He no longer could remember on which day he was given the order, but he was able to write down a rather long dialogue verbatim about the
project decades later. Obviously, he was given his mission before Mussolini had been returned to the political stage—meaning before September 14, 1943. Wolff had, as previously mentioned, two appointments with Hitler shortly before the arrival of the Duce at headquarters, one lasting ten minutes, the other twenty minutes. The shorter time span would have been just enough to speak of his first experiences and measures taken in Italy. During the second, Wolff introduced Professor Tassinari, his candidate for the position of prime minister of Italy, as already described.
During the following period, three times in October, twice in November, and once in December of 1943, Wolff had appointments with Hitler. According to his description, he reported on his preparations to occupy the Vatican, and at the same time, the information that he had come to a negative conclusion by trying to make it clear to Hitler how impractical it was to occupy the Vatican and kidnap the Pope. His reasoning was that the Church was the only authority that was recognized by all Italians, and whoever took action against it risked a popular rebellion. At some point in this time period, Wolff must have sent an oral message to the Pope through his colleague, Eugen Dollmann, who always maintained good relations with the Vatican. According to Dollmann the message was that the Pope had nothing to fear from the Germans as long as he, Karl Wolff, remained the Supreme SS and Police Führer in Italy. Were he to be replaced, it would be a sign that a harder policy had been decided.
Apparently all of this confirms the fact that Wolff was “completely credible,” according to the Jesuit Dr. Burkhardt Schneider, professor of recent Church history, “in recording the instructions he received from Hitler for a ‘liquidation’ of the Vatican, and describing his efforts to block this order.” However, Hitler’s intentions, as Wolff described them, were soon no longer a State Secret. At the end of September 1943 everyone in Rome was talking openly about an action against the Vatican being imminent. Indeed the entire area of Vatican City was surrounded by police checkpoints, but this was mostly to prevent the German deserters and the opponents of the Italian regime from finding extraterritorial shelter there.
On October 7, an RSI (Italian Social Republic) radio broadcast announced that as a precaution quarters were being prepared for the Pope in Germany. That was a false report. Consul Eitel Friedrich Moellhausen, at the time the highest-ranking German diplomat at the German embassy in Rome under Mussolini’s new regime, wrote that it was “not true that the Germans had decided to take the Holy Father away from Rome… All of these statements were exaggerations. Those responsible for German
policy, including Hitler, had at most only occasionally considered those issues, but it never came down to a serious decision.” “It is, however, possible” admitted Moellhausen, “that in the Party and in the SS there were men who would advocate such an atrocity.”
No doubt the consul was mainly thinking of Goebbels, Himmler, and above all Bormann.
Hardly anyone considered Mussolini as having any importance. “Every German and every Italian…is convinced that the Duce and the Italian government have no further authority,” said a report at the end of June written by the commanding general’s staff. In the next report, already written under Wolff, it was determined at the beginning of August that “the development of the general situation,” especially in the east and in Italy, as well as the strong increase of attacks and air raids … do not encourage … a positive attitude among the population toward the common prosecution of the war.” The report concluded, “that it was not possible to handle the conscription of the age group as planned for work in Germany nor to get the terrible situation with the partisans under control … There is increasing fear on the part of officials of working with the Germans. “Seven Germans were killed by an attack on a restaurant in Genoa, seventy communists were shot and all restaurants and bars were closed for a week.”
There were many signs indicating that Wolff, sooner or later, would no longer be involved in the war just sitting at his desk. Already in April 1944 his entire region was declared a “partisan war territory” and many protective measures became compulsory for all Germans. Secret instructions came from Himmler in June ordering “the construction of an SS fortification, to research a site for the reconnaissance of the Italian border defense installations.” Also the Karst Caves in Krain and on the Adriatic coastal region—all of this being part of Wolff’s territory—were to be explored as defensive positions. He now also had to clear out any areas that could fall into enemy hands during an unavoidable retreat in the near future. Everything that could be used by the Reich was to be removed; machines, vehicles, precious metal, resources, finished goods, food, even livestock and horses were taken north. From the area around Rome 35, 000 heads of livestock were removed in this manner; it would have been twice as many had the enemy not advanced so quickly. Indeed, they did not leave only the “scorched earth” as it happened in the east, but the Allies would encounter enough difficulties in an emptied land since their soldiers were quite a mixed society: Americans, Britons, Canadians and other units from the Empire, French and North Africans, a Polish legion.
