KARL WOLFF, 84, NAZI SS GENERAL WHO SURRENDERED TROOPS IN ITALY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120066-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 25, 2011
• Sequence Number: 66
• Publication Date: July 17, 1984
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120066-8
ARTICLE APPEARED
ON PAGE S ` g
WASHINGTON TIMES
17 July 1984
STAT
Karl Wolff, 84, Nazi SS general
who surrendered troops m Italy
From combined dispatches
Karl Wolff, 84, the Nazi SS gen-
eral who surrendered German
troops in Italy in 1945, died yester-
day in a hospital in Rosenheim,
West Germany.
The cause of Gen. Wolff's death
was not disclosed. In 1971, he suf-
fered a heart attack, prompting his
early release from a Bavarian
prison where he was serving a
15-year sentence for war crimes.
Gen. Wolff, once described by a
war crimes judge as a "bureaucrat
of death," joined the Nazi Party in
1931 and rose quickly through the
ranks to become adjutant to Hein-
1i rich Himmler, commander of the
feared SS (Schutzstaffel- Security
Detachment), by 1936. At the out-
break of World War II in 1939, he
became liaison officer between the
SS and Adolf Hitler's headquarters.
In 1943 he was appointed chief of
police and SS commander in Italy.
Gen. Wolff negotiated the early sur-
render of German troops in Italy
with Allen Dulles, then the head of
the U.S. Office of Strategic Services
in Bern, Switzerland.
He held his first secret meeting
with Mr. Dulles in March 1945 after
deciding Germany could not win
the war. German troops in Italy
capitulated April 29, 1945, nine
days before the Nazi regime's
unconditional surrender.
The surrender gave Gen. Wolff a
reputation for "humanitarian"
actions. He was not charged by the
international war crimes tribunal
at Nuremberg, but was called to
testify at trials of former col-
leagues.
Gen. Wolff was held in an Allied
internment camp until ' 1949 and
then released. He moved to
Cologne, then later took up resi-
dence at Starnberg Lake outside
Munich.
In 1962, Gen. Wolff was arrested
and charged by the Munich state
prosecutor with complicity in the
deaths of 300,000 Jews at the Tre-
blinka death camp in Poland and
about 100 partisans and Jews on the
Russian front.
He testified he had been ordered
to attend the execution of the 100
prisoners but took no part in the
killings. He maintained he was
unaware of the fate of Jews sent to:
concentration camps.
However, the Munich court con-
cluded Gen. Wolff served as Him
mier's "eyes and ears" in:!
deportations and thus was guilty of
complicity in the killings.
Gen. Wolff was released periodi-
cally from prison beginning in 1969
for medical treatment, and was set'
free permanently after a heart
attack in 1971.
His name surfaced most
recently in 1983 in connection with
the "Hitler diaries" hoax. Gen.
Wolff was known to have had close
contact with Gerd Heidemann, the
reporter who claimed to have dis-
covered diaries written by Hitler.
Gen. Wolff was born in Darm-;
stadt, near Frankfurt. He served as
a German army lieutenant in World
War I and became a salesman;
before joining the Nazi movement.
He is survived by five children.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2011/02/25: CIA-RDP90-01208R000100120066-8