London, Saturday, July 2, 2005 [Files on Himmler 'murder' exposed as fake] [SOME OF THE FORENSIC TESTS: pdf] Opinion Faking our history AS Ben Fenton reports today, allegations that British intelligence was responsible for the poisoning of Heinrich Himmler in 1945 were based on forged documents, apparently planted in folders in the National Archives [Public Record Office] at Kew. So these claims which have dragged so many reputations through the mud, are complete rubbish. Somebody, somewhere, wanted to plant the idea that Himmler, the head of the SS, had been suing for peace between Britain and Germany since 1943, and that Winston Churchill was therefore terrified of allowing the Americans to interrogate him. The success of the forger's ploy opens up tremendous opportunities for us all to re-write history. We could all award ourselves dukedoms -- or the mineral rights to Yorkshire -- simply by slipping a fake document or two into the National Archives. On a whim, we could file a forged document recording the repeal of the European Communities Act, 1972. Or we could counterfeit the surrender of the American rebels to George III, giving the New World to the United Kingdom in perpetuity. This is, of course, precisely how totalitarian states operate. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four, Winston Smith worked in a department dedicated to rewriting the past. It is deeply disquieting that somebody succeeded in corrupting files detailing such an important part of our history. How Himmler's death was turned into a British murder plot By Ben Fenton IT is hard to imagine a more serious charge against a government than that it would sanction the murder of a senior member of an enemy regime, especially when it was planning the trials of defeated combatants. But that is the main allegation in the final pages of Martin Allen's new book, Himmler's Secret War. Much of the rest contends that Heinrich Himmler, the brutal head of the Nazi killing machine that operated under the lightning strike symbol of the SS, was involved from early in the war in trying to supplant Adolf Hitler and sue for peace with the Allies. The publicity for the book, not surprisingly, concentrates on the sensational material in the last few pages. Here, Mr Allen makes an accusation that might have been dismissed as the sort of unsourced claim that popular history revels in. But the charge that British intelligence -- with the knowledge of Churchill -- had assassinated Himmler was sourced and it was supported. Or so it seemed. Two files were produced in evidence. In one, categorised in the National Archives as FO 800/868, miscellaneous correspondence of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), are two documents. The (left) first purports to be a letter from John Wheeler-Bennett of the Foreign Office who was its liaison officer with the PWE, the shadowy group committed to subverting the Nazis with propaganda, subversive broadcasts and other subliminal tactics. But the letter of May 10, 1945, written as the Nuremberg trials are being prepared, is suggesting something far more active. He tells Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart, the head of the Political Intelligence Department of the Foreign Office and one of the men with operational control of PWE, that Himmler must die. "We cannot allow Himmler to take to the stand in any prospective prosecution, or indeed allow him to be interrogated by the Americans. Steps will therefore have to be taken to eliminate him as soon as he falls into our hands." Prof M R D Foot commented that this does not sound like the language Wheeler-Bennett, whom he knew well, would ever use, especially not to a superior, as Bruce Lockhart was. The need to kill Himmler, according to the Allen thesis, arose from fears that under interrogation he would tell the Americans that Britain had been taking part in peace negotiations without informing Washington. Bruce Lockhart, it is claimed, writes at the bottom: "I agree. I have arranged for Mr Ingrams to go for a fortnight." Mr Ingrams is Leonard Ingrams, the father of Richard Ingrams, former editor of Private Eye. He was a fixer for PWE and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), but until now never identified as a possible assassin. The second document in the file is a flimsy sheet, supposedly the deciphered version of a telegram sent by "Mr Thomas" - presumably Ingrams - to Bruce Lockhart. "As instructed action was taken to silence him [Himmler] permanently … we may conclude that the HH problem is ended." This is also supposedly noted by "R B-L" - Bruce Lockhart's name is not hyphenated - with the instruction to a subordinate "Copy to PM", which neatly incriminates Winston Churchill in the assassination. The last of the documents used to support the allegation is supposed to be a letter from Brendan Bracken, the minister of information, thus ministerial head of PWE, and Churchill's closest ally in the War Cabinet, to the Earl of Selborne, titular head of SOE. It is found in the file HS 8/944, Selborne's personal correspondence and represents, or is supposed to represent, the cover-up. In this strangely modern-sounding document, Bracken says to Selborne: "Further to the good news of the death of Little H [Himmler], I feel it is imperative that we maintain a complete news blackout on the exact circumstances of this most evil man's demise. "I am sure that if it were to become public knowledge that we had had a hand in this man's demise, it would have devastating repercussions for this country's standing." Two other Bracken letters, in the same file, one dated late 1943 and