Top Nazi (15 page)

This was why he and Himmler had words—Wolff told the story rather often. First energetically and then furiously, the Reichsführer ordered him to keep his position, and since this didn’t help, Himmler began pleading. It was then that Himmler promised him that he would receive an honorable discharge within a reasonable time, but secretly had him placed on the list of candidates for the upcoming Reich elections. This way, supposedly without having anything to do with it, he was elected by the Darmstadt constituency to Parliament on March 29, 1936. Propelled into the limelight with publicity of this kind, he had to forego stepping down.

But this explanation does not hold. Parliament had become meaningless because Hitler had been ruling through the Enabling Act since 1933. The only interesting thing at each election was to see how close the results had been pushed to a ninety-nine percent approval rate of Hitler’s policies. For the representatives there was nothing left to do in the “talking shop”—as the Nazis had taken to calling the Reichstag at the time; their few sittings as well as their votes were preprogrammed. Because of this, an election was forgotten a few days after it was held in the precincts. The representatives, forgotten as well, were mocked by the people as an expensive men’s choir. After every session (they met at the most a couple of times a year), the gentlemen sang national anthems and the Horst-Wessel. Each singer received 7,200 marks as a yearly salary, namely parliamentary allowances, and free traveling on all the trains of the Reichsbahn. All of this surely helped Wolff deal with the fact that he must remain in the SS. Besides that, Himmler assured him that they would now fight more strongly against every type of corruption together, and naturally against Koch and Göring as well.

Instead of a fight, however, it became an alliance. It was directed at the leading circles of the army. They balked at Himmler’s plans for the Waffen SS. The leadership of the Waffen SS had accepted the existence of the SS Leibstandarte. The SS Death’s Head unit was not recognized by the Wehrmacht leadership because they guarded concentration camps and the soldiers would have nothing to do with them. The military resisted every attempt to set up more armed SS units with a statement by the Führer, according to which the Wehrmacht should be the only armed unit of the nation.

Göring already stood above such basic disputes. Since May 1935 there was an official air force and he was its chief. The army still resisted the Luftwaffe setting up its own anti-aircraft defense and intelligence unit. For that reason, the “fat one”—as the people called Göring because of his growing size—lay in wait for an opportunity to reduce the influence of the generals. This occurred as the minister of the Reichswehr, Werner von Blomberg, who was promoted by Hitler to General of the Army for his accomplishments in establishing the Wehrmacht, married at the age of 60. After many years as a widower, he wed Erna Gruhn, a Berlin woman who was 34 years younger. Within a few days, a scandal broke out that took on the appearance of a state crisis. The conclusion could be anticipated. Neither Göring nor Himmler, who both wanted to use the situation, profited significantly. Only Hitler succeeded in strengthening his absolute dictatorship.

Since Wolff, at headquarters, was in charge of supervising the secret state police on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, he felt he was at the center of events. He had held the rank of SS Gruppenführer for a year and was, besides, the first SS Führer to be named lieutenant general of the SS Reserve troops. These troops, with Blomberg’s agreement, were allowed to recruit up to 25,000 men alongside the police and the army. Wolff was, however, not allowed to wear the heavy-braided rank insignia of general that was a source of concern to him. He described the events of those days, as he saw them, in a manuscript that he offered to book and newspaper publishers on many occasions.

Wolff reported that the relationship between the Reich minister of war and the young stenographer from Berlin began in a Thüringen hotel to which Blomberg had retired for a short holiday. He wanted to remain unknown and free of worries, but the hotel manager had the impression that his prominent guest felt lonely when he sat alone at his table during meals. And so Blomberg was asked if perhaps a young lady from the group of guests would be welcome. Erna Gruhn pleased the General of the Army so well that the father of three daughters and two sons did not break off the relationship even after his return to Berlin, and soon after he proposed marriage to his companion. Before that, he had requested that Göring, by chance, ask Hitler if the supreme leader had any objections if a noble minister of war were to marry a simple girl. The Führer, as Wolff reported, was very pleased that the people could be shown in such a spectacular manner how far the new open-mindedness of a national community without class barriers had already stretched. The wedding on January 12, 1938, a Friday, took place within a small circle, but because Hitler and Göring came as best men and the propaganda effect was obvious—photos chosen by Hitler himself appeared in all the newspapers. The couple was already on a honeymoon by that time.

