Wilhelm Höttl

Wilhelm Höttl (born March 19, 1915 in Vienna ; † June 27, 1999 in Altaussee ) was an Austrian SS officer who worked for the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) and the SD during the Second World War and worked for Allied secret services after the end of the war . He later headed a private high school, the Bad Aussee private middle school .

Life

Before World War II

His parents were Maria Höttl, née Renner, and Hans Höttl, a civil servant. During his studies he switched from the Catholic youth movement “ Neuland ” to the NSDAP ( membership number 6.309.616) and the SS (SS number 309.510). It was in 1938 after the " Anschluss " to the German Reich at the University of Vienna as Doctor of History PhD .

Activity in World War II

From 1939 Höttl was employed by the Reich Security Main Office. At the SD head section Vienna, his duties included church issues. He later moved to Berlin, where he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer ( major ) and was employed in Amt VI (SD-Auslands), first in the Italy department and later in the Balkans. There he was an important employee of Walter Schellenberg .

Höttl was adjutant of Kaltenbrunner and was 1943 obersturmbannführer ( Colonel transported). During the occupation of Hungary from March 1944, Höttl was with Edmund Veesenmayer at the embassy of the German Reich in Hungary . There he belonged to the staff of the Higher SS and Police Leader for Hungary Otto Winkelmann in Budapest . In 1945, Kaltenbrunner intended Höttl for a ministerial post in a Nazi separatist government in Austria.

In early 1945, Höttl received special permission from Kaltenbrunner for the entrepreneur Fritz Westen to transport a column of trucks with valuables from Croatia. West arrived at Allen Welsh Dulles in Bern on February 28, 1945 .

After the end of the Second World War in Europe on May 8, 1945 , Höttl was to activate his contacts in Budapest and Bucharest via the SD radio station in Steyring with directional beacons for the Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) .

Höttl was arrested on May 12, 1945 on an alpine pasture near Altaussee.

After the Second World War

During the Nuremberg trial of the main war criminals , Höttl was available as a witness for the prosecution.

Prosecutor Major William F. Walsh quoted an affidavit from Höttl on December 14, 1945, dated November 26, 1945. According to this, Eichmann entrusted him with a “great imperial secret” at the end of August 1944: “ About four million Jews were killed in the various extermination camps during the period another 2 million died in other ways, the majority of which were shot dead by the task forces of the security police during the campaign against Russia . "

Höttl was recruited by CIA director Allen Welsh Dulles for the CIC in Linz , where he was employed until 1949. What he made himself available to the Allied secret services is largely in the dark. In the Salzkammergut , Höttl recruited an organization made up of former members of the SD, the Waffen-SS and officers of the Wehrmacht, as well as refugees from Balkan states. He also played a leading role in the establishment of contact by former National Socialists with the leadership of the ÖVP , the so-called Oberweiser Conference .

From 1952, Höttl headed the Bad Aussee private middle school , which took young people with school difficulties to the Matura . It was visited by Hans Pusch , Jochen Rindt and André Heller , among others . The latter referred to it as a "Nazi reservation". Höttl introduced him to the class on the first day of school in 1958 with the following words, alluding to his Jewish background, which was not lived in the family: "That's Heller, don't sit next to him, he's got bad blood."

In 1953 Höttl worked again for intelligence services under the code name "Papermill".

During the Eichmann trial , Höttl declared: "Eichmann was the freight forwarder to death."

Martin Haidinger , the historian and author of the book Wilhelm Höttl. Spy for Hitler and the USA , suggests that Höttl, together with his agent colleague Heinrich "Harry" Mast, may have been involved in the Mossad's finding of Eichmann in Argentina.

In 1961, the Aussee private secondary school was deprived of the right to hold school-leaving examinations, and in January 1964 it went bankrupt . It then came to the Bad Aussee community and has been a federal school since 1978 .

In the summer of 1995, Höttl received the Golden Medal of Honor of the State of Styria from Governor Josef Krainer, despite protests by the Mauthausen camp community, and was honored as a historian and school founder from Aussee.

Publications

• (as "Walter Hagen") The secret front. Organization, people and actions of the German secret service . Nibelungen-Verlag, Linz 1950
  • Abbreviated English translation: The Secret Front, Enigma Books, 1954
• (as "Walter Hagen") company Bernhard. A historical factual report on the greatest counterfeiting campaign of all time . Welsermühl Verlag, Wels and Starnberg 1955
• Commitment to the empire. In the foreign secret service of the Third Reich , Siegfried Bublies, Koblenz 1997, ISBN 3-926584-41-6 .

literature

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Höttl in the catalog of the German National Library
• Thorsten Querg: Wilhelm Höttl - From informant to Sturmbannführer in the security service of the SS , in: Historical racism research. Ideologists - perpetrators - victims. Edited by Barbara Danckwortt, Thorsten Querg and Claudia Schöningh. Argument-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1995 (Philosophy and Social Sciences Edition, Volume 30), pp. 209-230, ISBN 3-88619-630-5 .
• Gerald Steinacher : Nazis on the run. How war criminals escaped overseas via Italy. Studienverlag, Vienna / Innsbruck / Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-7065-4026-1 .
• Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 . (Updated 2nd edition).
• Martin Haidinger : Wilhelm Höttl. Spy for Hitler and the USA. Ueberreuter, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-8000-7730-4 .

Web links

• Documents from the US State Archives NARA

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Werner Liersch: Ernst Kaltenbrunner's Alpine production of the end of the Dead Mountains. In: Berliner Zeitung . April 23, 2005, accessed September 5, 2018 . 
2. ^ IMT: The Nuremberg Trial of the Major War Criminals. Reprint Munich 1989, ISBN 3-7735-2524-9 , Vol. XXXI, p. 85 (Document 2738-PS).
3. ↑ Martin Haidinger: School of maneuverability . In: The press . March 14, 2010, p. 22 ( online [accessed September 5, 2019]).
4. ↑ Ani Reng: The Austrian James Dean. (No longer available online.) July 1, 2010, archived from the original on April 25, 2015 ; accessed on September 5, 2018 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} André Heller "with the bad blood". In: The Standard . December 29, 2005, accessed September 5, 2018 . 
6. ↑ In the sights of the Nazi hunters . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 2001 ( online ).
7. ^ Richard Breitman: Records of the Central Intelligence Agency (RG 263). Retrieved September 5, 2018 . 
8. ↑ The labyrinth . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1961 ( online ).
9. ^ Martin Haidinger: Wilhelm Höttl. Spy for Hitler and the USA . Ueberreuter, Vienna 2019, ISBN 978-3-8000-7730-4 , pp. P. 159 ff .
10. ↑ The long way of the BORG Bad Aussee. In: mein district.at. January 7, 2015, accessed March 18, 2017 . 
11. ^ David Kahn: The Secret History of the Author of the Secret Front. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 7, 2004 ; accessed on September 5, 2018 .