Top Nazi (3 page)

Once again, just as when he joined, Wolff had to hand in a résumé, only this time it had to be somewhat more detailed. But it was not until two months after Hoeflich wrote his evaluation that the recommendation for him to stand for promotion was presented to the corps leadership. Since “nothing can be held against his promotion,” all twenty present signed the document. This took place on March 22, 1932. The entire case then lay on Heinrich Hoeflich’s desk for three months. It wasn’t until the end of June that it was sent on to the Führer of the SS Group South, also located in Munich. Hoeflich’s accompanying letter stated: “Membership Book [i.e., the Party Book] can not be presented, since Wolff has only a membership card.”

That sentence could possibly be the reason for the delay, because anyone who joined the Nazi party in those years received only a red card for identification and a space to paste in his dues markers. Only after one year, and if the newly admitted member was not marked negatively, would the card be traded in for the little red book stamped with the Swastika-Eagle. A further explanation could be that Standarten führer Hoeflich and his staff had more important things to do in those days. From mid-February to mid-April 1932, the rank and file were kept very busy with two election campaigns for president of Germany, in which Hitler ran twice unsuccessfully against Hindenburg. A few days after the 84-year-old field marshal was reelected, Chancellor Brüning obtained his approval for the “Emergency Order for the Security of State Authority,” outlawing the SA and SS anywhere within the boundaries of Germany. The ban was lifted
only on July 14, 1932, when the rightist Center Party politician Franz von Papen replaced Brüning in office. Maybe the influence of a “system government” (as Hitler liked to call it) delayed Wolff’s promotion. Nevertheless, the promotion was dated back to February 18 in his personnel files.

On that February 18, a Thursday, the future SS Sturmführer spent the day in an empty factory building in Theresienwiese in Munich. The building was being used for something quite different than its original purpose; it housed the Reichsführer School of the SA. The chief of staff, Ernst Röhm, was a former Reichswehr captain who had risen, in the meantime, to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Bolivian army, but was still above Heinrich Himmler and in command of the SS. Up to that point, the factory had been used only to train SA leaders in ideology; now the school was available to the SS for the first time. Some one hundred members who could prove worthy of a career had three weeks of SS training pounded into their heads. They slept on cots on the ground floor, were fed on the second floor in a manner reminiscent of a field kitchen, and on the third floor they received propaganda training for the imminent final battle for power in Germany. Prominent members of the party spoke to them almost every day. Xaver Schwarz, the treasurer of the Nazi party, naturally withheld information concerning the debts of the Party as well as the names of its patrons from heavy industry. Retired General von Epp, leader of the military-political office of the Nazi party, was there to make the Party look respectable. Walther Darré, leader of the agrarian-political office of the Nazi party, praised the farmers as a source of power within the nation and expected the salvation of the world to come from people of the Nordic race. A young unknown Sturmbannführer gave a lecture looking for volunteers for the intelligence service that Himmler had ordered him to organize. Some people in attendance whispered that he had been with the SS for less than nine months. That was the first time Reinhard Heydrich and Wolff met; within a few years they were to become the closest confidants of Heinrich Himmler.

Naturally, Himmler also spoke to the course participants about the underground activities of the Freemasons, the supranational powers of the Catholic church, some of the false teachings of the Christian faith, and the craziness of the Jews, as they were depicted in the Old Testament. In 1939, as Himmler was being celebrated by his closest colleagues on the tenth anniversary of his being appointed by Hitler to the head of the SS, Wolff summarized a nostalgic look back in which he, full of sacred fervor for the speeches by Himmler at this training course, remembered: “The
worldly seeds that were then sown in our believing, open hearts later blossomed in a wonderful way and bore fruit.” Enraptured, Wolff described in his account how Himmler paced in front of the course participants and, “with his strangely clear eyes, gazed down into the bottom of our souls. From that moment on, the bond was sealed… casting an overwhelming spell on each one of us.” The experience was “especially unexpected and deepened as our foremost SS leader sat down with us during our evenings of camaraderie and spared no effort in getting to know each of us in his uncommonly natural and winning manner.”

