The Müller Washington Journals- 1948-1951: From Gestapo Chief to the CIA

Edited  by Dr. Rainer Scholz

Editor¹s Foreword

“The American Army even recruited and evacuated the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller. To prevent later accusations that the United States government was employing the notorious Mueller, the Americans used Gehlen’s organization to finance his work.”

 Joseph Trento, “The Secret History of the CIA” New York, 2001, p29

At the beginning of December, 1948, a German national arrived in Washington, D.C. to take up an important position with the newly-formed CIA. He was a specialist on almost every aspect of Soviet intelligence and had actively fought them, both in his native Bavaria where he was head of the political police in Munich and later in Berlin as head of Amt IV of the State Security Office.

His name was Heinrich Müller.

Even as a young man, Heini Müller had kept daily journals of his activities, journals that covered his military service as a pilot in the Imperial German air arm and an apprentice policeman in Munich. He continued these journals throughout the war and while employed by the top CIA leadership in Washington, continued his daily notations.

This work is a translation of his complete journals from December of 1948 through September of 1951.

When Heinrich Müller was hired by the CIA¹s  James Critchfield 1948, he had misgivings about working for his former enemies but pragmatism and the lure of large amounts of money won him over to what he considered to be merely an extension of his life-work against the agents of the Comintern. What he discovered after living and working in official Washington for four years was that the nation¹s capital was, in truth, what he once humorously claimed sounded like a cross between a zoo and a lunatic asylum. His journals, in addition to personal letters, various reports and other personal material, give a very clear, but not particularly flattering, view of the inmates of both the zoo and the asylum.

Müller moved, albeit very carefully, in the rarefied atmosphere of senior policy personnel, military leaders, heads of various intelligence agencies and the White House itself. He was a very observant, quick-witted person who took copious notes of what he saw. This was not a departure from his earlier habits because Heinrich Müller had always kept a journal, even when he was a lowly Bavarian police officer, and his comments about personalities and events in the Third Reich are just as pungent and entertaining as the ones he made while in America.

The reason for publishing this phase of his eventful life is that so many agencies in the United States and their supporters do not want to believe that a man of Müller¹s position could ever have been employed by their country in general or their agency in specific.

Mueller, Heinrich: The official biography

1901-1945? Head of Amt IV in the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) from 1939, and one of the most influential officials of the SS involved directly in the extermination of European Jewry.  Served in the air force during World War I where he won the Iron Cross, 1st Class, on the Russian front. After the war he served in the Bavarian political police where he developed expertise in surveillance of communists and other potentially subversive groups, including the NSDAP.  Brought to Berlin by Reinhard Heydrich, he was  initially in charge of the Secret Political Police, Dept II, with responsibilities for surveillance and control of communists, Marxists, oppositional groups, Austrian affairs, and the concentration camps.  He was, according to Padfield, "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 his duty to the state-which in his mind were one.  That the state happened to be Hitler's Third Reich was a matter of circumstance". (pp.144-45).  This is borne out by the viewpoint expressed by Bavarian Gau headquarters that he would have served any master with the same degree of dedication and enthusiasm so long as his career aspirations could be advanced. (Höhne, pp.162-63)  He rose rapidly. In 1939 he assumed control of Amt IV, the Gestapo.  He moved in rank from SS Colonel in 1937 to SS Lieutenant-General and Police Chief in November 1941.   His enthusiasm for carrying out a task thoroughly was reflected in his commitment to the solution of the Jewish problem. As Wistrich notes, he was more directly involved in their extermination programme than either Himmler or Heydrich: "He signed the circulating order requiring the immediate delivery to Auschwitz by 31 January 1943 of 45,000 Jews for extermination and countless other documents of the same tenor, which reveal his zeal in carrying out orders.  In the summer of 1943 he was sent to Rome to pressurize the Italians, who were proving singularly inefficient and unenthusiastic in arresting Jews.  ...In his hands, mass murder became an automatic administrative procedure."(p.174)  He was also directly involved in the notorious roundup and execution of British and Dominion air force officers who had escaped from Stalag Luft III, fifty of whom were executed on capture.  His last known whereabouts was the Führer bunker, on 17 May 1945. Like many others who escaped judicial accountability, he was rumored to have been seen in various countries subsequently.

Sources: R Wistrich/Who's Who in Nazi Germany; H Höhne/The Order of the Death's Head; M M Boatner III/The Biographical Dictionary of World War II; P Padfield/Himmler: Reichsführer SS.

Introduction

In the early morning hours of September 25, 1963, a grave was opened in the West Berlin Kreuzberg military cemetery and the contents removed for forensic examination. The marker indicated that the occupant of the grave was Heinrich Müller, born April 28, 1900, and killed in the street fighting in Berlin in 1945 when the Soviet Army seized the German capital. The memorial stone did not indicate that Müller had been an SS-Gruppenführer and a Lieutenant General in the German Police and that since 1935, was the head of the German Gestapo or the Secret State Police.

The exhumation had been requested by the West German Ludwigsburg Center that dealt with ex-Nazis sought for prosecution. This Center had information that Müller was not dead and was, in fact, gainfully employed by a foreign government. One of the first steps in proving this was to ascertain whether the corpse in the grave was that of Heinrich Müller who had been issued a death certificate from the Death Bureau of Berlin-Center numbered 11 706/45.

A subsequent pathological examination proved that there were the remains of three different men in the grave, none of whom were Heinrich Müller.

The man being sought was the son of a minor official, had completed a primary school education, had taken technical training in aircraft engines and in June of 1917 had joined the German Army. Because of his background, after his preliminary training, Müller was assigned to Flieger Ausbildung Abteilung 287 in April of 1918. In the seven months remaining before the war ended, Müller was promoted to NCO in August of 1918 and won the Iron Crosses First and Second Class. He was also awarded the Bavarian pilot’s badge and after injuring his leg in an aircraft accident, the retired Bavarian pilot’s badge. Müller served on the Western Front throughout the war.

When the war was over, Müller joined the Munich Police in 1919 as a junior assistant. He passed his entrance examination and became a police officer. He was promoted to Police Secretary in 1929 and was in Section VI of the Bavarian State Police, a unit that dealt with Communist activity. In 1934, Müller and a number of his associates were transferred to the Gestapo in Berlin and joined the SS as a Sturmführer on April 20, 1934. In 1935, Müller was head of Department II (Gestapo). In 1936, he was head of the Gestapo division of the headquarters of the Security Police (Sicherheitspolizei). In 1937, he was promoted to senior police official (Kriminalrat) and in 1939, to the rank of Reichskriminaldirektor or Director of Police.

His SS promotions were:
SS-Obersturmführer on July 1, 1934,
SS-Sturmhauptführer on January 30, 1935,
SS-Sturmbannführer on April 20, 1936,
SS-Obersturmbannführer on November 9, 1936,
SS-Standartenführer on January 30, 1937, SS-Oberführer on April 20, 1939,
SS-Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der deutschen Polizei on December 12, 1940
       and
SS-Gruppenführer und Generalleutnant der deutschen Polizei on November 9,1941.1

The organization that Müller controlled, the Secret State Police, had been instituted by Hermann Göring as Minister President of Prussia in 1933 but was acquired by Heinrich Himmler as part of his empire building. The numerous changes, additions, absorptions and expansions of the Gestapo during the course of its existence would fill a volume, because like Himmler, Müller was also an empire builder.

Although on Müller’s orders, most of the Gestapo records were destroyed in 1945, it can be approximated that the entire personnel roster of the Gestapo numbered 25,000 with a much larger but undetermined number, of V agents or Vertrauensleute, voluntary and paid informers. In 1943, when the army Intelligence system, the Abwehr, was broken up due to its poor performance, Müller managed to acquire its counter-intelligence department. Although Hitler had ordered in June 1941 that the army was to be the sole radio interception agency, Müller moved into this field as well and by the end of the war, was running an extensive radio intelligence department that specialized in “playback” or the turning of enemy agents to feed their former employers false information and locate other agents arriving or in place.

The Gestapo was renowned for its excellent filing system which permitted very close observation of the population. The Germans have always required the use of internal passports and required its citizens to register their current addresses and their places of employment so the Gestapo had less difficulty maintaining its control. The Gestapo also maintained telephone interdiction facilities and watched the mails. These methods are not unique to Germany or the Gestapo but were more prevalent and pervasive than in other western countries. Müller’s men did not have the modern American technology of using privately owned television sets connected to the universal cable systems as a means of listening to private conversations, mainly because the television set was not in use in Germany at that period. Almost any other conceivable form of observation was in use and after the war, the victors expressed considerable professional interest in the Gestapo’s methods and techniques.

