Wolff explained his uncommonly rapid rise by saying that Himmler needed the advice and help of someone with experience at the front who had been decorated for bravery. The Reichsführer had had the bad luck that World War I ended before military cadet Heinrich Himmler could be transferred from the garrison to the front where he could have experienced his baptism under fire. A man who received his commission while under enemy fire (as did Wolff) was enriched with particular experience in leading men.
The retired lieutenant successfully played up to the glorification of the soldier at the front, which retired lance corporal Adolf Hitler had elevated to a dogma of his Party. It is still rather difficult to explain, however, why an adjutant of Himmler’s at that time was required to have had such experiences, since the Black Corps was not made up of soldiers, but rather of political activists. A civil war was no longer expected after the seizure of power had been carried out so harshly. Fights still took place only between Party comrades, but instead of shooting with powder and lead, they savaged each other with rumors and slander.
One salvo in that war was a Prussian law enacted by Göring on November 30, 1933, removing the secret police in Prussia from the state ministry of the interior and placing it directly under his authority as prime minister. This move spoiled Himmler’s chances of ever having a unified political police throughout the Reich. So the Reichsführer found the time to concern himself once again with his SS. Imitating his model Hitler, he went out into the streets, in a snappy open Maybach automobile, driving to the locations of all the SS units and giving speeches in front of the assembled troops. On these occasions Wolff, as his constant companion, was to arrange the visitor’s program and, together with local leaders, be sure that the Reichsführer was always received with the appropriate ritual. Sometimes these business trips were arranged with the ladies: on the front seat was the Reichsführer with his wife, Marga, a nurse and the daughter of a West Prussian landowner and seven years older than her husband; and Wolff and his wife Frieda. The couples grew even closer socially, outside of their work.
In those days Wolff had to hear Himmler’s standard speech everywhere they went: the SS is an order into which one is sworn for his entire life; the SS is the racial elite of the German people; the SS as a guard that practices National Socialism in its purest form; the SS are the toughest fighters against Freemasons, Jews, Marxists, democrats, pacifists, and anyone with foreign beliefs; the SS are protectors of German virtues of
loyalty, honesty, cleanliness, humility; the SS is an environment of unconditional obedience. Such statements were the confirmation for Wolff of a belief rooted in his early youth: the Germans are the elite of humanity, the SS is the elite of the German people, and whoever in this corps is called to be a leader, and is logically the elite of the elite.
Wolff felt his anger even more justified upon hearing and seeing how the Sturmabteilung of the SA, a competitive command of retired captain Ernst Röhm, was discrediting the new and better Germany As he arrived in Breslau with Himmler, the waiters at the best hotel in town told him that the leader of the Silesian SA, the gigantic Obergruppenführer Edmund Heines (a retired lieutenant of a volunteer corps, death squad killer, professional revolutionary, and the main figure in a homosexual ring), made it his habit of holding wild drinking bouts in the hotel, turning off the lights by shooting at them with a pistol. In Röhm’s Berlin staff headquarters on Matthäi-Kirch-Strasse, Wolff was able to see for himself how the victory over the “system, namely democracy,” was still being celebrated with incredible amounts of French champagne, cognac, and heavy Bordeaux wines. There was no longer a lack of money; Röhm had increased his unit to more than three million members and more or less forcibly integrated them into the SA. This group was originally a monarchist-leaning “steel helmet unit of soldiers from the front.” The puritan Himmler was especially incensed at the excesses of alcohol. He told Wolff that the Reich treasurer, Xaver Schwarz, administrator of all Party funds, had already cautioned the SA leadership that they should at least use, in a more economical, nationally conscious manner, German champagne, German brandies, and Rhein wines.
