THE SECRET HISTORY OF A SURRENDER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP72-00450R000100260002-2
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 4, 1999
• Sequence Number: 2
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 1999/10/13 : CIA-RDP72-0045OR000100260002-2
TIE SATURDAY EVENING POST
The Secret
History of a.
Surrender
By FO1IRESnI DAVIS
In the second and last
chapter of this story of an
American triumph, the author
gives you fascinating glimpses
of Hitler, Himmler, Kesselring
and other high Nazis in the
dying days of the Reich.
II
T seemed for a few hours on April 21, 1945, that
the exasperatingly slow endeavor to wind up
the war in Italy by surrender had fallen irre-
trievably flat. The negotiations, crammed with the
standard ingredients of spy fiction-suspense,
danger and the startling experience of meeting
notorious enemy characters face to face while the
fighting was still going on-had lasted seven weeks.
But while Allen W. Dulles, the astute chief of Maj.
Gen. William J. Donovan's Office of Strategic Serv-
ices in Switzerland, was dejectedly preparing to
break communications with the Nazi peace con-
spirators, in obedience to the day's orders from the
High Command in Washington, a message came
from the other side of the lines. Relayed by Little
Wally, the clandestine radio operator in Milan, it
announced that. the SS General Karl Wolff and the
Reichswehr Col. Gen. Heinrich von Vietinghoff were
of last unreservedly ready to down arms. Even
tlien, in fact, emissaries, armed with full powers,
were preparing to cross the frontier and put them-
selves in the hands of the O. S. S., according to
agreement, for the journey to the Caserta head-
quarters, where the surrender would be completed.
Two days later, Baron Luigi Parrilli, the faithful
Italian go-between, arrived in Switzerland with
word direct from Wolff. The prime mover in the
peace junta was coming with the emissaries. Parrilli
had been waiting at Fasano, Wolff's headquarters
on Lake Garda, when the SS general returned from
his unsought visit to Himmler and Hitler in Ger-
many.
Himmler, Wolff reported, was badly frayed, in-
decisively pondering whether the top Nazis should
fight, it out in Berlin, retreat to a northern redoubt
or fly to Berchtesgaden. Against the third option
stood the Fuhrer's recently acquired and somewhat
hysterical aversion to flying. Both Himmler and
Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner, chief of the Gestapo,
castigated Wolff for his part. in Sunrise; Kalten-
brunner, reading from stacked documents, confront-
ed him with details which he had, thought deeply
secret. Wolff quaked as Kaltenbrunner read. Ex-
pecting to be liquidated, Wolff thought he owed his
escape solely to the fact that the nerves of the high
Nazis already had cracked.
Once, testing Kaltenbrunner's mood, Wolff
stied, saying, "I will not accept being treated as
were on trial; if I have done anything dishonor-
`ake me out and shoot me." Kaltenbrunner
,on subsided. Emboldened, Wolff charged
with having miscalculated Germany's ca-
pacity to resist in the Rhineland as well as in the
east against the Russians. When the SS Reichsfiihrer
offered no defense against these reproaches, Wolff
declared that, Himmler having proved a false guide,
he felt entitled now to shift for himself. At the
moment, Himmler seemed acquiescent. Kalten-
brunner, however, insisted that all must go down
together. Late that night the Gestapo chief ordered
Wolff to accompany him to Hitler's headquarters.
Arriving at 4:30 in the morning, they found the
Fiihrer, gray and despondent, in his bunker, pre-
paring to sleep. He asked them to return at five P.M.
At that hour there took place one of the last con-
versations with Hitler as reported directly from high
Nazi sources. The talk began with Wolff explaining
that he undertook the parleys with the Americans
only after the Fiihrer, in February, had sent out
secret instructions to establish contact wherever
possible with the Allies. Making no comment,
Hitler launched instead into a harangue, giving
Wolff explicit orders concerning the last-stand de-
fense of Northern Italy and the scorched-earth
policy he expected to be pursued. When Wolff ad-
vised against leveling Italy, Hitler listened quietly,
but again made no comment. Preoccupied with the
defense of the Italian front., he remarked that Italy
must be held for at least two months. He was con-
vinced that the Russians could be stood off for two
months.
