Camp 020 Report on the Case of Alfred Naujocks 14.1.1945, p.11 (See Alfred Naujocks British Documents Vol.1.pdf, https://archive.org/details/alfred-nauj ... -documents)
Even though his description of the operation is extremely short, he nevertheless manages to insert several massive errors. Naujocks does not know that the Gleiwitz installation is not a radio station, but merely a transmitter that served to propagate the Breslau radio station. So there is, contrary to his description, no studio with microphones to take over (What in reality did happen, seems to be that the occupiers managed to find and connect an auxiliary microphone, that was used to announce when the Transmitter was turned off and the antenna grounded during thunderstorms).THE POLISH FRONTIER INCIDENTS:
On the 10th August, 1939, NAUJOCK was summoned into HEYDRICH'S presence and told that, as the Fuehrer was determined to attack Poland within a month, it would be necessary to stage some "frontier incidents" which would lead the world to believe that the first aggressive move had been made by the Poles and not by the Germans.
For this purpose, it was proposed to take selected life-term prisoners from the concentration camps, kill them by means of hypodermic injections, dress them in Polish army uniforms and, having riddled the bodies with bullets, place them in carefully chosen positions in German frontier villages of Upper Silesia, so that it would appear, to the casual observer, that small parties of Polish troops had been carrying out abortive raids on Reich territory.
This plan was immediately put into effect, and NAUJOCKS states that the bodies were forwarded to the villages where they were required in packing cases labelled "preserves", Some of the victims arrived at their destinations only half-dead, having been given inadequate injections, and these had to be put out of their misery before they could be used. The part played by NAUJOOKS in the affair was as follows:
In order to lend colour to the "frontier incidents", HEYDRICH and his friends decided to publish a story to the effect that the Gleiwitz broadcasting station had been attacked by Polish insurgents, and he (NAUJOCKS) was accordingly sent to that town with five or six men to make the necessary arrangements. On his arrival there, he arranged for a Polish-speaking German to take possession of the microphone "by force" and to begin broadcasting an appeal to his "countrymen" urging them to rise against the Germans. The broadcast was then abruptly broken off, shots were fired in the studio, and finally a corpse, with which NAUJOCKS had previously been provided, was left lying on the floor close to the microphone, riddled with bullets.
NAUJOCKS had to remain for more than fortnight in Gleiwitz before he was ordered back to Berlin, and when he did eventually leave and passed all the German troops and army equipment en route for the Polish frontier, he realised for the first time that it was now merely a matter of days before war broke out.
In this way Germany prepared for her unprovoked attack on the Polish people, and NAUJOCKS says that when HITLER made his radio speech on 1st September, 1939, in which he expressed his anger at the "Polish frontier outrages" and assured his listeners that such insults could only be answered by the sword, he (NAUJOCKS) began for the first time to lose faith in the Fuehrer. He maintains that HITLER himself must have planned the frontier incident scheme and given ordere for the murder of the prisoners from the, concentration camps, since no other Nazi leader would have dared to take such a step on his own initiative. He points out, however, that even the Fuehrer himself could not have carried out such a dastardly plan without the assistance of utterly unscrupulous men such as HEYDRICH and Gruppenleiter MUELLER, who rivalled the former for his cruelty and callousness.
On his return to Berlin NAUJOCKS was, as usual, bitterly reprimanded by HEYDRICH, who had been unable to pick up the faked broadcast from Gleiwitz Radio Station and was inclined to suggest that it had never taken place at all because NAUJOCKS had, as usual, lost his nerve at the last moment.
But there is an even more egregious error - note the timeline: Naujocks receives instructions from Heydrich on 10. August, immediately goes to Gleiwitz and carries out the operation. Then he waits for more than two weeks before he leaves Gleiwitz for Berlin and it is still a few days before the war starts. That Naujocks made this whopper of an error and no one noticed it for many months, is really a testament of how little, contrary to the postwar depiction, the Gleiwitz incident was propagandized by the Germans.
In comparison to this the other oddities - like why would you first kill the victims with an injection and then shoot them? - seem hardly noteworthy anymore.