Historians are still debating whether Chief of Staff Röhm, as Hitler later maintained, was actually planning his break from the Führer by the end of June 1934. Because of his position, Wolff could have been expected to add important information shedding light on the matter. This was not the case. Of course, Wolff mentioned events that he viewed as a plot involving high treason, but these are simply the observations of a man who was not directly involved in the mass murder ordered by Hitler on June 30, 1934, but certainly one of those who benefited from the bloodbath. It was even obvious to him that resentment had built up among the SA men of long standing service because they fared worst when it came to dividing the spoils of victory. For many of them the slogan and promise “Work and Bread” remained unfulfilled, despite the fact that the number of unemployed had already been reduced by half. Often people from
the old days still occupied those extremely desirable positions at the administrative desks, not out of generosity, but because the new government could not operate without their knowledge. Party administrators now occupied the positions of their political opponents who had been removed from those attractive posts. Following Hitler’s seizure of power, the majority of those working in civil service demonstrated amazing flexibility and declared themselves very quickly in favor of the new Germany by donning the uniform of one of the many satellite organizations of the NSDAP. Others found friends and protectors among the higher ranks of the National Socialists. The “Night of the Long Knives” itself should never have happened. This was the night when the brown shirted thugs and sadists expected to be rewarded for their efforts during the so-called period of struggle. Was the SA at all necessary anymore? Many asked themselves this question. The slogan was being spread that the National Socialist revolution still needed to be completed so that Hitler could free himself from the bourgeois constraints of the capitalists and other big shots.
Supported by this emotional dissatisfaction, the head of the SA doubtlessly set his sights on his own goals. He gladly allowed himself to be called the Napoleon of the twentieth century; he considered himself capable, just like the great Corsican, of leading his Fatherland to fame and greatness. A people’s militia would step in to take the place of the Reichswehr with its long-serving soldiers. The militia was not to be led by the old fogies of a politically uninvolved officer corps, but rather by young revolutionaries. At first, the SA should carry weapons and be placed alongside the Reichswehr, with the predictable result that its strength in numbers would soon be decisive.
Wolff offered no evidence that these plans had ever gone beyond the stage of alcohol-induced bragging. In the spring of 1934, he began to worry about the speeches that Röhm was making locally and the very rapid succession of SA deployments. A very aggressive tone was used in blaming the “reactionaries” for wanting to hold back the National Socialist revolution and preventing the struggle for work and bread from being more successful. Not without reason, the Reichswehr, as well as the Party organization, became distrustful.
Anyone seeking to understand why Himmler and Karl Wolff, who in the meantime had risen to the position of first adjutant, followed these developments carefully must also be aware of several connections within the National Socialist leadership clique. There was already the previously mentioned insinuation from Himmler regarding the chief of staff of the
SA, Röhm. If he wanted to start a putsch, the SS could be drawn into it. Above Röhm there was only the “Obersten SA Führer,” no less than Hitler himself, who trusted none of his paladins, and constantly spoke of
his
SA and SS men.
Only a short time before activist Nazi groups enjoyed a certain independence from the Party. Until August 1930 the “Oberster SA Führer” for the Reich was retired captain Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, who relinquished that honor when Hitler curtailed his independence. Since then, a chief of staff led the SA. Röhm only took the position in January 1931 when Hitler called his putsch comrade back from Bolivia, where he held the top rank as a military advisor.
Up to this point the SS had been deliberately kept small. When Himmler took over the leadership in January 1929, the number of men had shrunk to 280. Following that, the number of members was never allowed to rise above ten percent of the SA troopers at any one location; it was forbidden for years to recruit SA men. If it came down to a disagreement between the SA and Hitler and the Party, the SS would still have the possibility of becoming independent.
For that reason the security force (SD) led by Heydrich, within the SS, observed the course of events in the SA very carefully. At the end of April 1934 Himmler felt it was the right time to warn his friend Röhm—either in the name of the old comradeship from the days of the 1923 putsch in Munich in the anti-republican organization called the “Reich War Flag,” or simply as protection in case events took a different turn.
