What Is Operation Sunrise?

photorandy2023

10 months ago

This is a new series of articles where I explain what various terms, catch phrases, and other confusing topics, as well as many secret government projects and agencies, are and do. If there are any subjects you’re interested in learning about, please include them in the comment section.

Operation Sunrise (sometimes called the Berne incident) was a series of World War II secret negotiations from February to May 1945 between representatives of Nazi Germany and the United States to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy. Most of the meetings took place in the vicinity of Bern, Switzerland, and the lead negotiators were Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff and American OSS agent Allen Dulles. The meetings provoked Soviet suspicion that the Americans were seeking to sign a separate peace with the Germans and led to heated correspondence between Joseph Stalin and Franklin D. Roosevelt, an early episode of the emerging Cold War.

Events

Prelude

During the Second World War, Allen Dulles was in charge of the Office of Strategic Services station attached to the American embassy in Bern from November 1942 onward, which he used as a base for launching intelligence operations. Dulles had a diplomatic cover, but he made little secret of his real work, and it was widely known due to The New York Times short story published on 17 September 1942 stating that he was “being replaced as committee treasurer because of his war work with government Office of Strategic Services”. The Office of Strategic Services was a newly founded agency, and it was not clear if it would be allowed to continue beyond the Second World War as the CIG (Central Intelligence Group), then later the CIA. The Army and Navy were both opposed to its existence (in fact, the OSS was disbanded in October 1945). The OSS chief, William Donovan, was lobbying very strongly for the OSS to be continued after the war, and as such OSS operatives were under strong pressure to achieve successes that might justify continuing the agency. Dulles for his part having accomplished very little during his three years in Bern was desperate for any sort of success that would allow him to end the war on a high note and justify the continued existence of the OSS.

Situation in Italy

In July 1943, following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, provoking a civil war. Italy’s military outside of the Italian peninsula collapsed, its occupied and annexed territories falling under German control. Italy capitulated to the Allies on 3 September 1943.

The subsequent German occupation of northern Italy in September 1943 led to a guerrilla war being waged by Italian insurgent bands loyal to the National Liberation Committee (CLN) against the Germans and the forces of Fascist “Salò Republic”. The majority of the Italian people considered the CLN rather than the rump government in Rome headed by the extremely unpopular King Victor Emmanuel III to be their legitimate government, much to the discomfort of the American and even more so the British government, who preferred to deal with the Rome government. On the night of 8–9 September 1943 when Operation Axis, the German occupation of Italy was launched, the king, instead of trying to rally his people, had issued only vague and contradictory orders in an unsigned document written in pencil and instead fled Rome under the cover of night. The king’s lack of leadership on the night of 8–9 September had greatly aided the German occupation as the majority of Italian officers had no idea of what they were supposed to do, and fatally discredited the House of Savoy. The monarchy was especially unpopular in the north of Italy, where people felt that it was Victor Emmanuel who by his incompetence and cowardice was responsible for them having to endure an occupation by Nazi Germany. The collapse of living standards caused by the German occupation in the north had caused the Italian Communist Party, traditionally popular with the working classes in the industrial cities of northern Italy, to surge in appeal as many people in northern Italy wanted to see an utopian “people’s republic” to be modelled after the Soviet Union (which was viewed in certain quarters in Italy as a land of freedom and equality) after the war.^[10] In Italy, a return to the pre-war order would mean a return to Fascism, leading to anti-Fascist Italians to argue that what was needed was a break with the past.

Operation Sunrise

Since the fall of 1944, the Red Army had been advancing up the Danube river valley and on 26 December 1944 the Battle of Budapest began, which ended with Budapest surrendering on 13 February 1945. After the fall of Budapest, the Red Army advance continued up the Danube river valley towards Vienna. The German forces in northern Italy were holding out against an Allied offensive in the Po river valley, waging a fierce defensive campaign, but an Allied bombing campaign had reduced their supplies coming down from the Brenner Pass to the minimum, making the German situation in Italy highly precarious. The initial purpose behind the talks in Switzerland, as proposed by Wolff, was not to have Army Group C surrender to the Allies, but rather to surrender northern Italy to the Allies in order to allow the 800,000 men of Army Group C to withdraw over the Brenner Pass to defend Vienna against the Red Army. On 23 February 1945, Dulles accepted Wolff’s offer to explore terms of a local surrender. In an 8 March meeting in Lucerne organized by Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel, Wolff offered the following plan: Army Group C goes into Germany, while Allied Forces Commander Harold Alexander advances in the direction of the South of France. Wolff believed at first that the Anglo-American acceptance of his plan just might break up the “Big Three” alliance of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States.

