Saving Italy: The Race to Rescue a Nation's Treasures from the Nazis (29 page)

On March 24, the matter escalated when Roosevelt wrote Stalin, seeking to reassure him that while meetings with Wolff would proceed, they were in no way a “violation of our agreed principle of unconditional surrender.” After recriminations back and forth, Roosevelt graciously concluded the affair with a note to Stalin, sent the morning of his death, that expressed appreciation “for your frank explanation of the Soviet point of view of the Bern incident [OSS meetings with Wolff], which now appears to have faded into the past without having accomplished any useful purpose.” Even so, Dulles’s “discussions” with Wolff continued with the tacit approval of Roosevelt. But his successor, Harry Truman, felt differently. More sympathetic to Stalin’s concerns, Truman, with Churchill’s consent, pulled the plug on Operation Sunrise.

Unaware of the Western Allies’ change in position, Wolff, his adjutant (Major Wenner), and Vietinghoff’s designated representative (Lieutenant Colonel Viktor von Schweinitz) arrived in Lucerne, Switzerland, on April 23, ready to proceed with surrender. Their sudden appearance caught Dulles by surprise. Dulles first contacted General Alexander, who in turn cabled the Joint Chiefs, seeking reconsideration of their April 20 cabled instructions. He then explained the situation to Waibel, who had the unenviable task of explaining to Wolff that the German delays had raised suspicions in Washington and London. For the moment at least, further surrender discussions were not possible. Wolff and his party were encouraged to remain in Switzerland and hope, like Dulles, for a change in position by the Joint Chiefs.

By April 25, American soldiers and Soviet Red Army troops had linked up at the Elbe River. Partisans in northern Italy, sensing that the moment of liberation neared, came out of hiding and began roving in armed bands. Once again, Himmler contacted Wolff, sending a telegram that read: “It is more essential than ever that the Italian front holds and remains intact. No negotiations of any kind should be undertaken.” Three days later, news leaked that Himmler had been meeting with Count Bernadotte in the northern German town of Lübeck, hoping the Swedish official could arrange an introduction with Eisenhower to enable Himmler to surrender German forces in the West. Waibel later told Dulles that, upon receiving the message, Wolff simply “shrugged his shoulders and said that what Himmler had to say no longer made any difference.”

Aware of the threat posed by the partisans, Wolff sent word to Dulles that he needed to return to his headquarters in Italy while he still could. Vietinghoff’s designee, Schweinitz, would remain behind, along with Major Wenner. Each officer had authorization to review and execute the surrender documents at Caserta if the opportunity arose.

Wolff also informed Dulles that he had convinced Gauleiter Hofer to go along with his plan. But the truth was more complicated. Knowing that the Allies would never agree to a conditional surrender, much less one on Hofer’s terms, Wolff had deliberately avoided telling Hofer that his plan called for unconditional surrender. Hofer’s acceptance had come with conditions designed to maintain his autonomy, including the delusional notion that there should be no “occupation of the Alpine region by Allied troops.” This Wolff did not disclose to Dulles.

Before departing, Wolff completed a four-page handwritten letter addressed to the two principal Swiss intermediaries, Professor Max Husmann and Chief of Intelligence Max Waibel, but in fact intended for Dulles. The American spymaster had on numerous occasions assured Washington that no deals or incentives had been extended to Wolff, and that he had “engaged in no negotiations, merely listened to [Wolff’s] presentation.” Wolff’s letter suggested otherwise. “You know the incredible difficulties which opposed me over and over again,” Wolff’s letter began. “Even if I did not succeed in starting and completing our negotiations at the beginning of this bloody struggle I nevertheless today am confidentially acting along the lines of the discussions I had with you and the representatives of the Allies.”

The third and fourth pages featured a list of personal belongings, noting, “Wolff to possibly keep,” and the location of his family: “SS families (women and children) on Lake Tegernsee 50km to the south of Munich (divorced wife + 4 children Wolff et al).” Beneath the heading titled “Immediate and Preferred Protection of Following Buildings” were the names and directions to three buildings under Wolff’s control. The Palazzo Reale in Bolzano, which served as Wolff’s new headquarters, also doubled as a vault for the “untouched coin collection of the King of Italy” taken from the Quirinal Palace during the German retreat, and gold bars and bullion belonging to the Royal Treasury. The other two buildings, both located in the Alto Adige region, housed the Florentine treasures. One “contains approximately 300 world famous oil paintings from Uffizi, Florence, saved from castles which were under heaviest fire near Florence.” The other stored “approximately 300 other oil paintings as well as the . . . world famous sculptures.” Leaving nothing to chance, Wolff arranged for Langsdorff to gather a group of men, including two members of the Kunstschutz, and drive to the two repositories to protect them “against partisans and looting.”

