On May 21st, 1945, at a checkpoint in northern Germany, a small group of former Soviet prisoners of war captured three German soldiers who were trying to flee.

Among them, one stood out due to his unusual appearance, a shaved head, and an eye patch.

His documentation identified him as Sergeant Hinrich Hitittinger.

But as the interrogations progressed, he made a shocking revelation.

Upon removing the eye patch and adjusting his glasses, he asked to speak with the Allied generals and revealed his true identity, Hinrich Himmler, the feared Reichkes Furer SS and Adolf Hitler’s right-hand man.

With his capture, the Allies finally got their hands on the most wanted man of the Nazi regime after Hitler’s death.

His final days are extremely interesting.

Get ready.

Before anything else, it is crucial that we understand Himmler’s relationship with Hitler.

Before anything else, it is crucial that we understand Himmler’s relationship with Hitler.

Understanding this will make everything make sense in the final days of the SS leader.

As second in command of the SS and later Reicher SS, Himmler was in regular contact with Hitler to organize the presence of SS members as personal bodyguards.

Himmler was not involved in policymaking decisions of the Nazi party in the years before they came to power.

From the late 1930s onward, the SS operated independently from the control of other state agencies or government departments, and Himmler reported only to Hitler.

Hitler promoted and practiced the furer princip.

This principle required absolute obedience from all subordinates to their superiors.

Thus, Hitler viewed the government structure as a pyramid with himself, the infallible leader, at the top.

Accordingly, Himmler placed himself in a position of subordination to Hitler, being unconditionally obedient to him.

However, like other highranking Nazi officials, he had aspirations of one day succeeding Hitler as leader of the Reich.

Himmler considered Albert Shar a particularly dangerous rival both in the administration of the Reich and as a possible successor to Hitler.

Hitler called Himmler’s mystical and pseudo religious interests nonsense.

Himmler was not a member of Hitler’s inner circle.

The two men were not very close and rarely met socially.

Himmler socialized almost exclusively with other SS members.

His unconditional loyalty and efforts to please Hitler earned him the nickname Dert Troy Hinrich, the faithful Hinrich.

However, in the final days of the war, when it became clear that Hitler planned to die in Berlin, Himmler abandoned his longtime superior in an attempt to save himself.

Now, let’s go back a little to understand a bit more about him.

After serving in a reserve battalion during World War I without seeing combat, Himmler joined the Nazi party in 1923.

In 1925, he joined the SS, a small paramilitary wing of the Nazi party that served as Adolf Hitler’s bodyguard unit.

Later, Himmler steadily rose through the ranks of the SS until becoming Reichfurer SS in 1929.

Under Himmler’s leadership, the SS grew from a battalion of 290 men into one of the most powerful institutions within Nazi Germany.

Throughout his career, Himmler gained a reputation for his strong organizational skills as well as for selecting highly competent subordinates such as Reinhard Hydrich.

From 1943 onward, he was head of the criminal politi, criminal police, and minister of the interior, which gave him oversight over all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo.

He also controlled the Vafen SS, a branch of the SS that fought in combat alongside the Vermacht during World War II.

As the main executive of Nazi racial policies, Himmler was responsible for operating concentration and extermination camps as well as forming the Einats group and death squads in German occupied Europe.

In this role, he played a central part in the genocide of approximately 5.

5 to 6 million Jews and the deaths of millions of other victims during the Holocaust.

One day before the launch of Operation Barbarosa in June 1941, Himmler commissioned the drafting of the general plan Ost which was approved by Hitler in May 1942 and implemented by the Nazi regime resulting in the death of about 14 million people in Eastern Europe.

Himmler’s importance in the Third Reich cannot be underestimated.

Since being appointed Reichfurer SS in 1929, he expanded the Nazi forces, which initially consisted of just a battalion of 290 men, but quickly multiplied into thousands under his command.

However, by 1945, the situation was radically different.

The Third Reich was increasingly cornered by the advances of the United States from France and the Red Army from the east.

After failing in his attempt to stop the Americans as commanderin-chief of Army Group Upper Rin in January 1945, Himmler was appointed again as commanderin-chief.