Karl Wolff, the Higher SS Police Chief for Italy, had committed numerous war crimes during the struggle against the CLN guerrillas. With the defeat of Germany a certainty by early 1945, Wolff was looking for immunity for himself and the other SS and Wehrmacht officers in Italy. Aside from the war crimes committed against the Italian people during the anti-guerrilla war, Wolff had been deeply involved in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”, as he triumphantly wrote in a letter to a friend in 1942 stating his “special joy that now five thousand of the Chosen People are going to Treblinka every day”. For his part, Dulles wanted to see an orderly surrender in Italy, which would ensure the Allies, rather than the Italian guerrillas, many of whom belonged to the Italian Communist Party, would control northern Italy. Dulles rejected Wolff’s demand that Army Group C be allowed to cross over to Austria to continue the war, insisting that the men of Army Group C surrender to the Allies, but also agreed that the men of Army Group C would surrender to the Allied armies rather than the guerrillas of CLN and be allowed to keep their weapons for an interim period after surrendering. The Wehrmacht leaders in Italy were only interested in Operation Sunrise as a means to move Army Group C into Austria, and once they learned that was not possible, they lost interest. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the departing German commander in Italy, told the new commander Heinrich von Vietinghoff: “…that an end to the fighting will not be considered at all as long as the Führer is still alive”. In reality, the negotiations in Switzerland led nowhere because General Vietinghoff was opposed to any “premature” surrender, as he was keenly aware of the Dolchstoßlegende and did not want to be blamed for any new “stab-in-the-back”.

On 12 March the U.S. ambassador in the USSR, W. Averell Harriman, notified Vyacheslav Molotov of the possibility of Wolff’s arrival in Lugano to conduct negotiations on the German army’s surrender in Italy. On the same day, Molotov replied that the Soviet government would not object to talks between American and British officers and the German general, provided that representatives of Soviet Military Command could also take part in them. However, on 16 March the Soviet side was informed that its representatives would not be allowed to take part in negotiations with Wolff. Meanwhile, on 15 and 19 March, Wolff discussed details of how an actual surrender would proceed with American general Lyman Lemnitzer and British general Terence Airey.

Denial

Roosevelt denied that there were any negotiations for surrender taking place in Switzerland. Dulles, however appears to have made, apparently at his own discretion, a verbal agreement to protect SS General Wolff from prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials as they worked out details of surrender. Although Switzerland was neutral during World War II, the Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel and the school director Max Husmann arranged for the meetings. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was following the discussion closely, and said he believed that “misunderstandings” with the Soviets were resolved with Roosevelt’s death on 12 April. Churchill cynically referred to the negotiations as Operation Crossword, apparently because he found them puzzling. In spite of warnings from other officials that he was violating the Casablanca agreement that called for all dealings with Axis members to be on terms of unconditional surrender, Dulles worked supportively with Wolff, determined to end the war before the “communists” reached Trieste. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg wrote: “The whole ‘Sunrise’ episode reflects very badly on the judgement of Allen Dulles who allowed himself to get carried away—and over JCS orders—by prospects of a great coup”.

Repercussions

On 22 March Molotov, in his letter to the American ambassador, wrote that

for two weeks, in Bern, behind the back of the Soviet Union, negotiations between representatives of the German Military Command on one side and representatives of American and British Command on the other side are conducted. The Soviet government considers this absolutely inadmissible.”

This led to Roosevelt‘s letter to Stalin on 25 March and Stalin’s reply on 29 March.

