The unavoidable questions came from his interviewer as to whether or not he had even been a General of the Waffen SS. He countered that he was, “The first to be named a general of the Waffen SS.” Did he ever lead a unit in war? He referred to his rank and position as lieutenant and company leader in the Infantry Bodyguard Regiment 115, and to his service description as “plenipotentiary General of the German Armed Forces in Italy,” who “kept the supply routes open” for Kesselring’s southern front, “and had to fight the partisans in the rear, at times with up to 300, 000 men.” (Others reported hardly half that strength.) For that he was decorated with the German Cross of Gold and then in February 1945 was recommended for the Knight’s Cross. This decoration never reached him, however, as the enemy was faster than German military bureaucracy. When he was asked about his negotiations with Allen Dulles, he said: “After a very critical examination of my motives and my conduct in acting without authority,” Hitler “completely approved” his behavior—this was a lie,
because he had hidden the already agreed-to surrender from the Führer, and because it had been expressly forbidden.
Wolff’s assertion that he first heard of the murders of the Jews in March 1945 cost him credibility his interlocutor said. “One must,” countered Wolff, “understand the dictatorship and its power and task distribution to comprehend this ignorance. Even the slightest violation of the regulations of secrecy was threatened with death and all family members were liable for the crimes of one. According to Eichmann’s statements, the order to murder had only been given verbally. Himmler “never spoke to me personally or in confidence about these things.” For that reason, he could “not have had even the slightest knowledge of those procedures.”
Ironically, his SS opponents answered in the next issue of
The Volunteer:
“He was the liaison officer between the most powerful and the second most powerful two men in the Reich. How could he not know what privates found out?” He apparently forgot during his interview “that he had told
Neue lllustrierte
the story of how, during a mass execution, the brains of a victim were splattered in Himmler’s face…In view of such incidents, did he feel like a simple-minded Parsifal? Did Wolff enjoy Himmler’s trust? That was a key question. We never heard of top leaders appointing adjutants whom they did not trust.”
Certainly General Karl Wolff was not as ingenious a strategist as the famous Count Moltke back in 1870, but he would have been better off had he at least learned from him to keep quiet. His employer at the magazine felt compelled to fire such a simple-minded employee because of the articles; however, it was agreed that Wolff’s stepson (from the marriage to Inge), who lived in Cologne and was in the advertising business, would take the position. In another irony, whether the arrest warrant issued by the district court of Weilheim (which was presented to him on January 18, 1962, at his “little castle” in Kempfenhausen, thus preventing the newly unemployed executive from indulging in his favorite pastime, the writing of his memoirs), stemmed largely from his efforts to secure a pedestal for himself in the German halls of glory.
The arrest warrant came, as he said, out of nowhere. It assumed that Wolff knew the dreadful secret of the Third Reich when he ordered the railway cars for the Jewish transport at the Reich Ministry of Transport. On the last of the eight type-written pages, the warrant states: “The organized mass murder of the Jews in the extermination camps occurred as the result of base motivations and were carried out in a cruel manner”—which, according to the Criminal Code, the facts of the case were sufficient
for a murder indictment. “The accused is therefore suspected of abetting the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews. The arrest is ordered because the crime gives the grounds for examination, and counters the risk of escape, and aside from that, in consideration of the extent of further necessary investigations, there appears to be the danger of suppression of evidence.”
He was taken into custody at the Weilheim jail for several weeks before he was transferred to the prison at Munich-Stadelheim, and handed over to the district court in Munich. As legal advisor he chose the Munich lawyer Dr. Alfred Seidl, who had experience in the defense of Nazis before the International Military tribunal in Nuremberg. Wolff hoped for help from someone who really could not say much about the charges—his American friend Gero von Gaevernitz, who had already testified at the prosecution in Munich at the beginning of February. This had not been very effective, but the call for assistance implied, however, that Wolff expected in exchange for his part in the surrender activities, a sort of general amnesty for all the sins of his Nazi past.
