The Himmler Solution - Secret Peace Talks With Roosevelt & Churchill

Many people today know that Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuehrer SS, and by 1945 the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany after Hitler himself, attempted to make peace with the Western Allies in the final weeks of the war in Europe. He did this secretly behind Hitler's back, but his attempts were rebuffed by the Western Allies and Hitler found out, leading to Himmler's official disgrace and loss of his positions in the Nazi state. All of this occurred when Germany was almost beaten, and it is used as evidence that Himmler was naive and deluded if he thought the Western Allies would ever consider him an acceptable replacement for Hitler or someone they wished to negotiate with. That at least is the official story. But in the eight decades since the war's end, it has emerged that far from rejecting Himmler as a peace envoy, in fact the British and Americans had been holding indirect talks with the Reichsfuehrer SS since fairly early in World War II, with the aim of encouraging Himmler to launch a coup against Hitler and to end the fighting on the Western Front. To us today, with our knowledge of Himmler's extensive crimes, and of course the luxury of hindsight, it appears unbelievable that the Western democracies would ever have thought of the Reichsfuehrer as an acceptable, even desirable, alternative leader of Nazi Germany. But for various reasons, Himmler was considered as an alternative leader to Hitler, and both Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt and many other senior officials had some direct or indirect contacts with Himmler and his representatives. The negotiations fell under the title of the Himmler Solution or the SS Solution, the solution to end the war in Western Europe months or even years earlier than when it did finally come to its bloody conclusion in May 1945. It has also thrown up some intriguing evidence about Himmler's involvement with the German resistance movement, the anti-Nazi group of aristocrats and army officers and industrialists that attempted to blow Hitler up in July 1944. Evidence suggests that Himmler was involved in some way in this attack, and in the covering up of his involvement when it failed. In Britain during the early part of the war, quite a number of British politicians and establishment figures favoured a negotiated peace with Germany, led by the Foreign Secretary, Viscount Halifax. The peace faction of the Conservative Party saw no advantage to Britain in continuing to fight Germany, which would imperil the wider British Empire and the economy. Memories of the slaughter of 1914-18 were never far from their minds. In the lead-up to the outbreak of World War II, politicians in Britain and France tried to control and limit Hitler's aggressiveness through a process called appeasement, but the irresolution of the British and French governments over the Austrian, Sudetenland and Czechoslovakian questions only emboldened Hitler to eventually strike at Poland and cause Britain and France to declare war in September 1939. The men who had been involved in these political maneuverings were labelled as appeasers, and in many cases their political careers were severely damaged. In a previous video, link in the end screen, I explained how Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and Prime Minister of Prussia, went behind Hitler's back and made an approach to the British about ending the war in late 1939. Goering even offered the removal of Hitler as part of any deal. Lord Halifax had sent British spy Colonel Malcolm Christie to approach Prince Max Zorhoenlohe Langenburg, a Liechtenstein passport-holding Bohemian aristocrat who was close to many senior Nazis, to soften the Goering peace proposals, but nothing came of this. Then, in January 1940, the German resistance itself reached out to the Special Operations Executive agent Peter Tennant had a meeting on the 18th of January 1940 with Dr. Walter Jakobsen, a close friend of German resistance leader and the former mayor of Leipzig, Dr. Karl Goedela. Goedela had extensive pre-war business contacts in Sweden. Goedela's peace proposal was very similar to Goering's and included Hitler's removal from office. The Americans were aware of these peace talks. Prominent former diplomat and international lawyer John Foster Dulles briefed President Roosevelt and persuaded Roosevelt to urge the British government, led at this time by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, to take the proposal seriously. Dulles was under the impression that as well as coming from the German resistance and sympathetic German generals within the military, Himmler was also involved in some form or other. An acquaintance of Goedela's in the British government, Sir Robert van Sittardt, chief diplomatic advisor to the government, gave his cautious approval to the Tennant-Jakobsen negotiations in Stockholm. Sporadic contact was maintained between the Goedela group and the British as the military situation began to deteriorate for Britain following the German attack west in summer 1940. Neville Chamberlain was replaced as Prime Minister by Winston Churchill, who deeply distrusted the peace camp led by Lord Halifax within the Conservative Party, but nonetheless needed these Conservatives to keep him in power. One of the major leaders of the German peace group, apart from Dr Goedela, which was known as the Kreisau Circle, was Count Helmut von Moltke, a lawyer, and the Count was preparing to meet a senior British government official in Stockholm to discuss peace. That official was Michael Balfour at the Ministry of Information. However, Churchill blocked any such moves by Balfour