The two would not have to deal with each other very much longer. Hitler had already been planning for quite some time to place all German forces in Italy under a single supreme command, and in doing so, Rommel was also to take over Kesselring’s southern front. Back on October 18 Keitel, as Chief of the OKW, had presented Hitler with a draft of an order. However, it was never signed and Wolff believed he could explain the reason for that change of mind.
At Fasano, just after he began operating—as he recalled—“a high officer from Rommel’s staff, a man generally regarded as irreproachable,” came to see him. He requested that the SS general on his honor as an officer agree to never name his informant, if he were to trust him with a secret that must absolutely be shared with the Führer—“in the interest of Germany.” After this dramatic introduction, the visitor provided him with the information that his commander General Rommel “after the military disappointments of the last twelve months no longer believed in a German victory at the end of the war.” The Führer must know this before he “entrusted Rommel with a new command that was decisive for the war.”
On October 19 and 20, Wolff was again at the ‘Wolfsschanze.” Apparently, he gave Hitler the information at that time. However, a problem came up in the conversation when Hitler wanted to know where the SS general got his information. But his word of honor stopped Wolff from saying anything. The Führer did not believe this was at all valid given the situation; he demanded that Wolff “get over the barrier of your word of honor complex and in the interest of Germany entrust me with the name of this officer.” As this appeal also remained without effect, Hitler pressured him further and “after a short pause he said ‘Now I have it. I relieve you as your Supreme Commander from your officer’s word of honor!” That was Wolff’s description. Apparently the Führer, who in the course of his life had given and broken his word of honor so many times, did not comprehend the invalidity of such an assurance. He couldn’t know better, since Wolff—he obviously was not thinking about it at that moment—only rose to the rank of corporal during the war and had never been an officer. Hitler only stopped pressuring him when Wolff explained that breaking an officer’s word of honor would force him to shoot himself.
If one were to follow the tale further, Field Marshal Keitel was called in with the signed orders appointing Rommel as commander of most German forces in Italy. Taking his pen Hitlercrossed out Rommel’s name and wrote “Kesselring” above it. Whether it happened like that, with Wolff as the grey eminence, can no longer be confirmed.
David Irving has offended many people with his odious positions but no one can deny that he is a thorough researcher. In his opinion, the change of mind came in mid-October at the “Wolffschanze” when Rommel himself made pessimistic statements in discussing the supreme command in Italy. We must assume that Irving had questioned Wolff thoroughly because the scene regarding the changed certificate was repeated to him. However Irving didn’t use it; and obviously doubted its authenticity.
Despite Irving’s opinion, a biography of Wolff cannot simply ignore the incident because it is typical not only of the rumors pervading the Nazi leadership, but also of the importance that Wolff attributed to himself until the end. On the other hand, it is quite believable that he did what he could to get rid of Rommel in Italy. Wolff got along with the sophisticated Franconian Kesselring much better than with the unpolished Swabian Rommel, who also occasionally let it be known that his respect for the SS general was tempered because Wolff did not have to learn the
profession by working his way up, and had been promoted directly from lieutenant to lieutenant general. Rommel was anything but a diplomat and that was exactly the kind of talent required to work with Mussolini and his entourage.
One of his tasks—said Wolff—was to turn an ageing and sick man who had become lethargic into an energetic Duce ready for action.
However, the conditions in which the head of the new state was placed were not exactly apt to strengthen his lust for life. Attempts to rebuild his army progressed slowly, due to the already weak enthusiasm of the people dampened by the use of German instructors. The economy had to be adjusted accordingly to fulfill German demands; Production and Armaments Minister Albert Speer created an organization of authorized representatives throughout the country who decided what was to be produced and in what time frame. In the areas threatened by the allied advance, factories were dismantled and the machinery was transported to Germany. Because of a shortage of workers, Italian soldiers who were prisoners of war because of the Badoglio government’s “treason” became interned civilians, locked in camps, and transported to work. Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, who was responsible for creating the work force, failed in his attempt to recruit volunteers in Italy. Now he resorted to having pedestrians on the street checked for identification; anyone out of work was taken north as slave labor. In so far as the financial administration worked, its main and most urgent task was to cover the rising cost of the occupation. With their German Reich military banknotes, the field-gray soldiers emptied out the stores that were already only half stocked—which increased and spread the black market.
