Alfred Naujocks
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Alfred Helmut Naujocks (September 20, 1911 - April 4 1966??), was an SS-Sturmbannführer, and according to some historians, the catalyst for starting the Second World War in Europe.
[edit] World War II
Formerly an engineering student at Kiel University, Naujocks has already helped with undercover attacks in Slovakia which were blamed on Slovakian nationalists.
On August 31, 1939, he led the attack on the German radio station Gleiwitz, one of twenty-one similar concentrated attacks that the Germans quickly attributed to the Polish. These attacks, but not explicitely the Gleiwitz incident, formed Hitler's justification to the Reichstag regarding the necessary "pacification" of Poland.
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. He was demoted and had to serve in the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front. In 1943, due to his health condition, he was sent to the West where he served as an economic administrator for the troops in Belgium, while involving himself in the deaths of several Belgian Underground members.
After his promotion to Obersturmführer he participated in sabotage and terrorist actions against the Danish population from December 1943 until autumn 1944, as a member of the "Peter Group", led by Otto Schwerdt, including the murder of the priest Kaj Munk.
Around November 1944, Naujocks turned himself over to American forces who subsequently placed him in detention as a possible war criminal.
[edit] After the war
In his affidavit presented at the Nuremberg Trials, Naujocks declared the attack against German Radio Tower in Gleiwitz 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.
Naujocks is alleged to have died on April 4, 1960, although some sources state that his death occurred in 1966 or 1968.