This time of Army Group Vistula, which was relentlessly advancing toward Berlin.

In hindsight, Hitler’s decision proved to be a mistake.

Himmler did not possess enough military experience for a mission of such importance.

At the same time, this loyal Nazi dignitary was becoming increasingly convinced that Nazi Germany was incapable of winning the war.

During these weeks of futile planning, Himmler began to behave more and more erratically.

He rarely left his train, which was not adequately equipped for the mission, as it had only one telephone line and lacked proper maps or a radio to communicate with the front lines.

He also showed little interest in the job, seeing it as a pointless effort.

Himmler worked only 4 hours a day and only after receiving a massage every morning, followed by lunch and a long nap.

The lack of leadership became evident in the performance of the German army on the Eastern Front.

In March 1945, the German war effort was on the brink of collapse and Himmler’s relationship with Hitler had deteriorated.

Himmler considered negotiating a peace settlement independently.

His massur, Felix Keren, who had moved to Sweden, acted as an intermediary in the negotiations with Count Folk Bernadot, head of the Swedish Red Cross.

Letters were exchanged between the two men and direct meetings were arranged by Walter Shelonberg of the RSHA.

Also in March 1945, Himmler issued a directive that Jews should be marched from the construction project of the southeastern wall fortifications Sudoswal on the Austrohungarian border to Mount Mousausen.

He wanted hostages for potential peace negotiations.

Thousands died during these marches.

Himmler and Hitler met for the last time on April 20th, 1945, Hitler’s birthday, in Berlin, and Himmler swore unwavering loyalty to Hitler.

In a military meeting that day, Hitler stated that he would not leave Berlin despite the Soviet advances.

Along with Guring, Himmler quickly left the city after the meeting.

On April 21st, Himmler met with Norbert Massur, a Swedish representative of the World Jewish Congress to discuss the release of Jewish concentration camp prisoners.

As a result of these negotiations, about 20,000 people were freed in the white buses operation.

Himmler falsely claimed in the meeting that the crematoria in the camps had been built to handle the bodies of prisoners who died in a typhus epidemic.

He also falsely stated very high survival rates for the camps at Ashvitz and Bergen Bellson even as these locations were liberated and it became obvious that his claims were lies.

On April 23rd, Himmler met directly with Bernardot at the Swedish consulate in Lubec.

Representing himself as the provisional leader of Germany, he claimed that Hitler would be dead within the next few days.

Hoping that the British and Americans would fight against the Soviets alongside what remained of the Vermacht, Himmler asked Bernadot to inform General Dwight Eisenhower that Germany wished to surrender to the Western Allies, not to the Soviet Union.

Bernadot asked Himmler to put his proposal in writing, and Himmler complied.

Meanwhile, Guring had sent a telegram a few hours earlier asking Hitler for permission to assume leadership of the Reich in his capacity as Hitler’s deputy, an act that Hitler, under pressure from Martin Borman, interpreted as a demand for him to resign or face a coup.

On April 27th, Himmler’s SS representative at Hitler’s headquarters in Berlin, Herman Fageline, was caught in civilian clothes preparing to desert.

He was arrested and brought back to the Furer bunker.

On the night of April 28th, the BBC broadcasted a Reuters report about Himmler’s attempts at negotiations with the Western Allies.

Hitler had considered Himmler the second most loyal to him.

After Ysef Gerbles, he called Himmler the loyal Heinrich.

Hitler was furious at this betrayal and told those still with him in the bunker complex that Himmler’s secret negotiations were the worst betrayal he had ever known.

Hitler ordered Himmler’s arrest and Fageline was tried and executed.

By that time the Soviets had advanced to Potammer Platz just 300 m 330 yd from the Reich Chancellery and were preparing to storm the chancellory.

This report combined with Himmler’s betrayal led Hitler to write his last will and testament.

In the testament completed on April 29th, one day before his suicide, Hitler declared both Himmler and Guring traitors, he dismissed Himmler from all his positions in the party and the state and expelled him from the Nazi party.

Hitler appointed Grand Admiral Carl Dunits as his successor.

Himmler met with Donuts in Flynnburg and offered to be second in command.