Wolff had to console his charge about these and other adversities. In order to succeed, he remembered a method that worked for hundreds of years if a potentate needed cheering up or to get his mind off things. Clara Petacci had to be brought over. The daughter of a medical doctor in Rome, she had been Mussolini’s lover for years. The relationship was kept secret for a long time. The couple met mostly in the offices of the prime minister, in the Palazzo Venezia, where Mussolini and his Claretta kept a small, furnished apartment. Most Italians, and even Rachele Mussolini, only found out about the affair the day after the fall of the Duce, when the yellow press no longer feared censorship, and Badoglio allowed open criticism of his predecessor.
Claretta was, along with her family, arrested and kept in prison until the SS freed them, at the same time as her lover. She went to Merano and
wrote to Mussolini that she was yearning to see him. Her liberators, the officers of the Leibstandarte, took the letter to Lake Garda. Because the Duce was also eagerly waiting, it was not difficult for Wolff to arrange for them to be reunited. At the beginning of November, Claretta moved into a small and fairly modest house at Gardone that Wolff had requisitioned.
In mid-November Donna Rachele (Mussolini’s wife) also arrived at Gardone with her family from the Rocca delle Caminate. They filled the residence of the head of state. For that reason, he had Wolff prepare a second building in the center of town to handle government business. The building even had a balcony, where his loyal followers and those who were curious could occasionally cheer him. The separation between the apartment and the office allowed him to meet his lover every now and then. But a small world becomes much smaller for a man everyone knows, especially in a town that had gone years before from a fishing village to vacation and retirement paradise, and now was unexpectedly a royal seat. For a woman to live in secret in such a town when her picture had been in the headlines for weeks was even more unlikely. Wolff had of course briefed Clara Petacci that she was not to leave the house during the day, but, naturally, she did not follow that advice. As Wolff was visiting the Mussolini family home one day, Donna Rachele used the opportunity to lecture him. The situation cannot go on like this, she scolded. Wolff had brought the two together and now he must make sure that they were separated again. She was no longer angry at her husband’s affairs, which were were now being politically manipulated, giving Wolff, as the security advisor appointed by Hitler, food for thought. Since Wolff did not react to that, a few days later she clearly demanded that Petacci be removed from the “Government quarter.”
It was as simple as the stroke of a pen for the Highest SS and Police Führer and he had decided to fulfill that request. But he took his time. Perhaps he did not want to lose his informant, who occasionally provided him with internal news on the leadership team of the Italian Social Republic that she obtained from Minister of the Interior Buffarini-Guidi, whom she then supported with her Benito.
Drawing pleasure from the scandal, Wolff repeatedly told the story of how Donna Rachele lost her patience in the end—however, he only knew this second hand. She went to Buffarini-Guidi and forced him to accompany her to Petacci’s house. When the cast iron gate remained locked despite her impatient ringing, she rampaged around on the street for almost an hour and then finally tried to climb over the gate. Only then was
it opened. In the house, she attacked the weeping Claretta vociferously and in the end drew a gun from her purse but Buffarini-Guidi took it away from her.
Following that scene, the situation became too dangerous for Wolff. Petacci was moved to a house high up on the mountain above the lake, where years before the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio had built a huge victory memorial. But even that solution could not last since relatives of the Mussolinis had rented a house nearby and if they noticed anything suspicious, Donna Rachele was immediately informed. The solution was that two or three times a week an SS car went up to Claretta’s house and after a short stop would go back down to the valley. Rachele never found out that Wolff was driving and that her husband would get out and then be picked up by the same chauffeur the next day. In the family home, Mussolini was not missed; he slept at the government offices on the banks of the lake most of the time anyway.