Aftermath

President Harry Truman officially closed down talks with the Germans in Switzerland, and made sure that a Soviet general was represented at the talks in Caserta, Italy that finalized the surrender of the entire force. Nonetheless, fallout from the incident seems to have discouraged full Soviet participation in the founding United Nations conference later that month.

Wolff and his forces were being considered to help implement Operation Unthinkable, a secret plan to invade the Soviet Union which Winston Churchill advocated during this period. Wolff was later proven to be complicit in the murder of 300,000 Jews. On 26 April, the SS general was captured by Italian partisans, but was rescued by Dulles’ Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Swiss intelligence. Despite Wolff’s promises to Dulles in Bern made in March, Vietinghoff stalled for as long as possible about surrendering, only permitting Wolff to sign the instrument of surrender on 29 April 1945.

The actual surrender in Italy was signed on 29 April 1945 agreeing to a cessation of hostilities on 2 May. Wolff justified his actions to Berlin officials by explaining that the agreement had pre-empted “a Communist uprising” in northern Italy. Wolff and his officers were not interned at this time, but instead celebrated the resolution at Gestapo headquarters in Bolzano for several days with Allied commanders. The Americans had to periodically repel partisans who attempted to seize the Germans. Victory in Europe Day occurred on 8 May.

Galbraith’s evaluation

In 1979, the economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who had known Dulles when Dulles served as the CIA director in the 1950s, wrote that over the course of 1960–1961 Dulles showed himself

“a master of disastrous ineptitude. In those months he sent Gary Powers over the Paris Summit, helped overthrow the neutralist government of Souvanna Phouma in Laos (which later had to be restored) and was the man in charge of the organization that was responsible for perhaps the greatest foul-up in our history, the Bay of Pigs…These were not the achievements of a shrewd or even a halfway intelligent administrator. Nor was shrewdness the quality remarked upon by those of us without organizational loyalty who knew him in those years. While such judgments should be offered (and received) with caution, by some, certainly, he was thought amiable, agreeable but mentally very, very dim. Perhaps in the most charitable view, he had passed his best by the time of his great fiascos…beyond doubt that he had not only passed his best but that his best had never been. Never, not even in the Bay of Pigs, was his capacity for detached misjudgment more disastrous than in his management of Operation Sunrise, as the Wolff negotiations were called…He wanted to go out with a bang. Those who have thought he was foreseeing the Cold War and those who thought he was helping to cause it were both wrong. He was just being Allen Dulles.”

Dulles later recounted the events of Sunrise in his book, The Secret Surrender (1966). Dulles avidly promoted his role in the affair in order to advance his career.
Operation Sunrise was documented in Seventeen Moments of Spring, a Soviet historical TV series, which called it “Operation Sunrise Crossword”.
- Implementation of an Effective Strategic Concept for South Vietnam

Herewith, the summary I promised you of recent progress in implementing the strategic concept for South Vietnam in recent months. A systematic counterinsurgency operation has been launched very recently in an effort to eliminate Viet Cong guerrilla-subversive forces and rehabilitate the countryside on an area-by-area basis. The most notable progress, however, has been in the civilian rather than in the military sector. The strategic village concept, for example, has taken hold within both the Vietnam Government (GVN) and the US Mission; this concept is now a matter of national, high-priority policy for the GVN. Also, the GVNʼs Civic Action program has been reoriented and is being revitalized and expanded. Indeed, strategic village and Civic Action concepts now are integrated and vital in the GVNʼs general effort against the Viet Cong.

Specific examples of this progress are noted below.