the other early 1944, both of which have been found to be forgeries, were involved in setting the scene for the assassination. They lay out supposed details of the way in which Bracken and Selborne were encouraging Himmler to negotiate peace terms with Britain through intermediaries. In the German case, this was Walter Schellenberg, referred to as "WS", head of the SD, intelligence arm of the SS, and on the British side Sir Victor Mallet, our ambassador to neutral Sweden. The CIA has in the past released documents showing that they had conducted similar negotiations with Himmler through Schellenberg and Felix Kersten, a physiotherapist who exercised a Rasputin-like influence on the SS chief. But evidence of British duplicity has been less easy to pin down. In the world of the forgeries, the British, in particular Bracken and, by extension Churchill, seem sinister, shifty, dishonourable and, by the end of the show, murderous. Perhaps consideration of that might help uncover who it was who wished to portray this view of "history" and who has perpetrated the forgeries. Himmler murder files are fakes Forgeries exposed by a hunch and by science By Ben Fenton AT first sight the three documents seized on by Martin Allen to underpin allegations that the Political Warfare Executive was responsible for the assassination of Himmler looked remarkable. At second sight they looked even more remarkable because their language just did not ring true Surely, civil servants of the 1940s simply did not use language like "eliminate him" as John Wheeler-Bennett was supposed to, nor would even as flamboyant a man as Brendan Bracken have spoken of "devastating repercussions for this country's reputation". These are the words of the late 20th century, not its middle years. Suspicions aroused, the next step was to look more carefully at the documents and compare them with handwriting and signatures known to be genuine. The Daily Telegraph was then able to provide David Thomas, the director of government and archive services at the National Archives, with a sufficient prima facie case of forgery for him to agree to a full forensic examination. Four thick files from Kew were taken to the Buckinghamshire laboratory of Dr Audrey Giles, formerly of Scotland Yard's forensic science laboratory and a scientist of unquestioned reputation. She subjected five questionable documents to minute examination and also looked at several papers known to be genuine, for comparison. First, she examined three letters purporting to come from Brendan Bracken, Churchill's confidant, minister of information and head of the Political Warfare Executive. One of those three, dated May 27, 1945, apparently implicated Bracken in the cover-up of the killing of "Little H" while the other two were earlier letters suggesting that PWE was encouraging Himmler to believe that he could negotiate a peace deal with Britain. All three were claimed to have been sent to the Earl of Selborne, the minister responsible for the SOE, and were found by Mr Allen in the Archives document HS 8/944. All three were supposedly typed on Ministry of Information headed notepaper, with a salutation to "My Dear Top" - Lord Selborne's nickname - and a signature in Bracken's distinctive handwriting. Dr Giles was also given six genuine original letterheaded letters from Bracken. She examined the letterheads at x500 magnification and concluded that the relatively ragged outline of the letters showed that "the printing of the letterhead of each of the [suspect] Bracken letters is composed of dry toner deposit consistent with having been produced on a laser printer". In the genuine letters, though, the heading was produced by a traditional embossing technique that under the microscope produced a smooth edge. She was able to go further, and concluded that the laser printer, not in use until the 1980s, was a model of relatively high definition and therefore of fairly recent manufacture. These were the findings that seemed to carry most weight with the National Archives. Next, Dr Giles studied the salutation and signatures on the suspect Bracken letters using a Video Spectral Comparator which "allows the ink of the signatures and handwritings on the documents to be viewed in infra-red light" and she made another damaging discovery. "My examination of the inks of the writings on the Bracken documents clearly revealed the presence of pencil lines under the writings of the greeting and signature on each of these documents." She studied the ink under a particular infra-red wavelength. "Under these conditions, the ink of the handwriting is almost transparent but the pencil guide lines remain dark. Indeed if the original documents are examined carefully under a microscope, fragments of the pencil lines are visible." After studying genuine Bracken signatures and handwriting that had no such lines, she reported: "There is conclusive evidence that the Bracken letters … are not genuine, but are simulated documents." She also said that there was "conclusive evidence" that the letterheads were of "relatively recent" fabrication. Under international forensic standards, there is no higher level of certainty than "conclusive evidence". Dr Giles found the same level of certainty for the view that the alleged handwriting and initials of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart on the letter purported to have been sent by John Wheeler-Bennett on May 10, 1945, [above left] was not his handwriting. She also found "very strong evidence" - the next highest level of certainty on the international scale and likened to being "almost certain" of a fact - for the