Wolfe Frank: Playboy who became the Nazis ‘voice of doom’

AS CHAT-UP lines go it had a lot more resonance than “Do you come here often?” Wolfe Frank was desperate to impress the attractive British woman sitting opposite him in a cafe in post-war Nuremberg and so he asked: “Would you like to meet Göring?” The truth is Frank had some making up to do. While he had managed to wangle Captain Clare McCririck a seat on a British VIP flight to Germany, his attempt to smuggle her into the city’s Grand Hotel had been scuppered and she had been assigned rather more humble ladies-only quarters elsewhere. But as chief translator from German to English at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals that ran for 10 months from November 1945, Frank could at least make her trip worthwhile.

Using an interrogation slip, he arranged to meet Hitler’s righthand man Hermann Göring on the phoney pretext of checking some documentation.

But his real intention was to give Clare – who was granted an “observation pass” – a face-to-face encounter with the notorious former head of the Luftwaffe In a newly published memoir, Frank describes what happens next: “Göring was brought in punctually and I invited him to sit down. ‘Herr Göring,’ I said. ‘I have here a letter purportedly signed by General Koller. Would you please identify the signature?’ And I handed the two bits of paper to him.

“He glanced at them. ‘But I have already identified the signature on this letter,’ he announced. ‘Thank you. That will be all,’ I declared, and rose. “So did Göring, he nodded briefly and headed for the door, preceded and followed by the two MPs (Military Police).

“When he was level with Clare’s chair, he suddenly stopped and turned to face her. ‘Gnädiges (gracious) Fräulein,’ he said, ‘No doubt I owe this little interlude to your presence in Nuremberg. I hope you have enjoyed it also.’ Then he bowed politely, turned and left for his cell.”

This was only one of Frank’s slightly surreal interactions with Göring. The Nazi was also a fan of a fully grown Harlequinn Great Dane that Frank had acquired from an American officer to keep him company at his hotel.

Wittily named Tiny, the enormous hound was a regular visitor to the Palace of Justice court rooms, where he became a popular distraction from the grimness of the evidence.

“Göring always made some approving sound or gesture when he saw Tiny,” Frank writes. “Then one day, when I stood near him in the courtroom, I heard him say to me out of the corner of his mouth, ‘I wish you’d feed me to that dog of yours instead of hanging me’, and I just had time to whisper back ‘It won’t work – he’s fussy about his food’ before a guard bore down on me to see if I had broken the rule and talked to an accused.”

After hearing nine months of evidence the judges spent a month or so writing their judgments which arrived for the translators on the morning of September 30, 1946.

Frank writes: “I knew who, amongst the defendants, had been found guilty and on which counts. I did not know, nor did anybody else except the judges, what the sentences were going to be. “Nor did I know who would be interpreting them into German. Was it going to be hanging, the guillotine, shooting, prison or banishment? No one knew.” At 2pm judge Lord Lawrence delivered the sentence on Göring. “Göring shrugged his shoulders, pointed at his earphones and indicated he had not heard,” recalls Frank.

“It was incredible, unbelievable, but at that very moment of utmost tension, the installation had broken down. I went right on shaking. I began to count, “Eins, zwei, drei – können Sie mich hören (Can you hear me?) and Göring smiled – yes he actually smiled – nodded in my direction and we began anew.”

The judge told him: “Defendant Hermann Wilhelm Göring, on the counts of the indictment on which you have been convicted the International Military Tribunal sentences you to death by hanging.” Frank’s eyes were riveted on Göring’s face, which was totally expressionless but growing deadly white. “I spoke as if hypnotised, into the microphone before me,” he says. “Tod durch erhängen (death by hanging) instead of saying ‘Tod durch den Strang’ (death by the rope) which is the accepted formula in German.

“When I realised my error Göring had already dropped his earphones, turned and was stepping back into the lift. The first man to learn his punishment through me had gone from sight.”

FRANK delivered the same translation of death by the rope to Joachim von Ribbentrop (foreign minister) and the other Nazi leaders who were sentenced to capital punishment. All but one were hanged on October 16, 1946. Göring escaped the hangman’s noose by taking his own life with a poison capsule in his cell at the supposedly suicide-proof Nuremberg prison.

After the hangings, Frank became something of a media star as his translations had been beamed around the globe on radio. As he writes in his book: “I am proudly aware of my minor claim to fame as the Voice of Doom which Göring et al heard when they learned their sentences.”

To order Nuremberg’s Voice Of Doom: The Autobiography Of The Chief Interpreter At History’s Greatest Trials by Frank Wolfe (edited by Paul Hooley), Frontline Books at £19.99, call The Express Bookshop on 01872 562310 with your card details. Alternatively send a cheque payable to Express Bookshop to Frontline Books Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ. Or buy online at expressbookshop.co.uk. UK delivery is free

MEMOIRS SPENT 27 YEARS GATHERING DUST

BUT for the vigilance of retired panel beater and paint sprayer Mike Dilliway the contents of Wolfe Frank’s memoirs might never have seen the light of day.

In 2015, during an attic clear-out at his home near the Wiltshire village of Mere, Dilliway came across eight boxes he’d inherited from a penniless friend, Wolfe Frank, who had taken his own life in 1988 while in a poor physical and mental state.

Glancing through the documents, he knew they chronicled an important chapter in world history so passed them over to his writer friend, Paul Hooley, who spent a year knocking the manuscript into shape.

It turns out that Frank, who was of Jewish descent, was a Bavarian playboy before war broke out and married the first of his five wives in 1937. By then his work for the opposition had come to the notice of the authorities and he and his new wife had to flee to England after he was declared “an enemy of the state to be shot on sight”.

He learned English and became a businessman, running both a glass business and a furniture company, enjoying success on such a scale that he had a flat in London’s Dolphin Square plus a house on the Thames.

After being interned at the outbreak of war, Frank successfully campaigned for his release and joined the British Army in 1940, rising to the rank of captain. With his language skills, he was perfectly placed to act as a translator at the military tribunals.