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Hitler’s Table Talk 1941–1944
, H. R. Trevor-Roper, ed. (New York: Enigma Books, 2000), pp. 142-3, 145.
**
Hitler and His Generals: Military Conferences 1942—1945
, Helmut Heiber and David M. Glantz, eds. (New York: Enigma Books, 2003), p. 216.
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Obergruppenführer.
A
t five o’clock in the morning Mussolini called “comrade” Wolff. The former SS general recounted the conversation verbatim in various reports. The basic thrust was always the same, to find out what Mussolini wanted and Wolff’s reply. He basically evaded the Ciano issue, saying that it was solely an Italian matter; as an SS commander, he was not allowed to take a position. But the Duce begged him further; personally and confidentially the general certainly could give him an answer. “What would you do in my position?” was the question. The answer: “Remain firm!” Wolff also confirmed that it would harm Mussolini’s reputation with the Führer if he did not carry out the sentence.
With a delay, at nine o’clock instead of at six, the condemned men were taken from their cells and driven by car to the shooting range at the Verona Rifle Club where they were tied to chairs. Perhaps a few placating words from Wolff to the leader of the Italian Social Republic would have convinced him to disregard Hitler’s expectations. He did not find these words, although the five men who were shot that morning had only attempted to do what Wolff would do one year later—namely, to get out of a hopeless war, against the will of the head of state. Wolff also ran the temporary risk of facing a firing squad, but he was luckier (or more skillful) than the renegades of Fascism.
If the Highest SS and Police Führer in Italy had been forced to objectively evaluate his own situation, he would have had to admit that he was already in the process of betraying his supreme Führer and Commander in Chief—at least in his mind. Up to that point, he had always interpreted Party dogma his own way, and only followed it if it did not interfere with his own inclinations. As he saw it there had never been a philosophically well-formulated National Socialist ideology. Anyone who believed only in the swastika and the principle that the Führer was always right, and could make no mistakes. Yet SS Obergruppenführer Wolff increasingly doubted the validity of that statement, because he could see that a coming twilight of the gods would not spare him either. As long as there were peacetime successes and the victories at war showed that the so-called Providence would lead to greatness and honor the German people through Adolf Hitler, Wolff had never doubted that principle. However, the military defeats and the political slip-ups led him to doubt Hitler and the system allowing just one man to make every decision alone: less power to the Führer and more authority to his advisors. Popitz and Langbehn wanted to win the SS over to their revolt against dictatorship with that formula and now Wolff and Himmler were pursuing their ideas.
The two guardians of the Führer’s unlimited power still used the alibi of being in enemy territory during their conversations with the “enemies of the state.” Wolff’s attempts to venture into uncharted waters while he was “viceroy of Italy” could hardly be justified by this line of reasoning anymore. Badoglio had collaborated with the enemy on a military level, Ciano in the political arena; Wolff could not achieve anything in either of those areas at present, and so he ventured onto the thin ice of ideological heresy. He looked for contacts and allies in the clergy where, according to orthodox SS teaching, there lurked the archenemies of the Germanic soul.
He went about this through Ernst Freiherr von Weiszäcker, German ambassador to the Holy See. The ambassador was a traditionalist of the Protestant faith and a fundamentally tolerant Swabian liberal. That was the main reason Ribbentrop, whom he had served as secretary of state, had appointed him to what appeared to be a meaningless position. But in the meantime, the embassy became important, because in the Vatican, separated only by a white line from the city of Rome, the diplomats of the warring countries met in close quarters. Therefore, Wolff’s question whether anyone among the politicians on the enemy side was willing to discuss a peace agreement, was dealing with the right person in Weiszäcker,
who could easily hold such discussions. Both men agreed that Germany could neither win the war nor dictate the peace. That was the kind of thinking keeping the Gestapo and the special courts busy at that time.