Wolff reached the SS command post, located in a villa in Cernobbio, on Lake Como, late in the evening on April 25. During the early morning hours of April 26, partisans surrounded the villa, threatening Wolff and the other officers inside. When Max Waibel received this news from one of his agents, he and Gaevernitz headed for Chiasso, hoping to keep both Wolff and Operation Sunrise alive. Gaevernitz’s effort to go to Wolff’s aid was a clear violation of the order from the Joint Chiefs banning any contact with Wolff, but neither Gaevernitz, Waibel, or Dulles was willing to let Wolff fall prey to partisan fury.

After tense negotiations with the partisans, narrowly avoiding a gun battle, Waibel and Gaevernitz extricated and then drove a very grateful SS general to Lugano; Waibel then accompanied Wolff to the Swiss/Austrian border, arriving the morning of April 27. There they learned that Dulles had just received a “TRIPLE PRIORITY” message from Washington. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had reversed their previous “stop” instructions on Operation Sunrise. Dulles now had authorization to make immediate arrangements for Wolff’s two representatives to be flown to Caserta to sign the document of surrender.

IN MID-APRIL
, Don Guido Anelli made contact with trusted friends in the Alto Adige area who confirmed the presence of the works of art at each of the two locations. He then arranged for on-site surveillance by dependable patriots of “the Italian population in order to protect [the works of art] against any possible tampering on the part of those belonging to the ethnic minority.” Anelli also recruited a fellow priest with the Italian Red Cross in Bolzano and assigned him the task of organizing guides who, at the first appearance of Allied soldiers, would take them to the repositories.

With the commencement of the Allied spring offensive, Deane Keller headed north to Bologna, accompanied by Monuments officer Teddy Croft-Murray. The men entered the city on the evening of its liberation, April 21. The sixty-seven-mile drive had taken eight hours as traffic crawled along blacked-out roads jammed with vehicles.

The relative calm of the three winter months in Florence had dulled their memories of war’s carnage. Entering Bologna, ablaze and in ruins, brought things sharply back into focus. Keller wrote to his parents, describing the scene of “. . . death, misery, ruination—Jesus! Coming into town late at night, houses on fire, mines exploded by engineers, smell of death, dead animals, a couple of German soldiers, one in two pieces, another headless. I’m not morbid, but this is what the bleeding hearts should see.”

In Bologna, Keller met a boyish-looking twenty-three-year-old, Sergeant Bill Mauldin. The fellow draftsman and cartoonist was young enough to be his son. “What a break to have met up with him. I truly revere that kid’s mind and hand. A great gift. All the Old Masters would have seen it and admired it. It’s ALL AMERICAN.” Keller and Mauldin had one other thing in common: each had young sons. But Mauldin had never met his; he knew the child only through photographs.

Keller soon departed Bologna to inspect other towns being liberated by Fifth Army. Croft-Murray remained and began debriefing the art superintendents, in particular Dr. Pietro Zampetti, Director of Galleries in Modena. Of particular interest were the events of the previous summer, when trucks loaded with the Florentine treasures had passed through Marano sul Panaro en route to northern Italy. Zampetti had since learned that everything the Germans had removed from the Florence repositories could be found in two small villages in the Alto Adige: Campo Tures and San Leonardo.

The mention of these two names electrified Croft-Murray. He immediately transcribed his notes—as in his earliest days in Sicily, he was still without a typewriter—and dispatched them to MFAA Deputy Director John Bryan Ward-Perkins in Florence on April 27. None of the Monuments Men knew that Florentine Superintendent Giovanni Poggi had known the locations of both repositories for months but had decided against sharing it with them. In fact, Poggi had deliberately misled Fred Hartt.

Five months earlier, Poggi had seen the November 15, 1944, letter from Vatican Secretariat of State Giovanni Montini to Cardinal Elia Dalla Costa that identified a place called “Neumelans in Sand” as one of the secret art repositories containing the Florence treasures. Poggi relayed only that portion of the letter to Hartt, telling him there was no such place. Indeed, Hartt couldn’t find a town by that name on any map. But had Hartt seen the letter himself, he would have known that Montini had mistakenly crossed the correct name of the castle where the works were stored (Castle Neumelans) with a portion of the German name of the Italian town in which the castle was located (Sand in Taufers). As a consequence, “Neumelans in Sand” should have been “the
Castle
of Neumelans in the
town
of Sand in Taufers.” However, not wanting to leave anything to chance, Montini had also included the Italian name for the location: “Campo Tures.” Had Poggi provided that information to Hartt, the Americans would have had an easy time finding it on a map. But for reasons known only to Poggi, he did not. By deliberately withholding the name of the location, he had prolonged one of the great mysteries of the war in Italy.

