Before Wolff could begin his efforts to make contacts in the west, he wanted to know how far he could safely go and what he could offer. He therefore flew to Berlin, where Hitler had transferred his headquarters on January 16, 1945. Even though air-raid sirens could be heard at
the time, the dictator was still receiving his guests in the huge undamaged office of the Reich Chancellery. Ribbentrop was also present while Wolff reported on the situation in Italy. On February 6, both visitors were eager to find out how Germany was going to continue waging war. In the west, the enemy was already on German soil—in the Ardennes. The failed offensive had eaten up the last reserves of manpower and supplies, East Prussia was cut off, and the Red Army had reached the Oder. Day and night enemy planes were bombing the cities and the V1 and V2 rocket weapons that had been used with such confidence had not delivered the expected results. Wolff had already given up any hope of a wonder weapon, although Hitler hinted at a weapon of extermination so appalling in its results that it would only be used in the worst emergencies. Together with Ribbentrop, Wolff pleaded that one must also try for a political solution parallel to military efforts. Perhaps the enemies were now ready to turn against each other.
Hitler did not reply to all this, remained friendly, and did not openly reject the suggestion. His two visitors therefore assumed that he agreed to let them engage in efforts to make contact. Ribbentrop was counting on the fact that Swedish diplomats could establish the necessary connections. After his return to Lake Garda on February 8, Wolff called his officers from the Wehrmacht and SS together and ordered that even the slightest sign of contact from the enemy be reported to him immediately. As a result SS Obersturmbannführer Guido Zimmer, working for the SD in Milan, reported that he had recently had many conversations about the situation with a representative of Italian industrialists, Baron Luigi Parilli, and that they had also discussed the destruction of the Italian industrial potential in the event of a German retreat. Also his Swiss friends were seriously worried, because their supplies from Genoa and other Mediterranean ports would stop. The Swiss water power stations in the Alps would stop providing supplies of electricity to Italy. International big business feared, along with the destruction of operations in Italy, losses in Switzerland in the billions. The Italian economy was, in addition, also threatened by nationalization—first by Mussolini’s radical behavior, and in the long term by the future liberators who had no idea that a “red belt” would form right behind their backs, reaching from the south of France across northern Italy to Tito’s partisans and the rest of the Balkans.
Since Wolff did not want any such developments either, and because he saw clues that could divide the enemy in these arguments, he gave Parilli permission to travel to Switzerland. On February 21, 1945, he met with
Dr. Max Husmann, who ran a well-known boarding school not far from Lucerne for the sons of wealthy families. The two knew each other so well that the Swiss provided a security guarantee of 10, 000 francs that no undesired arrival would slip into the Swiss Confederation. Husmann, for his part, was friends with Max Waibel, professional soldier and a major in the Swiss Secret Service at the time. Waibel kept in contact with Allen W. Dulles, who was officially in charge of the Middle European Center of the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) in Bern. He was the brother of future Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and was regarded in Switzerland as President Roosevelt’s envoy.
A man in such a position must do his best to appear unobtrusive. But the Gestapo and the SD knew that elements of the German resistance had already met with Dulles many times, Dr. Langbehn among them. Dulles knew, on the other hand, that the Chief of the SD, Walter Schellenberg, occasionally exchanged news with Captain Roger Masson of the Swiss Secret Service, and that they had begun an operation competing with Parilli’s initiatives. However, up to that point, Schellenberg’s suggestions had consistently been turned down as not being serious. This background caused Dulles at first to refuse to see Parilli, who was connected to the SS, although the Baron, Waibel, and Husmann all assured him that the SS in Italy were different from anywhere else.
At the same time, Dulles wanted his Swiss friends to continue the conversations and he sent one of his colleagues, a German émigré living in Switzerland and a U.S. citizen, Dr. Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz. When Parilli mentioned to him that one of his SS contacts was the art historian Dr. Dollmann from Rome, the atmosphere of the conversation became much friendlier. Dollmann and Gaevernitz knew each other from years before. The latter was related to a Ruhr industrial family from Stinnes, who financed Hitler with large sums of money before 1933. Fritz Thyssen the head of the family then had a falling out with the German chancellor and published a book in the United States entitled
I Paid Hitler
. Parilli was asked to make it clear to the SS officer that, according to the resolutions at the Casablanca conference in January 1943, there could be no peace negotiations. Only unconditional surrender was possible. Parilli avoided reporting this specific point to his contacts, because they would then have decided to end the dialogue altogether.