As an officer of the Berlin vice squad made his rounds the next day, some “professional” ladies waiting for customers in a pub called his attention to a newspaper article and exclaimed, “That’s our
good friend
, Erna!” The officer reported this immediately to his superior, who, after thinking about it, had someone leaf through the files. It came to light that Erna Gruhn had ended up in her mother’s massage salon (a high-class brothel), and was temporarily suspected of prostitution, but had never been convicted.

For the officer, the case became so hot that he was afraid he might get blamed for it. He carried his files to the chief of police, Count Helldorf, himself. He also hesitated with his decision; he had the relevant ladies
thoroughly interrogated, and since the facts in the case remained unchanged, he took the files to General Wilhelm Keitel, chief of the Wehrmacht office in the war ministry on Bendler Strasse. Keitel was a friend of Blomberg. Helldorf asked him if the photo that lay on the vice squad table indeed was a picture of Frau von Blomberg. The answer being positive, he asked for advice as to how the embarrassing situation should be dealt with. This took place on January 23. Wolff objected strongly because the count had not taken the files immediately to the highest police authority—Heydrich or Himmler. But this didn’t happen because Helldorf, as SA Gruppenführer, was still angry at the SS leadership about the Röhm massacre. It is probable that Helldorf would have liked to pass the buck of making a decision to the Wehrmacht. This would not work out because even Keitel was not quite sure who the woman in the photo actually was, and therefore suggested asking Göring, who as a witness at the wedding ceremony had seen her up close.

It would be interesting to find out from an eyewitness how Göring reacted to the news—whether or not he had already known about the matter for quite some time, as a few people suspected. It is easy to imagine, however, what went through his mind as he realized that Blomberg had been the Reich’s longest serving war minister. Who would be his successor? The list of candidates was very short. The next candidate was the army chief, and in practical terms the supreme commander of the army, General Werner Baron von Fritsch, a dour personality, a strict Prussian monarchist, and one of the most talented soldiers of the Reich. Next on the list within the Wehrmacht going by rank was General Hermann Göring himself, who had risen from the rank of retired captain to general without a hitch, thanks to Hitler’s approval. For him, it was a great temptation to trip up the front-runner, and he could claim that his Party comrades viewed Fritsch as a reactionary.

Göring, forever the intelligent and experienced intriguer, quickly hatched a plan. Along with Fritsch and Blomberg, he had been invited by Hitler to the Reich Chancellery less than three months before, on November 5, 1937. The Führer had announced his intention to wipe Czechoslovakia and Austria from the map in a short time. Fritsch contradicted him, warning this would mean war, probably on two fronts, a war Germany was bound to lose. Blomberg and Reich foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath, who were also present, voiced the same concerns. Since then, there were rumors circulating about Fritsch being sick, and the demands of his office having become too heavy for him. Indeed, the general had
been in Egypt for over a month to cure a stubborn bout of bronchitis. There is nothing to substantiate the claim that the Gestapo was watching him, or that he had sexual relations with local men.

The reason for any such surveillance reached back some four years. In November 1933, a small-time 29-year-old gangster named Otto Schmidt observed an elegantly dressed man (wearing a coat with a fur collar, a white scarf, dark hat and monocle) in the Berlin Wannsee station in conversation with a male prostitute, Martin Weingärtner, who was waiting for customers. The two disappeared into a dark corner of the train station, and Schmidt observed them engaging in homosexual practices. After the two had separated, Schmidt stopped the elegant gentleman near the Potsdammer Platz, pretending to be a detective. His victim produced an officer’s identification from the Reichswehr, asked for discretion, and was relieved of 2,000 marks in hush-money in the course of the next few weeks.

Two years later, Schmidt ended up in the clutches of the Berlin criminal investigations department (the Kripo), under suspicion of other blackmailing activities. After many denials, he felt he was going to be set free without criminal charges because he involved well-known men in the examination, thereby threatening a scandal. He admitted that he had also extorted money from Reich minister of economics Walter Funk, Potsdam chief of police Count von Wedel, tennis champion Gottfried von Cramm, and from a high ranking military officer by the name of Fritsch.

