A psychiatrist, testifying as an expert, concluded that the Zeitgeist of the Nazi era “found a kindred spirit” in Wolff, who had an exaggerated need for admiration and persisted in playing the role of the general. “The accused tends to betray himself. People like him feel they have no accountability.” As Wolff was asked what qualified him to be a general, since he had only been a lieutenant in the First World War, he answered confidently that he had continued to educate himself. As general, he had “fulfilled all the tasks assigned to him satisfactorily.” The prosecution claimed that his achievements were so wretched that a real soldier, like SS General Felix Steiner (who came from the army), “could only muster a weary smile in this courtroom.”
Wolff’s claim that, at the Führer headquarters, he had been the representative of the Waffen SS was also refuted. Among more than sixty witnesses, there were SS officers who actually filled that same position and were now reporting that Wolff almost never concerned himself with issues regarding the troops, and was almost never allowed to attend the situation reports. Therefore, he was not a vital participant at headquarters during the crisis in Stalingrad in January 1943, as he asserted, but was traveling through Poland with Himmler at the time, to begin dismantling the Warsaw ghettos and organize the transportation of the Jews. A number of witnesses testified that he helped people who, because of their “non-Aryan” heritage, were in desperate straits, but those good deeds were not considered in his favor this time. The court asked why he provided such help if he was so convinced that nothing terrible was happening to the Jews?
Wolff called anyone who could testify to his good deeds. Gero von Gaevernitz appeared once again insisting that Wolff spared innumerable people from death because of the surrender. However the judge discounted such speculation. After all, the trial was not about how many lives Wolff saved, but rather how many lost their lives due to his share of the blame. And his complicity became clear when the court came to the conclusion that he knew that the purpose of the transports was the “Final Solution.”
Witness Ganzenmüller, who had provided the railway cars, didn’t dare admit that he had even an inkling of the destination the Jews were headed for back then. However, one of his officials, the director of the Federal Railroad Administration, admitted that he knew. “Not officially,” he said, “but from below. It was known among the railway employees.” Ganzenmüller even pretended that he had not even read Wolff’s thank-you letter, written by a secretary and signed by him, because the expressions used in the National Socialist code would have made him suspicious. The entire procedure, according to Ganzenmüller, simply passed through him. This was the formula Wolff also used whenever something in writing placed any kind of blame on his shoulders.
In the course of the hearings it was often the case, but the more this defense argument was heard, the harder it was to believe. Even Rudolf Rahn, Wolff’s diplomatic aid during the surrender, testified that “Wolff could not have missed the execution of the Jews by shooting.” And the friend with whom he had a “Du” personal relationship, SS Obergruppenführer Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, who had already been sentenced to life imprisonment as a mass murderer, said in court, “It is simply unbelievable that today someone who had such a high position can say that he knew nothing.”
The difficult task of proving not a deed but rather the knowledge of deeds forced the court to go well beyond the dates they themselves had set. Three hundred kilos of files had to be examined, as well as medical and contemporary expert reports presented in court. Wolff’s defense was also known for practices that took a lot of time. Dr. Rudolf Aschenauer, who also had experience at the Nuremberg trials, replaced Dr. Seidl. He had a difficult task with a defendant who smugly admitted when someone called him an influential man in the Third Reich, but who, on the other hand, only wanted to have the responsibility of being Himmler’s chief recordkeeper. The lawyer was also restricted from being effective by another situation in which he was also defending former SS officer Robert Mulka before the Frankfurt court. Mulka had been the adjutant of Auschwitz Camp Director Rudolf Höss, who had in the meantime been executed. Because of that Aschenauer was forced to constantly commute between the Bavarian and the Hessian capitals. The hideousness being discussed in Frankfurt unavoidably made its way to Munich as well. It raised the fear that once again, the small sinner in Frankfurt would hang and the greater one in Munich would go free.
