LETTER TO HONORABLE ALLEN W. DULLES FROM(Sanitized)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80R01731R000300050072-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: April 29, 2003
• Sequence Number: 72
• Publication Date: December 22, 1958
• Content Type: LETTER

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Signing the document which, almost unnoticed by the world, delivered a million men to the Allies and spared Northern Italy a bath
of blood. The man seated is a representative of Obergruppenfiihrer Karl Wolff, an incredible figure in the cloak-and-dagger drama
The Secret History of a Surrender
By FORRE ST DAVI S
1JHE precise details of how the war in Italy
guttered out at noonday on May second, last,
with the orderly surrender of what Mr.
Churchill exuberantly computed at "a million
men "?although only twenty-six combat divisions
were left afoot?may well have escaped you. His-
tory was piling up too fast around the beginning of
May. The fall of Northern Italy was overshadowed
by other events: the putative suicide of Hitler, the
degradation of the mortal remains of Il Duce in a
Milanese square, and the crumbling of the utterly
beaten Reichswehr in Germany itself.
After D day in Normandy the war in Italy had
seemed, in any case, a sort of side show?the "for-
gotten front," Mark Clark's men termed it with
some bitterness?and no American back home de-
serves censure for being hazy about the signing of
the Northern Italy capitulation on April twenty-
ninth at Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander's
AFHQ at Caserta. AFHQ was domiciled, in case
you've forgotten, in the summer palace of the
ancient kings of Naples, a minor Versailles with some
of the finest gardens in Europe.
The mass surrender of the
German armies in Northern
Italy didn't just happen. Be-
hind that event is an amazing
story with all the trimmings
of an Oppenheim novel.
Present for the? enemy, at the signing, were Lt.
Col. Viktor von Schweinitz?a towheaded, wispy-
mustached Junker who happens to be descended
through an American grandmother from John Jay,
our first chief justice?and Maj. Max Wenner,
short, dark and definitely non-Nordic. You will
come across Schweinitz and Wenner again in this
narrative when certain of their superiors will vainly
attempt to dishonor their signatures at the eleventh
hour and fight on back into the Alps.
The Caserta ceremony, signalizing the first of the
historic. Nazi surrenders of 1945, took only twenty
minutes. For so brief a function it accomplished
much, putting an end, for one thing, to American
casualties in that theater and sending home many
a G. I. who otherwise would have been buried in
Italian soil. Forestalling fanatical Nazi hopes of a
last stand in an Alpine redoubt, the surrender like-
wise checkmated a plot for organizing remnants of _
the defeated armies into a corps of Werewolves.
Contributing to the subsequent surrenders in Ger-
many?in Bavaria, Von Kesselring finally sued for
peace through Caserta?the April twenty-ninth
event definitely shortened the war in Europe. Cer-
tain authorities believe that, by breaking the spine
of German resistance, the surrender of Northern
Italy provided an early, clean-cut termination to a
war which might otherwise have dragged on for
days, or even a week or two, longer.
So much is known. What could not be made pu
lic until now was the background of the capitul/
tion, which, by no means an impromptu act, hi
been preceded by eight weeks of conversati
between American intelligence authorities and
featist Germans; negotiations?although the A
icans, bent on unconditional surrender, disliked
word?that were conducted principally in neut
spy-infested Switzerland by Maj. Gen. Willism
Donovan's Office of Strategic Services. The 0. S.
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THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
same time. Others Zimmer mentioned as disheart-
ened were even more exalted. Kesselring, for ex-
ample, and Dr. Rudolf Rahn, Hitler's ambassador
to Mussolini's sawdust republic. Even Heinrich
Himmler's personal lackey in Northern Italy, a
Gruppenfiihrer named Harster, was reliably reported
to be casting about for a way to leave the sinking
ship with advantage to himself. Although Kessel-
ring?who later was transferred to succeed Von
Rundstedt in the West?was at this stage highly
sympathetic with Wolff's sentiments, he became,
as we shall see, a principal thorn in the side of Sun-
rise.
