Karl Wolff (SS member)

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Karl Wolff, here as SS group leader (1937)

Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff (born May 13, 1900 in Darmstadt , † July 15, 1984 in Rosenheim ) was a German SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen-SS . He became head of the " personal staff of the Reichsführer SS " and "liaison officer of the SS to Hitler". After the war, Wolff claimed that he did not find out about the extermination of the Jews until 1945. On September 30, 1964, he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment by the Munich District Court II for aiding and abetting murder in at least 300,000 cases ( deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp ). In 1969 he was granted exemption from prison for incapacity.

Origin and school

Wolff was born the son of the judge Karl Friedrich Wolff (born December 19, 1871 in Gießen ; † January 2, 1916 in Darmstadt ). In 1901 the father became a public prosecutor in Darmstadt. In 1906 he switched to judging and became a local judge in Butzbach. After that, Karl Wolff, who had a doctorate in law, was a district judge in Darmstadt. In 1910 he was appointed district judge, in 1911 district judge. Most recently he was the district court director in Darmstadt.

Karl Wolff grew up in a notable family in Darmstadt. He lived in Schwerte for two years . Even in his early youth, he had the desire to join the military and become an officer . As a student at the Ludwig-Georgs-Gymnasium in Darmstadt, he voluntarily completed a two-year pre-military training for the National Youth Armed Forces .

As a flag boy , the high school graduate was accepted into the Grand Ducal Hessian Life Guard Infantry Regiment No. 115 thanks to the recommendations of his relatives .

Participation in the First World War

After graduating from high school on April 27, 1917 and a four-month training course for recruits , Wolff came to the Western Front as a war volunteer on September 5, 1917 and was promoted to lieutenant by the end of the war . He was awarded the Iron Cross, second and first class.

Demobilization and employment

The reduction in the strength of the Reichswehr personnel stipulated by the Versailles Treaty led to its demobilization in May 1920 . For a short time Wolff was company commander in a Hessian volunteer corps .

In Bankhaus Gebrüder Bethmann in Frankfurt Wolff went through a two-year apprenticeship, he became engaged at the end in July 1922, Frieda von Roemheld. After getting married in August of the following year, the Wolff couple moved to Munich , where Wolff found work at Deutsche Bank . However, due to the effects of the inflationary period , he became unemployed at the end of June 1924. Shortly afterwards he found a new job at the Munich branch of the "Walther von Danckelmann advertising expedition". On July 1, 1925, he opened his own company under the name "Advertisement Expedition Karl Wolff - von Römheld".

The economic crisis in 1931 (see German banking crisis ) made him believe that only the radical parties were capable of solving the economic and political dilemma in Germany. For him, only the right-wing extremist direction came into consideration.

Political career

On October 7, 1931, Wolff joined the NSDAP ( membership number 695.131) and the SS (SS number 14.235) and made a steep career in this party organization.

A three-week course at the Reichsfuhrer School of the SA in Munich gave him the basic ideological framework and led to his first acquaintance with the leaders of the party who act as lecturers, such as Franz Xaver Schwarz , Richard Walther Darré , Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler .

Himmler with his adjutant Wolff (right), December 12, 1933

From February 18, 1932 to September 1932, Wolff led Sturm 2 of the II. Sturmbannes of SS Standard 1 as SS-Sturmführer . In 1932, with its two Reichstag elections , the SS was also frequently used at party meetings, street demonstrations and organized brawls. On September 20, 1932, the proven, ambitious and well-versed Sturmführer was appointed adjutant of Sturmbannes II of Standard 1 and promoted to SS-Hauptsturmführer on January 30, 1933 . The post of adjutant of the SS with the new Reichsstatthalter in Bavaria , General Franz Ritter von Epp , in March 1933 was followed by the change from honorary to full-time member of the Schutzstaffel when he was appointed adjutant to the staff of the Reichsführer SS on June 18, 1933. The associated financial security enabled him to give up his previous job and sell his company. On March 8, 1933 , he became a member of the Reichstag .

Himmler's favor, as well as Wolff's talent for increasing his own advantage in addition to his commitment to the party and the SS, enabled a quick rise to the position of 1st adjutant in the staff of the "Reichsführer SS" on April 4, 1934, combined with three promotions to the SS -Standartenführer on April 20, 1934.

