HASS, KARL (1912–2004). A senior Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security
Service) officer prosecuted for his participation in the Ardeatine
Massacre, Karl Hass was born in Kiel on 5 October 1912. A group
leader in the Hitler Youth, he joined the SD in 1934 and was assigned
to the press section at the Berlin headquarters. In summer 1943, fol-
lowing the fall of Benito Mussolini, he was placed in charge of coun-
terintelligence in Rome. The most notorious incident under Hass’s
supervision occurred on 24 March 1944 at the Ardeatine Caves just
south of Rome, where 335 Italians were murdered in retaliation for a
bomb attack in the Via Rasella that had killed 33 Germans. On orders
from the Gestapo, Hass also lured Princess Malfada of Savoy, the
daughter of King Victor Emmanuel III, to the German embassy; she
later died at the Buchenwald concentration camp.
Although captured by the Americans at the end of the war, Hass
worked for several years in Germany and Austria for the U.S. Coun-
terintelligence Corps. His emergence from obscurity occurred in
1996 as the result of an immunity agreement for his testimony against
a fellow SD officer, Erich Priebke. On the eve of taking the stand at
the military trial in Rome, Hass unsuccessfully attempted to flee. He
was indicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because of his frail
health, however, he remained at a nursing home near Rome until his
death on 21 April 2004. See also KAPPLER, HERBERT.
HAUDEGEN. The last and most successful of Germany’s secret
Arctic weather stations during World War II, Operation haudegen
was under the command of Wilhelm Dege, a geographer fluent in
Norwegian and long familiar with the area. After arriving in mid-
September 1944, he and his trained team of 11 men—equipped with
provisions for 18 months—set up the facility in a remote fjord on
Nordaustlandet, the northernmost island in Svalbard (Spitsbergen).
Deemed essential for timely weather forecasting for military opera-
tions in northern and central Europe, the meteorological data was re-
corded at intervals of several hours and conveyed to Berlin via radio.
Hydrogen-filled radiosonde balloons were sent aloft every afternoon
to measure conditions in the lower levels of the stratosphere. Besides
submitting these reports, the group pursued scientific research related
to polar regions in general.
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