SUCH PEOPLE DO NOT KILL

By

 

Kommersant

22 min

View Original

Recently, in the anniversary year of the creation of the television series "Seventeen Moments of Spring", it seemed that he did not leave the television screen - the tenth moment had not yet ended on one channel, and the second was being played on the other. Once again, we relished the life of the elite of the Hitlerite Reich, performed by magnificent actors. Without even thinking that this cult film could well have been watched by one of its heroes. Maybe even Heinrich Müller himself, a former SS-Gruppenführer, bearer of the world famous nickname Gestapo-Müller, watched another replay of Lyoznov's television series, sitting in a small-sized room somewhere in a Moscow new building near a home screen in soft slippers and an old-fashioned dressing gown long ago, sighing at the sight of old joys and sipping kefir from a bottle according to the habit acquired in the second home ...

Dbut, there is a very persistent version that Mueller was not killed, that he allegedly worked for Soviet intelligence at all, and after the war he successfully forged personnel in the bowels of our state security. Where does this strange assumption come from? From the most convincing argument used in the search for criminals: look for who benefits. Who needed and benefited from Mueller? An example and mentor in a promising and influencing field of activity for the entire second half of the 20th century - in the formation and functioning of the "chivalry of the writing desk", the "armchair class", the class of the imperious upper bureaucracy? But the Soviet Union, having become a world empire after 1945, canceled the bet on the romantic Korchagins (the last of them were finished off by the war) and began to select and multiply this new class of pragmatic careerists in unprecedented numbers, for which the Kremlin really needed people,

Of course, one argument, even a classical one, is not enough. However, is he really alone?

ITS RESULTS

I don’t know if the “Our Achievements” plaque hung in the headquarters of the Gestapo (Berlin, Prinz-Albrechtstrasse 8, in the buildings of the former vocational school and the former Museum of Folklore). But if it did, the owner of the premises, who was the last to leave them at the end of April 1945 (like the captain - his sinking ship), could pin only one sheet of writing paper with several numbers on this board - and anyone who saw this sheet would shudder. The last Gestapo chief to leave the already blazing walls of his "office" was Heinrich Müller, Lieutenant General of Police, SS-Gruppenfuehrer, who, regardless of his title, was the real manager of affairs in the Gestapo. And the numbers he could write on the sheet are as follows: “Under the leadership and with the participation of my department, destroyed in prisons, concentration camps and operational groups (Einsatzgruppen):

Jews - 6 million

Soviet prisoners of war in concentration camps - 5.7 million,

concentration camp prisoners from the USSR - 3.3 million,

civilians on the territory of the USSR - from 700 to 800 thousand,

members of the Resistance - several hundred thousand (figures are being specified),

the political opposition is almost completely (several million) ”.

But the Gestapo most likely did not have such a board (or stand). Mueller did not tolerate publicity, did not advertise the results of his work and the achievements of the team of subordinates. It took the efforts of many investigators and many years of their research to reveal at least some part of what Mueller and his campaigners did. Much more is a mystery. Mueller himself is still a mystery. Investigative bodies and special services of the largest countries of Europe, Asia, America fought and are fighting over this riddle. Only the competent authorities of the USSR and its satellites, starting with the GDR, remained indifferent to it and inactive in this aspect. And this strange circumstance is also part of the riddle, formulated fictionally as follows: "Who are you, Herr Müller?"

HIS BOSSES

The proverb of clerks and servicemen: "Tell me who your boss is, and I will tell you who you are" is a special case of a more general truth: "Every nation is worthy of its rulers." Will we be able to "catch in the crosshair" Müller, comparing the SS-Gruppenfuehrer with his four direct bosses?

The highest of them is Adolf Hitler, the formal commander-in-chief of the SS forces (the Gestapo is part of the SS, a subdivision of the SS). The ideological, psychological and behavioral constant of the Fuhrer of the German people is the desire for unlimited power and world domination. Apart from them, Hitler was not particularly interested in anything. (The Gestapo-Müller was indifferent to these "higher goals".) The next three above Müller are Himmler, Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner. Chief among them is Himmler, their common boss, the Reichsfuehrer SS. The other two - Heydrich and Kaltenbrunner - are his subordinates, both at different times chiefs of the RSHA (Main Directorate of Imperial Security) and SD (SS Security Service), the second replaced the first in this post when he was killed by the Czech Resistance fighters. These four are Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich,

But what particularly sharply distinguished Mueller from his bosses - all four were under investigation, and two were even in prison, while he, on the contrary, was imprisoned himself, being absolutely law-abiding.

Young Hitler sat down for his Munich putsch. Young Himmler was accused at the trial on suspicion of the murder of a prostitute, on whose income he lived (in fact, he pimped). Young Heydrich was judged by honor and by his decision was expelled from the naval officer for rape. Kaltenbrunner, who in his youth established ties between the SS of Austria (where he was born) and Germany (for which he worked), served time in an Austrian prison for treason.

The young years of Muller and all his four leaders were different - it is not enough to say, they were contrasting, polar. After the defeat in the First World War, Germany plunged into the abyss of revolution, civil war (lost by the Reds), devastation and chaos. Four future SS bosses in those years of the "collapse of the empire" collapsed from the honorary shelves of the social bookcase (Hitler - from the pedestal of a front-line corporal who received a soldier's Iron Cross and was severely injured after a gas attack on the front line; Himmler, the son of the school director, - from the cozy niche of his favorite family, an avid gardener and a poultry farmer; Heydrich, son of the director of the conservatory, - from the path of a child prodigy violinist and a young military officer; Kaltenbrunner, the son of a lawyer - from the initial stages of law practice) to the bottom of life, teeming with homeless people, bandits, thieves, prostitutes, embittered by hunger and outcast.