A moving anecdote ended the manuscript. On the last evening together, the wives of the course participants, who lived in Munich, were allowed to take part. As Himmler gave the sign, well after midnight, that the evening was over, the last streetcar from Theresienweg had long since left. Wolff, his wife, and Standartenführer Hoeflich, who was a guest participant, had a seven-kilometer walk in front of them on a cold February night. According to Wolff, none of them would ever have suggested calling a taxi because they “probably would not have scraped five marks together between the three of them.” But Himmler helped out. He had a car available and “would not think of not bringing us home before he drove back to his house in Waldrudering.”

Hitler spoke to the participants many times. As he walked up and down the rows of assembled SS officers, he stopped in front of Wolff. Seeing the Iron Cross First Class he asked, “Where did you serve?” It was a standard question, but it made Wolff happy and proud. Years later, he maintained that Hitler remembered this first meeting. For his part, Wolff remembered that on the last day of their training, the SS were taken to the “Brown House,” to the so-called Senator’s room. There never was a Party Senate meeting held in this room, though, because Hitler never wanted such a committee. It was there that Hitler promised he would take power legally and never try to overthrow the government again. Furthermore, he solemnly announced, “I will never give you an order that goes against your conscience!” With that, Wolff felt that he could assume all the way to the end of the Second World War that no order from the Führer could violate humanity or civil rights.

For eight months, until the end of September 1932, Wolff marched at the head of Sturm 2 of the Second Sturmbann of SS Standarte 1. It was during the undeclared civil war when national socialists and communists, militants of the democratic Reich Banner units and German National Steel Helmet fighters died in the streets, at meetings, in barroom
brawls, and from treacherous “accidents.” “Beat the Fascists wherever you find them,” was the slogan of the leftists. “Beat the Red Front to a pulp!” sang the Brown warriors. Two Reichstag elections, both for the office of German president, and eight state parliament elections in the course of 1932, caused incredible tension, leading to uninterrupted violence. Hitler attacked the “system” relentlessly; he did not want any relaxation of the tension because the fanaticism of the propaganda coming from the extremist parties was demoralizing to his middle-class opponents. He celebrated those in his Party who died as martyrs: “They died so that Germany may live…”

Members of “Assault unit 2-11-1” only removed their jackboots to sleep from time to time. The Party flooded the city and countryside with rallies, and at least one uniformed assault soldier with a flag had to march at every event to show the colors and the armed units. Rumors of plans for a coup were heard everywhere. To be ready if their own people revolted or to be on call in case their opponents attacked, a storm trooper unit was occasionally camped out at Wolff’s house. Almost every Sunday morning and on some weekday evenings, he would climb up into the cab of a truck, with his men singing and waving the flag on the flatbed, and travel around the Bavarian countryside. In the small cities and towns they would link up with other units, often accompanied by drums and pipes, kettledrums and trumpets, beating out the rhythm for propaganda on the march. He exemplified order, discipline, and a strong hand that promised to set the lurching ship back on the right course.

The regular meeting place, called the Sturmlokal, was at the Zum Goldenen Hirschen Inn on Tuerkenstrasse in Munich. The owner of the inn certainly could not get rich on those guests. Many were unemployed or students without any income. Even the Sturmführer could not foot any large tab. The fact that he already had to walk to the celebration at the close of the Führer training class and had less than five marks in his pocket did not exactly speak for a flourishing business.

On the other hand, the Wolff couple owned and lived in a house with seven rooms, many of which served as offices for the “Karl Wolff-von Römheld Advertising Company.” Although the husband was the sole owner of the business, his wife brought nobility to the company shingle. Her father, His Excellency von Römheld, was the head of the cabinet of the last Grand Duke of Hesse and was awarded the hereditary nobility title for his services. He owned shares in a paper factory, among other things, and was therefore more than just wealthy. Wolff’s mother received the pension of a civil servant, which for the director of the district court
was not negligible. Karl, however, never wanted to take it for granted that a university education would be paid for. The family was certainly not poor. His maternal grandmother came from a rich Frankfurt family. The friends and acquaintances of the Wolff family in Darmstadt were well off. The Wolffs were on friendly terms with the industrial family Merck, whose factory already enjoyed a worldwide reputation for pharmaceutical and chemical products.