The Zimmer disclosures convinced Perrilli of two
things: first, that behind its harsh fa?e; Nazi
morale in Northern Italy was cracking wide open;
and, secondly, that the weakest sector was the out-
right Nazis. Perrilli, quickly discovering that he
had no direct access to Allied authorities, bethought
himself of his old schoolmaster in Switzerland. Dr.
Max Husmann, the master of a famous boys' school
on the Zugerberg, near Zurich, was, as Parrilli
knew, a dedicated busybody and a noble soul who
circulated everywhere in Switzerland. No un-
likelier actor ever took part in a drama of inter-
national intrigue than the unworldly, intense Hus-
mann.
Through his friend Max Weibel, both a doctor of
philosophy and an intelligence major on the Swiss
army's general staff, Doctor Husmann was able to
complete the ring. Weibel took Husmann and his
,information to the one. man in Switzerland able to
deal with it effectively, Allen W. Dulles, the chief
representative of the 0. S. S. in Switzerland. As
such, Mr. Dulles?who is the grandson of one Sec-
retary of State, Gen. John W. Foster, the nephew of
another, Robert Lansing, and the brother and peace-
time law partner of John Foster Dulles?managed
varied and important activities for the United
States in the common meeting ground of every hostile
interest in Europe. With the war ended, it can be no
secret that his jurisdiction included the enemy
countries as well as those occupied, together with
the underground forces therein.
A man of resource, Mr. Dulles had slipped into
Switzerland in the fall of 1942 a few hours after the
Nazis had closed the French border upon taking
over unoccupied France. He crossed the frontier
with the friendly connivance of the French guards,
who outwitted the newly arrived Nazi agents out of
admiration for Mr. Dulles' eloquent invocation of
the memories of Lafayette and Pershing. A judgmat-
ical man of genuine charm, Mr. Dulles conducted the
secret affairs of the United States, including Sunrise,
with discretion, skill and perseverance. For Sunrise
alone he deserves a medal.
Cracks in the Axis Wall
9-1HE intelligence brought by Doctor Husmann
left Dulles fairly cold. At the moment, Himmler,
inspired by Hitler, was waging a peace offensive,
primarily through Vienna, aimed at splitting the
anti-Axis front. Himmler had sent word that the
Nazis were willing to quit to the Western Allies
alone, excluding the Soviet Union. This was natu-
rally unacceptable. Suspecting that the word from
Milan was another salient of Himmler's offensive,
Dulles was also skeptical of inducing the surrender
of the German military on other grounds.
Although the Western Allies never attempted to
duplicate the Russian experiment with captured
German officers, the 0. S. S. had' interviewed a num-
ber of imprisoned general officers late in 1944 with a
view to using them as a lever on their colleagues still
in the field. To this job was assigned Gero von S.
11
Gaevernitz, a German-born American who became
Dulles' chief coadjutor with Sunrise. A year younger
than Karl Wolff, Gaevernitz belonged to the same
disillusioned German generation, but where the SS
dignitary had taken the easy path of Nazi affiliation,
Gaevernitz had migrated to the United States. He
did so at the prompting of his liberal father, Dr.
Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz. In New York,
young Gaevernitz had learned the banking busi-
ness. Pearl Harbor day found him in Germany. A
friend in the Foreign Office warned him that Hitler
planned an early declaration of war. Gaevernitz
reached Switzerland only six hours before Hitler
acted.
The attempt to use the captured German generals
had come to nothing, although it had the whole-
hearted support of Gen. Omar Bradley and the able
collaboration of his G-2, Maj. Gen. Edward L.
Sibert.
While the captured German generals agreed
with Gaevernitz that further resistance was useless,
their overtures to their comrades across the lines
broke against the Gestapo agents who surrounded
each Reichswehr field commander. Still shaken by
the purge following the July twentieth attempt on
Hitler's life, fearful of the reproaches of history, the
West-front commanders fell back on the personal
oaths they had sworn to Hitler. The 0. S. S. had not
yet learned that Hitler's elite corps, the SS, had less
compunction about desekting him.