Heinrich Müller married Sophie Dischner in 1924. Her father published a right wing Bavarian newspaper that was opposed to Hitler. A son, Reinhard, was born January 4, 1927, and a daughter, Elizabeth, on September 9, 1936. His daughter was stated to be “not entirely normal,” and there was considerable friction in Müller’s domestic life because of this. He eventually became estranged from his wife and had a lengthy relationship with his private secretary, Barbara Hellmuth. Müller and his wife were devout Catholics and even as a high-ranking SS officer, Müller refused to leave the church. He only joined the NSDAP very late when he was compelled to do so. In fact, Müller had been known to the Party as a strong opponent when they were struggling for power in the Munich of the 1920s and early 1930s. Party members were shocked when Müller and the men of his bureau were taken into the SS and put in charge of the Gestapo, and never ceased complaining about what they felt was ideological outrage. Müller owed his continued career and subsequent advancements to his intelligence, drive and ruthlessness. He was a self-effacing man, photographs of whom are rare. His putative superior, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, was extensively interrogated by US authorities after the war when they were seeking Müller. Excerpts from the comments of a man who disliked Müller and was not only disliked in return but also virtually ignored, are interesting. This quote is from the interrogation:

“MÜLLER’S influence in forming the Stapo staff was manifest not only in its foundation; later all posts in Amt IV were occupied by persons selected by him, including the Police Attachés…MÜLLER was unhappily married, had two children, one a boy of 17 called up for service just before the end of the war. The second child was much younger. The latter child had pronounced Mongolian features, and it is believed that on this account, MÜLLER avoided all social intercourse between friends and neighbors. MÜLLER spent practically all his time in his office on account of his unpleasant conditions at home. Most of his social life was confined to such officials as HUBER, PIFFRADER, GEISLER, MEISINGER and GOTTHALMSEDER. …When I met him for the first time, I did not notice any peculiarities. He had a remarkably small figure, a piercing look in his dark eyes and there was, in his appearance, nothing frank and kind but rather ‘luring’. He was, however, polite (“korrekt”) but perhaps too modest…MÜLLER had a remarkable memory and knew every person who had ever crossed his path and all events. He was a living encyclopedia for HIMMLER….He always wanted to do everything for himself, and gave his associates no chance for independent development; in fact this bad habit had been criticized even by HIMMLER.”

There exist very few descriptions of Müller engaged in the art of interrogation, something he was very skilled at. Müller was persistent and would take hours over these sessions. With his remarkable memory, he was almost always able to extract the truth. The only surviving account comes from the writings of captured British intelligence agent Captain Best. Kidnapped in Holland after the November, 1939 bomb attempt on Hitler’s life, Best was brought before Müller and questioned.

“Müller was a dapper, exceptionally good-looking little man, dressed in imitation of Adolf Hitler, in a gray uniform jacket, black riding breeches and top boots. He started his ‘snort’ immediately when he entered, and as he walked towards me, increased the pitch and the volume of his voice with great virtuosity. He managed to get right up close to me before his vocal chords tore into shreds. ‘You are in the hands of the Gestapo. Don’t imagine that we shall show you the slightest consideration. The Führer has already shown the world that he is invincible and soon he will come and liberate the people of England from the Jews and Plutocrats such as you. You are in the greatest danger and if you want to live another day must be very careful.’ Then he sat down on a chair in front of me and drew it up as close as possible, apparently with the intention of performing some mesmerizing trick. He had rather funny eyes which he could flicker from side to side with the greatest rapidity and I suppose that this was supposed to strike terror into the heart of the beholder.” Best then encountered Heydrich who shouted to him: “So far you have been treated as an officer and a gentleman, but don’t think that this will go on if you don’t behave better than you have done. You have two hours left in which to confess everything. If you don’t, I shall hand you over to the Gestapo, who are used to dealing with such gangsters and criminals—you won’t enjoy their methods a bit.”

“I turned to Müller, who was standing at my side and asked: ‘Who is this excitable young officer?’ At this Heydrich really went off the deep end and literally foamed at the mouth; at all events, he sprayed me liberally with saliva. Müller quickly pushed me out of the room and into my own. Later on he came in again and told me I must not take the matter too seriously: ‘Soup is never eaten as hot as it is cooked.’”

 Best concluded his description of Müller by saying: “In my experience, I always found Müller a very decent little man.”[1]

Heinrich Müller was five feet seven inches, strongly built with dark brown hair, cut high on the sides and good features. He had a small, tight mouth and rarely smiled but his face, and in fact his entire persona, was dominated by a pair of hooded brown eyes that fixed themselves on people with great intensity. He walked with a slight limp as a result of a wartime injury. Müller was descended from Germans living in Alsace and he went to some trouble to conceal the family French connections because of Hitler’s strong dislike of the French.

Given the position Müller occupied in the Third Reich and the role he played during its course, the question arises as to why no writer or historian has made any attempt to produce an in depth work on the head of the Gestapo. Aside from several pages in two of Heinz Höhne’s books and some material in Aronson, there is almost nothing in print about Heinrich Müller, and much of that extremely superficial or inaccurate. Although considerable information does exist in official files in archives, Müller has fallen through the cracks for several reasons.

Primarily, Heinrich Müller was a man who neither sought nor encouraged publicity. Unlike many of Hitler’s satraps, Müller disliked public display and was rarely photographed. Also, Müller was devoted to hard work and results, and preferred to work in private.

Secondarily, writers are drawn to the dramatic and the flamboyant, not the cold and secretive. Most treatments of historical personages consist, in the main, of wholesale filchings from previous writers, gotten up in new clothing but without substance. In the academic world, this is not called plagiarism, which it is, but instead labeled as research, which it is not.

Thirdly, U.S. intelligence agencies give every appearance of being singularly displeased by any mention of the name of Heinrich Müller.

In 1973, West German authorities issued a warrant for the arrest of Heinrich Müller, having good reason to believe that he did not die in Berlin in 1945. Correspondence, still classified in US files, between German legal agencies and their US counterparts indicates unhappiness, frustration and growing displeasure on the part of the Germans and classic stonewalling on the part of the Americans. Portions of Müller’s US CIC files now in Ft. Meade, Maryland, have been censored. None of the documents refused to researchers deal with immediate postwar searches for Müller but cover a much later period. The reasons given for continued classification is that their release would adversely affect US national security.

Historical Background

Living comfortably in Switzerland under the name of Schwartzer after the end of the Second World War, as an intelligence resource of the Swiss government, Heinrich Müller was contacted in 1948 by his onetime deputy in the Gestapo, SS-Oberführer Willi Krichbaum. Krichbaum, a long-time personal acquaintance of Müller, had been a senior Gestapo official in the Southeastern Grenz-Polizei or Border Police and had headed the Geheime Feld Polizei, the investigative body of the Abwehr since September of 1939.

After the war, Krichbaum had been recruited by former Major General Reinhard Gehlen and in 1946 was Gehlen’s chief agent recruiter stationed in Bad Reichenhall. Krichbaum was responsible for locating former Gestapo and SD agents and securing positions for them inside the Gehlen Organization.

This organization, located at the former Nazi official complex at Pullach southeast of Munich, became affiliated with the CIA when that organization was officially founded in 1948. According to Müller’s papers, Krichbaum had been in touch with his former chief through ex-Gestapo personnel living in Switzerland and opened discussions with the Americans about the possibility of employing Müller.

The head of this organization, Lt Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA, had heard rumors that the head of the Gestapo had fled to Switzerland and was working with Swiss intelligence. Through the services of former SS-Oberführer Krichbaum, Critchfield made contact with Müller in early 1948

Because of Müller’s knowledge and expertise in matters concerning Soviet intelligence, backed with archival material that the former head of the Gestapo had hidden in Berlin and Switzerland, the CIA expressed an immediate and intense interest in recruiting Müller. Krichbaum acted as a go-between in the negotiations with his former superior who was chafing at his comfortable but boring retirement and the CIA controlled Gehlen Organization under Colonel James Critchfield.[2]

It was never a question of the Americans threatening Müller with exposure if he did not cooperate, but more a question if Müller was willing to work for a former enemy. In the event, because of his detestation of communism and the perceived opportunity to do further damage to this system, Müller had little difficulty in working for American intelligence.

Müller and His Journals

As a young man, Heinrich Müller began to keep a brief record of his daily activities, a practice that he maintained throughout his life. There were times during the Sturm und Drang of his life when he was unable to maintain his entries, but these gaps were generally filled in when he had the opportunity.

In the beginning, Müller only noted down how much he had paid for something or a brief record of a trip or a chance meeting with an attractive woman, generally including her address and other such important information. When he was a young mechanic at the BMW aircraft engine plant, he kept notes on various engines he worked on, with occasional comments about the progress of the First World War that erupted when he was fourteen years old. Once Müller joined the army in 1917 and was assigned to a flying unit, his notes became more personal and began to cover his flights, actions and a host of other incidents that were far more interesting than the day-to-day drudgery of factory work.

