Kersten met him outside the house and urged him to be both friendly and magnanimous with Masur; this was his greatest chance to redeem the honour of Germany and show the world while there was still time that a new and humane policy had at last replaced the repressions and cruelties of the past. Kersten knew that an argument such as this would raise some response from Himmler’s professed humanitarianism. As they went in, Himmler assured Kersten that all he wanted now was some agreement with the Jews.
This was the first time since he had come to power that Himmler had met a Jew on equal terms. He greeted Masur formally and said how glad he was that he had come.1 They sat down, and immediately Himmler began to make a long, defensive statement about the attitude of the regime to the Jews as aliens in Germany, and how the emigration policy he had devised, which, as he said, ‘could have been very advantageous to the Jews,’ had been sabotaged by the other nations who would not receive them.
Masur was an experienced negotiator and he had come to achieve a particular object. He remained very calm and interposed a few occasional remarks to refute the more extreme of Himmler’s arguments. Only when Himmler said that the concentration camps were really training centres where if the work was hard the treatment had always been just, did Masur lose some measure of his patience and refer to the crimes that had been committed in them.
‘I concede that these things have happened occasionally’, Himmler agreed mildly, ‘but I have also punished those responsible.’
He complained bitterly of the false atrocity propaganda that the Allies were making out of the conditions at Belsen and Buchenwald, which he had ‘handed over as agreed’. He said:
‘When I let 2,700 Jews go into Switzerland, this was made the subject of a personal campaign against me in the Press, asserting that I had only released these men in order to construct an alibi for myself. But I have no need of an alibi! I have always done only what I considered just, what was essential for my people. I will also answer for that. Nobody has had so much mud slung at him in the last ten years as I have. I have never bothered myself about that. Even in Germany any man can say about me what he pleases. Newspapers abroad have started a campaign against me which is no encouragement to me to continue handing over the camps.’2
Masur urged that all the Jews left alive in Germany should be released at once, and that a stop should be put to the evacuations. But as soon as he was faced with hard facts and terms of agreement, Himmler began to hesitate and avoided committing himself. Masur had to retire with Schellenberg to another room to determine the details of what should be done; since they had met the previous day, Schellenberg knew what Masur wanted. It was easier to reach such agreements apart from Himmler; he only gave way when he was alone with Kersten, who made him promise to implement the agreement he had already made the previous month to release from Ravensbrück for evacuation to Sweden a thousand Jewish women under the cover of their being of Polish origin. Himmler was still openly afraid that Hitler might discover what he was doing.
To the end of the conversation, Himmler attempted to justify what had been done both in Germany and in the occupied countries. Crime had been reduced, he said; no one had gone hungry; everyone had work. Hitler alone had the resolution to resist the Communists; his defeat would bring chaos to Europe. Only then would the Americans discover the terrible thing that they had done. With the help of Schellenberg and Brandt, who was also present, Kersten achieved the best measure of agreement he could about the number of Jews to be released and the strict observation of what had already been accepted by Himmler in the past for the relief of the Jews still left in captivity. Worried and irresolute, Himmler stayed on the edge of the conversation, resorting to generalizations about the situation and the humane things he had done; he withdrew himself from any discussion of the arrangements that were being undertaken on his behalf by Schellenberg and Brandt. At about five o’clock in the morning the meeting broke up, and Kersten took Himmler outside for a more private conversation.
It was then that Himmler suddenly asked him, ‘Have you any access to General Eisenhower or the Western Allies?’
When Kersten said he had none, Himmler went on to ask if he would be willing to act as his ambassador to Eisenhower, and go to him with the suggestion that hostilities against Germany should be stopped so that war on a single front against Russia could be undertaken.
‘I am ready to concede victory to the Western Allies’, he said. ‘They have only to give me time to throw back the Russians. If they would let me have the equipment, I can still do it.’
Himmler could not give up the image of himself as the Supreme Commander in the German Army. Kersten said he should talk to Bernadotte about peace negotiations. That was more in his province. Then having reassured himself that the Dutch cities and the dam were still intact and that Himmler would do all he could to prevent further bloodshed in Scandinavia, Kersten finally let him go. By sheer persistence he had won from him everything he could, and Schellenberg was anxious now to take Himmler on to see Bernadotte at Hohenlychen; the Count was anxious to talk to him before leaving that morning for the north.
They went down to the car together; Himmler offered his hand to Kersten and thanked him for all he had done. It was as if he knew they would not meet again, and he spoke formally:
‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the years in which you have given me the benefit of your medical skill. My last thoughts are for my poor family’, he added, as he said goodbye and drove away with Schellenberg.3
They arrived at Hohenlychen at six o‘clock and had breakfast with Bernadotte, who had driven to the nursing home from Berlin the previous evening in order to meet Himmler.4 Bernadotte was in a hurry to leave and only anxious to get Himmler’s consent for the release of the Scandinavian prisoners who had been gathered by the Red Cross in Neuengamme. But Himmler would not give way; he said angrily that the ‘tissue of lies’ about Belsen and Buchenwald had made him think again about the whole situation, and he ordered the total evacuation of Neuengamme.
‘It is outrageous’, said Himmler to Bernadotte, ‘that this camp which in my opinion was in model shape should have become the subject of these shameless accounts. Nothing has upset me so much as what the Allied press has published about this business.’
Bernadotte noted how tired and nervous Himmler was. He looked ‘spent and weary’, and said he had not slept for several nights. ‘He gave the impression of being unable to remain long in one spot and of darting from place to place as an outlet for his anxiety and restlessness.’ Nevertheless, he ate hungrily and as he talked tapped his front teeth with his fingernails—a sign of nerves, as Schellenberg explained in an aside to Bernadotte. He agreed to the women being evacuated from Ravensbrück, and to the Red Cross moving the Scandinavians as far as Denmark, where they must remain under the control of the Gestapo. This was to begin the following day, arranged by the Danes at the request of Bernadotte.
Himmler, worn out, left it to Schellenberg to ask Bernadotte whether he would take a message to Eisenhower. Bernadotte refused. ‘He should have taken Germany’s affairs into his own hands after my first visit’, he said. Schellenberg, who had travelled with Bernadotte part of the way to the airport, returned to Hohenlychen ‘filled with a deep sadness’, and had scarcely gone to bed to make up his lost sleep when Himmler summoned him. The Reichsführer was lying in bed looking utterly miserable and saying he felt ill. But he decided to drive to Wustrow, the car weaving its way through the columns of troops and refugees that filled the roads. ‘I dread what is to come’, he said. Just before getting to Wustrow they were attacked by low-flying aircraft, but they escaped uninjured. They dined and then talked far into the night. Himmler dreamed of founding a new National Unity Party unencumbered by the presence of Hitler.