Top Nazi (46 page)
Wolff’s volunteers obviously had a rather low turnout, otherwise he never would have thought of sending weapons and equipment for 1,500 soldiers to Himmler to help in a crisis. He could possibly have acquired some of this equipment from the partisans.
On January 31, 1945, he wrote the cover letter to this “small contribution to my position.” Himmler had been the Supreme commander of the newly formed Army Group “Weichsel” for a week. With this group, he was to fill a huge hole that had been torn open by the Red Army, paving the way to Pomerania and Brandenburg. Regardless of this desperate situation, Wolff used the hackneyed National Socialist phrases: “It is with pride and confidence that we SS men look toward the gigantic task and responsibility the Führer, in his unlimited trust, has newly bestowed upon you.”
It became already clear within just a few days that this trust in Himmler’s commanding capabilities was completely misplaced. The Reichsführer SS was not able to build up a strong enough front. He decimated his divisions in one defeat after another. Before that he had already failed as military commander on the Upper Rhine. He had pushed for both assignments, hoping to win fame and respect with Hitler. One of his rivals for Hitler’s favor, Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, had supported Himmler’s plans and, at the same time, successfully speculated on his failure! Since then the Reichsführer SS avoided Führer headquarters as much as possible and, moved increasingly by fear, was seeking opportunities to appear as a peacemaker, thus hoping to unload the responsibility for all that had happened on Hitler.
In his name, SS Gruppenführer and General of the Police Dr. Wilhelm Harster, who was stationed in Verona, conspired behind Wolff’s back with Italian industrial leaders. They were all in shock at Mussolini’s plans to nationalize industry; and they therefore intensified the integration of their operations with other international companies. Himmler’s suggestions amounted to ending the fighting in Italy and France and have the entire German army march against the anti-capitalist Bolsheviks. The Western Powers would be free to join the campaign against the atheist Marxists. This was not a new idea; many Nazis had toyed with it. Wolff claimed he had already presented it to the Pope.
Now that the German armed forces were clearly reaching a point of collapse, they could not come to any kind of mutual understanding. In
August, Himmler had announced in Posen that whoever doubted the victorious outcome of the war would be mercilessly persecuted. On the other hand, in the meantime, he had sent his SD Chief, Walter Schellenberg, to meet with the Swedish banker Jakob Wallenberg, seeking to benefit from his connections with western politicians. To use such contacts, he was prepared to work with the former mayor of Leipzig, Dr. Carl Goerdeler, who had been arrested by the Gestapo as a ringleader of the resistance movement against Hitler. In order to make contact with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he was even ready to seek an agreement with the archenemy of the Aryans. Through SS Standartenführer Kurt Becher, he offered to stop the transport to the extermination camps of Hungarian and Swiss Jews, if there was a chance to negotiate. The unmentioned underpinning all his suggestions was that Hitler had to die.
B
y the end of 1944, only a handful of higher SS officers were still fully loyal to Hitler. Their idol had not lived up to their expectations and to his promises. As long as he seemed to guarantee victory, they accepted what was increasingly displeasing them now: total dictatorship within Germany, ruthlessness on the outside, increased personal danger, wartime shortages and the barbaric persecution of the Jews, assuming they secretly dissented with that policy. They were not allowed to protest; inside the Black Brotherhood only orders and obedience had any kind of value. To terminate one’s membership was dangerous, if not impossible; after all, a brotherhood is not a club. The lower ranks could at least cause their own dismissal by neglecting their jobs. But even the upper ranks, especially the full-time officer and the soldiers of the Waffen SS, risked their freedom and more if they tried to shed the belt buckle bearing the inscription “Our honor is loyalty.” Having no other ways of showing their displeasure, SS officers took some small liberties with the rules of the brotherhood. It was their way of showing that they no longer agreed with everything Heinrich Himmler ordered.
As the Reichsführer’s right hand and especially as a favorite of Hitler, Wolff could allow himself a bit of heresy. He didn’t do this out of serious
opposition. He felt the need to prevent arbitrariness and injustice and, when they occurred, he simply enjoyed showing some element of insubordination so that one was compelled to notice what a “great guy” he was. One writer refers to him as the “happy boy” of the SS. He had previously rejected that description during the Third Reich as suspicious since it involved the schmaltzy pop singer in an American movie in which a white singer pretended to be a black man (wearing “black face”). The warrior from Darmstadt wanted to be a knight without fear or reproach, as in the idealized version popular among high school teenagers in imperial Germany.
