April 6, 2004
Report on the Otto Ohlendorf IRR File
http://www.archives.gov/iwg/research..._irr_file.html
Otto Ohlendorf, one of the most notorious SS officials in Nazi Germany, was captured and interrogated extensively after the war. Although much of the U.S. Army's investigative file on Ohlendorf was declassified in 1987, some documents were withheld and are being released under the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act.
Ohlendorf, though a fanatic anti-Semite, considered himself an honest civil servant. Moreover, his educational background was in economics and from 1936 to 1945 he held economic and financial posts in the government alongside his other duties. Ohlendorf, the report begins, "is considered personally honest and he has always nursed a great dislike for corruption. The information… is therefore considered reliable." Ohlendorf's interrogators feared that if anything, he had held information back so that he could blackmail his fellow Nazis in the future.
Another significant document is a lengthy interrogation of Ohlendorf by a British intelligence officer of 7 July 1945, which concerns the final days of the war, particularly regarding Heinrich Himmler.
Discussions held in Berlin in April 1945 between senior SS officials including Ohlendorf, SS-General Felix Steiner, and SS-General Richard Hildebrandt. These discussions aimed at the creation of a new government that could procure a separate peace with the Allies. Himmler, these men hoped, would lead this government and Hitler would be pushed aside if necessary. "Our aim," said Ohlendorf, "was not to put up any resistance, but to let the Allies advance as far as the ELBE, having first concluded a tacit agreement that they'd halt there and thus to cover our rear for the continuation of the struggle against the East. These men, who were sober enough in all other respects, still believed that we had a sporting chance against the East."
Reference to telephone orders by Himmler days before Hitler's suicide. Ohlendorf said that Gestapo Chief Heinrich Mueller was "ordered to stay in Berlin as long as the FÜHRER remained there, as he shared responsibility for the FÜHRER's safety." Mueller vanished after the war, and for years it was surmised that Mueller offered himself to the U.S. or USSR for intelligence purposes. Ohlendorf's comment that Mueller was ordered to remain adds weight to the probability that Mueller died in Berlin.
Ohlendorf mentions a personal letter, dated 9 May 1945, which Himmler wrote and sent to British Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery. Montgomery had accepted the surrender of German forces in the Northwest on the 4th. Ohlendorf obliquely mentioned this letter's existence at his trial in 1947 but this British interrogation provides more detail. Ohlendorf said that Himmler showed the letter to him and that he altered Himmler's text because "it had been unfortunately worded." Himmler then had an adjutant take the letter to Montgomery. Himmler, Ohlendorf said, was anxious about the answer. After leaving Flensburg on the 9th, he regularly sent a man to Ohlendorf to see if Montgomery had replied. Accounts of Himmler's final days do not mention the letter, so one can only surmise what it said. It was likely a final attempt to split the Anglo-Soviet alliance. Ohlendorf said that Himmler until the very end believed that an agreement could be struck and that he hoped to be the Allies' "confidence man in Europe."