On September 15, the prosecution had its turn; two prosecutors had divided the material in the trial. The indictment requested that the accused be sentenced to life imprisonment for complicity in the murder of at least 300, 000 people. This was the estimated number of Jews who were sent to the gas chambers in Wolff’s railroad cars. The indictment regarding the shootings in Minsk was dropped; that crime no longer mattered, and perhaps it could only be useful to prove that in 1941 the defendant already knew what would happen to the Jews. The prosecution did not want to have the so-called good deeds considered. Even Hitler, Göring, and Himmler had protected individual Jews, and it would be absurd to reach a verdict of not guilty for that reason.
Attorney Aschenauer pleaded for his client’s innocence for four hours without a break. He portrayed him as a convinced National Socialist who was not motivated, however, by political ideas. He was therefore a completely different kind of person from the sadistic Nazi criminals who often committed the worst crimes. In Italy Wolff finally found the opportunity to show his true nature. It is impossible to prove that he knew of the atrocities before 1945; his character by itself would have prevented him from serving a system that he had viewed as being criminal, and it would have been impossible for him to participate in those crimes. Anschauer therefore requested a verdict of not guilty. Wolff made a short closing statement. A longer written statement was issued after sentencing. He was certain, he said in the courtroom, “that the judges would know how to honor his life’s purpose, which was to serve the Fatherland in a fair way.”
Things turned out differently. On September 30, he was taken to the courtroom in handcuffs for the reading of the sentence, and the police stood guard at the courthouse which was unusual. There had been a threatening phone call of physical violence should Wolff be set free. That was a crank call, however, because nothing of the sort happened and the presiding judge read the sentence and gave the explanation—15 years in prison as an accessory to the murder of 300, 000 Jews. The maximum sentence would have been life imprisonment; but as an accessory to the actual crime a lesser sentence would apply. As Wolff received his written version of the sentence in his Stadelheim cell, he began immediately to plough through the 354 pages. He and his lawyer were set to fight this “judicial murder,” because, in his opinion, that was what it was when a man of outstanding merit, at 64 years of age, respectable and innocent in this case, was to live behind bars for more than a decade, and most likely die there.
He vented his outrage by making notes in the margin of the massive sentence. Wherever it stated his knowing about the annihilation of the Jews, he noted with a thick pencil the word “Proof!” At one point there was a description of how he watched a woman receiving corporal punishment in a concentration camp. There one can read in his handwriting “5 blows!”—a note that not only shows his good memory but also means that such a small matter was not worth mentioning.
The reasons for the sentence confirmed to a certain degree that the indictment for the massacre at Minsk constituted proof. Regarding the incident it states, “Because of this the Court is convinced that by the middle of August 1941, at the latest, the accused was aware of Hitler’s and Himmler’s orders to exterminate the Jews…because of what had happened at Minsk. The sentence, however, must “take into consideration that the accused gradually came to the conclusion during his activities in Italy that he could no longer follow Hitler, Himmler, and the other leading men of the Third Reich in their inhuman politics of violence.”
One newspaper wrote that this was a surprising sentence. On the one hand, “even for experienced and legally knowledgeable trial observers it was in no way” clear that the evidence would “be sufficient for sentencing.” On the other hand, the court “had fully used punishment time in prison as provided, and only avoided life imprisonment due to extenuating circumstances.” That was why neither the defendant nor the prosecution was satisfied with such a split sentence. Both demanded an appeal. Wolff’s defense pointed out a number of factual contradictions. The prosecution wanted the defendant sentenced not only as an accessory, but also as an accomplice. The sentence would then have had to have been life imprisonment.
But what did this difference mean to a prisoner of his age? Would he even survive all those years? With a sentence limited in time, the chance was actually greater that with a pardon he could be free once again with a reduced sentence. Wolff was very disappointed that the Federal Supreme Court refused his request for an appeal at the end of October 1965, but he at least had the ray of hope that the request from the prosecution had also been denied. The defendant awaiting trial became a prisoner. He was moved from Stadelheim to the prison at Straubing.
