Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)
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Heinrich Müller (28 April 1900; date of death unknown, but evidence points to May 1945) was a high-ranking German '' Schutzstaffel'' (SS) and police official during the Nazi era. For most of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
in Europe, he was the chief of the
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
, the secret state police of
Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...
. Müller was central in the planning and execution of the Holocaust and attended the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which formalised plans for deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe—the " Final Solution to the Jewish question". He was known as "Gestapo Müller" to distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller. He was last seen in the ''
Führerbunker The () was an air raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex constructed in two phases in 1936 and 1944. It was the last of the Führer Headquarters (''Führerhaupt ...
'' in
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on 1 May 1945 and remains the most senior figure of the
Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
regime who was never captured or confirmed to have died.


Early life and career

Müller was born in
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
on 28 April 1900 to
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parents. His father had been a rural police official. Müller attended a ''Volksschule'' and completed an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic before the outbreak of the
First World War World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...
. During the last year of the war, he served in the ''
Luftstreitkräfte The ''Deutsche Luftstreitkräfte'' (, German Air Combat Forces)known before October 1916 as (The Imperial German Air Service, lit. "The flying troops of the German Kaiser’s Reich")was the air arm of the Imperial German Army. In English-langu ...
'' as a pilot for an artillery spotting unit. He was decorated several times for bravery (including the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords and Bavarian Pilots Badge). After the war ended, he joined the Bavarian Police in 1919 as an auxiliary worker. Although not a member of the '' Freikorps'', he was involved in the suppression of the communist risings in the early post-war years. After witnessing the shooting of hostages by the revolutionary "Red Army" in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he acquired a lifelong hatred of
communism Communism () is a political sociology, sociopolitical, political philosophy, philosophical, and economic ideology, economic ideology within the history of socialism, socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a ...
. During the years of the
Weimar Republic The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...
he was head of the Munich Political Police Department, having risen quickly through the ranks due to his spirited efforts.


