Top Nazi (27 page)
Hitler and Himmler viewed Blaskowitz’s memorandum differently and more seriously than the protests against inhuman treatment. On November 27, 1939, he had warned, “The current situation leads towards a decision making it impossible to exploit that country for a defense economy that would be favorable to the troops.” Even the lieutenant general knew that Hitler’s Germany in the long run would be inferior to the enemy regarding population, natural resources, and industrial capacity. Military victories could only change something if, in the conquered countries, they could be used towards a German victory. Even the SS knew that those murdered could no longer produce, but they figured that their terror would force the survivors to be obedient and push them to perform even better.
As the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of German Tradition, Himmler had to officially consider what to do with millions of Poles. The Einsatzgruppen liquidated the intellectual class—priests, professors, politicians, high-ranking officials—as quickly as possible during the initial weeks after taking over the area. Himmler was worried that this nation with such a high birthrate in due course could again produce capable leaders. In order to prevent this, he drafted a program. His notes for the talk to be held with the generals already contained the nucleus of his plan. “Execution of all potential resistance leaders” was written on one of his memos. On another one he said, “We have to remain hard. One million working slaves and how they should be treated.”
Later on, using such keywords, he drafted a detailed instruction manual on ruling Poland entitled: “Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Foreign Peoples in the East.” Stamped R
EICH
T
OP
S
ECRET
, the document was considered a high-level state secret. Wolff was the first to receive and read it. It also contained instructions that it be discussed with the head of the Political Office for Race of the NSDAP, Dr. Walter Gross, a medical doctor who was part of the office of Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, where Reichsleiter Martin Bormann reigned supreme. If he first approved the document, it would quickly land with the highest recommendations on the Führer’s desk. Because Himmler was always fearful before every meeting with Hitler he wanted to secure his agreement in a roundabout bureaucratic way.
What Wolff read—or so he claimed four decades later—“admittedly, made my hair stand on end. It was the most undisguised, brutal form of
tyrannical suppression” whereby those defeated are to be “reduced to a level of pure slavery.” Himmler recommended eradicating the strongly developed Polish national consciousness by vigorously promoting the ethnic character of single nationalities—White Russians, Gorals, Ukrainians—so that in the end the former unified people would disintegrate into many splinter groups. All power would then belong to the Germans. The highest office that a non-German could reach would be mayor. The population should be racially selected; whoever could prove himself to be sufficiently Nordic-Germanic would whenever possible be Germanized.
“For the non-Germanic population,” Wolff read, “there may be no higher schooling than an elementary school with four grades.” Their goal for learning: “Simple arithmetic up to 500 at the most and writing names,” being inculcated with orders “to obey the Germans, be honestly industrious and well behaved.” Talented children who were “racially faultless” were to be taken from their parents to Germany and remain there for an indefinite period of time. “The population will be available as a leaderless working nation, and because of their own lack of culture, they will be under the stringent, strict, and just leadership of the German people to work on their eternal cultural deeds and monuments.”
Wolff says that he told Himmler “with the openness usually existing between us, but naturally politely as well,” that this plan “could hardly be suitable for the twentieth century.” He asked Himmler “to explain how as Chancellor of the Order of Knights he would later account for such crass points of view.” In answer to that, Himmler praised Wolff’s “endearingly humane characteristics,” but also calling him a hopeless “idealist and optimist,” with whom one could “not make policies in a country of defeated enemies.”
Wolff melodramatically said: “Something was broken at that point!” He asked himself whether he still belonged in the SS, where he would want to pass on “the more than 300-year-old tradition of my Hessian Guards Regiment.” On the other hand, he made no plans to leave the SS or abandon the prominent position he occupied in the front row. Inarguably in certain respects he had performed his “good deeds” against the
conventions
of the SS—he later used that word—as things turned against the Nazis. He saved Jews, helped the persecuted, prevented despotism, got around draconian laws, but never renounced the advantages provided by his office and rank.