Therefore the SS Obergruppenführer and General of the Police would inevitably one day reach the fork in the road that was to draw him away from his leaders Hitler and Himmler. At first it happened almost imperceptibly, but later so fully that Wolff felt compelled to go off on his own. Retrospectively, it is difficult to determine when and where their paths began to separate. Perhaps it was already the case in January 1943 when Wolff visited the Warsaw Ghetto with Himmler and could personally experience how Nazism degraded people. Perhaps the change began in the spring of 1943 when he was very ill in Hohenlychen in a private room, cut off from his comrades on Himmler’s orders, in the stillness as he pondered whether the Reichsführer was attempting to cause his death inconspicuously by the violent massage of Felix Kersten. He felt, therefore, that his heretical impulses were amply justified as he and Himmler discussed a change of regime with Popitz and Langbehn. He often sang the SS tune, “When everyone betrays, we will remain true.” Where were the loyal ones now? They were at the very least thinking of jumping off a ship that was about to sink.
If one leafs through the “denazification certificates” that Wolff presented as evidence of his “good deeds” after the war during the denazification process and at the Munich trial, those flamboyant incidents added up during his time in Italy. In his letter to his ex-wife Frieda he rejoiced in the independence he had finally achieved. For example, he was now able to save an army staff officer in Italy from a court martial and perhaps a death sentence. The officer in question, on the occasion of the July 20, 1944, assassination attempt at the “Wolfsschanze,” had not spoken of Hitler with the necessary awe, and was thus reported by a lieutenant seeking to be a hero. However, Wolff, as plenipotentiary general and lord of the manor, looked at the file and summoned the accused to his office. In a long and conciliatory conversation that did not even remotely
resemble an interrogation, he interpreted the officer’s statements as harmless enough and terminated the inquiry.
Wolff received a note of thanks from the Bishop of Padua in March 1945 for saving the life of an Italian laborer working for the German army postal service. The Italian had stolen some small packages, thus harming German troops—a sacrilege that ex-lance corporal Hitler could only accept if it was punished by death. Wolff understood that this would be seen as incomprehensible harshness for the Italian mentality. He listened sympathetically to the bishop’s request for a pardon. The patriarch from Venice, Cardinal Piazza, wrote a note of thanks because the SS Obergruppenführer saved a nun of the order (who was of Jewish heritage and had converted to Christianity), from being added to the transport meant for the Jews. Wolff also protected a German soldier from court-martial when the military bureaucracy threatened to destroy him because he repeatedly complained about being punished for “neglecting the Nazi salute.” As plenipotentiary general, Wolff stopped all the accusations on the spot, helped the soldier take his leave to go home, which had been blocked as punishment, and even had the soldier accompany him in his car as far as the Brenner Pass. Wolff presented all of these “good deeds” (and many more) after the war as proof that, even within the awful group of the SS, he had remained a good person.
The suspicion that he had done all of this only to create an alibi for the future would seem groundless. Wolff was satisfied to appear in the role of the powerful man who fought injustice according to the principle used quite frequently at the time, that “unnecessary harshness should be avoided.” American historian John Toland examined Wolff’s account and interviewed him at length about his life. Toland described him as a “stately, energetic, and admittedly fairly naïve man who ardently believed in National Socialism.” He could never have been so naïve that all the atrocities of the Nazi regime were hidden from him until the end. He soothed his conscience by countering them with his “good deeds.” The better circles of Darmstadt had already taught him that one could earn “personal credit” that way and a reputation as a respectable human being. During his time as an advertising agent, he could increase his credit (sometimes even financially) with those kinds of favors, and once he began moving into positions of power, he improved his system. He was helpful wherever he could be, including for the little people, as every case enriched his account.