He met his future wife at a Munich bus stop and was careful to note down the time and place of the meeting as well as her address and the fact that her father published a newspaper for the Bavarian People¹s Party (BVP). After the war, Müller joined the Bavarian Political Police and was heavily involved in activities against both the communists and Nazis and his earlier journals were now eclipsed by locally momentous events. The Hitler Putsch of 1923 was one event which got considerable coverage as well as the aftermath of the earlier communist seizure of power in Munich and its eventual overthrow by units of the Freikorps, the army, and police.

As Müller advanced in the Bavarian police, his notebooks are filled with observations on the political scene of the late 1920s and the eventual rise to power of Hitler and the National Socialists. Thinking he would be removed from his post when Hitler became Chancellor and the NSDAP came to power in Bavaria in 1933, Müller, who was always an ambitious man, began to prepare a flood of well-researched papers on his struggles with the communists in Bavaria and his observations on how they could best be countered by the new state.

These reports came into the hands of Heinrich Himmler who turned them over to Reinhard Heydrich, head of the SS intelligence service. Heydrich then decided to overlook Müller¹s persecution of the Nazi movement as well as his adherence to the Catholic-oriented conservative Bavarian People¹s Party and put him in charge of the Gestapo. This agency was a Prussian state entity, not very large in size and certainly not particularly influential. Müller, ever using his ambition as a goad and his intelligence as a weapon, began to develop this small group of professional police officials into a huge agency that at its height had over fifty thousand agents, sub agents and informers. Müller developed card files on nearly everyone in Germany and his organizational skills increased not only the size, but also the effectiveness of the Gestapo.

This agency dealt mainly with internal subversion and was in essence a police counter-intelligence group. Many of Müller¹s associates were professional police officers and many were not members of the Nazi Party. Müller himself did not join the Party until 1939, at which time he was awarded the Blood Order, one of the most prestigious Party decorations, ironically intended for members of the NSDAP who had been involved with the 1923 Putsch in Munich. Since Müller was involved in the crushing of this uprising, his award of the Blood Order, plus his membership in the SS, infuriated loyal Party officials in Munich who bombarded their superiors with loud complaints about Müller¹s new plumage, as they termed it. During this time, Müller kept his journals up but as the war approached, their pages were no longer filled with women¹s addresses or telephone numbers or how much he had paid for a sausage and beer in the local restaurant. Instead of bratwurst, the pages were filled with high-level material on internal matters, often affairs that were never reported in the German press and certainly not outside the country.

It would be entirely safe to say that Heinrich Müller with his telephone taps, legions of informers, mail surveillance departments, radio interception teams and millions of index cards, knew more about the internal workings of Hitler¹s Third Reich than anyone else. Müller wrote much of this fascinating but little-known historical material down on a daily or weekly basis. When working on his journals at home, Müller taught himself to write backwards so his ever curious and always disapproving wife, Sophie, could not read his acid and often secret remarks.

After the war and his resettlement in Switzerland, Müller resumed keeping his journals and he brought these with him to the United States in 1948. Heinrich Müller¹s journals were certainly never intended for publication or justification. They are always brutally frank, cynical, highly informative and at least for some readers, entertaining. Müller did not suffer fools gladly and even though he had to work with his former enemies, there was no reason for him not to perform private literary surgery on their overweight, alcoholic bodies and flabby personalities.

In his journals, Müller emerges early on as a womanizer, a cynical and very often amoral man, consumed with ambition and tolerating no one who attempted to stand in his way.

The CIA offered him a job. He took it and used his position to ingratiate himself with the President of the United States and the Director of the FBI as well as to marry into a wealthy and influential Washington family. He had no hesitation in exchanging information and confidences with a high-level Soviet agent although his raison d¹etre was to assist his new employers in tracking down and exposing the same people. At one time, he had the same agent to dinner with two of the senior members of the CIA and, from his notes, thoroughly enjoyed the irony of the situation. In fact, it could be said that Müller always seemed to enjoy the ironical side of his work, took nothing seriously and filled his journals with comments and asides which the complaisant and conventional view with genuine horror and, more often than not, great disgust.

In Washington, Müller lost no time in climbing the social ladder and filling his Georgetown home with a fortune in art stolen by the Germans during the war. Some of this art, which included portions of the famed Amber Room, he sold off for the private purses of his co-workers in the CIA. He once gave a small, very private dinner for the President to which Müller wore all of his Third Reich and Imperial decorations and while sitting across from President Truman, discussed the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy, a man to whom Müller was supplying inside information to aid him in his reign of terror.

Müller had known the British-Soviet spy, Harold “Kim” Philby who worked for everyone from the Nazis to the communists, before the war and renewed his acquaintance when Philby was sent to Washington as British liaison to the FBI and CIA.

There are several instances where Müller, Philby and Viktor, his NKVD friend, would sit in the refined atmosphere of Washington¹s highly exclusive Metropolitan Club library and discuss all manner of highly classified information. In return for his hospitality, Müller was given an equal amount of highly classified Soviet and British information that his CIA employers found of great value. This high level information trading between putative enemies is typical of the intelligence communities of all nations and is certainly the rule, not the exception.

Initially, when Müller came to Washington in 1948, he was not fluent in English and was certainly a stranger, but he quickly adapted. From trivia about his water pipes and the weather, Müller¹s journals quickly expand into detailed, highly opinionated, coverage of the Red spy hunts, the internecine fighting in the nation's capital, open warfare between the FBI and the CIA, and Müller¹s negative and often highly entertaining views on the top levels of the CIA. It is in these passages that Müller wields the knife as well as the bludgeon.

Although happily married, Müller had no problem conducting brief but intense affairs with the bored and unsatisfied wives of his closest co-workers, affairs which he had no problem entering in his journals, along with any significant pillow talk he gleaned from his romps in a Gretna Green hotel bedroom.

Becoming a friend of Sothenes Behn, wealthy and powerful head of IT&T, Müller took a great interest in the American stock market and with the advent of the Korean War, began to buy stock in companies dealing with the Pentagon. He obtained highly secret, inside information on contracts to be let by the American military and he and his Soviet spy friend began to invest heavily in the market.

In his relations with his personal staff, Müller clearly emerges as a kind and very considerate man but outside of his inner circle, he was entertaining, pleasant... and utterly ruthless. He kept at least one assassin on his staff and had no qualms when this man dispatched people who Müller felt might have identified him as the former head of the Gestapo. At the same time, Müller encouraged romances among his staff members, gave extensive financial support to the family of one assistant and certainly was very kind and affectionate to his dog.

Frederick the Great once said that the more he saw of humanity, the more he loved his dogs, and Müller, by his actions and personal views, certainly agreed with the Prussian King¹s commentary.

Although it is doubtful if Müller could have added valuable medical knowledge to his other attributes, nevertheless, he instructed his CIA co-workers in various methods of giving unwanted people sudden heart attacks.

When he first came to Washington, Müller noted that a number of inconvenient people, to include James Forrestal, were being thrown out of upper floor windows to their deaths on the pavement below. He suggested that an induced heart attack was far less dangerous to people passing by on the sidewalk beneath the victim.

One of the criticisms of the series on, and by, Heinrich Müller is that the tenor of the conversations held between American government officials and the former chief of the Gestapo is outrageously cynical, manipulative and amoral on the part of all parties involved. There seems to be an image fixed in the minds of a few which has all leading members of a government in general and the CIA in particular, participants in an elegant and refined tableau reminiscent of a dinner at Thomas Jefferson¹s Montecello where serious matters of state were debated by high-minded gentlemen over port and a pipe of fine Virginia tobacco. In reality, the days when gentlemen were to be found in government are long over and forgotten with only the memory lingering on to uplift the spirits of the hopeful and trusting. Pragmatism and ruthlessness have replaced manners and morals so that the private discussions of Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet members and heads of intelligence agencies sound far more like a sit-down in a Brooklyn clam house between Mafia dons than an eighteenth century literary salon. As Müller himself often said, morals and ethics are excellent norms but not very effective techniques.

Nearly all of the historical events depicted in these books run counter to the history which has been taught in the schools or depicted in an endless flood of works on the Second World War and the years subsequent. In the main, this is because the propaganda of those eras has been codified by the participants themselves and embroidered by a following legion of obedient court historians, poured into literary concrete and pointed to with great pride by their creators.

