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Wolff discussed the purpose of Wewelsburg many times, even if it was always in a rather hazy way. In 1947, when testifying at the war crimes trials in Nuremberg, he was asked about the castle. His response was that the SS leadership did not even see it finished. Later he admitted that Himmler’s advisor, Weisthor, with his belief in old legends, told everyone that, in fact or in fantasy, the next and final attack by the Huns from the east would break down against this stronghold. As Wolff explained to his interrogator at Nuremberg, “The castle was meant for the highest leadership as a place to gather on special occasions.” There is evidence of this in a speech by Himmler on November 9, 1938, in which he announced that the swearing in of the Gruppenführers would take place at Wewelsburg every year. In addition to the many oaths a National Socialist had to swear in the course of his life in the Party, Himmler would still have created several more…
It never got as far as that ritual. The reconstruction of the ruins was never quite finished because the plans were constantly being expanded, and after 1939, with the beginning of World War II, there were hardly any suitable craftsmen available. The SS, however, knew how to get things done and set up a concentration camp in the neighborhood of the castle in which several hundred prisoners were being held as forced laborers at different times. Over 1, 200 prisoners died in that camp.
As Wolff was questioned about the financing of the project after the war, he said that 11 million marks had already been spent on the building. It must be taken into consideration that most of the land was leased from the administrative district for one mark per year. The prisoners of the concentration camp, naturally, received no pay. In addition, the mark had
a different purchasing power; for 11 million marks, one could build 500 single-family homes at that time. According to the final plans, construction was scheduled for 20 years and the entire costs were expected to reach 250 million marks. The splendid building that became the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin in 1938–39 cost a total of only 80 million marks.
On February 1, 1936, an organization was created specifically for the financing of the project called the “Society for the Promotion and Cultivation of German Cultural Memorials,” with headquarters in Munich. In order to fulfill the requirements of a registered organization, rules had to be established and signed by six members. Himmler was the head of the organization; Karl Wolff signed immediately after him; then his closest coworker, Luitpold Schallermeier; SS Führer Dr. Walter Salpeter; Himmler’s secretary Dr. Rudolf Brandt; SS coat of arms expert Karl Diebitsch; and Gruppenführer Oswald Pohl, head of the Administration and Economic Office of the SS. That office also took over the business management of the organization. Wolff was responsible for all personnel decisions, plans, promotion, and development of training operations, while the personnel staff handled the crew working on the castle. He did not need to bear any responsibility for the concentration camp, because this camp, as well as all the other camps, was under the supervision of his old friend, Gruppenführer Oswald Pohl. The situation was such that it obviously prevented Wolff from finding out anything about conditions behind the barbed wire fences.
Wolff handled a very sensitive situation during the disorderly festivities at the castle on May 1, 1937, with his usual skill. At the drunken May 1 celebrations, called the “National Day of Work” by the Nazis, an Obersturmführer from the castle detail beat a man from the town of Wewelsburg badly enough that he had to be taken to the hospital. It was not surprising that tensions would eventually lead to a fight because the town was strictly Catholic and the SS did not make it a habit to respect the religious feelings of the townspeople. In June, when the townspeople were celebrating their “Schützenfest,” the younger people did not want to let the SS men into the tent. Several SS Führers, however, forced their way in. When one of them demanded to dance on the stage with a girl, a brawl broke out. The captain of the castle at the time feared a farmers’ revolt and called in a train of SS reserve troops stationed in Arolsen for help. The soldiers who arrived with steel helmets and rifles found no rebels, but the Gestapo placed five of the townspeople into protective custody the next day anyway.
Wolff was given the task of handling the incident with as little sensation as possible. He was right to view the situation as just another fistfight that can break out anywhere when strangers behave boisterously at a public festival. He made sure that the fight had no consequences for the village people. The captain of the castle, on the other hand, was forced to resign his position. With this decision, Wolff was probably fulfilling the Reichsführer’s secret wish, since Chief of the SS Race and Settlement Office, Walter Darré, who, in the meantime, had fallen out of favor, had appointed the ousted dignitary. Even worse, Darré was Himmler’s brother-in-law, and the two were not getting along.
