Nawyox, Alfred

Pre-war years

Biographical information about Naujoks is scarce. A native of Kiel, he studied at the University of Kiel ^[1] as an engineer, did not graduate. He worked as a mechanic and welder, in 1931 he met Reinhard Heydrich and joined the SS ^[2] , since 1934 he worked as a driver for the Eastern Regional Command of the SD ^[3] .

January 23, 1935 Naujoks led an attack on an anti-German radio station in the village of Zagorji near Prague. During the attack, an activist of the Strasserian Black Front Rudolf Formis ^[4] was killed, in which Naujoks confessed only in 1944 during an interrogation with the Americans ^[5] . In the fall of 1937, Naujoks was promoted to SS Hauptsturmführer, and to Sturmbannführer in 1938 ^[3] .

World War II

On August 10, 1939, Reinhard Heydrich placed Alfred Nauyoks, leader of group VI-F (technical issues), at the head of a secret operation to stage the attack on the Gleivitsa radio station ^[6] . The operation was carried out on the evening of August 31, immediately before the Wehrmacht invasion of Poland. Having seized the radio station, the attackers turned to listeners in Polish, urging the Poles to revolt ^[7] . For greater credibility, the Gestapo brought here several prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp , who were dressed in Polish uniforms, shot and left in the forest, where they were later discovered by the local police. The staging of the attack was aimed at blaming the start of the war on the Polish side ^{[8] [9]} .

On November 8, 1939, Naujoks, the commander of the SS division, along with Walter Schellenberg captured two British intelligence officers SIS : Sigismund Payne-Best (captain) and Richard Henry Stevens in Dutch Venlo . He continued his activities in the Netherlands and Belgium during the French campaign , commanding an SS subversive detachment. Later, he developed the operation “Bernhard” for the production and transfer of fake pounds to the UK to destabilize its monetary system. In 1941, he left the SD after a serious violation of discipline and disobedience to Heydrich’s order and was sent to the Waffen-SS on the Soviet-German front, where he was wounded. In 1943, he returned to the Western Front and began to work in the military administration of Belgium, and later worked in Denmark.

As a leader in the occupying lands of Belgium, Naujoks was notorious for hunting for members of the Resistance Movement, killing several of them. From December 1943 to autumn 1944, he served in occupied Denmark, where he carried out terrorist attacks and attacks on the civilian population. He directed the so-called punitive “Peter group”, participated in the murder of the Lutheran priest Kai Munk ^[10] . Later, Naujoks was removed from his post, and Otto Alexander Friedrich Schwerdt, SS Hauptsturmfuhrer, was appointed in his place. October 19, 1944 Naujoks was captured by the Americans. He was immediately put under arrest as a possible war criminal.

After Flight

Alfred Naujoks acted as a witness at the Nuremberg trials , in which he confirmed that the events in Glavice occurred under the direct supervision of Heydrich and Müller . In 1946, he fled from the prisoner of war camp, but was again arrested and extradited to Denmark in 1947, where he was convicted and released in 1950. Presumably, he was one of the leaders of the organization of former SS members of ODESSA , which was involved in the transfer of the Nazis to Latin America. For cover, he was doing business in Hamburg, where he settled in 1952. Published a memoir, "The Man Who Started the War." He died on April 4, 1966 (the literature erroneously refers to the years 1960 or 1968).

Russian-speaking

• “Fascism and anti-fascism. Encyclopedia "M.:" Terra ", 2008; Zalessky K. A. "Guard units of Nazism. Complete SS Encyclopedia. ” M .: "Veche", 2009.

English

• Ailsby, Christopher. The Third Reich Day by Day. - Zenith Imprint, 2001 .-- ISBN 0-7603-1167-6 .
• Benz, Wolfgang (2007). A Concise History of the Third Reich . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-25383-4
• Mallmann Showell, Jak P. (2009). Enigma U-Boats, revised edition, page 166.
• Shirer, William L. 1990 [1959]. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich . New York: MJF Books. ISBN 978-0-8317-7404-2
• Weale, Adrian. The SS: A New History. - London: Little, Brown, 2010 .-- ISBN 978-1408703045 .

German-speaking

• Florian Altenhöner: Der Mann, der den 2. Weltkrieg begann. Alfred Naujocks: Fälscher, Mörder, Terrorist. Prospero Verlag, Münster / Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941688-10-0 .
• Shraga Elam: Hitlers Fälscher. Wie jüdische, amerikanische und Schweizer Agenten der SS beim Falschgeldwaschen halfen. Wien 2000.
• Franz Menges: Naujocks, Alfred. In: Neue Deutsche Biographie (NDB). Band 18, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-428-00199-0 , S. 762 f. (Digitalisat).
• Günter Peis: The Man Who Started The War. London 1960.
• Jürgen Runzheimer: Die Grenzzwischenfälle am Abend vor dem deutschen Angriff auf Polen. In: Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, (Hrsg.): Sommer 1939. Die Großmächte und der europäische Krieg. Stuttgart 1979, S. 107-147.
• Alfred Spieß, Heiner Lichtenstein: Unternehmen Tannenberg. Der Anlaß zum Zweiten Weltkrieg., Frankfurt a. M. 1989.