While Professor Husmann's seed fell at first on
barren soil, other reports reaching Dulles from
Northern Italy soon inclined him to listen more at-
tentively. A Reichswehr staff officer, in Zurich ex-
changing free marks for Swiss francs, indiscreetly
gossiped about the defeatism prevalent at head-
quarters. Dulles learned that the German consul at
Lugano, a son of the , (Continued on Page 107)
ir
ntescing col Dunes
o'l 0.5.3. aczd Woi0
Loannitser and thirey
secre4ed in Dulles' Glouse
Meeling o0 Dulles, Lemnazeo;
end Alt-ey wireraWo
dernnitzea and Airey smoggEed into
Swivzeriand as U. S. Army sergeanc,s
Daa les' 0. S. S. associa2e coners
wi9bDonnnantru ay Ovs2 Erneeging
Dr. IMesertann rneeft Wol, Eintrner
and DoiOrnann on way 90 Zorich
G-11. CI?VIc50, NOssekino aud
oner high Mazis 'ell ol surrenderr
Prffiefld90Cozen-Iva
In 3ou4hern 04a0y
"Litage Way," Czech opera2o7
cc', underground radio s9e4lor,
BEIVOG1 PE2?Ot]:! and nirmac.
peace conspimcy.
MAP BY WILLIAM H. CAMPBELL
The scene of the action. The battle-weary Nazis wanted to surrender an army and shorten the war and save thousands of
lives. But they mistrusted one ,another, mistrusted the area's top commander and, above all, they mistrusted Adolf Hitler.
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THE SATURDAI vtAN iNG POST
THE SECRET HISTORY
OF A SURRENDER
(Continued from Page 11)
one-time Reich foreign secretary, Con-
stantin von Neurath, had been sent by
Kesselring to Von Rundstedt's head-
quarters to talk about peace. It seemed
apparent to Dulles?and he so advised
his superiors at AFHQ, London and
Washington?that the situation in
Northern Italy might be ripening to-
ward capitulation.
A month intervened between Hus-
mann's first soundings of Dulles and
Dulles' first talk with Baron Parrilli.
That delay was due to Swiss skepticism
as well as the American's reluctance.
Not until late in February did the
Swiss authorities accept the thesis that
they had a stake in the orderly surren-
der of Northern Italy, preserving the
economy of that region. The Swiss,
moreover, did not want hordes of ref-
ugees and the wash of a defeated army
pounding on their frontiers. Earlier
they had withheld a visa from Parrilli,
finally requiring a 10,000-franc bond
from the professor, which he supplied.
Seeing Parrilli late in-February, Dulles
agreed to receive a duly authenticated
Nazi emissary, stipulating, however,
that the terms must be unconditional
surrender to all the Allies.
The Nazi conspirators selected Stan-
dartenfiihrer Dollmann to make the
first cast. By then Professor Husmann,
committed heart and soul to the cause
of peace, thought it his duty to travel
into Italy to indoctrinate Dollmann,
warning him that the Americans would
not negotiate terms, would spurn him
if he came from Himmler, and under
no circumstances would discuss accept-
ing a surrender without Russia. Al-
though Dollmann, described as "a
vivid personality, temperamental and
egotistical," came with the prestige of
a liaison officer among Kesselring,
Wolff and Mussolini's generalissimo,
Rodolfo Graziani, Dulles did not re-
ceive him personally. Instead he sent
an associate to confer with him in a
private room in the Restaurant Bian-
chi in Lugano.
The associate confined himself to
exacting, as a test of good faith, the
delivery to the Swiss frontier of two
important Italian partisan leaders held
by the Nazis?Prof. Ferruccio Parri,
chief of the military resistance in
Northern Italy, and a Major Usmiani,
an officer who had been collaborating
with the Americans. Parri was in the
dungeon at Verona, Usmiani in Milan's
notorious San Vittori prison. The door
to negotiations being left open, Doll-
mann departed, promising to send back
someone of higher rank.