Typical of his “resistance” was his attempt to avoid the tattoo that Himmler ordered, whereby all members of the SS had their blood type
branded on their left underarm. The reason being that in case a blood transfusion became necessary, the doctors could save themselves the trouble of lengthy laboratory examinations and spend more time saving lives. Wolff could already imagine the disadvantages of this as more SS troops were taken prisoner by the enemy and even more once the Germans left behind were held responsible for the war and its crimes. Wolff did not succeed in talking the Reichsführer out of the idea. He lived under the threat that Himmler would occasionally scrutinize Wolff’s underarms when they engaged in sports together. Then one day when an SS doctor, sent by Himmler himself, arrived to tattoo him, Wolff was able to convince him to inject the dye only into the top layer of skin. Inspector Himmler was satisfied with that—and Wolff as well because once the war was over, the marking did not show. This case—according to Wolff—also “damaged our excellent personal and official relationship of many years.”
In the large files marked “Personal Staff” there is no trace of any cooling off. Himmler still used the diminutive form “Wölffchen” in writing and in conversation. When they traveled to Finland together (where yet another medal came Wolff’s way), the Reichsführer recommended that his adjutant wear long underwear because it was so cold in that country. During the first four years of the war there were, as before, many letters addressed to Himmler with a notation on the left side to pass these on to Wolff for further attention. On the other hand, many letters that Himmler sent out indicated that Wolff had received a copy.
Himmler continued as in the past to pass all delicate cases on to Wolff as well as many personal matters. As, for example, when the 63-year-old Alice Gollwitzer, resident of the county of Rosenheim, widow of the Counsel of the Medical Corps, mother-in-law of a Wehrmacht general, and a friend of Himmler’s, came to the Gestapo’s attention because she referred to the occupation of the Sudetenland as a crime perpetrated by Hitler, and during the invasion of Poland she declared that the war would be over if someone would murder Hitler. As a Swiss national, she would shoot him if the cowardly Germans couldn’t manage to find the courage. With this, she would have signed her own death warrant had she not referred to her friendship of many years with Himmler. The Reichsführer SS confirmed that Frau G. had been an enthusiastic and true supporter of the Führer in the “days of struggle” and had “helped the SS in Augsburg considerably.” He slowed the Gestapo down through Heydrich, saying that the old woman was simply “talking nonsense.” He ordered Wolff to handle the case quietly and to calm down his old acquaintance.
The lady, however, would not let up and started to argue with anyone and everyone wanting to know if the SS was being used against her enemies. Even Wolff’s gentle diplomacy failed in her case. Finally, he could only suggest to Himmler to have the woman placed in a sanitarium, which is what happened.
Contrary to his expectations, Wolff’s program for the treatment of foreign nationals, which had been criticized so much, received great praise from the Führer. Two gauleiters wanted to apply it as well: Albert Forster, responsible for Danzig-West Prussia, and Arthur Greiser, who governed in Posen and Warthegau. Both held honorary SS ranks, and accordingly wore the Gruppenführer uniforms, and both competed as to who would be able to report to the Führer that his Gau was “Pole and free of Jews”.
They drove masses of Jews and Poles over the Gau borders to the east into the General Government of Dr. Hans Frank, who, however, quickly complained against such an influx. Greiser thought that he could decrease the Polish portion of the population in a Gau by using the Einsatzgruppen, namely through murder. Since many Jews and Poles suffered from tuberculosis, he declared those who were ill to be a public danger, and because they were also unsuitable for hard slave labor, he had no scruples about eliminating additional mouths to feed. Reichsleiter Martin Bormann was asked for advice, who in turn referred him to Reichsleiter Philipp Bouhler, head of an ominous “Office of the Führer,” and responsible for dirty tricks. Just then he had some units of experienced mass murderers that were available.