He was not satisfied by the sentence “with injustice screaming to the high heavens.” A fellow prisoner said that Wolff had counted the months in prison from his time as prisoner of war. Since he was not required to work due to his age, he at first used the time and quiet of his cell to write
letters to everyone in the world. His German friends, the Swiss and American friends, politicians of the Federal Republic, the higher echelons of the Catholic clergy, and influential men in the business world all received his calls for help. But who could do anything against a legal sentence, as long as no new evidence made it necessary to re-open the proceedings? As this was not to be expected, a pardon was the only remaining hope. However, one could not expect it that soon from Bavaria’s district government; it would have caused a political scandal. All those approached for help only responded to continue to have patience.
Once the prisoner realized that he could not change the situation at the moment, he wrote fewer letters and applied for work. With the traditional prison work of gluing bags he thus began his fourth career. Because he was obedient and always remained distinguished as a prisoner, he was well liked by the staff, from the guards all the way up to the director. Soon he rose to better paid tasks, and in the end he even received an office job outside the jail at the Straubinger branch of the machine factory at Augsburg-Nuremberg. His wages were ridiculously small, but came very welcome nonetheless. Because once again he was in trouble financially.
The wealth he had acquired so quickly as an advertising salesman was almost completely used up by attorney’s fees for his defense. Frau Inge and her children wanted to live in style. She had long reverted back to her more attractive family name, calling herself Countess Bernstorff-Wolff. The court costs were to be paid by the defendant, and because of the length of the trial and the many witnesses, they were shockingly high. As long as Wolff still had anything to his name, the state grabbed it. Frau Inge therefore asked her husband to give her a general power of attorney for all family financial matters. She and her sons took whatever could be salvaged. The house on Lake Starnberg was sold. Later Wolff complained that his family took the rest of his money for themselves. Besides that, Frau Inge was tired of being married to a man who had to spend his life in prison. She requested a divorce and went to court, but in the end the couple agreed to remain formally married. The woman moved to Switzerland, where her son by Wolff took residence. Later, when the father was free again, he wanted to visit her there, but some Swiss citizens who were opposed to the former general refused him entry. Whoever was the driving factor behind that decision remained unknown.
In the end, some help did come from the outside. The most dependable friend once again proved to be Gero von Gaevernitz. He wrote to the Bavarian justice minister, asking him to finally pardon Wolff; he had
earned it long before. The Munich government, as Wolff told his biographers, also got the agreement of the bishop and the CIA. The justice minister refused all petitions, because the situation was still too controversial. However, there was another way that was less noticeable. Once again, the general went to see the doctors. He complained constantly about his ailments and an internist and a urologist both certified that he was unfit to remain in prison because his suffering would only get worse inside his cell. At the end of August 1969, because of an “incapacity to remain in prison due to illness” he was released from the prison for a year—to begin with.
W
here was Wolff to go? Back to his first wife or to one of their children, who with one exception were all married in the meantime? To his second wife or one of their children? He was not really welcome anywhere for very long. So to start the homeless man, who had rendered outstanding services to the Pope and the clergy in Italy, found shelter in the Benedictine cloisters in Bavaria. They guaranteed him some respect as God’s reward, because he was nearly penniless, apart from his little retirement money. For two years he lived moving around as a guest of friends, acquaintances and people who enjoyed sheltering a former general.
More insistently than before, he now promoted himself to the German public as the Pope’s savior, claiming to have protected him from being dragged into Nazi imprisonment. Pius XII had died in the meantime; he could no longer confirm or deny anything. The archives of the Vatican remained characteristically silent, according to tradition. Wolff gave lectures to gatherings of Catholic groups. Reports about this activity appeared in the daily newspapers. He caused some sensation with a report several pages long in
Stern
; and from then on he was assured of getting the journalists’ attention. What he told them was self-serving but put him far too
much in the limelight. Nazi chaser and concentration camp survivor Simon Wiesenthal, who lived in Vienna, sounded the alarm. The Bavarian justice minister reacted and had a high clergyman tell the glorious SS general that if he was healthy enough to appear in public and carry on with long speeches, then he could once again go back to serve his sentence.