Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler [Hardcover]

Martin Allen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 21, 2005

Martin Allen has achieved pre-eminence as a researcher and writer specializing in the Second World War. In this, his third major book, Heinrich Himmler, Head of the SS, emerges as a man with a huge personal agenda. Having secured for himself an unassailable position by manipulating Hitler into wiping out the SS's left-wing rivals, the SA, in The Night of the Long Knives, he continued to nurture political supremacy for himself while Hitler fought his military war. At the heart of Himmler's Secret War is the turning point of the war when, following the German defeat at Stalingrad, Himmler recognized that Germany would lose. Through his trusted envoy, Walter Schellenberg, he devoted much energy to negotiating his intended post-war role as the man who would lead Germany. He believed his intermediary, the British Ambassador in Sweden, Victor Mallet, was in direct contact with Winston Churchill. In fact, he was the victim of a highly effective sting by the Political Warfare Executive (PWE).

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Martin Allen is a leading authority on the Second World War. His particular skill lies in searching out witnesses and documents for information other historians have missed. His first book, Hidden Agenda, covering the Duke of Windsor's wartime activities, was nominated as Observer Book of the Year and published in the USA, France, Germany, Spain, and Portugal. Allen's second book, The Hitler/Hess Deception, blew open the official version of Rudolph Hess as an eccentric adventurer and was published in seven languages and widely serialized. In this, his third book on political warfare in the Second World War, Martin Allen reveals Britian's top secret war of wits pitted against the German leadership to undermine Nazi Germany politically, and thereby ensure that Britian would emerge victorious in 1945.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press (December 21, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786717084
• ISBN-13: 978-0786717088
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #737,289 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Speculative but interesting, March 10, 2006

By 

Colonel Moran - See all my reviews

This review is from: Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler (Hardcover)

Could it be that there was a human being even worse than Adolf Hitler? If so, it might just be Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS. This fast-paced volume is both a short biography of Himmler and a study of his efforts to negotiate peace with the British...a peace that would have left him in charge of Germany. In fact, British Intelligence agencies manipulated Himmler in the hopes of weakening and disrupting the Reich, hastening its demise. Many of the documents that would prove or disprove several of the author's theories are sealed for several more years. Perhaps then we will know the extent of Churchill's involvment in the process. In addition, we may find out if Himmler really was killed by the British, so he could not stand trial and reveal anything about his peace negotiations. As such, much of the book must be viewed as speculative. But it is well-presented and speculation about the machinations of the worst men in history is still a fascinating undertaking.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Little H., June 28, 2006

By 

Thomas Dunskus (Faleyras, France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler (Hardcover)

Little H.
(This review is based on the UK edition, "Himmler's Secret War", Robson, 2005)

Martin Allen's book deals, in a general way, with the many "peaceable attempts" towards Britain made by the Germans during the Second World War. These approaches, the author tells us, took on various forms and came from very diverse groups of the German political spectrum; some of the later ones, surprisingly, were promoted by Himmler - the founder of the SS and the man in charge of Reich security, including the concentration camps,.

On the German side, all these initiatives, regardless of the political orientations of their promotors, had a common feature - the clear conviction of all the persons concerned that the Soviet Union and its international organisation, the Comintern, represented a unique threat to Western civilization. The intensity of this feeling can only be compared to our present fear of Islamic fundamental terrorism, but Bolshevism would have been able to - and did - take over the government in countries all over the world, something which Al-Kaida is far from achieving.

In the first part of the book, the author describes in some detail Himmler's contacts with the Allies, mostly with the British side, in the latter stages of WW2. The negotiations were aimed at ending the fighting on various fronts and at maintaining a state of order in the territories concerned pending a general end of the hostilities. The second portion of the work is devoted to Allen's thesis that Himmler, once he fell into British hands in one way or another two weeks after Germany's capitulation, did not commit suicide - as has always been maintained - but was summarily killed by his captors.

Sixty years on, this is not really an assertion which should cause any uproar. Does it really matter whether this man was eliminated with a blow on his head or taken to Nuremberg to be judged and hung with his cronies? It does, apparently, if we look at what happened once the book had come out, in the early summer of 2005. Within weeks, a British newspaper carried the story that several documents from the British Public Records Office (PRO) which Allen had used to prove his point were forgeries and that his theory was hence unfounded - or worse. The newspaper (not the PRO!) claimed to have submitted the documents to an expert who had confirmed that the items were modern fakes

Rather than putting the matter to rest, this turn of events raises many more problems than it solves. Quite apart from asking the obvious questions as to who did the forging, at what time, in what way and for what purpose, the reader wonders about how some stray newspaper reporter could have talked the authorities at the PRO into letting him walk out with original registered documents for scrutiny by some obscure specialist. The only believable procedure would have been for the reporter to be given photocopies, but that would have prevented any really reliable analysis.

Even here, we have not yet reached the end of the string of questions which come to mind, for we still do not know why, sixty years after the end of WW2, the accepted version of the events must not be put into doubt. Could it be that we are not dealing with facts at all, but with political questions which continue to be significant, two generations on? The Second World War became a disaster for Britain; the only positive aspect was the neutralization of Germany as a competitor for something like a decade, whereas the loss of the British Empire, the advance of the Red Army to a line 100 miles from the North Sea and, in particular, the abandonment of Poland and Czechoslovakia to the Soviet Union must be ranked among the major catastrophes of modern history, because Britain's very entry into the war in 1939 had been prompted by her intention to preserve the liberty and the independence of these countries.

Politically, all these monumental failures could be justified only by the moral argument that this "Fifth British War against the Reich" - as Robert Vansittard called it - was necessary if freedom and democracy were to prevail in the world (albeit not everywhere and not immediately). For that rason, it was imperative to go on fighting to the bitter end and to thwart any peace moves.

Apparently, even today, no arguments against these overriding intentions can be tolerated and it is, therefore, better to let security at the PRO be called lax rather than to let British policy during WW2 be put into question. Himmler had to be eliminated because it would have been difficult to explain to the dead of 1944/45 on all sides why they could not live to see the end of the war.

4.0 out of 5 stars The secret peace negiations of Himmler., May 31, 2010

By 

Kevin M Quigg (Gettysburg, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Himmler's Secret War: The Covert Peace Negotiations of Heinrich Himmler (Hardcover)

Himmler was evil, maybe even more so than Hitler. However, he was very smart and knew that Germany would lose the war by 1943. The author expresses the opinion with some well researched documents from the British public archives that Hitler engaged in peace talks with the British government. The British were engaging in this exercise so they could cause political turmoil in the German government. Himmler was doing it so he survive the Second World War. Ultimately, Himmler may have been killed to prevent him from telling of his relations with the British during these negotiations. As a previous reviewer has already stated, wheather Himmler was killed by hanging or earlier in a murder does not really matter. He was an evil man who deserved to die.

This is an OK espionage book. I gained a little insight into Himmler and his relations with the rest of the inner Nazi circle. These were evil men, and I can equate them with a den of snakes.