Top Nazi (4 page)
With this evaluation, Wolff was already being proposed for his next promotion: to Hauptsturmführer. The announcement was made on January 30, 1933, a date in the calendar chosen for the higher ranks of the SS to be showered with stars and silver oak leaves every year from that point on. It was the day of the Nazi ascent to power.
As Hitler moved into the German Chancellery in Berlin and a flood of brown uniforms waltzed through the Wilhelmstrasse on that January 30, 1933, there was nothing triumphant going on in Munich. In rather unorganized fashion, groups gathered to cheer and celebrate in the streets and beer halls. There were occasional brawls as the Communists loudly protested those events. In Bavaria, the Catholic clerical party of Prime Minister Dr. Heinrich Held was still holding on, and for the immediate future would continue to remain in power unchallenged. His cabinet in the state parliament, voted in nine months before, still had a sufficient majority.
One success usually leads to others, and even in Bavaria people of all party denominations began to drift to the National Socialists. However, as the state government announced that it would not allow itself to be drawn away from its democratic course by the new government, it could be sure that its people concerned with their Bavarian independence would, for the most part, stand behind it. Dr. Held announced that the state government resist being driven out of its legitimate offices, even by a Reichskomissar dispatched from Berlin. Such a messenger from Prussia would be arrested upon stepping over the state border. According to rumors, the government of the Free State of Bavaria was secretly negotiating with the clerical and authoritarian government of Austrian chancellor Dr. Engelbert Dollfuss about breaking away from Berlin and joining up with Vienna. That news placed the SS and the SA in Bavaria on the
alert. Wolff’s house once again filled up with a permanent commando of Party men, ready to march.
A renewed war of 1866 between northern and southern Germans did not take place, however. A new parliamentary election on March 5, 1933, the third within eight months, gave the National Socialists, together with the German Nationalists, the absolute majority in the Reichstag. That election also showed how much the democratic parties south of the Main had disintegrated. Those governing in Bavaria felt they were in no position to stop these developments, and were actually just waiting to be legally overthrown. A commissioner did not even need to cross the border to take over; he had already been residing in Munich for quite some time and was popular locally for over a decade as the savior who rescued the state from the tyranny of the leftist intellectuals in 1919. He was General Franz Ritter von Epp, not a Prussian, but rather a fellow Bavarian, and one ennobled by the Wittelsbach King, no less. Besides, von Epp was so pious that his comrades in the Nazi party called him the “Mother of God general.”
Historians are still arguing as to whether the takeover of power by the National Socialists could be called a revolution. For the swastika-loving SS guards, with their taste for martial drama, there was no doubt. The fact that the takeover took place practically without any violence only proved that the Weimar “system” was no longer capable of offering resistance and, most importantly, that a spiritual revolution had taken place within the deeper reaches of the German soul. It was also a legal revolution, just as the Führer had once predicted under oath.
A few revolutionary incidents were required, however, and they could not be carried out without the SS. They marched in Munich on March 9, four days after the Reichstag elections, in front of the sovereign center of power. Wolff enjoyed telling time and again among the circles of comrades how those who had been in power were properly thrown out. He and his marching company had orders to occupy the Landtag as a start that day. Only a handful of riot police were protecting the parliamentary building. As a precaution, they did not stir when they saw Wolff’s numerous forces step up to the doorway and caught sight of him, in his shining uniform wearing all his medals, entering the building. With a smile on his face and in a very clear voice, he let the police officers know that any resistance made no sense because, legally, even Bavaria had to conform to the Reich’s government now. It was his responsibility to make sure that “things ran smoothly,” as stated in a report by Hauptsturmführer Karl Wolff.
The official defenders of democracy took this message to their superior who, after a long string of questions and answers, gave the order over the telephone to give in to the threatened violence. Because this victory was achieved without losses, Wolff left an appropriate number of men behind and moved on to the prime minister’s chancellery. Here the procedure was repeated, only it took less time because the man in charge was expecting the visit and stayed away from his office. Thanks to Wolff’s personal charm, there was no violence in carrying out his orders. In other areas in Munich, however, the old thugs vented their well-honed hatred of many years and ran rampant against their political opponents.
