Five Days That Shocked the World: Eyewitness Accounts from Europe at the End of World War II Read Online Free PDF Page A

knew this man personally and thought very highly of him. He could never resist having his horoscope read, and I felt this would soften his reaction to the disappointment.” 2
    The astrologer was Wilhelm Wulff, a self-appointed seer who by his own account had been one of hundreds of German astrologers arrested after Rudolph Hess’s flight to Scotland in 1941, and interrogated by the Gestapo as they sought an explanation for Hess’s behavior. Wulff had been released after a while but remained under observation, threatened with severe punishment if his horoscopes proved to be inaccurate. He was almost as nervous as Schellenberg as an SS car collected him from Hamburg and drove him to Lübeck, where he was to meet Schellenberg before reporting to Himmler later that evening.
    “Make sure that Himmler sends me to Stockholm” were Schellenberg’s first words when they met. 3 Wulff asked to be left alone for an hour while he consulted his charts and prepared some horoscopes. Then the two of them set off for the police barracks in the suburbs that housed Himmler’s headquarters.
    It was getting on for midnight by the time they arrived. They were taken down a dimly lit corridor and shown into a room containing beds, a table, and wooden benches around the walls. They sat down to wait, but Himmler did not appear. Midnight came and went, heralded by an air raid siren sounding the all-clear, but there was still no sign of the SS leader. Schellenberg and Wulff were evidently in for a long night. Settling down on one of the benches along the wall, they ran once more through the points they were going to raise with Himmler when he arrived, and then resigned themselves to a lengthy wait.
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    WHILE SCHELLENBERG went to meet Himmler, Count Bernadotte had remained in Denmark, horrified to learn from the radio that his discussions with the Allies had gone public. He was staying with a Danish official when he heard his own name on the news, followed by an announcement that he had been conducting negotiations with Himmler for a German surrender.
    Bernadotte’s first reaction was one of despair. As a cousin of the king of Sweden, his main object in agreeing to act as a go-between was to ensure a peaceful German withdrawal from Norway and Denmark, one that left his fellow Scandinavians unscathed as the Wehrmacht pulled out. He had negotiated mainly with Schellenberg, but he had seen Himmler, too, meeting him secretly at the Swedish consulate in Lübeck on April 23. They had had a long talk by candlelight in the aftermath of an air raid. Himmler had admitted that Germany was beaten and had told Bernadotte that if Hitler weren’t already dead, he soon would be. He had asked Bernadotte to approach the Anglo-Americans about a possible surrender, adding privately that if his overtures were rejected, he himself would go to the Russian front and seek an honorable death in battle.
    Himmler had spoken in strictest confidence, as had Bernadotte when he relayed Himmler’s message to the British and American ambassadors in Stockholm. It was frustrating, therefore, to hear their names on the radio and know that they had been exposed. But was it a disaster? Bernadotte certainly thought so at first. “My initial reaction was that this had spoilt everything, and that there was no further possibility of negotiations.” 4 Thinking it over, however, he wasn’t so sure. It certainly meant that Himmler was out of the picture, but was that really so bad, when the Allies were refusing to deal with him anyway?
    It might actually be good, if Hitler were forced to appoint someone else to succeed him instead, as he would surely have to. Whoever Hitler appointed would not be as distasteful to the Allies. Either way, Bernadotte’s main concern was still to ensure a peaceful capitulation of the German forces in Norway and Denmark. He had told Schellenberg so that morning, before the SS man set off back to Lübeck to explain himself to