Wolff and his team had no idea that yet another competitor wanted to bypass them. SS Gruppenführer Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the Chief of Police and of the SD sent one of his espionage specialists, Sturmbannführer
Wilhelm Höttl, who was Austrian-born like Kaltenbrunner, to see Dulles and, through another middleman, offered the capitulation of German forces in Austria. He was requesting in return that those territories receive special status after the war and would not be thrown in with the Nazis in the vast criminal proceedings. In Bern Höttl naturally understood that he could not possibly carry out such a capitulation. His offer was not taken seriously. Wolff would later have to deal with this idea once more.
On February 27, Parilli returned to Milan and reported to Obersturmbannführer Zimmer, who informed SS Gruppenführer and General of the Police Dr. Wilhelm Harster, who was stationed in Verona. How quickly the next stages of the operation developed revealed that events were heating up too quickly for all the participants. Harster wanted to inform Wolff as fast as possible that it would be possible to have a conversation with Dulles, but when he called at Lake Garda, he found out that the Obergruppenführer was on his way back from a meeting with Marshal Kesselring at his headquarters. Wolff was traveling through Verona on his way. Harster was in such a hurry with his news that he positioned himself on one of the main roads leading out of the city and waited there for Wolff. Since Rahn came with him, the three could have a roadside war counsel. They decided to discuss the next steps the following day at Lake Garda. They met in the evening of February 28: Wolff, Harster, Rauff from Milan, and Zimmer, who commanded other SS units. Ambassador Rahn wished to remain in the background and would only provide advice since his participation could imply that the negotiations went beyond military resolutions. It was decided that Dollmann and Zimmer would travel to Switzerland with Parilli on March 3.
The day before their departure, Rahn told Kesselring, who was affected most by the plans, that two SS scouts were being sent to make contact with the enemy The highest ranking soldier in Italy wanted nothing to do with the matter. He would not break the oath that he had personally sworn to Hitler, and he would never become a traitor. After many long discussions, Rahn obtained from Kesselring a promise not to take any action against the negotiations. When they parted the general, with a cold smile, wished Rahn every success.
As announced by Parilli, Dollmann and Zimmer drove to Switzerland on March 3. Husmann picked them up at the border and brought them to Lugano. Among others, Waibel met with a confidante of Dulles who was allowed to hear out the Germans’ suggestions, but was in no way allowed to negotiate. Before he arrived in Lugano in the early afternoon,
Husmann and Parilli used the additional hours to prepare the SS officer for what was coming: a demand for unconditional surrender. Dollmann protested quite indignantly first: he was not a traitor! But after hours of discussions, he gave in and agreed with Husmann that, yes, the war was definitely lost; yes, the Washington-London-Moscow alliance was indivisible; yes, he was aware that no one wanted to negotiate with Hitler Himmler; yes, it now involved only Kesselring’s units in the Army Group C; yes, the thrust of the statement could only be to spare the Germans from an even more gigantic catastrophe.
Limited to these five principles, the conversation with Dulles’ representative, Paul Blum, lasted only twenty minutes. Parilli and his escorts were told that further discussions were only meaningful within this framework. Just in case it came to that, Blum gave Dollmann two pieces of paper. On each one there was a name: Ferrucio Parri, Antonio Usmiani. These were a resistance fighter and a U.S. agent who had recently fallen into German hands and were now sitting in Italian prisons. It was a wish, not a demand, on the part of Dulles, that they be set free. With that, Wolff could prove that he was serious in his intentions and that he did indeed have influence.
Dulles and Gaevernitz later admitted: “We both assumed that we would probably never hear from Dollmann again.” They were completely mistaken. Three days later, on March 6, Parilli came and announced that the Highest SS and Police Führer in Italy, the plenipotentiary General of the Wehrmacht in Italy, the commander in the rear territory and head of the military administration, SS Obergruppenführer and General of the Waffen SS Karl Wolff (this information was on his business cards) would arrive in two days. Early in the morning on March 8, he came to the Swiss border, in civilian clothes, accompanied by Dollmann, Zimmer, Parilli, and Wolff’s adjutant, Obersturmbannführer Eugen Wenner. They brought two other men with them; one was Ferruccio Parri, alias General Maurizio in partisan circles and later prime minister of Italy, and the other was Usmiani.