proposition that the Wheeler-Bennett letter was written on the same typewriter as the Bracken letters, which she has conclusively found to be forgeries. On the telegram allegedly sent by "Mr Thomas" [above top] to Bruce Lockhart, confirming the murder of Himmler at Luneberg, Dr Giles found that the amount of writing was not enough for a definite conclusion, but she came to the conclusion that there was "strong support" for its being forged as well. It certainly appears very similar to the forged handwriting of Bruce Lockhart. All in all, Dr Giles has told The Daily Telegraph that she is convinced that all the suspect documents provided to her are forgeries. Himmler murder files are fakes 'You expect everything in PRO to be real. It's a disaster' By Ben Fenton "Crikey," Martin Allen said when he was told that the documents on which he based the climax of his book were forgeries. "Bloody hell, how could that have had happened?" The historian, who lives in Gillingham, Dorset, denied absolutely any previous knowledge that the papers he had discovered in the autumn of 2003 were bogus. "It never occurred to me that anything in the PRO wouldn't be real. You go to the PRO and expect to find kosher documents. "It undermines the whole process of National Archives." Mr Allen, whose other two books focused on the flight of Hitler's deputy Rudolph Hess to Scotland in 1941 and the alleged pro-German activities of the Duke of Windsor, offered to help the investigation in any way. He would also be contacting his publisher, Robson Books, to discuss whether or not the book should be withdrawn. "I think I will ring my publisher and say that we have got something of a disaster here. "Something strange has happened indeed. I really don't understand, I really don't. "It's not within my skill to do something like this or in my interest because I'm a bona fide historian with several books behind me. I do my research. I spend a lot of money doing it and I didn't expect this. I am absolutely devastated. "You read an awful lot of documents without finding anything at all and then when suddenly, at the end of the day, at 4 o'clock on a wet winter evening you find something like this. You think: 'Yippee, I've found something. That gives me the lead on to something else'. But if you think the archive was seeded in such a way by the time you get the information - that's devastating, absolutely devastating." The implications for historians in general are profound. "Documents I find in the archives I tend to treat as gospel," Nigel West, the intelligence expert and historian of the SOE, said. The sort of fabrication uncovered in the Himmler affair was unprecedented in Britain, said Prof Richard Aldrich of the University of Nottingham. "It has happened with the UFO lobby in America and we have to face the fact that we are going to have to be more sceptical where the subjects are ones that people obsess about: UFOs, royalty, the Kennedy assassination, or in this case the Nazis. "The second worrying thing is that we know the SOE had plans to bump off Hitler and there are documents showing - although perhaps I ought to say that appear to show - that we were planning the same for Mussolini and his deputy. "So they are something we could almost believe before we see them." [Website note: neither The Daily Telegraph nor their journalist Ben Fenton made any attempt to contact David Irving, Steve Kippax, or other researchers involved in this matter before publishing these articles]. 'Revelations' that cheered the Right SINCE Himmler's Secret War was published, there are people who have been gladdened by the information apparently revealed by Martin Allen. Internet forums that discuss Nazi history have welcomed a new subject. On the website of David Irving, the British historian who was branded by a High Court judge as a Holocaust denier, there was a sense of triumph. On June 3 on the website, which has a banner reading The International Campaign for Real History, Mr Irving welcomes the discovery, which he does not attribute to Mr Allen, but to a British researcher, Steve Kippax. Mr Irving writes: "Real historians have long doubted the conformist version of how Himmler died, namely that he obligingly swallowed poison when he realised the game was up." It adds: "What is truly extraordinary is not so much that the conformists have willingly overlooked the inconsistencies for over 60 years but that those involved in, or aware of, the murder - who included Prime Minister Churchill himself - had kept quiet about it." Further down his article, Mr Irving says: "Brendan Bracken, Churchill's obnoxious red-headed confidant … was also in on the action - a war crime, despite Heinrich Himmler's dark record, as he was a prisoner of war who had surrendered to British custody." Commenting on Bracken's supposed remark, on one of the forged documents, that any link between British officials and the death of Himmler would be very damaging to the nation's reputation, Mr Irving, who is based in America, said: "Quite so. "Britain's secret agents had secretly and criminally liquidated one of the most wanted men in history, for whose proper public trial and punishment the blood of millions of his victims cried out: and for no other visible reason than to conceal that for a few days toward the end of the war, Churchill had negotiated with him on peace terms." Mr Irving does not seem to question the veracity of the documents. There is no suggestion at this point that Mr Irving or any of his associates or correspondents were aware of the forgeries or had any part in them. © Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2005. .