Wolff arrived, with Dollmann and
Zimmer, on March eighth. Still in this
thing to the hilt, Husmann met the
Germans at Chiasso, on the frontier,
riding with them to Zurich. Recur-
rently, he asked Wolff if the most
tragic chapter in Germany's history
was to end without one German per-
forming a great and humane act. Once
Wolff, traveling in a sealed compart-
ment, asked the schoolmaster to leave
him, but he did succeed in persuading
Doctor Husmann that he had a better
side to him and that he, with Kessel-
ring, had prevented the destruction of
Rome, contrary to Hitler's orders. On
the same train were Parri and Usmiani,
still mystified by their deliverance.
Declining to receive Wolff until he
had assured himself of the condition
of the two patriots, Dulles visited,Parri
Do You Know a Scow
From a Wanigan?
THE Navy has been making us
ship-minded as we never were
before. We'll probably keep up
that interest in peacetime, going
down to the sea or some other
body of water for commerce and
for fun. Here are some peacetime
aquatic occupations and the ships
or boats appropriate to their pur-
suit. Match up seven or more of
them with the right craft in the op-
posite column and you've won your
sea legs. You'll find the answers
upside-down below.
Which craft would you use . . .
1. to go rowing on the Bosporus?
2. to transport coal?
3. to ride the canals of Venice?
4. for logging?
5. to go sailing on the Mediterranean?
6. to cruise in Chinese and neighboring waters?
7. to go hunting with the Eskimos?
8. for fishing?
9. for trading in the Indian Ocean?
10. to transport refuse?
a. felluca
b. calque
C. junk
d. baggala
e. kayak
f. collier
g. smack
h. wanigan
i. scow
j. gondola
?ALAN A. BROWN.
1P-6 !2-8 !a-L !3-9 !E-g !r-E !kg :s"AlsuV
and Usmiani at the Hirslander clinic
in Zurich, where they were under ex-
amination. Neither had been tortured.
Dulles and Parri were warm friends.
At that moment?with the Italian re-
calling his fear when brought from his
cell that he was about to be shot?
neither could have foreseen that within
four months Parri, a member of the
non-monarchist, non-Marxist Action
party, would be prime minister of
Italy.
Dulles met the SS general in his
Zurich apartment. Also present were
the German-American Gaevernitz and
Schoolmaster Husmann. The Americans
knew that Wolff had a long record as a
dyed-in-the-wool Nazi, that he had
served with the notorious Von Epp at
Munich as well as with Himmler. Be-
fore the meeting, Wolff had submitted
numerous credentials, including a full-
page photograph of himself in a Ger-
man weekly publication and a list of
references headed by Rudolf Hess.
While Dulles listened impassively,
Wolff, a rapid-fire talker, explained
that both he and Kesselring knew the
war to be lost and wished to quit, with-
out reference to Hitler or Himmler, in
order to avoid further bloodshed and
the razing of Northern Italy. Profess-
ing himself a friend of England and
America, he expressed the hope that
something he might do might palliate
the aversion in which he knew Ger-
many to be held in those countries.
Unlike Dollmann, he did not speak of
his personal fate beyond saying that,
not being a war criminal, he had no
fears of Allied justice. Promising to
hand Northern Italy to Dulles on a
silver platter, he agreed in further
token of good faith, to deliver into
Switzerland several hundred interned
Jews, to stand personally responsible
for the welfare of 350 American and
British prisoners of war at Mantua,
and to free another important resist-
ance leader, Sogno Franci.