Wolff received a new order from Himmler that same evening: General von Epp, the new ruler in Bavaria, needed an aide from the SS. The 65-year-old general requested a retired officer, if possible, one decorated at the front, still young and tough, with exceptional manners and experience with paperwork. This was almost exactly the personal description of Karl Wolff. Himmler seemed to think that Wolff could certainly free himself from his business for two or three hours a day. The Reichsführer had obtained very little from the division of power so far, and felt it was important that one of his own could see and hear what was going on at the top in political circles.
From the very first day at his new task, it was apparent that it required full-time attention. But Wolff did not complain. He enjoyed the many public appearances where he could be seen just two steps behind the new representative of state power. He listened carefully during the confidential meetings, soon making the acquaintance of this or that party dignitary, and even being allowed to sit in one of the best seats at the celebratory High Mass that the Archbishop of Munich, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber, offered for the new ruler of Bavaria. The general was so pleased with his black-uniformed aides that he did not want to do without them when he was named governor of Bavaria and had to give up the position of prime minister.
The new prime minister, party comrade Ludwig Siebert, however, was of the opinion that Wolff was one of his perks in office and was to remain available to him. Meantime, Himmler had also come to appreciate Wolff’s talent to calm abrasive people and soften reluctance in an obliging tone of voice. He wanted to use Wolff on his own staff. The one obstacle in his path was that the Hauptsturmführer had performed all services up to this point without compensation, as did most of the lower ranks in all National Socialist formations. With this constellation of go-getters,
Wolff had even wondered what chances he would have if he got out of his insecure business. Epp offered to have him called up again in the Reichswehr, but he would have had to go back to being a lieutenant, in an officers’ corps shut off to Nazi protégés. As a start, this was not a very attractive prospect for a career. So he took Himmler’s suggestion and, as the aide to the Reichsführer SS, he became a full-time member of the Black Corps. The SS was just in the process of admitting a flood of new members and setting up new units. Whoever was close to Himmler could be assured of quick advancement.
On May 10, 1933, the Reichsführer SS wrote to “Mr. Secretary of State Röhm” at the Munich state government, “asking most obediently that SS-Sturmhauptführer Wolff, who was made available as an aide to the Reich governor in March, if at all possible, could once again be made available to the SS. […] The SS has a rather extensive shortage of leaders at this time…” Ernst Röhm, as chief of staff of the SA and at the same time commander of the SS (and of Heinrich Himmler), agreed. On June 15, 1933, Wolff began his new duties. He sold his advertising business to one of his SS comrades. For his services at the beginning he earned 450 marks a month. This was enough at the time for a small family to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle. Wolff could not really ask for more money at first because before the rise to power the Party had requested that in this time of need no German earn more than one thousand marks a month.
The Reich leadership of the SS in 1932 still occupied a small number of rooms on the top floor of the Brown House, and even Himmler had only a modest little office. They had since moved into a large building, and their Reichsführer now sat at the desk of the Munich police president; the office had been temporarily assigned to him in March. Without a doubt, Wolff felt that he was being paid much less than he was worth and for much less than he did. The Party members from the political Führer Corps, who were already disrespectfully and jealously labeled as “big shots” and “administrators” by the marching soldiers, divided the better positions among themselves. They argued that the solution to Germany’s problems no longer depended so much on physical strength as on one’s brain, and in this regard the corps of political leaders was definitely much better equipped than the units that marched in step.
Chief of Police Himmler could not complain about the lack of work. First of all, he had to guarantee that the “Reds,” the Social Democrats, and everything that stood left of that, would completely disappear from the stage. For the sake of simplicity and as a preventive measure, they were
mostly arrested and, without any court proceedings or sentencing, held prisoner behind the barbed wire of the former military camp at Dachau.