The examining officer at Kripo no longer felt he could handle a case of such proportions. He transferred Schmidt, along with the relevant files, to the “Reich’s Center to Fight Homosexuality,” a branch of the Gestapo. The head of that unit was Criminal Inspector Josef Meisinger. When the Nazis took over Heydrich transferred him to the Munich political police after years of spying on the NSDAP, turning him into a zealot by not firing him or even packing him off to a concentration camp. With Schmidt, Meisinger had at last found his great case. He showed Schmidt a photo of the general, with his name in the caption, and quickly secured the desired result, “That’s him!” He had read the same name on the officer’s identification card, “von Fritsch.” The incident went all the way up to Hitler, but remained unread; Himmler therefore had to take the “garbage” back. The army chief at that time was in the process of transforming the Reichswehr into the Wehrmacht, making many changes. Hitler was not about to have him disturbed by something so insignificant.

But now in January 1938, Fritsch stood in the way of Hitler’s plans. Himmler and Göring knew this. They both had to prevent him from
becoming minister of war instead of the more flexible Blomberg. Wolff did not know which of the two came up with the idea to extract the Schmidt file from the archives. On Hitler’s orders, it had been for the most part destroyed, at least the parts having to do with Fritsch. But Meisinger was able to complete the file incredibly quickly. This all happened with such dispatch that just a few days after the Blomberg wedding, a Gestapo official was searching for the house on Ferdinand Strasse in Berlin in which Schmidt had collected his money from the alleged General Fritsch. Such prompt reaction could even support the suspicions, expressed here and there, that the SS top brass and Göring already knew all about Erna Gruhn’s life before the marriage and were only waiting for the minister of war to destroy himself and leave his post.

On January 24, 1938, Hitler returned from the Berghof near Berchtesgaden to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. The following day Göring presented him with the Blomberg and Fritsch files. It is reported that in receiving them, the dictator had a nervous breakdown, but no one can swear to the fact that the great actor was giving a performance worthy of the stage. Blomberg was called back to Berlin immediately. Fritsch had already completed his vacation in Egypt. On January 26, Hitler received the minister of war and made it clear to him that he valued him as much now as before, but that the generals in the High Command were demanding his discharge. He could naturally have the marriage annulled because he had been deceived. Blomberg refused this solution; he loved his wife and especially in the face of such bad luck, would not leave her.

Hitler asked him whom he would recommend as successor. Blomberg named General von Fritsch. Hitler replied: “No, he’s leaving, too!” The next name was Göring. “It won’t be him!” Hitler decided. Then Blomberg recommended that the Führer and chancellor take over the ministry of war in addition to his other duties; this would absolutely be the best solution. The suggestion was more than convenient to the Führer who could then refer to Blomberg’s advice when addressing the generals.

On the same evening Fritsch came to the Reich Chancellery. Hitler had forbidden the accusation from being revealed to the general before that moment. He had prepared a theatrical coup, which was meant to lead to a spontaneous confession. But his Wehrmacht adjutant, Colonel Friedrich Hossbach, had not kept to this scenario and had given Fritsch a rough idea as to the nature of the accusation. As the general entered, only Hitler and Göring were present in the room. The chancellor reproached
him, citing the results of a detailed investigation regarding an offense against paragraph 175 of the military code. Fritsch indignantly denied the accusation. From the adjacent room, Schmidt was led in and Hitler asked if he knew this gentleman, pointing to the general.

Schmidt: “Absolutely. That’s Herr von Fritsch.”

It made no difference that the accused solemnly protested that he had never seen Schmidt. Hitler was determined to follow his plan to demote any of the men who did not support his course of aggression and expansion.

There followed a short but bitter argument among the Wehrmacht, the Gestapo and the ministry of justice as to who would handle and manage the case going forward. Hitler would have preferred special court proceedings, but later agreed that only a military court had jurisdiction. He demanded, however, that the Gestapo conduct the investigation. Fritsch was repeatedly interrogated by the Gestapo and confronted with the blackmailer one more time. He naturally stuck to his statement, because he knew what would happen if he capitulated. The Gestapo questioned many boys who had served under Fritsch during his career as an officer. They arrested the world famous tennis champion Gottfried von Cramm as he returned home from America, and also had him testify.