A. A Systematic Counterinsurgency Plan

President Diem approved the implementation of the Delta Pacification Plan on March 19, 1962. This plan calls for a systematic military-civilian counterinsurgency operation to clear the Viet Cong from the Mekong River delta and re-establish government control on an area-by-area basis by giving protection to the villagers and cutting off Viet Cong access to the villages.
The first part of such a plan has been initiated in the form of “Operation Sunrise.” The operation is confined to Binh Duong province but once its objectives have been achieved, a similar plan (as modified on the basis of experience) will be applied in other delta provinces and ultimately throughout most of the country.
“Operation Sunrise” consists of three phases. The first phase, initiated a month or two ago, involves essentially the necessary planning. The second phase involves military operations, the relocation of hamlets into compact and fortified strategic villages, and Civic Action activities within these villages (since this phase began on March 22, 1962, it is too early to make an assessment of it). The third phase is the period of consolidation emphasizing stepped-up Civic Action activities. The objectives during this phase are to strengthen security, build a socio-political base at the village level, and tie the villages into the national governmental system and the national fabric. The success of “Operation Sunrise” is overridingly keyed to strategic village and Civic Action concepts, thus reflecting the essentially political nature of the problem in South Vietnam.
The US Mission in Vietnam, when asked by the Vietnam Task Force whether all Saigon agencies concurred in the validity of the Thompson approach to counterinsurgency, replied that the Delta Plan “accords in essence” with counterinsurgency planning as worked out and approved by the Mission.

B. Strategic Hamlets or Villages

President Ngo Dinh Diem signed a decree on February 3, 1962, creating a special “Interministerial Committee for Strategic Hamlets” which will coordinate the strategic hamlet or village program on a country-wide basis.
Although precise information is not available, it is estimated that 150-200 strategic hamlets or villages have been established throughout more than half of Vietnamʼs 39 provinces. In one province, Vinh Long, the province chief claimed the completion of 60 strategic hamlets by January 1962.
The village of Tam An and the hamlet of Tan Phu in Bien Hoa province are examples of the effectiveness of the strategic hamlet or village approach for re-establishing government control in the countryside and promoting self-reliance among the peasantry.
- a.The Tam An administration, virtually eliminated by the Viet Cong, was re-constituted in October 1961, following an army sweep of the area. A well-built defense post was constructed on a strategic site, equipped by a radio and defended by small locally recruited Self Defense Corps and Civil Guard units. A new village council was created, gifts of medicine, clothing, and rice were given by the province chief, and no reprisals were taken against villagers who once were suspected of cooperating with the Viet Cong. This village has since remained free of the Viet Cong.
- b.Tan Phu had been for years prior to July 1961 under almost complete Viet Cong control. Following a security sweep of the area in November 1961, the province chief began to transform Tan Phu into a typical strategic hamlet (surrounding ditch, barbed-wire embankment, defense post, watch tower, etc.) and defended by a small locally recruited Self Defense Corps unit. The administrative system was strengthened and improved by the addition of vigorous and interested officials. Tan Phu continues to remain free of the Viet Cong.

C. Civic Action

On January 19, 1962, the Vietnamese Department of Civic Action was reorganized, creating (i) a central Civic Action Service in Saigon by combining related and heretofore separate services within the Department and (ii) an integrated Civic Action office in each province and district.
As of January 24, 1962, a chief and deputy chief for Civic Action reportedly had been appointed in every province in South Vietnam.
Civilian Civic Action teams have been operating generally in the Mekong River delta and primarily in Tay Ninh, Binh Duong, and Phuoc Tuy provinces.
- a.The teams consist of up to 20 specialists in health, agriculture police, education, information, public administration, public works and communications
- b.Recently, the mission of these teams has been increasingly focused on the strategic hamlet or village program.
- c.Civilian Civic Action activities are coordinated by the Department of Civic Action, assisted in men and material by the other departments and operationally directed at the local level by the district and provincial administrative authorities.
- d.In instances where they are employed in a systematic counterinsurgency operation, as in “Operation Sunrise,” Civic Action teams are temporarily under direct military control but will subsequently revert to district and provincial civilian control.
- e.USOM has established a committee to provide on a priority basis direct US assistance (and to coordinate such assistance) to Civic Action operations through the relevant Vietnamese Government agencies.

4. The Vietnamese Defense Department is now planning its own Civic Action program.

D. Security and Police

The importance now attached to the counterinsurgency role of the rural security services is reflected in the US Missionʼs recommendation that the strength of the Self Defense Corps be increased to 80,000 by fiscal year 1963 and that of the Civil Guard to 90,000 by fiscal year 1964.
Planning in USOM and in AID is proceeding with respect to the development of a rural police force. USOM has drawn up the guidelines for this force, has asked for 20 rural police advisers, and has recommended that 4.8 million dollars in US aid be allocated to the Vietnam police advisory program for fiscal year 1962.

