The Man Who Started the War

219 Pages·2016·1.06 MB·English

by  Günter Peis

This edition is published by PICKLE PARTNERS PUBLISHING—www.pp-publishing.com
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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.
© Pickle Partners Publishing 2015, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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Publisher’s Note
Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s 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
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THE MAN WHO STARTED THE WAR

BY

GUNTER PEIS
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
DEDICATION 5
SD (SICHERHEITSDIENST) 6
FOREWORD 7
CHAPTER 1—Capture 9
CHAPTER 2—Boyhood 16
CHAPTER 3—The Major 27
CHAPTER 4—Edith 33
CHAPTER 5—Plot Against Stalin 51
CHAPTER 6—Devil’s Workshop 70
CHAPTER 7—Gleiwitz 78
CHAPTER 8—Venlo 91
CHAPTER 9—Kitty 102
CHAPTER 10—Disaster 115
CHAPTER 11—Alfred Buys a Business 119
CHAPTER 12—Sepp Dietrich Again 130
CHAPTER 13—An End to Active Warfare 135
CHAPTER 14—Brussels 140
POSTSCRIPT 151
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 153
DEDICATION
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 Crankshaw—“Gestapo”
SD (SICHERHEITSDIENST)
The most sinister of Hitler’s many Secret Service organizations, the
Sicherheitsdienst—literally, chief security officer—was 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 SD’s creator, Reinhard
Heydrich, was one of the most brilliant and ambitious men around Hitler, and,
until his death by a British agent’s 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 SD’s 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 Pandora’s
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 job—
private detective in Vienna—“I’m keeping my hand in, you know, for when I’m
needed again.”
FOREWORD
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 Hitler’s 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 incident—to 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 hero’s 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 millions—literally. The forgery of the British five-pound notes—
which is one of the most famous exploits of the German Secret Service—was
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
CHAPTER 1—Capture
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.
Amid the general cacophony of sound their sixth sense divined the
approaching shell; both men flung themselves into a crater. Their crouching
bodies were shaken like leaves in an autumn breeze as the earth heaved and
shuddered from the shock of the explosion; waves of sound roared over them in
a paralysing torrent as they hugged the black mud. Then it was over, and they
were still alive.
Opening their eyes, instinct told them they had company. Twisting round,
snatching their rifles, they pointed them at a figure lying in the gloom of the
crater bottom; a figure in the grey-green uniform of the German Army, though
not that branch of it—the Panzers—they were fighting now. The German made
no move to reach the carbine at his feet. He made no move at all. Turning his
eyes from one to the other he said quietly in English: “Would you be good
enough to take me prisoner?”
There was silence for a moment, then they scrambled to their feet. The war,
for the man who started it, was over.

Captain Al Graziano pulled a signal pad towards him and began toying with
his pencil. He had set up his field Intelligence office in the cellar of the
farmhouse, making a postage-stamp sized area of order in a sea of chaos. Sitting
behind a trestle table on a canvas chair, he was surrounded by a confusion of