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 Pierre De Villemarest
A member of the French Resistance from autumn 1940, thereafter officer in the French Secret Army, then officer with the intelligence services assigned to the countries which had fallen under Soviet Communist rule.
Between 1962 and 2003 he has published about 20 works, including In The Shadow of Wall Street, Soviet-Nazi complicities and financing; GRU the Most Secret of the Soviet Services, 1918-1988 (translated into Chinese and Polish); and Facts & Chronicles Denied to the Public, Vol. 1 & 2. For the past thirty years he has written a private newsletter, with subscribers in eighteen countries, describing the hidden side to contemporary events.
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Who Protected Bormann & Gestapo Muller
Reviewed by The Sunday Times, 8th May 2005
Contact the Publisher, Wiliam Wolf [email protected]
Click here for interview with De Villemarest
Did you know that an NKVD general, and Stalin�s Minister of Security in the USSR, was still �handling� the Müller case in 1951? Did you know that another name high on the Nuremberg list, Martin Bormann, Hitler�s éminence grise, also received mysterious protection after the war? Did you know that a secret radio network was being operated between Bavaria and Spain as late as 1948 or that, in France, French citizens were taking orders from its leader, Martin Bormann?
As an intelligence officer, the author of this book is the only specialist to have met him in 1949, when Bormann went into permanent exile in South America, where he died in 1959. After conducting extensive investigations in Central Europe, Spain and South America, and immersing himself in the secrets of those European countries occupied by the Soviet Union, the author forestalls controversy by letting unpublished American, Soviet, East German (Stasi), and Czech archives speak for themselves.
In an article for the Sunday Times in 1996, the distinguished reporter Jon Swain wrote that, in his opinion, the author�s archives would, if published, astonish a great many people. As early as 1995, the German magazine Focus cited the author in connection with Müller and his real past. In this way true history runs along a parallel track to official history. All the points in the author�s thesis have been born out by documents declassified by the CIA in the course of 2004.
Contents:
Photographs and Documents between pages 33 and 38, 65 and 70, 97 and 100, 129 and 140, 161 and 164, 193 and 206, 225 and 228, 289 and 296, 410 and 411, 417 and 440
Preface by Vladimir Bukovsky
Introduction by General André Bach
Foreword
Chapter 1
1.1 - �Delius� and �Kent� tell the same story
1.2 - �Delius� and Operation Max.
1.3 - Müller organises �Sleepers� in March 1945
1.4 - Confirmation by a certain Mr Kent
1.5 - A Moscow trial in Paris
Chapter 2
2.1 - Key to a meteoric rise
2.2 - The curious �suicide� of Hitler�s niece
2.3 - In the shadow of Reinhard Heydrich
2.4 - Heydrich�s wife describes the �coup� of 9 March 1933
Chapter 3
3.1 - The rise of the Bavarians
3.2 - A frequently underrated situation
3.3 - Müller is challenged, but promoted
3.4 - The curious case of Colonel Walther Nicolai
3.5 - First steps towards the Pact of 1939
Chapter 4
4.1 - The police versus the army, in Berlin and Moscow
4.2 - Heydrich and Müller become forgers
4.3 - Massacre in the Soviet Union
4.4 - The dismissal of the German Army High Command
4.5 - Nicolai�s spy ring again
Chapter 5
5.1 - Soviet networks under Gestapo Müller�s nose
5.2 - A string of infiltrated agents
5.3 - The legal and illegal apparatus of the USSR in Germany
5.4 - Poland, first victim of the alliance
Chapter 6
6.1 - Manhunts and the Jewish question
6.2 - Joint Gestapo and NKVD units
6.3 - Müller and the Jewish question
6.4 - Some little-known facts
6.5 - Extension into France
Chapter 7
7.1 - Heinrich Müller and the Red Orchestra
7.2 - Who was protecting Greta Kuckhoff?