No government or leader has ever admitted being wrong, as witness the complete reluctance to absolve Admiral Husband Kimmel and General Walter Short of culpability in the lack of preparation at Pearl Harbor in 1941. It is now generally believed by the majority of interested Americans that President Franklin Roosevelt, and his immediate cohorts, had ample pre-knowledge of the pending Japanese attack but in spite of this widespread belief, no administration will ever admit to the errors of another administration, even sixty years after the fact.

The survival and employment by the United States of Heinrich Müller and a significant number of his former agents is contained in American archives but for reasons that are entirely obvious, these papers are still sealed with the highest security classifications. Even though all the participants in this event are long dead, governments, like corporations, are living entities and the sins of the fathers are not to be visited upon their children.

The journals of Heinrich Müller are by their very nature, revisionistic in the extreme and because of this revision of favorite myths and legends, abhorrent to the orthodox as well as those who chance to be employed by the same agencies that Müller so brutally scores. In order to refute his ugly depictions of national icons, legions of historians, government officials and ubiquitous academics have been improving their shining hours by frantic and extensive searches in various archives and official records on two continents. The sole purpose of their labors is to attempt to disprove the myriad allegations of ignorance, idleness and vice expressed by the former head of Hitler¹s secret police in his private journals. The sum and total of all this wasted labor can be found in such unhappy comments as are found in a British intelligence journal which states with shrill authority that because there were two typographical errors in three volumes, the contents of all of them have no historical value whatsoever.

Less substantive objections generally center on the fact that the reader¹s sensibilities and beliefs have been badly shaken; that the material simply cannot be true because the reader believes something else which, because he believes it, means it must be the personification of truth itself. At the end of the twentieth century one finds hope, trust and idealism residing in adjoining cots at a cut rate nursing home while waiting for the lights to go out.

Müller¹s journals did not begin in 1948 nor end in 1952 but they represent an important era in American history and present views of an insider who was privy to the most intimate secrets of the United States government and its senior members at the beginning of the Cold War, a campaign whose long-term effects are still being felt throughout the world.

The Müller Journals

Translation from the German by Ernst Gauss

Monday, 6 December 1948

The first week in Washington. I think I would have preferred to go to the tropics but it appears not to be. Impressive white buildings in one part of the city and terrible Negro slums in the rest. Contrasts are indicative of the attitude towards the social position of the former slaves. Ignore them. On the 8th the President will be talking to the President of Cuba about nothing but I am to see him as soon as my new chiefs of office will allow it. To begin to work on background material as soon as we have selected a proper house. Not considered a good idea for me to work in a regular office but at home.

Wednesday, 8 December 1948

Will move into a pleasant house in the Georgetown area. It is for sale but the government will rent it for me. It is an older house, more of a villa than a small house, but with a few servants and much better furniture, it will suffice. Thick piles of papers on the Chambers business to go over as well as preparing some material for the Justice Department based on my own papers. I will interview Colonel Hoover soon enough. It will be interesting to meet my opposite number, especially since I know a great deal about him but he knows almost nothing about me. Advantages are always better if you have them. Winter is not as bad here as it was in Munich but there are no mountains to hike in although they tell me that “out West” there are more than enough. I will have to wait on that.

Sunday, 12 December 1948

 I went to Mass this morning. Should take up where I left off and establish my good relations with the Church. Three of my people will arrive here tomorrow. The State Department spy ring is far more extensive than I would have thought. Apparently, Roosevelt was fully aware of the penetration by communists and permitted it. The entire agency is filled from cellar to attic with Lenin-lovers. Typical pseudo-intellectual assholes; they are everywhere in Washington. Totally ignorant but well-born fools or intelligent radicals. I have no choice...I have to associate with the former and destroy the latter. The lease is signed, money paid and I am now awaiting the furniture. The crated paintings are safe enough here. Insisting on bringing them with me prevented some official thief from taking them home with him. The money situation is not at all bad but we must be careful not to let the idiots know how much I have or they will try to reduce my salary. Most of them don’t know the difference between an original Raphael and a Klee so I am more or less safe there although I cannot hang anything where it can be seen. The new place is bigger than the one in Geneva but I know there is a cemetery nearby. Well, we all end up in one sooner or later.

Oakhill Cemetery lies on the edge of Georgetown. Müller had a large and very expensive collection of rare art, much of which had been looted during the war by the Germans and after the war by the OSS and the CIA. He supplemented his income by dealing in such art, both for himself and his American friends.

Monday, 13 December 1948

 The arrival of my staff people has been delayed for a week, making things rather difficult. Typical military stupidity. Someone obviously couldn’t read the papers correctly. I have set up a camp bed in the best bedroom and brought over all of my paintings. Even if I can’t hang them yet, it is pleasant enough to look at the crates. I have told T. (Truman, ed.) that there is no doubt at all that Hiss is the one the Soviets called ‘Alexi’ at least in the reports I have. He fits all the points very well. Such unhappiness.

I am told the President is not happy about the amount of espionage we have uncovered here. He thinks that by firing Wallace and closing down the OSS (which T. says stands for “Oh So Social” because it was full of socially prominent fools) he can clean up the Roosevelt sewer. I think not. I will have to talk to him about this...that is if they ever let me see him. I am told he is curious. Also that I must play the piano for him like a street musician’s pet monkey! Well, I can play a little Strauss and perhaps some simple Chopin.

This Chambers is a fat homosexual idiot but he put everyone right into the fire with his papers. Now they tell me that even before the war, he told the State Department about high-level espionage in the State Department but that Berle shut him up. When I told them that Berle worked with the Soviets, there was much head scratching and long faces.

We knew all their diplomatic codes were broken before the war by us, the British and the Soviets. That’s why I never liked to send coded messages and I refused to use our telephone system because it was like an old garden hose. Too many leaks. They tell me Hoover listens to everyone, or used to. Truman hates him and considers him to be a debased timeserver and informer. Who isn’t? Truman did not receive a majority in the election, only 49% but he did win which is important. I remember a conversation with Ribbentrop once about hunting. He said he had missed an elk by “just a centimeter” but he did miss and the distance isn’t important.

FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover, is called “Colonel” by Müller. Hoover was offered this rank by Roosevelt during the war but declined the honor, expecting to be made a General at least. Hoover, at Roosevelt’s instruction, tapped the telephones of official Washington and rushed the results to Roosevelt. He attempted to do this with Truman but was ordered to cease this practice at once and Truman refused to have any dealings with Hoover. Adolf Berle, Jr. was one of the “Brain Trusters” of Roosevelt’s New Deal and Undersecretary of State under Hull. He has been identified as a Soviet source.

Friday, 17 December 1948

Two of my people have arrived at last and I was able to get some decent furniture into the house. In cleaning out a closet, I found some old newspapers talking about Wilson’s death. Old newspapers, dripping faucets and dead flies on the window ledges are being cleaned out. My family is doing well enough, I understand, but I can do very little now. The Amis are still looking for me and I have been told to be very careful because they are watching everyone in Pasing. Small, discreet assistance is being rendered.

I have turned nearly all of my State Department material over to the Justice people and also have had my first unofficial guest, Msgr. S. (Spellman, ed.). We make progress to save our souls. A bit of pleasant information for him. Pius hates the communists worse than I do so at least I have some friends left. Christmas is always a bad time when one is away from family but we will make do. The Americans cook turkey (Trauthahn) here and celebrate on Christmas Day instead of Christmas Eve. We shall keep to the old customs and have goose and ham. A tree with candles too but I am told that electric lights are considered safer.

After the war, Müller’s wife and daughter returned to the old family home in Pasing, a suburb of Munich. They were later joined by his son who had been in a prisoner of war camp as a tank driver in the elite Adolf Hitler Leibstandarte Armored Division. The American CIC as well as Soviet intelligence closely watched the family and it was eventually discovered that Müller had contact with his wife but nothing could be done about this because CIC reports were not acted upon. Müller was a nominal Catholic who officially had to leave the Church at Himmler’s request. In 1948, Pope Pius XII who, as Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli had been Nuncio to Germany, had a deep and abiding hatred of communism, having seen its terroristic actions at the end of the First World War.

Wednesday, 22 December 1948

Interesting news this morning. The dining room is much the way I want it with fresh paint, new draperies and much of the furniture from Geneva in place. At breakfast I had a visitor who was much excited. When the servants had left, he closed the door in a most conspiratorial manner and rushed over to tell me the news! Mr. Duggan had accidentally fallen out of his office window last night! Such a tragedy and so soon before the holidays too. Well, I suppose if he had lived, he would have been up before the courts and might have said something. Of course I have not been here long enough to have helped him and I have only been through New York, but my fellow workers seem to be more than capable in this field. We all share such common interests.

