"I WAS HITLER'S DOUBLE"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23507, 18 November 1939, Page 7 (Supplement)

"I WAS HITLER'S DOUBLE"

OjS" October 12, 1031, I was seated in a Munich Beer Hall when I was approached by "Heinrich Himmler,. then Hitler's •right-hand man, and now, as head 0 f the Nazi State and Secret Police, the most feared man in Germany. TTimmler came straight to the ,\point : "Hitler wants to see you," Be said. On tlio way to the Brown. House, then tlfe Nazi Party headquarters in Munich,' 3 wondered why Hitler wanted •to see inc..For years, ever since I had met .Adolf in 1922, I had been one of his followers, ready to fight for the ideals lio represented. In the Brown House Hitler sat impressively behind his massive desk. Although I was well-known to him ho looked at me in a curious, speculative Wfly* - . . . ._ y Then he spoke to Himmler. "\ou are right, Heinrich," he said. Then to me: • "Stand by the window, Hans, against the light." _ * As I did so, wonderingly, Hitler pulled "a comb from his pocket, readjusted my hair and pulled a lock of it down over mv forehead. Hitler nodded. "It is striking," he said. "I think, Heinrich, that with a' moustache it will bo perfect." He paused, then turned to me. "Has it ever occurred to you, Hans," he asked, "that you are strikingly like me?" I answered that the resemblance had been a matter of comment by my friends. Gestures Imitated The cold, decisive voice of Himmler ipoke. "Last night, Hans," he said, '•someonei tried to kill Adolf. It is not the first "time, nor will it be the last. That'is why we want you «to safeguard Adolf's life in the only way it can be safeguarded." Ho peered closely at me through his thick-lensod glasses. His small, grey eyes wero hard, emotionless. "We want you, Hans," he said glcwly'. v "to be Adolf." I accepted without hesitation. In my zeal for Der Fuehrer I could imagine 'no greater honour than to wear his shadow. How often we are fooled. A-period of intensive training fol- ' lowed.-.ln the seclusion of a small villa near Munich I was taught to imitate Hitler in everything. I studied his walk, his gestures, the way he sat down, the way lie rose, the details of the salute he gave. i And while the training went on I §rew a small moustache. My hair was yed a shade lighter. Tlien came the first test. Himmler dressed me in a trench coat similar to the one Hitler often wore, and gave me o.ne of Adolf's hats. Together we walked down a street for a few hundred yards. I was uneasy, my nerves tense, but I came out of the test with flying colours. Hitler's acquaintances whom we met ell saluted me as Der Fuehrer. Assailant Killed

Many times afterwards in the months that/ followed, I appeared in public as Hitler, but never at close range and never at important meetings or functions. Hitler was working hard, awaiting- the moment when he would inake his bid for supreme power. That moment came. And with it my first real tesi and the first attempt to kill me. • It was July, 1932. Hitler, opposing General von Hindenburg for the presidency, was working like a man possessed. He was tireless, speaking half a dozen times a day. His final,/Gve-of-election speech was to be made : at~ Nuremberg on July 30. There were persistent reports that Communists would make an attempt on Hitler's life when lie entered the city. For that reason I rode in the second car in' the Nazi cavalcade, occupying the seat usually taken by Hitler. Adolf was on his way to Nuremberg by another road. He was to meet us when wc arrived. As we drove through tho cheering people acknowledging the welcome, a fight began in the crowd lining the route just ahead of our car. Trained Nazi workers 'sprang in to stop the brawl. The fighters had spread into the road. Our car had almost halted.

1 ; 1 By HANS 770R six years the writer of this article was Adolf I Hitler's double. He rode in processio?is receiving salutes and acknowledging cheers intended for Hitler. Once Hans Midler, the double, was shot. On two other occasions he was shot at..... Threatened with death when his period of usefulness was ended, he is now in America, a refugee from the Gestapo.

I braced myself. Quickly I glanced from side to side, peering at the houses which overshadowed us. I glimpsed a movement in a second-storey window almost opposite our stalled car. There was the glint of light on metal. I knew instantly what it was—the barrel of a rifle projecting over the window sill. Even as I flung myself to one side I thanked the training I luyl had during the Great War. I was quick enough to save my life, but not quick enough to avoid being wounded. The crack of the rifle rang out and a heavy blow on. the shoulder told me I had been wounded. Instinctively my hand went to the spot. And then my training reasserted itself —the hand went up in the Nazi salute. There was blood on the shoulder of my uniform. Those who wero close enough could not help seeing that I had been wounded. But most of them were watching the fighters, and those who did see the blood were convinced later, that their eyes had deceived 1 them when Hitler, vigorous, unwounded, made his speech. Through the tumult I heard Himmler's voice: "Are you badly hurt? Can you go on ?" "I'm all right," I said. "It's not bad." At that moment the fighters were shoved back to the sidewalk by Der Fuehrer's followers. Tlio car started again. I saw, as we went by the house, a group 6f our men dashing into the doorway of the house from which the shot had come. The newspapers stated that Kurt Hassler, a young student who had tried to kill me, was found lying on tlio

floor of the second-storev room -with a bullet from his own rifle through his brain.

