Operation Sunrise (World War II)

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.

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.

[2] 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.

[3] 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.

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.

[7] 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.

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.

[13] 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.

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.

[21][22] 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.

[20] 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".

[25] 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.

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.