He served in the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service; SD), and by 1944 was acting head of Intelligence and Counter Espionage in Central and South East Europe.
[2] Höttl was first stationed in Vienna with the SD foreign bureau and then moved to Berlin where he was promoted to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major).
In addition, Höttl served as political advisor to Hitler's ambassador there, Edmund Veesenmayer, who reported to Berlin, for example, on the large-scale deportations in 1944 of Jews from Hungary.
Toldi then paid Höttl 10% of his convoy's goods (4 cases of gold) in return for German passports and Swiss visas for all of his family.
Toldi and his family then successfully entered Switzerland, but he was later detained in Austria that year, interrogated by Allied authorities, but released and has never been traced again.
The meeting of the two men took place at Höttl's office in Budapest: Approximately 4,000,000 Jews had been killed in the various concentration camps, while an additional 2,000,000 met death in other ways, the major part of whom were shot by operational squads of the Security Police during the campaign against Russia.
Ein historischer Tatsachenbericht über die größte Geldfälscheraktion aller Zeiten (Welsermühl Verlag, Wels 1955), a historical report on the biggest currency counterfeit operation in history (the Germans had printed millions of British pounds).
Höttl received a cross of merit for his work as a historian and as a school director, despite the protest of surviving Nazi victims.