During the last days of the Third Reich and the immediate aftermath of World War II in Europe, the Allied hunt for the high-ranking Nazis closest to the Führer was vigorous. Some war criminals slipped through the cordon of checkpoints and the interrogations of prisoners, while others took to their heels and were shot down in the rubble of the Nazi capital of Berlin. Such was the case with Martin Bormann, Hitler’s private secretary and head of the Nazi Party Chancellery.

Still others—including Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring; Kriegsmarine commander Admiral Karl Dönitz, who succeeded Hitler as leader of the doomed Reich; Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, head of the high command of the German armed forces (OKW); and Gen. Alfred Jodl, the OKW chief of staff—were apprehended. Another of those taken into custody was Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler, who tried mightily to avoid arrest.

According to a BBC story in 2020, two men in long green overcoats were with the Reichsfuhrer, who wore a dirty sergeant’s uniform and an eye patch. At the British checkpoint on May 22, 1945, they were immediately under suspicion. The two well dressed Germans kept looking back at the third as if worried whether he was keeping up. When asked for their papers, they produced the standard document issued by the Allies to German soldiers after hostilities ceased.

Warnings had been posted that some counterfeit documents were circulating, particularly for the benefit of SS members attempting to elude capture. The British troops at the checkpoint were alert to the bogus forms, and when the third German, allegedly Sergeant Heinrich Hizinger, handed over his identification the trio was detained. The same stamp that had been seen earlier on false documents was evident on Hizinger’s.

Taken to a camp for interrogation, the fidgety Himmler removed the eye patch and asked to speak with a senior officer. One of the most wanted Nazis believed still at large, Himmler proclaimed his identity and hoped to bargain for his life. Soon afterward, he was sent for a physical examination. While examing Himmler’s mouth the doctor, Captain C.J. “Jimmy” Wells, noticed a small blue object. As he tried to remove it, Himmler pulled away and bit down on the hidden cyanide capsule, dying in minutes. Like Göring a few months later, he had cheated the hangman.

The BBC story announced that Himmler’s incriminating identity paper had been found after 75 years. It had been donated to the Military Intelligence Museum in Shefford, Bedfordshire, England, by Lt. Col. Sidney Noakes, an attorney who joined British Military Intelligence in 1943 and was transferred to MI5, Britain’s domestic counterintelligence and security agency. Apparently, Noakes had been a member of the interrogation team that questioned Himmler and was allowed to retain the document that bore the telltale stamp that the checkpoint soldiers had been warned to watch for. In an ironic twist, the Germans’ own forgery had led to Himmler’s capture.

“Without this damning stamp on the document it is possible that Himmler may have been able to pass through the system unnoticed and escape as many other wanted Nazis,” Bill Steadman, curator of the Military Intelligence Museum, told the BBC when the identity document was being placed on display. “What appeals to me most about this story is that the Germans themselves made the unmasking an absolute certainty.”

Although Himmler, the mastermind of the Holocaust and head of the odious organization that perpetrated unspeakable war crimes, did manage to avoid the Allied military tribunal at Nuremberg, his escape plan had been foiled and his fate sealed—by his own accomplices.

Michael E. Haskew

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