7.3 - A revealing analysis
7.4 - The game played by Himmler, Bormann and Kaltenbrunner
7.5 - An Austrian heads the administration
Chapter 8
8.1 - Playing a double game to serve the enemy
8.2 - The silence of the �expert�
8.3 - Behind Max and the others: General V.S. Abakumov
8.4 - The Sonderkommando confronts the Red Orchestra
8.5 - Mysterious breakouts, but the jailers go unpunished
8.6 - Interrogators give away more than their prisoners
Chapter 9
9.1 - Viktor Abakumov on the line
9.2 - The birth of Hacke
9.3 - Defector Michel Goleniewski�s testimony
9.4 - The Spetsburo intervenes
9.5 - �Pete� Bagley listens to Piotr Deriabin
Chapter 10
10.1 - The Red Three
10.2 - The strange motorcade to Moscow
10.3 - The Sonderkommando crosses into the East
10.4 - Viktor Abakumov at the controls
10.5 - The silence of Gestapo Müller
10.6 - The suspicions of the GRU in 1943
10.7 - Martin Bormann�s stenographers
Chapter 11
11.1 - The convulsions of summer 1944
11.2 - The Joseph Goebbels memorandum
11.3 - A true bureaucratic frenzy
11.4 - ... But Communist mistresses, too
11.5 - Müller and the Plot of 20 July 1944
Chapter 12
12.1 - Operation Survival
12.2 - The inventor of industrial espionage
12.3 - The art of camouflaging people
12.4 - A multi-layered treasury
12.5 - The Strasbourg conference, August 1944
12.6 - Networks concealing other networks
Chapter 13
13.1 - Escape from Berlin
13.2 - The inner circle know where to meet
13.3 - Heinrich Müller�s personal bunker
13.4 - The evacuation of the Führer bunker
13.5 - Bormann out in the open
13.6 - Gestapo Müller�s final arrangements
13.7 - The final meetings
Chapter 14
14.1 - Establishing their position
14.2 - TICOM demolishes illusions
14.3 - Confirmation from the archives
14.4 - Soviet sympathisers keep watch in Germany
14.5 - On the trail of a gamekeeper
14.6 - Müller plays his own game
14.7 - Kaltenbrunner�s luck runs out
Chapter 15
15.1 - The Saragossa Dossier
15.2 - A well-placed informant
15.3 - Direct Quotations
15.4 - The Bormann network�s South American activities
15.5 - French collaboration with Hacke
15.6 - Nostalgia for the idyllic days of the Pact
15.7 - The Risks taken by Ric
Chapter 16
16.1 - Freude puts through a call to Bormann in Argentina
16.2 - Confirmation from a Russian expert
16.3 - Under cover of Manuel de Falla�s coffin
16.4 - Operation Brandy
16.5 - K5 hangs on to information
16.6 - Evita Peron�s mission to Europe
16.7 - The future wife of Kirk Douglas
16.8 - Change of tack to the Middle East
16.9 - Death at the end of the trail
Chapter 17
17.1 - The Müller saga
17.2 - Laying it on thick...
17.3 - Abakumov dominates German affairs
17.4 - An East German springboard against the West
17.5 - Müller and Rattenhuber at the controls of a secret police force
Chapter 18
18.1 - Flight to South America
18.2 - Rattenhuber under the microscope
18.3 - The first agents sent into the West
18.4 - Panzinger and Pannwitz return to the West
18.5 - The end of Abakumov
18.6 - The flight of Gestapo Müller
Chapter 19
Ivan Serov to Rudolf Barak, �Kidnap Müller!�
Unlimited Sovietisation
A superficial relaxation
The approach and abduction
The end of a �top policeman�
Curious campaigns and loyal admirers
Chapter 20
Sharing the loot in Adenauer�s shadow
Schacht, Abs, Pferdmenges, Achenbach...