Most of all, Mueller and his leadership differed among themselves in what is commonly called the "world of addictions." Hitler outside politics (rare moments) was passionately fond of Wagner's music (Müller was not noticed in Wagnerism). Kaltenbrunner, the "mountain man", from his student years had the resounding fame of a fist fighter, an unsurpassed brawler (Mueller left this hard work to his subordinates, specialists in "interrogation of the third degree"). Heydrich considered his main life to be nightlife - in the company of his fellow SS men, he inspected one brothel after another until morning, looking for the meaning of being in the transcendental perversions with prostitutes of all ages and conditions, unless, of course, he was busy with his other favorite occupation - he did not torture for a long time and subtly his next victim in the basements of the Gestapo (Müller preferred to sleep at night, although he went to bed late or because of urgent work, or because of a protracted game of chess with some colleague, the same fanatic of this game as he is, and Mueller was looking for such fanatics of chess as a staff member). Himmler, as a former gardener and poultry farmer, was seized with the idea of ​​breeding true, pure Germans, refined Aryans, for which in special barracks "Lebensborn" mated young SS men from the selected bodyguard regiment of the Fuhrer "Adolf Hitler-Leibstandarte" with specially and scrupulously selected girls (in the thousands) in order to obtain from them the desired offspring - the "master race" for the future world Reich (Müller did not believe in the racial idea and in the technology of directed eugenics, especially since a lot of downs were born in Himmler's "poultry house", and he trusted more in the selection of Reich citizens for their agents, numbering in tens of thousands,

HIS STYLE

If, as can be seen from all of the above, Mueller contrasted so much with his bosses, why did they keep him in such a high position, why they arranged for him a crazy career, for which they forgave not just indifference to Nazi ideology and lack of piety towards the NSDAP, but also the pursuit of your party during your youth?

The secret is that Mueller turned the most indecent desires, the most shameful vices of his leaders into an industry, into a huge, loud, prestigious, powerful enterprise, which flattered the bosses, asserted them in itself, elevated them in their eyes.

Müller knew that, in addition to politics and art, Hitler had a secret passion - a bulky folder with copies of personal letters and transcripts of telephone conversations (even intimate) of his closest associates in the party and government, as well as high officials was put on the table every day for the Fuhrer to read the state apparatus, the SS, the party and the Wehrmacht. This folder of the Fuhrer was filled in personally by Müller. To prevent the folder from "losing weight", Mueller provided wiretapping and tape recording of telephone conversations, radio communications, and mail viewing. Not only that - the Gestapo dossier contained information about millions of people, and in order for the information to be rechecked and replenished, an automatic filing cabinet was mounted in the Gestapo - an aggregate that was a colossus the size of a two-story building and was controlled by only one operator!

Müller not only took Heydrich's night orgies for granted, but also creatively reworked it into something desirable and useful for the Gestapo, as a result of which the Gestapo organized the Kitty Salon, renting a former Berlin hotel through dummies and turning it into a fashionable brothel stuffed with equipment eavesdropping and sound recording. The "girls" of this secret and unprecedented radio-equipped and telephonic brothel were selected through a complex competition, in which, in addition to knowledge of languages ​​(to serve diplomats), physical data, memory and ideological Nazi stuffing inside a sexy uniform were tested. On special occasions in the apartments of the "Salon Kitty", along with the sound recording and filming with a hidden camera was carried out - needless to say that these footage, the characters of which were the stars of the political horizon of the Reich and the diplomatic corps,

Müller quickly and in a businesslike manner appreciated the breeding aspirations of the SS Reichsfuehrer Himmler - in the blissful, almost heavenly idyll of the Lebensborns, a barracks for breeding young males of the Fuhrer's personal guard regiment with selected young Aryan females, Himmler carried out a “positive breeding line” of the masters, but, since he personally fainted at the sight of the death penalty, the destruction of the "negative line" - ensuring the disappearance of the "chaff" after their separation from the "seeds" - was entrusted to the Gestapo and personally to Müller. He organized an extermination machine, ideal in terms of technology and uninterrupted operation - from the broadly used right of the Gestapo to arrest anyone and everyone and put them in a death camp without presenting any grounds or any arrest warrants (with the absolute lack of jurisdiction of all SS officials,

Müller recognized the cherished professional hegemonic aspirations of Kaltenbrunner, a former lawyer, and successfully contributed to their implementation. Mueller instructed the Gestapo to decide on the life and death of prisoners precisely to the council of lawyers - only they gave sanction to the death penalty. But the main thing in which Mueller supported Kaltenbrunner was the desire for a monopoly on information, the struggle of the RSHA to transfer all types of intelligence services to the imperial security service (modeled on the Stalinist Lubyanka) - military, political, and economic. As soon as Hitler agreed to this, to Mueller's great joy his dream came true - the RSHA (with the Gestapo) and the NKVD became twins, not just brothers.

And, finally, for the sake of his chief boss, going, as they say, towards his innermost aspirations, Müller made an enterprise on the scale of world history. He knew that after the signing of the Munich Agreement, when Britain and France gave Hitler the Sudetes and doomed Czechoslovakia to the German occupation, the Fuhrer exclaimed more than once with bitterness: "They stole my war from me!" Since childhood, Adolf Hitler dreamed of military glory, having led Germany, he revived the army and persistently prepared it for action. And Müller started this main business of Hitler - he prepared and conducted a mock attack by the Poles on the German border radio station in Gleiwitz, and did it as clearly and realistically as possible - with the corpses of “Polish soldiers” (prisoners of concentration camps disguised as them), with victims among the Germans. Under the pretext of revenge for Gleiwitz, Hitler ordered the army to crush Poland.

Müller is the man who started World War II!

ITS STRANGE

It was no coincidence that Müller sided with Kaltenbrunner in his implementation of the Soviet model of super special service, which he considered unsurpassed. Many times the head of the Gestapo, in the presence of his colleagues (in particular, the SS intelligence officer Schellenberg) and people close to him (primarily two mistresses), confessed his admiration for Stalin and the Stalinist state system, which he called ideal, admired the success of the Kremlin and the Lubyanka in repressive practice , in the establishment of total control over the people and over an individual, the setting of torture and the perfection of the Gulag in the implementation of the formula for the functioning of concentration camps in the USSR, discovered by its leaders: "death through labor" - formulas,

When Müller praised the order in the USSR, he knew what he was saying - the top leadership of the Hitlerite Reich needed him precisely as a specialist in communism, which he became in the 20s in the Munich police, where he was noticed by Himmler as an excellent specialist and zealous hard worker and taken to the central office of the SD and the Gestapo in Berlin. It was Mueller who became the first main mentor of his direct superiors in the RSHA on Marxism, the history and life of the Russian Bolsheviks, the German Communist Party, the Comintern, the Stalinist Central Committee, the NKVD - he dictated to his secretary and mistress Barbara H. essays on the theory and practice of world communism, which diligently studied by Himmler and Heydrich.

