[Translation of notes taken by David Irving in late 1960s from Wolff's original German MS; Wolff, alive at that time, had instructed the Institute to keep it strictly confidential, and inspection was allowed to Mr Irving on that basis.]

Exceptionally powerful effect on the Reichsführer SS [Himmler] of the assassination of Heydrich. He kept recalling the declaration of war by the International Jewish Community as uttered by Chaim Weizmann in September 1939[*], and declared that Germany must rid herself of the seeds, and that the security of the Reich demanded that we wipe out the Jewish element. [...]

Perhaps seventy men all told, from Himmler to Höss, were involved in the extermination of the Jews. [...] "Bormann [left] and Himmler [probably] represented the view that the Jewish problem had to be dealt with, without Hitler getting his fingers dirty on it."

After mass epidemic at Auschwitz, the idea of deliberate mass deaths probably occurred. Himmler was in his way bizarre and religious and held to the view that for the Greatest Warlord in the Greatest War of all times he had to take upon himself tasks, which had to be solved to put Hitler's ideas into effect, without engaging him personally.

Around August 1942 the Reichsführer SS dropped some dark hints: Wolff could have no idea, what one had had to take on ones self for the Messiah of the Next Two Thousand Years, in order that this man personally remain free of sin.

He (the Reichsführer) was beyond help. For the sake of the German people and its Führer he had had to take things upon his own shoulders of which nobody must ever be allowed to learn. [...] The Reichsführer had taken the decision to solve the Jewish Problem radically, as Himmler considered the Jewish Problem and Bolshevism to be practically identical.

Impetus No. 1: Stalin's declaration of total partisan warfare in July 1941

Impetus No. 2: The Assassination of Heydrich [left, by International Jewry]

Wolff inclines to the opinion, that Hitler did not touch upon the question of the Vernichtung of the Jews even with Himmler and in this sense kept himself well out of the whole thing. ... The little circle under Himmler's and Bormann's cover ... declared simply, that they were acting on a "Führer order", without this ever having been explicitly given.