When he informed Dulles that he would have to answer questions in Berlin, the latter advised him to escape. Wolff, his family, and his co-conspirators could find asylum with the Allies. But this was useless advice; the families of all those involved were under Himmler’s control, and the relatives of “traitors” were threatened with death because one of their members had “bad blood” running in his veins. And if everyone could successfully escape, the slaughter would continue. They all felt like patriots. All of a sudden, they were ready to give their lives for the Fatherland if it were absolutely necessary. However, at the talks in Switzerland, the point had been that Germany and the German people would not disappear with Hitler and National Socialism, but that a new order had to be established and that upstanding men would be needed. Men like Wolff, who could imagine himself as a future cabinet minister.
Whoever leaves to explore new shores can sink very easily. Therefore, before leaving, Wolff gave Parilli a letter to be delivered to Dulles, in which he promised to carry on the effort for the surrender until its conclusion, if he returned from Berlin in one piece, and without having lost his position. Should he, on the other hand, be arrested and executed, he then requested that Dulles defend his honor and announce that the SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff did not negotiate “in self-interest, nor as a traitor” but “only in the hope…of saving the German people.” Aside from that, he asked Dulles that, in the event of such a conclusion, he protect both of Wolff’s families—the one in the Salzburg area, and the other in Upper Bavaria. Before leaving for Berlin, he prepared himself with a letter drafted by Ambassador Rahn that Wolff was to hand over to Hitler. In this letter, he takes credit for the fact that his efforts to establish contact with the western Allies were successful, and that they were in the interest of Hitler’s policies. He landed at an airport south of Berlin during the night of April 16–17. At several points the Red Army had almost reached the edge of the German capital, but the ring around it did not close until one week later. Wolff saw a favorable sign when SS doctor and Himmler’s old friend, Professor Karl Gebhardt, picked him up at the airport: there was no threat of being arrested by the doctor. Wolff then thought of a letter that he had sent to Himmler a few days before in which he asked the Reichsführer SS that he come and inspect the SS units in Italy in the future. If that had happened he would have had Himmler arrested. Now he feared that a cell had been reserved for him. But Gebhardt brought him to the Hotel Adlon which still was functioning as the best in Berlin for illustrious guests.
Gebhardt picked him up there the next morning. Together they drove to Hohenlychen, some 120 kilometers north of Berlin, where Himmler temporarily had his field headquarters, protected by the red cross on the roofs of the sick bay buildings. The three of them ate lunch in friendly conversation, and during the course of the two hours Wolff once again managed to convince the Reichsführer SS that his general had not deviated by a single step from the path of loyalty. He admitted to having negotiated further with Dulles, but with Rahn’s letter, he could show that a politically important chess move had succeeded. Hitler himself had even approved of that contact. This reassured Himmler, who was also making efforts to arrange for talks with the enemy. In the next few days, he wanted to meet Norbert Masur, an official representative from the Jewish World Congress, headquartered in New York.
Kaltenbrunner came after the meal. His massive face announced disaster. He wanted to speak to Himmler alone first. When Wolff was called back into the room, the atmosphere had become icy. Kaltenbrunner accused him of having negotiated with Cardinal Schuster in Milan regarding a comprehensive armistice on the entire Italian front; an agent had just reported this to him. Wolff was able to argue on this point in good conscience; he had personally never negotiated with Schuster. For the most part, he had used Dollmann because he had more experience in dealing with the higher clergy.
While the two SS Obergruppenführer were arguing, with increasingly bitter insults, Himmler avoided taking a position. He hesitated as to what he should believe. Both adversaries expected him to make a decision, but even hours later he could not decide. Kaltenbrunner wanted his opponent removed, if possible arrested and degraded because he knew that Wolff had blocked his own attempts to contact Dulles. Wolff, on the other hand, knew that he was fighting for survival. First he played at being misunderstood, then unjustly accused, outraged, and finally furious for having to defend himself against a conspiracy. This was all useless since, of course, he could not disprove the accusation, but also could not let it remain hanging. After hours of debate, Himmler was still incapable of exercising his authority. Then, Wolff unexpectedly pulled his biggest trump from his sleeve: let the Führer decide. The three of them, he suggested, should immediately drive to the Reich chancellery.