A surprising symbiosis behind Konrad Adenauer
Playing double and multiple games under cover of the Cold War
The Gauleiter Circle in 1953
Ernst Achenbach, lawyer and negotiator
The Thyssen affair
Chapter 21
Deafening silence in the East and in the West
Mossad bans further operations
Moscow�s silence
Appendix 1 - I G Farben, worldwide economic espionage and the �Zefis�
Appendix 2 - Bormann, the committees of bankers, the intermediaries
Appendix 3 - Karl Oberg and Helmut Knochen
Appendix 4 - A German-Soviet Medal from the year 1934
Appendix 5 - Olga Ivanovna Förster-Shkarina
Appendix 6 - Olga Chekhova
Appendix 7 - Secrets of an Immersion
Kommando 306 is hot on my heels
Target de Gaulle
In the Boulevard Suchet, Paris
Light is shed on an epoch
A helping hand from Gustave Bertrand
On the staff of the Governor of Württemberg
The Schnaufer communications route
Self-financing an adventure
Clear warnings
Preface By Vladimir Bukovsky The two leading, Nazi figures most responsible for the Holocaust and other atrocities (Martin Bormann and Gestapo M�ller), were Stalin's agents; and, for 60 years no one wants to talk about it - until now.
No government, no international body, no Tribunal of any sort, has ever investigated this fact and none is likely to do so now. Can we believe it? Well, frankly, I am not even surprised.
It was noticed long ago that the truth is usually the first casualty in any war, and that the history of it is subsequently written by the winning party. This is particularly true with regards to the Cold War simply because it was the war of ideas - a war over what the Truth is. Therefore, truth was not just a casualty resulting from some "collateral damage", but the prime target of the whole war - the main reason for waging it. Not surprisingly, the Truth was practically destroyed, in the process, and to such an extent, that I doubt whether historians will ever manage to piece it together.
Furthermore, the resulting vacuum was rapidly filled with Big Lies which today have become established as indisputable common wisdom, and which one cannot even question without being dismissed as a lunatic. Thus, as many sources nevertheless indicate, overt antagonism between the Nazis and the Soviets was invented by the Comintern, in the early 1930s, and then carefully cultivated until 1939, and again after 1941.
The purpose was dual: first, it served as a cover for close, secret, Soviet-Nazi collaboration in building their respective military machines; second, it forced all others to support one side or the other, leaving no space for a third position.
Being thus placed "between a rock and a hard place", even the staunchest democrats had to make this devilish choice. Besides, Soviet-Nazi ideological differences were so insignificant - compared with their common goal of destroying the "old order" - that they were not an obstacle in practical politics. Meanwhile, the two dictators played a game of apparent antagonism to help them achieve this goal, and, even today, some 75 years after the Comintern invented this "Left-Right" game, it is still being played, and, consequently, public perception is still being configured by Stalin's propaganda!
The Nazis are still perceived to be on the "right" (bad guys), while the Communists are said to be on the "left" (good guys). Just try to explain that "national socialism" is as much on the "left" as its "international" brother without being called a dangerous extremist!
Although we all know that Stalin and Hitler jointly started World War 2, as partners in crime, and were, therefore, equally responsible for the destruction it caused, the one became a "liberator of Europe", while the other became the ultimate villain. For decades nobody in the West dared to condemn Stalin, because, by implication, it would have made Hitler seem less sinister. Although, owing to some recently discovered documents, and thanks to the few researchers who have published them, we now know that Stalin planned to attack Germany on July 6, and was simply late by two weeks - which allowed Hitler to strike first (on June 22nd) - we are not much nearer to recognising the reality of Soviet-Nazi collusion, up to that point, or that betraying Hitler was part of the Soviet plan. We are still floundering between the poles of this Nazi-Communist dichotomy.
Although we know that Stalin practically invented Hitler, brought him to power, and armed and supplied him, thus enabling Stalin to see the fulfillment of their common dream - destruction of the "old order" in Europe - the Soviet Union has remained "the Liberator", and "a beacon for all progressive mankind", and Hitler has borne the blame for both of them.