But I know different. Hassler, trying to escape, was caught by Nazi troopers and literally stamped to death. Callous Conduct ,

When we reached the hall the others in the car clustered round me and rushed me through a side door. Hitler was waiting just inside. Then two members of the party stepped to one side of me and the others gathered around Hitler and walked with him to the waiting audience. I was taken to a private house, where a trusted party doctor dressed my wound. --

Next time I saw Hitler he did not call me "Hans." He called me "Midler." The old days of friendship ■were ended, beyond recall. With the naming of Hitler to the Reich Chancellorship in 1933, the entire group that had surrounded him in the early days of the National j Socialist movement moved to Berlin. , For three years I, as Hitler's double, had no life of my own. My comings and goings were as carefully ordered and' regimented as those of a prisoner in gaol. The desire to live my own normal- life had to bo suppressed firmly. Hitler's other doubles had to obey the same orders. I do not know how many there wore—or are; —but X do know that in the little doubles' room alongside Hitler's office in the Chancellery are seven lockers. One was mine. Another belonged to Slireck, who was killed while impersonating Hitler on a road trip from Berlin to Munich in 1936. I

I had survived the bloody purge of 1934 which wiped out Ernst Roehm, Leader of the Nazi Brownshirts, and many others. In spite of Roehm's moral habits he was well liked, and was a power among the Storm Troopers. His death solidified Hitler opposition into the only real organised defiance that exists in Germany to-day. Himmler Complains I have seen evidences of it. Storm Troopers who took part in that Munich purge have been found on lonely roads, either shot or stabbed, and somewhere •about their bodies there is always crudely carved "R," symbolic of Roehm's vengeance. It is common knowlcdgo among Nazi officials that the organisation which sprang up to avenge Roehm has spread from one end of Germany to the other. Early in 1936, howover, something began to prey upon my mind with far greater force than the fear of death that was always standing in the background in my life. I had been ill for about a week with a cold, and a doctof had been treating me. One day I spoke to him of a pain in my shoulder that had been troubling me for some time. He diagnosed it as arthritis and recommended a treatment of injections, telling, mo that unless it was in time it might become impossible for mo to use my right arm without a great deal of pain. . . . perhaps even prevent its use altogether. It was not until after lie left that the real danger of the pain in my shoulder burst upon me. If my right arm became useless I could not give the Nazi salute. . . . and without the ability to return the salutes of the crowd in the streets as I rode past, my usefulness as a double for Hitler would bo completely ended. ( And I dared not to take the treatments that the doctor had suggested. Himmler and tlie Gestapo would immediately know of them and the reason I was taking them. If they wero successful, there would be no trouble, of course. But if the pain should become worse, if the treatments failed. . . . the thought caused me to shudder. I decided against the treatments. I would conceal the fact that I had arthritis as long as I could. Later in the year Himmler summoned me to the Gestapo headquarters. "You're handling yourself badly," he said. "Your salutes are slow and tlio intervals between them are badly spaced." . „ • _ .. , "I had not noticed," I replied weakly. . "You are wrong, said Himmler curtly. "Check your motion pictures of to-day with those of six months ago." I did so. And I realised the discrepancy between Hitler's salutes and the way I was giving them. Evaded Capture

Back at Himmler's desk I attached a small passport picture I had brought with mo to the proper place in the passport, screwed in place the tiny piece of metal that prevented it being taken off again without tearing tho passport, and then stamped -the picture and a part of the surrounding paper with the Gestapo embossing seal from Himmler's desk. Tho identification particulars could all be added later, but tliero were several, more things that I must do. Once I thought that I heard someone coming and I hurriedly stuffed tho Ijassport into my pocket with shaking lands and dropped into a chair. But it was a false alarm. In a drawer on tho left-hand side of the desk was a stamp that I had seen Himmler use many times when Gestapo agents were going beyond the border. ... a red rubber stamp stating that tho bearer of this passport had been authorised to take a blank number of gold marks out of the country. This I stamped boldly across the page. Then, inconspicuously down in one corner went the imprint _ of another rubber stamp, in tiuy violet letters: GESCHAEFTSEEISE FUER DEN GESTAPO The four magic words that opened all doors, "Travelling on Business for the Secret State Police." After that came visa stamps, left blank so that I could fill them in at my leisure. ' When I left his desk my nerves were almost shattered from the tension through which I had passed, and my face was covered with beads of perspiration, but I had in my pocket a complete passport, officially stamped, visaed and attested, all in blank.

It became more painful, more difficult for me to lift my arm. There would come a day when such an act would be ■ impossible. And that would be the day when the curtain would fall on tho drama of my impersonation of Hitler. . January, 1937, came. Himmler sent for me. He was more cordial than usual, told me I needed a holiday, and added- casually that he had arranged for me to spend a month in Vienna. I had an escort —an escort of death —to Austria. But at tho border I managed to get a few minutes; alone and present my false passport in the name of Karl Braun to both the German and the Austrian frontier officials. . ' j The second night in Vienna I slipped on shoes I had had specially made for ■me. One shoe had a sole three inches thick —the shoe of a cripple. I shaved off the moustache I had worn for six years, crept out of the hotel, and got to the West Bahnhof. Tliero I boarded a train for Switzerland. Even th'ere I was not safe. Gestapo agents, disguised as Swiss gendarmes, tried to arrest mo. I got away from them by telling them I had £IO,OOO (in sterling) to draw, came back with the packet containing the money, and on the pretext I had a bill to pay, left them, with the packet as security. A taxi-cab to Basle station and then by good fortune, I boarded a train which linked up with a liner bound for America. > ■ . Once again my forged passport did the trick. The first night at sea T had a oreat sense of relief. Hans, tho Hitler Double, and Karl Braun, tho lame man vanished for ever.

I knew then the end was inevitable —unless I planned my escape. I began to frequent the headquarters of the Gestapo, and one day, when I. knew Himmler was away on other business, I entered bis office and opened the vault-like room where the head of the Secret Police kept dossiers, passports and identification of those who had been executed, imprisoned or sent to concentration camps. . . . and, more important, blank passports. After searching drawer after drawer I came across the blank passports.

—Condensed from The People, London