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Summary: Schellenberg's Memoirs Illuminate the Nazi Secret Service
Review: Walter Schellenberg is one of those enigmatic figures that emerged from the ruins of the Third Reich. Like the memiors of Hitler's armaments minister, Albert Speer, Schellenberg's account gives us a penetrating look into the inner workings of the Nazi regime. Unlike Speer's account however, Schellenberg sticks to his own field, intelligence, and completly ignores the larger, darker questions of the men he served so faithfully. That aside, 'The Labyrinth' is a remarkable glimpse into the world of German intelligence during World War Two. Schellenberg gives us the same kind of intimate portrait of Heinrich Himmler that Albert Speer gave of Adolf Hitler in 'Inside the Third Reich.' Schellenberg also gives us a memorable look at men like Reinhard Heydrich, Whilhelm Canaris, Heinrich Mueller, and Ernst Kaltenbrunner. But the heart of this work is Schellenberg's own experiences as head of foreign intelligence and counter intelligence. Included are Schellenberg's scheme to kidnap the Duke of Windsor in Portugal in 1940, his 'turning' of Russian POW's to the Nazi cause, and his capture of two British secret service officers on the Dutch-German border in 1939. The narrative ends with Schellenberg's attempts to secure the surrender of the western armies to the allies on behalf of Himmler. For anyone interested in the Nazi intelligence system of the Second World War or of true spy stories in general this is a work that will not disappoint. If you enjoyed this work you might want to check out Gerald Reitlinger's 'SS: Alibi of a nation, 1922-45,' for a larger picture of the German SS.
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Summary: Hidden powers
Review: Walter Schellenberg's memoirs are an acute, objective and non passionate account of the facts and people at the top of the Third Reich, as almost as impartially as a journalist could have written them, curious for a man who was Reinhard Heydrich's deputy chief of counterespionage, and more curious because Schellenberg just related the events without questioning the ethic or the political values of this or that. He just narrates the events, of course, giving his own personal feelings and opinions of many situations, but without moral points of view nor any kind of remorse or regrets. The memoirs are centred on the espionage and sabotage affairs he planned or executed, always under Heydrich's command, from the beginning of the SD through the unification of all the intelligence services within the RSHA in 1939, the assassination of Heydrich in Prague in 1942, till the end of WWII. The affairs are very juicy, like the Venlo incident, the Anschluss, the occupation of Bohemia and Moravia, the plans for the invasion of Poland, the plans to kidnap the Duke of Windsor, the "Cicero" and "Zeppelin" operations, the attemts to push Spain forward to war beside Germany,the intoxicating operation about the GRU in the Soviet Union, etc, as well as the very lucid portraits of Nazi hierarchs: Hitler is seen as an emotionally unstable man and a paranoid; Heydrich, Schellenberg's former chief, as extremely intelligent and cultivated but also as a wild beast, a psychotic personality, very cruel and ambitious; Himmler, as an ordinary man, grey, a mediocrity; Von Ribbentrop, as pretentious and rather blunt; Kaltenbrunner, his latter chief, as an alcoholic, incompetent and envious. It's also very interesting to follow, through these human portraits, the tensions, envy, ambition and hidden wounds these rulers caused each other, which proves that the Third Reich wasn't the monolithic granite some historians try us to believe. Schellenberg's memoirs show the nature of intelligence services as the hidden powers of the Third Reich, but, as a paradox, these powers are full of incompetent bureaucrats. The only two people who still remain remarkable for their qualities are Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the RSHA(Reichsicherheitshauptamt- Reich Main Security Office) and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris,chief of the Military Intelligence (Abwehr), apart, of course, from Walter Schellenberg. These three are actually the grey eminences of Nazi Intelligence services.
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Summary: The book of a master of deception
Review: Walter Schellenberg, -the closest friend of Reinhard Heydrich, an intimate of Himmler- was an "idea man" for both and his career sky-rocketted to make him the youngest SS General. How are we expected to believe that he had nothing to do with the mass murdering of Jewish people?
Isn't he the one, who, on May 20 1941, ordered to stop the emigrations of Jewish people from France and Belgium, being the first to refer to the coming "Final Solution" of the Jewish problem... Well, you will not find this in his Memoirs, and neither in the US archives on Walter Schellenberg which have just been declassified (1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002) and even less in the British archives which have not been declassified.Thanks to a plea bargain with the British, owing to the Allies desire to conceal that the duke of Windsor (former king Edward VIII) and Wallis Simpson (his wife) were Nazi spies, Walter Schellenberg's history was rewritten with the help of his western Allies investigators. Schellenberg was given the time to prepare his defense in Sweden with Himmler's chyropractor, Felix Kersten, to be later acting as a defense witness. Thus, through the "Troza Memoradum" then written by Schellenberg, Felix Kersten was informed of how he had to adapt the "notiezen" which would be used for writing his own Memoirs. This avoided him of being convicted and helped saving his Gestapo accomplice. Walter Schellenberg had attempted more negotiations for a separate peace witht the west than anybody else event if he was carrying them out not for a return to democracy but only for replacing Hitler by Himmler. Even this part is misinformation. Schellenberg in fact was just an agent-provocateur, who infiltrated every treason attempt against the nazis. It did cost, at Venlo, Menzies and Dansey (heads of the British IS) their spy network in continental Europe. During the war it only costed Himmler the life saving of a couple of Swedish jews, and, at the very end of the war, a train of 1200 Jewish persons which were about to be liberated by the Allies: for this "Musy train" negotiations had been dragging since June 1944 (almost one full year) but were arranged in a matter of days when it became strategic for Himmler. Schellenberg worked as a chief of the Gestapo Office E, before directing (only for two and a half year) the political espionage of the Nazi Security Service. After the von Stauffenberg attempt against Hitler (which he and Himmler had fully penetrated) he also gained full control over the military espionage. Naturally the Memoirs loose the reader in the Labyrinth of the spy stories to avoid him getting to the Minotaur of the Holocaust. Wasn't the Minotaur symbolically representing the guilt of King Minos of Crete?
Schellenberg's Memoirs duly called the Labyrinth are full of silence and subtle lies, well wrapped up in true fascinating but misleading spy stories.
Unfortunately lots of historians did base other analysis on this twisted and biased account written by one of the nazi monster. To be read with more than caution as, contrary to what the investigators claimed, the author is extremely clever. Their statement about his alleged lack of intelligence was only aiming at covering the holes left in their own investigation, and at hiding some inconsistencies in their presentation. This book doesn't supply any answers but it raises a huge number of questions for the knowlegeable historian.
One day someone will use the Ariadne thread to find the proven way to the Minotaur and fly above the intricacies of the Labyrinth with wings that the sun will not melt down.
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