SS career

It was while serving in a police capacity in Munich that Müller first became acquainted with many members of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
(NSDAP) including
Heinrich Himmler Heinrich Luitpold Himmler (; 7 October 1900 â€“ 23 May 1945) was a German Nazism, Nazi politician and military leader who was the 4th of the (Protection Squadron; SS), a leading member of the Nazi Party, and one of the most powerful p ...
and Reinhard Heydrich, although during the Weimar period he supported the Bavarian People's Party. On 9 March 1933, during the Nazi ''putsch'' that deposed the Bavarian government of Minister-President Heinrich Held, Müller advocated using force against the Nazis to his superiors. Ironically, these views aided Müller's rise as it guaranteed the hostility of the Nazis, thereby making Müller very dependent upon the patronage of Reinhard Heydrich, who in turn appreciated Müller's professionalism and skill as a policeman, and was aware of Müller's past. Once the Nazis seized power, Müller's knowledge of communist activities placed him in high demand; as a result he was promoted to ''Polizeiobersekretär'' in May 1933 and again to Criminal Inspector in November 1933. Historian Richard J. Evans wrote: "Müller was a stickler for duty and discipline, and approached the tasks he was set as if they were military commands. A true
workaholic A workaholic is a person who works Compulsive behavior, compulsively. A workaholic experiences an inability to limit the amount of time they spend on work despite negative consequences such as damage to their relationships or health. There is no ...
who never took a vacation, Müller was determined to serve the German state, irrespective of what political form it took, and believed it was everyone's duty, including his own, to obey its dictates without question." Evans also records Müller was a regime functionary out of ambition, not out of a belief in National Socialism: An internal aziParty memorandum ... could not understand how "so odious an opponent of the movement" could become head of the Gestapo, especially since he had once referred to Hitler as "an immigrant unemployed house painter" and "an Austrian draft-dodger". Nazi jurist and former police chief, SS-''Obergruppenführer'' Werner Best opined Müller represented one of the "finest examples" of the limited connection between members of the NSDAP and the police before 1933. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Heydrich, as head of the Security Service (SD), recruited Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Albert Meisinger, who were collectively referred to as the "Bajuwaren-Brigade" (Bavarian Brigade). Müller joined the SS in 1934. By 1936, with Heydrich head of the Gestapo, Müller was its operations chief. On 4 January 1937, an evaluation by the Nazi Party's Deputy ''Gauleiter'' of Munich-Upper Bavaria stated: This assessment did not deter Heydrich from moving Müller along the ranks, particularly since Heydrich believed it was an advantage not to be bound to the influence of the Nazi Party. Functionaries like Müller were the sort of men Heydrich preferred since they were inherently committed to their "area of responsibility" and correspondingly justified any steps they deemed necessary against perceived enemies of the Nazi "racial community." Müller was promoted to the rank of '' Standartenführer'' (colonel) in 1937. Engrossing himself often in red-tape and statistics, Müller was a natural administrator who took solace in a "world of notes, memos, and regulations" and then received and transformed Gestapo reports of denouncements, torture, and secret executions into "administrative fodder." Despite the expense of so much mental energy in carrying out his duties, Müller disliked the scholarly types and once told Walter Schellenberg that "intellectuals should be sent down a coal mine and blown up." British author and translator Edward Crankshaw described Müller as "the arch-type non-political functionary" who was "in love with personal power and dedicated to the service of authority, the State." General Walter Dornberger, the chief over the rocket research at Peenemünde, (under alleged Gestapo suspicion) was one of the few to ever interview with Müller and characterized him as, "the unobtrusive type of police official who leaves no personal impression on the memory" but added, "... all I could remember was a pair of piercing grey-blue eyes, fixed on me with an unwavering scrutiny. My first impression was one of cold curiosity and extreme reserve." American journalist and war correspondent, William L. Shirer, called Müller a "a dapper-looking fellow" but shortly thereafter described him as "a cold, dispassionate killer". Himmler biographer Peter Padfield wrote: "he üllerwas an archetypal middle rank official: of limited imagination, non-political, non-ideological, his only fanaticism lay in an inner drive to perfection in his profession and in his duty to the state—which in his mind were one ... A smallish man with piercing eyes and thin lips, he was an able organiser, utterly ruthless, a man who lived for his work." Such was his dedication to the job that Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höss claimed one could reach Müller "any time of the day or night, even Sundays and public holidays." He was made '' Inspekteur der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD'' for all of
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following the 1938
Anschluss The (, or , ), also known as the (, ), was the annexation of the Federal State of Austria into Nazi Germany on 12 March 1938. The idea of an (a united Austria and Germany that would form a "German Question, Greater Germany") arose after t ...
, while his close friend Franz Josef Huber took charge of the Gestapo office in Vienna. One of Müller's first major acts occurred during the unprecedented '' Kristallnacht'' pogrom of 9–10 November 1938, when he ordered the arrest of between 20,000 and 30,000 Jews. Heydrich also tasked Müller during the summer of 1939 to create a centrally organized agency to deal with the eventual emigration of the Jews. Müller became a member of the
Nazi Party The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
in 1939 for the purely opportunist reason of improving his chances of promotion and only after Himmler insisted he do it. Historian Robert Gellately does not give much credence to this apolitical image of Müller and cites the musings of Walter Schellenberg, who claimed during a conversation with Müller sometime in 1943, Müller lauded the Stalinist system as superior to Nazism, which he believed compromised on too much. Schellenberg even alleged when Müller compared Stalin against Hitler, his (Müller's) opinion was Stalin did things better. As Gellately relates, such a politically oriented asseveration certainly indicates Müller did indeed have preferences. He was notorious, for instance, for admiring the Soviet police. While the chief of the subsequent Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration was indeed Heydrich, it was Müller who took care of the office's administrative details. Shortly thereafter, Müller took charge of this office but then handed control over to Adolf Eichmann. Once the war began, this ended the possibility of Jewish emigration and caused the office's dissolution.