or indeed by van Sittardt. Instead, Churchill dispatched Walter Monckton to Stockholm to meet Count von Moltke. Von Moltke set out the terms of the German peace offer to Monckton. It is interesting to note that Swedish intelligence, which was monitoring these meetings, was under the impression that the Goedela-von Moltke resistance group was being backed in some form by Himmler, who they believed wanted to succeed Hitler as leader of Germany. It is interesting to note that Goedela and von Moltke's transport to Sweden and visas had been arranged by the SS. Monckton reported to Churchill that the Germans were very serious. However, despite being offered the chance to remove Hitler and end the war in 1940, Churchill abruptly overruled the Peace Party and his government and stopped talking to the German resistance movement. This move angered not only Lord Halifax and his supporters, but also John Foster Dulles. But despite Churchill's order to cease such negotiations with the Germans, negotiations did continue in secret. John Dulles and his brother Alan were heavily involved with banking and industrial enterprises in the US and Europe. Alan Dulles would also operate as a senior OSS agent based in Bern, Switzerland during World War II. An associate of both Dulles brothers and Lord Halifax was banker Sir Charles Hambro, a member of a famous Danish merchant banking family and former World War I British officer. By 1940 Hambro was heading SOE operations in Scandinavia and was also a director of the Bank of England. Hambro is believed to have helped set up a series of meetings in 1940 between his friend and boss Montague Norman, who headed the Bank of England, and German peace envoys. These meetings took place in hotels in the United States in New York City and San Francisco. The FBI bugged the meetings and some of what has been said was published later. On the 27th of November 1940 a meeting was held at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco between three people. Sir William Wiseman, the 10th baronet, an aristocrat and a Halifax supporter, and also general partner of the US investment bank Kuhn Loeb & Co. The second person present was Fritz Wiedemann, former personal adjutant to Adolf Hitler and in World War I the adjutant of Hitler's infantry regiment. He had fallen out of favour with Hitler's inner circle, and in January 1939 he had been shoveled off to be appointed German consul to San Francisco. He was by this time secretly anti-Nazi. The third person at the meeting was a woman, Hungarian princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, ex-wife of a German diplomat and close friend in the 1930s of Hitler, and later, after she moved to London and became a big society figure, Viscount Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail newspaper. She was also Wiedemann's lover. She had many friends among the British establishment, and after moving to the United States had been placed under FBI surveillance. During the meeting on the 27th of November 1940, all three argued that Hitler had to be removed. Wiedemann was recorded by the FBI as saying the following, quote, What we talk about tonight I will send straight to Lord Halifax, because I know he knows you. He is sympathetic, and I will send it direct to him, so that it is not circulated around the Foreign Office. Not even our Ambassador in Washington will know anything about it, end quote. So what did they discuss? Well, the discussion was about who should replace the Führer if Hitler was removed from power. The former Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II, living in exile in the Netherlands, was rejected outright, as was his son, Crown Prince Wilhelm. Princess Stephanie, however, suggested a new person, Heinrich Himmler. The inference from these secret meetings was, of course, that Churchill was kept out of the loop, but the FBI informed the US Government about this and other meetings, and Churchill was informed. To prevent embarrassment to the British Government, Sir William Wiedemann's presence at the meetings was explained as being part of an effort by MI6. Wiedemann did indeed work for British Intelligence in World War II, and his involvement was explained as a mission to draw out information from the Germans, and this may indeed have been true. In the meantime, Churchill tried to have Montague Norman replaced as Governor of the Bank of England, but the Halifax faction was powerful enough to prevent this from happening. It certainly shows that Churchill's position was not secure, and that forces even within his own political party were conspiring against him throughout World War II. As if to illustrate this point, the action next moved from San Francisco to Spain, where the British Ambassador in Madrid, Sir Samuel Hoare, another prominent Lord Halifax Peace Party supporter and no friend of Churchill's, became involved in another plot. Hoare had been Home Secretary from 1937 to 39, and briefly Secretary of State for Air in 1940, but had been removed from office along with Prime Minister Chamberlain in 1940, largely because they were all tired with the brush of being appeasers of the Germans, and shuffled off to Madrid. However, he saw himself as a future Prime Minister. In March 1941, a Spanish General reached out to the British military attaché in Madrid with a message from Heinrich Himmler. This was passed to Hoare. The gist of Himmler's message was a peace offer, a conclusion to the whom we met earlier, to discuss Himmler's proposals. The British military attaché reported Himmler's offer to the Foreign Office in London, who informed Churchill. Hoare deflected criticism from himself by claiming that he had rejected Himmler's advances immediately. Naturally, this