In one of his many interrogations by Allied examiners, by German de-nazification functionaries, and officers of German criminal justice, Wolff described the scene. According to his account, Himmler took his adjutant, whom Röhm regarded very highly, along as a witness to SA staff headquarters in Berlin. Supposedly the Reichsführer SS begged the SA chief of staff to part with such terrible company who, with their dissolute lifestyle, alcoholic orgies, vandalism and homosexual cliques, were just an embarrassment to the entire National Socialist movement. “Chief of Staff, don’t force me to order my people to take action against you,” Himmler supposedly begged, with tears in his eyes.
Röhm, according to Wolff’s description, at first rejected the reproaches indignantly, but then agreed he had to rein in his incorrigible herds who were by now completely out of control. With tears in his eyes as well, he eventually thanked his comrade Heinrich for being so candid.
If one strips away the melodramatic effects with which Wolff often garnished his tales, one may conclude from that meeting that Himmler already knew at that point in time the kind of trouble that was brewing at the Reich Chancellery. On the same day he reported to Hitler with Wolff present. There, Himmler described Röhm’s understanding and remorse in detail, but one may suspect that he actually only wanted to spread salt in his Führer’s wounds since he was always fearful of betrayal. It was understood from Hitler’s answer that he had already decided on his course of action. According to Wolff, he said he was sad because he found it difficult to act against an old fighting comrade, but this had become truly unavoidable. Himmler should keep the police and SS forces prepared to take action in this case, and report future unruliness.
Himmler could risk these games of intrigue because he had just secured his position by forming an alliance with the second most powerful man in Germany. He had been arguing for months with Hermann Göring because he was not willing to place the Prussian police under Himmler’s command, as officials at the same level in all other German states of the Reich had already done. However, he had recently shown signs of relenting; even Göring had bones to pick with Röhm and he knew that he would not survive a victorious putsch by the SA.
Göring and Röhm were mercenary types who needed no particular philosophy of life to assemble military troops. In the early days of the Nazi party, at the time of the Munich putsch, Göring, the former aviator captain and commander of the famous “Fighter Squadron Richthofen,” had once been the Führer of the SA. He was a role model of a war hero, with a white swastika on a black steel helmet and a “Pour le mérite” medal for bravery around his neck. Eventually the two retired captains had to cross paths in the chaotic workings of the Third Reich, especially now that they were both striving towards the same goal. Göring didn’t actually see himself as the great reformer of the armed forces, but he certainly wanted to become their commander or minister of war. (He did manage to become Reich marshal, the highest-ranking German soldier of all time, but he still had retired lance corporal Hitler above him and no troops to back him up.) If he wanted to get rid of Röhm as a competitor, then he not only needed an ally in the party, but also an alliance with a massive organization as counterweight to a possible SA revolt. Who would be better than Himmler and the SS? And if it were to come to a conflict with the SA, it would be better to know that he had the political police on his side. Hitler also shared this opinion.
In mid-April 1934, Göring handed over his secret state police organization (the Gestapa, which the public renamed Gestapo) to Himmler in Berlin. The most important people on his staff, including Wolff of course, were present at that state event. In the days that followed, the greater part of the SS Reich leadership moved to the Spree, with only a contact office for the Reich leadership of the NDSAP remaining at the Karlstrasse on the Isar. Himmler moved into the most impressive office in the former School of Arts and Crafts on the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where Göring’s secret police were headquartered. In the adjacent offices to the right and left, he placed his closest colleagues: Reinhard Heydrich and Karl Wolff. The Röhm affair could be splendidly managed from there.
Certainly the three top SS leaders already knew by then how Hitler would act in this situation, even if they did not know the exact manner by which he would seek his revenge. In mid-April, the Reich Chancellor was steaming across the North Sea aboard the battleship
Deutschland
. In addition to the Reich Minister of War, Generaloberst von Blomberg and the Head of the Navy Admiral Raeder, there were many high-ranking Reichswehr officers present. There is evidence that the introduction of conscription was discussed, and in this regard Röhm and his plan to replace the Reichswehr with a militia were also on the agenda. The three SS chiefs in Berlin understood that Hitler could in no way agree to arming the SA would-be revolutionaries, and that an alliance between the SS and the Reichswehr would happen of its own accord.