My informant, who kept trying to eat my fresh rolls, told me that the matter is to be kept quiet. I wonder when a man falls sixteen floors to the street how this can be kept quiet? Did he come down on somebody I wonder? How do you explain the brains on a car parked on the street? He had a bad headache and his head exploded suddenly?

I am supposed to talk to a Mr. Nixon either today or tomorrow about some of this. Not to mention the fake suicide at all. He doesn’t know and ought not to but is considered a very good ally. Now it seems I will not see the President until after the holidays because he has gone home to his farm. It gives me more time to polish my English. One of the water pipes broke last night but fortunately there was nothing in the cellar and everything has been fixed. The neighborhood is pleasant and there are some excellent parks here. I shall make a visit to the art museum as soon as I can, that is if I get through the mountains of files that they keep dumping on me. The new secretary is not as pretty as the last one but is very accommodating. The question is whether or not she stays in the house or lives elsewhere. We will see how we get along. It is good to have the regular cook back. He knows exactly what I want and when I want it. It is a terrible trouble to break in new servants. I used to let my wife do that but now it is my job. More trouble in Berlin but that is to be expected. Mundt is supposed to stop over this afternoon and perhaps we can settle a few things.

There was great tension in Soviet-blockaded Berlin but this did not materialize into open warfare as the militant U.S. war party so often and loudly predicted. Karl Mundt, a conservative Congressman from South Dakota, had been elected in 1946 along with Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin. The American Congress was, by 1948, extremely conservative, mainly as the result of a grassroots movement against the rampant liberalism of the Roosevelt era.

Friday, 24 December 1948

 Hiss claims that all are lies. We know better. Pot boiling over the Duggan “accident.” Nixon is sure the man killed himself rather than face “the music” but we know better here. The rest of the staff is here and about half of the house is ready for use. My bedroom is finally finished and last night I personally hung my treasures up. One does get used to the same mattress and while the windows do not give me the view I used to have, still, the effect is soothing and restful. Herta is not as pleasant as Barbara or Anna but, all in all, gives promise. I told her to stop eating so much! She is used to the very poor food in Europe after all. If she starts to get fat, I will have to replace her. Krieger will come over in January and if H. doesn’t work out, at least I know where I am with my loyal stenographer.

The Duggan referred to here is Laurence H. Duggan, who had been accused by Whittaker Chambers of being a communist spy. Duggan had attended Harvard University where he knew Alger Hiss, also an accused State Department spy (later convicted). Duggan joined the Department of State in 1930 and became a political affairs advisor, leaving the Department in 1944. At the time of his death, Duggan was connected with the Rockefeller interests. After being accused by former communist agent Chambers, Duggan either jumped, fell, or, as now seems most likely, was pushed from his office window in New York. His friends in the government subsequently lauded him and the matter was shelved. Subsequent deciphering of Soviet secret messages, called Venona by U.S. intelligence, revealed that Duggan was indeed an agent. Müller was already aware of this fact because the Germans had intercepted Soviet intelligence messages sent from Ottawa, Canada, in a code that like the codes used by the NKVD in Australia, could be easily broken.

Saturday, 25 December 1948

Christmas this evening. An excellent goose which I bought myself and in the very large drawing room a very fine tree. I decided not to put electric lights on it and I put it into the stand that revolves and plays songs on the apparatus inside. The candles make my staff feel at home. The gifts are ready to hand out and the staff got me a very nice watch that I will have to wear to keep them happy.

The President’s people have said that Duggan was not a spy and was the victim of an accident, not a suicide. How do you define an accident? He was accidentally standing by an open window in the middle of winter when some thoughtless secretary shoved him out because he bit her breasts the night before? That awful Roosevelt woman says that press accounts of the high-flying Duggan were terrible. I can write better English than she can but we at least have similar interests...women.

I have discovered that Washington is, like the boiler in the cellar, not unlike Berlin. Gossip, chatter, innuendo, deep thrusts into the back by good friends, greed and, above all, total ignorance of almost everything but how to acquire money and most of all, importance.

I am learning to be very awe-inspired when I have to listen to people like General Smith who is a very small-minded man. He is near-sighted and stares intently at people, impressing them with the brilliance of his mind. If he wore glasses, he would be less impressive. When he was in England with Eisenhower, he chased hotel maids from morning to night. Of course Eisenhower had an affair with his driver, female I must say. Well, I can’t condemn them for such activities but I would never have chased old English women around with my pants open. Smith is now busy practicing his expertise on the Russians but it is rumored that he may return here permanently. They seem to like military personages running their various agencies.

The Admiral was at Pearl Harbor when it came under attack. For some reason, I have neglected to enlighten him about certain facts concerning that episode, facts which would no doubt meet with the disbelief the orthodox display when confronted with uncomfortable truths. I may have to go to New York after all when the Grand Jury comes back next month. It will be interesting to go to the Metropolitan Museum at least. Perhaps I will have the chance to see the President before then. I will have to go downstairs soon so I will wish my family and myself a very Happy Christmas and a Fortunate New Year!

Tuesday, 28 December 1948

I see that Truman will be receiving a nice increase in his pay soon. Too early for me to consider such a thing. Christmas was as expected, sad but very pleasant in the new country. No longer hear German in the streets, although in Geneva it was more often French. Some prominent USA trade union people are being investigated by the legislature now. I have always maintained that next to university professors, the trade unions conceal the worst communists.

I will see the President sometime just after the New Year.

Now that the house is in order, I am having the wine cellar filled and I am expected to have some of my fellow workers over for a New Year party.

More strange stories to relate. The former deputy Secretary of State, Welles, was found lying unconscious in the snow at his estate near here on the day after Christmas. Robert told me that Welles, who was once the real Secretary (I keep wanting to write Minister here) of State was an old fairy who liked sailors, especially black ones. Could one of them have beaten him up? This does happen but no one wants to talk about it. He is alive but has frostbite. The Stalingrad sickness. We used to call the East Medal the Frozen Meat Order for just that reason.

General Truscott told me an extremely funny story about General Smith. He does not like him at all and I will put this down in case I need it later on.

The General, who was Chief of Staff to Eisenhower, was in Sicily during the campaign there and apparently was late for a conference with General Patton (probably the best the Americans had). They sent a staff car to see why he was late and found his car parked on the edge of a road. This was near an American artillery battery and when Smith heard the guns firing, he was sure they were Germans and fled, screaming like a girl, from his car and ran down into the bushes. It took three officers, including a General, to convince him that it was safe to return but everyone was terribly embarrassed to discover that Smith had shit his pants full! Someone had to put down a briefcase for him to sit on so he didn’t mess the car!

They say Patton enjoyed this very much.

The next time I have to deal with Smith, I will remember the story but I do not think I will bring it up to him. I understand he will be in Washington officially on Tuesday. He will see the President. Wants to be let out of the Ambassadorship and am told he has had someone write a book for him.

The story about Walter Bedell Smith is quite true and can be found today in the papers of General George Patton. From 1946 through 1949, Smith was U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union and after this, head of the CIA. According to his files, Müller’s initial contact with Smith and several others came about while he was being considered for employment.

Sumner Welles, who had once been the de facto Secretary of State and a close personal friend of Roosevelt, had left the government in 1943 as the result of a scandal involving a homosexual incident with a black Pullman porter on an official trip. He later began to drink heavily and was found unconscious on the grounds of his Maryland estate under circumstances that have never been explained.

Sunday, 2 January 1949

We have had very bad weather here, all across the eastern part of the continent. Very cold and much snow. Not unfamiliar to me. If Americans have a few centimeters of snow on the ground, they go quite mad with apprehension. The press is always filled with amusing stories. In Canada, some politician, out for a walk in the bad snowstorm, lost his way, fell into a river and drowned.

We had a decent little party last night and only one senior officer got drunk and threw up in the pantry. None of them know the difference between vinegar and prime vintage so I served them terrible domestic wine and champagne in expensive bottles. Soldiers who spend their wars in canteens or safely behind desks are so boastful with a few ounces of alcohol in them.

I recall a talk I had recently with Thayer and that obnoxious Russian, Pash. He is a hard-faced man with glasses who used to be a gymnastics teacher, hates all communists, Jews and Japanese. He was bragging to us how he pushed a General Dewitt into locking all the Japanese-Americans away in concentration camps at the beginning of their war. He took positive delight in this and then went on to discuss, in front of Thayer who had pretensions of gentility, the way he had Togliatti shot in Rome last July. I quote him exactly “We shot the ginny (?) in the head and he still lived. The next time we can stick a grenade up his wop ass.” After Thayer looked like he might enjoy throwing up privately, Pash went on to discuss how he and the Wisner gang of assassins were once going to shoot Wallace! He was very bitter that he was talked out of this little program! Marvelous what kind of lunatics we have to deal with. Suppose he didn’t like the President’s piano playing and fired a Panzerfaust into his ear?

