about Himmler drew attention to his own wartime activities and
caused the Bavarian Ministry of Justice to charge him with “abet-
ting the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jews.” A second ar-
rest warrant accused him of providing “psychological assistance”
during a massacre in Minsk in August 1941. Wolff’s denial of any
knowledge of the death camps proved unpersuasive, as did the
testimony of his friend Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz stressing
the number of lives saved through Operation sunrise. On 30 Sep-
tember 1964, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. In late August
1969, however, Wolff was released owing to poor health. He died
on 17 July 1984 in Rosenheim (Bavaria).WOLKE. A joint undertaking of the Ministerium für Staatssicher-
heit (MfS) and Polish counterintelligence, Operation wolke (Cloud)
originated in 1983 and was designed to aid the Polish martial law
regime under Wojciech Jaruzelski in combating the Solidarity
movement. Relying on the technological expertise of Main Division
III of the MfS (whose assigned personnel and equipment arrived in a
special aircraft from East Berlin), the operation specifically targeted
the U.S. embassy in Warsaw. The Poles provided a concealed base
of operations near the building. Other key aspects, such as devising
legends and determining the means of transporting and storing opera-
tional materials, were decided in consultation, even though the two
services had a strained record of cooperation.
By penetrating the embassy electronically, the Poles and East
Germans attempted to ascertain the activities of covert agents and
any hostile attempts to tap into the radio communications system
in Warsaw. The operation also focused on Solidarity’s clandestine
radio transmitter and explored methods of blocking its broadcasts.
At the conclusion of wolke in 1986, a comprehensive report was
delivered by MfS head Erich Mielke to the Polish interior minister
and the KGB.
WOLLENBERG, ERICH (1892–1973). A leading communist mili-
tary and intelligence strategist who later broke with Joseph Stalin,
Erich Wollenberg was born into a middle-class family in Königsberg
(now Kaliningrad, Russia) on 15 August 1892. A medical student in
1914, he volunteered for military service and saw frontline combat.
WOLLENBERG, ERICH • 503