Top Nazi (63 page)

The trial against Heidemann and Kujau began in the District Court of Hamburg at the end of August 1984. More than sixty witnesses were subpoenaed, among them Henri Nannan, the past publisher of
Stern
, who had since retired; journalist Erich Kuby; former SS Brigadeführer Wilhelm Mohnke; and, as number 35, “Karl Wolff, Kirchenweg 9, Prien am Chiemsee.” He once again had finally managed to have a suitable address. However, the witness could no longer testify; he had died on July 15, 1984, at Rosenheim Hospital.

Karl Wolff reveled at being the center of attention his entire life. He was successful now in this last act because in some form or other he still played a role. Also the obituary afforded him one more appearance to the German public. The German Press Agency distributed it with a CV. There was hardly a newspaper or broadcaster that did not announce his death. “The man who uncovered Hitler’s plans” died announced a German newspaper with one of the highest circulations in a prominent headline. It referred to the Pope legend. The newspaper
named him “one of the most enigmatic figures of the Nazi regime”—and he lived up to that reputation once again in Heidemann’s company.

Retired Senior General

Karl Wolff

born May 5,1900died July 15, 1984

In silent memory:

Widukind Wolff and family

Hartmut Wolff and family

8210 Prien am Chiemsee, Kirchenweg 9, Tel. 0 80 51-26 38

Funeral Saturday, July 21, 1984, at 11:30 a.m. Cemetery in Prien

What would have happened if he had testified as a witness under oath about how much he knew about the forgery caper? Did he once again know nothing? The evidence speaks against him. When asked by a reporter from an English newspaper,
Sunday People
, about Hitler’s diaries, he said: “What my friends and I have been saying for years has now been confirmed: Hitler had never ordered the extermination of the Jews. Hitler’s image had always been blackened by that accusation and the reputation of the German people had been damaged. The diaries cleanse his reputation and also my own. We are national-thinking people and idealists, not criminals.”

Wolff did as much as he could to prove the validity of the diaries by supporting the legend of their origin. Heidemann stated that the notebooks had been loaded on an airplane in Berlin on April 21, 1945, to be flown to Innsbruck. Wolff admitted to having heard of this plan at Führer headquarters. He had taken his leave of Hitler forever on the afternoon of April 18, but allegedly it was discussed in the bunker that the Führer’s most important sketches were to be flown out by the pilot who died in the plane crash three days later.

Although almost all those who lived at Hitler’s side never saw any diaries and almost all doubted that Hitler would have found the time and the opportunity to write them in secret, Wolff considered them authentic. He had always stated that Hitler not only agreed to Rudolf Hess’s flight to England in 1941, but actually wanted it so that a peace agreement with England would free his back for the attack against the Soviet Union. And that was written in so many words by the author of the diaries. In their writings, the Reichsführer SS was blamed for lacking military experience in the First World War, and for being a small animal breeder possessed by a paranoia about race.

It is highly unlikely that Wolff helped write the texts of the diaries. Clearly, however, they place the Führer in the same light Wolff had always described him. Several installments came at just the right time for Wolff in his personal matters; he wanted to use them to once again appeal the sentence of the Munich court, after the legal proceedings against Judge Jörka. Wolff’s argument was that if Hitler wanted to let the Jews live and wanted to create a territory for them, something Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff allegedly had always believed, then he could rightfully assume that
the transport of the Jews from Warsaw was part of this goal. So rather than being an accomplice to murder, he had performed a “good deed.”

One can speculate that Wolff’s thinking affected the Nazi-oriented and historically simple-minded Heidemann to buy into Kujau’s forgery. It is also conceivable that these views are commonly held in the circles of Nazi junk enthusiasts. Whoever delighted in Hitler’s remnants must also be sympathetic to his system.

That Wolff always ends up in the first row of those deceived and abused is neither coincidence nor bad luck. Overestimation of one’s own abilities, ambition, and vanity had always pushed him forward where he would be seen, heard, and honored. His appearance, his origins, upbringing and tactical skills helped him along the way. He was even successful in holding on to the tip of the dress of the goddess of fate for a brief moment in 1945. At any rate, a public obituary called him “one of the most enigmatic of figures.” He ended up with a superlative after all.

________________

*
Jochen von Lang,
The Secretary
.

APPENDIX I

Karl Wolff as Negotiator with the Soviets

The issue of a separate peace between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia remains among the more persistent mysteries of the Second World War. There are many indications of such attempts and at least three high level contacts have been identified. The Second negotiations mentioned below involve Karl Wolff who never hinted during his lifetime that he participated in any such talks. Wolff was however a logical choice as Himmler’s representative at Hitler’s headquarters known for his diplomatic ability as a polished upper class negotiator—a trait that was clearly out of character within the rough SS milieu—and for his absolute trustworthiness. Wolff was the number two man in the SS and with Heydrich until the latter’s assassination in 1942, Himmler’s heir apparent. Wolff also enjoyed the confidence of Hitler himself. As is customary with documents coming from the Russian archives no facsimile is available and the accompanying maps mentioned in the documents were not present in the file.