After the war Wolff prided himself a great deal in the fact that he saved many art and cultural treasures from being destroyed in the areas threatened by fighting by transporting them to safe locations. The initiative for this, however, came from Hitler, who ordered Wolff and Rahn to have cultural possessions moved by professionals from central Italy to Rome and Florence because there, under the status of the open city, they would be fairly well protected. In the second half of July there was fighting in the area around Florence and Wolff’s representatives, with the help of soldiers, collected paintings from the houses and castles that were already in the line of enemy artillery fire.
Wolff reported one such rescue to Himmler by telegram. It involved two paintings by Lucas Cranach, entitled “Adam” and “Eve.” Wolff remembered that “the Führer … during his visit to Florence” (on October 28, 1940) had “particularly appreciated” those pictures. Now they were brought to Bergamo and Wolff asked in his telegram whether they “should be taken to Führer headquarters so that the Führer could be in control of the famous pictures that we saved.”
Until then Wolff had always opposed this method of collecting art. He soon discovered that Marshal Hermann Göring had many freight cars of such stolen property attached to the back of his special train by an art commission working for him. Wolff told Mussolini, who absolutely forbade the export of all artwork, thus forcing Göring to leave without his valuable loot. However, now there was an opportunity to please the Führer; for that Wolff was prepared to make an exception. But at headquarters, the offer was rejected, with a heavy heart. The Cranach paintings, as well as a number of other works of art, were to be stored in the South Tyrol, so that “for now the authority of the Italian state would not be offended.” “However, it had to be made clear that the place where the paintings were located would, in any case, be under German protection.”
A few days before the exchange of telegrams, Wolff was at Führer headquarters, together with the man he could not let travel unguarded and for whose security and presence he was totally responsible. The day of the visit with Hitler was July 20, 1944—a day that not only became memorable because the two dictators saw each other for the last time, before they both died almost simultaneously nine months later. It was also the day of the assassination attempt, when the conspirators—mainly army officers—wanted to save the German people and the Reich from complete catastrophe with a bomb attack to kill Hitler. There were no great state initiatives taken on that visit, as had always been customary, since the
meeting took place incidentally. Mussolini wanted to check on the Italian nationals whom fate had brought to the Reich. This was not only four divisions of his future army; the more urgent cases were the so-called “civilian internees,” the slave workers, who had refused to serve in the Italian army and were, therefore, confined to work camps. After various visits together with Wolff, Mussolini wanted to negotiate with Hitler about the fate of those Italians.
At the end of his trip to Germany, with his small entourage and Wolff, Mussolini was expected at the “Wolfsschanze” at 3:00 p.m. on the train platform. It was noticeable that the guards were inspecting the special train particularly carefully this time. As the guest and the host greeted each other, Hitler only offered his left hand to Mussolini, contrary to his habit. A black cape hid the fact that he could only move his right arm with difficulty. As the two walked into the third circle, with Wolff following them, Hitler recounted what had happened: approximately two and a half hours before, during the situation report in one of the cabins, a bomb exploded under a heavy oak table. Several people were killed and many others were injured.
The main foreign office interpreter, Dr. Paul Schmidt, accompanied the group to the scene. He saw “a picture of devastation,” as if there had been a heavy air raid. “In shock,” Mussolini’s eyes “almost popped out of his head.” After Hitler also showed the Duce his uniform that had been completely torn to shreds by the blast and the singed hairs on his neck, did the “superstitious southerner” rate Hitler’s survival as “a sign from heaven” and a guarantee of victory.