*
During their second meeting, Wolff agreed to allow Dulles to place a spy—a twenty-six-year-old radio operator named Vaceslav Hradecky, known as “Little Wally”—inside the SS counterespionage building in Milan, and later in Wolff’s headquarters in Bolzano. Hradecky, a Czech citizen who had been arrested in Prague in 1939 and imprisoned by the Germans at Dachau before escaping, provided a vital communication link for Wolff with Dulles, and later with Allied Force Headquarters in Caserta.

25

SURRENDER

APRIL 27–MAY 2, 1945

O
n April 27, as General Wolff attempted to cross the Austrian border back into Italy, Benito Mussolini was searching for a way to escape. Two days earlier, the once-fiery dictator, fearful of being trapped and captured again, departed Milan and drove the short distance to the lakeside town of Como. After bidding his wife farewell, he and his entourage considered crossing into Switzerland, but the area was already under partisan control; they could proceed no farther. A second attempt failed when partisans recognized the Duce, wearing a German greatcoat and helmet, and pulled him from the vehicle.

Mussolini was initially detained in the town of Dongo. After a brief reunion with his lover, Clara Petacci, both were shot. Fifteen others, mostly prominent figures of the Fascist regime, were also taken prisoner and gunned down. A truck carried the bodies to Milan, where they were dumped in Piazzale Loreto at 3 a.m. on April 29. In a scene of ghastly vengeance, the bullet-riddled bodies of the once-beloved Duce and the others were hung upside down from the girders of an Esso gasoline station.

At noon on April 28, Colonel Schweinitz and Major Wenner, each carrying written authorization to surrender the forces of Vietinghoff and Wolff, boarded General Alexander’s luxuriously equipped C-47 airplane in Annecy, France, and departed for Allied Force Headquarters in Caserta, Italy. The first official meeting began at 6 p.m. with the presentation of the official surrender document. Hours later, they returned for a second meeting, which included a Soviet representative, Major General Kislenko, to raise objections and seek clarifications. While Wenner appeared ready to sign the document as presented, Schweinitz objected to Wehrmacht troops being interned at prisoner-of-war camps rather than demobilized on the spot and allowed to return home. This had been one of Vietinghoff’s conditions. Schweinitz felt bound to defend it.

During the morning of April 29, realizing that there wasn’t enough time to consult his commander, Schweinitz acquiesced. Discussions then focused on the appropriate method and length of time required to communicate to troops on the front line notice of the surrender. The parties agreed that hostilities in Italy would end at 2 p.m. on May 2 (1200 hours Greenwich Mean Time), seventy-two hours after the signing of the official surrender document. No announcement of the surrender would occur until then. After a ceremony that lasted just seventeen minutes, the Allies had in hand an executed document that began, “The German Commander-in-Chief Southwest hereby surrenders
unconditionally
all the forces under his command or control. . . .” On paper at least, the war in Italy would end in three days.

For the surrender to take effect, Vietinghoff and Wolff had to inform their forces and order them to cease fire on or before the 2 p.m. May 2 deadline. Until the Allies received confirmation that Vietinghoff and Wolff had issued the cease-fire notice to their troops—a process that couldn’t begin until Schweinitz and Wenner returned to Bolzano and presented them with the executed surrender document—fighting would continue. Unanticipated delays in their return to Switzerland consumed almost ten of the seventy-two hours. By the time they departed Bern for Bolzano, it was nearly 1 a.m. on April 30. Later that morning, they reached the Swiss-Austrian border, only to discover that it was closed.

But an even larger problem loomed. That same morning, as Allen Dulles petitioned his contacts within the Swiss government to obtain passage for the German deputies, Kesselring, who two days earlier had seen his power expanded to include command of all German troops in Italy, issued orders relieving Vietinghoff and General Hans Röttiger, Kesselring’s former Chief of Staff, of their commands. Both officers were ordered to report immediately to a secret army command post at Lake Karer, in the Alto Adige region, for court-martial. The surrender document now bore the proxy signatures of officers with no authority. That Kesselring had known about the Caserta document and acted so quickly indicated that someone was aggressively trying to sabotage Wolff’s surrender efforts, but who?

FOUR DAYS EARLIER,
on April 26, on orders from Vietinghoff, SS Colonel Eugen Dollmann, had traveled to Kesselring’s headquarters to seek final consent for Wolff’s surrender plan. Although Kesselring’s command did
not yet
include Italy, the ever-cautious Vietinghoff hoped to obtain his approval. On the way, Dollmann stopped in Innsbruck to have dinner with Gauleiter Hofer. There he learned that Wolff’s enemy, Kaltenbrunner, claimed to be in contact with the Allies with his own plan for a surrender of Austria, something that would benefit his fellow countryman Hofer.