Wallace needs to be attended to but not by Pash and I think a heart attack would be most beneficial. When I said this, Thayer looked at me as if I were mad and then excused himself. He probably did vomit into the bushes outside. At any rate, he did me the disservice by leaving me with the lunatic Pash who revealed a plot to me about poisoning some leftwing newspaper reporter he hated.

I will have to go to New York at once and can see the President when I come back. After him, I will be honored to visit with Colonel Hoover and, of course, the Admiral once again. I use the excuse of my work to avoid most of these idiots and assholes but sometimes, I have a duty to perform. This is not much different from the old days, after all.

Boris T. Pash was born Boris Pashkovski in Russia. His father was the Metropolitan Theophilus Pashkovski. Boris shortened his name in 1932. He was a refugee who came to this country after the October Revolution. He was a gym teacher in Los Angeles and held a rank in the National Guard of California. He was instrumental in persuading General De Witt to endorse a program of deportation and imprisonment of all Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Pash was later chief of security for the Manhattan atomic program and while there, incurred Roosevelt’s wrath by attempting to arrest a number of communist agents engaged in work on the project. He later became head of the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) in San Francisco.

After the war, he was in charge of the ‘Alsos Project’ in which Pash and a team of military police went around conquered Germany rounding up German atomic scientists and shipping them to the United States. Later, he became involved with the new CIA and worked with Frank Wisner, head of the CIA’s clandestine operations. Pash was a strong anti-communist and became involved in various assassination projects such as the attempted murder of Italian communist leader, Palmiro Togliatti on 14 July, 1948, in Rome. The assassination attempt was a failure.

The Thayer mentioned was Charles Thayer who had been OSS chief in Vienna after the war. He became head of the Voice of America in 1947. He died in 1969 during a heart operation. Thayer was a strong proponent of the use of former Third Reich officials to combat communism but was viewed as too liberal by the hard-line conservatives who were bent on purging any element from government that they did not view as strongly anti-Soviet. Thayer’s problem was that he adopted a more moderate course of action and eventually was forced out of government service.

Thursday, 6 January 1949

New York. Bad weather in Washington when I left. Cold and instead of snow, it rained! Excellent rooms at the Hotel Plaza and a fine view from my windows of the great park. Much like the English Garden.

A shipment arrived for me here on the Los Angeles out of Antwerp. Must supervise the disposition of my material.

While the Grand Jury is sitting here, I am involved in work on the witnesses and the individuals being heard. Max Bedacht, whom I know of from my Munich days, is a witness. A known communist for certain but one who has changed his allegiance. A brief conversation with him and we talked about Weiss Ferdl and a pub he knew in Schwabing. Get on their good side, always.

Levine, the writer, talks to me about the communists for over three hours. He once said he knew about the late Duggan being a communist agent but now recants somewhat. He is getting pressure from the Administration here that, on the one hand, wants to clean out the communists (mostly because the people want them to) but on the other do not want to disrupt the image of the Roosevelt Administration and their communistic New Deal. They wish to have it both ways and they cannot.

I had to talk to Chambers who is a fat, untidy and very emotional man, filled with guilt about his communism and his homosexuality. Basically, he is trying to tell the truth and often does but he is so emotionally involved that he often goes far afield.

New York is a very interesting city. The famous “skyscrapers” are impressive and I spent part of yesterday morning at the Metropolitan Museum, which is splendid and can be walked to from the hotel although my security people do not like the idea. I will have to come back again or at least spin out my stay here and see more of it. Also, visited a dozen very good antique galleries and made some purchases. In one, I found a complete set of silver service for twelve. German, mid-19th century and obviously stolen by a GI after the war. But cheap enough and the initial matches my own new name so I had to buy the set. Two heavy boxes that my man carried out to the taxicab. The drivers of these vehicles are quite interesting characters. Also bought two miniatures, Elizabethan English, which show a man and his wife. Good frames and good techniques.

More work with the Grand Jury people. Levine very strongly exposes extensive communist networks here, in Mexico and Canada. At least some of what he produced as evidence makes complete sense and I will have to check it out. He thinks I am Swiss and asked me where he could buy a good cuckoo clock! I told him that these were German and he made a great face and said bad things about the Germans. These encounters are entertaining because I wonder what Levine would do if he discovered that he had lunch in the hotel suite of the head of the Gestapo! He even mentioned my old agency and went into some entirely inaccurate history. It was all I could do to keep from laughing in his very serious, pedantic face!

Colonel Hoover now claims he has “investigated” over two million US officials and found that only about seven thousand were “suspicious.” First, I cannot believe he has investigated so many and my own percentages are far higher. I am looking forward to my interview with him. It would be better to interview him at my home in Washington. He can sit down while I stand up with the window behind me. That way, I will have the physical and psychological advantage over him. I am told to keep my secretary away from him because attractive women tend to annoy him. A very proper man but, according to my background information, a savage anti-communist who ruthlessly persecuted thousands both during and after the 1914 war. Terrible legal troubles later over this but one can see just how he thinks. When Wilson was hidden in the White House (syphilis or stroke?) and no one ran the country, Hoover and his people ran amok (a word I learned from Hewel).

Americans tend to be either one way or the other. One day they embrace you and the next, beat you to death with a piece of metal pipe. This mindless chatter will go on for weeks but I have no reason to go back to Washington as long as I can impress people here. This is where the activity is, after all.

Perhaps I can get to a concert at the Metropolitan Opera. Is it true that they have a gold curtain there? Perhaps someday the Americans might reconstitute the Berlin Philharmonic but I doubt if Furtwängler will ever be allowed to conduct it. After all, he dared to conduct the orchestra when Hitler was present and this makes him a dangerous and evil Nazi although all he thought of was skiing, women and music. I understand F. was to conduct in Chicago but the Jews in the orchestra there made such a fuss that he will probably not come.

The American Army board has recommended clemency for most of the Peiper men from the Ardennes battle. If they didn’t need us so badly to fight the Russians, they would have hanged a lot more of us.

Ambassador Walther Hewel was Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop’s permanent representative at Hitler’s military headquarters. As a young student at the Munich University, Hewel had been with Hitler in his abortive putsch in 1923 and later went to Java where he learned to speak the local language. He vanished at the end of the war and is reputed to have escaped from embattled Berlin.

It was 1951 before Wilhelm Furtwängler, former conductor of the famous Berlin Philharmonic was permitted to conduct in public again.

Thursday, 20 January 1949

Today, Truman is to be inaugurated here at a great ceremony. I was invited to attend but have made my excuses. From what I have seen of American parades, compared with German ceremonies, they always seem very amateurish. Besides, I have to go over literally thousands of pages of paper, some mine and some theirs, dealing with communists and I simply cannot spare the time.

There was also a large official function last evening, also to which I did not go although one of my General friends offered to get me a ticket. I have no interest in meeting with famous Americans at this point and besides, my English is not so good yet. Perhaps later when I learn to speak with less accent. I am hiring a speech teacher who thinks I am a Swiss national, which in fact I suppose I am although the German is certainly not the same.

Cold, very clear and windy. I took a pleasant walk through the streets of Georgetown and noticed all of the very old red brick buildings, built like Dutch houses, almost up to the street and very narrow. Attractive enough and how interesting to compare these old and historic buildings with the awful Negro slums in other parts of town. We would never have permitted such disgusting living areas in Germany but this is a democracy, as I am constantly being told, and people can largely do as they like.

A little later, I heard the roar of military aircraft over the city and went up on the roof just to be certain that the Russians weren’t attacking. American planes, part of the ceremony. It takes a very long time to get the sound of bombers directly overhead out of one’s mind.

Friday, 4 February 1949

Our dear friend Comrade Josef does not want to come to visit Truman in the United States because his doctor won’t allow him to! No one dares tell Stalin what to do. I understand that he wishes to meet Truman in Czechoslovakia instead. Two reasons for this: One, Stalin dares not leave Russia because he is terrified of a coup and second, he hates Truman who has consistently thwarted his expansionist plans and will make some kind of an attempt to kill him in the safety of one of his slave countries. Probably blame it on priests or the Benes faction. I have given my own opinion on this where it should do some good but have been told that Truman detests Stalin, sees him for what he is, a lunatic murderer, and will not go.

Weather has been cold and very clear. There is a garden here that has gone to seed and perhaps in the spring, something creative can be done. I should have Papa come over and work in it but that certainly will not be. Things seem to be going as well as can be expected at home. The family is still being bothered by the Amis but I think they can survive. They are looking in the wrong place for me after all. Do these idiots think I am hiding in the attic or creep into the house disguised in a wig and false beard?