"We must fight to gain time," Hitler told Wolff,
as reported to Dulles. "In two more months the
break between the Anglo-Saxons and the Russians
will come about and then I shall join the party
which approaches me first. It makes no difference
which." As for himself, Hitler added that he would
then fulfill the personal ambition he had nourished
from the beginning of the war, retiring from active
duty in order to "observe and influence the fate of
the German people from a distance." This was on
April eighteenth. Thirteen days later the German
radio announced his death. To Wolff, intent on
quitting the sinking ship, Hitler seemed as uncon-
scious of the realities of his disintegrating situation
as a sleepwalker.
Back in Fasano, convinced that there was little
more to fear from Hitler and Himmler, Wolff
finally persuaded General Vietinghoff that the
sands had run out. On the twenty-fourth, Wolff
SS Ceneral Karl Wolff, scho narrowly escaped
death at the hands of Ileinrieh Ilinunler.
reached Lucerne with the emissaries, Lt.. Col. Viktor
von Schweinitz, of Vietinghoff's staff, and his own
aide, Maj. Max Wenner. The parliamentarians were
in borrowed civvies, Wenner wearing Wolff's shoot-
ing jacket, an aggressively checked tweed. The Ger-
man party was secretly installed in the villa of Maj.
Max Waibel, of the Swiss general stall', who had
been a participant in Sunrise almost from the start.
The presence of Wolffand the plenipotentiaries in
Lucerne confronted Dulles with a problem. Upon
receipt of word that Wolff was at last. delivering
what he had promised early in March, the American
had notified Caserta, London and Washington.
Dulles and his principal aide, the German-born
American Gero von S. Gaevernitz, reasoned, rightly
as it turned out, that the High Command would
not have halted the (Lu,, f,, ,,,d o,, Page 1O5)
Maj. Max Waibel (left), of Swiss staff, an intermediary in the negotiations almost from start, talks
at Ascona with Allied major generals in mufti: Lyman Lemnitzer (center) and Terence Aire.
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 Approved For Release I 999/1*l'WpWfXTW i 0 50R000100260002-2
THE SECRET HISTORY
OF A SURRENDER
conversations had they known the
Germans to be on the point of capitu-
lation. Caserta took that view also,
and Field Marshal Sir Harold Alex-
ander urgently cabled the High Com-
mand to reconsider. From Caserta
came word likewise to hold the Ger-
mans in Lucerne. Yet under terms of
the order terminating the parleys,
Dulles could not communicate directly
with Wolff. Fortunately, Switzerland
also having a vital interest in the out-
come, Major Waibel was willing to
bridge that hiatus.
The High Command was slower to
resume than they had been to interdict
the negotiations. Hence, for nearly
`our days, while Alexander and Mark
Cark were driving toward the Po with
ruing fury, the emissaries idled in
Ltcerne. Wolff got out earlier. The
sweeping advance of the Allies threat-
ened, as he thought, his escape road
back to its headquarters, which were
in process of being moved, along with
Vietinghoff's, to Bolzano, in the Dolo-
mites, under the Austrian border. It
seemed to Dulles, as well as Wolff, that
the general was needed in Italy to re-
deem his promises regarding destruc-
tion of property and the safeguarding
of prisoners and hostages, as well as to
effectuate the surrender when signed
at Caserta. Furthermore, Wolff was
concerned, unnecessarily as it turned
out, over reports from Milan of mys-
terious activities of Mussolini. As
soon would become known, with pe-
culiar force to Wolff, 11 Duce was
merely planning his ill-starred get-
away.