As head of the personal staff Reichsführer SS from November 9, 1935, his competence included seven offices in addition to the chief adjutant, such as the personnel office, the SS court, the auditing department and the staff treasury. His office did not officially have the rank of an SS main office , but it was on par with the actual main office and served as a catchment basin for all tasks that were not assigned to one of the main offices (for example the "officer for the service dog"). In addition there were the organizations “ Lebensborn ”, the “ Freundeskreis Reichsführer SS ” and “ Supporting Member of the SS ”.

Wolff had a special friendship with the head of the Reich Security Main Office, Reinhard Heydrich .

At the Fuehrer's headquarters

Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler with Karl Wolff at a meeting with Francisco Franco and Ramón Serrano Súñer (far right) in Spain (October 25, 1940).
Heinrich Himmler during a visit to Mauthausen concentration camp , April 1941. In the foreground from left to right: August Eigruber , August Schmidhuber , Franz Ziereis , Himmler, Wolff, Franz Kutschera

At the beginning of the Second World War , Wolff was sent to the Fuehrer's headquarters in order to act as a "liaison officer of the Waffen-SS". Such a task was repeatedly questioned. After all, it was Hitler himself who spoke out in favor of Wolff as the representative of the SS at his headquarters. The question of a potential Himmler successor could possibly also have played a role here, for whom, in addition to Heydrich, Wolff was obviously at least temporarily considered. In practice, however, Wolff was probably “Himmler's eyes and ears” in the Führer headquarters, as the public prosecutor at the Munich jury court put it in 1964.

At the Fuehrer's headquarters he was undoubtedly also informed of all significant events or was able to easily obtain relevant information. Wolff was also present at the Berghof , which temporarily served as the Führer headquarters. In addition, as head of the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS, he received copies of all important letters from the main SS offices, so that his post-war declarations that he only learned of crimes after the end of the National Socialist regime can be seen as a protective claim. If, as Himmler's right-hand man , he counted the organizer of “ Aktion Reinhard ”, Odilo Globocnik , among his friends, he could not have had less information than the many who learned about the atrocities of the regime on site.

When there were bottlenecks in the railway transport capacities during the evacuation of the Warsaw ghetto , Wolff arranged the necessary trains to the extermination camps through the deputy Reich Minister of Transport , State Secretary Albert Ganzenmüller , who was well known to him . In a letter dated August 13, 1942, Wolff thanked Ganzenmüller's assistance: “I was particularly pleased to have taken note of your information that a train with members of the chosen people has been going to Treblinka every day for 14 days [...] I have from I got in touch with the bodies involved, so that a smooth implementation of the entire measure appears to be guaranteed. "

He was also informed of the negative pressure and cold water experiments carried out by doctor Sigmund Rascher in the Dachau concentration camp in his capacity as the superior of Wolfram Sievers , the head of the department responsible for the “ Ahnenerbe ” .

On March 6, 1943, he divorced his wife Frieda von Römheld and on March 9, he married his long-time lover, the widow Ingeborg Countess Bernstorff, a convinced National Socialist and sister-in-law of Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff , who was murdered by the SS in 1945. Wolff's involvement was investigated, but could not be proven.

The clouding of his good relationship with Himmler, allegedly because of his divorce, which Himmler did not want to approve but Hitler allowed, and a prolonged illness led to his replacement as Chief of Staff Reichsführer SS and his transfer to Italy .

There he was u. a. responsible for the arrest of 1259 Jews in Rome on October 16, 1943, 1007 of whom were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Highest SS and Police Leader in Italy

Power of attorney from the Marshal of Italy, Rodolfo Graziani , to Wolff to begin surrender negotiations, April 27, 1945

In July 1943, Himmler appointed Wolff as the “ highest SS and police leader ” in Italy with the task of freeing Benito Mussolini, who was arrested by his compatriots on July 25, 1943 , and then initiating his civilian takeover of power. After the Allies landed in southern Italy, the Italian government under Pietro Badoglio concluded the Cassibile armistice with the Allies on September 3, 1943 , thus breaking away from the German alliance system.

Shortly afterwards, the German troops occupied Italy (" Axis case "). On September 12, 1943, Mussolini was freed from his captivity by German paratroopers (" company oak "). After the appointment of an Italian puppet government ( Italian Social Republic ) based in Salò on Lake Garda , Wolff supported the forced recruitment of Italian workers for the German armaments industry and fought the increasing partisan activities ( Resistancea ).