Since the beginning of the war, on Hitler’s orders, these people had gone into nursing homes and institutions throughout the Reich; eventually (according to Nazi doctors) several thousand persons, incurable mentally ill patients were killed with poisoned injections or carbon monoxide. Their actions were being called “euthanasia” or “death facilitators for useless life.” As to whether it really was not worth living, neither the relatives nor the victims were allowed to decide. The mass murders had been organized by an SS Brigadeführer from Munich, Viktor Brack, a doctor’s son. His best executioner was Christian Wirth, an alcoholic police officer who had been promoted to captain, and who was in the habit of loudly ridiculing his victims. The deeds did not remain as secretive as had been planned, and protests, mainly from the church, moved Hitler to stop the euthanasia program temporarily.
Brack took his men to the Warthegau. Because everything was still in a chaotic state of construction, they could begin their macabre activity
immediately. Wolff most definitely knew about this, not only on the basis of copies of Himmler’s correspondence regarding the issue, but also because he was friendly with Viktor Brack at the beginning of the 1930s. Therefore, Wolff probably also found out that the “Death Helpers” in 1942 were still working for the SS in the east and for the Lublin police chief, Odilo Globocnik (“Globus”), his other good old friend. After the mass murders of the ill, Brack’s specialists built the gas chambers in the extermination camps of Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka and operated them just as they did the extermination machinery at the concentration camp at Maidanek. But all of this—Wolff says—he only found out after the war.
In the Gau Danzig-West Prussia, Gauleiter Forster came up with yet another trick besides concentration camps and expulsion to reduce the number of Poles. Whoever did not have an absolutely terrible political reputation and was not a determined Polish nationalist, could easily become a German citizen or at least apply for that honor. Himmler and the local SS leadership had a say in the matter. Himmler suspected that in Forster’s Gau too much “Polish blood” was seeping into the German nation. Sooner or later, he threatened, he would send his race experts to West Prussia and hold horrible inspections among the new citizens.
Forster’s reaction was brutal. He said, “If I looked like Himmler, I wouldn’t talk about race!” That vicious talk was attributed to the Higher SS and Police Führer responsible for Danzig, Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrand. He was quick to call Wolff and report those disparaging remarks. Hildebrand had to rush to the RSHA main office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and repeat his story once more, this time to the Reichsführer. The three of them then decided what should be done against the slanderer.
As reserve officers of the First World War, both Wolff and Hildebrand wanted to avenge the insult immediately. If Hitler hadn’t forbidden armed duel, only a challenge with pistols, in their opinion, would have been justified. So the next closest thing was a complaint to the Party high court. But Himmler calmed them down; a fight with a gauleiter would create opposition among all the others and possibly even with Martin Bormann, Hitler’s confidant and right-hand man. He could not afford, he thought, so many enemies at that time. As a kind of rear-guard battle, he did have several eyewitnesses to the insult questioned, but that was only a threatening gesture. Wolff said, “That he did not defend his honor better was a further disappointment.”
Indeed Himmler was not a favorite at the Führer’s headquarters at that time. According to Hitler, he and his policemen had failed in a very serious case. They could not prove that British intelligence had created and planted a bomb that exploded on November 8, 1939, in one of the columns of the Munich Bürgerbräukeller during the traditional memorial celebrations of Hitler’s 1923 putsch, where he always gave a long speech. But for some incomprehensible reasons the speaker kept it short this time. With his entourage, including Himmler and Wolff, he immediately left for the train station and got into the cars attached especially for him to a regularly scheduled express train.
In Nuremberg the local chief of police had the “Headquarters”—the name used by Hitler and Wolff designating their location during the war—stopped and reported that a number of Party veterans had been buried in the rubble. Eight were found dead. The time bomb exploded ten minutes after Hitler left the room. He was immediately convinced, and remained so, that British intelligence had set a trap.
There was also the good news that SS Oberführer Walter Schellenberg, responsible for foreign intelligence in the SD, was handling two British Secret Service agents, and meeting with them as purported opponents of the Nazis; they were successfully lured to the Dutch border. On Himmler’s orders, Schellenberg kidnapped the two Englishmen in Dutch territory and taken across the border. It was quickly determined, though, that they had nothing to do with the attack. The best specialists in the Gestapo were helpless.