A more compelling reason for Wolff's
speedy return developed before he left
Lucerne. The evil spirit, of the North-
ern Italy undertaking, Heinrich Himm-
ler, had again been moved to action.
Obviously reflecting Hitler and Kal-
tenbrunner, he had telegraphed Wolff
at Fasano, saying, "It is more than
ever essential that the Italian front
hold and remain intact. No negotia-
tions of any kind should be under-
taken." The order was read to Wolff
by telephone while in Waibel's pres-
ence. To the Swiss he said, "That no
longer counts, Himmler has played his
last card." Yet Himmler, through the
Gestapo, was still in a position to cause
harm. Two of his most lethal hatchet
men were, as Wolff knew, circulating
in Italy.
Crossing the border at Chiasso with-
out incident, Wolff' soon found his way
south blocked by resistance groups.
The patriots, thinking liberation at
hand with the great, drive of the Anglo-
American armies, had poured out of
the mountains, occupying Como and
other northern towns and blocking the
highways. This was on the afternoon
of April twenty-sixth. That morning a
squad of partisans had caught Musso-
lini, fleeing north along Lake Como
with Clara Petacci, his mistress, and
t he infamous pair were slain. Partisan
blood was up, and Wolff, the supreme
SS police chief of Italy, would have
been another rich catch.
Taking refuge in a villa near Cernob-
hio, Wolff' soon found himself again
thwarted. The patriots surrounded
him, too weak as yet to attack, but
rapidly gaining reinforcements. Hap-
pily for him, the telephone still worked.
A call to Major Waibel brought Gero
Gaevernitz at once to Chiasso, where,
luckily, he encountered Donald Jones,
of the O. S. S., an old hand with the
partisans who had just returned from
a visit with their leaders in this dis-
trict at Como. Jones agreed that
prompt action was vital. There could
be little doubt that once in partisan
hands Wolff would be shot forthwith
and, from our point of view, that would
be bad. With Wolff gone, the whole
long maneuver might easily fall to the
ground.
Jones, therefore, volunteered to
rescue Wolff. No better man could
have been found. 'Known to the patri-
ots as Scotti, Jones had for two years
been going and coming among them,
arranging communications, carrying in
currency and playing the part of a
Dutch uncle to them all. First tele-
phoning Wolff that his men should
hold their fire when his motorcars ar-
rived, Jones set out with a strange
cavalcade hastily assembled. In the
leading car he placed two German
officers who had managed to get away
from the villa together with a large
white flag. Jones followed in the sec-
ond car, shining his headlights on the
flag ahead. In the third car he put
trustworthy partisans armed with au-
tomatic weapons.
While rolling out of Chiasso the
motorcade was fired on by a partisan
band. Calling a halt, Jones coura-
geously left his car and walked unarmed
into his headlights with the hope that
someone among the band would recog-
nize him and put a stop to the firing.
So it happened. An old friend ran from
the cover, crying "il amico Scotti," the
firing stopped and the expedition re-
sumed its way. At Como a friendly pre-
fect armed Jones with a pass through
all partisan lines. Often halted, but
not again made a target, the party
finally reached Wolff's villa. Wolff was
in full uniform. While he changed to
mufti, members of his staff offered
Jones some Scotch, and American ciga-
rettes, which they assured him had ac-
companied them all the way from North
Africa. Wolff was delivered by Jones
to Gaevernitz at Chiasso, taken from
there across Switzerland to Feldkirch
on the Austrian border, from which he
could reach the new headquarters at
Bolzano by way of the Vorarlberg.
Before departing from Chiasso, Wolff
uttered a new set of pledges to Gaever-
nitz. His life having been actually
saved by Jones and the O. S. S., the
SS leader put genuine fervency into
his promise to arrest Himmler should
he show up in Italy bent on destruc-
tive ends. While at the villa, Wolff re-
ported, he had telephoned Rauch, his
SS commander at Milan, renewed in-
st.ructions to avoid fighting and pillage,
ordering him to surrender even to the
partisans if necessary. Gaevernitz had
put these directives in writing, later
entrusting them to Parrilli for delivery
to Milan. Wolff further agreed to take
forcible measures against any military
leaders who should attempt to block
surrender. As we shall see, this prom-
ise was fulfilled.