But let us take a more recent example: as the Berlin Wall crumbled, the Western leaders hastily proclaimed the next two, biggest lies of the century: firstly, that "the Cold War is over"; and secondly, that "the West won it".
However generously we try to interpret the first statement, we are obliged to conclude that it was a monumental fraud. Clearly, the Western leaders must have re-defined the whole purpose of the war, without so much as informing the public! For one thing, the Cold War was in progress long before 1961, when the Wall was constructed, and, therefore, could not terminate simply with its removal.
The Wall was merely a manifestation of the illness, not its cause, as a moment's reflection will confirm. Yet, from that moment onwards, the real cause of the trouble - the Soviet Union with its totalitarian communist system - became almost sacrosanct for the West; and so much so that, as the Soviet crisis deepened further, every Western leader rushed to prop up that regime, from Francois Mitterrand (who actually supported the 1991 coup in Moscow) to George Bush (who went to Kiev in 1991 and tried to dissuade the Ukrainians from leaving the Soviet Union).
Of course, if we interpret the Cold War, in narrow military terms, merely as a confrontation between the Warsaw Pact and NATO, we can say we won it, simply because one of the blocs has disappeared; but the Cold War was always much more than that. It was an ideological confrontation, a war of ideas, between liberal democracies and communist totalitarianism. Eventually, the Soviet Union and its allies collapsed of exhaustion, under the burden of their own stupidity, despite the efforts of the West to prop them up with credits, loans, technology and diplomatic support. Suffice it to say, that, in only the last seven years of its existence, the most crucial seven years, when it was desperately struggling for survival, the Soviet Union was given $45 billion in different loans and credits; and when, ultimately, it collapsed anyway, jubilation, and claims of victory, in the Western world, were surprisingly muted: most importantly, however, there were no demands for the just punishment of the most odious perpetrators of crimes against humanity, who had suddenly become available for prosecution. Western leaders looked almost embarrassed and saddened by the most significant event of the whole century. Does this sound like a victory?
The truth is that, except for a few years after World War 2, and during the first few years of Ronald Reagan's presidency, the West was engaged in a typical process of appeasement towards the communist countries - and appeasers don't win wars. We might have won an important battle under Ronald Reagan, but the job was never finished. Let us imagine, for example, that the victorious Allies in 1945 had accepted some sort of "perestroika" of the Nazi regime, instead of unconditional surrender. I doubt we would have seen democracy in Europe for the next 30 years. The Nazi Party and its collaborators, albeit under a different name, would have continued to govern a somewhat milder version of their former political system.
This, I am afraid, is exactly what happened in most of the former Communist countries, where former, Communist apparatchiks remain in power to this very day. Not only in Russia, Bulgaria or Moldova; but, even in Poland and Hungary, the latest elections brought "former" Communists to power. Even in Berlin, the "former" Communists have scored a staggering victory; the same is to be said about the communist power not only in North Korea, but still in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. And no one in the West seems to be alarmed, or surprised. Do they really believe they have won the Cold War?
And what about the former Soviet collaborators, sympathizers, and apologists in the West? Are they condemned and ridiculed? Are they retired and pensioned off? On the contrary, in many West European countries they actually came to power, just as the Soviet Union collapsed, and have become an even more influential part of the Western establishment. They are still opinion-makers, and now they are decision-makers too. They don't like to discuss the past, in public, lest it remind people of less than glorious facts from their own biographies, but they are the loudest among those who claim that the Cold War is over; and, of course, they are the ones who write history today, in a hurry to establish their own interpretation of it, as accepted wisdom. As Orwell notes, "those who control the past, control the future".
Regrettably, they are quite successful in their effort. We live today as though we did not have a past at all - as though we have just started from the Year 0. As a result, our public life seems to be afflicted by some sort of moral schizophrenia.