Accustomed to the blatant tirades
of the party comrades, Wolff confessed
himself enormously taken with Dulles'
correctly firm suavity. "How different
these Americans are from what we
have been told," he exclaimed to Hus-
mann. To the Swiss he confided a curi-
ously mystical belief that he was being
spared for some great purpose. A year
before, he had walked away from an
airplane that had crashed a tree, kill-
ing the other passengers. Twice during
the Sunrise conversations, that faith
was confirmed. When he was returning
from the March-eighth interview with
Dulles, Allied fighter bombers raked
his motor car as it proceeded from
Milan to his headquarters at Fasano
on Lake Garda, wounding his chauffeur
and a staff officer. A machine-gun bul-
let punctured the tail of his blouse, and
on Parrilli's next trip Wolff sent the
scorched shred of the garment to
Dulles, asking that the Allied air forces
work over the Milan-Fasano road
lightly in future. Again, while he was
riding to an inspection with Mussolini,
the road was attacked, killing a lieu-
tenant and wounding the chauffeur of
Wolff's car, but leaving him skin-
whole.
So confident had been Wolff, so
closely did his assurances jibe with
other information, that Dulles felt jus-
tified in asking AFHQ for assistance in
buttoning up the surrender. Alexander
accordingly sent two senior officers:
Maj. Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer, U. S. A.,
assistant chief of staff at Caserta, and
the British Maj. Gen. Terence S. Airey,
AFHQ intelligence chief. The story of
how 0. S. S. smuggled the generals
into Switzerland under the dog-tag
107
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THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
(Continued from Page 108)
The Allied generals and Wolff did
agree on a surrender procedure. Wolff
was to deliver two parliamentarians,
armed with full powers, to the 0. S. S.
in Switzerland when the time came for
a flight to headquarters at Caserta,
where the deal finally would be but-
toned up. Dulles engaged to get them
across Switzerland to the French fron-
tier and back to their own lines.
When Wolff reached Kesselring's
headquarters he found the field mar-
shal only fifteen kilometers ahead of
the hard-driving Gen. George S. Pat-
ton's Third Army. Nevertheless, Kes-
selring, according to Wolff, took time
out to authorize Wolff to recommend
surrender to Vietinghoff in his name.
He explained that he could not himself
move because he mistrusted his asso-
ciates. "Our situation," he told Wolff,
"is desperate, but nobody dares tell
the truth to the Fiihrer, who is sur-
rounded by advisers who still believe
in a last, specific secret weapon, which
they call the Verzweiflungswaffe." Trans-
lated, that means last-resort
weapon. He professed not to
know the weapon's exact na-
ture.
Although encouraged, Wolff
was subjected to further de-
lay.
Himmler summoned him
to Berlin, upbraided him for
yielding the Italian partisans,
Parri and Usmiani, and asked
for a full report on his visits
to Switzerland. Wolff dissem-
bled. Ordered to remain in
Berlin temporarily, he fled
back to Italy when Himmler
was unexpectedly called to
Hungary. All this promptly
was reported to Dulles by the
German lieutenant, Zimmer,
who crossed the border twice
in four days.
Back in Italy, Wolff en-
countered two new obstacles.
Although the new theater
commander, Vietinghoff, and
his chief of staff, Roettiger,
4,were impressed by Kessel-
ring's endorsement of Sunrise,
Vietinghoff declined to move
until the situation north of the
Alps was clearly seen to be
hopeless. He argued with some
reason that he had no wish to
inspire? another stab-in-the-
back legend for the postwar consola-
tion of the German people. Hitler was
at the moment assuring his people that
vactory would turn on the battle of
Berlin. It seemed plain that Vieting-
hoff, believing a majority of his officers
and men still under the Fiihrer's spell,
feared disorder if he acted prematurely
ind in defiance of Hitler's reiterated
,rders to hold Italy at all cost.
Vietinghoff's obstructionism was grave
enough, but graver troubles were piling
up for Wolff on the personal side. Back
in Berlin, Himmler telephoned, order-
ing Wolff not to leave his post again
under any circumstances. Employing
a characteristic instrument of Nazi
terrorism, Himmler broadly hinted
that Wolff's family were now being
held as hostages for his obedience.
