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Robert Wolfe (March 2, 1921 – December 09, 2014) was a World War II U.S. Army officer, historian, and retired senior
archivist
An archivist is an information professional who assesses, collects, organizes, preserves, maintains control over, and provides access to records and archives determined to have long-term value. The records maintained by an archivist can cons ...
of the
US National Archives
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch, charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also taske ...
. He was wounded in both the Pacific and European Theaters of Operation. He commanded a recon team and also an anti-landmine platoon. He was a
subject-matter expert
A subject-matter expert (SME) is a person who has accumulated great knowledge in a particular field or topic and this level of knowledge is demonstrated by the person's degree, licensure, and/or through years of professional experience with the su ...
on captured
Nazi
Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...
war documents. Wolfe worked for 34 years at the Archives, functioning as its senior specialist for captured German and related records.
Military career
Wolfe received head wounds in both theaters. While recovering from his first wound, he served in a training cadre in Ohio. After receiving his second head wound in France, he was assigned to the Office of Military Censorship in Paris, France.
After the end of the European war, he joined the
Office of Military Government in
Heidelberg, Germany
Heidelberg (; ; ) is the List of cities in Baden-Württemberg by population, fifth-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, and with a population of about 163,000, of which roughly a quarter consists of studen ...
. At first his duties were with the prosecutors' office for the
Nuremberg War Crimes trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials #REDIRECT Nuremberg trials
{{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from move ...
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. After the trials ended, he worked with U.S. efforts to rebuild the German civilian government.
The office manager in 1947 was Ingeborg Edith Kirch. She and Wolfe were married in 1948 before leaving Germany for the U.S. They returned to
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York City, where Robert completed his education at
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
. While working on his doctorate, he taught history and political science at
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a public university in Brooklyn in New York City, United States. It is part of the City University of New York system and enrolls nearly 14,000 students on a campus in the Midwood and Flatbush sections of Brooklyn as of fall ...
.
NARA career
He joined the National Archives in 1961, upon concluding service as a member of the
American Historical Association
The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world, claiming over 10,000 members. Founded in 1884, AHA works to protect academic free ...
team
microfilm
A microform is a scaled-down reproduction of a document, typically either photographic film or paper, made for the purposes of transmission, storage, reading, and printing. Microform images are commonly reduced to about 4% or of the original d ...
ing captured German records at the
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
Records Center in
Alexandria, Virginia
Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in Northern Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Washington, D.C., D.C. The city's population of 159,467 at the 2020 ...
.
Berlin Document Center
Wolfe also served as archival consultant to the
Department of State
The United States Department of State (DOS), or simply the State Department, is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the country's foreign policy and relations. Equivalent to the ministry of foreign affairs ...
for the
Berlin Document Center
The Berlin Document Center (BDC) was created in Berlin, Germany, after the end of World War II. Its task was to centralize the collection of documents from the time of Nazism, which were needed for the preparation of the Nuremberg Trials against wa ...
(BDC) and as Special Adviser to
Eli Wiesel for the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) is the United States' official memorial to the Holocaust, dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of the Holocaust. Opened in 1993, the museum explores the Holocaust through p ...
. His publications include: ''Captured German and Related Records: a National Archives Conference'' (1974) and ''Americans as Proconsuls: U.S. Military Government in Germany and Japan, 1944-52'' (1984).
As archival consultant to the Department of State for the BDC from 1968 to 1994, Wolfe was the chief American negotiator for the return to the
West German government of original captured
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
personnel records assembled by the victors at the BDC. During that time, he wrote official reports and presented and published papers concerning the history of those records, specifically including reference to the discovery and capture of the Nazi Party records found at the paper mill in
Schwabing-Freimann
Schwabing is a borough in the northern part of Munich, the Capital (political), capital of the Germany, German state of Bavaria. It is part of the city borough 4 (Schwabing-West) and the city borough 12 (Schwabing-Freimann). The population of Sc ...