The High Command reversed its in-
structions on the twenty-seventh, and
Schweinitz and Wenner got away the
next day. These German emissaries
crossed the French frontier at Geneva
to Annemasse, proceeding at once to
the air base at Annecy, where an Amer-
ican C-47 picked them up and flew
them through the foulest weather of
the late spring to Caserta. Although it
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 106 Approved For Release 1999/10/13 : CIA-RDP72-0045OR000100260002-2
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST September 29,1945
might well have seemed to the O. S. S.
authorities that the worst was over,
actually the course of Sunrise from
April twenty-eighth to May second at
twelve noon, mean Greenwich time-
when arms finally were grounded
on the Italian front-was checkered,
dogged by bad weather, faulty com-
munications, treachery in the German
ranks and Heinrich Himmler.
Since the High Command did not
see fit to explain its intervention in the
negotiations, the files of Sunrise are
bare of anything that might account
for the motive. It may be surmised
with fair assurance, however, that the
reason for abandoning the matter on
the verge of success, leaving the Ger-
man parliamentarians dangling for
four days in Lucerne, was political and
not military.
The transaction ending the war in
Italy detained the German parlia-
mentarians at Caserta only twenty-
four hours. Gaevernitz fortunately
had accompanied them, and when Von
Schweinitz, representing General Vie-
tinghoff, raised some minor points con-
cerning procedure, the O. S. S. man was
able to persuade him that the surrender
had to be unconditional. Back at the
Swiss-French border with three copies
of the protocol for delivery to Vieting-
hoff and Wolff, the first in a series of
hitches which were to become monoto-
nously disheartening developed. Be-
cause of a communications delay the
O. S. S. man assigned to meet and assist
the emissaries over the border did not
appear. None of the party remembered
the names under which the Germans
were traveling.
In that extremity, Gaevernitz re-
sourcefully stepped across the border
and asked the Swiss guards if they
.vould oblige hirn by identifying his
companions as the men who had gone
out with-him yesterday and allow them
to return. This the Swiss did, literally
permitting Schweinitz and Wenner back
into Switzerland on their faces. As
this was the evening of the twenty-
ninth, the capitulation being set for
three days hence, and they had an all-
night drive ahead of them to the Aus-
trian frontier, every minute counted.
The surrender party reached Dulles'
house in Bern just before midnight,
tired and discouraged. None had slept
for thirty-six hours. Arriving at Feld-
kirch the next morning, the German
emissaries met another, more serious
delay. During the night the Swiss had
closed the frontier. As the order
stemmed from the highest quarters,
the old Swiss friends of Sunrise lacked
the rank to get around it. Dulles there-
upon appealed to an elevated Swiss
functionary, telling him how material
was the passage of these men and re-
minding him of Switzerland's interest
in an orderly surrender and the pres-
ervation of Northern Italy from demo-
lition. The official, a man of decision,
acted promptly, and Schweinitz and
Wenner crossed the frontier-the only
exceptions made that day.
In Austria and Italy, where the
emissaries had only a battered German
jalopy instead of the powerful Amer-
ican car that had sped them across
Switzerland, they met with rough
going, the highways being often blocked
by late snows. Although expected at
Bolzano by midday, they did not reach
there until 12:30 A.M. on May first.
Meanwhile, Dulles was beset with
communications difficulties. With the
capitulation signed, it was clearly of
the utmost importance that it be con-
firmed by the Germans at Bolzano to
the Allies at Caserta, so that the order
to cease firing at noon of the second be
co-ordinated. Little Wally, the radio
operator secreted in Milan, had been
extricated by Dulles when negotia-
tions were broken off. The problem
now was to get Wally to Bolzano. To
this chore was assigned First Lieut.