It is interesting to compare Naujocks interrogation statements to those he made later in his affidavit for the IMT in Nuremberg on 20.11.1945 (https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/re ... cts/156820):
Some differences with the earlier testimony:I, Alfred Helmut Naujocks, being first duly sworn, depose and state as follows:
1. I was a member of the SS from 1931 to 19 October 1944 and a member of the SD from its creation in 1934 to January 1941. I served as a member of the Waffen-SS from February 1941 until the middle of 1942. Thereafter, I served in the economic department of the military administration of Belgium from September 1942 to September 1944. I surrendered to the Allies on 19 October 1944.
2. On or about 10 August 1939, the chief of the Sipo and SD, Heydrich, personally ordered me to simulate an attack on the radio station near Gleiwitz near the Polish border and to make it appear that the attacking force consisted of Poles. Heydrich said, "Practical proof is needed for these attacks of the Poles for the foreign press as well as for German propaganda purposes." I was directed to go to Gleiwitz with five or six other SD-men and wait there until I received a code word from Heydrich indicating that the attack should take place. My instructions were to seize the radio station and to hold it long enough to permit a Polish speaking German who would be put at my disposal to broadcast a speech in Polish. Heydrich told me that this speech should state that the time had come for conflict between Germans and Poles and that Poles should get together and smash down any Germans from whom they met resistance. Heydrich also told me at this time that he expected an attack on Poland by Germany in a few days.
3. I went to Gleiwitz and waited there fourteen days. Then I requested permission of Heydrich to return to Berlin but was told to stay in Gleiwitz. Between the 25th and the 31st of August I went to see Heinrich Mueller, head of the Gestapo, who was then nearby at Oppeln. In my presence, Mueller discussed with a man named Mehlhorn plans for another border incident, in which it should be made to appear that Polish soldiers were at tacking German troops. Germans in the approximate strength of a company were to be used. Mueller stated that he had 12 or 13 condemned criminals who were to be dressed in Polish uniforms and left dead on the ground of the scene of the incident, to show that they had been killed while attacking. For this purpose they were to be given fatal injections by a doctor employed by Heydrich. Then they were also to be given gunshot wounds. After the incident members of the press and other persons were to be taken to the spot of the incident. A police report was subsequently to be prepared.
4. Mueller told me that he had an order from Heydrich to make one of those criminals available to me for the action at Gleiwitz. The code name by which he referred to these criminals was "Canned Goods."
5. The incident at Gleiwitz in which I participated was carried out on the evening preceding the German attack on Poland. As I recall, war broke out on the 1st of September 1939. At noon of the 31st August I received by telephone from Heydrich the code word for the attack which was to take place at 8 o'clock that evening. Heydrich said, "In order to carry out this attack report to Mueller for Canned Goods." I did this and gave Mueller instructions to deliver the man near the radio station. I received this man and had him laid down at the entrance to the station. He was alive but he was completely unconscious. I tried to open his eyes. I could not recognize by his eyes that he was alive, only by his breathing. I did not see the shot wounds but a lot of blood was smeared across his face. He was in civilian clothes.
6. We seized the radio station as ordered, broadcast a speech of three to four minutes over an emergency transmitter, fired some pistol shots and left.
1. The "False Flag" operations besides the one in Gleiwitz are reduced to a single one and it is no longer presented as something that definitely happened, but only something that Naujocks overheard being planned. The packing cases labeled "Canned Goods" for transporting bodies are removed, instead "Canned Goods" is now supposed to be a code word for the bodies.
2. There is no longer explicit mention of seizing a studio. There is nonsensical talk of using an "emergency transmitter" to make the broadcast, charitably we can assume that "emergency microphone" is meant
3. In the interrogation protocol, the victim is riddled with bullets and dead when he is placed, whereas in the IMT version he is only unconscious and no bullet wounds are visible. In addition, in the first version the victim is placed inside the building, in the second at the entrance.
4. It is interesting how the elements are swapped to "fix" the timeline: The "only days until war breaks out" is now put into the mouth of Heydrich right at the start on 10. August. The two weeks of waiting come next. To bridge the time gap until 31. August, another week long wait period is inserted, distinguished from the previous one by a visit to Heinrich Müller in Oppeln taking place.
These two documents not only prove that the statements of Naujocks were a lie, but that his captors could not help knowing that he was lying.