A kidnapping of Pope Pius XII planned by Hitler . is said to have been thwarted by Wolff, since then the situation of the German troops in Italy would no longer have been tenable. Besides Ernst von Weizsäcker, Wolff was the only known SS officer who received an audience with the Pope on May 10, 1944. He also showed himself to be helpful towards the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza , the papal aid organization for charitable support and food for the population of Rome and the surrounding area, for example by allowing transports to restricted areas.

With the German commander-in-chief in Italy, Field Marshal Albert Kesselring , Wolff supported the efforts of the Vatican to have Rome declared an open city in order to save the city and its art treasures from destruction. When the Allies occupied Rome on June 4, 1944, Wolff was absent due to illness.

On July 26, 1944, Wolff was appointed "Plenipotentiary General" of the German Wehrmacht at his own request , as he hoped this would give him more influence in the general confusion of competencies in Italy. He mobilized all available units against the increasing partisan activity.

The advance of the Allies eventually led to the evacuation of the Italian puppet government under Mussolini to Tyrol and later to Germany. For Wolff, too, the hopelessness of the further course of the war became increasingly apparent. Just like the "Reichsführer SS" Heinrich Himmler, Wolff, who meanwhile resided in Bozen , sought contact with the Allies through intermediaries. In February 1945, Wolff made contact with the representative of the Central European headquarters of the US Secret Service Office of Strategic Services , Allen W. Dulles, through Swiss middlemen ( Max Waibel , Max Husmann, etc.) . The negotiations finally led to an early armistice in Italy on May 2, 1945, six days before Germany's total surrender on May 8, 1945 (see Operation Sunrise ). In April 1945 Wolff was indirectly involved in the liberation of so-called special prisoners and clan prisoners by Wichard von Alvensleben .

After the war

On May 13, 1945, Wolff and his family were arrested by American troops in a prison in Bolzano . After a three-month stay and separation from his family, Wolff was transferred to the war crimes prison in Nuremberg on August 21, 1945 . He was not charged, however, as American and British intelligence officials feared Wolff might reveal details of the surrender negotiations in Italy. Wolff only appeared as a witness in the Nuremberg trials , for example in the SS Economic and Administrative Main Office trial . The Americans finally handed him over to the British in January 1948 , who continued to imprison him in Minden .

In November 1948, the Hamburg-Bergedorf ruling court, charged with denazification proceedings for Wolff, sentenced him to five years in prison for membership in a criminal organization (SS) and his knowledge that this had served criminal purposes, of which two years were served as pre- trial detention were valid. The appeal court called by Wolff overturned the judgment on March 6, 1949 and reduced the prison sentence in June 1949 to four years in prison, which had meanwhile been settled.

After his dismissal, Wolff worked as a representative for the advertising department of a magazine and settled with his family in Starnberg .

In the wake of the Eichmann trial , Wolff made press articles about Himmler, claiming that he only found out about the murders of the Jews in March 1945. Because of these public allegations as well as the corresponding counter-statements, the German judiciary was again interested in Wolff. On January 18, 1962, an arrest warrant was issued against him by the Weilheim District Court for aiding and abetting the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews, primarily through his intervention at the Reich Ministry of Transport to provide the necessary wagon capacities. When the proceedings were handed over to the Munich II Regional Court , Wolff was admitted to the Munich-Stadelheim prison . His defense lawyer was Rudolf Aschenauer , who specialized in proceedings against Nazi defendants accused of crimes against humanity and war crimes . On September 30, 1964, Wolff was sentenced to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the murder of 300,000 Jews. After the Federal Court of Justice rejected his request for revision in October 1965, the judgment became final. To serve his sentence, Wolff was transferred to Straubing prison. At the end of August 1969 he was released because he was "incapable of imprisonment due to illness".

In 1973 Wolff was seen as a witness in the British television series Die Welt im Krieg .

Renewed representations of his alleged services to preventing the kidnapping of the Pope drew the attention of the former Stern reporter Gerd Heidemann to Wolff, who, as a collector of Nazi devotional objects, bought various personal items from the financially depressed Wolff. Wolff served Heidemann as a knowledgeable advisor in his collecting activities and photo reports on contemporary history topics. In this context, both of them came across the Stuttgart militaria dealer Konrad Kujau . This collaboration was ultimately to lead to the biggest press complaint in post-war history about the forged Hitler diaries .

Wolff, who was summoned as a witness, could no longer participate in the trial against Kujau and Heidemann at the end of August 1984. He died on July 15, 1984 in Rosenheim Hospital . He converted to Islam a few weeks before his death . He was buried on July 21, 1984 in the Prien am Chiemsee cemetery.

