The Germans expected that Mussolini would finally govern—naturally in name only, since Hitler and his governors Wolff and Rahn were to make all key decisions. For a long time they hesitated as to where Mussolini could reside in the future. Rome was not suitable: the enemy was already too near and the people of the great city were hard to control. In the cities of the north, industrial workers were too rebellious. Because Mussolini felt homesick for his family home at Rocca delle Caminate, Wolff picked him up from Hirschberg by car on September 23. From Munich they flew over the Alps together. Mussolini took over the controls on the plane for a time. From the airport at Forlì they drove into the mountains. The family home resembled a fifteenth century fortress, but had actually been built in the 1930s. There was a guard at the gate; Wolff had ordered a unit of the SS Leibstandarte unit garrisoned nearby, which now presented arms, wearing white leather trimmed uniforms.
On the same day Wolff flew hurriedly on to Rome. It became urgent to find a credible minister of defense for the new government. Rahn and Wolff invited Marshal Rodolfo Graziani to the embassy where they successfully appealed to his love of country saying that with his cooperation, they could prove to Hitler, who was complaining loudly, that true Italians wanted no part of traitors like Badoglio.
In August, while he was still in Munich, Wolff wrote to his ex-wife, telling her how “happily and confidenuy he had taken on “his first big and independent task. The trust of Hitler and of the Reichsführer SS is a great source of pride for me.” In another letter dated September 29, he admitted, “I have never worked as hard as in the last fourteen days…often without sleep, seldom more than three or four hours. But it gives me indescribable pleasure to finally be able to be doing and mastering something independently. Conditions in Italy are actually extremely difficult at the moment and the police force that is available to me is ridiculously small, but that is what makes this especially fun.”
In writing this, he had already located what was to be Mussolini’s residence: on Lake Garda, in one of the most charming landscapes in Italy, protected from the cold and storms by high mountains on three sides, and where spas function throughout the year. Until then, the confiscated hotels and feudal homes were used for injured and recovering soldiers, and the valley had been declared a hospital area. Now those buildings were being cleared out for Mussolini, his family, his entourage, the ministers and the authorities of the new state, and naturally also for the German officers and guards. All of them would use Red Cross markings; the Allied air force left the region almost undisturbed.
Himmler’s disfavor, if it was of the intensity described by Wolff, was long forgotten and he was again friendly and full of goodwill. In a top-secret speech Himmler gave in Posen on October 4, 1943, he boasted long and wide about the murder of the Jews in the extermination camps. The SS had “persevered, when 500 here or 1, 000 there…this is a glorious chapter in our history that was never written and never will be written.” The entire upper echelon of leadership listened, with the exception of Wolff. He was involved in Italy, but he must have been able to read the text of the speech a few days later at Himmler’s field headquarters, because he was mentioned and celebrated by Himmler as one of his closest and oldest colleagues.” Furthermore, he was praised for his ability to handle turf disputes; when ugly situations surfaced everyone involved
became responsible for their resolution. Himmler was again addressing his letters to Wolff as “dear Wölfchen.”
Now that the persecution of the Jews had taken on its most dreadful form, Wolff could not possibly think he could make an exception for Italy. Wolff knew that Himmler had been working on enlisting the Duce to an aggressive form of anti-Semitism. In October 1942 the Reichsführer SS traveled to Rome with Wolff for that specific reason. A report summarized what Himmler and Mussolini had discussed during a confidential conversation. The Jews—as Himmler summarized his arguments—were “responsible for sabotage, espionage…as well as the formation of rebel gangs…in Russia we had to shoot a number…of men and women.” Furthermore, Wolff found out from a report from the OKW that since the beginning of December 1942, all the Jews in the Italian-occupied zones of France were to be arrested, but that this agreement with the Italian command had been sabotaged. He also knew that in January 1943 Ribbentrop had pressured the government in Rome “to adapt your procedures against the Jews to ours.”
