Wilhelm Höttl

Wilhelm Höttl or Hoettl (19 March 1915 – 27 June 1999) was an Austrian Nazi Party member, and SS member who rose to the rank of SS-''Sturmbannführer''. He served in the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (Security Service; SD), and by 1944 was acting head of Intelligence and Counter Espionage in Central and South East Europe. After the war ended, he was recruited by the United States Army Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC). Later, Höttl opened a school in Bad Aussee and authored three books. He died in 1999.

Biography

Höttl was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, 19 March 1915. In 1938, at the age of 23, he received a doctorate in history from the University of Vienna.

While still a student, he joined the Nazi Party (member no. 6309616) and the SS (member no. 309510). From late 1939 until the end of World War II in Europe, Höttl was employed almost without interruption by Germany's central intelligence and security agency, the ''Reichssicherheitshauptamt'' (RSHA; Reich Security Main Office). The RSHA was made up of seven main departments, including: the ''Sicherheitsdienst'' (SD; Security Service); the ''Sicherheitspolizei'' (SiPo; Security Police), composed of the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and the ''Kriminalpolizei'' (Kripo; Criminal Police).

Höttl was first stationed in Vienna with the SD foreign bureau and then moved to Berlin where he was promoted to the rank of SS-''Sturmbannführer'' (major). In 1944 Höttl became the ''Ausland-SDs acting head of Intelligence and Counter Espionage in Central and South East Europe. In March he was assigned to Budapest, where he served as second in command to ''Reichsführer-SS'' Heinrich Himmler's SS representative in Hungary. In addition, Höttl served as political advisor to Hitler's ambassador there, Edmund Veesenmayer, who reported to Berlin, for example, on the large-scale deportations in 1944 of Jews from Hungary. During his stay in Budapest he was in contact with the Americans in Bern, Switzerland.

As the residual Nazi German empire collapsed in 1945, with Höttl's position allowing him official access to German passports and official entry visa's to Switzerland, he leveraged the position for his own gain. Those who paid Höttl were Hungarian SS officer Árpád Toldi, who was in charge of the Hungarian Gold Train. Toldi and his family left the train with a large amount of gold on 30 March 1945, as the train crossed into Austria - the Soviet Red Army was only 10 miles behind. Toldi's convoy tried to enter neutral Switzerland 10 days later, but were refused entry. Toldi then paid Höttl 10% of his convoy's goods (4 cases of gold) in return for German passports and Swiss visas for all of his family. Toldi and his family then successfully entered Switzerland, but he was later detained in Austria that year, interrogated by Allied authorities, but released and has never been traced again.

Prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials

In March 1945, Höttl contacted OSS authorities in Switzerland and in May 1945 surrendered himself to American authorities in Bad Aussee. He was then taken to Germany, where he was confined until October 1947 when he was transferred to Austria and confined in Lager Klessheim, Salzburg. During this time Höttl figured prominently as a prosecution witness at the Nuremberg trials. In an affidavit dated 25 November 1945, the 30-year-old Höttl described a conversation he held with Adolf Eichmann