Stille Hilfe

The first president, Helene Elizabeth, Princess von Isenburg, was chosen because of her good contacts in the aristocracy and conservative upper middle-class circles as well as the Catholic Church.

Founding members of the committee included church representatives Theophil Wurm and Johannes Neuhäusler, as well as high-ranking former functionaries of the Nazi state such as the former SS-Standartenführer and head of department in the Central Reich Security Office (RSHA), Wilhelm Spengler, and SS-Obersturmbannführer Heinrich Malz, who was the personal adviser of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

Helene Elisabeth, Princess von Isenburg explained its objectives in this way: "From the start of its efforts‚ the Stille Hilfe sought to take care of, above all, the serious needs of the prisoners of war and those interned completely without rights.

In press campaigns, personal and open letters and petitions, the accused were usually represented as innocent victims–merely those taking commands, irreproachable and having a blind faith in the Führer–who would have to suffer bitter injustice by victor's justice.

Johannes Neuhäusler [de] (1888–1973) in particular, who not only had suffered detention/imprisonment by the Gestapo, but also had been held by the Nazis in the Dachau concentration camp as a special prisoner, was most effective in public opinion, even among western Allied officials.

The motives of the bishops lay probably less in a conscious ideological identification with the war criminals, but rather in the effort regarding reconciliation with the German past and the start of the new post-war society in West Germany.

The further connections of Princess Isenburg and Aschenauer led particularly to former SS organisations such as Gauleiterkreis under Werner Naumann, which was already partly formed in Allied prisoner-of-war camps.

At the same time however contacts were reinforced with "Hilfsorganisation für nationale politische Gefangene und deren Angehörige" (relief organization for national political prisoners) (HNG), so continuity may be secured.

Gudrun Burwitz was instructed by Stille Hilfe to rent a comfortable room for him in a home for the aged, which was built on a lot formerly owned by Rudolf Hess.

[1] At the end of the 1990s it became public that the social welfare assistance administration (and thus the German taxpayers) had in large part taken over the considerable running costs of the home where Malloth was staying.

Although firmly rooted in the neo-Nazi fringe, it developed amicable relations with conservative West German politicians, such as CDU Bundestag Parliamentary leader Alfred Dregger, who praised the efforts of Stille Hilfe in 1989.