St. Petersburg Times (May 25, 1945)
Hangman Himmler dies by poison to cheat Allies
LONDON, England (UP) – Heinrich Himmler, chief of the Gestapo and symbol of all that was bestial in Nazism, committed suicide by poison Wednesday night in a villa at Lueneburg in northwestern Germany where he had been held secretly since his capture by British troops at Bremervoerde Monday.
Himmler died wearing only his socks. He had been stripped for examination. The examining doctor, looking for concealed poison, put his finger in Himmler’s mouth. Himmler jerked back and bit on a tiny vial of cyanide of potassium he had concealed in his mouth.
British Second Army headquarters announced Himmler’s death and Supreme Allied Headquarters confirmed it.
The death of German war criminal No. 2, second only to Adolf Hitler, left only Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop at large among the top-ranking Nazis, assuming that Hitler and Paul Joseph Goebbels died in Berlin.
Dispatches from Second Army headquarters said Himmler and his two adjutants were captured at Bremervoerde, west of Hamburg and northeast of Bremen, by a British detachment.
Himmler was disguised and was using the name of Hizinger, dispatches said. He was wearing pearl-colored horn-rimmed eyeglasses instead of his usual nose glasses. He had shaved off his little mustache and wore a black patch over one eye.
Apparently, Himmler since his arrest had concealed in his mouth, when others were around, a tiny vial of cyanide of potassium.
Himmler was taken to Lueneburg, southeast of Hamburg, and held at a villa in greatest secrecy, dispatches said.
Wednesday night, it was said, a physician examined Himmler and asked him to open his mouth.
The doctor wanted to be sure Himmler had no poison. He looked into Himmler’s mouth and appeared to be satisfied, dispatches said. But on second thought he asked Himmler to get nearer a light. The doctor put his finger in Himmler’s mouth to make a closer examination. Himmler jerked back his head, bit on the vial, dropped to the floor and died 15 minutes later at 11:04 p.m. despite the doctor’s efforts to save him, it was said.
Yesterday, Himmler’s body lay on the floor of the villa, at British Second Army headquarters in Lueneburg, half covered by a blanket, according to dispatches.
Sgt. Maj. Edward Austin saw Himmler die. He told his story to a BBC correspondent:
Before I arrived, I didn’t know it was Himmler. I was told only that I was to guard an important Quisling. He came into the room – not the arrogant figure we all used to know. He wore an army shirt and a pair of drawers and had a blanket wrapped around him. I recognized him immediately. I pointed to a couch and said in German: “That’s your bed. Get on to it.”
He looked at me and at an interpreter and said: “He doesn’t know who I am.”
“Yes, I do,” I said. “You are Heinrich Himmler. But, still, that’s your bed. Get undressed.”
He tried to stare me down but I stared back and eventually he looked down.
He started to take off his drawers and went to the couch.
A doctor and a colonel came in and started a routine inspection, looking for poison which we suspected he had on him. We looked in his clothes, all over his body, under his arms, in his ears, behind his ears, in his hair. At last we asked him to open his mouth.
He opened his mouth and rolled his tongue around his teeth. The doctor wasn’t satisfied. He asked Himmler to come near the light and open his mouth. The doctor put two fingers in his mouth and had a good look inside. Himmler clamped down his jaws on the doctor’s fingers and crushed a vial he had held in his mouth for hours.
The colonel and I instinctively jumped to him. The doctor hauled him onto the couch and tried to make him spit out the poison, and the colonel and I held him. We worked on him 15 minutes, trying all methods of artificial respiration. He died and we threw a blanket over him.
A senior intelligence officer at the headquarters of Gen. Sir Miles Dempsey, commanding the Second Army, told the story of Himmler’s arrest.
Two British soldiers were guarding a bridge at Bremervoerde. They were engaged in a security check on passing civilians. The soldiers stopped three men in civilian clothing – “Herr Hizinger” and his two thug-like companions, really bodyguards. “Hizinger” produced papers which aroused the suspicion of the soldiers.
The papers identified “Hizinger” as a discharged member of the German Army field security police. There he made a fatal mistake. The guards knew discharge papers were no longer being issued to German troops. But for the papers, Himmler might have escaped.
The three men were put under close arrest. They were passed on to British field security police. At the camp to which they were taken, Himmler remained unrecognized. He was held for interrogation. Through one of his “adjutants,” he asked for an interview with the camp commandant. The commandant consented.
He arrived at the detention place and “Herr Hitzinger,” stepping up to him, announced: “I am Heinrich Himmler.”
The chief counter-intelligence officer was called. He confirmed that the man was Himmler and his decision was checked as correct by counter-intelligence officers from Dempsey’s headquarters.
Himmler was stripped, much against his will, and searched thoroughly – it was thought. No other civilian clothes were available and Himmler was given his choice of remaining stripped, wearing British battledress or wrapping himself in blankets. He chose the blankets. He was separated from his hard-looking “adjutants.”
Himmler was taken in an intelligence officer’s car to Lueneburg, where a house was set aside for him.
Last night, a doctor was called to make another and more thorough examination – the fourth since Himmler’s arrest, dispatches said.
He had lived a little more than four hours after he disclosed his identity, an Allied headquarters dispatch said.
Two Red Army aides of Marshal Georgy K. Zhukov, commanding the First White Russian Army, examined Himmler’s body tonight. They were given photographs of him and a full report of his capture and death.
Himmler was 45, a pasty-faced man of clerkish appearance except for his cruel mouth. He was called Hitler’s hatchet man and Hangman Himmler. Of all the Nazis, he was one of the most cold-blooded and ruthless. It had been reported often that he was a rival of Hitler for power, but the best reports indicated that he was a loyal follower.
Himmler joined the German Army in the last war, in 1917, and was made a lieutenant. After the war, he studied agriculture and political economy. He was a pioneer Nazi and in 1920 he started a little black book, which| he kept up carefully, listing his enemies and those of the Nazis, as well as prominent men all over Europe.
The list grew longer and with the years Himmler accumulated a voluminous file of information on thousands of men and women.
Himmler was an inconspicuous little man, round-faced, with a little mustache and wearing nose glasses which gave him the appearance of a shop clerk. But he was a terrible enemy, cold, cruel, merciless. He and his SS troops and Gestapo operatives led the blood purge of 1934, in which the Nazis murdered hundreds of their own leading men.
Himmler had succeeded in remaining in hiding for 15 days before the British got him. He was last reported at Flensburg, in the Schleswig-Holstein isthmus leading to Denmark, May 6. A high command delegation was leaving to sign the Reims surrender next day. It was over for Himmler. He asked high command leaders what to do. They advised him to fly to the south and try to join the Germans who were expected to continue resistance in the mountains. He disappeared from Flensburg at that time.