First negotiations: October 1941

According to
The Sunday Times
of May 28, 1989, former Bulgarian diplomat Dimitar Peyev who was posted in Moscow in 1941 remembers that Lavrenti Beria acting on orders from Stalin approached Bulgarian ambassador N. Stamenov to transmit a message to Hitler. Stalin in the face of the German offensive that had reached deep into the Russian heartland, was ready to concede much more than the Treaty of Brest Litovsk of 1918 when the USSR surrendered large portions of Baltic, Polish and Ukrainian territories to imperial Germany. According to the recollections of military historian General N. Pavlenko in a conversation Marshal G. Zhukov told of instructions from Stalin to Beria to send a peace offer to Nazi Germany through a third party. A very pessimistic Stalin mentioned the idea of “another Brest Litovsk” to Zhukov on October 7, 1941 to create “breathing space” in order to rebuild the Soviet armed forces. Pavlenko also mentioned but did not name the Bulgarian go-between. There appears to have been no face-to-face meeting, however at that time between German and Soviet negotiators.

Second negotiations: February 20–27, 1942

Former GRU (Soviet military intelligence) officer Vladimir Karpov (See: Vladimir Karpov,
Generalissimus 2
volumes (Moscow: Alta, 2002) second volume pp.4–21) reproduces the instructions provided to the Soviet negotiator and a report detailing the results of the secret meeting between German and Soviet negotiators at Mtsensk in Belarus behind German lines on February 20 to 27, 1942. The text is of particular interest because the German side was represented by SS Gruppenführer Karl Wolff as reported to Stalin by V. Merkulov the NKVD negotiator. There is obviously no trace of such a meeting in this Wolff biography or in any of his interviews, nor did Wolff make any mention of the meeting to any of his acquaintances. It should be pointed out that in an interview with
Komsolmolskaya Pravda
author Vladimir Karpov comes across as a rabid anti-Semite and unreconstructed Stalinist. Specialists in Soviet wartime intelligence operations and historians have vouched for the authenticity of the following documents. The maps and drawings mentioned were not included in the file.

“Stalin felt that the Soviet offensive was demoralizing the German leadership, which could therefore agree to his peace offer.

Stalin did not consult his military leaders, and not even with the members of the Politburo, which is why none of them mentions the event in their oral reminiscences or published memoirs.

Stalin ordered the NKVD to carry an offer of a ceasefire to the Germans in his, Stalin’s, name and set the stage for more far-reaching plans for a radical change in the war. NKVD agents contacted their German “colleagues” (possibly through the SD); the meeting took place in Mtsensk on February 20, 1942. Mtsensk at that time was in occupied German territory. Apparently, Stalin decided to hold these negotiations at the very start of the counteroffensive, and NKVD agents had begun the search for contacts immediately. There is no information as to how the initial contacts took place.

Stalin personally wrote the following “Proposals to the German Command.” Only two copies were made, one held by Stalin, the other for the person conducting the talks. This document, evidently, was not intended to be handed over to the Germans; it was an abstract, a list of questions to be used as a guide for the Soviet representative.

That the “Proposals” were drawn up by Stalin is confirmed by his signature. The fact that this was only an abstract is indicated by the short “Stalinist” phrases printed not on a regular state or party form, but on a simple piece of white paper without any indication of the executor and the number of distributed copies, which was required in such official documents.

These documents are published here in English for the first time and are considered to be authentic by major historians and researchers
.

Proposals to the German Command

1)Cease military actions beginning 5 May 1942 at 6:00 along the entire line of the front. Declare a ceasefire until 18:00 of 1 August 1942.

2)Beginning on 1 August 1942 and up to 22 December 1942 German troops must pull back to the boundaries designated in diagram No. 1. It is proposed to establish a border between Germany and the USSR along the length of the line designated in drawing No. 1.

3)Following the redistribution of the armies, the armed forces of the USSR by the end of 1943 will be ready to begin military actions with German armed forces against England and the USA.

4)The USSR will be ready to examine the conditions to declare peace between our countries and to accuse international Jewry represented by England and the USA of instigating war, and to conduct a joint offensive during the course of the subsequent years of 1943–1944 with the goal of creating a new world order (diagram No. 2).

OBSERVATION: In the event of refusal to carry out the aforementioned demands in points 1 and 2, the German armies will be destroyed, and the German leadership as such will cease to exist on the political map.

Warn the German command of its responsibility.

Supreme Commander in Chief of the Union of the SSR

(I. STALIN)

Moscow, Kremlin, 19 February 1942
368

FIRST DEPUTY

OF THE PEOPLE’S COMMISSAR OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS

OF THE USSR

To Comrade STALIN

REPORT

In the course of negotiations at Mtsensk from 20–27 February 1942 with a representative of the German command and the chief of the personal staff of the Reichsführer SS, Gruppenführer SS Wolff, the German command did not consider it possible to satisfy our demands.

The Germans proposed that we leave the boundaries along the line of the front as they are until the end of 1942, after having ceased all military action.

The government of the USSR must immediately put an end to Jewry. It was therefore initially suggested to move all Jews into the far northern regions, isolate and then completely annihilate them. In so doing, Soviet authorities will guard the external perimeter and impose a severe martial regime over the territory of a group of camps. The actual killing and utilization of the corpses of the Jewish population will be handled by Jews themselves.

The German command does not exclude the possibility of creating a united front against England and the USA.

Following consultations with Berlin, Wolff announced that under a new world order, if the leadership of the USSR accepts German demands it is possible that Germany will draw its eastern boundaries to benefit the USSR.

The German command as a sign of such changes will be prepared to change the color of the swastika on the state banner from black to red.

In discussing positions according to diagram no. 2 there were the following differences of opinion:

1) Latin America. Must belong to Germany

2) A difficult point is the meaning of “Chinese civilization.” According to the opinion of the German command, China must become an occupied territory and a protectorate of the Japanese empire.