Wolff's death brought his name again in all the major German newspapers. a. was called "one of the most colorful figures of the Nazi regime". In the preface to Wolff's biography, Claus Sybill writes that Wolff could be seen as a classic case study for a representative of the upper middle class affected by the Nazi syndrome: “Wolff himself is and remains [...] the idealist who always wanted the good . And because he had never thought up or planned anything bad himself, no matter how many crimes could happen around him - he almost never noticed anything about it. "

Awards

Awards in the First World War

Awards as SS leader

literature

Web links

Commons : Karl Wolff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary in: Darmstädter Zeitung of January 4, 1916 Online .
  2. ↑ Otto Knaus: 80 semesters Activitas Karlsruhensiae 1878–1928. Festschrift Connection Karlsruhensia (Heidelberg), approx. 1960, p. 41; limited preview in Google Book search
  3. ↑ Grand Ducal Hessian Government Gazette 1910, p. 16; limited preview in Google Book search
  4. ↑ Hof- und Staats-Handbuch des Großherzogtums Hessen for the year 1912/13 , p. 174
  5. ↑ Der Spiegel 7/1962, p. 37 ff.
  6. ↑ According to the self-image of the SS, he was accepted into the rank of officer. However, as an internal party division, the SS could not assign officer ranks, but only 'ranks'. However, during the Nazi regime, SS ranks were eventually viewed as officer ranks.
  7. ↑ Gerald Riedlinger: Die Endlösung , Berlin 1956, p. 288 (correspondence between the State Secretary in the Ministry of Transport Ganzenmüller and Himmler's field adjutant, SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff; Process IV, p. 2184f); quoted from: The yellow star. The persecution of Jews in Europe from 1933 to 1945 (Gerhard Schoenberner), Hamburg 1960, p. 78.
  8. ^ SS-General Wolff: Himmler's little wolf . Der Spiegel 7/1962 of February 14, 1962, p. 37 ff.
  9. ^ Letter from Herbert Kappler to Karl Wolff, October 17, 1943, about the successful "Judenaktion", in: Museo Storico della Liberazione, Rome
  10. ↑ Albrecht von Kessel: The Pope and the Jews , in: Fritz J. Raddatz (Ed.): Summa Iniuria , Rororo 1963, p. 167 ff. [1]
  11. ^ Dan Kurzman: The Race for Rome , New York, 1975, p. 50, p. 189.
  12. ^ Dan Kurzman: A Special Mission, Hitler's Secret Plot to seize the Vatican and Kidnap Pope Pius XII , 2007, p. 213.
  13. ^ Primo Mazzolari: La Carita Del Papa , Turin 1991.
  14. ^ Statement by Father Otto Faller, Pontificio Commissione Assistenza, June 1, 1970, also Pietro Cardinal Palazzini, Interview L'Associazione Pio XII, Rome October 11, 1992.
  15. ^ Sara Randell: Ending the War. Operation Sunrise and Max Husmann , Stämplfi Verlag, Bern 2018
  16. ↑ Führer prisoners: Nice weather . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1967, p. 54/55 ( online report on the liberation of special prisoners and clan prisoners).
  17. ^ Kerstin von Lingen : Conspiracy of Silence: How the "Old Boys" of American Intelligence Shielded SS General Karl Wolff from Prosecution. In: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 22, 200, pp. 74-109, doi: 10.1093 / hgs / dcn004. Accessed April 23, 2014.
  18. ↑ Introduction to NMT Case 4 - USA v. Pohl et al. ( Memento of the original from July 9, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on www. nuremberg.law.harvard.edu. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / nuremberg.law.harvard.edu
  19. ↑ Today plea in the Wolff trial , dpa report. In: Hamburger Abendblatt , No. 215 of September 15, 1964, p. 1.
  20. ↑ His daughter Fatima Grimm said the Islamic funeral prayer at his grave. Cf. Stefan Meining : “A mosque in Germany: Nazis, secret services and the rise of political Islam in the west”, Beck Verlag 2011, p. 151.
personal data
SURNAME Wolff, Karl
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wolff, Karl Friedrich Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German officer of the SS, chief of the “Personal Staff Reichsführer SS”, highest police and SS leader in Italy, politician (NSDAP), Member of the Parliament
DATE OF BIRTH May 13, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH July 15, 1984
Place of death Rosenheim