SS Gruppenführer, Police Lieutenant General Heinrich Müller - the most sinister and mysterious figure of the Third Reich. After a long time, this name haunts many truth seekers in the world. According to the official version, it is believed that he died during street battles. But new versions periodically appear in the press, supported by documents that show that this villain managed to get out of besieged Berlin in the spring of 1945 and lived comfortably until 1983. Who helped him avoid the Nuremberg trials? Who did he work for after the war?
Childhood, youth, family
The biography of Heinrich Müller began on April 28, 1900. He was born in the capital of Bavaria, Munich, into the family of a former gendarmerie officer Alois Müller and Anna Müller (Schraindl). His sister died in childhood, and he grew up the only child in the family. It was an exemplary family with strong Catholic views. Nevertheless, according to the characteristic given to him by the school teacher, the child was very spoiled and prone to lies.
Heinrich Müller graduated from elementary school in the small Bavarian town of Ingolstadt on the Danube River, after his parents moved to the city of Schrobenhausen, he entered a working school in 1907. He received school education in the Bavarian town of Krumbach. After that he entered as an apprentice at an aircraft factory in Munich. He studied the profession for three years, but did not work on it.
Military service
In 1917 he enlisted in the army, where he underwent military training for six months. He was assigned to further studies in the rank of apprentice pilot. After four months of special training, he is sent to the front by a pilot in the aviation unit, where he served for 2 years. For this short period he received two iron crosses of 1 and 2 degrees. At the end of 1919, Heinrich Müller was fired as an invalid with the rank of sergeant major. Having worked for some time as a forwarder, he decides to go to work for the police, in which he then receives a certificate of secondary education.
Police service
Heinrich Müller, who was not properly educated, envied educated people and had a hatred for intellectuals. In the twenties, he held a position in the political department of the Munich police. He was considered a good specialist in the secret work of the Communist Party of Germany. Thanks to the reports he regularly provided to his superiors, he was aware of not only the affairs of the Communist Party, but also the Comintern and the USSR intelligence.
His colleagues did not like him and said that during a friendly conversation with him they felt like they were being interrogated. In 1933, police purged, as a result of which many were fired. But he was left, because the authorities really needed the materials provided by Müller.
Mueller's Marriage
In 1924, another important event took place in the biography and family of Heinrich Müller. He married Sophia Dishner, who came from a wealthy family of the owner of the printing house. In marriage with her, he had two children: a son and a daughter. But family life was not entirely successful. The couple practically lived separately. He makes his mistress in Berlin, already being the head of the Gestapo. His wife survived him and lived up to 90 years.
Muller's Oddities
The future head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, loved his work, from which he stayed from morning to night. I didn’t take leave and never got sick. He preferred work in the office, was an inveterate bureaucrat and a great pedant. Not a single piece of paper passed by him, which he would certainly study and come up. The information he owned made him indispensable for his superiors. He was mostly silent, preferring to listen to what others were saying. I tried not to bulge out, being all the time in the background.
His appearance aroused bewilderment among his superiors. He was short in stature, trimmed almost baldly, only a small tuft of hair, divided into a straight parting, “decorated” his head. The brown eyes and accent of the Bavarian, according to his Berlin boss Himmler, were a clear sign of inferiority. The Bavarians with brown eyes were not to his liking. But he was tolerant of Muller, since he owned valuable information.
Friction with the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP)
Heinrich Müller had a difficult relationship with the NSDAP, which opposed his promotion in 1936. The Munich party leadership justified its position by the fact that, pursuing the left, he violated the rule of law. He is not worthy to be in the party for the reason that he is not a de facto National Socialist, he hates those who interfere with his career. If his superiors ordered the persecution of the right, he would do so, since he does not share the convictions of the NSDAP. The party leadership in Pazig generally characterized him as a person unworthy of being a party member.
The career growth of the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller showed the opposite. Despite the fact that the party is against it, experts like him are needed. Despite the negative characterization given to him in Munich, he made a leap in his career, stepping over three steps. And in 1937 he received the rank of SS Standartenfuhrer. He becomes a party member only thanks to Himmler in 1939.
Career after the Nazis came to power
It was from 1933 that Müller's career began. Having overcome all the vicissitudes of the party, he began to quickly move up the career ladder. In the fall of 1939, while continuing to speak the Bavarian dialect, the criminal police adviser was promoted to chief of the Gestapo. The biography of Heinrich Müller soon replenished with even higher ranks. In 1941, he was already a lieutenant general of the police and SS gruppenfuhrer.
Work relationship
Mueller's dreams came true. His fury at work, thorough information about any person in the country's leadership did not go unnoticed. Reaching the very top of the Reich, SS gruppenführer Heinrich Müller felt superior to many highly educated officials. Confident of his need, he did not even seek out a glance at Himmler, Bormann, and his immediate superior, Heydrich, to whom he owed his career.
He maintained the same attitude to Kaltenbrunner, who became his boss after the death of Heydrich. Schellenberg, the head of political intelligence and the head of the criminal police, Nebe was annoyed and repelled only by his appearance. But Müller didn’t care much about it, since the zeal in work and the dossiers on each Partigenigenoss forced him to reckon with.
Despite the fact that the career growth of Heinrich Müller after the death of Heydrich ceased, his real power increased. This was thanks to his conditional boss Kaltenbrunner, who led the General Directorate of Imperial Security. Muller took an active part in repressive politics. The mere word "Gestapo" terrified any resident of Germany and the occupied territory, but he carried out all his decisions on behalf of Himmler and Kaltenbrunner, in reality remaining a simple performer.