Himmler refused. For a very long time, he would shake when facing Hitler and did not like it. And for years, Wolff had been in better graces and Himmler was now deeply in “Reich shit.” The two parties in this dispute should drive together, so that he would be free of that responsibility. And so, Wolff and Kaltenbrunner sat silently and resentfully next to each other in the back seat of the Mercedes, whose driver in front of them was straining, looking for the road during the night in the course of the two-hour drive, because the black covers over the headlights only let very little light seep through the narrow slits onto the pavement. They always had to be prepared for Soviet artillery to shell the road with rockets from a distance, or that the slow and low-flying Soviet airplanes would hit them with bombs.
At three o’clock in the morning on April 18, the vehicle reached the Reich Chancellery. While the two SS officers walked through the darkness to the entrance of the underground bunker system, Wolff warned his companion: he should be allowed to describe the thing with Dulles, because
Himmler had always known of the talks and had even forbidden him to inform Hitler of them. Therefore it would not be advisable for Kaltenbrunner to pull out the most recent report from the files for Hitler. “If they hang me,” threatened Wolff, “my place will be between yours and Himmler’s.” What he experienced during the early morning hours of April 18, 1945, at the Führer bunker, Wolff repeated dozens of times to his astonished listeners as an example of bravery in the course of his historical role. The mere fact that he returned unscathed to freedom was proof enough that he must have played his part as the hero very well. It must of course be mentioned that no one could dispute his account because he was the only survivor.
While he and Kaltenbrunner were waiting in the corridor of the Führer bunker, Hitler stepped out of his living quarters. On the way into the conference room, he greeted them in a friendly manner and was a bit surprised, “You are here, Wolff?” Did that rhetorical question imply that Wolff was not expected? Or that Hitler figured that the SS would slaughter its own black sheep? At least it was clear that the visitor was not announced. The two SS bigwigs were called into the conference room an hour later. Although Hitler had become a wreck, a prematurely sick and trembling old man, he asked with an energetic voice and inquisitive sternness where Wolff got the idea to openly disregard orders from the Führer. “Kaltenbrunner and Himmler have shed light on your negotiations with the enemy”
Wolff was prepared for that attack. He referred to their conversation of February 6 in the Reich Chancellery where he, in Ribbentrop’s presence, suggested to Hitler that they seek contact with the Allies. There he had the impression that he had been given a free hand. Wasn’t it because of him that the West and the East got into an argument? Triumphantly he announced, “I am happy to be able to report to my Führer that through Mr. Dulles, I have been successful in opening the gates of the White House in Washington and the door to the prime minister in London for talks. I request instructions for the future, my Führer!”
Clearly this was one of the great swindles on record! Wolff was the first to know that no one would negotiate with Hitler, and that the enemy would not even accept an unconditional surrender from him. Often enough, he had had to assure Dulles and the Allied generals that neither Hitler nor Himmler were behind Wolff’s actions, and often enough he had been told that the talks would immediately end if this were found to be the case. Nevertheless, he bellowed out the sentences in his high tenor
voice and strung them together fluidly, avoiding any kind of pause to think, appearing as convincing as the expression of his truly Germanic eyes. Kaltenbrunner stopped getting involved anymore. He felt that he, as the dark figure, no longer had a chance against the beaming blue-eyed boy and that, at that moment, his agent’s report would be nothing more than a piece of paper.
Now Hitler in a milder mood, reproached his SS general only slightly. According to Wolff, he said: “Had your undertaking failed, then I would have had to let you fall like Hess.” He was referring to his former deputy in the leadership of the Party, who, before the start of Barbarossa, flew to England to win over the British for a joint operation against the Soviet Union. The official version was that Hitler had known nothing of those intentions and only found out about them from a letter that Hess had left behind, before leaving, where he explained his actions. There had always been rumors, however, that Hitler had been part of the conspiracy. This was often being repeated, mostly among the higher ranks of the Party, but there was no evidence for this theory. If Wolff
was
quoting Hitler correctly, this could back up the assumption that the man sitting in Spandau, the then ninety-year-old Rudolf Hess, was following the Führer’s orders when he took that flight. Once again the question remains: How credible was SS General Karl Wolff? He also stated that he told Hitler on that occasion that an unconditional surrender could no longer to be avoided—and that contrary to his usual reaction, the Führer reacted rather moderately, apparently only to say that he would consider it. That was not normally how he reacted when discussing that issue.