Gestapo chief

In September 1939, when the Gestapo and other police organizations were consolidated under Heydrich into the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), Müller was made chief of the RSHA "Amt IV" (Office or Dept. 4):
Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
. To distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller, he became known as "Gestapo Müller". As Gestapo chief of operations and later (September 1939 forward) head of the organization, Müller played a leading role in the detection and suppression of all forms of resistance to the Nazi regime. Trusted by both Heydrich and Himmler, Müller was pivotal in making the Gestapo the "central executive organ of National Socialist terror" according to historians Carsten Dams and Michael Stolle. Under his leadership, the Gestapo succeeded in infiltrating and to a large extent, destroying groups opposed to the Nazis, such as the underground networks of the left-wing Social Democratic Party and Communist Party. Along these lines, historian George C. Browder asserts that Müller's "expertise and his ardent hate for Communism guaranteed his future". When Hitler and his army chiefs asked for a pretext for the
invasion of Poland The invasion of Poland, also known as the September Campaign, Polish Campaign, and Polish Defensive War of 1939 (1 September – 6 October 1939), was a joint attack on the Second Polish Republic, Republic of Poland by Nazi Germany, the Slovak R ...
in 1939, Himmler, Heydrich, and Müller masterminded and carried out a false flag project code-named Operation Himmler. During one of the operations, the clandestine mission to a German radio station on the Polish border, Müller helped collect a dozen or so condemned men from camps, who were then dressed in Polish uniforms. In exchange for their participation, the men were told by Müller that "they would be pardoned and released." Instead, the men were given a lethal injection and gunshot wounds to make them appear to have been killed in action during a fake attack. These incidents (particularly the staged attack on the Gleiwitz radio station) were then used in Nazi propaganda to justify the invasion of Poland, the opening event of
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. Thereafter, Müller continued to rise quickly through the ranks of the SS: in October 1939 he became an SS-'' Oberführer'', in November 1941 – '' Gruppenführer'' and Lieutenant General of the police. During the Second World War, Müller was heavily involved in
espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information ( intelligence). A person who commits espionage on a mission-specific contract is called an ...
and counter-espionage, particularly since the Nazi regime increasingly distrusted the military intelligence service—the '' Abwehr''—which under Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was a hotbed of activity for the German Resistance. In 1942 he successfully infiltrated the " Red Orchestra" network of
Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
spies and used it to feed false information to the Soviet intelligence services. Heydrich was Müller's direct superior until his assassination in 1942. For the remainder of the war, Ernst Kaltenbrunner took over as Müller's superior. Müller occupied a position in the Nazi hierarchy close to Himmler, the overall head of the Nazi police apparatus and the chief architect of the plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe, and Eichmann, the man entrusted with arranging the deportations of Jews to the Eastern ghettoes and death camps. Eichmann headed the Gestapo's "Office of Resettlement", and then its "Office of Jewish Affairs" (the RSHA Amt IV sub-office known as Referat IV B4). He was Müller's subordinate. Müller was also involved in the regime's policy towards the
Jew Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...
s, although Himmler and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels drove this area of policy. On 6 October 1939 for instance, Müller instructed Eichmann to prepare for the deportation of some 70,000 to 80,000 Jews from the annexed Polish city of Kattowitz; an order which included the deportation of the Jews from Ostrava—both "expulsion campaigns" had already been planned as early as September by the Gestapo or the army. Twelve days later on 18 October 1939, he told Eichmann it would soon "be necessary to organize the resettlement and removal of Poles and Jews into the area of the future Polish rump state centrally" via the RSHA. Although his chief responsibility was always police work within Germany, he was fully in charge and thus responsible to execute the extermination of the Jews of Europe. When Eichmann reported to Müller sometime in the middle of 1941 that he had been informed by Himmler the Führer had ordered the physical destruction of the Jews for instance, Müller silently nodded at his desk, indicating to Eichmann that he already knew. Correspondingly, Müller received detailed reports from Eichmann about the '' Einsatzgruppen'' death-squad units, which according to historian Raul Hilberg killed more than two million people, including 1.3 million Jews between 1941 and 1945. At the end of June 1941, Müller dispatched Eichmann to Minsk, so he could collect detailed information on the execution activities. In August 1941, Müller ordered these killing reports be forwarded to Hitler. Attempting to keep the brutality of the wholesale slaughter occurring in the East as quiet as possible, Müller sent a telegram to the ''Einsatzgruppen'' towards the end of August 1941, which explicitly instructed them "to prevent the crowding of spectators during the mass executions." On 23 October 1941, Müller briefed a circular to SiPo stations which exclusively prohibited any future Jewish emigration out of German controlled territory, a directive which presaged their imminent extermination. In January 1942, he attended the Wannsee Conference at which Heydrich briefed senior officials from a number of government departments of the extermination plan, and at which Eichmann took the minutes. Once the conference concluded, Müller, Heydrich, and Eichmann remained afterwards for additional "informal chats". Just a couple of months later in March 1942, Jews were already being systematically killed in gas vans at Chelmno and Belzec while construction was underway at Birkenau and Sobibor. Again, Müller sent Eichmann to relate his findings about the killing operations taking place at Chelmno; when Eichmann returned this time, he reported to Müller that the scene was "horrible" and added it was "an indescribable inferno." When the first denunciations of the mass murder being carried-out by the Germans hit the Allied press during