More bad news awaited Dollmann’s arrival at Kesselring’s headquarters. The Führer was preparing to expand the army groups under Kesselring’s command to
include
Italy. Not wanting to disrupt Wolff’s plan, and sensing that Kesselring “was very nervous of the whole thing,” Dollmann deliberately avoided telling Kesselring that the previous commander in Italy—Vietinghoff—had already empowered his deputy, Schweinitz, to end the war in Italy. Before departing, Dollmann asked Kesselring, “What will you do, sir, what answer will you give the German people, if at the critical moment they should appeal to your sense of responsibility?” “You can be sure,” answered Kesselring, “that in such a situation I would not hesitate to place everything I have and am at their disposal.” From Dollmann’s perspective, they were already at the “critical moment,” so Kesselring’s answer could only be interpreted as an indication of support for Wolff’s plan. Even then, the answer Dollmann sought had been obtained by a deliberate omission. Kesselring believed he had responded honorably and was being consistent with what he had previously told Wolff at Bad Nauheim.

Perhaps aroused by Dollmann’s question, Kesselring arranged to meet with Vietinghoff the following day at Gauleiter Hofer’s farmhouse near Innsbruck. Ambassador Rudolf Rahn and Hofer also attended, and Wolff would have gone too had he not been delayed by the close call with the partisans. His absence meant there would be no way for those gathered to know that hours earlier, with the lifting of the Operation Sunrise suspension by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, events had been set irrevocably in motion.

After listening to Vietinghoff’s presentation of the military situation in Italy—it was grim—Kesselring reminded everyone of his duty. “As soldiers we [have] to obey orders. These [forbid] capitulation unless we [can] conscientiously say that there [is] no other way out.” Kesselring believed that while an early surrender might save the lives of many in Italy, it would come at the expense of tens of thousands of German soldiers locked in battle on the Eastern and Western Fronts. While hope—no matter how slight—remained elsewhere, German forces in Italy had an obligation to continue fighting. For that reason, Kesselring would not support independent action or accept unconditional surrender as long as the Führer was alive.

Kesselring’s words unnerved Vietinghoff. After departing Hofer’s farmhouse, Vietinghoff and Rahn stopped in the town of Merano for a brief meeting to discuss this new problem with Röttiger and Dollmann. The two generals—Vietinghoff and Röttiger—began shouting at each other. Vietinghoff expressed his belief “that he would no longer be able to carry out the surrender.” Weary of listening to Vietinghoff go on about a soldier’s duty and loyalty to the Führer, Röttiger let fly, telling Vietinghoff that his words of “honor and loyalty and such talk [are] not going to convince anybody when it [is] obvious that the cause of the trouble [is] a complete lack of personal courage.” The two men had been allies in the surrender effort, but the stress of the surrender negotiations, at once treasonous and patriotic, had turned them against each other.

Wolff didn’t reach Bolzano until midnight, April 27, optimistic that his surrender plan was finally on the verge of success. At 2 a.m. on April 28, he held a meeting in Hofer’s office with Rahn, Röttiger, Dollmann, Vietinghoff, and the Gauleiter to update them on what had transpired in Switzerland with Dulles. He told the group that they had acted just in time: Schweinitz and Wenner were headed to Caserta. With any luck, the surrender document would be signed by the end of the following day, April 29. Their delay in not acting sooner, and further Allied advances on the battlefield, meant that negotiating terms beyond “unconditional surrender” had not been possible.

Hofer became irate. Still under the assumption that Wolff had presented Dulles with his list of conditions, and claiming this was the first time he had heard about an unconditional surrender, Hofer insisted that Ambassador Rahn immediately depart for Caserta to participate in the negotiations to reach “a constructive solution.” Determined to maintain control of his province, Hofer then demanded that he be placed in control of the military forces in Alto Adige, another absurd suggestion. When those present rejected it out of hand, the Gauleiter stormed from the meeting.

The following day, Hofer spoke with General Röttiger by phone to once again voice his strongest disagreement with the concept of “unconditional surrender.” Then he yelled, “People are going over my head! I won’t have anything more to do with your plans. Why don’t you fight instead of negotiating?” Hofer also managed to reach Kesselring to report select details of the 2 a.m. briefing by Wolff, in particular the Allies’ refusal to negotiate. Hofer prodded Kesselring to act by informing him that within hours, perhaps, Wolff’s plan would result in the “unconditional surrender” of all German forces in Italy. That afternoon, Kesselring telephoned his former Chief of Staff, admonishing Röttiger: “Fight—don’t think about negotiating.”