Guido Zimmer, the humble author of
Sunrise, who previously had taken
Wally to Milan and installed him in
his own house. Zimmer, who had been
stationed at Buchs, opposite Feldkirch,
in a switch of courier posts, had suc-
ceeded in getting Wally to Bolzano on
the twenty-eighth.
At Caserta and Bern, Wally's first
signals from Bolzano impatiently were
awaited. Bolzano was pocketed by
mountains. Could Wally's crystals
clear them? Actually, the word from
Wally was spotty, he was unable to
receive the text of the capitulation
coherently, and Caserta's first word
that the Germans were going through
with the surrender came from clear
signals to field commanders from Bol-
zano ordering them to stack arms at
the appointed time.
Fearing communications delays,
Dulles had withheld one copy of the
protocol. From Caserta he heard of
Alexander's urgent desire that the text
reach Bolzano expeditiously. For a
time Dulles thought of dropping his
copy with a parachutist-Tracy Barnes,
of the legation staff, volunteering for
the job and a Swiss pilot being retained.
Barnes, as a parachute officer, had
made a daring operational jump in
Normandy after D day, being subse-
quently decorated for it. Fortunately,
in as much as the jump into the Bol-
zano pocket would have been extremely
hazardous, this expedient was dropped
when it appeared certain the emissaries
would reach Nazi headquarters in time.
May Day was one of intense anxiety
at Caserta and Bern. No word came
from Bolzano, and at 8:30 that night
Field Marshal Alexander dispatched a
stiff note, demanding an immediate
reply if the Germans wished the firing
stopped at noon next day. That mes-
sage got through. The silence at Bol-
zano covered a frenetic sequence of
happenings which threatened, until
eight hours before the time set, to nul-
lify the long and tortuous negotiations
which had ended at the Caserta cere-
monies.
Upon General Wolff's arrival at his
headquarters on the night of April
28-29, he conferred until 7:30 A.M.
with Vietinghoff, Ambassador Rahn,
Gauleiter Franz Hofer and others. To
all but Hofer the surrender was re-
garded as a fait accompli. Hoping, as
afterward became known, to keep the
Tyrol as an unreconstructed strong-
hold of Nazism, policed by Werewolves,
Hofer had insisted that the surrender
terms forbid entrance into those prov-
inces to the Allied forces. When he
learned that the military had never
considered making such a request,
knowing its uselessness, Hofer at-
tempted to inject a monkey wrench
into the surrender. Although a ring-
leader in the Sunrise cartel on the Nazi
side, Hofer now turned informer, tele-
phoning Himmler and Kesselring the
whole story.
His treachery worked. On Himmler's
advice, Kesselring-who had been
placed in over-all command of the Ital-
ian theater along with Southern Ger-
many since Wolff's visit-at once re-
moved Vietinghoff and his chief of staff,
Roettiger, replacing them with an in-
fantry general named Schultz and a
Major General Wentzel. In the begin-
ning, Kesselring had been a tower of
strength to Wolff and the surrender
junta. Only a week before, two officers,
sent by Wolff to Kesselring, reported
the field marshal regretful that he could
not join in surrendering before the " im-
pending death," the bevorstehenden Tod,
of Hitler. The uncertain Kesselring
now ordered an army investigation of
the surrender enterprise, holding that
the sending of Schweinitz and Wenner
had been "too far-reaching."
In the explosive atmosphere pro-
duced by Hofer's ratting, the emissaries
reached Bolzano. At 6:30 A.M. of the
first, Wolff got together Roettiger,
Standartenfiihrer Eugen Dollmann, who
had been an early participant in Sun-
rise, and staff officers, to discuss the
terms with Schweinitz and Wenner.