After the war, Müller’s family all lived in a small house in the Munich suburb of Pasing. His father, wife, daughter and son, a recently released prisoner of war, were quite poor and ostracized because of Müller’s position in the Gestapo. Müller’s father, Alois, had never been a great success in life, having tried his hand at a number of occupations; policeman, church restorer and professional gardener. He failed at all of these projects and certainly instilled a greatly heightened sense of ambition in his only son.

Thursday, 10 February 1949

More paperwork, endless paperwork. I was given a fine shepherd dog today as a guard animal. A male, about a year old, black and tan and very intelligent. He has some enormously long name on his papers but I will call him Maxl. My wife hated dogs but I do not and I think we will get along very well indeed. Well-trained, just like Hitler’s favorite bitch was. Schopenhauer was right about people and dogs. On the other hand, Herta is still stuffing herself like a sausage and the cook is complaining that she invades his kitchen at all hours and disrupts his planned meals. I have spoken with H. about this eating problem several times and I will have to get rid of her if she does not stop. I do not like people to ignore my suggestions and her problem is not physical. Also, I do not like fat women and she is moving quickly in that direction.

Irmgard has arrived, is not happy with my domestic arrangement and I assured her it would change soon. My excuse was that H. had been assigned to me!

After finally meeting the President, some of my impressions. I never knew Roosevelt but this one must be a welcome change. A dynamic man, friendly but also firm. Not well versed in European politics and very suspicious of the military. He understands domestic politics very well, having been a legislator for some years. I think basically an honest man and I can see why Stalin loathes him. Truman comes directly to the point and cuts through the diplomatic nonsense. As I thought, he is of two minds about the communist business, also a little frightened about its extent and probably would like to push it aside. We talked about Duggan and he does not feel he was a communist and said “poor man” several times. He asked me what I thought about Hitler and so on. Intelligent questions. He will officially hear nothing bad about Roosevelt but in private does not speak well of him. This is a small town farmer in thought and the sophistication of the American intellectual establishment very much annoys him. They, of course, hate him because they all loved Roosevelt and his ways. Truman said that Roosevelt had to “put him on the ticket” because he was forced to...that R. wanted crazy Wallace but couldn’t get him. In revenge, R. never told Truman anything at all and completely ignored him! And this when R. knew he was dying! T. also said Roosevelt “couldn’t tell the truth to save his soul.” That I can believe. He also told me that the White House was “a pigsty” when he moved in and that Mrs. Roosevelt and the family lived like “poor white trash” in what he called the People’s House.

Mrs. R. used to bring her lady friends into the building, even when the President was there, but refused to allow him to bring any of his lady friends around. And Truman said the cook belonged in the kitchen of a penitentiary and that State dinners were avoided like the Black Death.

 Another historical footnote: When R. died, his old friend (who I know hated him) Churchill, refused to attend the funeral. I told T. that C. was a drunken, fat little fairy and I actually got the President to laugh. He told me that he heard I liked to play the piano and that I must visit with him at home and we could play duets! My God, I will have to fortify myself with schnapps first! They tell me his unattractive daughter thinks she is a wonderful singer but sounds like a cat was being run over by a truck. That will be an evening I could do without, believe me. The term “monkey love” is often very applicable.

The wall hangings have come down from New York and I will have them put up over the weekend. They will join the Goeblens already in the hall. Every time I see these, I recall them hanging in the new Chancellery. The Vienna Museum is no doubt still looking for them. If Peiner had finished his projected pieces, they would have been returned to Vienna and I would have bare places on my walls.

I am to have some of my associates in for dinner next week. Someone told me that I am supposed to have a “wonderful wine cellar,” but this was from someone who was at the New Year’s party and drank the swill! (The same General who threw up in the pantry). I am supposed to have lunch with Wisner but I will put it off as long as I can. I cannot abide him; he drinks far too much, is terribly arrogant without any visible reason for it and appears to me to be more than half-mad. I mentioned my opinions of him to the President but he is not sufficiently in control to do much about such assholes as Pash and Wisner.

The tapestries mentioned were on loan to Hitler from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna while Werner Peiner, a German artist, was working on an original series of hangings, which depicted scenes from German military history. This series was never finished and the old tapestries vanished at the end of the war.

[1] Best, S.Payne, “The Venlo Incident,” London, 1950.
[2] “The American Army even recruited and evacuated the head of the Gestapo, Heinrich Mueller. To prevent later accusations that the United States government was employing the notorious Mueller, the Americans used Gehlen’s organization to finance his work.” Trento, Joseph, “The Secret History of the CIA” New York, 2001, p29.

To be continued….

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution – Part 4

by Curzio Malaparte

CHAPTER FOUR

KAPP OR MARS vs. MARX

“We reckoned on a revolution in Poland “ and the revolution never came,” said Trotsky to Clara Zetkin in the autumn of 1920. How can the behavior of the Polish Catilines be reasonably explained by those who believe, with Sir Horace Rumbold, that of all the circumstances attendant on a coup d‘Etat, disorder is by far the most useful?

Trotsky’s army at the gates of Warsaw, the great weakness of the Witos Government, and the popular spirit of sedition were surely all of them most favonrable circumstances for an attempt at revolution. Balachowitch had said, “Any fool can seize power.” Moreover, not only Poland, but the whole of Europe was full of these fools in 1920. Given the circumstances, why did no one in Warsaw, not even the Communists, make a single attempt at a coup d‘Etat? The only person who had no illusions about the possibility of a revolution in Poland was Radek. Lenin himself said so to Clara Zetkin.  Radek knew what the Polish Catilines lacked, and he believed that a Polish revolution would have to be artificially brought about from the outside. Neither did Radek have any false hopes about conspirators in other countries. The story of events in Poland during the summer of 1920 revealed not only the inadequacy of Polish Catilines hut of all European Catilines. Whoever is able to take an unprejudiced view of events in Europe in 1919 and 1920, cannot help wondering how Europe managed to get over such a serious revolutionary crisis. In almost all countries the liberal middle classes were incapable of defending the State. Its defensive methods lay and still lie in a simple application of those police systems which, from all time and even now, are relied upon by both absolute and liberal Governments. But if the bourgeoisie was unable to defend the State, it was compensated by the inadequacy of the revolutionary parties : they could not meet the old-fashioned defensive methods of Governments with modern offensive tactics. They could not parry police measures with a revolutionary technique.

It is significant that the Catilines both of the Right and of the Left were unable, at the most critical stage in Europe’s revolutionary crisis in 1919 and 1920, to use the experience of the Bolshevik revolution. They were ignorant of the method, the tactics, and modern technique of the coup d’Etat of which Trotsky had given a new and classic example. Their idea of capturing the State was out-of-date and so they were doomed to find themselves on the adversary’s g round, and, using means and methods which all Governments, however weak and shortsighted, can successfully counteract by the traditional mea ns and methods of State defense.

Europe was ripe for revolution, but the revolutionary parties were clearly unable to make good use of these favorable circumstances or of Trotsky s experience. They held that the success of the Bolshevik insurrection in October 1917 was due to the peculiar condition of Russia in those days and to Kerenski’s blunders. But at that time almost every European nation had a Kerenski at the head of the Government: they forgot that when Trotsky formed his plan for a coup d‘Etat and put it into execution he took not the slightest notice of Russia’s special situation. The novelty in Trotsky’s insurrectional tactics lay in this complete disregard for the general situation of the country. Kerenski’s blunders could influence only the plan and execution of the Bolshevik coup d’Etat; Trotsky’s tactics would have been the same even if the Russian situation had been different.

Kerenski’s mistakes were, and still are, typical of the entire liberal bourgeoisie in Europe. Governments were extremely feeble and their surviva1 was a matter for police organization. Meanwhile, liberal Governments were fortunate in that the Catilines also considered revolution as a question of police organization.

The Kapp Putsch is a lesson to all those who think of revolutionary tactics in terms of politics and not of technique.

In the night of March 12-13, 1920, several divisions of Baltic regiments commanded by General von Luttwitz had collected near Berlin. They sent an ultimatum to Bauer’s Government threatening to occupy the capital unless the Government resigned in favor of Kapp. Even if Kapp prided himself on the parliamentary nature of his coup d’Etat and on being von Luttwitz’s Siéyès, yet his attempt at revolution was a purely classic and military coup d‘Etat from the start, both in conception and execution. Bauer’s Government turned down the request, and took the necessary police measures for the defense of the State and the maintenance of order. As always happens in such cases, the Government counteracted the military plan with a police plan. The two are alike and that is why military sedition is not revolutionary at all. The police defends the State as though it were a town: the soldiers attack the State as if it were a fortress.