Influential relatives and acquaintances also helped the retired lieutenant when he had to decide on a profession and was looking for a job after leaving the Reichswehr in 1920. They managed to secure a suitable position for the twenty-year-old in Frankfurt at the bank owned by the von Bethmann brothers, whose family had belonged to the monied aristocracy of the financial metropolis on the Main for two decades. Even during the two-year training period, the young man attached great importance to living a suitable lifestyle in an elegantly furnished two-room apartment in a well-to-do neighborhood, renting, if possible, from a noble landlord. “Because of the change from
Gardeleutnant
, it was a constant battle to avoid moving downward socially,” he remembered many years later. In all of his dealings, therefore, he paid a great deal of attention to reputation; he preferred names coming from the aristocracy, including that of his future wife, Frieda von Römheld. Both liked to dance and danced well; the smart couple even took home prizes at various competitions. They became engaged in July 1922, just as Karl Wolff finished his bank training.

The former Excellency Karl Alexander Konrad Gustav von Römheld had no male heirs. Therefore, he enjoyed having his son-in-law as his successor in his business. Karl Wolff was to gather experience as an industrial manager at Trick-Zellstoff Ltd. in Kehl, the company with which His Excellency had dealings, but less than nine months later he returned to Darmstadt. The couple married in August 1923, just as inflation was racing to impossible heights. At that time rumors were flying around that the republic formed in Weimar four years before would sooner or later be replaced by a better regime. Karl Wolff was drawn to Munich. During those months, the city became the mecca of the nationalists. Most of the right-wing radical revolutionaries were already gathered there, more or less legally, because the authorities closed their eyes even to the most “wanted” subversives. Wolff found work at one of the city branch offices of the Deutsche Bank.

But on November 9, 1923, just three months after Wolff’s wedding, Hitler’s vociferously advertised march to Berlin, where he attempted to copy Mussolini’s march on Rome, ended after just a few kilometers, at the
muzzles of the Bavarian police platoon’s rifles in front of the Hall of Generals in Munich. Whether or not he was directly involved, as one of Hitler’s supporters, Wolff had reason to mourn the failure. Shortly thereafter, however, he encountered bad luck of his own. At the end of the inflationary period, a stable Rentenmark replaced the old mark whose value was reduced to the paper it was printed on. Because of this, the banks were no longer forced to calculate in trillions, the exchange rate of the dollar no longer changed hourly, and the bank’s clients once again became stingy with their pfennigs. By the end of June 1924, Karl Wolff was unemployed.

Three days later he became an employee of the Munich branch of the “Walther von Danckelmann Advertising Company,” with headquarters in Hamburg. He was chosen out of more than four dozen applicants on the basis of his engaging appearance, and because he had offered to work for the same amount of money he received from the unemployment office until he could prove that his efforts were worth more than that. He learned the fine points of the advertising business so quickly that he was given the management of the branch after just a few months; six months later he was able to quit his job. Then, on July 1, 1925, he opened his own company in the same field. In case the clients of Walther von Danckelmann wanted to take the opportunity to change their agent, they wouldn’t even be giving up the title of nobility when they chose the new “Karl Wolff-von Römheld Advertising Company.”

By 1932, the company name was in trouble. Even the elegant lifestyle of the boss was threatened. Therefore, he felt comforted that at least with the Party things were moving in the right direction: the comrades admired his military record; he was allowed to sit on the same bench as the hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg at the Führer training on Theresienwiese; and was again picked for a new task. The Sturmbann II needed an adjutant who knew the rituals of the military and could express himself with confidence.

Possessing these qualifications, Wolff was assigned a position that he would hold very successfully for more than a decade, growing in influence and moving up in rank. Martin Bormann, one of the most influential Nazi leaders in the Reich, who eventually rose to become “Secretary to the Führer,” often condescendingly referred to the aides as “coat carriers.” But Wolff’s ambition would never let him be content with such a secondary position. He naturally knew that in such a job one always had to stand in the shadow of someone higher up, but he was confident, and rightfully so, that he had the ability to work his way out of obscurity without
having to bear full responsibility. Of course, he also knew that the position of adjutant could only be held for any length of time if he could sense the mood of his superior. But he was successful, thanks to his skill in dealing with very different kinds of people, his ability to organize things on his own, and his tactics in the daily battles with his rivals. In this way, the new adjutant of Sturmbann II of the Elite Unit I was able to achieve general approval. Standarteführer Heinrich Hoeflich certified him in a subsequent Personnel Report and Evaluation, stating that Wolff possesses an “amicable, friendly personality.” He also called him a “dedicated National Socialist. Furthermore, he shows an understanding for the needs of the individual SS soldier.”