Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)

Heinrich Müller (28 April 1900; date of death unknown, but evidence points to May 1945) was a high-ranking German Schutzstaffel (SS) and police official during the Nazi era.

For most of World War II in Europe, he was the chief of the Gestapo, the secret state police of Nazi Germany.

Müller was born in Munich on 28 April 1900 to Catholic parents.

His father had been a rural police official.

Müller attended a Volksschule and completed an apprenticeship as an aircraft mechanic before the outbreak of the First World War.

During the last year of the war, he served in the Luftstreitkräfte as a pilot for an artillery spotting unit.

He was decorated several times for bravery (including the Iron Cross 1st and 2nd class, Bavarian Military Merit Cross 2nd Class with Swords and Bavarian Pilots Badge).

After the war ended, he joined the Bavarian Police in 1919 as an auxiliary worker.

Although not a member of the Freikorps, he was involved in the suppression of the communist risings in the early post-war years.

After witnessing the shooting of hostages by the revolutionary "Red Army" in Munich during the Bavarian Soviet Republic, he acquired a lifelong hatred of communism.

During the years of the Weimar Republic he was head of the Munich Political Police Department, having risen quickly through the ranks due to his spirited efforts.

It was under these auspices that he became acquainted with many members of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) including Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, although Müller in the Weimar period was generally seen as a supporter of the Bavarian People's Party (which at that time ruled Bavaria).

He did his duty both under the direction of the notorious Police President Koch [Julius Koch, the Munich Police President 1929–33], and under Nortz and Mantel.

His sphere of activity was to supervise and deal with the left-wing movement ... [H]e fought against it very hard, sometimes in fact ignoring legal provisions and regulations ... But it is equally clear that, ... Müller would have acted against the Right in just the same way.

With his enormous ambition and his marked 'pushiness' he would win the approval of his superiors ... In terms of his political opinions ... his standpoint varied between the German National People's Party and the Bavarian People's Party.

But he was by no means a National Socialist.

As far as his qualities of character are concerned, these are regarded in an even poorer light than his political ones.

He is ruthless, ... and continually tries to demonstrate his efficiency, but claims all the glory for himself.

In his choice of officials for the Bavarian Political Police he was very concerned to propose either officials who were more junior than himself or only those who were inferior in ability ... In this way he could keep rivals at bay.

In his choice of officials he did not take account of political considerations, he only had his own egoistical aims in mind ...

The Gau leadership of Munich-Upper Bavaria cannot, therefore, recommend accelerated promotion for Müller because he has rendered no services to the National Uprising."

This assessment did not deter Heydrich from moving Müller along the ranks, particularly since Heydrich believed it was an advantage not to be bound to the influence of the Nazi Party.

Functionaries like Müller were the sort of men Heydrich preferred since they were inherently committed to their "area of responsibility" and correspondingly justified any steps they deemed necessary against perceived enemies of the Nazi "racial community."

On 9 March 1933, during the Nazi putsch that deposed the Bavarian government of Minister-President Heinrich Held, Müller advocated to his superiors using force against the Nazis.

Ironically, these views aided Müller's rise as it guaranteed the hostility of the Nazis, thereby making Müller very dependent upon the patronage of Reinhard Heydrich, who in turn appreciated Müller's professionalism and skill as a policeman, and was aware of Müller's past.

Once the Nazis seized power, Müller's knowledge of communist activities placed him in high demand; as a result he was promoted to Polizeiobersekretär in May 1933 and again to Criminal Inspector in November 1933.

Historian Richard J. Evans wrote: "Müller was a stickler for duty and discipline, and approached the tasks he was set as if they were military commands. A true workaholic who never took a vacation, Müller was determined to serve the German state, irrespective of what political form it took, and believed it was everyone's duty, including his own, to obey its dictates without question."

Evans also records Müller was a regime functionary out of ambition, not out of a belief in National Socialism: An internal [Nazi] Party memorandum ... could not understand how "so odious an opponent of the movement" could become head of the Gestapo, especially since he had once referred to Hitler as "an immigrant unemployed house painter" and "an Austrian draft-dodger".

Nazi jurist and former police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer Werner Best opined Müller represented one of the "finest examples" of the limited connection between members of the NSDAP and the police before 1933.

After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Heydrich, as head of the Security Service (SD), recruited Müller, Franz Josef Huber and Josef Albert Meisinger, who were collectively referred to as the "Bajuwaren-Brigade" (Bavarian Brigade).

Müller joined the SS in 1934.

By 1936, with Heydrich head of the Gestapo, Müller was its operations chief.

On 4 January 1937, an evaluation by the Nazi Party's Deputy Gauleiter of Munich-Upper Bavaria stated:

"Criminal Police Chief Inspector Heinrich Müller is not a Party member. He has also never actively worked within the Party or in one of its ancillary organisations ...

Before the seizure of power Müller was employed in the political department of the Police Headquarters.

Müller was promoted to the rank of Standartenführer (colonel) in 1937.

Engrossing himself often in red-tape and statistics, Müller was a natural administrator who took solace in a "world of notes, memos, and regulations" and then received and transformed Gestapo reports of denouncements, torture, and secret executions into "administrative fodder."

Müller was central in the planning and execution of the Holocaust and attended the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, which formalised plans for deportation and genocide of all Jews in German-occupied Europe—The "Final Solution to the Jewish Question".

He was known as "Gestapo Müller" to distinguish him from another SS general named Heinrich Müller.

He was last seen in the Führerbunker in Berlin on 1 May 1945 and remains the most senior figure of the Nazi regime who was never captured or confirmed to have died.