Some members of the Munich National Socialist circles had collected a number of special enemies over the years. Now in Dachau they were given the opportunity to understand that a new era had begun. Guard shifts had to be set up and procedures enacted. SS soldiers were deputized as policemen in a matter of minutes by wearing an armband. There were only very few National Socialists at police headquarters, and even if the interim Standartenführer Reinhard Heydrich managed to transform the most efficient former opponents into obedient Nazis within a few days, the Reichsführer still had very little time for his SS.
Wolff always said later on that he had been called to the SS building as a sort of right-hand man for the incredibly busy Himmler. The Reichsführer actually did have a chief of staff, the SS Gruppenführer Seidel-Dittmarsch. He was the office chief and ranked above the newly recruited Hauptsturmführer, like a general to a captain. In Wolff’s personnel file, it was noted that he had simply been temporarily commandeered to the staff of the Reichsführer as of June 18, 1933, and only from September 1, 1933, was he considered an adjutant. Apparently was just one of many. In the fall of that year, Hauptsturmführer Suchsland, equal to Wolff in rank, was writing letters for Himmler and signed them in his name.
That was precisely Wolff’s task. He checked all later recruitments, separated the wheat from the chaff, answered miscellaneous and routine questions, made suggestions for letters, which Himmler could either sign or alter, and collected documents for any case in which Himmler would have to form an opinion. Furthermore, it was his responsibility to proof any questionnaires that had been filled out by SS applicants. These were certainly huge piles at times because, in those days, many comrades considered it necessary (for whatever reason) to openly affiliate themselves with the National Socialists, and since the Party was now closed to new members, the units drew all the interest. The so-called “better circles” preferred the SS—whether it was because of their “nicer” uniforms, or because they considered themselves an elite unit and several notches above the unrefined, proletarian SA—with the motto, “small but fine.”
The proofing of those questionnaires could not have been too difficult, however, as the forms had already passed through the offices of all SS administrators from the Stürmen upwards, and had been stamped accordingly. It is easily understandable that Wolff wanted to be rid of this pointless in his office duties. But it is not exactly believable that he
managed to hand off this paperwork to his highest superior, chief of staff and Gruppenführer Seidel-Dittmarsch.
According to Wolff, the chief of staff was secretly busy in the months following the takeover, alienating the black-uniformed storm troopers from the Reichsführer. Supposedly he wanted Himmler to concentrate on the police, meaning the state sector, so that he, Seidel-Dittmarsch, could one day take over the Party unit. Wolff considered it to his credit that he protected Himmler from such a loss of power.
But any prerequisite for such a change did not exist at that time. Himmler would certainly have liked to have all the police forces of the Reich under his control back then, but there were still too many points of resistance. Everywhere the command of the police had been handed over to Party comrades, and they had no desire to hand over the newly acquired sinecures to the Reichsführer SS governing in Munich. Not until the beginning of 1944 was Himmler allowed to assume command of the political police in most of the German states. In Prussia, however, he still had no say. Hermann Göring governed as Prussian prime minister, and any attempts to steal into the police there only earned him displeasure with Hitler’s most powerful Party comrade.
Therefore, it is highly improbable that Gruppenführer Seidel-Dittmarsch’s plan was followed at all. Besides Wolff, no one else mentioned that possibility. Wolff was actually warned by Himmler about the secret dealings of the chief of staff. He also took that opportunity to point out that many of the SS newly arrived on the staff were good friends of the underhanded Gruppenführer. The matter, if it existed at all, took care of itself, since Seidel-Dittmarsch became severely ill during the winter of 1933 and died in February 1934.
It can be seen from Wolff’s calendar of promotions that he enjoyed the special favor of his Reichsführer beginning in the fall of 1933: on each of the National Socialist commemoration days that quickly followed one another, he was promoted a rank. On November 9, 1933, the anniversary of Hitler’s putsch, he became Sturmbannführer; on January 30, 1934, the anniversary of the takeover, he became Obersturmbannführer; on April 20, 1934, Hitler’s birthday, he rose to Standartenführer. That amounted to three promotions within seven months, and one can truly see these as a reward for loyal service. For Christmas in 1933, Himmler honored his adjutant Karl Wolff by giving him a large portrait photo with a handwritten dedication, “Very Sincerely.”