Thus, in the wake of "the collapse of Communism", any attempt to prosecute (or even to name) secret police torturers, murderers and terrorists in the service of the former Soviet empire (as well as their accomplices abroad), was greeted with indignation and branded as a "witch-hunt"; yet, at the same time, all sorts of "truth commissions" sprang up, from South Africa to Latin America, investigating human rights violations and punishing perpetrators in their respective regions. Needless to say, no one dared to call these "witch hunts".
Remarkably, the power to punish crimes against humanity has remained dormant since 1946. It was invoked, for the first time since then, only against some small-time thugs in Bosnia. Neither the crimes committed by Stalin in Eastern Europe, nor those by the Soviet army in Afghanistan, nor even the "social cleansing" conducted by Pol Pot in Cambodia, were deemed worthy of international judgment. Chinese genocide in Tibet, and Russian genocide in Chechnya, provoked, at best, an expression of "regret" on the part of Western governments.
Actually, in many cases, it would not even have been necessary to convene a special tribunal: for example, the murder of captive Polish officers in Katyn was already acknowledged as a crime against humanity at the Nuremberg Trials. Yet the man who was in charge of the execution - former head of one of the Directorates of the NKVD, Pyotr Soprunenko* - was still alive and well in Moscow on a good pension several years after the USSR collapsed. Everyone knew this, Muscovites willingly pointed out the windows of his apartment in a house on the Sadovaya Ring. MGB investigator Daniil Kopelyansky, who interrogated Raoul Wallenberg, was also thriving, as was the organizer of Trotsky's assassination, General Pavel Sudoplatov; but neither Poland, nor Sweden nor Mexico was seeking the extradition of these criminals.
When did we let ourselves become bound by this flawed morality, this schizophrenia of the conscience? Occasionally, we continue to hunt down senile 80-year-olds, in the jungles of Latin America, for the evils they perpetrated 60 years ago. They are murderers. Proudly, we declare: "never again!" and noble tears moisten our eyes; but when it comes to putting Erich Honecker in the dock - a man, on whose orders people were killed as little as 15 years ago - why, every feeling is outraged! It would be inhuman, he's old and sick; and we release him into the jungles of Latin America.
Today, sixty years after the end of WW2, and 15 years after the end of the Soviet Union, any attempt to equate those two totalitarian monsters is still met with indignation. While Nazi symbols are outlawed in the European Union, a suggestion to do the same with Communist symbols was categorically rejected. In just a couple of months, we shall be witnessing the ultimate travesty - a gigantic propaganda show, in Russia, to mark the 60th anniversary of VE-Day, to which every Western leader is cordially invited, and which they will all be happy to attend, even though they know that, as part of the celebration, their Russian hosts are planning to unveil a statue of Stalin (albeit, together with Roosevelt and Churchill). Thus the lies of "post-Communism" will meet the lies of World War 2, in front of numerous TV cameras. How are we going to restore the Truth after that?
As I write these lines, Western leaders are outbidding each other in praise of a certain KGB Colonel, who used to persecute people like me. The US President even claims that he could look into this man's soul. I wonder how he managed to do that! In all my many, involuntary encounters with KGB officers, soul is one thing I have failed to spot.
As the effort to create an "anti-terrorist coalition" was launched, British Prime-Minister Tony Blair, undoubtedly in consultation with Washington, went to Russia and welcomed aboard this new ally. He expressed his delight that, in this war, Russia will finally stand alongside the West - particularly he said (and I quote) "because Russia has such a vast experience in fighting terrorism."
I never thought I would live long enough to hear such words from a leading Western politician. It is almost as callous and ridiculous as to say that Germany has vast experience in dealing with Jews. Russia, in its former incarnation as the Soviet Union, has practically invented modern political terrorism, elevating it to the level of state policy - firstly, in order to control its own population, and secondly, in order to spread its influence across the world, but does anyone care to recognize this today?