With this kind of trust, Wolff said during one of their conversations that he would like to discuss the world situation with the highest dignitary in the Vatican. The ambassador was glad to help, and with the hesitation customary among diplomats, he told Wolff to come and meet the rector of the German theological college at the Vatican, Dr. Ivo Zeiger, a Jesuit priest, at the embassy at the beginning of December 1943. The priest was surprised—he later admitted—that such a high ranking SS officer, who in addition to that had been Himmler’s right-hand man until recently, would get together with a Jesuit, of all people, since the order of the Society of Jesus was “on the black list of the authorities of the Third Reich.” (It must be remembered that Heinrich Himmler as well as Wolff had always secretly admired the rules and discipline of the Society of Jesus and copied some of the regulations of the Jesuit order when establishing the General SS.)
Wolff did not come to the meeting alone and brought the shrewd SS Standartenführer Eugen Dollmann as a witness. Wolff hoped that the Vatican would support him in his search for a bridge to the western Allies. The man who had left a Christian church to become one of Himmler’s SS generals had a powerful motto; in their fight against the godless Marxists, Leninists, and Stalinists, the Germans are in the final analysis also defending the Catholic Church, therefore Hitler and the Pope should actually, in principle, be allies. But up to now the Vatican Curia had not endorsed the struggle undertaken by Germany.
The priest did not list the things that separated their positions. He barely mentioned the “horrible measures” that “were taken by German officials behind the frontline.” He mentioned in particular that the clergy in Poland was being persecuted and that awful things were taking place in the concentration camps. At that time, the priest possibly did not know about the systematic murder of the Jews. But those hints were enough for Wolff to avoid arguing with him. Father Zeiger noted Wolff’s answer: “Yes, these things are very sad. I thank fate—or if you will, the Lord God—that I had nothing to do with those ugly things.” The words—Zeiger noted—“stuck in his memory even more” because Wolff “made some sharp critical comments…” in the presence of Standartenführer Dollmann and the ambassador, “which according to the way the system worked at the time…could have been dangerous.”
As Wolff assured the Jesuit priest that “as the German Police Chief in Italy with the top responsibility” it was his “firm intention to avoid all unnecessary difficulties for the Holy See, the Church, and other institutions.” Zeiger took Wolff to task and said that “in a fight with partisans on the Slovenian border an older leader of the Carthusian religious order whom I know well was taken prisoner by the Germans. I know that he certainly did nothing wrong politically.”
Father Zeiger’s request did not fall on deaf ears. Several days later Josip Edgar Leopold—the Carthusian father superior—was released from jail in Laibach on condition that in the future he move to a South Tyrolean cloister of his order. By the way, he had been arrested for a reason, and had been found guilty in a criminal trial for offering support to the partisans, and, for that, had been sentenced to death. With his release, Wolff passed the first test of being well regarded by the Church. “The Vatican wants to find out … who this General Wolff really is,” Leopold later recalled.
Shortly after that Wolff was tested a second time. Donna Virginia Agnelli, the wife of one of the owners of the Fiat automobile companies, also lived in Rome at the time—where she was at the center of the most influential social circles—she was also by birth a Princess Bourbon del Monte. The Fiat companies made handsome profits during the war, but the Princess nevertheless thought the Germans were even worse barbarians than the Fascists. She didn’t even attempt to hide her thoughts when she spoke to friends and acquaintances on the telephone, but because she knew that her conversations were tapped, she spoke in English, never even considering, however, that someone in the SD understood the language. In short, the Italian police arrested the Princess.
Since the top clergy, and even a cardinal, often visited her drawing room, many in the Vatican were concerned about the Princess’ accommodations. They also remembered having occasionally met SS Colonel Eugen Dollmann, a sensitive art connoisseur and brilliant conversationalist, in the Agnelli drawing room. Dollmann was now wearing his black SS uniform thickly decorated with a great deal of tinsel. Someone spoke to him; he went to Wolff and obtained orders to free Virginia Agnelli from prison. The Highest SS and Police Führer also helped her travel to Switzerland and his reward was the promise that the Pope would see him in a secret private audience.