Kesselring’s near-exact repetition of Hofer’s words confirmed for Röttiger that Gauleiter Hofer was the saboteur. Wolff had refused to believe it until Kesselring fired Vietinghoff and Röttiger. Vying to protect his territory and power, Hofer had played his cards well, perhaps well enough to sabotage the surrender. And why shouldn’t he? Wolff’s unconditional-surrender plan offered him nothing. Wolff also had another worry: Kesselring had reported his actions to the SS leaders in Berlin, which meant his adversary—and Hofer’s ally—Ernst Kaltenbrunner, would be handling the case.

Vietinghoff obeyed Kesselring’s orders and, as Wolff noted, “disappeared—his courage had given out completely.” Röttiger stayed behind, hoping that he and Wolff could find a solution. In Bern, Dulles had written to Washington to report: “Kaltenbrunner is now attempting to save his skin by playing the Austrian card and wants to work out an Austrian capitulation, allegedly to prevent the establishment of [the Alpine Redoubt].” The seventy-two-hour window to notify German troops of the cease-fire had narrowed to forty-eight hours. It would take bold action to salvage the surrender while there was still time.

LATE IN THE
afternoon of April 30, Dulles succeeded in obtaining consent from Swiss officials for Schweinitz and Wenner to resume their trip across the Austrian border and on to Bolzano. While the delay consumed precious hours, it had provided time for Wolff to send them an urgent message. Having just learned about Kesselring’s dismissal of Vietinghoff and Röttiger, Wolff anticipated that the Gestapo, acting on orders from Kaltenbrunner, would arrest them when they passed through Innsbruck. Wolff instructed the men to bypass Innsbruck and cross into Italy over the Reschen Pass. This would add hours to their journey, but it was the only safe route.

Schweinitz and Wenner finally reached Wolff’s headquarters in Bolzano around 12:30 a.m. on May 1. Half of the time allocated for implementation of the cease-fire had been consumed by their travels from Caserta; only thirty-six hours remained. Vietinghoff’s and Röttiger’s replacements—Generals Schulz and Wentzell—had arrived the previous day, sworn to take no action toward a cease-fire without direct orders from Kesselring. All paths of appeal through the German chain of command were closed.

Wolff and Röttiger decided to enact a desperate plan. Around 7 a.m. on May 1, Röttiger ordered a detachment of military police under control of Wolff’s SS forces to block the entrance to German Army Headquarters, located in Bolzano on the edge of town, and arrest everyone inside, including Schulz and Wentzell. Röttiger then appointed himself commander of Army Group C (German forces in Italy) and, hoping to avoid some of the mistakes made by Stauffenberg and his fellow conspirators, immediately severed all communications with Germany. With Röttiger’s action, German Army Headquarters in Bolzano became a world unto itself.

The ensuing events made sense only in the climate of exhaustion and extreme stress that attended these final hours. As the self-appointed commander of German forces in Italy, Röttiger called a meeting of the subordinate commanders to explain what he had done. But Röttiger’s countrymen were unwilling to support actions they deemed illegal and treasonous. Distraught by his failure, and mindful of the consequences of his actions, Röttiger threatened to shoot himself. Hearing this news, Wolff rushed from his nearby headquarters to “prevent [Röttiger] from blowing out his brains.” Wolff then proposed to Röttiger another course of action: why not attempt to persuade Kesselring’s replacement generals—Schulz and Wentzell—to support the surrender? Cut off from Kesselring, under armed guard, and well aware the war was lost, surely they would see that surrender was in Germany’s best interest.

Wolff the salesman went to work explaining to the replacement generals the background of what had happened and why, all the while pleading with them to support a surrender. After he managed to convince them to reconsider their opposition, tempers began to cool. Röttiger even apologized to the replacement generals for placing them under arrest, which they accepted. He then restored communications to the outside world and agreed to relinquish control of Army Group C back to Schulz to enable him to order the cease-fire, if Schulz could be convinced.

At 6 p.m., now just twenty hours from the deadline, Generals Wolff and Röttiger, plus Schulz, Wentzell, and several subordinate commanders and staff officers, including Dollmann, gathered for another meeting. A majority view quickly emerged. Further fighting was futile; prolonging the fight would only lead to more German deaths. Schulz softened his position and agreed to submit the matter, including the majority opinion, to Kesselring for a final decision. Unfortunately, however, when Schulz and Wolff tried to reach Kesselring, they were informed that he was away from his headquarters.