“The case began when Italian intermediaries extended a peace feeler through Swiss intelligence. Time was of the essence.”
By Nicholas Reynolds
FORTY-NINE-YEAR-old Allen Welsh Dulles relished the challenge of being surrounded by the enemy. After Pearl Harbor, he wanted to get as far away as he could from the staid practice of law on Wall Street but was not fit for military service. Instead, from 1942 on, he would run a spy bureau for the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) out of the American legation at Bern in neutral Switzerland, with Nazi Germany to the northeast, occupied France to the northwest, and fascist Italy to the south, soon to be the scene of a life-or-death struggle between the Germans and the Allies.
With few resources, Dulles would achieve outsize results. Historians remember his three most important cases: the secret relationship with the Germans who tried to kill Hitler; the reams of top secret telegrams smuggled from the Nazi foreign office in Berlin; and above all the secret surrender he arranged through SS-Obergruppenführer and general of the Waffen SS Karl Wolff.
The case began on February 22, 1945, when Italian intermediaries extended a peace feeler through Swiss intelligence. They claimed that SS men of conscience wanted to end the pointless loss of life and destruction on the Italian peninsula. Time was of the essence. In the west, the Battle of the Bulge had ended in defeat for the Wehrmacht — while the Soviet juggernaut advanced, seemingly unstoppable, toward Berlin and Vienna from the east. Could the Swiss get in touch with Dulles right away?
Dulles noted the inquiry but doubted he would hear of it again. A few days later, he was surprised to learn that two mid-level SS officers had come to Switzerland from Italy and wanted to talk. To hear them out Dulles dispatched Paul Blum, an accomplished linguist who made the trip to Lugano, a stunning lakeside destination close to Italy. Speaking French, SS colonel Eugen Dollmann probed the Allied position. Would the Americans be willing to negotiate with Reichsführer and SS chief Heinrich Himmler?
“Not a Chinaman’s chance,” Blum blurted out in English.
What about Wolff, the senior SS commander in Italy? He was almost as powerful as the commander-in-chief of the conventional German military in the Mediterranean, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring. The answer was perhaps. First, however, the OSS demanded proof that the Germans were dealing in good faith, which they could provide by releasing two prominent Italians in SS hands.
In short order, the former prisoners appeared at the Swiss frontier followed by Wolff himself. He wanted to see Dulles, forwarding his peacemaking credentials: pages of references, instances of clemency and protection of priceless works of art.
Wolff focused on the recent, more favourable past, not on the 10 years that he spent as Himmler’s closest aide and liaison to Hitler while they were directing wars of conquest and the Holocaust. Dulles was not fooled by the epic resume gap; he knew enough about Wolff not to expect him to be “a Sunday school teacher.”
Dulles would sit with Wolff on March 8 in an apartment that he kept at the end of a quiet street in Zurich “for meetings of the touchiest nature.” When Wolff arrived, Dulles just nodded in greeting and offered his guest a scotch; American officers did not want to shake hands with Nazis. Dulles recorded that Wolff was “a handsome man and well aware of it.” Nordic, well-built (well-fed, some said), greying blond hair, blue eyes, and (especially for a Nazi) good manners. He spoke High German without a regional accent. The 44-year-old was, for Dulles, “probably [the] most dynamic personality in northern Italy.”
Wolff described what he could and could not do. He was prepared to surrender the forces under his command. But the result would be far better if he could persuade Kesselring to surrender the conventional forces in Italy as well, which he just might be able to arrange so long as no one betrayed his plans to Hitler.
Dulles spared few details in the cable he transmitted on March 9 to Washington and Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ) in Caserta, Italy, the regional friendly command. Despite the cablese, his excitement almost leaped off the page: “I believe this may present [a] very unique opportunity to shorten [the] war and to permit occupation of North Italy and possible even penetration [of] Austria under most favourable conditions. Also might wreck plans for establishment of maquis,” a reference to the possibility that the Nazis were organizing their own partisans to continue to fight after the regulars surrendered.
Initial reactions were positive. OSS Director William J. Donovan was reportedly enthusiastic from the start. An attractive prospect on its own, the surrender would also be another opportunity to showcase what OSS could contribute to the war effort.
The Pentagon was guardedly optimistic. On March 10, AFHQ/Caserta requested and received permission to send two generals to meet with Wolff.
Only London wanted to go slow; Churchill did not want to act until he notified the Soviets, who then erupted in paranoia and anger. Britain and America were negotiating with the Germans behind their back, they accused.