Wolff’s historic participation in the negotiations leading to the surrender of the German and Italian armed forces in Italy on May 2, 1945,
was of a different nature. The lives of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides were spared five or six days of pointless killing and dying. He also risked his life many times because he was in danger as someone guilty of treason or high treason, and he was threatened with death from enemy planes or partisans. This episode must be discussed since Wolff constantly made sure that these achievements were not forgotten.
In this case, too, success has many fathers. Others also took credit for the capitulation. For example, the diplomat, Dr. Rudolf Rahn, the all-purpose intellectual of the SS Dr. Eugen Dollmann, army General Hans Röttinger, the Swiss citizens Dr. Max Husmann and Max Waibel, the Italian Baron Luigi Parilli, and the U.S. citizen and German emigrant Gero von Schulze-Gävernitz, and several other participants. Many books and articles were published but Wolff never went beyond copies of taped conversations and numerous manuscript pages, despite his desire for publicity.
The reason behind “Operation Sunrise”—the cover name “Sunrise” came from OSS chief in Bern, Allen Dulles—was not due to any of the men mentioned previously, but rather to a historical figure who was to find out about the betrayal shortly before his death, namely, Benito Mussolini. As the year 1944 drew to a close, he wanted to find out from Wolff how this war, given Hitler’s promises, could possibly end in victory. The Obergruppenführer saw this question as a challenge, since the person who was to be most affected by this activity was the last one to know, and because Wolff was afraid that Mussolini would inform Hitler. In those days of insecurity, everyone played not only his own game, but also a double game at the same time. During the war, as it would be demonstrated later on, Mussolini remained in epistolary contact, albeit sporadically, with Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He was carrying the evidence of this correspondence with him among his private papers when he fled. Had Mussolini wished to use that connection, Wolff could have prevented him from doing so by quickly ending the war.
The relationship between the two at the end of the year 1944 was no longer as warm as it had been earlier. The advisor and protector had increasingly changed his role into that of a guard. He became even more annoying when the nominal ruler of a rump Italy sought to shed the German intrusion into all Italian affairs. Against Hitler’s will, Mussolini named his state “Italian Social Republic”—the word “Socialist” would have been acceptable, but he announced his intention to nationalize major industries. It was a relapse of sorts: Mussolini began his political career on the far left, in the most extreme wing of the Socialist party. Now the capitalists
in Italy feared that he could actually enter into agreements with the underground Reds. Furthermore, he was planning to fire Minister of the Interior Buffarini-Guidi. He rightfully assumed that this corrupt fascist functionary was keeping Wolff and Rahn constantly posted on the most recent news emanating from the fascist snake pit. He even decided to break out of the political greenhouse on Lake Garda and experience the raw air of Italian reality, directly with the people. Milan was the largest city among those remaining under fascist and German control; he wanted to create a new center of operations there. On December 16, 1944, he gave a speech at the Lirico theater in Milan where he was enthusiastically cheered as in his best dictatorial times. Mussolini subtly but clearly showed how he was standing up against Hitler by stressing Italy’s achievements and its suffering for the alliance, and warned how the Germans would take horrible revenge if the Italians attacked them from the rear.
Aside from his attempt to win more ground with the workers, Mussolini also quietly courted the clergy. Through Archbishop Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster of Milan he sought a connection to the Vatican and, further, to the Allies and the partisans. At the same time Wolff was also his rival because SS Standartenführer Walther Rauff, the SD Chief of the region, was ordered to make efforts in the same direction. His SS past, however, was not such a good reference for a benevolent operation; in the East, he had been in charge of the operation using gas vehicles where prisoners of the extermination camps were killed by carbon monoxide engine exhaust. In Italy, however, Wolff considered that Rauff had performed well; a few weeks before the end of the war, he recommended him for the Gold Cross. By then relations between Wolff and the Italian head of state had sunk to a form of indifferent coolness. They lied to each other in silence and deceived one another through subterfuge. Then in February 1945, when Buffarini-Guidi was replaced, Wolff lost his source of information. This meant that Mussolini was being watched more closely than ever before. At the beginning of March, police detective Otto Kisnat reported to the Duce as his new bodyguard, a gift from Heinrich Himmler. He was experienced in guarding high-ranking officials, and since he had to guarantee the physical safety of those he was protecting, he had to be constantly at his side.