Alfred Naujocks
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Born September 20 1911, Alfred Helmut Naujocks was an SS-Sturmbannführer, and according to some historians, the catalyst for starting the Second World War in Europe.
On August 31, 1939, he led the attack on the Gleiwitz radio station, one of twenty-one similar concentrated attacks that the Germans quickly attributed to the Polish. These attacks formed Hitler's justification to the Reichstag regarding the necessary "pacification" of Poland.
That November, Naujocks also participated in the Venlo incident which saw the capture of two British SIS agents in the Netherlands.
In 1941, he was dismissed from the Sicherheitsdienst after disputing one of Reinhard Heydrich's orders. In 1943, he was sent to the Western front where served as an economic administrator for the troops in Belgium, while involving himself in the deaths of several Belgian Underground members.
In November of 1944, Naujocks surrendered and turned himself over to American forces — who subsequently placed him in detention as a possible war criminal.
In his affidavit presented at the Nuremberg Trials, Naujocks declared the attack against Gliwice Radio Tower was under orders from Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, the chief of Gestapo. After the war he worked as a businessman in Hamburg, where he also sold his story to the media as The Man who Started the War. He is alleged to have helped Otto Skorzeny run ODESSA in helping migrate former SS officers to Latin America covertly to avoid prosecution.
He is alleged to have died on April 4th, 1960, although some sources state that his death occurred in 1966 or 1968.