It was in the superiority of the Stalinist model of the state over Hitler's that Muller saw the reasons for the victories of the Red Army and the defeat of Germany in the war in the East. “They are better,” Mueller explained to his mistress Anna S. at the end of April 1945 the reason for the appearance of a Soviet tank outside the window of her Berlin mansion, when Anna helped Mueller burn his documents in the fireplace - passport, IDs, order books. At the same time, as one of the reasons for the German defeat, Müller called the too impermissibly high level of culture of the German people, citing as an example the difference in the behavior of high-ranking military men convicted in the USSR along with Marshal Tukhachevsky for conspiracy against Stalin, and high-ranking officers arrested in Germany for participating in the assassination attempt against Hitler: those in the USSR repented and called dozens of accomplices, and these, in Germany,

There was nothing new in such speeches, for Müller liked to say that he would gladly collect all the intellectuals in one mine and blow it up. And at the same time, among his subordinates and closest employees, recruited by him to his headquarters personally, the overwhelming majority had a higher education, and some had two.

It is interesting that Mueller did not enter into Hitler's party in principle, not only before she came to power, but also for six years in a row after her accession, when the Nazis triumphantly ruled Germany, and this new regime, immediately after its emergence, was elevated to one of the highest and the most responsible positions in the SS and the state apparatus. In the archives of the Nazi Party, documents have been preserved that document Mueller's pre-existing actions and statements in different years, making it clear his more than cool attitude towards Nazism and the Nazis. Back on March 9, 1933, at the time of the capture of the government by the Nazis, a Munich police officer (the citadel of Nazism) Mueller, having learned that SA stormtroopers were going to move into the building of the city police department where he worked and turn it into a NSDAP club, shouted to his colleagues - to the police: "Let them just stick around, we'll show them! " Later, taking a leading position in the RSHA, Müller summoned to Berlin and demonstratively took his close friend and colleague in the Munich police, Franz-Josef Huber, to the central office of the Gestapo, a professional Nazi hunter during the Weimar Republic, who persecuted communists and extremism alike and Hitlerites. Moreover, Mueller provided Huber, during the years of their Munich cooperation, who publicly covered Adolf Hitler with almost obscenities, almost lightning-fast promotion to large posts in his "office" and high ranks in the SS. Actions of this kind - and there were many of them - caused an angry and hysterical reaction of the party bosses and an avalanche of denunciations against Mueller to Hitler and Bormann. Müller summoned to Berlin and demonstratively took his close friend and colleague in the Munich police, Franz Josef Huber, a professional Nazi hunter during the Weimar Republic, which equally persecuted both communists and Nazis for extremism, into the central office of the Gestapo. Moreover, Mueller provided Huber, during the years of their Munich cooperation, who publicly covered Adolf Hitler with almost obscenities, almost lightning-fast promotion to large posts in his "office" and high ranks in the SS. Actions of this kind - and there were many of them - caused an angry and hysterical reaction of the party bosses and an avalanche of denunciations against Mueller to Hitler and Bormann. Müller summoned to Berlin and demonstratively took his close friend and colleague in the Munich police, Franz Josef Huber, a professional Nazi hunter during the Weimar Republic, which equally persecuted both communists and Nazis for extremism, into the central office of the Gestapo. Moreover, Mueller provided Huber, during the years of their Munich cooperation, who publicly covered Adolf Hitler with almost obscenities, almost lightning-fast promotion to large posts in his "office" and high ranks in the SS. Actions of this kind - and there were many of them - caused an angry and hysterical reaction of the party bosses and an avalanche of denunciations against Mueller to Hitler and Bormann. Moreover, Mueller provided Huber, during the years of their Munich cooperation, who publicly covered Adolf Hitler with almost obscenities, almost lightning-fast promotion to large posts in his "office" and high ranks in the SS. Actions of this kind - and there were many of them - caused an angry and hysterical reaction of the party bosses and an avalanche of denunciations against Mueller to Hitler and Bormann. Moreover, Mueller provided Huber, during the years of their Munich cooperation, who publicly covered Adolf Hitler with almost obscenities, almost lightning-fast promotion to large posts in his "office" and high ranks in the SS. Actions of this kind - and there were many of them - caused an angry and hysterical reaction of the party bosses and an avalanche of denunciations against Mueller to Hitler and Bormann.