It was agreed that the “war-internees would be transferred to the status of free workers or set to work as assistants within the framework of the German Wehrmacht.” That was the communiqué. But Wolff was much more interested in the repercussions of the assassination attempt, what the investigation would reveal, who would have to be killed, and who would inherit the positions that now became free within the power apparatus of the Third Reich. It would lead us too far from our subject to describe the conspirators’ plan, their connections, the course of action, and finally the reasons for their failure. It was the seriously wounded Colonel Claus Count Schenk von Stauffenberg who brought the bomb, equipped with a time detonator, in his brief case, placed it under the map table in the meeting room, and left headquarters immediately after the explosion. He returned to Berlin where he was to take over the leadership of the revolt. He was very quickly identified as the assassin and had already mistakenly alerted his co-conspirators with the news over the telephone that Hitler was dead.
Upon hearing this, they had begun taking over in the garrisons using the code word “Walküre.” Due to a ridiculous coincidence, their plan failed in a decisive place, the capital of the Reich, where the occupation of the government quarter was to be handled by the guard regiment. An officer of that unit, who was told that the SS had murdered Hitler and that he must thwart their putsch, was able to speak with the “dead” Hitler on the telephone. Hitler ordered him to shoot anyone “who tries to disobey my orders.” The rebellion fell apart.
From the point of view of the “Wolfsschanze” what mattered the most was to get the Wehrmacht units stationed in Germany under control. They reported to the Supreme Commander of the replacement army Senior General Friedrich Fromm. He was suspected of being a conspirator and was dismissed for that reason. Hitler considered Himmler, the most loyal of his loyal henchmen, as Reichsführer SS and Chief of the German police, Reich Minister of the Interior and holder of other positions as the least dangerous successor to Fromm. Wolff described, as “one of the few” who was present at this appointment, how Hitler asked the supreme commanders of the three sectors of the Wehrmacht for their opinion regarding this change. Göring’s comment was, “My Führer, why, on this sad occasion, at which the only good thing is that you are still alive, don’t you make Himmler Minister of War? Then we would finally have a clear set-up again.” (As quoted by Wolff.)
According to Wolff, this was to be the “reform that was already long overdue.” But Himmler, “true to his hesitant manner” thought about it and finally answered in a quiet, pathetic voice: “Mein Führer, I’ll be able to manage the way I am.” Then Hitler is supposed to have said to him: “Fly immediately to Berlin and take care of things at the source of the fire. You have every authority. Step in! Better too much and too harsh than too little.” Together the Reichsführer SS and his Obergruppenführer, once again as close as they had ever been, drove to the airport. On the way, Wolff asked Himmler why he had turned down the Ministry of War. “Ah, Wölfchen,” Himmler is supposed to have said, “the chubby one” (as General Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the OKW, was called in the highest circles) “stood across from me, and he was always so decent. I would have taken his position away!”
Heinrich Himmler was used to stopping at nothing; stepping over dead bodies, even millions of them. But, according to Wolff, he was so sensitive that he could not manage to take the job away from a field marshal who was called a “Lackey” by his officers because he only said what
Hitler wanted to hear, and proved to be more obedient than competent. But before wondering about Himmler’s soft heart, we should ponder the reasons why the Reichsführer SS happened to take the Highest SS and Police Führer in Italy, of all people, with him to the criminal court in Berlin. It would have been more fitting to take the Head of the Gestapo and a number of executioners. Did Hitler think that Wolff would be better acquainted with the circles of resistance than the Gestapo official who was responsible for them? Wolff and Himmler had withstood the critical Langbehn and Popitz affair together, coming out of it unscathed, although the Gestapo Chief and SS Obergruppenführer Heinrich Müller had set up the intrigue very cleverly against both of them. Dr. Langbehn was still in Gestapo custody because of his conspiracy with OSS in Switzerland, but he revealed nothing about his conversations with the SS leaders about replacing Hitler, knowing full well that he could sign his own death warrant with that information.