, Germany. One such publication was "A Short History of the Berlin Document Center", written as a Preface to "The Holdings of the Berlin Document Center: A Guide to the Collections" (BDC, Berlin, 1994).
In 2001, Wolfe wrote a
monograph
A monograph is generally a long-form work on one (usually scholarly) subject, or one aspect of a subject, typically created by a single author or artist (or, sometimes, by two or more authors). Traditionally it is in written form and published a ...
describing the discovery of the Nazi Party's worldwide membership card file by U.S. Army
Counter Intelligence Corps
The Counter Intelligence Corps (Army CIC) was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and ...
Agent
Michel Thomas
Michel Thomas (born Moniek Kroskof, February 3, 1914 – January 8, 2005) was a polyglot linguist, and decorated war veteran. He survived imprisonment in several Nazi concentration camps after serving in the Maquis of the French Resistance ...
in early May 1945.
Interagency Working Group
Wolfe was one of eight independent historians employed by the
Interagency Working Group (IWG) to assist in implementing the declassification and disclosures under the provisions of the
Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
The Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group is a Federal government of the United States, United States government interagency group, which is tasked with locating, identifying, inventorying, and recomme ...
(NWCDA). The IWG had been established to oversee the review of Federal agency records under consideration for declassification.
These historians served as ''ex officio'' members of the IWG and were involved in all aspects of the IWG's work with German and Japanese Imperial war records in order to comply with the "largest congressionally mandated declassification project in U.S. history".
The eight million pages of material declassified by the IWG under the NWCDA added significantly to the publicly available information about Nazi war crimes, collaborators, and the lives of selected criminals following the war. Wolfe was one of the authors of a 2004 report entitled ''U.S. Intelligence and the Nazis'' which was revised and released the following year, 2005, by Cambridge University Press as a book.
Among the senior Nazis intensely sought by the Allies was
Heinrich Müller, who was head of the
Gestapo
The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe.
The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...
. No arrest was reported; no body was identified. Both the Soviets and the West wanted to interrogate him about many aspects of the war. Wolfe and three other historians analyzed what evidence was available. Their conclusion, "The Mystery of Heinrich Müller: New Materials from the CIA," ''Holocaust and Genocide Studies'' published in 2001, was that Müller had been killed in Berlin as the war drew to a close.
The expertise of the historians in the searching process and their resulting analysis of the records was a major contribution to public understanding of World War II war crimes and the involvement of U.S. agencies relating to those charged or suspected of war crimes.
Death and tributes
Wolfe died in Alexandria, Virginia, on December 9, 2014, survived by his wife and two sons. He directed that there be no funeral but, that he be buried in
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington National Cemetery is the largest cemetery in the United States National Cemetery System, one of two maintained by the United States Army. More than 400,000 people are buried in its 639 acres (259 ha) in Arlington County, Virginia.
...
. He was buried, along with his wife, who died on April 2, 2015, on July 10, 2015. He was among the last of the subject specialists at the National Archives. Shlomo Aronson paid tribute to his memory as "a treasurer of the WWII records at the US National Archives, and a warm, humorous ''mensch''. ... We historians will cherish his memory."
Edwin Black
Edwin Black (born February 27, 1950) is an American historian and author, as well as a print syndication, syndicated columnist, investigative journalist, and weekly talk show host on The Edwin Black Show. He specializes in human rights, the hist ...
said of him, "The National Archives has lost one of its most precious resources. But mostly, history has lost a most valiant soldier."
Bibliography
Books
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Reports
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References
External links
Statement by Robert Wolfe for Implementing the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act
* ttps://www.archives.gov/iwg/research-papers/eichmann.html ''Did CIA Really Cold-Shoulder the Hunt for Adolf Eichmann?''by Robert Wolfe in 2006
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wolfe, Robert
American historians
American archivists
Historians of Nazism
American historians of the Holocaust
Writers from Washington, D.C.
1921 births
2014 deaths
Brooklyn College faculty
United States Army personnel of World War II
American expatriates in Germany
Military personnel from Vermont
United States Army officers