Wolff had removed his wife, formerly a
Frau von Bernstorff, who once lived in
New York, and the children to a refuge
in his command near the Brenner Pass.
Himmler had returned them to Wolff's
estate at St. Wolfgang in the Tyrol for,
as he put it, "their safety." Wolff
could not know what orders the Ge-
stapo had direct from Himmler, and this
new turn gave him cause for fear. To
Dulles, via Baron Parrilli, he explained
* *
that he must be careful in as much as
he would be of no further service "as a
corpse," even though he were a corpse
"at a state funeral."
Previously he had promised to be in
Ascona on April second with authority
to surrender. He sent Parrilli instead,
insisting, however, that he was not yet
licked. Because of the twin setbacks,
Generals Lemnitzer and Airey returned
to headquarters at Caserta. Sternly
Dulles admonished Wolff, through Par-
rilli, that Allied successes were shorten-
ing the time for surrender. Warning
him that he and Vietinghoff would be
held personally responsible if Hitler's
scorched-earth policy was executed, he
reminded Wolff of his detailed promises
to safeguard hostages, prisoners and
partisans against the Fiihrer's murder-
ous intentions. Since Dulles never put
himself in the position of bargaining
with the Nazis, all his communications
to Wolff had been oral. This time
Parrilli had to memorize long passages.
The power drive launched by Alex-
ander and Clark in the first week of
* * * * * * * * *
FINALE
By Frederick Ebriyht
the operator in his own apartment. It
had been thought easier to conceal him
in Milan than at Wolff's headquarters.
Besides providing direct communica-
tions from Wolff to Caserta and Bern,
Wally engaged in extracurricular activ-
ity, pointing the Allied Air Forces to
likely targets. In one case, where the
target was Mussolini's current hide-out
quite near the Zimmer apartment,
Wally's directions were understand-
ably precise.
When a tip came from Little Wally
to touch up General Vietinghoff's
headquarters, which were separate
from Wolff's, the Americans marveled
at this peculiarly Germanic method of
applying pressure. Wolff had inspired
the tip.
By mid-April, with the British Eighth
and the American Fifth armies ad-
vancing steadily toward the Po, the
prospects for a useful surrender ap-
peared dim indeed. Meanwhile, two
agents provocateurs showed up to add
zest to the flagging Sunrise. One, a
German consul in Italy known to be a
Kaltenbrunner man, sought an
interview with Dullesin Wolff's
name, exhibiting too much
knowledge of the conspiracy
for comfort. A pseudo-British
officer tried to gain audience
with Vietinghoff on behalf of
Dulles.
. This so alarmed the Ober-
komrnandant that he wrote
a full explanation to Jodl at
Fiihrer headquarters, asking
absolution and advice. Only
after the strongest representa-
tions from Wolff, Ambassador
Rahn and Roettiger, did Viet-
inghoff tear up the letter.
Arriving in Switzerland on
April sixteenth, Lieutenant
Zimmer brought a letter from
Wolff containing condolences
on the death of President
Roosevelt together with as-
surances that the army com-
manders under Vietinghoff had
been enlisted for Sunrise and
that capitulation was immi-
nent, with or without the
Oberkommandant. Zimmer re-
ported Gauleiter Franz Hofer,
of the Tyrol, just back from
Hitler's headquarters with
word that the Fiihrer was
" crazily " planning vast new
counteroffensives.
Despite Wolff's optimism, his letter
contained a disquieting note, sharp-
ened the next day when Parrilli ap-
peared with fresh advices. Himmler
had ordered Wolff to Berlin. At first he
took evasive action, refusing to answer
the telephone, but Parrilli reported
that Wolff, after drawing up a new
will, finally had taken off for Berlin via
Prague. At the American end of Sun-
rise it seemed that little hope remained
of ending the Italian war rationally,
sparing the Allied forces and the Ital-
ian people the final draught of blood.
