ribbentrop to believe that Himmler had known of the escape all along and was attempting through him to stir up further trouble in Rumania. If there was one thing Himmler could not bear it was the criticism or ill-will of the Führer; in any case Himmler disliked Luther, who tended to be loud-mouthed and over-familiar. While Wolff stood on one side of him warning him against Luther, Schellenberg, with his plan to depose Ribbentrop firmly in mind, stood on the other urging him not to reach a hasty decision. Himmler as usual postponed making up his mind but, as he always did when he was in any doubt, he finally took the line that offered the least risk to himself. Luther was arrested and interrogated, and Ribbentrop’s face was saved.

Himmler had lacked the courage to act against Ribbentrop. He feared Hitler’s admiration for the man he regarded as second only to Bismarck, exceeded the Führer’s confidence in himself. Schellenberg’s carefully contrived advantage was therefore discarded, and Himmler fell temporarily out of favour. In a private letter to his wife dated 16 January 1943, Bormann comments at some length on Himmler, who, he says, is ‘deeply offended… He feels unjustly treated by the Chief’. Bormann claims that he tried to calm Himmler, whose criticism of the treatment he had received was ‘very bitter, and at times acid’. Himmler, he thought, was suffering from ‘nervous strain.’ Later Schellenberg, to his disgust, found that Himmler wanted to discuss the whole matter openly with Ribbentrop showing, as Schellenberg put it, ‘a cowardly lack of decision’. He agreed, however, that any future attempts to negotiate peace must be conducted through a neutral country. ‘I don’t wish to know all these details’, he added. ‘That’s your responsibility.’ Throughout this period Himmler impressed on Schellenberg that he should keep in contact with Langbehn, and it seems clear that at some stage Langbehn was being used as an agent by Schellenberg to make contact with Allied representatives in Switzerland. For instance, in December Hassell noted in his diary, ‘Langbehn has had some talks with an English official in Zurich (12 December) and an American official (Hopper) in Stockholm, with the approval of the S.D.’ The talks, as always, were inconclusive because the Allies required the unconditional surrender of Germany and the complete overthrow of the Nazi regime.