fuelled Churchill's paranoia concerning plots against him as Prime Minister from the Halifax Peace Group, perhaps in concert with sympathetic Germans. However, US entry into the war on Britain's side in December 1941, following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, and Hitler's unwise decision to declare war on the United States, considerably strengthened Churchill's position as war leader. But the peace feelers kept coming, apparently emanating from Himmler. On the 15th of January 1943, Alan Dulles, heading, as I said, US intelligence operations in Europe from his base in Bern, Switzerland, met an old friend, none other than Prince Zorhornloher Langenburg, the Prince having been a pre-war guest at both Dulles brothers' Long Island homes. Alan Dulles was working to continue negotiations with representatives of the German resistance to Hitler, who by this time were making attempts to assassinate the Führer. Dulles noted that the German resistance wanted to get rid of Hitler, but also to continue fighting the Soviets after making peace with Britain and the United States. This is of course precisely what Himmler also wanted, and had indeed offered. Dulles' reports were shown to both the British and the higher echelons of the US government, and the US urged Churchill to take their proposal seriously and reach a settlement with Germany. Why? Because if the war continued, it was beginning to look as though Stalin's armies would eventually overrun Eastern and Central Europe. Though allied with Stalin, the Western Allies had no wish to see Communism being extended so close to Western Europe. If Germany stopped fighting the Allies in the West and transferred her armed forces to reinforce the Eastern Front, the Soviets might yet be stopped before they advanced into Western Europe. Churchill asked the head of MI5, the security service, Sir Stuart Mingey's, to explore Himmler's proposals, but with certain preconditions. In order for the British to involve themselves with Himmler, the Reichsführer must first overthrow and arrest Hitler, who was to be held, according to Churchill, under house arrest at Obersalzberg. The intention, of course, was to put him on trial as a war criminal. Then a new government was to be formed, presumably from the German resistance movement, called the Council of Twelve, to be headed by Himmler as a sort of interim leader, who, due to his controlling the vast SS and police organisations of the Reich, was best placed to establish order and security in Germany, following a coup d'état. Only if these preconditions were met would the British open negotiations with Himmler and the new government to end the war in the West. Churchill's preconditions naturally forced Himmler to show his hand against Hitler, a very risky move, and of course one could argue that that was entirely the British position, to try to sow discord amongst the German leaders and the government. If Himmler failed to topple Hitler, the Reichsführer himself would be finished. This was all communicated to Himmler via German lawyer Dr. Karl Langbein, according to Himmler's chief spy, SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, who talked about this in great detail to his captors after World War II. Langbein met British representatives in Stockholm in March and April 1943, and also agents of Allen Dallas in Bern. But Himmler had rivals and enemies within the Nazi state that he had to handle carefully. For example, the Gestapo was technically under his remit, but its leader, SS-Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller, was extremely powerful. The Gestapo was not privy to Himmler's secret negotiations, and grew suspicious of the activities of Dr. Langbein. They supposed that Langbein was a British agent and arrested him. Brigadeführer Schellenberg stepped into the breach and continued negotiations with the British in person. Schellenberg had multiple meetings with prominent Swedish bankers, and millionaire businessmen involved with both British and U.S. intelligence, and with the Germans. The upshot of all of this was something called the SS-Solution, the removal of Hitler, the SS placed in charge of Germany, peace with the Western allies, but a continuation of the war against the Soviets. President Roosevelt dispatched to Stockholm a special envoy, OSS agent Abraham Stevens Hewitt, a man with long-established connections to Swedish and German bankers and businessmen. Part of his remit was to try and persuade the Swedes to slow down the supply of ball bearings to the Germans, vital for Hitler's war industries. Hewitt arrived in Stockholm in August 1943 and began negotiations with the Germans. Hewitt renewed his acquaintance with a pre-war friend, the Swedish businessman Jakob Wallenberg, who was a multimillionaire and extremely influential. Proof of Wallenberg's close relationship with the Nazi government had come in 1941, when Hitler had awarded him Grand Officer of the Order of the German Eagle. Wallenberg had ties to the German resistance through such figures as Karl Gödel, who had many business dealings in Sweden, as I mentioned. Knowing that Hewitt was a representative and a August 1943, Wallenberg confided in him concerning his ties to the anti-Hitler camp and told Hewitt that he was in touch with a cross-section of high-ranking German financial and manufacturing interests keen to overthrow Hitler. Would Hewitt be prepared to meet representatives of such interests? Wallenberg also told Hewitt that the position and the motives of Himmler in all of this were rather perplexing to the German resistance movement. Hewitt recorded that he believed Himmler wanted to oust Hitler and replace him, and then reach a secret peace agreement with the Western