The suspicion of the Nazi functionaries was also aroused by the lack of mercy of the Gestapo chief: a modest lifestyle, and indifference to luxury, and a dislike for uniforms and regalia - it was noticed that even in the Reich Chancellery, Müller prefers to walk in civilian clothes and without his high orders, and even the fact that During the difficult war years for Germany, the Gestapo-Müller, as the whole country and all of Europe called him, did not attach to any distributor, refused special rations, but not ration cards, which ordinary employees of Berlin lived. Moreover, Muller had a characteristic "social fad" - anger against the "bourgeois", business people, clever businessmen, whom he called "American types": one of them, Eduard Winter, manager of the Opel automobile concern and Goering's protégé, tortured interrogations, surveillance, checks of his financial condition and transactions, and all only because he quickly became rich and, as a result, acquired influence in the Berlin power structures. Conversely, when the so-called ordinary people were arrested, Müller demanded a thorough check of compromising evidence on them, and there are cases of release from prison of those who fell victim to slanderous denunciations (as a rule, on charges of anti-Nazi sentiments, but with a purely selfish or careerist motive). And once Müller managed to save from torture and dangerous punishment an ordinary soldier who incurred the wrath of Heydrich himself. British intelligence agent Best, whom Müller personally interrogated in the central prison of the Gestapo, said: "In my opinion, Müller was a decent man." that he quickly grew rich and as a result acquired influence in the Berlin power structures. Conversely, when the so-called ordinary people were arrested, Müller demanded a thorough check of compromising evidence on them, and there are cases of release from prison of those who fell victim to slanderous denunciations (as a rule, on charges of anti-Nazi sentiments, but with a purely selfish or careerist motive). And once Müller managed to save from torture and dangerous punishment an ordinary soldier who incurred the wrath of Heydrich himself. British intelligence agent Best, whom Müller personally interrogated in the central prison of the Gestapo, said: "In my opinion, Müller was a decent man." that he quickly grew rich and as a result acquired influence in the Berlin power structures. Conversely, when the so-called ordinary people were arrested, Müller demanded a thorough check of compromising evidence on them, and there are cases of release from prison of those who fell victim to slanderous denunciations (as a rule, on charges of anti-Nazi sentiments, but with a purely selfish or careerist motive). And once Müller managed to save from torture and dangerous punishment an ordinary soldier who incurred the wrath of Heydrich himself. British intelligence agent Best, whom Müller personally interrogated in the central prison of the Gestapo, said: "In my opinion, Müller was a decent man." and there are known cases of the release from prison of those who became the victim of slanderous denunciations (as a rule, on charges of anti-Nazi sentiments, but with a purely selfish or careerist motive). And once Müller managed to save from torture and dangerous punishment an ordinary soldier who incurred the wrath of Heydrich himself. British intelligence agent Best, whom Müller personally interrogated in the central prison of the Gestapo, said: "In my opinion, Müller was a decent man." and there are known cases of the release from prison of those who became the victim of slanderous denunciations (as a rule, on charges of anti-Nazi sentiments, but with a purely selfish or careerist motive). And once Müller managed to save from torture and dangerous punishment an ordinary soldier who incurred the wrath of Heydrich himself. British intelligence agent Best, whom Müller personally interrogated in the central prison of the Gestapo, said: "In my opinion, Müller was a decent man."

But it is more accurate to form an opinion about Mueller's personality on the facts recorded in the documents of the Gestapo archive, since the archive seized by the victorious allies has been preserved almost in full. Here are some of these facts. Müller, without days off and holidays, from early morning until late at night, watched and watched in his office at the Gestapo headquarters on Prince Albrechtstrasse at his permanent desk, returning to him after any banquets and buffets, which sometimes he could not avoid in front of everyone trying to dodge them. Over the past five years of the leadership of the Gestapo, Mueller was absent from his workplace only twice - once he took time off for family reasons, in another case he fell ill due to a severe cold. Mueller adopted this working regime from his personal "right-flank" Joseph Stalin. With him, along with the role of a workaholic, Müller also copied the method of leadership: he always subordinated to himself only those who did not surpass him in the profession, and built the Gestapo system according to the principle of core competence - no one could be more informed than the task entrusted to him required. or an imputed area of ​​work, and it was only in Mueller's brain that a general picture emerged from the reports and reports of individual "screws of the machine". This is how Mueller put into practice the Stalinist principle of leadership: "He who possesses the maximum information has the maximum power." and it was only in Mueller's brain that a general picture emerged from the reports and reports of individual "cogs of the machine". This is how Mueller put into practice the Stalinist principle of leadership: "He who possesses the maximum information has the maximum power." and it was only in Mueller's brain that a general picture emerged from the reports and reports of individual "cogs of the machine". This is how Mueller put into practice the Stalinist principle of leadership: "He who possesses the maximum information has the maximum power."

The goal (in accordance with Stalinist practice) justified any means in Mueller's eyes. "Upper Nazis" demanded to exterminate Jews, representatives of lower races, oppositionists, the Soviet intelligentsia, captured Soviet intelligence officers and saboteurs, as well as members of the Resistance. Mueller, on the other hand, repeatedly met with Jewish leaders to search for compromise solutions, often tried to reduce the scale of the anti-Semitic genocide, justifying this either by the lack of SS capacity and forces, or by the need to exchange Jews for German prisoners of war, instead of the total destruction of "subhumans", he ordered them to be Germanized (especially specialists, physically strong and children),

There are circulars signed by Müller in the archives of the Gestapo obliging to treat Soviet prisoners of war (which the Germans could not have done, because Stalin in 1941 announced to the whole world that the USSR had no German prisoners, but traitors to the Motherland), Müller's orders were found, softening the regime of repression (and from the 44th - a ban on them) for German women, as well as for those Jews who had merits before Germany, found his permission to release Jews to freedom in some cases, to receive food parcels for most categories of camp prisoners (except , of course, Soviet). In the opinion of Müller's colleagues, if the solution of the Jewish question depended on him personally, no genocide against the Jews would have been carried out. It is worth adding to this, that, as a result of the activities of the SS commission for detecting abuses sanctioned by Müller and as a result of its investigations in the concentration camp system, despite the opposition of the direct chiefs of the Gestapo chief, a number of camp leaders, guards and guards were convicted by the SS court, and some were sentenced to death for cruelty and unauthorized killings. It must be borne in mind: the orders for the mass extermination of Jews, commissars of the Red Army, the death penalty and the creation of death camps were signed by members of the highest leadership of the Reich - Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Field Marshals Keitel and von Reichenau. Müller carried out the orders, for otherwise he would have been destroyed. guard commanders and guards were convicted by the SS court, and some were sentenced to death for cruelty and unsanctioned killings. It must be borne in mind: the orders for the mass extermination of Jews, commissars of the Red Army, the death penalty and the creation of death camps were signed by members of the highest leadership of the Reich - Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Field Marshals Keitel and von Reichenau. Müller carried out the orders, for otherwise he would have been destroyed. guard commanders and guards were convicted by the SS court, and some were sentenced to death for cruelty and unsanctioned killings. It must be borne in mind: the orders for the mass extermination of Jews, commissars of the Red Army, the death penalty and the creation of death camps were signed by members of the highest leadership of the Reich - Hitler, Goering, Himmler, Heydrich, Kaltenbrunner, Field Marshals Keitel and von Reichenau. Müller carried out the orders, for otherwise he would have been destroyed.

