ABSTRACT
Naujocks, Alfred (1911-60) A leading figure in Reinhard Heydrich's SD (Security Service), the intelligence service of the SS, and a specialist in its dirty tricks department, Alfred Naujocks achieved notoriety as the man who started World War II by leading the fake ‘Polish’ attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, Upper Silesia, on 31 August 1939. Born on 20 September 1911 and briefly an engineering student at Kiel, Naujocks was the type of young ruffian who proved to be so useful in the street-fighting phase of Nazism. A well-known amateur boxer, he was frequently involved in brawls with communists. He joined the SS in 1931 and three years later enrolled in the SD, becoming one of Heydrich's most trusted agents. In 1939 he was made head of the sub-section of Section III of SD Ausland and put in charge of such special duties as fabricating false papers, passports, identity cards and forged notes for SD agents operating abroad. He was responsible for devising the scheme to bombard England with forged banknotes (Operation Bernhard) in the early phase of World War II. On Heydrich's instructions, Naujocks had earlier supervised and led the feigned ‘Polish’ attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, near the Polish frontier, which was presented by Nazi propaganda as an act of aggression which justified the German invasion of Poland. Naujocks led a small force of SS commandos, dressed in Polish uniforms, who seized the Gleiwitz transmitter on the evening of 31 August 1939 and announced that ‘the time had come for war between Poland and Germany’. After completing the operation, Naujocks and his men left behind the body of a condemned criminal from one of the concentration camps, as if he had been killed in the attack. The day after this fabricated ‘provocation’, the German army crossed into Poland.
