army blanket over his shirt and underpants.
Austin, who had previously failed to prevent the S.S. General Pruetzmann from committing suicide when he had crushed a capsule of cyanide between his teeth, was determined not to allow Himmler to commit suicide by the same means. He pointed at once to a couch in the room.
‘That’s your bed. Get undressed’, he ordered, speaking in German.
Himmler did not seem to understand. He stared at Austin, and then spoke to the interpreter.
‘He doesn’t know who I am’ he said.
‘Yes I do’, said Austin. ‘You’re Himmler. Nevertheless, that’s your bed. Get undressed.’
Himmler still tried to stare him out, but the sergeant asserted his authority and stared back at him. Himmler dropped his eyes and gave in. He sat down on the couch and started to take off his underpants.
Then Colonel Murphy and Captain C. J. L. Wells, an army doctor, came in to carry out the routine inspection of their prisoner. They still suspected that Himmler was carrying poison. When he had stripped, they searched all over his body — his ears, his armpits, his hair, his buttocks. Then the doctor ordered him to open his mouth, and, in the words of Colonel Murphy, ‘immediately he saw a small black knob sticking out between a gap in the teeth on the right hand side lower jaw’.
‘Come nearer the light’, said the doctor. ‘Open your mouth.’
He put two fingers into the prisoner’s mouth. It was then that Himmler suddenly turned his head aside and bit down hard on the doctor’s fingers.
‘He’s done it’, shouted the doctor.
Both the colonel and the sergeant jumped on Himmler and threw him to the ground, turning him on his stomach to prevent him swallowing. The doctor held him by the throat, trying to force him to spit out the poison. The struggle to preserve his life by using emetics and a stomach-pump lasted a quarter of an hour; every method of artificial respiration was used. ‘He died,’ said the sergeant, ‘and when he died we threw a blanket over him, and left him.’21
Two days later, Himmler was buried in an unmarked place near Luneburg; his body had been wrapped in army blankets and wound in camouflage netting secured with telephone wire. Sergeant-Major Austin, who in civilian life had been a dustman, dug him a secret grave.
Appendix A: Adolf Eichmann’s Account of Himmler
Prior to his trial in Israel, Adolf Eichmann voluntarily submitted to a very thorough examination, during the course of which hundreds of documents (most of them photostats of affidavits and of R.S.H.A. files) were sifted and discussed. The examination started on 29 May 1960 and continued in almost daily sessions to 15 January 1961; 76 tapes produced 3,564 pages of typescript, a verbatim account of the entire interrogation which, through the courtesy of the Israeli Embassy in London, we were given the opportunity to study.
Eichmann proved eager to co-operate with his interrogators; he became as obsequious as he must once have been to his former superiors. He was proud of his punctiliousness in obeying orders, and he delighted in describing filing systems and other office routine in considerable detail. He claimed he had originally joined the S.S. during 1931—2 (he was not sure of the exact date) through the influence of Kaltenbrunner, whom he had known well since childhood. Later, he had applied to join the S.D. and was appointed a clerk in the ‘Freemason Museum’; subsequently, as we have seen, he became a specialist in Jewish affairs.
During the interrogation, Eichmann emphasized again and again that it was Hitler who ordered the physical destruction of the Jews, while Himmler was charged with issuing the necessary orders. Eichmann first describes Himmler (pp. 38—9) as ‘always ready to oblige the Fuhrer, liable to get bogged down in petty detail, but then again, quite impulsively, signing some far-reaching decree.’ On p. 146 Eichmann reverts to Himmler’s impulsiveness in giving these far-reaching orders whenever he was struck by some idea; as often as not such orders would be passed on to any officer who happened to be with him at the time and later held up by red tape as soon as they had reached the appropriate official channels.
Eichmann mentions Himmler’s aversion to seeing fingers stained with nicotine. Officers ordered into Himmler’s presence were advised to use the lemon and pumice-stone available in the washroom of Himmler’s special train. Anyone failing to do so risked getting a three or six months’
In Minsk Eichmann witnessed the mass-shooting of Jews straight into the ditch, and a little later (p. 240) he claims that Heydrich out of sheer bravado gave orders to kill Jews who were already being killed by Globocnik’s orders. Heydrich said, ‘I herewith authorize you to submit a further 150,000 Jews to the final solution [der
Eichmann has much to say about the S.S. euphemisms, such as ‘final solution’ and ‘special treatment’. Even at the notorious conference at Wannsee (see page 127) direct references to killing were avoided, Heydrich favouring the term
At all times Himmler was specially interested in ‘prominent’ prisoners; hence (p. 2608) we find him giving special orders for Fray Gluck, the sister of La Guardia, the Mayor of New York, to be taken out of a mass transport and to be transferred to the camp where Leon Blum, Odette Churchill and other important prisoners were held.
On pp. 2456 et seq. Eichmann shows his surprise at documentary evidence of Himmler having devoted much time during the difficult years of 1943—4 to such petty details as the question of two or three Jews in one case and five or six in another being exempted from extermination on account of their expertise in metallurgy and diamonds respectively, experts in that field being required for the armaments industry and for the production of the highest grade of Knight’s Cross.
There are several references (such as those on pp. 1249, 1290 and 1318) to Himmler’s orders of October 1941 stopping any emigration of Jews, ‘except in isolated instances beneficial for the Reich’ (which refers to Jews wealthy enough to pay a minimum of 100,000 Swiss francs). In July 1944 Himmler issued an order that the emigration of certain Hungarian Jews to Palestine must be stopped ‘because they are biologically potent, so their survival is not desirable in the interests of the Reich.’ But in April 1942 (p. 478) Himmler wrote to the Chief of the S.D. stating that while the Fuhrer’s orders for the ‘final solution’ must be carried out ruthlessly, he wanted those Jews and Jewesses still capable of work to be exempted for the time being and set to work in the concentration camps. In July 1942 neither Eichmann not his chief Mueller dared to decide about the fate of French Jewish children still cared for by French welfare organizations (p. 701—2). Mueller asked Himmler for a decision, and the Reichsfuhrer’s personal order came for ‘sending all of them East’, that is, having them killed. On pp. 660
The last time Eichmann saw Himmler was during the spring of 1945, when Himmler told him that in the case of future negotiations with Eisenhower he wanted some 200 to 300 prominent Jews ‘for hostage purposes’. Eichmann was to collect them in various camps, and see Gauleiter Hofer in Innsbruck about allocating some evacuated villages for them. Eichmann dutifully reported the Reichsfuhrer’s order to Kaltenbrunner, who, according to Eichmann, ‘showed little interest, since nothing really mattered any longer’.
