Adolf Hitler, fully aware of, and infuriated by, the War guilt Clause in the Versailles Treaty in which Germany took full responsibility for the beginning of WW I, was determined to have a pretext for the invasion of Poland [Case White] which would cast the Poles as aggressors. The planning and implementation of that pretext was left to the SS, particularly Reinhard Heydrich, Chief of the Sicherheitzpolitzei and SD, the Chief of the Gestapo, then Oberfuehrer, later Obergruppenfuehrer, Heinrich Mueller, and one of Heydrich's SD thugs, Sturmbannfuehrer Alfred Naujocks.
The plan involved staging 'attacks' on several locations along the German-Polish border. The attacks were to be made by SS men in Polish uniforms [furnished by the Abwehr]. The most famous involved a German radio station at Gleiwitz, Naujocks himself led that attack. One of the SS men, who spoke Polish, made inflammatory statements over the radio while others fired gunshots [after some confusion and delay]. Other raids were staged at border checkpoints, etc.
Heydrich, ever the perfectionist, wanted physical proof of the 'raids'. That was where Mueller came in. He coordinated the selection, transport, uniforming and murder of several concentration camp inmates, the "Canned Goods", who were left at Gleiwitz. Hitler had his pretext. the next morning the Stukas screamed down, and the Panzers rolled East. World War II had begun.
The Security Police built a model of Gleiwitz at Gestapo headquarters, and would show it to visitors, with Heydrich often present to murmur that was how the war had started. Of the major players involved, Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30th, 1945. Reichsfuehrer SS Heinrich Himmler followed suit several weeks later. Reinhard Heydrich, who was Chief of Interpol in 1939-1940, went on to plan the Final Solution and host the Wansee Conference. Promoted to be Reichsprotektor of Bohemia-Moravia [the Czech Republic], he was assassinated in Prague in 1942. 'Gestapo' Mueller was reported ead at the end of WW II in Berlin, but his coffin revealed a skeleton composed of two bodies, neither of which was his. He was never found. Naujocks, who ran afoul of Heydrich later in the war, survived transfer to the Waffen SS on the Eastern front, and returned to RSHA [the Reichs Main Security Office] on after Heydrich's death. He survived the war.