There are a number of orders of repression, signed personally by Müller and have a strange character and amusing subtext. Here, for example, is his order to all departments of the Gestapo in the territories of the old Reich (actually Germany) and the countries occupied by the Wehrmacht in June 1941: "I grant the right to arrest seemingly especially dangerous Communist Party functionaries as soon as the opportunity presents itself." Almost every word here is a sensation! Hitler has been in power for eight years. The chief of the Gestapo - to the omnipotent Gestapo for eight years: "I grant the right to take ..." "Particularly dangerous functionaries of the Communist Party ..." And not really? And this is what happens - for eight years (how many Nazis have been in power) "especially dangerous" communists have been roaming free? .. But a similar order from Mueller dated August 17, 1944 (!): In the case of a special double (! ) signal ("grid" and "thunderstorm") must be arrested ... the secretaries of the Communist Party and the Socialist Party of Germany. Se-kr-ta-ri! Phantasmagoria ... In eight months, the Wehrmacht will be finally defeated, the Reich will collapse, Hitler will commit suicide - and the leaders of the enemy parties are still freezing in the wild (to say nothing of the rank and file!), And in order to arrest them, to touch them with a finger, local Gestapo departments should receive from Berlin not just a signal, but a double one, and God forbid, only one half of it will be counted as a whole! Tell this to the veterans of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - after all, they will not believe! But this is a document with Mueller's own handwritten signature. But these are flowers. During the Nuremberg trials, investigators interrogated the head of the SD (SS security service) intelligence, Schellenberg, and he testified that Mueller not only worshiped Stalin and the USSR, but also worked for the intelligence of the USSR. Let's remember this official testimony.

Still, the main strangeness of Mueller should be considered, perhaps, not his life, not his service, but his death. Muller is the only person in the world whose death was registered, but after the registration of his death, an arrest warrant was issued for his own, which is valid to this day.

HIS (?) DEATH (?)

"The death of SS Obergruppenfuehrer and Police Lieutenant General Heinrich Müller" - an action with this name, perhaps one of the most talented operations carried out by Müller at the end of the war. He began to cook it long before the 45th year. That Germany would lose the war with the Soviet Union, Müller began to guess (and he is not alone) back in 1943, and then he let slip about his guess in a conversation with Walter Schellenberg, and then to his secretary and mistress Barbara H. pathetically declared that the Fatherland was ready to collapse and the last bullet in his Walther's clip would belong to him. The phrase has not sunk into oblivion. Another mistress of Müller, Anna Sh., Who helped him, as already mentioned, at the end of April 1945 to burn personal documents at his Berlin villa, told the investigation that Müller could have a fake passport (of course!) And always had an ampoule with him with poison.

A little later, in Berlin, two corpses were found and buried in different parts of the city in the uniforms of an SS Gruppenfuehrer and with Müller's documents (but with ripped off photographs). One burial was made at the Jewish cemetery (it was not found), the second - at the Berlin-Neukölln cemetery, where in 1958 Mueller's children erected a monument. At the request of the prosecutor's office in 1963, this grave was opened and the remains found in it were examined at the Berlin Institute of Forensic Medicine, which gave the conclusion: the bones from the grave belong to six different people, the skull is not suitable for Heinrich Müller in size and age, the lower jaw of the skull does not fit the upper ...

In various statements and studies (in particular, in the memoirs of former German prisoners of war, in the testimony of SD intelligence chief Schellenberg at the Nuremberg trials, in an interview with the famous Zionist leader and super-knowledgeable master of secret diplomacy Simon Wiesenthal, in the investigation of the Focus magazine) with varying degrees of confidence and Evidence is called the address of Mueller's stay after the war - the USSR. Significant is the fact that in the smoky ruins of the Nazi Reich Chancellery on the night of May 2 to 3, 1945, Müller was not alone - his subordinate was always with him, who was engaged in the Gestapo with a radio game with Soviet intelligence and was in charge of the development of its caught agents.

What could he count on if he was not our spy (this is the weakest version)? Much.

Müller put political investigation on the rails of technical progress. He entangled the globe with a network of agents, entering the top authorities of all significant states. Müller knew the codes of many governments and armies, their developers and carriers. He was aware of the military and state secrets of the allied and enemy coalitions. Finally, he knew who was doing what in Germany - in science, engineering, military production and the General Staff, in politics: who was worth what, who was working for whom. He knew who was who on the globe. Such people are not killed.

Alexey DIDUROV

 

WE SPEAK - SHTIRLITS, IMPLY ... MUELLER?

By

 

Kommersant

18 min

View Original

Versions

Schellenberg was convinced that Mueller became a Soviet agent

Under the hood at Wiesenthal

In July 1961, three handsome gentlemen were sitting in a cozy bar in Vienna airport, leisurely sipping coffee. A few hours before departure, they parted ways with an elegant middle-aged man. His name was Simon Wiesenthal.

It was thanks to Wiesenthal's fantastic enthusiasm and unquenchable energy that many thousands of Nazi criminals were brought to justice. He was the first to receive information about Eichmann. At the beginning of 1961, Wiesenthal, together with his "Documentation Center for Searching for Nazi Criminals", moved from the provincial town of Linz to the Austrian capital Vienna.

By this day, he already had a fairly detailed card index for more than 20 thousand Nazis. Most of all, however, Wiesenthal was struck by the information he had received shortly before about the former chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller (which he shared with three Israelis who flew to London).

The story of the life and death of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller is still shrouded in secrecy. Heinrich Müller always tried to stay in the background. It was known that on April 28, 1945, he was in Hitler's Berlin bunker. After that, he sank into the water.

