Top Nazi: SS General Karl Wolff: The Man Between Hitler & Himmler

by Jochen von Lang

The only biography of SS General Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff, who for many years would function as Himmler’s adjutant within the SS. One of Hitler’s favorites, he played an increasingly key role until he was appointed head of the German SS & police in 1943 in Italy, where he negotiated a secret surrender to Allen Dulles.
Foreword
Where did you serve?
GOT the source of life
In the good graces of the Führer
Kristallnacht: the night of broken glass
Megalomania as national illness
...& tomorrow the entire world!
The messiah for the next 2000 years
Even the guard must obey
Take over the Vatican!
The pope & the anti-Christ
When everyone betrays...
Caught in the middle
Cooperation has its price
Prisoner at Nuremberg
The general representative
Eichmann's accomplice
An enigmatic personality
Appendices I-IV
Bibliography
Index

Genres: World War II, Nonfiction

413 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this one up at the Park Ridge Public Library's annual book sale. Usually I claim that reading such biographies is part of an ongoing effort to grapple with the phenomenon of German Nazism in order to reflect on the enormities perpetrated by our government, or that it's part of trying to understand my relatives' experiences in occupied Europe during the war, but there's also the factor of juvenile fascination--as was commonly noted among little boys in elementary school: the Nazis had the best uniforms, too bad they were so bad.

Karl Wolff of the S.S. was one Nazi who never, according to this account, thought he was bad. Indeed, he thought he was noble and could never understand why anyone would think of prosecuting him. He was, in fact, an aristocrat by bearing and, eventually, by a second marriage with a former mistress. He did, in fact, protect--as most of the Party leadership did--some Jews. He did, in fact, serve as a principal, along with Alan Dulles of the O.S.S., in the early surrender of Axis troops in Northern Italy. He went on to claim other noble feats as well, such as saving the pope, but for those claims he was the sole surviving witness. Everything had a justification, a noble aim: his support of National Socialism and his betrayal of it; his first and his, effectively overlapping, second marriages; his atheism and his protection of the Church. And, he would have us believe, he knew nothing of the extermination of the Jews despite the fact that it was run by his immediate superior, Himmler.

This book, originally published in German, is a well-documented reconstruction of the life of the number two man in the S.S. Its biggest flaw is its inadequate translation. I imagine its the translator who, for some reason, avoids the use of the past perfect, leading to some odd constructions. Sometimes indeed it took reading a while to discover that the author was engaged in a dark bit of sarcasm or irony, of which there is a lot in the text. Still, a good biography of an upper-level bureaucrat who, as Eichmann had it, managed to wear white gloves and to keep them clean throughout the war.

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

While Wolff appears frequently in group photographs of Hitler and/or Himmler, most people don't know who he is. If you don't have an interest in the SS hierarchy, this book probably won't interest you. Nevertheless, Wolff played a significant part in the German war effort, and this book does a good job of telling his story.

[Augustus · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this 2005 biography, the journalist author relates the story of Karl Wolff, who became a trusted chief of Heinrich Himmler's personal staff and in that capacity rose rapidly to the high rank of Obergruppenfuehrer in the Waffen-SS.

Some early chapters are a bit tedious, as Wolff travels around with Himmler and uses his reportedly clever talk to resolve personal feuds between various top Nazis. Later chapters become more interesting, however, after General Wolff was assigned to protect Mussolini following his rescue from arrest in Italy.

Assigned to Italy as the SS Police Leader in 1943, Wolff conducted meetings and established various contacts that would later help him avoid prosecution at Nuremberg. He freed some political prisoners, helped preserved endangered art works, and even reportedly met with Pope Pius XII on May 10, 1944. His unrecorded dialogue with the Pope may have discussed the possibility of Germany realigning itself with Christian Allies against the aetheistic Soviet Union. Later, Wolff engaged in secret peace negotiations in Switzerland with the American Allen Dulles (until Stalin learned of such contacts and persuaded the U.S. Government to end them).

Wolff lived almost 40 years after World War II, spending a number of years in prison and vacillating between successes and failures. The author provides interesting perspectives as to both justice and injustice of the Allied Nuremberg trials and the later denazification trials in German courts. Wolff apparently saw himself as an idealist, but the author points out that the general could not maintain such a high position in the SS without some knowledge of the crimes committed by parts of his organization.

The book seems to be well researched and was based on numerous interviews with Nazi leaders. The first Appendix also contains some interesting translations of reports indicating that in February 1942, General Wolff participated in secret negotiations with the USSR in which he proposed what amounts to a revival of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.