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The key man of the delegation was His Excellency Arturo Bocchini, chief of the Italian police, a high-ranking fascist leader. But as much as he praised the culture of ancient Rome, he indulged himself in the luxuries of life developed during the time of the Caesars. These obese, short-legged Sybarites and cynics, of all people, were the ones the purist Himmler was seeking to be friendly with, and in his footsteps so did Standartenführer and Chief Adjutant Wolff. The visit lasted five days. It ended with a grand evening meal in Berlin’s finest hotel. The Reichsführer SS made sure nothing was left out; if his guest still wanted to amuse himself in the late evening after the end of the program, the German Reich then also paid for his intimate entertainment.
Six months later Himmler traveled to Rome with a vast entourage to repay Bocchini’s visit. On the occasion of the Day of the Italian Police,
they swore to fight communism together. Wolff interpreted this later as the beginning of the alliance, the Pact of Steel and the anti-Comintern Pact. This conference was actually a celebratory business excursion, and whoever took part received medals as decorations from the Italians, from the Reichsführer down to the lowliest coat carrier. For Himmler, the Great Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy was an appropriate decoration to display at his home. Karl Wolff, Reinhard Heydrich, and Kurt Daluege, chief of the Reich Ordnungspolizei, were served with a lower version of the same medal, earning the title of “Grand Ufficiale.”
An expert in the art of living, Bocchini would have passed for a miserable host had he not offered his colleague from the north the very best Italy could give, both on this visit and those that were to follow. Himmler only barely took advantage of this largesse. He only enjoyed eating and drinking moderately because his painfully nervous stomach prevented him, and by midnight at the latest, when the men became lively and, as tradition had it, the wives were sent home, he usually went to bed alone. According to tradition, the Italians took their guests to a plush bordello, for their own entertainment as well, because in such cases, the entire establishment was paid out of tax revenues. Wolff and Heydrich always avoided such free enjoyment. They knew the secret of Berlin’s Salon “Kitty,” which the chief of the RSHA had set up for visiting dignitaries, and equipped each room with microphones.
At those meetings, the black uniforms from the north always met the black shirts from the south (the fascist uniforms were also entirely black, including the shirts) in the most solemn ceremonies that were the staple of totalitarian systems. When Hitler met with Mussolini for the first time in 1934 in Venice, mistakes made by the protocol section made him feel like a country bumpkin trying to look important in front of his experienced model. In September 1937, as the Duce’s return visit to Berlin was being prepared, things had changed considerably for the Führer and Reich Chancellor of the German people. He could boast several successes: the Saar had returned to the Reich in 1935 after a people’s plebiscite organized by the League of Nations. To strengthen the Reichswehr, which had been limited by the Treaty of Versailles, compulsory military service was reinstituted in March 1935. The air force, forbidden up to that point, was now being rapidly built up. The navy received new ships, legitimized by a naval agreement with England. Germany and Italy had protested together against a Franco-Soviet alliance. Since the summer of 1936, German and Italian volunteers were fighting in the Spanish Civil War on the nationalist side led
by General Francisco Franco against the Republicans. The fascist military did not exactly cover itself with glory during that war.
Hitler was now somebody! He was eager to change the impression he made in Venice. Whatever was necessary for pomp and circumstance between September 25 and 29, 1937, was produced more to dazzle the guest than to honor him. Gruppenführer Wolff, who in the meantime had been named General of the SS Provisional Troops (a preliminary stage of what was to become the Waffen SS), was assigned as the Duce’s honorary escort. Why was he was chosen for that particular assignment? He hardly spoke a word of Italian, but he was regarded as one of the most representative figures in the Nazi leadership, and rightly so. Tall, blond, blue-eyed, strong with his military officer’s bearing, he embodied the ideal German hero; he had an aura of sophistication and know-how with his officer’s club manners, and on official visits to Italy he had always quickly made friends with the local dignitaries.