Wolff was even allowed to participate in raising funds. Every year Himmler’s “circle of friends” deposited their donations with him. The members of this circle of friends were among the most influential men from the world of finance, industry and trade and, because they had all been awarded with honorary ranks and uniforms of the SS, they also had to be formally lined up for the sake of order, as members of the personal staff. If the funds of the Reichsführung SS were running low, the fact was called to Wolff’s attention. The SS had particularly strong ties to the “Deutsche Bank,” and Wolff took out loans for the Wewelsburg Castle totaling 13 million marks.
The actual use of the castle for the SS was out of proportion to the expenditure. Himmler held only one Gruppenführer conference there in the middle of June 1941, one week before the attack on the Soviet Union. Obergruppenführer von Bach-Zelewski was fighting the partisans in the east during the war. During the Nuremberg trials he stated that at the castle, Himmler announced that the purpose of the campaign about to begin was to kill 30 million Slavs. Wolff, who had organized the meeting, denied this and maintained that Himmler only spoke of millions of people who would be killed during the campaign.
Himmler’s intention to hang the coats of arms, carved in wood, of all the Gruppenführers at the Wewelsburg created a lot of work for Wolff. He asked them all to bring in sketches or at least descriptions of their family crests. If Wolff were to write to any top officials of the Party who held high honorary ranks, like Reichsleiter Martin Bormann and Max Amann (responsible for the press and at the same time publisher of all party papers), he signed as “Your very humble …” Lower ranking officials, like the Gauleiters, had to be content with a simple “Heil Hitler, Your …” The letters to the active SS Führers reveal how deliberately Wolff selected his friends. He was on the “Du” (personal) level with
Obergruppenführer Kurt Daluege, Chief of the Ordnungspolizei, and senior ranking SS member behind Himmler; along with Sepp Dietrich, Munich’s age-old fighter who, thanks to Hitler’s favor, was raised from a beer hall rowdy to the rank of commander of the SS Leibstandarte; and with Hitler’s adjutant and confidant Julius Schaub, who always had the Führer’s ear. Wolff was on a first name basis with Gruppenführer Theo Eicke, Himmler’s favorite, although his reputation was not the best. The same was true of Gruppenführer Oswald Pohl, who was in charge of the concentration camps and also had to provide Eicke with the guard detail. Wolff, however, was closest to “dear Reinhard” (Heydrich, Chief of the Security Police, therefore also of the Gestapo and of the SD, and later the supreme leader in charge of Jewish annihilation). Heydrich was allowed to call Wolff “dear Peter”—a nickname that, at the beginning, only Wolff’s wife used for her husband.
Aside from the many aristocrats among the Gruppenführers, hardly anyone could produce a coat of arms. Heydrich and Wolff had already had Comrade Weisthor design such family decorations for them. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, later to become Heydrich’s successor, could at least produce a family crest, which his ancestors, scythesmiths by trade, had usually stamped onto the steel of the tools they manufactured. The majority of those addressed had, as did Wolff and Heydrich, to turn to the crest, rune and family researchers of the SS for help. The initiative, however, never came to a conclusion. “Another presentation for after the war,” Wolff noted in a colored pencil on the final document regarding this activity.
He also busied himself intensely with the interior furnishings of the castle. When he was told in September 1942 that “a mass of antiques (furniture, porcelain, etc.)” was brought up by the personal staff of the Office of Raw Materials—although these were almost certainly the belongings of the deported Jews—he gave the chief architect of Wewelsburg the task of selecting suitable items. Among the purchases were a Queen Anne coin cabinet, a Chippendale mahogany table, and a Flemish carved oak cabinet. All told, the castle at Wewelsburg bought antiques valued at 200, 000 marks in this manner. These values were calculated according to the usual standards of thievery.
In a similarly honest manner, Wolff helped the castle secure another treasure. As the rich cloisters along the Danube in Austria were being confiscated by the Nazi party for transparent reasons, Himmler allowed himself to be guided through the Canon Foundation of St. Florian, near
Linz, where he couldn’t help but notice a large round rug that would certainly brighten a large, round room at the castle. Himmler demonstrated his desire so blatantly to August Eigruber, the Gauleiter of the Upper Danube, that Eigruber was left no alternative but to offer the rug as a gift to his prominent guest. The Gauleiter was not so quick with the delivery, however. Perhaps he hoped in this way to keep the valuable piece in his own country.