It was now past 4:00 a.m. and a tired Hitler wanted to go to bed. Wolff had to wait until the afternoon for his orders regarding his actions to come. He received them during a walk through the gardens of the Reich chancellery. Hitler wanted to take the opportunity to get some fresh air, as there were no enemy planes reported in the Berlin airspace. With great effort, he placed one foot in front of the other, supporting himself with a cane and stopping every few feet. During that walk, he explained his tactics for the upcoming weeks. Upon capturing the Reich, the Russians would not be satisfied with the regions that had been agreed upon, the West would protest, and it would end up in an argument. From an encircled Berlin, he could still choose which side offered him the best deal, and with the divisions still available—if no longer in the Reich territory, then in Italy, Bohemia, Austria, or Norway and Denmark—build up a balance of power. He would therefore set his price very high. It would be
wrong to give up on any one of the fronts. And, for the same reason, it was right to keep the talks with Dulles going. Wolff should negotiate further and keep stalling his partner with attempts at obtaining better conditions for a surrender.
Soviet writer Lev Besymenski used Wolff’s report as evidence that the capitalists in Washington and London had always been double-crossing the honest Joseph Stalin. Besymenski supported his claim that Wolff correctly depicted Hitler’s plans, with texts that Hitler apparently dictated to his secretary Martin Bormann during February 1945, and by an annotation by the Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels about a conversation with Hitler on February 24, 1945. According to those notes, Wolff becomes thoroughly believable as an eyewitness on this issue. On April 18, as Hitler explained his plans to him in the garden, he stood much higher in the Führer’s good graces than his opponents Himmler and Kaltenbrunner.
What is astonishing is that Wolff managed to pull the wool over the eyes of both Hitler and his two far from stupid enemies so completely. Here he proved to be a true master of deceit. Perhaps it truly befits him—as mass murderer Eichmann once said—“the aristocrat as intriguer.” On the other hand, he was very shocked later on when he thought back to the dangers he was able to avoid during those last few days. On his flight back to Italy, he was not at all sure anymore that he would see the conclusion of the surrender. His ambivalent feelings did not seem to fall in place until many years later when he admitted to reporter Erich Kuby from
Stern
magazine that at first he despised Hitler, then loved him, swore his loyalty to him and remained true to his oath. Such discrepancies in his memory never bothered Karl Wolff very much. Had Hitler not died and were he to attempt to return to power, Wolff could have been another Marshal Ney, who was sent to take the emperor (who had escaped from the island of Elba) to Paris as a prisoner, but who, during his first conversation with Napoleon, deserted the king to follow the emperor.
As Wolff’s plane landed in Bergamo on April 19, he found out that his protégé Mussolini had left Lake Garda the night before to go to Milan. The Duce had assured the detective who was guarding him that he would only take a few escorts with him and would be back in a few days. These were lies. However, besides the Germans, he also deceived himself by his decisions. He was never to see Lake Garda again, since he only had nine more days to live. This deceit, the still-unclear situation of his two families,
along with the terrors of the trip to Berlin, may have influenced Wolff to withdraw again for forty-eight hours from any outside contact. Risking achieving the best outcome, he was overextended to the point that he no longer could forecast what would happen next. Hitler had certainly cast his spell upon him once again, but the facts were clear that he must separate himself from the Führer once and for all.
Perhaps he would have worried less had he known that Dulles had been instructed in a telegram from Washington to break off all contacts with German negotiators because they were “not prepared at the current time” to “surrender under acceptable conditions…In view of complications arising with the Russians,” Dulles was to “consider the entire matter as closed.” The telegram was stamped “Top Secret!,” and Dulles held to it so completely that he didn’t even want to inform his German negotiating partner. He kept quiet also because he didn’t know whether Wolff had returned safely from Berlin, and whether the Germans were even prepared to talk. He was also silent because he feared that the SS would take it out on his Czech radioman should he break off negotiations.