Theories About Müller's Fate

After all this searching and speculating, which has led to no proof, only an official declaration of death, a clue from Norway may shed some light on the fate of the Gestapo chief. This clue not only sheds new light on the case, but also adds a human, existential dimension, because it deals with the search for a father, in this case a daughter's search for a father she never met.

This daughter, of course, growing up in Norway, had long wondered about her father and had done some research. By chance, in the 1990s, she met SVT's Lars Weldeborn (b. 1952), who was captivated by her story: a living daughter of the Gestapo's supreme leader, the mysterious Heinrich Müller! After a lot of preparation and the green light from SVT's management, a reporting team was formed to follow the daughter's journey to find the truth about her father.

The documentary shows her contacts with various archives and people in Germany. In the Bundesarchiv's archives of SS officers, there is a dossier on Heinrich Müller with the note that he had a child in the care of the Lebensborn organization. This was an SS organization for the care of so-called Aryan children with German fathers. The entry in Müller's file unfortunately says nothing about where this child would have been born. But the note is supported by a record in a Norwegian hospital that Heinrich Müller was the father of a daughter born in June 1944. Admittedly, many Germans bore this name at the time, but the two records together make it less likely that it was anyone other than the Gestapo chief. He and the presumed daughter also look quite alike.

How long and how often Müller visited Norway, and what his main business there was, is unclear. His file in the SS archives contains notes on all his stays abroad – but unfortunately the notes are illegible. So far only one of his visits to Norway is documented, namely by a photograph in Aftenposten on 8 September 1941. The photo shows the Gestapo leadership visiting a German cemetery in Oslo. – Another visit is said to have taken place in the summer of 1943, when Müller turned up at his Norwegian girlfriend's childhood home and asked for her. Her mother is said to have been very upset, not least because he came in the dreaded German uniform. Presumably Müller visited Norway on more occasions. The daughter also remembers once finding a photo of a man in German uniform, a photo that her mother immediately destroyed.

Knowing from previous research that her father was a devout Catholic, the daughter was drawn to Rome, where, as is well known, several influential Catholics helped many Nazis escape after the war via the so-called Rat Line.

In Rome, she simply called the Vatican and requested information about her father. His name and existence seemed to be known (!), which is strange in itself; why would the Vatican know about an SS general some 40 years after the war? She was put through to church history giant Erwin Gatz (1933-2011) who promised to give her information.

After a few days, she receives an envelope with a couple of photocopies from a printed book, but no covering letter. The copies hardly correspond to what the daughter had expected, not a word about any Müller. When she calls a second time to ask Gatz to explain what he meant, Gatz rejects her, he wants nothing more to do with her.

Instead, the photocopies are about a man called Hudal. Who was this Hudal, who does not appear in the literature on Gestapo-Müller?

Hudal was a man of many names, many titles and many slightly varying opinions. His name was Alois Karl Hudal, sometimes called Luigi. He was from Graz (1885-1963), was ordained a priest, became a Doctor of Theology, first specializing in the Orthodox Churches, then a second time specializing in the Old Testament. He did the latter at the Austrian seminary of Santa Maria dell’ Anima in Rome, which became his base. He received the title of professor in Graz; in 1933 he was also appointed titular bishop.

In 1937 he became the rector of the seminary in Rome and tried to make it a German-speaking cultural center in Rome. In the same year, he published a highly acclaimed book, Die Grundlagen des Nationalsozialismus, in which he argued for the interweaving of Catholicism and Nazism.

The book was reverently dedicated to Hitler, and Hudal was jokingly nicknamed the Brown Bishop. It was important for the Church to capitalize on the good aspects of Nazism. His main idea was that Catholicism and National Socialism should jointly fight Marxism and Communism, or Bolshevism as it was called at the time. However, he distanced himself from Nazi atheism and neo-paganism. He received strong support for his ideas.

