Alfred Naujocks

Alfred Helmut Naujocks (20 September 1911 – 4 April 1966), alias Hans Müller, Alfred Bonsen, and Rudolf Möbert, was a German SS functionary during the Third Reich. He took part in the staged Gleiwitz incident, a false flag operation intended to provide the justification for the attack on Poland by Nazi Germany, which ultimately culminated in starting World War II.

Naujocks was born in Kiel and attended the University of Kiel, where he studied engineering. In 1931, after an incomplete apprenticeship as a precision mechanic, he joined the SS. A well known amateur boxer, he was frequently in brawls with the communists. He then signed on as a low-ranking driver for the Sicherheitsdienst SD-Regional Command East, Berlin in 1934, but was soon entrusted with special assignments such as murder. He led an undercover attack on an anti-Nazi radio station in the village of Slapy in Czechoslovakia on 23 January 1935. Black Front activist Rudolf Formis was killed in the incident; Naujocks confessed to the murder in 1944 while in American custody. By autumn 1937, Naujocks had been promoted to Hauptsturmführer (captain) and by the following year, had been promoted again to Sturmbannführer (major).

On 10 August 1939, Reinhard Heydrich informed Naujocks of his mission to lead a small group of German operatives to seize the Gleiwitz radio station. Three weeks later, on the night of 31 August, Naujocks led the attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, one of twenty-one similar concentrated attacks which the German government quickly attributed to the Poles. Once inside the radio station, a short anti-German message in Polish was broadcast (the precise content of the message is now uncertain). Shots were fired in the studio and a corpse left on the floor near the microphone.

This attack formed Hitler's justification to the Reichstag regarding the necessary "pacification" of Poland, thereby igniting the Second World War in Europe.

More recently, author and researcher Jak Mallmann Showell's investigation has suggested that Naujocks' claims as to his actions at the Gleiwitz radio station may have been a fabrication to curry special handling by the Allies after the war. Mallmann Showell discerned that Naujocks is the sole source for details of his personal actions on the night of 31 August 1939. He also avers that the Poles may have accessed the site to obtain Enigma machine secrets for the Allies.^{[clarification needed]} General Lahousen confirmed he provided Naujocks the Polish uniforms.

Later, on 9 November 1939, Naujocks (along with Walter Schellenberg) participated in the Venlo incident, which saw the capture in the Netherlands of two British SIS agents, Captain Sigismund Payne Best and Major Richard Henry Stevens. For this, he was personally awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler. Naujocks also assisted Schellenberg in the secret assignment of spying on Berlin brothel Salon Kitty's clientele.

In early 1940, Naujocks was put in charge of the counterfeiting unit of the SD charged with forging British bank notes under Operation Andreas. By late 1940, Naujocks had been removed from his position after he fell out of favor with Heydrich.

In 1941, he was dismissed from the SD after disputing one of Heydrich's orders. He was demoted and had to serve in the Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front. In 1943, due to ill health, he was sent to the West, where he served as an economic administrator the following year for German troops in Belgium, while involving himself in the deaths of several Belgian underground and Danish resistance members.