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Geli was the daughter of Hitler’s half-sister Angela Raubal, and nineteen years younger than her uncle Adolf. He had her come from Vienna to Munich before the seizure of power because supposedly he wanted her to be trained as a singer. She had a room in his Munich apartment on Prinzregentplatz and soon became his lover, although it was rumored that she did not take loyalty all that seriously. Apparently niece and uncle had come to a strong disagreement, because on September 18, 1931, she shot herself in her room with one of Hitler’s pistols while he was on his way to Nuremberg. His Party comrades informed him, and he drove back immediately. He was a psychological wreck for days. If one believes Wolff’s account, the glorious victor of the Anschluss wore a very solemn expression at the grave.
During those turbulent days in Vienna, Himmler and Wolff had time to scrutinize several prominent prisoners of the Gestapo. Quite differently from the opponents of lower rank who vanished into the concentration camps where Schuschnigg had imprisoned the Austrian Nazis up to this point, people of rank and status were held at the Metropol, the new Gestapo headquarters. In these elegant rooms the officials lived, worked, and celebrated. For Schuschnigg and his ministers, the attic was good enough, where the waiters and kitchen help were lodged. The rooms, the furniture, and the sanitary fixtures had been neglected for years.
In one of those rooms, furnished primitively with a table, chair, closet, and an iron bed, the visitors met with Louis Freiherr von Rothschild, head of the bank of the same name, in Vienna, and who was connected to the worldwide company of the banker dynasty through family and business ties. The prisoner was under the constant watch of a detective as the Gestapo wanted to avoid an attempted suicide. For a man used to living in a palace since he was a child, this was a very unusual situation, but he
was still better off than the Jews from Vienna’s Josefstadt, who were being chased in the streets by the rampaging Nazi rabble and forced with kicks and blows to scrub the concrete with water and a broom.
When Himmler and Wolff stepped into the attic room, they were amazed: Rothschild was not in any way like the picture they had conjured of a “financier Jew.” He was thin, of medium height, with reddish-blond hair and, according to Wolff, had “radiantly blue eyes.” As he rose from his chair and silently scrutinized his visitors, his expression remained so distantly serene, as if he were receiving two of his employees. The somewhat embarrassed Reichsführer SS foolishly asked, “Do you know who I am?” Rothschild stated his name and rank. Himmler promised that he would gladly fulfill any justifiable wishes, whatever he understood those to be. The prisoner expressed no wishes. When asked about his expectations for the future, he said that it would most likely take a long time before it could be agreed upon what was to be done with him and his property. After Himmler inspected the room for cleanliness in the typical manner of a sergeant, he ordered that the bed, table and chair be exchanged for newer furniture and that the toilet seat and washbasin be replaced.
Baron Rothschild had guessed correctly: he was still a prisoner of the Gestapo a year later. There were no specific accusations against him, but being a very wealthy Jew was enough. According to National Socialist standards, he had to be one of the most powerful members of the “secret Jewish world government.” It was to be his luck that there were still Germans who did not take such obscure fantasies seriously. Among them was one of the banker’s colleagues, Dr. Kurt Rasche, a member of the board of the Dresdner Bank and a member of Himmler’s circle of friends. Frankfurt banker Cornelius Freiherr von Berenberg-Gossler was also part of the group. Wolff had become friendly with his son when he was an apprentice at the bank in Frankfurt in 1920. Both moneymen were asked to help Rothschild by business friends in Paris, and both went to the always-jovial Gruppenführer, Karl Wolff.
Whether or not it was his recommendation alone that brought about Rothschild’s release from prison several weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War during the summer of 1939 with permission to travel to France, must remain open. Wolff, however, was to claim this as his achievement later on. At that time, he was having constant arguments with his close friend Heydrich, the head of the RSHA, because he wanted to blackmail Rothschild for millions in ransom money—in foreign currency of course. He wanted use those funds to set up Jews wishing to emigrate,
because upon entering their new countries, they had to show large amounts of money per person, thereby certifying that they would not quickly become burdens to the local public welfare systems.
Ten years after the annexation of Austria, when only rubble, death, and crime remained of the glitter of the Third Reich, Wolff was in the prison in Nuremberg for the International Military Tribunal. He had Dr. Karl Rasche, who also was being held there, certify that he, Wolff, had been helpful to a world famous Jew. This piece of paper was called a “Persilschein” [“bleach paper”] back then because it could turn a brown shirt lily-white again.