But his influence, which had hitherto been steadily growing, reached a clear turning point the following year. Hudal vigorously promoted Austria's accession to the German Reich. His views put an end to both his career and his influence. The Catholic Church in general was not at all in favor of the idea. The Vatican was completely dominated by Italians who would have preferred Austria to remain what it was in 1938, an arch-Catholic and fascist state. Neither Mussolini nor the Italian government was attracted by the change.

Thus, although Hudal is incriminated by his support for German Nazism, in Rome in 1943-1944 he helped a few individuals fleeing the Nazis, including two New Zealanders; he may also have contributed to the sparing of 1 000 of Rome's Jews in the final stages of the war. Whether he did this out of the goodness of his heart or with calculation is impossible to say. Although he was a strong anti-Semite, he does not seem to have shared the Nazis' supposedly scientific view of the Jews as a biological race that had to be exterminated. For example, he is said to have spoken out against the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, which defined degrees of Jewishness.

After the war, he naturally lost all official prestige, but at the same time became a central figure in the so-called Rat Line, the Catholic Church's secret aid organization for Nazi and fascist war criminals. The Red Cross and Caritas also participated in this work. Among the hundreds of Nazis Hudal directly or indirectly helped were the infamous Barbie, Eichmann and Mengele. In his memoirs, written in 1962 but not published until 1976, Hudal himself declares that he helped several “so-called war criminals”, and this out of pure human love.

But he remained rector of the Anima seminary in Rome until 1952. He died in 1963 and was given a stately grave in a cemetery for German-speaking Catholics, Campo Santo Teutonico inside the walls of Vatican City.

It was documents about this strange semi-Nazi Bishop Hudal that Müller's daughter received from the Vatican historian Erwin Gatz, when she had asked about her father Heinrich Müller.

The photocopies not only told the story of Hudal's life, but also described his magnificent tomb. In it also rested his mother and some other people connected to the Anima seminary. But no Heinrich Müller. When his daughter tries to get an explanation, she is - as already mentioned - spurned by Gatz.

But the daughter and the SVT team do not let go of the clue in the photocopies, and attention is focused on a Franz Andreas Kaminski in Hudal's grave. He is said to have been born on 23.09.1903 in Graz, Austria; died in Rome on 23.01.1973. He is also said to have been administrator (Verwalter) of the Anima seminary for more than 40 years, i.e. before 1933. His wife also rested there.

To confirm the information about the Kaminskis, Müller's daughter contacted all possible authorities in Austria. But these people are not to be found in the archives, neither born, baptized, nor married. It is therefore likely that their names are cover names for other persons. (Towards the end of the programme she also visits a Catholic parish priest in Graz, who interprets the information in exactly the same way as she does.)

To get more clarity on the matter, the SVT team now trots off to the rector of the Anima seminary, Johannes Nedbal (1934-2002). The team tells him that they suspect that Kaminski is identical to Müller and shows a photo of the latter. The photo is a poor photocopy on a plain A4 paper. It is an old photo, and Müller is dressed in civilian clothes. The principal finds a certain resemblance to Kaminski whom he hasn't seen for perhaps 40 years and says it could be Kaminski.

But he says, Kaminski hardly looked like a Gestapo officer, but rather like a forest ranger from Steiermark. Funnily enough, the description fits quite well with the only 170 cm tall and ordinary Müller.

The headmaster first makes a spontaneous comment, questioning whether Kaminski was a particularly good Catholic. What may have been behind the comment remains unclear, but apparently the headmaster remembered something negative about Kaminski. To find more people who might recognize the man in the picture, the SVT team goes to the seminary office together with the rector; but he is the only one who knows that the photocopy represents Müller. Principal Nedbal now asks Kaminski's successor as trustee, Arcangelo Speciale, if he recognizes Kaminski. After being hesitant at first, the trustee says emphatically, "Yes, he is," and says that he got to know Kaminski before he died. The camera captures how Principal Nedbal sulks and is silent for a moment. When he then translates the steward's unequivocal answer into German for Müller's daughter, he weakens the German translation: "He said he might have looked like that when he was very young." Principal Nedbal does not seem at all to like that Müller has actually been identified but does not yet reveal anything to the staff at the seminary.