Knowing Himmler, Dulles supposed
that Wolff's persistent treachery to the
Fiihrer was about to meet its due re-
ward.
This was on April seventeenth. The
pay-oft came four days later in a dis-
patch from Washington, quickly con-
firmed by AFHQ, ordering Dulles to
terminate all surrender conversations
with the Germans forthwith. The or-
der, bearing the imprint of the High
Command, carried no explanation. To
Dulles it appeared that all hope had
fled; that the war in Italy must now
go on to its bitter and appointed end.
Editors' Note?This is the first of two articles by
Forrest Davis. The second will appear next week.
* *
Weary of its season, the golden butterfly rests on
gold leaf
And flexes once, twice, thrice its wings and then
is still;
For both these frail and lovely things the hour
brief;
Both leaf and butterfly are mindful of
encroaching chill.
And weary of its own hours, the bronze sundial
Stands passive and unmoved beneath a
thinning sun;
A locust churrs once only in the bleaching
yellowed grass,
And in the after silence
undone.
is a summer thus
is
And here the heart, like butterfly and leaf,
Or heavy with its time, cries not against the
frost,
Full knowing though it does that on this night
The song, the hour and the leaf will all be lost.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
April hampered, threatening to dis-
rupt, the line of communications be-
tween Dulles and Wolff. More than
ever the highways of Northern Italy
were unsafe to travel. To Dulles it
seemed the time had come to avail him-
self of Wolff's offer to shelter an Allied
radio station within the enemy lines.
Chosen for the unprecedented and haz-
ardous mission was a young Czech
known as Little Wally, who had been
trained as an operator by 0. S. S. for a
job where a knowledge of German was
required. Wally had been studying
medicine at the University of Prague
when called into the army before the
German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Going underground thereafter, he had
been caught, imprisoned at Dachau,
had escaped, becoming a parachute
saboteur with the British, been caught
again and had for the second time es-
caped, this time to Switzerland. In-
terned, he again got away and in
France volunteered for duty with the
0. S. S.
Lieutenant Zimmer took Little Wally
with his transmitter, cipher books and
secret instructions?which, however,
divulged nothing of the Sunrise opera-
tions?with him to Milan, installing
?
111
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Approved For Release 2003/05/23 : CIA-RDP80R01731R000300050072-9
Approved For Reilfts#A4991A5/L2130;a6-RUI?8OR01731R000300050072-9
The Secret
History of a
Surrender
By FORREST 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
at last unreservedly ready to down arms. Even
then, in fact, emissaries, armed with full powers,
were preparing to cross the frontier and put them-
selves in the hands of the 0. 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 Fiihrer'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
bristled, saying, "I will not accept being treated as
if I were on trial; if I have done anything dishonor-
able take me out and shoot me." Kaltenbrunner
thereupon subsided. Emboldened, Wolff charged
Himmler with having miscalculated Germany's ca-
..
pacity to resist in the Rhineland as well as in the
east against the Russians. When the SS Reichsfahrer
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 " obsarve 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
17
SS General Karl Wolff, who narrowly escaped
death at the hands of Heinrich Himmler.
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 staff, who had
been a participant in Sunrise almost from the start.
The presence of Wolff and 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 (Continued on Page 105)
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 Airey.
Approved For Release 2003/05/23 : CIA-RDP80R01731R000300050072-9
?;4. Approved For Release 2003/05/23 : CIA-RDP80R01731R000300050072-9
THE SATURDAY EVENING POST
THE SECRET HISTORY
OF A SURRENDER
(Continued from Page 17)
? 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
four days, while Alexander and Mark
Clark were driving toward the Po with
rising fury, the emissaries idled in
Lucerne. Wolff got out earlier. The
sweeping advance of the Allies threat-
ened, as he thought, his escape road
back to his 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, Il 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.
Between the Lines
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
the 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-
bio, 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 0. 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.
A Pawn in the Game
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 "ii 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-
structions 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
105
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