Eugen Dollmann

from left to right: Kurt Daluege, General Palma, Dollmann

Eugen Dollmann (8 August 1900 in Regensburg – 17 May 1985 in Munich) was a German Diplomat and a member of the SS.[1][2]

Early life and family

The son of Paula Dollmann, born Schummerer and Stefan Dollmann, Eugen Dollmann graduated in 1926 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München as Doktor der Philosophie. From 1927 to 1930 Dollmann studied in Rome the history of the Farnese family and Italian art history.

He was living at the Piazza di Spagna where he worked as interpreter. There he met Heinrich Himmler who introduced him with Karl Wolff. In 1934 Dollmann become Italienkorrespondent of the Münchner Neueste Nachrichten. In 1935 he become Chief of the NSDAP/AO Press office in Italy. In 1937 he become Oberst of the Schutzstaffel.

from left to right: Italian Police officer Arturo Bocchini, Wolf-Heinrich von Helldorf, Kurt Daluege, Dollmann (as Himmler's representative in Rome), General Palma.

Diplomatic career

In 1939 was appointed German Ambassador to the Holy See. He helped Virginia Agnelli escape from detention and was with her help able to arrange a meeting between the SS General Wolff and Pope Pius XII to negotiate the peaceful German evacuation of Rome. Later he as Befehlshaber der Polizei was Adjutant of Karl Wolff in a villa on the Lake Garda. On 20 July 1944 Dollmann was official interpreter at the meeting of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, at the Wolfsschanze, immediately after the 20 July plot.

Around 8 May 1945, Dollmann was protected from criminal prosecution of his involvement in war crimes. Cardinal Alfredo Ildefonso Schuster, Archbishop of Milan, with whom he had discussed the possibility for a separate peace between Nazi Germany and the Western Allies (Operation Sunrise), hid Dollmann in a mental institution in Laveno-Mombello.

Dollmann formed the basis for the character of Capitan Bergmann in the film, Rome, Open City by Roberto Rossellini. In 1946, Dollmann returned to Rome, was detected in a movie theater and accompanied by James Jesus Angleton of the CIA to Bern to see Allen Welsh Dulles. In 1952, Dollmann was expelled on the grounds of having had a homosexual relationship with a Swiss official, from Switzerland to Italy. A Padre Parini helped him transfer to Spain, where he was employed by Otto Skorzeny in Donostia in the arms trade.

Italian Intelligence Agency travel documents were issued for Dollmann through Carlo Rocchi, a confidence man of the CIA in Milan. With these, Dollmann traveled into the Federal Republic of Germany. Dollmann was held for one month for Passport offences in custody. In Munich, he stayed at Das Blaue Haus, a boarding house at the back of the Munich Kammerspiele.

He translated the synchronization template of La Dolce Vita by Federico Fellini. Gianfranco Bianchi presided as his executor [trans. from German].

External links

Notes

  1. ↑ Richard Breitman: U.S. intelligence and the Nazis. S. 317.
  2. ↑ Breitmann S. 332.

References