The principal fruit of these talks was a
decision to arrest the new Oberkom-
mandant and his chief of staff.
This was done at seven A.M., Schultz
and Wentzel being confined in an air-
raid shelter carved out of the moun-
tain just back of the Reichswehr head-
quarters. Roettiger assumed de facto
command, but Wolff was pulling the
strings. Vietinghoff meanwhile had
retired to a retreat for high-officer re-
serves. The telephone circuits to Ger-
many were cut to prevent news of the
insurrection reaching Hitler, Himmler
or Kesselring. When two army com-
manders, Herr and Lemmelsen, de-
clined to go along with the surrender
as long as Schultz and Wentzel were
under detention, Wolff talked with the
arrested officers for two hours. The
most they would concede was their
willingness to intercede with Kessel-
ring in behalf of surrender.
The situation that day was not eased
by the visit of an Allied bombing
squadron. One bomb damaged a build-
ing within a couple hundred yards of
where Wally was struggling with his
crystals in the marble villa occupied
by Wolff's headquarters. Wolff took
time off from his other labors to prod
Wally into hurrying a message of pro-
test to Caserta, asking air headquar-
ters, if they must bomb Bolzano, to
aim for the other side of town. An SS
officer threatened Wally with extinc-
tion if the visitation was repeated.
When the operator reported the threat
to Wolff, the general ordered the officer
summarily punished.
At 8:30 P.M., when Alexander's per-
emptory note came, Wolff undertook
to force an immediate response fron
Kesselring. He had no luck. In the
field marshal's absence from his head-
quarters, Wolff demanded by telephone
of his chief of staff that Kesselrirg at
once appoint a new Oberkommandant
with authority to capitulate. The chief
of staff promised a reply by ten o'clock.
When none arrived, Wolff-gained the
consent of all the subordinate com-
manders to send out orders to quit
firing at noon the next day. It was
these signals that Caserta heard.
An hour later, at eleven P.M., the
Berlin radio announced Hitler's death.
Curiously, that event, which had been
counted upon to ease the surrender
situation because it relieved the Reichs-
wehr officers of their personal oath to
the Fiihrer, produced no such effect.
As Wolff and three associates pre-
pared to leave the headquarters, their
way was blocked by a crowd of armed
and threatening officers. The surrender=
clique escaped through the air-raid
shelter and, back at his headquarters,
Wolff ordered out seven tanks and
350 SS men with machine guns to ring
the building.
At 1:15 A.M., Kesselring, pursuing
his obstruction to the bitter end, or-
dered the arrest of Vietinghoff, Roet-
tiger, Schweinitz and other Reichswehr
officers. He also recommended similar
action to the Luftwaffe and SS high
commands in Germany. No arrests
were made. Three quarters of an hour
afterward Kesselring telephoned Wolff,
and after more than two hours of
abusive tirades finally yielded at 4:30
A.M. Only seven and a half hours re-
mained in which to effectuate the sur-
render. Fortunately, the orders that
went out at ten P.M. sufficed, except for
two parachute divisions with which
disciplinary action had to be taken
later in the day.
The surrender put an end to twenty
months of fighting -often gallant, al-
ways dreary----spared Northern Italy
the ravages visited on the south, and
brought to Dulles from General Lem-
nitzer, who had supervised the show at
Caserta, a telegram hailing Sunrise as
a "complete and tremendous suc-
cess" . . . spelling "the end of Nazi
domination in Europe." To General
Donovan came a message from General
Lemnitzer hailing O. S. S. for its "vital
part" in the Northern Italy surrender.
Because of O. S. S.'s operations, Lem-
nitzer wrote, "the war in Europe has
been brought to a successful conclu-
sion much earlier than would other-
wise have been possible, with the con-
sequent saving of many lives and much
treasure."
Editors' Note-This is the second of two articles
by Mr. Davis.
Approved For Release 1999/10/13 : CIA-RDP72-0045OR000100260002-2