Günter Peis - The Man Who Started the War

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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.

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THE MAN WHO STARTED THE WAR

BY

GUNTER PEIS

Contents

To my friend APOLLO GRANFORTE

Then there was Helmut Naujocks of the SD, a plain clothes expert, who only killed for a useful purpose...his modest contribution to history was the faking of the frontier incident which started the world war.Edward CrankshawGestapo

The most sinister of Hitlers many Secret Service organizations, the Sicherheitsdienstliterally, chief security officerwas born soon after the formation of the Nazi Party. Its earliest task was to file individual members records. To this was added background information, then spies were employed to fill in the gaps. Nothing, and no one, was sacred to them. Every high-ranking Party man had his own small Intelligence service, and the ludicrous situation could arise that the SD spies would be watching spies who were watching spies. Such was the empire of hate and suspicion; this was the divide by which Hitler ruled.

SD men were, in the ranks, tough, commando-style SS men with a liberal sprinkling of talented burglars, forgers, bouncers and con-men. The officers were chemists, doctors, lawyers, economists, writers.

Naujocks was an adventurer who took the theories from the desks of the executive and put them into practice with the daring, the cunning and the thuggery that he found in the ranks. To the SD, an indispensable man...until he got to know too much.

He and his men were universally hated by all departments of the Party. Their powers were mysterious, their actions unknown. The SDs creator, Reinhard Heydrich, was one of the most brilliant and ambitious men around Hitler, and, until his death by a British agents bomb, he kept tight hold on the department, a hold that assured him of an almost impregnable position. Everybody was afraid of him; his spies were everywhere: the customs official at Lisbon, the barman in the Hotel Adlon, the university lecturer at Leipzig, the black marketeer in Paris, the priest in the Vatican. These were the SDs own informants; they had nothing to do with the Gestapo or Admiral Canaris military Intelligence section, the Abwehr. Many attempts were made to merge the unwieldy espionage networks which operated as rivals, but Heydrich was reluctant to open up his Pandoras box and let others peer inside; to be a Nazi Party leader, you needed all the fear you could command. Secrets were as deadly as bullets, and your friend today might be your executioner tomorrow.

Walter Schellenberg inherited the SD, and, eventually and too late, the other security services. He, like his predecessor, was vain, pompous and an intellectual, but he was efficient and ruthless, and strengthened the SD considerably, especially outside Germany. As the end came desperately near, however, the whole structure cracked, and trusted officials later fell over themselves to denounce each other to the Allies. Schellenberg himself escaped hanging by talking, though there is good reason to believe that there was much he did not tell and many names he did not mention. He retired to live on a Swiss lakeside, his bitterness alleviated by the moderate comfort of a mysterious pension he received. He died happy in the mistaken belief that his house was being watched and his every movements noted.

Today SD men are scattered throughout Germany and South America, some back in their old civilian jobs, others living on their wits and some, undoubtedly, on loot. Their old power still touches all of them. Said one of his new jobprivate detective in ViennaIm keeping my hand in, you know, for when Im needed again.

I am the man who started the war. An incredible claim? Be cynical if you like. It is true. I was the trigger man who lit the fuse to Europe in 1939. The events of that year and those that followed are now so confused, their history so complex, that it is difficult to see things in their right perspective and context. But however hazy their knowledge, people who are uncertain of all but the biggest milestones of that era will say emphatically today that there was no Sarajevo the second, no assassin to start Hitlers war.

Well, they are wrong. There was a specific incident which began the chain-reaction of violence and bloodshed, and, of course, there had to be one man to engineer the incidentto pull the trigger, so to say. I was that man; but the title I claim gives me no false pride or sense of achievement. This is not a heros story. Neither does it depress me with feelings of enormous guilt.

Had I been able to avoid taking charge of the Gleiwitz radio plot it would still have taken place. I think. Anyway, my uppermost feeling today is one of surprise and even astonishment.

Reading the manuscript of this book I felt curiously detached from the tales of murder and intrigue. Was it really me, Alfred Naujocks, who was involved in all this?

I have never been a man for second thoughts or long reflections on my past, and this is the first time that I have seen such a picture of myself painted. It is not a pretty one, I know. Gerald Reitlinger, chronicler of the SS, once wrote that my memoirs would be a gift to history, and hazarded the opinion that they would be written in Buenos Aires. Others have stated categorically that I am dead, and probably hoped I was. I can, at least, understand this last feeling, for my name has probably appeared on more search warrants than that of any other man alive today.

I made millionsliterally. The forgery of the British five-pound noteswhich is one of the most famous exploits of the German Secret Servicewas placed in my hands. Today, I live from hand to mouth. It does not surprise me. Nothing can, now. For twenty years I had to burgle, steal, kidnap and lie. I suppose that is part of Secret Service work everywhere.

All that counts with me in 1960 is that I know no other life well enough to live it, and that in peace I am a failure. I cannot turn myself into a criminal now. I did what my Government told me to do and was decorated for it.

So this is my story. After fifteen years, I am safe to reveal it, or as safe as I ever shall be. It took me two years to tell it to Gunter Peis, the journalist whom I first met at the Nuremberg trials. Until it was finished we shared some terrible secrets, for the world and the history books knew only the consequences of my actions, not what lay behind them.

I am not asking for judgment, or sympathy, or fame. Just read, and draw your own conclusions.

Alfred Helmut Naujocks

Hamburg

Two American soldiers stumbled across a field in the Ardennes, weary from lack of sleep, numbed by the continuous shock of explosions all around. Dodging from tree to shell-hole, hedge to ditch, they were making their way to the dubious shelter of a farmhouse which an hour ago had been the company rendezvous. Not that that meant anything. An hour ago they had been a patrol of ten men. Now they were the only survivors.