Карл Фридрих Отто Вольф: Рейхсфюрер-СС штабының басшысы және Оңтүстік Тироль фольклорисі

Chief of Personal Staff Reichsführer SS, SS Obergruppenführer
the folklorist of the South Tyrol

Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff (13 May 1900 – 17 July 1984) was a German SS functionary who served as Chief of Personal Staff Reichsführer SS (Heinrich Himmler) and an SS liaison to Adolf Hitler during World War II. He ended the war as the Supreme SS and Police Leader in occupied Italy and helped arrange for the early surrender of Axis forces in that theatre, effectively ending the war there several days sooner than in the rest of Europe. He escaped prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials as a result of his participation in Operation Sunrise. In 1962, Wolff was re arrested and prosecuted in West Germany for the deportation of Polish Jews, and he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for being an accessory to murder in 1964. He was released in 1971 due to his failing health, but died 13 years later.

Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff was born the son of a wealthy district court judge in Darmstadt on 13 May 1900. During World War I he graduated from school in 1917, volunteered to join the Imperial German Army (Leibgarde Infanterie Regiment Nr. 115) and served on the Western Front. He rose to the rank of lieutenant and was awarded both the Iron Cross second class and first class. After the war, Wolff was forced to leave the army because of the reduction of the German armed forces following the terms imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. Wolff was in the paramilitary Freikorps from December 1918 to May 1920. He started a two year apprenticeship at the Bethmann Bank in Frankfurt and married Frieda von Römheld in 1923. The couple moved to Munich, where Wolff worked for Deutsche Bank. In June 1924 he was laid off and joined a public relations firm. Wolff may also have studied law, but never took any state exams. In 1925 he started his own public relations company which he operated in Munich until 1933.

Wolff joined the Nazi Party with card number 695,131 and the SS in October 1931. His SS membership number was 14,235 and he was commissioned as an SS Sturmführer in February 1932. From March 1933, after the Nazi Party had obtained national power, Wolff served as an adjutant to Franz Ritter von Epp, then governor of Bavaria. Here he came to the attention of the head of the SS Heinrich Himmler who appointed Wolff his personal adjutant in June 1933. In 1936 Wolff became a member of the Reichstag. The same year Himmler named him chief of Personal Staff Reichsführer SS to coordinate all contact and correspondence within the SS at both party and state levels. By managing Himmler's affairs with the SS, the Nazi Party, state agencies and personnel, the eloquent and well mannered Wolff rose to become one of the key figures in Himmler's power regime. In addition, Wolff oversaw the economic investments made by the SS, was responsible for saving funds among Himmler's circle of friends and for connections to the SS organizations Ahnenerbe and Lebensborn. In 1939 he retroactively became head of the Main Office and SS liaison officer to Hitler. In 1936, Wolff left the Protestant Church. On 30 January 1937, he was promoted to the rank of SS Gruppenführer (major general).

Arrested on 13 May 1945, he was imprisoned in Schöneberg. During the Nuremberg trials, Wolff was allowed to escape prosecution because of his early capitulation in Italy and by appearing as a witness for the prosecution at trial. Although released in 1947, he had been indicted by the post war German government as part of the denazification process. Detained under house arrest, after a German trial, Wolff was sentenced to 5 years in prison in November 1948, for his membership in the SS. In June 1949, he was released from prison after his sentence was reduced to 4 years. After his release, Wolff worked as an executive for an advertising agency. He took up residence with his family in Starnberg. In 1962, during the trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann, evidence showed that Wolff had organized the deportation of Italian Jews in 1944. Wolff was arrested and put on trial in West Germany. In 1964, he was convicted of deporting 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka extermination camp, which led to their murders. Sentenced to 15 years in prison in Straubing, Wolff served only part of his sentence and was released in 1971 following a heart attack. such as István Deák, a professor of history at Columbia University. Reviewing A Special Mission by Dan Kurzman, a promoter of the theory, Deák noted Kurzman's "credulity" and that the latter "uncritically accepts the validity of controversial documents and unquestioningly believes in the statements made to him by his principal German interlocutor, the former SS General Karl Wolff". He further criticized the book's "modest documentation" containing "a great number of vague or inaccurate references". In the late 1970s Wolff also became involved with Stern journalist Gerd Heidemann. Together with Heidemann, he travelled through South America, where he helped to locate, among others, Klaus Barbie and Walter Rauff, with whom Heidemann conducted interviews for a series of articles. Wolff served as a consultant for the alleged Hitler Diaries and was upset when they turned out to be forgeries by Konrad Kujau. Asked to attend the trial of Heidemann and Kujau, Wolff declined; on 17 July 1984, he died in a hospital in Rosenheim. He was buried in the cemetery at Prien am Chiemsee on 21 July. A few weeks before his death, Wolff declared the Islamic profession of faith, becoming a Muslim. At his grave, his daughter Fatima Grimm gave the funeral prayer in the presence of representatives of the Islamic Center of Munich (ICM). She was also a Muslim convert, doing so in 1960 while in Munich, later becoming a translator, author and speaker on Islam in Germany.