the autumn and winter of 1942, Himmler instructed Müller to ensure "all the bodies were either buried or burned." Enforcement and administration of Nazi "racial-hygiene" policies were also within the purview of Müller's responsibilities, as a special letter he sent from Berlin to all Gestapo offices on 10 March 1942 reveals; the letter contained instructions concerning the relationship between German women and Polish civilians or prisoners-of-war who were conscripted as labor during the war, particularly in cases related to pregnancy. If both parties proved "racially acceptable" and the Polish man wanted to marry the woman, the pregnancy and relationship was allowed without punitive consequences, provided the RSHA approved after photographic evaluation of both parties and subsequent "Germanization" of the Pole occurred. For cases where one or more parties was deemed racially unfit, the Polish male would receive "special handling", an obvious Nazi euphemism for a death-sentence. In May 1942, Heydrich was assassinated in
Prague Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
by Czechoslovak soldiers sent from
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. Müller was sent to Prague to head the investigation into Operation "Anthropoid". He succeeded through a combination of bribery and torture in locating the assassins, who killed themselves to avoid capture. Despite this success, his influence within the regime declined somewhat with the loss of his original patron, Heydrich. Nonetheless, between the time Heydrich died in 1942 and Kaltenbrunner took office in January 1943, "Müller played a central role in the organization of
The Holocaust The Holocaust (), known in Hebrew language, Hebrew as the (), was the genocide of History of the Jews in Europe, European Jews during World War II. From 1941 to 1945, Nazi Germany and Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy ...
." Evidence of Müller's intimate involvement in the Holocaust are abundant in some of the surviving documents and in the later testimony of Eichmann, who divulged that he remained in constant contact with Müller. Eichmann recalled how Müller reserved power unto himself and while he (Eichmann), arranged plenty of deportations, it was only Müller who could write the total number of Jews (in his orange-colored pencil) who were transported at the top of the corresponding reports. As the Red Army counteroffensive against the Germans arrayed at the Battle of Stalingrad in mid-November 1942 started to take its toll, the exigencies of war demanded an increase in arms production; Müller played his part by responding to and facilitating Himmler's request for an additional 35,000–40,000 forced laborers. The Gestapo Chief rounded them up from across detention centers and prisons which were not yet part of the concentration camp system and sent them to Majdanek and Auschwitz. Sometime in 1943, Müller was sent to
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to pressure
Fascist Italy Fascist Italy () is a term which is used in historiography to describe the Kingdom of Italy between 1922 and 1943, when Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party controlled the country, transforming it into a totalitarian dictatorship. Th ...
to cooperate in relinquishing their Jews for deportation. Despite having the apparent support of
Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who, upon assuming office as Prime Minister of Italy, Prime Minister, became the dictator of Fascist Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 un ...
, Müller's efforts were not very successful as influential Jewish figures within Italy were in contact with the police and the military; they successfully appealed to their (Italians and Jews) shared religious convictions and convinced them to resist Nazi pressure. In 1943 Müller had differences with Himmler over what to do with the growing evidence of a resistance network within the German state apparatus, particularly the ''Abwehr'' and the Foreign Office. He presented Himmler with firm evidence during February 1943, that Wilhelm Canaris was involved with the resistance; however, Himmler told him to drop the case. Offended by this, Müller became an ally of Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi Party Chancellery, who was Himmler's main rival. According to the SiPo and SD official in Denmark, Rudolf Mildner, Gestapo Chief Müller instructed him "to arrest the
Nobel Prize The Nobel Prizes ( ; ; ) are awards administered by the Nobel Foundation and granted in accordance with the principle of "for the greatest benefit to humankind". The prizes were first awarded in 1901, marking the fifth anniversary of Alfred N ...
–winning atomic physicist
Niels Bohr Niels Henrik David Bohr (, ; ; 7 October 1885 – 18 November 1962) was a Danish theoretical physicist who made foundational contributions to understanding atomic structure and old quantum theory, quantum theory, for which he received the No ...
" sometime during the fall of 1943; this was likely the consequence of Bohr being half-Jewish, but his scientific significance also interested officials in Berlin. Fortunately for Bohr, he was tipped off by a sympathetic German woman working for the Gestapo and was able to escape across the Kattegat Strait into
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with the evacuation of Jews from Denmark. Later, Mildner conveniently asserted during Allied questioning that he had disobeyed Müller's order and allowed Bohr to get to safety. Early in 1944, Müller issued the Nazi injunction known as the "cartridge directive"; this command ordered that Soviet prisoners-of-war who had assisted in the identification of detained political commissars for the purpose of their liquidation be executed on the grounds they were ''Geheimnisträger'' (bearers of secrets). Instructions like these amid the numerous other crimes committed at his command made Müller "one of the most feared officials in Europe" during the Nazi reign. After the assassination attempt against
Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
on 20 July 1944, Müller was placed in charge of the arrest and interrogation of all those suspected of involvement in the resistance. Over 5,000 people were arrested and about 200 executed, including Canaris. Not long after the anti-Nazi resisters were killed, Müller allegedly exclaimed, "We won't make the same mistake as in 1918. We won't leave our internal German enemies alive." In the last months of the war, Müller remained at his post, apparently still confident of a German victory: he told one of his officers in December 1944 that the Ardennes offensive would result in the recapture of
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.