Waibel had prepared everything for their arrival at the border train station. By telephone he reported the sensational news to Gaevernitz that Parri and Usmiani were delivered “in good shape” to an officer of the Swiss Secret Service and were on Swiss soil. For the sake of expediency, they were hidden in a Zurich clinic—not for health reasons, but rather because their absence had prematurely betrayed the operation. In addition, Waibel had reserved two compartments on the Gotthard-Express traveling to Zurich for the group of Germans, so they could travel in a
locked compartment with drawn curtains. Wolff’s picture had appeared repeatedly in Swiss newspapers, and the political consequences were incalculable when the world found out that one of the highest SS leaders was in Switzerland to confer with the Americans. Because of his profession, Husmann was used to lecturing students, and since he felt that Wolff was not sufficiently prepared for a conversation with Dulles, he sat down with him alone in one of the compartments. He discussed in detail the list of crimes attributed to Hitler, the National Socialists, and particularly those of the SS. It was supposedly on that occasion that Wolff found out for the first time that the Jews had been murdered in extermination camps systematically and by the millions. It sounds improbable that one of the top officers of the SS, Himmler’s longstanding right-hand man, and a member of the Führer’s headquarters for years, and in particular a man with Wolff’s innumerable connections inside the Third Reich, should have found out about the number one state secret in Germany just before the end of the war from a Swiss teacher. It appears, however, that Husmann was so impressed by Wolff’s assurance and his word of honor, that he believed him. He was more mistrusting in another respect. Wolff repeatedly and insistently stated that neither Hitler nor Himmler had sent him to undertake the negotiations. He did, however, use a small mental reservation, in that he felt empowered by Hitler to make this contact. There was something Wolff did not know: even Himmler was pretty much in the picture because Police General Harster had reported to his immediate superior Kaltenbrunner that Wolff had sent Parilli to Switzerland.
Before Wolff left on his trip, he had consulted with Rahn. The diplomat had shown him a letter where Rahn’s Swiss intermediary reported that Dulles was ready for negotiations with the Germans. Rahn recalled, “Wolff wanted to negotiate himself. I had no problem with that. Was it not highly symbolic that the first promising step to ending the war was taken by a high-ranking SS officer?” Did Rahn mean that the SS were ready to clear up the mess that they had played a significant role in creating? Rahn continued: “I eased my own concerns in letting someone with so little experience in political discussions lead such sensitive negotiations by giving him handwritten notes to use as a guide.” They contained the suggestion that the Allies should temporarily defer their planned major offensive so that Rahn and Wolff could have time to win over Kesselring and his army group to a capitulation. In return the German divisions that were still holding out would slowly leave Italy without destroying anything. On the other side of the border, the soldiers of the army group would then
surrender, but they were to be allowed to keep their weapons until the danger of violence and plundering in the homeland by the liberated masses of foreign forced laborers was over. After a short internment the soldiers were to be released from POW status back into civilian life. Wolff went to Dulles with this suggestion, but it was utter Utopia. Whoever experienced the end of the war knows how much worse the fate of the soldiers of the Italian army was to be. Rahn, the confident negotiator, would certainly not have achieved anything more than Wolff, and even the little bit that was promised to him did not materialize. Whoever surrenders unconditionally must accept every decision of the enemy.
The harsh discussion with Husmann in the train compartment had taken its toll on Wolff, and as the locomotive became stuck in the snow, he grew increasingly nervous because this forced him to walk several hundred meters on the tracks to switch to another train. He must not be recognized lest all the participants get into trouble. Even Waibel was taking huge risks: he had neither informed his superior nor any government office of his private operation, which meant jeopardizing Swiss neutrality—an illegal misuse of secret service institutions and privileges. The four SS officers and the Italian baron breathed easily once they could disappear in Husmann’s Zurich apartment to wait.