Alfred Naujocks

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Born in 1911, SS-Sturmbannführer Alfred Helmut Naujocks was, according to some historians, ultimately responsible for the Second World War in Europe.

On August 31st, 1939, he led the attack on Gleiwitz radio station, which led to the false reports of Poles overrunning the station as part of a concentrated series of 21 attacks on the German-Polish border, which gave Hitler his needed justification to present the Reichstag with his intentions to pacify the Poles the following day.

That November, Naujocks also participated in the Venlo incident which saw the capture of two British SIS agents in the Netherlands.

In 1941, he was dismissed from the Sicherheitsdienst after disputing one of Reinhard Heydrich's orders. In 1943, he was sent to the Western front where he would serve as an economic administrator with the troops in Belgium, while involving himself in the deaths of several Belgian Underground members.

In November of 1944, Naujocks deserted and turned himself over to American forces—who subsequently placed him in detention as a possible war criminal.

In his affidavit presented at the Nuremberg Trials, Naujocks declared the attack against Gliwice Radio Tower was under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of Gestapo. After the war he worked as a businessman in Hamburg, where he also sold his story to the media as The Man who Started the War. He is alleged to have helped Otto Skorzeny run ODESSA in helping migrate former SS officers to Latin America covertly to avoid prosecution. He probably died on April 4th, 1960, though some sources state that his death occurred in 1966 or 1968.