Berlin 1945

In April 1945, Müller was among the last of the Nazi loyalists assembled in the ''
Führerbunker The () was an air raid shelter located near the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, Germany. It was part of a subterranean bunker complex constructed in two phases in 1936 and 1944. It was the last of the Führer Headquarters (''Führerhaupt ...
'' as the Red Army fought its way into the city centre of
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
. One of his last tasks was the interrogation of Hermann Fegelein, Himmler's SS liaison officer, in the cellar of the Church of the Trinity after Himmler's attempted peace negotiations with the Western Allies behind Hitler's back. Fegelein was shot after Hitler expelled Himmler from all his posts. Hitler's secretary, Traudl Junge, recounted seeing Müller on 22 April; she also added that Müller had assumed Kaltenbrunner's former duties as head of the RSHA. Both Junge and '' Oberscharführer'' Rochus Misch, the telephone operator for the ''Führerbunker'', recalled seeing Müller on 30 April, the date of Hitler's suicide.


Disappearance

Müller was last seen in the ''Führerbunker'' on the following evening. Hans Baur, Hitler's pilot, later quoted him as saying, "We know the Russian methods exactly. I haven't the faintest intention of being taken prisoner by the Russians". From that day onwards, no trace of Müller has ever been found. He is the most senior member of the Nazi government whose fate remains a mystery. Author and former British intelligence officer, Adrian Weale, claims that the evidence about Müller indicates that he was most likely killed or committed suicide during the chaotic fall of Berlin, but his body, if recovered, was never identified. The United States
Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
's (CIA) file on Müller was released under the Freedom of Information Act in 2001 and documents several unsuccessful attempts by U.S. agencies to find him. The U.S. National Archives commentary on the file concludes: "Though inconclusive on Müller's ultimate fate, the file is very clear on one point. The Central Intelligence Agency and its predecessors did not know Müller's whereabouts at any point after the war. In other words, the CIA was never in contact with Müller." The CIA file shows an extensive search, led by the counterespionage branch of the U.S.
Office of Strategic Services The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the first intelligence agency of the United States, formed during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines ...
(forerunner of the CIA), was made for Müller in the months after Germany's surrender. The search was complicated by the fact that "Heinrich Müller" is a very common German name. A further problem arose because "some of these Müllers, including Gestapo Müller, did not appear to have middle names. An additional source of confusion was that there were two different SS generals named Heinrich Müller". In 1947, American and British agents searched the home of Müller's wartime mistress, Anna Schmid, but found nothing suggesting that he was still alive. With the onset of the
Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
and the shift of priorities to meeting the challenge of the USSR, interest in pursuing missing Nazis declined. By this time, the conclusion seemed to have been reached that Müller was most likely dead. The
Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the Air force, air and space force of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. It was formed towards the end of the World War I, First World War on 1 April 1918, on the merger of t ...
Special Investigation Branch also had an interest in Müller with regard to the Stalag Luft III murders, for which he was presumed to have responsibility given his position in the Gestapo. Walter Schellenberg alleged in his memoir that Müller had defected to the Soviet Union in 1945. He also wrote that a German officer—who had been a prisoner of war in the USSR—claimed to have seen Müller in
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in 1948, and that he had died shortly afterward. There is no reference in the memoir as to who the German officer was or any other details that might help verify this claim. The capture and subsequent trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1960 sparked new interest in Müller's whereabouts. Although Eichmann revealed no specific information, he told his Israeli interrogators that he believed that Müller was still alive. The West German office in charge of the prosecution of war criminals charged the police to investigate. The possibility that Müller was working for the USSR was considered, but no definite information was gained. Müller's family and his former secretary were placed under surveillance by the Allies in case he was corresponding with them. The West Germans investigated several reports of Müller's body being found and buried in the days after the fall of Berlin. The reports were contradictory, not wholly reliable, and it was not possible to confirm any of them. One such report came from Walter Lüders, a former member of the '' Volkssturm'', who said he had been part of a burial unit which had found the body of an SS general in the garden of the Reich Chancellery, with the identity papers of Heinrich Müller. The body had been buried in a mass grave at the old Jewish Cemetery on Grosse Hamburger Strasse in the Soviet Sector. Since this location was in