Seminary staff are now providing more information about Kaminski. He is said to have hidden in the seminary as early as 1931 before the war to avoid military service, but it is not clear where he came from. After the war, he had worked for a film company but returned in the 1950s as an administrator at the seminary. He is also said to have been Hudal's driver. This information is difficult to reconcile with the pages of the book about Hudal’s grave, where Kaminski is said to have worked as a trustee for more than 40 years, i.e. already before 1933.

The Swedish TV team asks for photos of Kaminski and is referred to an elderly lady on the staff who must have photos at her home. They go there, but the lady cannot find a single photo of Kaminski. But the fact that the seminary would have had an employee from at least 1950 to 1973, perhaps even from 1931, without him appearing in a single photograph, is quite strange.

Surprised, the lady spontaneously tells the team that Kaminski did not exist in the social security system. This certainly shows that he was not registered with the Italian authorities!

The lady says that Kaminski's real name was Kamienski, that his father was Polish and that he had had two brothers, but that they had died childless.

Later the same day, the Swedish TV team returns to the Anima seminary. Now the team is met with a completely different attitude. The administrator, who had just explained that he got to know Kaminski before he died, now insists at length that he never met him. Apparently the staff have been told by rector Nedbal that Kaminski is probably identical with Gestapo-Müller.

The team then tries to interview Kaminski's daughter, who lives in Rome with her husband and children. On the phone she declines an interview with SVT, and later her husband threatens to call the police and sue SVT. So no interview takes place. Why are the daughter and her husband so dismissive and upset? – Before leaving the seminary, Gestapo-Müller's daughter is promised by the staff that they will send information showing that Kaminski was there before the Second World War. But the seminary of Santa Maria dell'Anima never gets in touch.

If Müller managed to get to Rome and changed his name to Kaminski there, how did he do it? How was he able to survive in Berlin after he and his collaborator Scholz left Hitler's bunker? One can only speculate. But he - if anyone - probably knew more secret ways out of Berlin than most.

The various stories about how he was found dead are partly contradictory, partly just stories.

That Müller, with his knowledge and resources in the form of loyal followers, may have laid false trails seems likely. None of those who claimed to have found his dead body had photographed the body or face of the person they thought was Müller. – One of his many biographers says that he was a master at chess. He may well have planned his disappearance in detail well in advance.

We also do not know how he could have contacted Hudal in Rome. If you search for the two's surnames together on the internet, you don't get a single hit. In the SVT documentary there is only one photo showing Müller with a possible Hudal in the background, namely from Hitler's grand visit to Rome in 1938. Although Hudal and Müller may not have known each other personally, they certainly must have known of each other. Their political profiles are quite similar: not full-blooded Nazis, but ardent Catholics, obsessed with hatred of Bolshevism.

Since Hudal was obviously one of the main characters of the Rat Line, no previous personal friendship was needed to help him hide. An example of this is Adolf Eichmann, who did not belong to the group of South German or Austrian Catholic Nazis at all but had an Evangelical Lutheran background. Nevertheless, he was taken care of by the Rat Line. According to one account, he converted to Catholicism in return.

And since Müller was one of Europe's most best-informed people concerning secret organizations and routes, he should have found it quite easy to contact Hudal. On his way to Rome, Müller could safely hide in various monasteries and churches, because the Allies were discouraged from searching Catholic churches and monasteries!

Hudal admitted in his memoirs, written in 1962, that he had helped Nazis to escape. He called his protégés” so-called war criminals” who had fought against Bolshevism. He said his campaign to help them was a form of compassionate love. Hudal did not name names, but is believed to have helped Adolf Eichmann, Barbie - the Lyon murderer - and Josef Mengele, among others.