Heinrich Müller (28.4.1900 Munich – 30.4.1945 Berlin/missing)

Müller volunteered to fight in World War I in 1917. In 1919, he joined the Political Department of the Munich Police Headquarters. Investigating activists of the Munich Soviet Republic was among his first responsibilities; subsequently, he focused on surveilling and combating the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Müller was a devout Catholic and German nationalist.

His meteoric career began after 1933: As an expert on the communist movement, he served the new regime as an extremely efficient, compliant civil servant. Although he was not initially a member of the Nazi Party, Reinhard Heydrich brought him on board as a senior official of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) in Berlin in April 1934. He became Heydrich’s deputy at the new Security Police headquarters in 1936; in 1939, he became head of Dept. IV (Gestapo) in the ‘Reich Security Main Office’. This made Müller the most powerful man in the Nazi police apparatus after Himmler and Heydrich, and he was responsible for suppressing the resistance, the deportation and murder of the Jewish population, and the deployment of death squads in the occupied territories. Müller had already joined the SS in 1934 and in 1941 he achieved the rank of SS Group Leader.

Müller’s death is not documented. He has been missing since May 1945. It has been speculated that he was taken prisoner and abducted when Soviet troops marched into Berlin or that he managed to escape abroad. However, it is more likely that he did not survive the end of the war.