The meeting took place in the afternoon of May 10, 1944. It was the first and certainly the only time that Pius XII met with a leading SS officer. Wolff, wearing a civilian suit, came to the cloister of the Salvatorian
Order, near the Vatican, where the prior, Dr. Pankratius Pfeiffer, would escort him to the Pope’s private library. On this occasion also, Dr. Dollmann was used as go-between and escort, to request the release of a prisoner almost as a way of gaining entry into the Vatican. The son of a Roman lawyer was in prison for his Communist activities. Wolff promised he would try. But the case only progressed slowly. The prisoner remained in custody almost a month; he was released only a few hours before the Germans pulled out of Rome on June 5, 1944.
Wolff, who spoke no Italian, could converse with the Pope in German. What they discussed and whether the Highest SS and Police Chief agreed to anything with the Pontifex Maximus of the Catholic Church is still kept secret. They agreed to maintain confidentiality and there were no witnesses present. The Vatican had given no notice of this meeting; they had not even recorded it on the visitor’s list. Understandably, the SS general was also careful not to publicize the meeting at first. It would be revealed only many years after the war. During the one-hour conversation, he probably argued once more that the enemies of atheism had to fight the Bolsheviks together.
Wolff often wrote about that event, but in many pages he managed to say almost nothing. Despite the many words, he kept his promise of secrecy. In several sentences, he quoted the Pope verbatim—using his astounding memory. “Smiling, the Pope said: ‘How much misfortune could have been avoided had God led you to me earlier!’”
It seems strange for the highest authority in the Catholic church to have said that, since it implies a criticism of God for not bringing Karl Wolfffrom Darmstadt together with Eugenio Pacelli, the current Pope in Rome, in time. Pius XII cannot have viewed the situation so naively; he was a priest with a lot of experience of the world. From his many diplomatic missions, he was well aware of his own influence as well as that of an SS Obergruppenführer. When bidding farewell, he was also to have said, “You are doing something difficult, General Wolff!” Almost the identical words were supposedly said to Martin Luther in 1521 at the Reichstag in Worms as he began his mission. We cannot say whether the Pope or the SS general remembered that quote.
On the other hand, we do know that Wolff, getting ready to take his leave, stood at attention on the threshold and gave the Nazi salute with his right arm raised. The Pope viewed the gesture as a matter of habit, attaching no other significance to it. Wolff never mentioned that detail in recalling his audience with the Pope.
The many accounts that appeared over several decades may have led the Vatican to keep a detailed record of everything the SS general said about Pius XII. The Vatican is interested in sainthood for Pope Pacelli, and that strictly regulated procedure requires that everything known about the life and work of the subject must be carefully recorded. The consistory of the archbishopric of Munich and Freising heard the retired general as witness, recorded his statements and requested at the same time that these be kept confidential. The consistory wrote Wolff a letter dated March 28, 1972, thanking him. It also emerged from this letter that Wolff had provided a “record” for the files of his “conversations with Adolf Hitler from September through December 1943 regarding the instructions for the occupation of the Vatican and the abduction of the Pope.” It may be assumed that in the course of the procedure of beatification this episode from the history of the Third Reich will be examined and possibly even cleared up.
The events are not as clear as Wolff described them. Following his report, no one besides Heinrich Himmler and himself were to be informed of Hitler’s decisions. It was a State Secret. Documents, orders of any kind, or even a hint in some file cannot be found. In all probability they never existed. What does exist and in writing at the time were only Hitler’s two statements, already mentioned in the
Table Talk
. One is confirmed by an annotation by Joseph Goebbels in his diary on July 27, 1943, two days after the fall of the Duce, where he mentions Hitlerintention to occupy the Vatican. Kidnapping the Pope, however, was not mentioned. The files also show that Martin Bormann, secretary to the Führer and unquestionably the most influential person within the permanent entourage, had a fanatical hatred of the Catholic church, the clergy, and most certainly the Pope. There is also no evidence showing that in those days he repeatedly mentioned that the undefended Vatican could be neutralized in one nonviolent sweep of the hand. On top of that, because Hitler was convinced that the Pope was involved in the fall of the Duce, it is certain that at the end of July 1943 and in the first weeks of August, acts of violence against the seat of the Catholic church were taken into consideration. It is therefore also logical that Hitler had discussed it with Wolff, the highest police officer in Italy. The “personal credit” that Wolff frequently mentions also makes it absolutely believable that the talkative Hitler did not carefully measure his words.