He claimed that he was entitled to a position in Donuts’s provisional government as Reich’s Furer SS, believing that the SS would be in a good position to restore and maintain order after the war.

Donuts repeatedly rejected Himmler’s advances and began peace negotiations with the Allies.

It was only when war broke out in 1939 that Hinrich Himmler was able to put into practice his cruel and cold policy of genocide, the extermination of entire races.

However, there is little evidence that he was a sadist, that he actually enjoyed the mass murder of millions or the torture inflicted on his victims by the Gestapo to extract secrets and confessions.

But throughout the war, he stained the name of Germany for centuries.

He thrived on it.

He loaded himself with power.

In the end, he was not only head of the SS, head of the Gestapo, and supreme head of the police, but also commanderin-chief of the home army, head of all espionage and counter espionage services both inside and outside Germany and minister of the interior.

When Hitler dismissed him from all his positions, Himmler could not believe he had hit rock bottom.

Events swept over him and left him wandering around northern Germany, still with pomp and long escorts, but without any power.

He wrote a letter to Field Marshall Montgomery.

There was no response.

Then Admiral Donuts, now serving a 10-year sentence as a Nazi war criminal in Spandow Prison, Berlin, wrote to the once powerful Himmler.

He told him that Hitler was dead and that as his appointed successor, he no longer needed the services of hair Reich minister.

Dunit then set up his puppet government at his headquarters in Flynnburg on the Baltic Sea near the Danish border and unconditionally surrendered to the Allies.

The war in Europe was over.

The last action of the war on the continent was in Flynn where Dunit and his government were arrested.

The British knew that Himmler was in the area.

They expected to find him when capturing Donuts’s government, but there was no sign of him.

The British were told that Himmler, stripped of his power, was wandering like a lost soul around the outskirts of the new government in the first days of peace, still with his entourage, his bodyguards, and his fleet of cars.

Then, a few days earlier, accompanied only by his chief aid and his secretary, he disappeared.

No one had seen him since.

The British immediately ordered a renewed hunt for Himmler.

They alerted all intelligence personnel.

They warned the Russians and the Americans that the arch Nazi villain had escaped their net.

But they were wrong.

Himmler was already in British hands.

He had spent 2 days in a British prisoner of war camp at the time of the British action against Donuts’s government.

The problem was that the British didn’t know it.

On Monday, May 21st, 1945, men from the famous Black Watch regiment were searching a mixed crowd of people heading west over a small bridge across the Osta River near Bremer Verdda in northern Germany.

Among the foreign forced laborers and other displaced persons, they noticed three men in civilian clothes trying to cross the bridge.

One was over 6 ft tall, burly, and had a kind of killer look, arrogant, and showy.

The second was small, slightly built, and quiet.

Both had blonde hair.

But it was the third man who caught their attention.

He was of medium height, fat, clean shaven, and over his right eye he wore a large black patch.

Except for this theatrical touch, the three men might have passed unnoticed, but the men from the Black Watch were intrigued.

They asked the men for their documents.

These showed that they were former soldiers of the Vermacht.

The man with the patch said his name was Hinsiger.

The guards said they didn’t think his documents were in order.

They lifted the patch from Hinsiger and saw that his eye was unharmed.

The three Germans then made another mistake.

They started shouting and threatening.

That was enough for the Black Watch men.

The three men were placed in a truck and taken to the prisoner of war camp at Barnstead, 10 mi from the headquarters of the British Second Army in Lunberg.

There they were stripped and their clothes were taken away to be searched.

No sign of a poison vial was found, something Nazi leaders usually carried either in their clothes or on their bodies.

They were interrogated several times and they made their third mistake.

They told different stories each time and their individual stories didn’t match.

After 2 days of this, Hinsiger’s courage gave in.

It was just a few hours after the capture of Donuts’s government.

He turned to the British sergeant who was interrogating him and said arrogantly, “It seems you don’t realize who I am.

” “Oh, no,” said the sergeant.

I am Reich Minister Hinrich Himmler, Reich Furer of the SS,” he said proudly.

The sergeant looked at Himmler and with a defiant expression replied, “Oh yeah? Well, I’m Winston Churchill.

