5 September 2005 releases: German intelligence officers

The latest release of Security Service records to The National Archives includes a file on SS Standartenführer Walther Rauff, a notorious Nazi and advisor to Gestapo chief Reinhard Heydrich. The file, KV 2/1970, provides a chilling account of the brutal career of a man thought to be responsible for nearly 100,000 deaths during the Second World War.

Early Career

Rauff joined the Reichsmarine (the German Navy) in 1924 as a young cadet. After a period of training as a midshipman he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1936 and given command of a minesweeper. He was a friend of Reinhard Heydrich, who also served in the Navy in the 1920s. Heydrich was hired by SS chief Heinrich Himmler in 1931 to serve as the head of the SS counter-intelligence system, and when Rauff resigned from the Navy in 1937, Heydrich took him under his wing. Rauff was given the job of putting the SS and its security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), onto a war footing. He was appointed to the rank of Standartenführer, roughly equivalent to a colonel.

Rauff's "technical work"

In 1941 Rauff was made head of technical affairs of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Security Main Office), on Heydrich's personal staff.

It was in his capacity as "technical adviser" to Heydrich in 1941-42 that Rauff was given the task of solving problems faced by the SS Einsatzgruppen (execution squads) in Eastern Europe. The Nazis initially used shooting as a method of mass murder, as happened in places like Babi Yar near Kiev, where at least 33,000 Jews were killed in only two days. However, the close-quarters killing of men, women and children took a heavy psychological toll on the killers themselves.

With help from his SS technicians, Rauff devised an alternative in the form of crude but effective mobile gas chambers. These had already been used on a limited basis in a Nazi euthanasia programme called Tiergartenstraße-4, in which thousands of mentally ill patients were murdered.

Rauff supervised the modification of scores of trucks, with the assistance of a Berlin chassis builder, to divert their exhaust fumes into airtight chambers in the back of the vehicles. The victims were then poisoned and / or asphyxiated from the carbon monoxide accumulating within the truck compartment as the vehicle travelled to a burial site. The trucks could carry between 25 and 60 people at a time.

Trials were conducted at Sachsenhausen concentration camp where inmates were driven and gassed in these trucks as they were driven directly to a crematorium. Gas trucks were subsequently employed at an extermination camp at Chelmno nad Narem in Poland. There were teething problems, however. After a time the SS squads responsible complained of bad headaches due to the fumes and asked to go back to the previous, more "acceptable" method of mass shootings.

Nevertheless, executions continued and Rauff and his fellow administrators discussed possible technical improvements. Their findings were carefully recorded on file, with Himmler maintaining a keen interest in the outcome.

In mid-1942, permanent gas chambers were established at extermination camps such as Auschwitz. These provided a much more efficient means of killing people at rates of up to 2,500 an hour. Rauff moved on to other tasks; by this time, his "technical work" had accounted for at least 97,000 deaths.

Rauff in Italy

The Security Service file records that Rauff was posted to Tunis in 1942 as head of the SD, where he led an Einsatzkommando (an SS task force). He was then sent to Milan in 1943 where he took charge of all Gestapo and SD operations throughout northwest Italy.

In both these postings Rauff rapidly gained reputation for utter ruthlessness. In Tunis he was responsible for the indiscriminate execution of both Jews and local partisans. His work in Italy involved imposing total German control on Milan, Turin and Genoa. His success in this task earned him the congratulations of his SS superior, who described it as "a superb achievement".

Rauff remained in Italy until the end of the war. He narrowly avoided being lynched by an Italian mob, having barricaded himself and a number of other SS officers into the Hotel Regina in Milan. He was arrested by Allied troops and sent to a prisoner of war camp.

Interrogation and escape

File KV 2/1970 includes a record of Rauff's interrogation report, which gives his account of his wartime activities. Other material in the file discusses the real nature of his wartime and post-war activities, which were uncovered after official German documents were found providing details of his "technical work." Rauff's interrogator concluded his report with the following words:

"Rauff has brought his organisation of political gangsterism to stream-lined perfection and is proud of the fact. By nature cynical and overbearing, but cunning and shifty rather than intelligent, he regards his past activities as a matter of course."

The interrogator went on to recommend life-long internment and Rauff was placed in a prisoner of war camp in Rimini, from which he escaped in December 1946. He found safe haven in Syria where he became a "Training Advisor", further details of which remain unknown.

Rauff then moved with his family to Santiago, Chile. In 1958, his whereabouts became known when he wrote to the West German Finance Ministry asking for his naval pension to be paid to him at his new home. By this time the true extent of his war crimes was well known and in 1962, he was arrested after Germany requested his extradition.

He was freed a few months later after the Chilean Supreme Court ruled that the statute of limitations on his crimes had expired. Subsequent attempts to extradite him to face justice failed and he remained in Chile for the rest of his life.

Rauff remained an unrepentant Nazi until his death, aged 77, in 1984. He never showed any remorse for his actions, which he described as those of "a mere technical administrator." If anything, he was perplexed by the reactions of others to them.