For prisoner Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, Wolff could or would not intercede in the same way in 1938. Indeed on Himmler’s orders, his attic room was also made more comfortable and even freshly painted, but his guards from Austria understood that he be made to feel the hatred that had built up in them because of the time their party had been outlawed and they were persecuted. In the end neither Himmler nor Wolff decided what was to happen to him, since the decision belonged to Hitler alone. The former Austrian chancellor was sent to a German concentration camp, but given special status insofar as he was allotted his own apartment in a blocked off area and his wife was allowed to share his imprisonment. He was also not forced to work. Shortly before the end of the war he, along with some fifty other prisoners who were also politically important to the State, was taken on a bus to South Tyrol so the victorious approaching troops of the Western Allies were unable to free him. Wolff met him there one more time.
For the chief of the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS, however, the so-called annexation was not only made up of historic events. The new situation caused all kinds of complications. Zealous Party comrades in Linz decorated the sign on the front door of the medical officer, Dr. Eduard Bloch, with the sticker “Jew.” They wanted to catch up with their German comrades in the area of anti-Semitism. In this case they were grasping at straws. There were still many people in Linz who remembered that the widow Klara Hitler, the mother of Führer-to-be Adolf, lived in the suburb of Urfahr. She had consulted Dr. Bloch at the beginning of 1907 because of pains in her chest. He diagnosed cancer. Klara Hitler was then operated on, but it was soon discovered that the illness was no longer curable, no matter how hard the doctor tried. The sick woman died on December 23, 1907. The 18-year-old son was convinced that Dr. Bloch
had done everything humanly possible, and felt an obligation to show gratitude ever since.
Many people in Linz were of the opinion that the doctor did not deserve to be put out of work by Hitler’s followers. They remembered that the son of an attorney practicing in Linz, namely Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, had become a big man in the SS and had recently been appointed to head the SS in upper Austria. Brigadeführer Kaltenbrunner ordered two SS men to clean up the doctor’s sign, and forbid any further sticker operations. He sent a report about it to Wolff, who answered in the usual five-week time frame. The Reichsführer SS “was aware of the situation” and “is absolutely in agreement with the way it was handled.”
The dreadfully grotesque aspect of this episode is that several years before Ernst Kaltenbrunner had recruited the son of a German citizen living in Linz named Adolf Eichmann to join the SS. In the meantime, he had become the Jewish consultant for the SD and later for the Gestapo. As Obersturmbannführer he was to transport millions of Jews from many countries in Europe to the extermination camps and, therefore, to the gas chambers. Kaltenbrunner later became Heydrich’s successor, as chief of the RSHA and the supreme commander of the mass murders, which is why the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg sentenced him to death by hanging.
Wolff was still to have many more dealings with Kaltenbrunner. They disliked each other from the beginning, the hulking brilliant lawyer from Linz who had the charm of a Styrian woodcutter, and the officer of the guards who stood out effortlessly in any company. For a long time, Wolff kept up the appearance of good-willed but condescending camaraderie with Kaltenbrunner. Soon after the Anschluss he complained to Himmler that he could not manage on his salary as a full-time SS Führer and leader of upper Austria, after having moved to the expensive city of Vienna. Of course he required some decorum and the Reichsführer promised him financial aid. Wolff received instructions to have contributions from the donations of the circle of friends transferred to Kaltenbrunner. Insufficiently informed, apparently, as to the amount of the donation, Wolff asked Kaltenbrunner in a letter how much had been promised to him. If this was intended to be a test of Kaltenbrunner’s honesty, he passed. His information matched Himmler’s.
For some time the correspondence between Wolff, the chief of the personal staff, and the Viennese SS leader was characterized by a difference in rank and years of service. Once Kaltenbrunner decided to do the
man in Berlin a good turn. In his capacity as Higher SS and Police Chief, he suggested to the gauleiter of Lower Bavaria, Dr. Jury, that in the future he should send the profits from the gambling casinos in Baden near Vienna sent to the SS club “Lebensborn,” which Wolff was managing. Only then, he threatened, would the concessions of the casino be renewed. But Jury wanted to channel the profits into the treasury controlled by the Gau leadership. With the help of Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, who based himself on the Führer’s decision, whereby Gau leaders could initiate projects through their own income sources, independently of the ministries in Berlin. Wolff therefore replied to Kaltenbrunner that it was definitely not in the Reichsführer’s best interest to “place Dr. Jury under pressure and be in such a predicament” of having to deliver the money. In addition, the Gauleiter “needed certain amounts of money to finance the spa areas within his Gau.” Kaltenbrunner was instructed to negotiate an agreement, which “took equally into account the wishes of the SS and the Gau leadership.”