Years passed, and German prisoners of war began to return from Russia. And now one by one testimony began to appear - the chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, was seen in Moscow in the uniform of a state security colonel. Moreover, he allegedly attended some interrogations and closely monitored the correctness of the translations.

Then information came to Wiesenthal that Mueller allegedly moved to East Germany, where he constantly meets with his wife.

Naturally, the Mossad could not ignore this information. At that time, the whole world believed that the Almighty himself was helping Israel to carry out just retribution against the Nazis. In the 60s and 80s, trials of war criminals took place quite often. True, among all this pack of Nazis there were not so many of those "chief engineers" who launched the mechanism of bloody murders and horrific torture.

It took several years for employees of the department for tracing Nazi criminals in the Israeli Mossad to come to the conclusion that the information provided by Wiesenthal is not groundless. They managed to find out that Muller's wife, known for her sentimentality, accuracy and superstition, would not dare to throw away her husband's letters, which, if he was really alive, she should have received and kept.

In all likelihood, the unsuccessful visit of the Israelis to Frau Muller was due to an attempt to obtain confirmation that the Gestapo chief was somewhere nearby.

It is naive to believe that the failure that occurred in December 1967 in Starnberg could have stopped the Israelis. The Mossad would never leave Müller alone. However, as you know, it was not found. And his death (unlike Bormann, whose death was certified in 1973 after an examination of the remains recovered from a grave found near Hitler's bunker) - still has no official confirmation. True, in the same 73rd year, a man appeared in Berlin who said that he knew where Mueller was buried. He pointed to an unmarked grave in the city cemetery.

After observing the necessary formalities, they opened it and, to everyone's surprise, found there ... three skeletons. After conducting a postmortem examination, it turned out that none of them belonged to Heinrich Müller.

Perhaps (and now we can only guess), after the arrest of Mossad agents in West Germany, the Gestapo chief finally realized that he would not be left alone and disappeared. Second, Israeli intelligence has received real confirmation that Mueller is no longer alive. And finally, the third option - Heinrich Müller spent the rest of his life behind the Iron Curtain. One cannot but agree that for all its professionalism, the Mossad would hardly have dared to kidnap from the Soviet Union.

And the fact that he was there is very similar to the truth.

Under the hood at Müller

Mr. enrih Mueller started his career at the Munich police in 1919. In 1923, when an unsuccessful attempt at Hitler's coup was made in the ancient capital of Bavaria, Müller already had quite a lot of experience in fighting representatives of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). It is not easy to believe in this, but the fact that the "beer putsch" ended in collapse is no small merit of Müller.

Over the next 10 years, Criminal Police Inspector Heinrich Müller continued to successfully fight the Nazis. He managed to collect unique documentation, which consisted of separate dossiers, for almost all members of the NSDAP.

In 1933, when Hitler became Chancellor, Müller was the most respected expert on the Nazi Party. The Munich police treated him with respect and fear. By that time, he had already created a huge network of informant agents and could provide, as well as receive, any information that interested him.

Müller was not a member of the NSDAP, but nevertheless he was offered a leading position. This time he was ordered to liquidate the German Communist Party. Müller took up this task with the same zeal as he had done to eradicate the Nazi clique a few years ago. By 1935, one of the most influential and numerous communist parties in the world had only a few hundred members, and Mueller himself became the chief specialist on communism and the Soviet Union. That is why the head of the Main Imperial Security Directorate, Heydrich, suggested that Mueller head the "Soviet" department.

Basically, he didn't care who to fight with. He did not adhere to any convictions and derived personal benefit from every assignment he received.

Several years will pass, and as zealously as in previous years, Müller, who became the chief of the Gestapo, will begin to carry out the "final solution of the Jewish question." It was he who was the immediate head of the head of the 4th sector under the Gestapo department IV-B - the head of the "very diligent and extremely executive" Obersturmbannführer - Karl Eichmann.

In carrying out his work, Mueller admired Stalin and the NKVD more than once. He believed that they brilliantly completed all the tasks assigned to them. Not paying attention to the bewilderment of those around him, Mueller said that it is very difficult to achieve success in the fight against his people. And Stalin raised it to the stage of art, and one cannot but admire it, - he added.

However, is it possible that Mueller's admiration for the Soviet system had other reasons as well?

Under the hood at Schellenberg

The shackle erupted in 1939, when the leadership of the NSDAP party became aware that one of the people belonging to its elite, namely the chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, was not a member of the Nazi party. Immediately after that, Mueller was ordered to join the ranks of the NSDAP in an ultimatum order.

He shrugged his shoulders and ... applied. The party commission, having considered Mueller's petition, made a decision that was not quite standard for those times: "To refuse it as inappropriate to the party charter."

When the namesake of the rejected candidate, Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, found out, he was furious. A minute after the call to the Gestapo commission, all formalities were settled, and Mueller received a crisp new NSDAP member ticket.

After the start of the offensive on the Eastern Front, Mueller, having no direct relation to counterintelligence, began an active struggle against the spy network of the Soviet army. It was he who played the main role in the bloody defeat of the famous "Red Chapel" ("Red Orchestra").

Walter Schellenberg, the head of intelligence or the VI Directorate of the RSHA, was amazed at Müller's behavior. In the book of memoirs "The Schellenberg Memoirs", published shortly before his death in 1952, Schellenberg writes that in 1942 Gestapo agents managed to seize several radio transmitters used by Soviet intelligence officers. He soon learned that Müller had ordered the two radios to be left at the Gestapo. When Schellenberg inquired about this strange decision of the chief of the secret police, Müller said that he didn’t believe that he had received all the information from the arrested "orchestra members." In addition, he told Schellenberg that he wanted to try to continue transmitting disinformation to Moscow.

When Schellenberg learned that the chief of the Gestapo had hired a highly qualified radio communications expert, this information aroused even greater suspicion in him. In addition, he knew very well that the implementation of disinformation operations requires careful preparation and the involvement of a large circle of specialists. Nobody seemed to know about Mueller's plans. And in any case, such a grandiose plan could not remain unknown to Schellenberg, the man holding the post of chief of the VI (intelligence) directorate of the RSHA.

