Himmler’s Plot (2)

The situation in 1943 was even better. Much better. His control over the security services was consolidate into RSHA – Reich’s Main Security Office; his control over the economy was expanded and tightened (not least due to his total control over the supply of slave labor), more government officials were SS officers, SS-VT was now full-fledged, well-equipped and battle-hardened Waffen-SS, etc., etc.

Himmler carefully maintained the distance (and thus his autonomy) from Adolf Hitler. He deliberately stayed away from Hitler’s “inner circle”, knowing only too well that getting in was difficult, but getting out was utterly impossible.

Hitler was known to issue a very broad – and often vague – directives and left it out to his subordinate to find a way to make them a reality (and even figure out what the hell did the Führer want to be done).

Which suited Himmler just fine – and by 1943 he became an expert at presenting his own decisions and actions as those ordered by Adolf Hitler. In other words, he pretended to follow the orders of his boss while in reality he was playing his very own game.

But the most important (and radical) change was the new position of Hermann Goering who was now an official successor to Adolf Hitler as Führer of Germany (in the event of the latter’s death).

Goering had neither the ability nor the desire (nor the resources for that matter) to run the country so he would be very much willing to make Himmler the de-facto Reich President and Reich Chancellor – if only to avoid following Adolf Hitler into a better world.

Like everyone else in Germany, Goering was afraid of Himmler – and for a good reason; and his Fallschirmjäger (paratroopers), though a formidable force, were no match for Waffen-SS.

Hence I have no doubt that by 1943 (and possibly even earlier than that), Himmler and Goering developed a plan to liquidate their boss (more precisely, to let Tresckow & Co. do it) crush the military coup, execute the traitors and quite legally assume the full power in Germany proper and German-controlled territories.

This is the only explanation why the SS-run RSD (Reichssicherheitsdienst – “Reich security service”) that protected Adolf Hitler and other Nazi leaders, allowed the plotters to get the bomb on board his plane (!) and the suicide bombers (!!) to come close enough to The Führer to kill him with a 100% certainty. So on about half a dozen of occasions it was the Almighty Providence, not the RSD that saved Hitler’s life.

What was Himmler’s game plan for the “Day After”? Prior to the Kursk disaster, it was obvious – make von Manstein Commander-in-Chief of the Wehrmacht and give him a Cart Blanche for winning the war by annihilating the Red Army one battle after another.

After a year of suffering a 10:1 casualty ratio which von Manstein could deliver, Stalin would have had no other choice but to sue for peace – Brest-Litovsk style (or risk to run out of men).

The peace treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union (which obviously would give the former unrestricted access to oil and other natural resources of the latter) would automatically make war with Germany hopeless for both Great Britain and the USA as without Soviet cannon fodder and mountains of military hardware their chances of winning the war with the Third Reich were exactly zero.

So they would have reluctantly (and inevitably) signed the peace treaty with Germany on very attractive terms for the latter.

By the second half of 1943, the situation for Germany deteriorated significantly. I would say, even radically. Still, von Manstein would have been able to inflict losses on the Red Army severe enough to slow its advance substantially.

Which would have given Himmler a chance to prove to the Western Allies (via skillful diplomacy, of course) that they were fighting on the wrong side. In other words, to provide them with ample evidence (of which after Operation Barbarossa German intelligence had plenty) that the Soviet Union was an existential threat to them (and to the whole Western civilization) while the Nazi Germany was not.

In 1943 or even early 1944 (i.e. prior to the landing in Normandy), this plan would have worked. After the D-Day (and the destruction of Army Group Center by the Red Army) probably not (unbeknown to Himmler, the Americans were very close to the testing of a nuclear bomb which would stop Stalin in his tracks).

Hence the success of July 20^th plot would not have changed things much for Himmler – only made his escape (leaving Goering alone in the cold) easier. Much easier, I would say. Easier enough to make a risky decision to allow the generals to blow up his boss to kingdom come.

“All of the above” proves (IMHO, beyond the reasonable doubt) that all Resistance plots (and possibly even the assassination attempt by Georg Elser) were in reality only parts of one giant Himmler’s plot.

the tools that SS-Reichsfuhrer tried to use (unsuccessfully) to get rid of his boss, achieve acceptable peace with both the Soviet Union and the Western Allies and embark on an immensely ambitious project of building the pan-European SS-Staat.

Himmler’s empire where the Mittelpunkt der Welt (the Center of the World) was to be located not in Berlin (I seriously doubt that Himmler would have pursued a technically impossible Welthaupstadt Germania project) but in Wewelsburg Castle.

Himmler was a “perverted monarchist” (his SS-Reich does look and feel like a highly distorted – dystopian even – version of a Holy Roman Empire). Consequently, it would be fair to assume that Die Neue SS (the real ODESSA – his underground Reich) was established as a monarchy of sorts.

With Heinrich Himmler as an emperor and the crown (not necessarily physical) passed to his eldest son (I have no doubt that after his escape Himmler produced quite a few children – in full compliance with the procreation ideology of the SS).