A senior Nazi SS coordinator who became a late-war negotiating envoy
On 8 March 1945, Wolff met Allen Dulles in Switzerland to discuss terms for the surrender of German forces in northern Italy.
Karl Wolff was a senior Nazi SS officer who served as Heinrich Himmler’s chief of staff and stood close to the regime’s central decisions and crimes. As the highest SS and police leader in occupied Italy, he oversaw a system marked by the deportation of Jews, forced labor, and repression of the resistance, responsibilities not erased by his later negotiations. In 1945 he conducted the secret Operation Sunrise talks with OSS chief Allen Dulles in Switzerland, helping secure the early surrender of German forces in northern Italy, though his influence and motives were limited. After the war he was convicted for facilitating mass murder.
Also known as: Carl Wolff
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1917–1920Officer candidate in the Imperial German Army’s 115th Infantry Regiment, serving on the Western Front
- 1931Joined the Nazi Party and the SS
- 1935–1943Chief of the Reichsführer-SS Personal Staff
- 1943–1944Highest SS and Police Leader in Italy
- 1944–1945Plenipotentiary General of the German Wehrmacht in Italy
- 1945German negotiating representative in Operation Sunrise, involved in the surrender in northern Italy
- 1964–1969Convicted by a Munich court for facilitating the murder of 300,000 Jews and sentenced to 15 years, released in 1969
Related historical events
Chief of Himmler's Personal Staff and Involvement in Deportations
Wolff entered the Nazi Party and the SS in October 1931 and served as an adjutant to Franz Ritter von Epp, then governor of Bavaria, where he came to Himmler's attention and became Himmler's personal adjutant in June 1933. In 1936 Himmler named him chief of Personal Staff Reichsführer-SS to coordinate all contact and correspondence within the SS at both party and state levels; Wolff also oversaw the SS's economic investments and the business of the Ahnenerbe and Lebensborn, growing into a key figure of Himmler's power system. German-language sources date this appointment to 9 November 1935, about a year earlier than the 1936 dating.
When the war began in 1939, Wolff was posted to the Führer's headquarters, where he acted in effect as "Himmler's eyes and ears at the Führer's headquarters". As that phrase, used by the prosecution at his 1964 Munich trial, implies, he knew or was in a position to know of major events, and he received copies of all important correspondence of the SS main offices. He kept up a friendship with Odilo Globocnik, the organiser of Operation Reinhard.
Wolff's involvement shows directly in the administration of deportations. On 8 September 1939 he ordered the immediate arrest of all Polish Jewish men and their families and the confiscation of their property, and in 1942 he managed the deportation trains during the mass murder of the Warsaw Ghetto. When rail transport was blocked, he repeatedly contacted Albert Ganzenmüller, state secretary of the Reich Railways, and in a letter of 13 August 1942 he thanked him for running the trains to Treblinka, stating that he had contacted the offices concerned to ensure the smooth execution of the measures. After the war he claimed that he learned of the murder of the Jews only in 1945, but German-language scholarship treats this as a self-serving claim.
His position was also shaken in this period. After Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated in June 1942, he competed with Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Walter Schellenberg and others, and a kidney ailment and frequent absences from Berlin cost him Himmler's confidence, so that he gave up the post of chief of staff. In April 1943 he was also relieved of his duties at the Führer's headquarters, but Himmler still regarded him as a loyal member of the SS and in September 1943 transferred him to Italy as Highest SS and Police Leader.