Claretta therefore continued to depend on Wolff’s assistance. The SS general who very much appreciated feminine charms was pleased to have secured her good will with these favors. In return she reported to him occasionally what her Benito thought about the case of Count Ciano—a matter politically extremely explosive. The son-in-law of the Duce and former foreign minister was always considered as one of the most eager proponents of the Axis; that he had been, at the same time, spreading cynical comments about the alliance between National Socialists and Fascists was well known and joked about in Berlin. But with time, the Germans became suspicious and, finally, Hitler became convinced that the Italian foreign minister was thwarting his war plans. Count Ciano had informed the British at the end of August 1939 that Italy would not join the war if Hitler attacked Poland. This would allow Great Britain to reduce its navy in the Mediterranean, and gave a guarantee to Poland when it declared war on Germany. Therefore no one cried when Mussolini took over the foreign office himself, and his son-in-law Count Ciano became ambassador to the Vatican. It did not surprise anyone to see Ciano join the rebellion against the Duce. He fled to Germany only when the Badoglio government failed to accept his switching sides, and he therefore had to expect reprisals.
In Germany the Cianos were free but kept under observation. Over time, they could feel that they were not well-regarded and very much under surveillance. When they asked to travel to Spain and then go on to emigrate to Argentina, the trip was not approved. Now they were hoping
that their plans would be more successful in Italy; Mussolini would hardly refuse his beloved daughter’s request, nor that of her husband, whom at times he had loved as much as his own sons.
If Mussolini had forgiven the Count, Hitler most certainly had not. He pushed his Italian friend to secretly seek revenge, but on the surface the withered friendship seemed to be flourishing once more. When on a trip to see her father in Italy, Edda had to go to a sanitarium for a nervous breakdown, her husband also requested to return home. In October Wolff informed the SD guards at the Ciano residence on Lake Starnberger that the Count could fly to Verona, as he wished. When he got off the plane, he was arrested by Italian police officers who were being watched by the SD. In the middle of November Mussolini decreed that the traitors who had toppled him on July 25 were to be tried by a special court. There were only six rebels being held, since most of the others had fled. At the end of September after a conversation with Hitler, Minister of Propaganda Dr. Joseph Goebbels had already noted in his diary what the prisoners were to expect. The Führer was extremely disappointed with the Duce’s behavior, criminal court proceedings were imperative, and the son-in-law would “have to be the first to believe it.”
With wild energy Mussolini’s daughter Edda now fought for her husband’s life. She thought she held a trump in her hands with Ciano’s diaries from his days as foreign minister and believed the contents were so compromising for Hitler, Ribbentrop, and others that the Germans would trade them for Count’s freedom. She managed to flee to Switzerland, and place the diaries in a bank safety deposit box. However, her gamble failed. Hitler’s reputation in the world was already so tattered that further incrimination would not upset anyone; besides, the German people would not find out about it anyway.
On January 8, 1944, the court proceedings against Count Galeazzo Ciano and five other accused began in Verona. On January 10, the death sentence was pronounced for Ciano and four others. Wolff had been in Munich the day before. On January 11, shortly after midnight, General Harster of the police called him from Verona. A letter from Edda Ciano, addressed to her father, had been seized. Wolff made sure that the letter was brought to her father’s residence by courier. She had written to him several days before, but the letter got lost somewhere. Edda was asking for her husband’s freedom. She threatened to use “everything that I have in writing without mercy if Galeazzo is not in Switzerland within three days.”
Without a doubt a telephone order coming from Mussolini could prevent or at least postpone the execution set for 6:00 a.m. that morning. Why did this not occur? Was he not allowed to? Did he not want to? The decision was difficult because it involved his son-in-law If he showed mercy, could he have a deserter from his new army punished with the death penalty? Was mercy in this case not nepotism? Could a head of state agree to be blackmailed, especially by his own daughter? And how would Hitler react? Would this pardon not confirm to the Führer what he generally accused the Italians of, namely, that they were all traitors?