Wherever the illustrious guest went, from the greeting at the border train station at Kiefersfelden on September 25 to the breathtaking festivities from September 27 to 29, Wolff was always only a few steps behind Mussolini when he was not at his side. Understandably he felt that he was at the center of history. Historians, however, measure the significance of the meeting between the Duce and Hitler more as a decorative exercise than a significant political event. It was a play, staged by the propagandists of politics, meant to persuade the world and themselves of the friendship between two countries and their combined power.
Mussolini’s state visit was the occasion that filled SS General Wolff with great pride, earning him lavish praise and respect from both dictators, and opening the door to a rapidly rising career. It occurred on the afternoon of September 25, 1937. During the course of the morning, the Duce was greeted at the Munich train station by a group of a hundred people accompanying his host. After both dictators reviewed several lines of men standing at attention with frozen expressions, and adjourned to Hitler’s private apartment where he was appointed by his guest as an Honorary Corporal in the Fascist Military—a rank the Führer already found annoying, since the Germans placed it between private and noncommissioned officer.
Wolff enjoyed being within arm’s reach of the Duce at that ceremony as well as at the midday luncheon in the newly constructed Führer building. However, he was not allowed on the balcony from which Hitler and Mussolini observed a parade of party units. This was, it later turned out,
his luck and that of the other participants. Line after line paraded in their Prussian goosestep on the concrete underneath the balcony. The high-stepping legs impressed the guest so much that he decided to introduce something similar in the Italian army. Wolff was very pleased that the highpoint of the show would be the march of the “Leibstandarte of Adolf Hitler.”
The brass band led the marching units with “The Badenweiler March, Tempo 114 Steps.” The drum major was marching out in front. With his baton, he signaled to turn so that the musicians would clear the street for the following companies. But his cutting arm movement was too wide, and because the staff lay only loosely in his right hand, it flew straight up in the air, before it turned over high above and finally landed, smashing back down on the concrete. The first men of the first company, the tall black uniformed high-steppers, would reach that spot in a broad marching line in a few seconds. Inevitably, the staff would make many party soldiers fall. They would end up under the boots of the soldiers following close behind, causing many more of their comrades to stumble. Without a doubt, there would be injuries and maybe even deaths, but even worse for the hosts would be the embarrassment that the elite troops, of all people, had failed.
Wolff reported that everyone escorting the two leaders was frozen on the spot with fear. He was the only one to not lose his nerve; he ran onto the road without a moment’s hesitation, disregarding all soldierly regulations and rules of protocol, and snatched the drum major’s staff out of the way of the relentless beat of the approaching boots just in time. Wolff: “Although, as lieutenant general (SS Gruppenführer), wearing a steel helmet and dagger, I was not really intended to pick up the staff.” The spectators breathed a sigh of relief, the prominent guests as well as the crowded citizens of Munich who were being cordoned back behind the uniformed guards. Wolff claims that his deed was rewarded with applause. When the parade ended, Hitler and Mussolini thanked him for his quick-witted and courageous act with a handshake.
According to Wolff, Hitler said, “Whenever the Reich happens to be in danger, may an SS man step in.”
As brave as the deed was, it would not go down in history. It was never mentioned in any newspaper articles nor shown on any news program; mistakes are not allowed at the highest level. But even though kept quiet it was not forgotten. From now on, Wolff could count on a great deal of goodwill. He had (as the former bank employee would say) a rather high personal credit limit, and not only with the two main personalities of the
show. Wolff: “Up to that point, I was a second-class man, but by the grace of the Führer, I was moving higher up.” Three months later, the Italian ambassador in Berlin placed the medal of the “Holy Mauritius and Lazarus” around his neck, which also gave him the privilege of being addressed as “Commendatore.” He found it a bit unfair that Hitler did not also hang some colorful enamel jewelry around his neck. Somewhat indignantly, he remembered that in Hapsburg Austria there had been a Maria Theresa medal awarded for particularly courageous deeds that were performed voluntarily and spontaneously, as long as they did not contravene an order or any custom. Such a reward did not exist with Hitler, but from now on, Wolff was almost always on hand when the supreme Fascist and the highest ranking National Socialists would meet.