The youngest general in Germany, Walter Schellenberg, was famous for his professionalism and excellent education - he was one of the few leaders of the Third Reich who had a university degree in law. Even before the defeat of Hitler was only a matter of time, he openly advocated improving the conditions of detention of concentration camp prisoners and even sought their release. (By the way, these facts were taken into account at one of the military tribunals in Nuremberg. Schellenberg was charged only with belonging to the criminal organizations of the SD and SS. For this he was sentenced to six years in prison, but released early in 1951. ) At the same time, Mueller was known for his unscrupulousness, cruelty and cunning.

Schellenberg realized that the evidence at his disposal was insufficient to bring any charges against Mueller.

Two years have passed. In February 1944, Hitler signed an order to disband the military intelligence service (Abwehr), which had long irritated him. Much of the documentation, operational communications and the main counterintelligence functions fell into the department of Mueller. The first thing he did was to end all counterintelligence operations against the Soviet Union.

When this became known, Schellenberg again tried to sort things out with a competitor. Mueller said that over the past years, actions against the "Russians" have been so successful that they have long ceased any attempts to collect information on German territory.

“Our main goal is to fight the British and Americans,” he announced.

Schellenberg could not object to this pathetic statement of the chief Gestapo man. Of course, he could not believe that there were no more Soviet agents in Germany. But again he had no proof.

However, a few months later, at the end of 1944, Walter Schellenberg received evidence of the presence of an enemy scout in Berlin.

Employees of the SD interception service tracked the signals of a radio transmitter broadcasting eastward to the location of the Polish city of Gdansk (Danzig). The most interesting thing was that they came from the premises of the main department of the Gestapo. Before starting the search, Schellenberg ordered the decryption of the radiogram. No matter how hard the SD ransomware fought, they did not succeed. The only thing they could tell their boss was that the cipher code was identical to the Belgian and Parisian ciphers used by the head of the Red Chapel, Leopold Trepper.

The end of the war, which became obvious to everyone, prevented Schellenberg from completing the investigation he had begun, however, without receiving the necessary information and evidence, he had no doubt that the Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller worked for Soviet intelligence.

Food for thought

B ost citizens of the Soviet Union learned of the existence of Heinrich Müller in 1973, when the All-Union television broadcast a 12-part film Tatiana Lioznova "Seventeen Moments of Spring." The premiere of the TV movie contributed to the immense popularity of the book of the same name by Yulian Semyonov.

It seems to me that it looks extremely surprising that one of the main war criminals, who undoubtedly was the chief of the Gestapo, is represented, if not positive, then at least a very human character. It is also surprising that despite the obvious tendency towards strict adherence to historical truth in everything that concerns the real characters in the novel and in its adaptation, a number of inaccuracies were made in relation to the image of Heinrich Müller.

All the actors who played the roles of real characters had a striking external resemblance to their heroes. Remember Fritz Dietz, who played Hitler, Nikolai Prokopovich, who appeared in the form of Himmler, the late Yuri Vizbor and the unforgettable Bormann, Oleg Tabakov - Schellenberg, Kaltenbrunner performed by Mikhail Zharkovsky. Even Vasily Lanovoy was very similar to the little-known general Karl Wolf.

In a word, everything was done as it should be in professional cinema. The only character that had nothing to do with his prototype was Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, brilliantly performed by actor Leonid Bronevoy. Moreover, those who have ever seen Mueller's photograph were shocked by such a striking discrepancy. The real Muller had a beautiful head of hair without a single gray hair, and Muller - Bronevoy, as if deliberately protruding a bald head, showed the audience the scanty remnants of completely white hair. The chief of the Gestapo (by the way, the only character in both books and films) constantly emphasizes his advanced age. And at the very end of the story about the "exploit of the scout" Muller-Bronevoy declares with obvious regret:

- Here you, Stirlitz, in the 65th year will be under 70, and for me - about 80!

In reality, Heinrich Müller was born in 1900, therefore, at the beginning of 1945, when the events of "Seventeen Moments ..." unfold, the Gestapo chief was only 44 years old ... It's too early to complain about old age.

Could it be the actor's age?

Not at all. Stirlitz - Vyacheslav Tikhonov at the time of filming was as old as the real Muller, that is, 44. In the film, he appears as such. A tall, fit handsome man in his prime. Leonid Bronevoy is the same age as Tikhonov, but on the screen he looks like a flabby half-pensioner with a puffy face and huge bags under his eyes, tired from the war, and from work, and from life, and in general from everything. (How amazing the work of a make-up artist is sometimes!)

He, fearing no one, constantly puffs out his hatred for the entire top of the Nazi party. He hates Himmler, treats Goering, who has lost its former influence, with obvious disgust, hates Goebbels, and even Bormann, whom everyone considers the most influential Nazi of the Reich, Müller speaks with contempt. (True, he does this very carefully.) But his indignation with the Fuehrer is especially great.

- Hitler led Germany to disaster! He repeats.

What pathos, what pathos! Just a fiery anti-fascist. Exactly what Heinrich Müller was in the 1920s and 1930s, when, while serving in the police, he dispersed Nazi thugs in the streets and pubs of Munich.

Perhaps it is no coincidence that Mueller appears in Seventeen Moments of Spring as such a lone oppositionist who has long understood the hopelessness of Germany's situation and does not want to make any compromises with any of the leaders of the Third Reich. The only person in whom he seeks and, as it seems to him, finds an ally is Stirlitz, that is, Colonel of Soviet intelligence Maksim Maksimovich Isaev.

It is difficult to assume that Tatyana Lioznova or Yulian Semenov, who had access to the most secret archives, did not know what one of the main characters of their exciting story looked like and at what age. But it was extremely important for someone to change the appearance of this particular real character of a fascinating detective. After all, it is not without reason that it is said that "if the stars are lit, it means that someone needs it." Who exactly needed to distort the appearance of Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller beyond recognition?

And most importantly - why?