All of these warnings—Wolff also knew this—remained unsuccessful. The current dogmas about race in Germany were incomprehensible to the Italians. Even if Wolff did not want to order any anti-Semitic actions, he could expect that Himmler would quickly find out about any delay in the persecution of the Jews, since he was now in charge of the area. At the beginning of October he found out from Friedrich Moellhausen, the consul at the German embassy in Rome, that SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler, who was in charge of the German Security Police in Rome, was given the order to “arrest” the 8, 000-odd Jews living in the capital “and take them to northern Italy, where they were to be liquidated.” The sentence is quoted from a telegram dated October 6 that Moellhausen used to enlist his superior, von Ribbentrop, to counter Himmler’s plans. He would have liked to address Wolff, but he was traveling and reporting to Hitler at headquarters late in the afternoon of the following day regarding the situation in Italy.
Moellhausen’s attempt at an objection ended in a rebuff from Berlin: “The Herr RAM [Reich Foreign Minister] requests that you inform Ambassador Rahn and Consul Moellhausen that on the grounds of an order from the Führer, the 8, 000 Jews living in Rome are to be taken as hostages to Mauthausen. The Herr RAM requests that you instruct Rahn and Moellhausen that they are in no way to interfere in this matter, but are to leave it up to the SS.”
This meant: keep your fingers out of things that are none of your business. The mention of Mauthausen was clearly a lie; everyone in the know within the Nazi leadership was fully aware that such transports ended straight into the gas chambers and crematoriums, and that Mauthausen was a concentration camp used for the purpose of murder, not an extermination camp. Particularly offensive in Berlin was the fact that Moellhausen had used the word “liquidated” in his telegram. Not even Himmler managed to be so direct in his correspondence.
However, Moellhausen knew since September 26 the kind of threat hanging over the Jews of Rome. On that day, he found out that Hauptsturmführer Theodor Dannecker, a representative of SS Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann, arrived in Rome, and was well aware of the kind of work this SS officer from the Jewish affairs office of the Gestapo and the SD specialized in. Wolff was still in Italy at the end of September, so he must have known about Dannecker’s arrival. According to regulations every SS officer had to report to the appropriate Higher SS and Police Chief if he wanted to work in his jurisdiction.
Did the mass murderer Dannecker somehow not report to Wolff? Or did Wolff not know at that time what kind of work Eichmann and his men were doing? Or did Wolff leave on a business trip because he did not want to know what was going to happen to the Jews in Rome? Eichmann would have said, in such a case, that Wolff once again put on his white gloves.
Already on October 14, a group of one hundred SS ransacked the synagogues and their offices in the Jewish quarter. Two days later, on the Sabbath, the quarter was being combed by patrols. Kappler led the operation, calling “to action all available forces of the security and order police.” In his report to Berlin, he immediately added that “the participation of the Italian police was impossible…due to its unreliability in this area.” The population was also said to have practiced “passive resistance,” “which in many individual instances became active help” (for those persecuted). Instead of 8, 000 Jews, less than 1, 000 ended up in the clutches of the SS. Two days later, on the morning of October 18, they were loaded into railroad freight cars and taken away to Auschwitz. During Wolff’s reign as “Viceroy,” a total of about 7, 000 Italian Jews were deported, with most of them ending up being murdered.
During the Munich criminal proceedings, Wolff denied responsibility for the operations against the Italian Jews and correctly pointed out that the orders came from the RSHA Main Office and were sent directly
to the commander of the SD. This was the normal procedure for deportations. It was of course also the usual manner by which the responsible Highest SS and Police Chief was informed of planned operations; he could, if necessary, “become involved and alter routine measures.”
We have found no document showing that Wolff was told about the deportation of the Jews on October 16, since he was either at Himmler’s field headquarters or in the neighboring Führer headquarters when it took place. From there, he cabled instructions to his Italian office to pass along several orders to Obersturmbannführer Kappler. The contents of the orders are unknown; the files only show a confirmation dated October 18, that these “instructions were passed on according to instructions.” At the same time Wolff received Kappler’s telegraphed report about the raid in Rome along with the notice “Urgent! Secret! Present immediately!” The contents, Wolff said after the war, deeply disturbed him but he learned of the operation so late that he could have done nothing to prevent it.
Why was that not possible? The raid was on October 16 and he was informed on October 18—the day the train loaded, with its victims, left Rome going north. The railroad network was so busy at that time that transports of this type rolled along for days before they reached their destinations. Most probably and theoretically the train could have been stopped before it reached the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. But that would have required a heroic decision.