Bauer told the police to barricade the squares and main streets and to occupy all public buildings. In order to carry out his coup d‘Etat, Von Luttwitz substituted the policemen at the crossroads in the main streets, at the entrance of a square, in front of the Reichstag and the Ministries in the Wilhelmstrasse, by his own troops. A few hours after his entry into the town, he was master of the situation. The town had been taken over without bloodshed, as regularly as any changing of the guard. But if von Luttwitz was a soldier, Kapp, the former Director of Agriculture, was a high functionary and a bureaucrat. Von Luttwitz thought he had captured the State merely by substituting his own men for the police in the maintenance of public order , while Kapp, the new Chancellor, was convinced that the occupation of the Ministries would sufficiently guarantee the normal working of the machinery of State and confirm the lawfulness of the Revolutionary Government.

Bauer was an average man but gifted with common sense, well acquainted with the generals and leading officials in the Reich. He saw at once how useless it would be to meet von Luttwitz’s coup d’Etat with an armed counterattack. The occupation of Berlin by the Baltic : troops could not be avoided. Policemen would not have a chance against these hardened soldiers ;. They were a useful weapon against riots and conspiracies but hopeless where veterans were concerned. When the first steel helmets appeared in front of the barricade that blocked the entrance to the Wilhelmstrasse, the police squad there surrendered to the rebels. Noske himself, an energetic man and determined to hold out to the end, decided to support Bauer and the other Ministers when he heard of the first defections. Bauer thought quite rightly that the Revolutionary Government was weakest in its control of the machinery of the State. If the machine could somehow be stopped, or a t least prevented from going, then the Kapp Government would be mortally wounded. If the pulse of the State could only be interrupted, then the whole of public life would necessarily be paralyzed.

Bauer’s attitude was that of a small bourgeois educated in the school of Marx. He was the only man bold enough to attempt a thorough and violent upheaval of public life in order to keep Kapp from asserting his power with the help of constituted law and order: and such a man could only be a middle-class bourgeois, a man of order, full of Socialist ideas, accustomed to judge men and events quite foreign to his mentality, his education, or his interests, with an impartiality and a skepticism worthy of a Government official.

Before leaving Berlin to take shelter in Dresden, Bauer’s Government had launched an appeal to the proletariat, inviting the workers to proclaim a general strike. Bauer’s decision spelt ~ danger for Kapp. A fresh offensive by the forces that were still loyal to the Bauer Government ~ would have been much less dangerous for Kapp than a general strike, because von Luttwitz’s troops could then have easily carried the day. But how could a huge crowd of workers be persuaded to go back to work? Surely not by the use of violence. At midday Kapp thought he had the situation well in hand, but that same night, on March 13th, he found himself hemmed in by an unforeseen enemy. The life of Berlin had been paralyzed in a few moments. The strike was spreading all over Prussia. Darkness reigned in the capital, the streets in the center were deserted although everything was perfectly quiet in the workers’ suburbs. A general paralysis had struck the technical services like lightning: even the nurses had left their hospitals. Communications with Prussia and the rest of Germany had ceased early in the afternoon: Berlin would be starving in a few hours’ time. There was no sign of violence or rebellion in the crowds and the workers had left their factories with the greatest coolness. The general disorder was perfect.

Berlin seemed to be plunged into a heavy sleep on the night of March 13-14, except in the Adlon Hotel where the Allied Missions had their quarters and where everyone stayed up all night awaiting more serious developments. At dawn the capital was quiet, though deprived of bread, water, and newspapers. In the most populated districts the markets were deserted: the railway strike had cut off the town’s food supplies and the general strike had spread like a plague among all the government and private employees. Telephone and telegraph operators never appeared at their offices. Banks, shops, and cafés were closed. Numbers of clerks in the Government offices refused to recognize the Revolutionary Government. Bauer had foreseen how infectious the strike would be. Kapp asked his own engineers and skilled workers to try to repair the delicate mechanism of the technical services, but it was too late. The machine of the State itself had already been struck with paralysis.

The working class population in the suburbs was no longer so quiet as in the first days : small signs of impatience, unrest, and revolt were beginning to be noticeable everywhere. The news coming in from all the Southern States compelled Kapp to choose one of two alternatives: either to surrender to Germany, which besieged Berlin, or to surrender to Berlin which held the illegal Government as its prisoner. Should he hand over the power to Bauer or to Workers’ Councils which had already obtained a majority in the suburbs? Only the Reichstag and the Ministries had been won over in the coup d’Etat. Kapp’s position was getting more serious from hour to hour: his Government was slowly being deprived of the very possibilities and chances of a political move. Negotiations with the parties of the Left or agreement with those of the Right seemed to be out of the question. A violent move might have led to unforeseen consequences. When von Luttwitz’s troops made an attempt to compel the workers to go back to work, the only result was useless bloodshed. The first victims were lying dead on the pavement here and there as a proof of the fatal mistake of a Revolutionary Government that had forgotten to seize the main electric plants and railway stations.

These first drops of blood produced an indelible rust on the wheelwork of the State, and by the third day the lack of discipline had evidently eaten its way into the bureaucracy to judge by the arrest of several high functionaries in the Foreign Office. On March 15th, the National Assembly was convened in Stuttgart and Bauer said to President Ebert, when speaking of the bloody incidents in Berlin: “Kapp made his mistake when he interfered with the disorder.”

The master of the situation was Bauer, the moderate Bauer, with his respect for order. He alone knew that Kapp’s attempt at revolution could be decisively quelled by widespread disorder. Neither a conservative full of authoritative principles, nor a liberal with a respect for law, nor yet a democrat loyal to Parliament as a channel for political struggles, would ever have dared as he did to rouse the illegal intervention of the proletarian masses and defend the State by trusting to a general strike.

Machiavelli’s Prince would have boldly summoned the people to fight against either a sudden attack or a Government conspiracy, and Machiavelli’s Prince was surely more Conservative than a Tory of Queen Victoria’s day, even though the State was not responsible for his moral prejudices or his political education. But then he was schooled in those common historical examples of the tyrannies of Asia, Greece, and the Italian Signories of the Renaissance.

On the other hand, the tradition in conservative or liberal European Governments forbids any appeal to illegal action by the proletarian masses, whatever the peril that has to be faced. Later on people in Germany wondered what Stresemann would have done had he stood in Bauer’s shoes. We may be sure that Stresemann would have considered Bauer’s appeal to the proletariat as a most incorrect procedure.

Bauer’s upbringing, it must be remembered, was Marxist, so that he naturally had no misgivings as to the choice of means with which to fight a revolution. The idea of using a General Strike as a legal method of defending a democratic State against a sudden attack from military or Communist quarters could not be alien to a man brought up in Marx’s teaching. Bauer, however, was the first to apply one of the Marx’s fundamental principles in the defense of the State. His example is of the greatest importance in the history of modern revolutions.

The faith of the German people in Bauer during the five days of illegal Government began to waver and gave place to unrest and fear when Kapp proclaimed on March 17th that he was relinquishing power because “Germany’s extremely critical condition demanded the union of all parties and citizens in order to face the danger of a Communist Revolution.” The Socialist Party had lost control over the General Strike, and the real masters of the situation were the Communists. The Red Republic had been proclaimed in some of the suburbs of Berlin. Workers’ councils were springing up here and there all over Germany. In Saxony and in the Ruhr, the General Strike had ushered in revolt and the Reichswehr came up against a perfectly good Communist army, provided with cannon and machine-guns. What would Bauer do? Kapp had been turned out by the General Strike-was Bauer to disappear in a civil war?

Faced with the need of suppressing a workers’ revolt, Bauer’s Marxist education revealed its weakness. Marx said that “Insurrection is a fine art.” But his art is the capture of power, not the defense of it. Marx’s revolutionary strategy aims at the capture of the State; his method is class warfare. Lenin had to upset some of the basic principles of Marxism in order to stay in power, as Zinoviev observed when he wrote: “Henceforth true Marxism is impossible without Lenin.” The General Strike had been Bauer’s weapon in defending the Reich against Kapp: if the Reich was to be spared a proletarian insurrection, the Reichswehr must be called in. Von Luttwitz’s troops were nonplussed by the general strike but they could easily have overcome a Communist revolution. Kapp, however, had relinquished power at the very moment when the proletariat gave him an opportunity to fight on his own ground. Such a blunder on the part of a reactionary like Kapp is incomprehensible and unjustifiable. But a Marxist like Bauer could not see that the Reichswehr at that moment was the only possible weapon with which to meet a proletarian insurrection, and his mistake is easily explained. Meanwhile, after several useless attempts to agree with the leaders of the Communist revolt, Bauer handed over to Muller. It was a wretched end for a man of such fearless honest and moderate ideas. Both European conspirators and liberals still have a great deal to learn from Lenin and Bauer.

To be continued….