East Berlin East Berlin (; ) was the partially recognised capital city, capital of East Germany (GDR) from 1949 to 1990. From 1945, it was the Allied occupation zones in Germany, Soviet occupation sector of Berlin. The American, British, and French se ...
in 1961, the gravesite could not be investigated by West German authorities, nor has there been any attempt to excavate the site since the
reunification of Germany German reunification () was the process of re-establishing Germany as a single sovereign state, which began on 9 November 1989 and culminated on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic and the integration of i ...
. In 1961, Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Goleniewski, the Deputy Chief of Polish Military Counter Intelligence, defected to the U.S. Goleniewski had worked as an interrogator of captured German officials from 1948 to 1952. He never met Müller but said he had heard from his Soviet superiors that sometime between 1950 and 1952, the Soviets had "picked up Müller and taken him to Moscow". The CIA tried to track down the men Goleniewski named as having worked with Müller in Moscow but were unable to confirm his story. Israel also continued to pursue Müller: in 1967, two Israeli operatives were caught by West German police attempting to break into the
Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
apartment of Müller's wife. In 1967, a man in
Panama City Panama City, also known as Panama, is the capital and largest city of Panama. It has a total population of 1,086,990, with over 2,100,000 in its metropolitan area. The city is located at the Pacific Ocean, Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, i ...
named Francis Willard Keith was accused of being Müller. West German diplomats pressed the Panamanian government to extradite him for trial. West German prosecutors said Sophie Müller, 64, had seen photos of Keith and identified him as her long-missing husband. However, Keith was released once fingerprints proved he was not Müller. The CIA investigation concluded: "There is little room for doubt that the Soviet and Czechoslovak ntelligenceservices circulated rumors to the effect that Müller had escaped to the West ... to offset the charges that the Soviets had sheltered the criminal ... There are strong indications but no proof that Müller collaborated with he Soviets There are also strong indications but no proof that Müller died n Berlin" The CIA apparently remained convinced at that time that if Müller had survived the war, he was being harboured within the USSR. However, when the USSR collapsed in 1991 and the Soviet archives were opened, no evidence to support this belief emerged. The U.S. National Archives commentary concludes: "More information about Müller's fate might still emerge from still secret files of the former Soviet Union. The CIA file, by itself, does not permit definitive conclusions. Taking into account the currently available records, the authors of this report conclude that Müller most likely died in Berlin in early May 1945." By the 1990s, it was in any case increasingly unlikely Müller, who was born in 1900, would be alive even if he had survived the war. In 2008, German historian Peter Longerich published a biography of Himmler—translated into English in 2012—that contained an unsubstantiated account of Müller's last known whereabouts. According to reports from Himmler's adjutant, Werner Grothmann, Müller was with Himmler at
Flensburg Flensburg (; Danish language, Danish and ; ; ) is an independent city, independent town in the far north of the Germany, German state of Schleswig-Holstein. After Kiel and Lübeck, it is the third-largest city in Schleswig-Holstein. Flensburg's ...
on 11 May 1945 and accompanied Himmler and other SS officers as they attempted to escape the Allies on foot. Himmler and Müller parted company at Meinstedt, after which Müller was not seen again. In 2013, Johannes Tuchel, the head of the Memorial to the German Resistance, claimed Müller's body was found in August 1945 by a work crew cleaning up corpses and was one of 3,000 buried in a mass grave on the site of a former Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Mitte. While Tuchel was confident he had solved the mystery, whether Müller is actually there has not been confirmed. Nonetheless, the uncertainty of Müller's ultimate end and/or whereabouts has only served to nourish the "mysterious power" that the Gestapo elicits even to the present.