Attempts by the defense attorney to spare his client being held in custody while awaiting trial also failed. He offered to post one hundred thousand marks bail, and also mentioned that the deputy camp commandant at Auschwitz was temporarily freed from prison for half the amount. The court decided that the danger of an escape attempt always existed in such a case, because “this precise circle of people, strongly suspected of having had a part in such crimes, would typically attempt to escape from their punishment by fleeing to another country.”
The defense already in the early stages of the proceedings, in mid-February 1962, argued to subvert the trial just as it was beginning, and to which Wolff would refer repeatedly in the time that followed. In a legal document Dr. Seidl pointed out that the American counsel for the prosecution at Nuremberg “presented” the accused “with the exchange of letters with Dr. Ganzenmüller during cross-examination” and that they “naturally also checked the question as to whether the accused in this case had been guilty of punishable behavior.” At no time had charges been brought against him.
The next legal document contained additional remarks that such an accusation was reasonable at that time in preparation of a trial in Nuremberg against several SS officers. In that trial Obergruppenführer Gotdob Berger and Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, among others, were sentenced to long prison terms, but were pardoned in 1950.
From Dr. Seidl’s perspective, the Americans had done their protégé a disservice by preventing his criminal prosecution. Namely, had he been sentenced for the Ganzenmüller matter, he would have been free anyway, and no court could have prosecuted him.
The prisoner’s situation got worse, when on July 31, 1962, a second arrest warrant was issued accusing him “in his capacity as SS Obergruppenführer and SS Chief of a Main Office” he had “at least provided psychological assistance” during the massacre in Minsk in August 1941. The reason for that visit by Himmler and the “highest SS officer” had been to ease the consciences of the men in the Einsatzgruppen. “He provided equally strong support to the men, of which he was well aware.”
It may have still been possible to keep him out of prison had they been successful in getting one of the two charges against him dismissed. Dr. Seidl had defended SS Obergruppenführer Oswald Pohl at Nuremberg and Wolff had testified as a witness in that trial—to stand by Pohl, as he asserted. However, after being sentenced to death, Pohl blamed Karl Wolff of having transferred his own responsibility to other heads of the main offices by providing a misleading description of the organizational structure of the SS. In that trial on June 4, 1947, Wolff once again stated that he did not know what was happening to the Jews. The prosecutor had, however, shown him the exchange of letters with Ganzenmüller and asked: “Does this refresh your memory, Herr General?” To deny it would have been pointless. Wolff’s answer was, “I do not in any way deny, after this refreshing of my memory, that I came in contact with these matters…but I can actually not find anything criminal in transporting Jews.” The prosecution then tried to prove through other questions that Wolff had been informed by way of Himmler’ speeches or written notes. On the next day, once the topic returned to the exchange of letters, Seidl jumped in, and with his questions gave Wolff the opportunity to report his version of the exchange of letters. After his description, only a chain of unlucky circumstances made him appear as an accomplice.
“The Honorable Judge Phillips,” he had added to his statements, “placed doubt on the credibility of my statement yesterday.” Now the judge should please state “whether his doubt remains unchanged. I may comment that to continue in this doubt would have the same unfavorable consequences practically speaking, which resulted from my being placed in an insane asylum last year.”
This example of Wolff’s aggressive rhetoric shows how he can impress people in critical situations. Judge Phillips was softened back then,
and only said: “I will accept your explanation.” Was that the equivalent of an acquittal? Wolff now told the Munich examining judge that he should understand that his efforts would be fruitless. If an Allied court had indeed already heard of Wolff’s activities about the railroad cars, then on the basis of the agreement between the Allies and the Federal Republic, he could not be accused of the same crime again.
