The following day it was Ribbentrop who made contact with Himmler, and probably came to see him at Hohenlychen; Himmler apparently gave his approval to Ribbentrop’s plan to send Fritz Hesse to Stockholm on a fruitless peace mission. Hesse left on 17 February, the day after Bernadotte arrived on his mission to Germany.
Bernadotte’s principal intention was to visit Himmler and take over the various negotiations initiated by Kersten, whom he appears to have regarded as an interloper. On 18 February33 Bernadotte had his first meeting with Himmler at Hohenlychen after he had formally visited both Kaltenbrunner and Ribbentrop, whose lengthy speeches during the interview he secretly timed with a stop-watch. Ribbentrop’s foreign policy, he observed, seemed to favour some kind of agreement with Stalin for the joint domination of Europe by the U.S.S.R. and Germany — the reverse, that is, of the policy Schellenberg and Kersten were advocating to Himmler, which aimed at linking Germany and the Western Allies in combined opposition to further encroachments by the Red Army into Western Europe. Accompanied by Schellenberg, Bernadotte drove to Hohenlychen, which he discovered to be filled with German refugees from the east. Contrary to what he had expected, he found Himmler in a lively mood. He was dressed in the green uniform of the Waffen S.S. and wore hornrimmed spectacles instead of the pince-nez which Bernadotte had seen in so many portraits of the Reichsführer. Bernadotte’s description of Himmler is of particular interest:
‘He had small, well-shaped and delicate hands, and they were carefully manicured, although this was forbidden in the S.S. He was also, to my great surprise, extremely affable. He gave evidence of a sense of humour, tending rather to the macabre… Certainly there was nothing diabolical in his appearance. Nor did I observe any sign of that icy hardness in his expression of which I had heard so much. Himmler… seemed a very vivacious personality, inclined to sentimentality where his relations with the Führer were concerned, and with a great capacity for enthusiasm.’
When Bernadotte, who was aware of Himmler’s interest in the Scandinavian countries, gave him a seventeenth-century Swedish book on Scandinavian runic inscriptions, he ‘seemed noticeably affected’.
Bernadotte’s specific request was for the release of some thousands of Norwegian and Danish prisoners for internment in Sweden; this Himmler refused, but agreed they should be moved to two specific camps, where they might be cared for by the Swedish Red Cross. He even agreed, after a discursive conversation about the dangers to Europe of a Russian victory, that ‘if the necessity should arise, he would allow interned Jews to be handed over to the Allied military authorities’. When they parted, he asked Schellenberg for an assurance that a good driver had been obtained to take Bernadotte back to Berlin. ‘Otherwise’, he added, ‘it might happen that the Swedish papers would announce in big headlines: War Criminal Himmler murders Count Bernadotte.’
According to Schellenberg, Himmler was annoyed by this intrusion into the negotiations which he wanted to keep as secret as possible. The fact that Bernadotte’s visit was known officially to Ribbentrop and Kaltenbrunner meant that Hitler also would know of it; however, he decided to put the whole matter on an official basis and instructed both Kaltenbrunner and Fegelein, his official representative at Hitler’s headquarters, to sound Hitler on the matter. Fegelein reported Hitler as saying: ‘You can’t get anywhere with this sort of nonsense in total war.’ Schellenberg, anxious as ever to put himself in the picture, claims to have advised Bernadotte on the journey out to Hohenlychen to compromise about the Danish and Norwegian prisoners and ask for their removal to a central camp in the north-west by Swedish Red Cross transport rather than their extradition to Sweden for internment. After the interview, he claims that Himmler ‘had been very favourably impressed’ by the Count, and wanted to maintain close contact with him. No doubt he was encouraged to seize this new lifeline to the future by the failure of the attack on the Russians which had just been carried out in his name by Guderian’s nominees.
A week later, Himmler ventured as far as Berlin to attend a reception given by Goebbels at his Ministry. They talked about peace negotiations, but Goebbels had renewed his faith in Hitler and refused to think of such things without the active support of Hitler himself. He even suggested that if such action were ever taken by the Führer, he would much prefer to look to Stalin in the east than the Allies in the west. ‘Madness,’ murmured Himmler, and walked away.34 Goebbels was preparing for his role as the stonewall defender of Berlin, the man who with his wife and children was to lay down his life for the Führer.
Kersten returned to Germany from Stockholm on 3 March after further consultations with Günther, the Swedish Foreign Minister, who feared that the Allies would force Sweden to break her neutrality and enter the war if Germany did not withdraw from Norway. He had also met Hilel Storch in Stockholm on 25 February. Storch was one of the leading men in the World Jewish Congress in New York, and he was anxious to use every possible means to secure the safety and the release of the remaining Jews imprisoned in Germany. He knew of Hitler’s orders, that both the prisoners and the camps should be destroyed rather than let them be liberated by the Allies. Kersten undertook to negotiate directly with Himmler for the relief of the Jews by the International Red Cross.
He began his new talks with Himmler on 5 March. ‘He was in a highly nervous condition,’ writes Kersten, ‘negotiations were difficult and stormy.’
During the following days Kersten fought to rouse Himmler’s conscience and the remnants of his humanity. Schellenberg did the same: ‘I wrestled for his soul’, he said. ‘I begged him to avail himself of the good offices of Sweden… I suggested that he should ask Count Bernadotte to fly to General Eisenhower and transmit to him his offer of capitulation.’ According to Schellenberg, Himmler gave in and agreed that Schellenberg should continue his sessions with Bernadotte, whom he was unwilling at this stage to meet himself because of his fear of Hitler and of the leadership group in Berlin, who he knew were hostile and had by now an easier access to the Führer than he had himself.
On the same day that Kersten began his desperate discussions with Himmler, Bernadotte arrived from Sweden to make final arrangements for the transportation of the Danish and Norwegian prisoners from camps all over Germany to a central camp at Neuenburg. These negotiations were conducted with Kaltenbrunner and Schellenberg. Difficulties developed on both sides. Bernadotte claims he had overcome Kaltenbrunner’s point blank refusal to co-operate. On the other hand, according to Professor Trevor-Roper, Bernadotte himself refused point-blank to accept non-Scandinavian prisoners on the Swedish transport, and wrote to Himmler accordingly.35 The matter had to be straightened out by Günther and Kersten, and the transportation took place during the last two weeks of March. Meanwhile, Kersten negotiated a further agreement with Himmler of the greatest importance, again working together with Günther. This agreement was signed by Himmler on 12 March, and in it the Reichsführer S.S. undertook to disregard Hitler’s orders that concentration camps were to be blown up before the arrival of Allied forces. He agreed to surrender them intact with their prisoners still alive, and to stop all further execution of Jews.
In making this decision, Himmler was no doubt influenced by his discovery on 10 March that a typhus epidemic had broken out in the huge camp at Belsen. The news had been kept from him by Kaltenbrunner, according to Kersten, who at once made use of this new threat to Germany to increase his pressure on Himmler. ‘I pointed out that he could not in any circumstances permit this camp to become a plague centre which would imperil all Germany.’ He sent orders at once to Kaltenbrunner in which, guided by Kersten, he demanded that drastic measures be taken to stamp out the epidemic. On 19 March Himmler sent further written orders to Kramer, the commandant of Belsen, saying that ‘not another Jew’ was to be killed and the death rate at the camp, which by now had some 60,000 prisoners, must be reduced at all costs. The state of Belsen was so appalling that even Hoess when he visited the camp was shocked at the sight of so many thousands of dead.