Allies. Wallenberg said that Himmler knew Germany had effectively lost the war by this stage, and was searching for ways to ingratiate himself with the Western Allies. His SS and the Nazi security apparatus would be the bargaining chips to achieve his aims. As well as Brigadefuhrer Schellenberg, Himmler also used his trusted masseur and physical therapist Felix Kirsten to reach out to the Allies via Sweden. Kirsten travelled to Stockholm often, as he was in the process of establishing a permanent home there. In October 1943, Hewitt met Kirsten in Sweden. Hewitt had a series of secret meetings with Kirsten. It appears that Hewitt saw an opportunity to sow discord among the Nazi leadership via Kirsten's channel to the Reichsfuhrer SS. Hewitt reported to Washington, quote, the doctor urged me to come to Germany to discuss Himmler's position with him, and to see whether a settlement might be possible. He indicated clearly that, on certain conditions, Himmler was prepared to overthrow Hitler, and that he was the only man who had the power to do so in Germany, end quote. A version of Hewitt's report was given to both the British and the Soviets. Hewitt next arranged a meeting with Wouter Schellenberg. At this point, following Germany's defeat at Stalingrad, Kirsten told Hewitt that time was of the essence, since the German minister to Sweden had brought to the SS office in Stockholm a copy of a peace proposal from none other than Stalin to Hitler, which, if this was true, would have broken the pact between the Western Allies of unconditional German surrender. This joint agreement had come out of the Casablanca Conference of January 1943. The Stalin peace offer was in fact quite true, and is backed up by a copy of a peace proposal that was also given to the German ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, in Ankara. The Soviet proposal offered about half of the Baltic states to the north of East Prussia to Germany, and the division of Poland, according to the 1939 lines, following the joint German-Soviet invasion of that year. However, German forces would naturally have to withdraw from the rest of Soviet territory. Kirsten reported to Hewitt that von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, and Dr Goebbels, the propaganda minister, were both keen that Hitler accept these terms and end the war in the east, but that Hitler and Himmler were against them. Why Himmler rejected such a deal can be interpreted in several ways, depending on how you view the Reichsführer and his motives throughout World War II. Hewitt told his bosses that he would be very happy to meet Himmler. He knew the intelligence value to be gleaned from such confidential meetings, revealing all sorts of interesting information about what was going on at the highest echelons of the Nazi government. He was keen, like the British, to encourage a putsch attempt in Germany by Himmler to weaken the German government and the German war effort. However, in the end Hewitt was recalled to Washington, and nothing came of these meetings. Winston Churchill was kept informed of the meetings held by the Americans with the Germans, and he decided to throw a spanner in the works and get the negotiations stopped. He ordered British intelligence to begin a disinformation campaign to undermine the negotiations, a successful gambit. The Gestapo was by now fully interested in the strange activities of Schellenberg and others in Sweden, and many now faced arrest. Around this time a senior member of the German resistance, Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Poppitz, is recorded as having had a meeting with Himmler. Poppitz offered Himmler the full support of the German opposition movement if he would make a move to get rid of Hitler, and secure a negotiated end to the war. Interestingly, Poppitz was not arrested at this time, and it seems that Himmler did absolutely nothing to investigate the German resistance movement himself, which is very strange as he headed the German police and security organizations. Why? Probably because he was working towards the same goal, and if the resistance successfully killed Hitler, Himmler, as the next most powerful leader, could have used his SS and police to seize control without having to make a direct move against the Führer himself. Then he could have enacted the so-called Himmler Solution, as outlined to the British and Americans working in concert with the German resistance leaders. The notion of the anti-Hitler resistance joining forces with Himmler was apparently a popular idea at the time. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock had advised the leader of the military arm of the resistance movement, Generalmajor Henning von Tresckow, to approach Himmler concerning removing Hitler from power. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, German military intelligence, was, according to his own biographer, working together with Himmler to bring about regime change inside Germany, though he failed to present any solid evidence of such an alliance. It is well known, however, that Admiral Canaris had some connections to MI6 during World War II. But it is also important to note that many in the German resistance movement, General von Tresckow being a prominent example, thought that Himmler was as bad as Hitler and wanted rid of both men and the imposition of a military government by themselves on Germany. Interestingly, though, the German resistance's aims were virtually identical to those of Himmler's Remove Hitler, make peace with the Western Allies, and keep fighting the Soviets. The full extent of Himmler's involvement with the German resistance plot to kill Hitler is very difficult to pin down, owing to so many of the key players