Alleged CIC dossier

In July 1988, author Ian Sayer received from an anonymous individual a 427-page document, purported to be a photocopy of a U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) file that had been inadvertently released by the U.S. National Archives. The dossier alleged that Heinrich Müller had survived the war and had worked for the CIC as an intelligence adviser. Sayer and co-author Douglas Botting were known to be working on a comprehensive history of the CIC at that time. The dossier had also come to the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice's Nazi-hunting unit, the Office of Special Investigations, who subsequently sought Sayer's opinion on the veracity of the documents. By this time the anonymous individual (later identified as Gregory Douglas) had managed to interest ''Time'' magazine and ''
The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...
'' newspaper in his story. Historians such as Anton Joachimsthaler and Luke Daly-Groves regard the claims of the dossier, which include a
conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources: * ...
(involving a body double) about Hitler's death, as exemplifying created "myths".


See also

* Glossary of Nazi Germany * List of Nazi Party leaders and officials * List of fugitives from justice who disappeared *
List of SS personnel A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...


References


Notes


Citations


Bibliography

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External links

* Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group
RG 263 Detailed Report, Heinrich Mueller
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Muller, Heinrich 1900 births Christian fascists Date of death unknown Fugitives wanted by Germany German anti-communists German mass murderers German Roman Catholics German World War I pilots Gestapo personnel Holocaust perpetrators Luftstreitkräfte personnel Military personnel from Munich Missing person cases in Germany People from the Kingdom of Bavaria Police misconduct in Germany Recipients of the clasp to the Iron Cross, 1st class Recipients of the Knights Cross of the War Merit Cross Romani genocide perpetrators SS and police leaders SS-Gruppenführer Wannsee Conference attendees