This book is written for those who do care, or who will care one day. I can safely predict that their number will grow steadily with every passing year; for, in my firm view, Communism will not really lie on the ash heap of history until we throw it there. Until some Nuremberg-style tribunal passes judgement on all the crimes committed by Communism, it will not be dead, and the war will not be over. Moreover, having failed to finish it off conclusively, we are now in danger of integrating the resulting monster into our world. It may not be called Communism any more, but it has retained many of its dangerous characteristics. Knowing your past will help to save your future.
Vladimir Bukovsky
Cambridge, 24th March 2005
* Publisher's note: according to Pierre de Villemarest's archives, Pyotr K. Soprunenko, born 1908, was head of the NKVD (KGB) for prisoners of war in May 1945. He advanced to the rank of Major in 1940 after personally orchestrating the massacre of Polish officers at Ostashkov in April of that year. The number of victims, taken together with those executed at Katyn, Kozelsk and Starobjelsk between April and the end of May 1940, totalled more than 14,000.
Vladimir Bukovsky is a human rights activist and former Soviet prisoner. He was among the first to expose the use of psychiatry against political prisoners in the USSR. Bukovsky was convicted (Article 70-1) in June 1963 for organizing poetry meetings in the center of Moscow (next to the Vladimir Mayakovsky monument) and sent to a psikhushka; freed in February 1964. In January 1965 he was arrested for organizing a demonstration in defense of Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov and other dissidents (190-1, 3 years of imprisonment); freed in January 1970. In 1971, Bukovsky smuggled to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the USSR. The facts galvanized human rights activists worldwide (including inside the country), and was a pretext for his subsequent arrest in January 1972, for contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat (70-1, 7 years of imprisonment plus 5 years in exile). In December of 1976, while imprisoned, Bukovsky was exchanged for former Chilean Communist leader Luis Corvalan. Adapted from a more comprehensive biography and bibliography at www.wikipedia.com
Summary
On April 29, 1945, all trace was lost of Heinrich `Gestapo' Muller, from September 1939 to the end of the war, head of Section IV (Gestapo) of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office; RSHA).
One of the most wanted of all the Nazi war criminals, Himmler and Heydrich appreciated his blind obedience and willingness to execute "delicate missions" such as eliminating leading generals (such as Blomberg and Fritsch) and personalities hostile to Hitler.
Muller organized provocations such as bloody incidents on the Polish frontiers, which "justified" the war against Poland. He was directly involved in the "final solution of the Jewish Question" after organizing the famous "conference of Wannsee".
Muller signed the orders requiring, by 31 January 1943, the delivery to Auschwitz of 45.000 Jews for extermination. At the end of March 1944, he gave the order to shoot British officers who had escaped from detention, near Breslau.
The mystery of Gestapo Muller has occupied war crimes investigators for more than 60 years. Pierre de Villemarest, the respected French archivist and historian, who alongside Simon Weisenthal is among the most authoritative investigators of this period, has offered the first convincing theory of Muller's fate.
According to "Untouchable" a new book soon to be published by Pierre de Villemarest, (Aquilion, London, 2005, £15.90) well before the end of the war, Muller had sold out to the Soviets. After the war, Muller, protected by Stalin's minister for state security, simply reported to a new master, as he was put to work organising the East German communist intelligence apparatus.
Muller's position became precarious after the death of Stalin. Muller was the protege of Soviet General Viktor Abakumov, minister of security and head of Stalin's feared Smersh. After Stalin's death, a bitter power stuggle between Abakumov and Beria ended with Abakoumov's murder. Muller fled to South America where he hid in the border area between Argentina and Brazil until Czech intelligence officers working on behalf of the KGB kidnapped him and took him back to the Soviet Union, where he died in mysterious circumstances.
Pierre de Villemarest, a former French intelligence officer and resistant who has spent more than half a century on the trail of Gestapo Muller, presents important new new evidence including the testimony of a senior Czech intelligence officer, Rudolf Barak, who was, in 1954, ordered by the Russians to bring Muller `in from the cold' after he had stopped reporting and attending meetings with his controller.