When once again Himmler visited his castle in the middle of July 1942, he noticed that the rug was not there. Wolff, who accompanied him, hurried to the telex machine installed at the castle and dictated an order. The receiver was the supreme SS Führer of Austria in Vienna, the Gruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner: “The Reichsführer SS requests in as friendly and pressing a way that the Gauleiter remember to fulfill his promise and that he supervise the same.”
Two weeks later, Kaltenbrunner reported to Wolff that the rug would be shipped “expertly packed to Wewelsburg in the next few days.” Eigruber, however, still did not want to part with his valuable piece so quickly. Kaltenbrunner had to warn him yet again, and after another month the Gauleiter wrote in an abrupt manner to Himmler that he had “already handed the rug over to the Linz state police for further delivery.” On August 18, 1942, the captain of the castle at Wewelsburg could finally report to Wolff in Berlin “that the round rug…had arrived. After being unpacked, it was cleaned, de-mothed and appropriately placed in the new museum.” The sender of this report was Siegfried Taubert, who, according to Wolff’s examination procedures, was given the job following his fist-fighting predecessor. Wolff was promised more tolerance of the Catholics in the region by the new commander, a retired major decorated in the First World War. In the SS, he had the rank of Gruppenführer—this showed the importance given to the castle on the part of the SS leadership. However, when he made a request to have a staff division of the Waffen SS, meaning an armed unit at the castle, Wolff had to tighten the reins. At the same time, he forbade him any intervention into conditions at the local concentration camps. When it came to the concentrations camps, Wolff was always in favor of a strict division of responsibilities.
The practice of plundering for the benefit of the castle was pursued in the conquered East. SS Obersturmführer W. Jordan, who belonged to the teaching staff at the castle as its prehistoric researcher, went to the Crimean peninsula in December 1942. From this rich landscape of ancient culture he sent back whatever treasures he could lay his hands on.
From a professor of archeology who lived in Yalta, he obtained ancient Greek gold earrings, coins, Persian miniatures, a golden phallus from the first century A.D.—everything in exchange for a few meager sacks of flour. In the following shipment he sent gems and Russian coins made of precious metals stamped during the period of the tsars.
This became the treasure of the castle that Himmler wanted to stash away for rainy days. After the war, the land around the castle was meticulously dug up, but nothing was found. Rumors maintained that Taubert had prisoners immure the treasure at the end of March 1945, and he supposedly announced that he would have those workers shot once they had finished the job. During criminal proceedings dealing with crimes at the Wewelsburg concentration camp, no evidence could be found to that effect. Himmler was kept informed when American armored forces were approaching the castle, and he dispatched an SS officer with an engineering squad from Army Group Weichsel to go west in the direction of Paderborn with orders to blow up the castle.
At that point Wolff had no longer been responsible for the castle for some time; he had been working in Italy for over one and a half years. On Good Friday, March 30, 1945, the demolition squad reached the castle that the SS had already evacuated. As the officer realized that the explosives would not be powerful enough to completely demolish the castle, he blew up the main areas of the building and set fires in the parts that remained. He and his engineering squad had hardly left the scene when throngs of townspeople descended upon the burning ruins and dragged away what they could lay their hands on, including some 40,000 bottles of wine, champagne and high-proof alcohol from the cellars.
Wolff’s work relating to the SS shrine was no mystery. His task fit in with his vision of the SS as an order of knights and guards. Himmler’s romantic ideas may have been bothersome at times because they were wildly eccentric, but the illusions these two gentlemen harbored regarding the castle only differed in minor details. The assignment as chief adjutant was a much more difficult task for Wolff, but one he enthusiastically embraced because it fully corresponded to his inclinations and abilities. He was responsible for supervising and guiding a group of people who made up the core of the German economy. This “Reichsführer SS’s circle of friends” that we already mentioned included some three dozen of the most influential industrialists and money managers that met occasionally.