Before trying to answer this question, I would like to quote from the Russian weekly Intelligence and Counterintelligence, which is the print organ of the Russian FSB. In October last year S. Tranov in the article "Who are you, Stirlitz?" writes: "Alas, there was no intelligence officer who held such a high position in the Directorate of the Imperial Security Service of Nazi Germany (RSHA) ..."

On the other hand, it is reliably known that the Soviet command knew about the Nazis' attempt to negotiate with the allies. There is a lot of evidence about this, including in the book of Marshal Zhukov "Memories and Reflections". This information could have come to the Center only from Berlin. Therefore, someone had to hand it over.

Tranov claims that there was no such agent. Schellenberg is convinced that Mueller, at least at the end of the war, became a Soviet agent. If this is so, then the mysterious radio signals from the Gestapo and information about Himmler's negotiations were transmitted not by the non-existent Stirlitz, but by his prototype - Müller.

Now it becomes clear why Müller looks completely different from himself, and the Soviet intelligence officer Isaev-Stirlitz, at least outwardly, is very similar to the real Müller. And their age is the same. And even the title!

Isaev was, after all, a colonel. And the captured Germans saw Müller in the uniform of a colonel.

Everything converges - radio signals, Berlin, Moscow, Stirlitz, Müller, Isaev, Schellenberg ...

Today it is not easy to say whether there will be an official confirmation of this, in my opinion, quite realistic hypothesis. Most likely not. The myth will triumph over reality. The terrible Müller will not take the place of the beautiful Isaev.

But this hypothesis is not surprising. As a matter of fact, why the Soviet intelligence service could not cooperate with the chief of the Gestapo ?! Just a few years earlier, both of them openly admired and idolized each other. Ideology could not interfere here either. And first of all, because when it came to the benefit, the more mutual, Mueller put his bets on the clear winners, and the winners received invaluable information from the chief of the Gestapo - there was simply no place for ideology.

During the war, Stalin abandoned his trampled logic of "hitting his own so that others would be afraid." These days he tried to beat only strangers. True, sometimes he was ready to change his own rules and quickly make a stranger his own. And above all because, accepting Mueller's proposals, Stalin immediately became the sole owner of both a source of invaluable information and a brilliant professional selflessly devoted to his bloody cause. All this could not but arouse at least a short-term sympathy for the Soviet leader. On the other hand, turning Müller into "his own", Stalin immediately made him a more achievable object for beating. Under the totalitarian, and therefore similar, rule of the Nazis and the Communists, this approach to business could become, and most likely became decisive.

To this day, despite the cardinal changes and publicity, it is not easy for us to admit that the country that triumphed over fascism resorted to help and rescued, perhaps, one of the most terrible Nazi criminals, the bloody chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller.

How can we not recall the revelations of Müller-Bronevoy in a conversation with Stirlitz, which, according to Yu. Semenov, took place at the end of March 1945.

“You don't have to rush to get to a small farm with a swimming pool. Many of the Fuhrer's mongrels will flee from here very soon. But when the Russian cannonade is roaring in Berlin and the soldiers are fighting for every house, then it will be possible to leave from here without slamming the door. Leave and take the secret with you ... ".

Whether he was a Soviet agent or not, no one can deny that the real Heinrich Müller did just that. He left. And he took the secret with him ...

Igor TUFELD

---

Leonid BRONEVOY on the role of Heinrich Müller in the film "Seventeen Moments of Spring"

T Atiyah Lioznova, chief director of this film, quite unexpectedly invited me to try out for the role of Muller. There were no samples as such. We were running out of time to start filming ... The archival portrait of my hero, Heinrich Müller, was never shown to me. I still have no idea what it looks like. In the hustle and bustle of the beginning of filming, troublesome fittings, changing clothes and moving, it simply did not occur to someone with this request: to find and show me a photograph of the real Muller.

I played the role according to what was written, as it was in the script, purely intuitively. That my character Heinrich Müller was outwardly similar to the hero of Vyacheslav Tikhonov Stirlitz, I have never heard before, this is news to me. I read the script by Yulian Semyonov. That was the end of the work with documentary material for me, because no one introduced us to the archives, and I don't even know how much I or one of my fellow actors outwardly matched the appearance of their characters.

Yulian Semyonov himself appeared on the set several times, but he practically did not communicate with us, the actors. As a rule, his circle of communication was closed on a few gray people from the KGB, who were constantly present on our set.

When the film crew was already preparing for filming, Lioznova did not want to take me to the role of Muller until the last moment. They even offered to play Hitler. But then they found a good German actor Fritz Diez. Mueller, according to Tatyana Lioznova, should have been outwardly more rigid, not as charming, in her words, as I am. There were plenty of people willing to play the role of Heinrich Müller. And all of them are quite famous actors. And then suddenly - me. The not-so-famous film actor was supposed to play one of the most important roles. At first I even wanted to refuse. But what does all this matter? After all, viewers have been watching the film for a long time and perceive its characters as they saw them in this film.

In general, I am not disappointed with my participation in "Seventeen Moments ..." And it's good that today this film is watched with interest, and our viewers know Heinrich Müller the way I played him.

In the photo ITAR-TASS and from the archive of the film studio named after Gorky:

• When Müller was not accepted into the party, his boss Himmler was furious.
• The youngest general in Germany, Walter Schellenberg, was famous for his professionalism and excellent education.
• Stirlitz - Vyacheslav Tikhonov at the time of filming was as old as the real Muller, that is, 44. A tall, fit handsome man.
• Who are you, Stirlitz, People's Hero of the Soviet Union? Or, who were you? It would be better if this question remained unanswered: generation after generation of children and adults are watching your exploits, although they are following, however, with some difficulty. In the black-and-white spots and lines of the old film, we guess familiar shots: and you, Stirlitz, I will ask you to stay ... Stay, Stirlitz! At least in the movies ...
• Now it becomes clear why Muller looks completely different from himself, and the Soviet intelligence officer Isaev-Stirlitz is very reminiscent of the real Muller.
• The only character that had nothing to do with his prototype was Gestapo chief Heinrich Müller, brilliantly performed by actor Leonid Bronevoy.