It is difficult to ascertain what advantages the Germans got out of the friendship extended between the SS and the fascists. The always-congenial Wolff, however, did meet a number of Italian diplomats with whom he would have to deal more closely many years later. Himmler’s friendship with the obese police chief, Bocchini, remained politically one-sided, but did bring certain personal privileges for the otherwise very particular Reichsführer SS. Every year, towards the end of the year, an invitation would come for him and his wife to take a trip south, under the guise of a business trip, allowing it to be stretched into a longer more relaxing vacation. On one of these trips, he even visited the North African coast of Libya as a guest of Italian air marshal Balbo, who was the governor.
A number of further attempts by Himmler and Wolff to reap additional foreign laurels was less successful. Instead of the expected approval from the Reich Chancellor, there were complaints from the foreign office, which did not like others hunting in its territory. Joachim von Ribbentrop, who jealously protected his area of responsibility, protested loudly. The disputes with the Reich foreign minister went back to the time he was still ambassador to London, and did not actually end until the final days of World War II, when for the government in Berlin “foreign” meant beyond the Oder River in the east and the Elbe River in the west.
The idea of creating a link to England was presented to Himmler at the beginning of 1935 by the U.S. citizen W A. de Sager, a native Swiss who was living in Great Britain. In conversations with Himmler and Wolff, he discussed how he could use his connections in the English upper class to stop the atrocity propaganda in the Anglo-Saxon press, meaning any reports on the concentration camps, the harassment of Jews, the persecution of the critics of the regime—in other words, those who were undermining
the German government’s reputation. He promised to create a friendlier atmosphere towards Hitler’s regime at the U.S. embassy in Berlin. He further planned to write a book in English that would contribute greatly to rehabilitate Germany.
Wolff and Heydrich sent de Sager to see Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke, the commander of the SS Death’s Head units that guarded the concentration camps. He was allowed to visit the camp at Dachau, which was being specifically denounced abroad. An apartment in the distinguished Bendlerstrasse in Berlin was made available to him so that he could invite foreign press correspondents and traveling Anglo-Americans, as well as the relatives of foreign ambassadors to social occasions. Every now and then Wolff found his way there. On May 8, 1935, de Sager arranged a meeting in this apartment between Himmler and United States diplomat, Finsterwalde.
If de Sager did not exaggerate matters for Himmler’s benefit, then the American with the German name was open to Hitler’s ideas and the methods of the SS. The U.S. ambassador, William D. Dodd, was said to be biased, however, because his daughter was the lover of Dr. Rudolf Diels, a high-level official in the state of Prussia whom Göring had placed to head the secret state police in Berlin during the takeover of power. He was then apparently pushed out of office by Himmler and, therefore, did not speak favorably of the SS. However, the ambassador, influenced by an opponent of the regime, was removed one year later, as reported by de Sager, and with the help of Mr. Finsterwalde his successor would therefore be better informed right from the start of his assignment.
By mid-July 1935, Himmler and Wolff were informed in writing by their propagandist de Sager as to which prominent Englishmen he had convinced of the respectability of the SS and the Reichsführer during his eight day visit to London. De Sager gave himself credit that due to his lecture concerning the concentration camps and his observations in Dachau, he was able to prevent a huge debate in the House of Commons, which would inevitably have led the English government to issue a protest to the German government. In this speech, de Sager placed the responsibility for torture and murders exclusively on ousted Gestapo Chief Diels. Himmler and Wolff did not correct that error, although they knew that Diels actually shut down a number of the illegal camps that were tolerated by the Party and run individually by single SA or SS units. These also happened to be the worst torture camps.
De Sager took some Englishmen with him back to Germany. Two of these were former officers representing the British Legion, an association of war veterans, and were even smuggled in for a visit to Dachau. They provided a written statement that “after intensive inspections” they felt, “contrary to news of atrocities widely spread around the world, that it was very wise to keep such racially and politically inferior elements in camps.” They were invited to a dinner with Himmler and Wolff. In the brotherly atmosphere of a late hour, they bestowed upon Himmler (who never served at the front) honorary membership in the British front fighter’s association, and invited him to make a return visit to London.