later being rounded up and killed by Himmler following the bomb plot's failure. One of the plot's leaders, Adam von Trotzerszoltz, a prominent German lawyer, met British contacts in Stockholm to discuss the plot before it occurred. He referred to the plan as the, quote, Himmler solution, and the British supposed that von Trotz was Himmler's agent, but evidence is lacking. Von Trotz first met agent David McEwen in Stockholm on the 21st of June 1944, just under a month before the assassination attempt on Hitler at the Wolf's Lair in East Prussia. Another British agent, Peter Tennant, admitted, long after the war, that the MI6 agent McEwen allegedly gave Adam von Trotz British time-pencil fuses for use on the bombs, which were British clam mines provided secretly to Admiral Canaris at the Abwehr by British intelligence, who it was alleged was working to aid the German resistance. The British SOE had, with Churchill's blessing, spent years working up an assassination attempt of their own on Hitler, codenamed Operation Foxley, but following the bomb plot of July 1944, it faded from sight. Why? Because Hitler's incompetent management of the war was actively aiding the Allies by this point. A new government of competent generals would frustrate Churchill's ambition of total victory over Germany. Of course, Hitler's incompetent handling of the war was also aiding the Soviets, and bringing the Red Army further and further into Europe, something that many in the British and US political establishments did not wish to see. Only Hitler's replacement by a more competent German government, and peace in the West, could ensure that the Soviet menace could be halted, and that was either the Himmler solution, or the German resistance taking full control. One piece of evidence that has raised a few eyebrows concerning the July bomb plot, and Himmler's alleged involvement with it, concerns the appointment of Colonel Count von Stauffenberg to Generaloberst Friedrich Fromm's staff at the reserve army in Berlin, thereby giving him access to Hitler's military situation conferences. The signature opposite Stauffenberg's name on the recommendation was none other than that of Himmler. Historians can't quite fathom why Himmler, head of the SS, was interfering at this stage with army promotions, but it certainly enabled Stauffenberg to be in a position to kill Hitler. The puzzling aspect of Himmler's alleged links with the German resistance is that organisation's decision to try and kill not only Hitler, but Himmler as well. This is well documented, and indeed Stauffenberg's first bomb attempt was called off at the last minute, precisely because Himmler wasn't present at the meeting with Hitler. Did the German resistance try to double-cross Himmler, and remove him and his SS from the post-Hitler Germany their plot imagined? The arrests and round-ups of SS personnel during Operation Valkyrie suggest it was the case, and Himmler's subsequent root-and-branch elimination of the German resistance after Valkyrie's failure could have been, as well as self-preservation on the part of Himmler, revenge against those whom he had aided and negotiated with, but who had turned on him at the last moment, preferring a government of aristocrats and generals and industrialists than that headed by a war-criminal leader of the SS police state. It is, of course, not an unreasonable assumption to make. All of the figures I have mentioned in connection to the resistance to Hitler—Goedeler, von Tresckal, von Trott, von Moltke, Canaris, etc.—all perished in the round-ups that followed the July plot, either committing suicide or being executed. Himmler gained ultimate power inside Germany, and the complete trust of Hitler, which was extremely ironic considering his secret machinations against the Führer. And what did Himmler do next? Well, he resumed secret negotiations with the Western Allies. In December 1944 a new envoy, Swedish tycoon Berger Dallarus, met the British ambassador in Stockholm, Sir Victor Mallet, and presented once again the same Himmler peace proposals that the Reichsführer had proposed on multiple occasions before. Churchill was made aware of Mallet's meeting with Dallarus. Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, cabled Mallet, on the 23rd of December, the following—'I must ask you to ensure that, in future, no member of your staff enters into discussions of this nature with Dallarus or anyone else.' Churchill closed the door on any future negotiations with Heinrich Himmler—a door that he had been trying to close for years. At the same time, the Gestapo began to close in on Schellenberg, and Langbein, and other of Himmler's representatives, who would in due course be arrested, and in the case of Dr. Langbein, disowned by Himmler, who actually aided his execution. Himmler now set his sights on offshoring as much of Germany's wealth and industrial patents as he could, involving more secret meetings in Stockholm, and elsewhere between high-level industrialists, SS officers, bankers, and spies. But that is a story outside of the scope of this video, and if you are interested in this subject, look up something called the Maison Rouge meetings, or the Red House Report, for more information. What I have covered in this video are only the broad strokes. However, a lot of what occurred between Himmler and the Western Allies has never been publicly released, probably because it is damaging to the reputations of certain individuals involved. I can't help but think that Himmler's secret shenanigans with the British in particular may have contributed to his very inconvenient demise in British captivity in May 1945, before he was able to be placed on trial in open court. But then again, I may be wrong.