E. Village Communication System

Of the 133 village radios shipped to Vietnam to date, 44 have been installed in Gia Dinh province, 48 are to be installed in An Xuyen province during April 6-25, and most of the remainder are to be installed concurrently in Binh Duong province where “Operation Sunrise” is now in progress. Priorities have also been established for four other delta provinces.
The public safety role of village radios was demonstrated on March 20, 1962, when a joint USOM-Vietnamese radio installation team was attacked by Viet Cong guerrillas. The security escort engaged the Viet Cong while the team proceeded to install the village radio and then notified district headquarters and other village radio stations. Assistance was despatched and resulted in an ambush of the Viet Cong as they were fleeing toward another village which had been alerted.

F. US AID Project Priorities

The US Governmentʼs ability to render non-military assistance to Vietnam on an increasingly effective basis was decidedly strengthened by AIDʼs action in March 1962 establishing priorities, first, second, and third, for projects within its Vietnam program. The categorization of these projects was based on their immediate impact on the “counterinsurgency and short-range security objectives in accordance with current US policy.”

G. Military Tactics

A military operation in late February or early March of this year reflects the effective utilization of security forces and artillery in counter-guerrilla warfare. A combined Vietnamese Army ranger, Civil Guard, and Self Defense Corps force, supported by an Army artillery unit, engaged a Viet Cong guerrilla company in a pre-planned operation in Kien Hoa province. The Viet Cong initially stood and fought but then broke and attempted to withdraw. At that point, artillery fire was requested on the retreating Viet Cong and inflicted severe casualties. In large measure, this operation succeeded, first, because artillery was not employed at the outset (which would have alerted the Viet Cong and permitted them to escape) and, second, because the use of Civil Guard and Self Defense Corps forces (which are essentially defensive forces) in an offensive mission was supported by a participating regular army unit.

Background

Operation Sunrise was a series of secret negotiations arranged through a number of intermediaries and facilitated by Swiss Army Intelligence. They were held in March 1945 in Switzerland between representitives of the western Allies and Germany.
Allen Dulles (who later became the Director of the CIA) and Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff (a senior Nazi, once known as the “eyes and ears of Heinrich Himmler”) were the senior figures involved. After a number of confidence building measures, the main meeting was on the 19th March 1945 in a secluded estate at Ascona (close to the Italian border north of Milan). The initial aim was to agree on the terms for a German surrender of their forces in Italy.

As a result of the complex negotiations, at 18:00hrs on Saturday 28th April 1945 in the Royal Palace at Caserta, Lt. Col. von Schweinitz and SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Wenner, representing General von Vietinghoff and SS General Wolff were given the surrender document to study by General W. D. Morgan. The two German officers were told that there would be a further meeting at 21:00hrs to confirm that they accepted the details of the document.

At the second meeting, the German officers agreed to the terms of the “Instrument of Surrender” which would be signed at 14:00hrs on Sunday 29th April 1945.

Following a surrender in Italy (involving between six and nine hundred thousand enemy troops), it was clear that the wholesale surrender of Germany would be imminent and the Swiss talks were useful to consider the location of an unconditional German capitulation. If only for reasons of prestige, the Western Allies preferred that this would happen on the Western Front. There were a number of possibilities, especially as the Germans were keen to surrender to the British or Americans and ‘steer’ the maximum number of Wehrmacht units into their captivity.

The Russians, although informed of the talks, were not allowed to attend, a situation which led to heightened tensions between the big three Allied powers.

“If Sunrise revealed tensions that would quickly culminate into the Cold War, the German surrender in Northern Italy saved Russian lives as well as those of Anglo-Americans and Germans. Partly because of the Sunrise talks, Wehrmacht troops were not transferred to fight on the Eastern Front”.

Resources

en.wikipedia.org, “Operation Sunrise.” By Wikipedia Editors; history.state.gov, “139. Memorandum From the Director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (Hilsman) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs (Harriman).”; militaryhistories.co.uk, “Operation Sunrise.”;