The crisis among the Allies quickly escalated. After hearing from Moscow, Roosevelt directed a note to Stalin on March 24 stressing that unconditional surrender was still his policy; no one was negotiating with the Germans.
Stalin was not consoled, responding with further accusations of bad faith. The east-west alliance shuddered. The American chiefs of staff even feared an open split with the Soviets that could only redound to the Germans’ advantage.
Despite a conciliatory message from Roosevelt, Stalin escalated his threats and accusations: the British and the Americans were getting the Germans in the West to agree to lay down their arms so that the western Allies could occupy territory that would otherwise fall to the Red Army.
Roosevelt repeated the American position—no one was negotiating with the Germans in Switzerland—adding that he could “not avoid a feeling of bitter resentment toward your informers … for such vile representations of my actions.”
In the meantime, the secret surrender had stalled on the Italian side of the border. Wolff reappeared in Switzerland on March 19, meeting first with Dulles and then with the generals from AFHQ, to tell them Kesselring, the field marshal Wolff said was ready to surrender, had been elevated to command the entire Western Front and moved to a headquarters in Germany. His successor in Italy, Colonel General Heinrich von Vietinghoff, was reluctant to act, blowing hot and cold.
While Vietinghoff dithered, German defences everywhere were crumbling. Less than a month later, the Red Army was a little over 50 miles from Berlin. British and American armies continued to advance from the west, having crossed the Rhine in March. In Italy, the Allies were pushing the Wehrmacht to the north, which meant that the Germans were running out of space at the top of the Italian boot. Yet no one was sure how long they would continue to fight. Dulles still believed that the Nazis might be planning a last stand in the Alpine Redoubt.
For his part, Wolff stayed the course, even sending Dulles a handwritten letter reaffirming his commitment to ending the war in Italy. But the combined British and American chiefs of staff had had enough and ordered Dulles to break off contact with the German emissaries, citing as reasons Vietinghoff’s indecision and Stalin’s paranoia.
Three days later, on April 23, Dulles learned that the Germans were — finally —ready to surrender both the SS and the Wehrmacht in Italy. Almost immediately, British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander, the commander at AFHQ, asked the Combined Chiefs to reconsider. The reply was equivocal: Dulles should not talk to Wolff, but if Wolff talked to the Swiss, and they told Dulles what he had said, that would be acceptable. The back-and-forth grated on Dulles’s nerves, aggravating his gout and causing agonizing pain. On April 24, an OSS officer arranged for him to receive a dose of morphine that kept him in the game.
By April 26, Washington had changed course and agreed to a surrender if it occurred at AFHQ in the presence of a Soviet officer.
Frantic efforts followed to get the SS and Wehrmacht representatives, one empowered by Wolff and the other by Vietinghoff, to Caserta, over 500 miles south of the Swiss border. By April 29, the two officers had signed the surrender instrument, which would take effect on May 2.
Other Wehrmacht and Nazi officials, including Kesselring, immediately contested its validity, threatening each other with arrest and court martial. Only after Hitler’s suicide on April 30 became known did the path clear. Throughout the war, the German dictator had almost without exception forbidden withdrawals and surrenders; the actual surrender in Italy six days before Victory in Europe Day on May 8 might not have occurred if he had still been alive.
Dulles was treated as a hero for what he had done. On May 4, he made his way to Caserta to receive “a most enthusiastic reception from the field marshal” and his staff, who were beside themselves with relief and appreciation.
From Washington, OSS Deputy Director Magruder blessed Dulles for saving lives—including that of his son, who would have had to continue fighting in Italy if the negotiations had failed.
Lyman Lemnitzer, the American general who had met Wolff in Switzerland, outdid Alexander and Eisenhower, writing Donovan to credit him and the OSS “for having in existence the organization, trained personnel, and the means required to take full advantage of the situation.”
Nicholas Reynolds is the author of Need to Know: World War II and the Rise of American Intelligence from which this article is adapted. Reynolds has worked in the fields of modern military history and intelligence off and on for 40 years. After earning his PhD from Oxford University, he joined the United States Marine Corps in the 1970s, serving as an infantry officer and then as a historian. As a colonel in the reserves, he eventually became officer in charge of field history, deploying historians around the world to capture history as it was being made. When not on duty with the USMC, he served as a CIA officer at home and abroad, immersing himself in the very human business of espionage. Most recently, he was the historian for the CIA Museum, responsible for developing its strategic plan and helping to turn remarkable artifacts into compelling stories. He currently teaches as an adjunct professor for Johns Hopkins University and, with his wife, Becky, cares for rescue pugs.