An apology came promptly from Vienna, of course. A misunderstanding created by one of the subordinates had complicated the case, and from now on they would “naturally proceed in a friendly and tactful” manner. During the new negotiations it was supposedly agreed that Jury would deliver “the largest possible recurring amounts.” Unfortunately, however, “the casino business has momentarily fallen off.” The reason is made clear by the date on the letter: September 30, 1939—the war in Europe had been going on for one month.
At this time, Wolff’s letters were already hand stamped “temporary Führer Headquarters.” For the next three years, that was to be his permanent residence—according to Hitler’s wishes, as Wolff liked to emphasize. This assignment strengthened his self-confidence even more. While he ended his letters to Kaltenbrunner with a simple signature under the obligatory “Heil Hitler,” the attorney did not fail to place a “respectfully yours” above his signature. In the autumn at the beginning of the war he zealously sent the Wolff family at Tegern Lake large quantities of fruit, which by then had become very rare. He no longer felt he had to do this once he became chief of the RSHA. Then, as the Third Reich came to an end, and its dignitaries were obeying the dictum “every man for himself,” they became rivals. Kaltenbrunner attempted very quickly to dispatch Wolff to the gallows for being guilty of high treason against his country.
Kristallnacht: The Night of Broken Glass
T
he first months following the Anschluss of Austria were not very dramatic, but the careerist functionaries of the SS and SA provided more than enough excitement. Two weeks had barely gone by when Himmler ordered an armed SS reserve unit to be set up in Austria. The assignment was given to the inspector of the SS reserve units, Brigadeführer Paul Hausser, who was responsible for setting up, organizing, and training those units.
Hausser did not, however, have the SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler under his control. At the beginning, in 1933, the SS was trained by the old Reichswehr Infantry Regiment 9 and received their pay from the budget of the Prussian State Police. They swore allegiance only to Adolf Hitler, and were led by the old Nazi fighter Sepp Dietrich, a highly decorated sergeant and tank driver in the First World War, who changed his life when he took part in the Nazi Munich beer hall brawls, and, of course, in the attempted putsch of 1923. Hausser retired from the Reichswehr as a lieutenant general because of his age, but he felt too vigorous to just live out
a quiet life, and was recruited into Himmler’s reserve units, the precursor of the Waffen SS. In Hausser’s eyes Sepp Dietrich, belting out his strong Bavarian vocabulary and cursing constantly, was a wild farm boy, able at best to command a company. The commander of the Leibstandarte had little regard for the former general staff officer. Up to that point, the two had simply gone their own ways, but when Hitler ordered the newly organized (Austrian) reserve unit regiment to draw part of its core manpower from the Leibstandarte, the argument became unavoidable. In a written report to Himmler, Hausser complained that Dietrich was refusing to give him the men as well as the weapons. Hausser threatened to resign his rank and commission because this case was “not an exception. These are orders coming from the Reichsführer SS and the inspection shows that the training and change were not carried out.”
Himmler knew from his own experience about those kinds of difficulties with Sepp Dietrich. It had already happened that the commander of the Leibstandarte managed to get an order from the Reichsführer reversed by Hitler. Very wisely, he passed the arbitration of the fight to Chief of the Personal Staff Karl Wolff. On that same day, with a rush much too hectic for his usual way of working, Wolff met with Dietrich, who was also stationed in Berlin, and later placed a note in his file summing up the conversation. After that, everything went a bit differently from what Hausser claimed. Dietrich did not refuse anything at all; he provided everything that was asked of him, but added a few conditions that Hausser promptly disregarded. In this case, Dietrich didn’t want to lose the 193 Austrians in his Leibstandarte because they had just been picked by his representatives and sent on to Berlin, and “because of their height of over six feet should not be placed in the general SS Reserves, but rather in the Leibstandarte.”