Muller Crimes
As the direct head (chief) of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller led the reprisals, both in Germany and in the occupied territories, including the Soviet Union. Millions of those tortured and killed, including hundreds of thousands of killed Soviet prisoners of war, whose lives were interrupted by his instruction on how to handle them, were signed. This is a Nazi criminal who managed to escape the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Buddy muller
Before the war, the political and military intelligence of the USSR had extensive and well-conspired networks in Germany, but with the advent of Mueller, they began to slowly disappear. By the way, the same can be said about the German agents in Moscow. The main reason for the failures of Soviet agents was radio communications, the sessions of which, according to the instructions of the center, took hours, which made it possible to detect the transmitter and calculate the agent.
For the most part, the radio operator and his walkie-talkie were used by the Gestapo in a radio game, to which Partigenigenoss attached great importance. An interesting fact: Heinrich Muller and Schellenberg agreed each radio game personally with Hitler, since the often transmitted information used in disinformation was genuine. But in Soviet intelligence, even the most reliable information of political and military intelligence was treated with caution, trying to verify it in other ways.
Last days
Heinrich Müller fell out of sight of his entourage at the very beginning of May 1945. The investigation, conducted in 1961 by the West German prosecutor’s office, found that on April 28 he was conducting an interrogation. He survived Hitler's suicide in the basement of the Reich Chancellery, which is almost next to the bunker. Interviewed witnesses testified that they had seen him for the last time on 02/01/19/45.
At this time, at night, a group of fascists decided to break through the Soviet environment. Müller refused the offer to follow along with them, saying that he knows how the Chekists work and that he has no desire to be captured. Some of them suggested that he decided to commit suicide. But Mueller knew that there was practically no chance for such a group to break through, which really happened.
Mueller's death - was she?
This is the secret of Heinrich Müller, which has not yet been solved. The official version says that on 08/06/1945, during the clearing of the territory of the Imperial Ministry of Aviation, a man’s body was found in a temporary grave in a uniform and with a certificate in the name of SS Mueller groupführer. When compared with photography, a relative resemblance to a corpse was established. The reburial in 1945 was carried out at the old Jewish cemetery. To verify the authenticity of the remains of Heinrich Müller, a German judge authorized the exhumation of the skeletons found in the grave. An examination conducted in 1961 established that there were no remains of a gruppenführer in it. The documents did not show registered fingerprints.
A little later, in 1956, the first rumors appeared that Mueller was alive. Walter Schellenberg poured oil into the fire , who publicly stated that his colleague had been recruited by the NKVD and allegedly had been seen in Moscow. Even the date of his death was called - 1948.
Later, new versions appeared, witnesses who saw Mueller in Latin America. American investigative journalists found that Muller was recruited by the CIA and resided in the United States, where he died at the age of 83. They allegedly confirmed their justifications with certain documents, the authenticity of which was not possible to confirm.
Reasons Muller could not die in 1945
The Gestapo chief was not a mere mortal. He was a man of monstrous capacity for work and phenomenal memory. He had a rule - to finish even the smallest, most insignificant matter. He knew perfectly all the rules of conspiracy, which he studied while working against the Communists. In his hands were all means, from fake but reliable documents to safe houses, including those located near Hitler's bunker.
He knew everything about any person at the top of the Reich. His legendary folder with information on any high-ranking member of the Reich was never even in Himmler’s hands, he went with her to personal reports to the Fuhrer. It was well known that each and every SS man had a characteristic tattoo under his arm, where the SS sign and blood type were depicted. It was on them or on wounds and scars under the arm that the majority of the Gestapo members were identified. The only exception was Mueller, who did not get a tattoo. For all the years of work in the secret police, only 9 photos of the Gestapo chief were taken, he was always in the shadows.
This suggests that Müller, being a phenomenal analyst, tried in advance to protect himself. Recent events left him no doubt about the collapse of the Reich. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that Müller, who rarely wore a uniform, appeared on May 1, 1945 in Hitler’s bunker in a dazzling white tunic with all the awards and told everyone present that he was going to commit suicide so as not to fall into the hands of the Russians . It was not like Muller, who did not discuss his issues with outsiders. It was the white tunic that allowed everyone to remember his last words.
His mistress said that in April 1945, Henry last visited her and burned all personal documents. He left her a vial of poison and said that he had the same and he was going to commit suicide. Still alarming is the fact that few people knew Müller by sight, except for the highest ranks of the Reich and the Gestapo workers, who after the collapse tried to hide. He remains alone in the bunker, where he had the opportunity to pick up a suitable corpse and put on his bright and memorable form, put a certificate.
Secrets of the century. Heinrich Müller. Life after death
Now let's imagine a cold analyst, a good conspirator with all the intelligence in his hands, who decided to take his own life. He was not a fanatical party member, crushed and lost. He was a calculating professional at the age of 45, full of strength and hope. He knew how to create complex and complicated situations in life, to think over, stage and direct his disappearance. And apparently, he did it.
Lost in the mass of refugees will not be difficult for a professional who has good documents in his hands. Another strange circumstance suggests that Mueller was able to leave alive from Berlin. In the midst of street fighting in Berlin, a single-seat light aircraft flew towards Switzerland. Muller was a pilot who flew to Paris in his youth. But versions remain versions, and the mystery of Mueller’s disappearance remains unsolved