” “Hinser,” shouted in anger, exasperated, “I am Himmler, you idiot.

” He then demanded to be taken to General Eisenhower or Montgomery.

The sergeant later reported that he looked at Himmler and tried to imagine how he would look with the mustache and the trappings he had seen in pictures of the former official.

He thought to himself, “Maybe he is Himmler after all.

” The sergeant called a guard and ordered him to summon Captain Sylvester, the camp commander.

Hinsiger repeated his claim of being Himmler and Sylvester then telephoned Colonel Murphy, head of intelligence at the British Second Army headquarters in Lunberg.

After hearing this, Murphy responded.

Send him.

Sylvester gave Himmler a British combat uniform to wear, but Himmler refused after putting on the khaki socks.

I won’t wear a British uniform, he exploded.

You can’t wear your own clothes, said Sylvester.

You’ll either wear this uniform or nothing.

Even so, Himmler refused.

With no other options, they wrapped him in a gray army blanket.

Wearing this like a dirty toga and still in socks, Himmler was placed in a jeep and driven the 10 m to the British headquarters in Lunberg.

They stopped at 31 Ultenrasa, a suburban red brick villa covered in ivy, which British intelligence officers had turned into a local interrogation center.

The Germans, still dazed and relieved by the defeat, paid no attention to the strange figure as the former prince of terror was pushed up the front steps of the building.

Himmler was shoved into the ornate hall, crowded with British officers, among whom was a military doctor, some officers began mocking the strange figure wrapped in the blanket.

The doctor examined him thoroughly for any sign of hidden poison.

The SS cough drops, small glass ampules of potassium cyanide, the top Nazis and SS members commonly carried.

One end of the ampule had a purple seal.

The doctor even looked inside Himmler’s mouth.

He turned to the others and said, “Nothing.

” The interrogation began immediately.

“What were your plans?” Despite the lack of proper clothing, Himmler was truckulent and arrogant.

“I planned to lay low for several weeks until the search for me eased, and you recovered from the first impact of victory,” he added.

“If I had been in Berlin when the Furer died, I would have died with him.

” Himmler did not know that Hitler had already discovered his betrayal in negotiating with the West.

If Hitler had known of his plans, he would have killed his Troyer Heinrich like a dog.

just as he had done with Himmler’s henchman, Fageline, shortly before his own death.

Even though the unpleasant former jockey was Ava Brown’s brother-in-law, Hitler’s lover, Himmler did not submit to a detailed interrogation.

I have the right to be interviewed by General Eisenhower, he demanded pompously.

He then added with deliberate disdain, I will not speak to subordinates.

Whenever he had the chance, he would launch into a long Nazi diet tribe about the threat of communism and Soviet Russia to the west.

“Relations between east and west are already explosive.

Soon you will have to fight Russia, too,” he prophesied.

“Today,” his words do not seem as funny as they did to those British officers in the early days of peace.

8 years ago, they asked him to sign his name.

Eager to prove his identity, Himmler took the offered pen and wrote with hard, strong strokes up and down in letters nearly half an inch tall.

He handed the piece of paper to Colonel Murphy.

But with the ink still wet, Himmler snatched the paper back and tore it into tiny pieces.

He feared they might write some kind of confession above the signature, as he himself would have done.

Later, the pieces were put back together.

There was no doubt it was Himmler’s signature.

The British doctor was watching Himmler.

He later said that he wasn’t satisfied.

The former head of the SS seemed very confident, as if he had one last trick up his sleeve.

“Come into the light,” he said to Himmler.

“I want to take another look at you.

Open your mouth.

” The doctor tilted Himmler’s head back and with his index finger moved his tongue to get a better look.

That was when he saw the purple seal of the poison ampule no larger than a man’s pinky fingernail hidden in a clever nichch between two back molers.

The doctor made the mistake of letting out some kind of exclamation.

Himmler realized that his sure way out had been discovered.

The game was over.

It was now or never.

With a quick movement of his tongue, he shifted the poison ampule and crushed it between his teeth.

He let out a gasp of agony as the burning liquid scorched his life away.

Then slowly he shrank and collapsed to the floor.

Several British officers rushed forward.

They grabbed him and held him upside down.

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