Shameless opportunist
The wacky conspiracy theories surrounding the fate of Nazi war criminals have made this subject a wilderness of mirrors and there is evidence that some of the confusion is deliberate as various things published have been intended to conceal rather than reveal.
One of the attractions of de Villemarest's explanation is that to believe it you need not accept any far-fetched conspiracy theory such as the one put about by the Russians that M�ller was working for the CIA, living in Virginia and a member at all the smartest Washington clubs.
Heinrich Muller was less of a fanatic Nazi than a shameless opportunist. Every aspect of Muller's behaviour confirms that this was exactly the nature of his character.
As the war started going wrong, Muller had good reason to fear that he would shortly be dangling on the end of an allied rope. The SS chief was ruthless but not stupid. Like many others in Berlin, he had seen the inevitable consequence of the defeat at Stalingrad and the inevitability that the Reich would henceforth weaken as the allies grew stronger. From his view, the strongest strongman of all was no longer Hitler but Stalin. He had unequalled opportunity to ensure his own survival and there is plenty of evidence he used it. So he began to play a double game.
Muller's intelligence was second to none. He was both smart and well informed and above all ambitious. He imagined that Stalin would always need policemen. His ambition was that, as he was a living encyclopaedia of former nazis, the victory of the Russians would not interupt his profession as a policeman and spy. But the Russians had other ideas for Muller.
De Villemarest has assembled an extraordinary documentary archive and frequently invites readers to draw their own conclusions.
He is careful not to announce anything as proven until he feels the case is incontestable. His technique is perhaps closer to that of a prosecutor, building circumstance on circumstance until it is the totality that is persuasive beyond reasonable doubt, even if individual pieces of it may be hard to know in every particular detail.
De Villemarest's reconstruction is very impressive even when he admits he has not got the complete story - and since the remaining elements remain locked in the Russian archives, this may be material for which we will have to wait for some time.
It is known that Muller had connections at the very top of Soviet intelligence; he spent weeks with his Soviet counterparts in winter 1937, developing protocols for the Berlin-Moscow pact.
When did Muller turn traitor to Hitler? De Villemarest finds indications Muller had opened a channel with the Russians are early as 1943. So he could well have started playing a double game well before the end of the war. Certainly, his disappearance at the end of the war had a neatness to it - no trace of anyone resembling him was ever found in the wreckage of Berlin.
The testimonial basis of the story
De Villemarest is an indefatigable researcher on Nazi Germany. Working alongside a retired American CIA officer, Tenant Bagley, the most dramatic scoop is the death-bed confession of a former high-ranking Czech intelligence officer.
The important historical implications includee for the first time a suggestion that the post-war Odessa network of renegade Nazis in South America was penetrated, if not controlled, by the Russians.
This would be a good explanation why the Russians have been so reluctant to open their files on this case.
Rudolf Barak, former head of the Czecholosovakian communist intelligence service, told de Villemarest an incredible story involving an intelligence operation never before revealed to the public. Adolph Eichmann was not the only Nazi to be kidnapped in South America. Eichmann's boss, Heinrich Muller, met exactly the same fate but it has remained secret for 50 years.
The Czechs were perfect for the job. The Czechs maintained an important commercial presence in South America, and this was used as a cover for Moscow-inspired "false flag" intelligence operations.
Barak said that in 1954, he was ordered by Ivan Serov, the new director general of the KGB, to bring Heinrich Muller in from the cold. Muller, Barak said, had stopped responding to orders. In a daring operation that took a year to prepare, Muller was extracted and taken to the Soviet Union.
The Czech testimony reported by de Villemarest and Tenant Bagley is the crucial piece of a jigsaw which allows all of the other pieces to make sense.
Unlike so much re-treaded World War Two history, de Villemarest presents astonishing and new information on every page - and has invited the world to dispute his conclusions. So far, nobody has stepped forward.