During the Munich court proceedings, Wolff considered himself exonerated by the cable with Kappler’s report; it proved that he was not present during the events. The prosecutor reached other conclusions, namely, that Wolff had it sent to him with extreme urgency because on the following day, October 19, he was invited, together with Himmler, to have lunch with Hitler and wanted to use that opportunity to show how energetically he was following orders. The meal offered plenty of time; it lasted two hours.
Understandably, after the end of the war, he did not like to speak about the persecution of the Jews, or if necessary, only very casually. During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, Karl Wolff was also questioned as a witness on that issue to describe what had been going on in Italy. He said: “I vaguely remember that—I believe in the summer of 1943, September, or it could have been October—at the very beginning, when I was sent to. Italy and not quite fully trained—an order came from Berlin, as a reminder from Himmler, that Jews in Italy were to be arrested and deported to the Reich. As I remember, at that time in total, there were approximately 1, 050
Jews in all of Italy, so that means it was quite clearly not a very high percentage…that was handed over to the Reich.” One must therefore assume that during the months of captivity, probably because of deprivations, the witness’ great memory, so often praised, was at least temporarily damaged.
In the days preceding the persecution of the Jews, Wolff was unavailable to Consul Moellhausen in Rome; the Highest SS and Police Chief was busy looking for a suitable residence for Mussolini’s republic. However, he did not decide this alone: Rommel, whose headquarters were located at the northern end of Lake Garda, and Ambassador Rahn—in fact, everyone claims to have been with Wolff in choosing the seat of the new Fascist government. Only Mussolini was not pleased with the location. He needed many people around him, an audience that he could excite with his speeches. The narrow strip of land on the banks of Lake Garda was barely wide enough to accommodate all the functionaries, soldiers, German and Italian police officers, and servants. Besides that, Mussolini accused the Germans of having put him in a sack on Lake Garda. It is true that a single road along the lake connected the valley to the rest of the world, and that single traffic route could be blocked from the north and the south very easily. However, Mussolini no longer had enough energy to get his way with his rescuers, protectors, and guards. On October 8, 1943, as he got into his car at the Rocca delle Caminate, he did not even know exactly where the trip would end. He had only been told that Lake Garda was the destination.
Wolff was waiting for him in Verona and invited him to take a seat in his car. Followed by a small convoy of other cars full of SS officers and a few fascists, they reached the southern tip of the lake after one half hour. Turning north and following the bank of the lake, they reached Salò, the town that would soon give the new state its unofficial name and its somewhat disparaging title of “Republic of Salò.” Wolff had placed himself and his staff in the neighboring town of Fasano. He had prepared the residence of the head of state at Gargnano, less than a dozen kilometers further north, where he ordered one of the most luxurious houses cleared out. It belonged to the rich Feltrinelli business family from Milan, had more than thirty rooms, and was decorated with furniture considered particularly beautiful, in “Liberty” turn-of-the-century style.
The driveway was narrow and full of curves. The mountain rose up steep and jagged behind the villa that remained hidden by very tall trees. Wolff’s security measures were perfect. A branch of the SD constantly
checked everyone living at the house, the servants and any visitors. All telephone conversations were tapped. Posts and patrols made up of SS troops and Italian militia guarded the park and the entrances. For one month, the head of state lived practically alone in the huge building. A blonde German woman, who was both nurse and housekeeper named Irma, took care of him, and it was being whispered that she had a relationship with her employer. In November Rachele Mussolini was ready to move in.
Mussolini’s feeling of being a prisoner was justified, even if Wolff made every effort to let him feel that way only on occasion. One could not deny that the road going north, high above the lake through the tunnel in the rocks, reached the temporary border of the Republic only after a few kilometers. There began the “Operational Zone Foothills of the Alps” that Rommel had set up, and anyone seeking to travel to Trent and Bolzano needed a permit. Rommel did not like the Italians. He blamed them for his defeat in North Africa—due to their aversion to dying a hero’s death and their leadership’s protective attitude toward their fleet, rather than providing more supplies for the Africa Korps. Rommel offered his opinion quite often with Swabian directness. Mussolini got wind of it, and held it against him. It also bothered the Duce that in the First World War, former Captain Erwin Rommel beat the Italians in the Alps at Caporetto, earning the medal “Pour le merite” in doing so.