This objection was taken seriously in Munich. Judge D. Donald Phillips, now back in North Carolina, was asked under oath how far his statement about Wolff as a witness was to be considered as an acquittal. The judge remembered that “General Wolff had been subjected to an extremely pressing cross-examination by counsel for the prosecution Robbins, by Judge Musmanno, and from those testifying.” He also remembered that he had said: “I accept your explanation.” At the end, according to Phillips, a confidential judge’s consultation took place as to whether the War Crimes court should recommend bringing charges against Wolff. Since this had been denied, the Second Tribunal of the International Military Tribunal had closed the case. Former U.S. Prosecuting Attorney Telford Taylor was also heard. He explained, “a person who was not charged” and was let go, can not draw the conclusion “that he will not later be prosecuted by some other court.” It was thus noted in the indictment that Wolff was among the suspects in Nuremberg “who were spared continued prosecution.”
With that, the hope of avoiding the German justice system disappeared. The defense did not use this argument. Wolff would have liked to have used Phillip’s statement in another way, however. In his handwritten conclusion, which he wrote in prison, Wolff filled many pages after his sentencing, blaming the German judges for not listening to the opinions of their American colleagues. He ignored, however, that from newly discovered documents and additional statements, the German court could infer that he did in fact know about the Final Solution.
The prisoner awaiting trial brooded for hours over the ingratitude of the Fatherland. He had served for many years—as a true believer, a man who was both conscientious and without a conscience at the same time. He had not been rewarded with money, but with power and honors instead. When he claimed to have shortened the war by months, he calculated that Hitler could still have continued to resist in the “Alpine redoubt” for a long time—and an honest Wolff would have to admit to himself that this fortress had actually only been a bluff on Hitler’s part. No one knew better than he that in the Alps there were no prepared positions,
no supplies stored or the industrial capacity to continue to fight. And didn’t he, Obergruppenführer Wolff, spare the Germans the atom bomb at the end, by prematurely ending the war? In his written conclusion, he presented all of this for the consideration of the court, and must have examined all of it before the hearing.
The charges now descended upon him with the relendessness of the bureaucratic justice system. In December 1963, it was reported to the examining judge that the accused was suffering from depression and speech impairment. He was taken to a unit of the University Clinic in Munich.
On July 13, 1964, the first day of the trial began in an uproar. Even before the accused was taken into the courtroom, a man from the visitors’ seats yelled that he would not tolerate a second Eichmann trial. “I am,” he announced far too loudly, “a pure-blooded SS soldier.” He was led out.
That initial display made the elegant gentleman, escorted by two guards to the dock, appear even more serious. The dark blue tailored suit, the silver-gray tie, the decorative white hair and dignified behavior were not necessary to establish that there were not only rowdies among the Nazi Black Guard. The presiding judge of the district court let him recite his spotless curriculum in detail and also dress up his “good deeds” with many asides. “I claim,” said Wolff, “to have been an idealist.” He presented himself—something that was up to date during the cold war—as an anti-Bolshevik, who joined the SS in 1931 for that reason and, with the same basic convictions, agreed to the surrender to the Western Powers in 1945.
The listeners were surprised that instead of seeing a hard-line violent person, the man in front of them was obviously a conciliatory and educated gentleman who, with a soft, high voice, was almost sentimentally complaining that the Nazis had used and deceived him. As he all too readily described his achievements for the Fatherland, the chairman interrupted him, “The court is not here to carry out historical research. We can assume that you, even though at a late date, did achieve certain merits. But how does this reconcile with what you are accused of? Were you at that time a different Wolff?” He used the opportunity to say that all the terrible things of the Nazi period took place behind his back.
As long as the trial lasted, the press coverage was not favorable. The major daily newspapers had sent experienced journalists to the proceedings and even dedicated more than one hundred lines of print to him in one issue. The journalists involved were mostly critical intellectuals, who could hardly approve of the motives of the SS Obergruppenführer. The reporter from the Munich daily
Süddeutschen Zeitung
described him as “a
tall, corpulent man who, full of vanity, effectively projecting his sharp profile to his advantage, who was bursting with a need for admiration.” He was “the accomplished kind of staff officer, who could easily be sent anywhere in the Third Reich; a decorative type behind whom the reality of terror could be hidden.” And: “One hears a man of pathetic garrulousness, who drowns out the gloom of the Third Reich with the conventional hogwash about knighthood, tradition, and higher idealism.”