Operation Sunrise: Lugano, Ascona and the end of the war in Italy

The intermediaries

In the last months of the war, the border region of Ticino became the setting of the secret negotiations that led to the surrender of the German forces in Italy. The Historical Dictionary summarizes them in one sentence: in March and April 1945, negotiations on the partial capitulation of the German troops in Italy took place in Switzerland through the mediation of Major Max Waibel, and the capitulation took effect on 2 May 1945.¹ The American side was represented by Allen Dulles, head of the Office of Strategic Services in Bern since November 1942, and his collaborator Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz. The German side was led by SS-Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, the highest SS and police commander in Italy and military plenipotentiary of the Wehrmacht in the occupied country.²

The first contacts were made by intermediaries. The Italian baron Luigi Parrilli, a businessman with connections in northern Italian industry and in German circles, approached Swiss contacts in February 1945 with the suggestion that the SS leadership in Italy might be prepared to negotiate. Through the Swiss educator Max Husmann he reached Waibel, an officer of Swiss military intelligence, who in turn informed Dulles.³ The motives on the German side were mixed. Wolff and his officers knew that the war was lost and sought to secure their own future, while the industrialists of northern Italy wanted to prevent the destruction of factories, power stations and ports that the scorched-earth orders of the German command threatened. The motives on the Swiss side were equally practical: an orderly end of the war in northern Italy would protect the southern border from a flood of retreating troops and from the destruction of the transalpine infrastructure on which Switzerland depended.⁴

Lugano, Zurich and Ascona

On 3 March 1945 a first meeting took place in Lugano between Parrilli and Paul Blum, an officer of Dulles's staff, with the SS officers Eugen Dollmann and Guido Zimmer.⁵ Five days later, on 8 March 1945, Wolff himself crossed into Switzerland and met Dulles in Zurich.⁶ On 19 March 1945 Wolff met the American general Lyman Lemnitzer and the British general Terence Airey, who had come from the Allied headquarters at Caserta, in Ascona on Lake Maggiore.⁷ The meeting took place in a private villa, away from the attention of the diplomatic corps in Bern. The negotiations were interrupted by the replacement of the German commander-in-chief in Italy, by the resistance of senior German officers and by the protests of the Soviet Union, which suspected that the Western Allies were negotiating a separate peace.⁸

The instrument of surrender was finally signed at Caserta on 29 April 1945 by representatives of General Heinrich von Vietinghoff and of Wolff. It took effect on 2 May 1945, six days before the general capitulation of Germany.⁹ By then the Italian partisans had liberated Milan and most of the cities of the north, and Mussolini had been captured and killed at Dongo and Giulino di Mezzegra. The military significance of the early surrender has been debated by historians. Its practical consequence for Ticino was that the war on its southern border ended a few days earlier, and with fewer destroyed bridges, power stations and factories, than the scorched-earth orders had foreseen.

Neutrality as a service

Operation Sunrise belongs to the history of the Swiss "good offices", the services that a neutral State renders to belligerents as a channel of communication. Chapter C.II describes the older tradition of Ticino as a place of exile and conspiracy in the Risorgimento. In 1945 the canton again served as a place where people who could not meet officially met in private houses and hotel rooms, protected by the discretion of Swiss officers and the neutrality of Swiss territory. The episode also shows the limits of this service. Waibel mediated with the knowledge of his military superiors. Because the Soviet Union feared that a partial capitulation would free German troops for the eastern front, the affair was delicate for Swiss neutrality policy. The Federal Council therefore imposed a duty of silence on Waibel, which he disregarded in 1946 and for which the Federal Council reprimanded him. Former State Secretary Franz Blankart later said that the Federal Council would have stopped Waibel had it known of his activities.¹⁰

The parallel with the financial centre is close. Discretion, personal trust, the absence of publicity and the legal protection of a neutral jurisdiction are the same qualities that made Lugano attractive for Italian money. The difference lies in the legitimacy of the purpose. Sunrise served the end of a war and saved lives and infrastructure. The discretion of the banks, as the following decades would show, could also serve tax evasion, corruption and organized crime. The legal history of the Lugano financial centre after 1945, which the remaining chapters of Part D trace, is in large part the history of the attempt to separate legitimate discretion from complicity.

Essentials. Operation Sunrise was the secret negotiation between the American OSS under Allen Dulles and the SS commander in Italy, Karl Wolff, mediated by the Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel. Contacts were established through Luigi Parrilli and Max Husmann in February 1945. Meetings took place in Lugano on 3 March, in Zurich on 8 March and in Ascona on 19 March 1945. The surrender of the German forces in Italy was signed at Caserta on 29 April and took effect on 2 May 1945.

Notes

1. Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above): "Im März und April 1945 fanden in der Schweiz unter Vermittlung von Major Max Waibel Verhandlungen zur Teilkapitulation der deutschen Truppen in Italien statt, die am 2. Mai erfolgte (Operation Sunrise)." ↩
2. Wikipedia (English), "Operation Sunrise (World War II)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_II) (consulted as a last resort), on Dulles in Bern from November 1942 and Wolff's functions. The standard accounts are Bradley F. Smith and Elena Aga Rossi, Operation Sunrise: The Secret Surrender (New York: Basic Books, 1979), and Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). ↩
3. Wikipedia (Italian), "Operazione Sunrise", https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operazione_Sunrise (consulted as a last resort), on Parrilli as intermediary. Wikipedia (English), "Operation Sunrise (World War II)" (above): "the Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel and the school director Max Husmann arranged for the meetings"; Müller-Grieshaber and Jorio, "Waibel, Max" (below): "Ab Februar 1945 vermittelte Max Waibel zwischen dem SS-General in Italien, Karl Wolff, und dem amerikanischen Geheimdienstchef in Bern, Allen W. Dulles". ↩
4. Source as cited in the printed edition. ↩
5. Wikipedia (Italian), "Operazione Sunrise" (above). ↩
6. Wikipedia (Italian), "Operazione Sunrise" (above). The English Wikipedia places a meeting of 8 March 1945 in Lucerne. The Italian version, which places Wolff's meeting with Dulles in Zurich, agrees with the standard accounts. ↩
7. Wikipedia (Italian), "Operazione Sunrise" (above). ↩
8. Wikipedia (English), "Operation Sunrise (World War II)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sunrise_(World_War_II) (consulted as a last resort), on Kesselring as "the departing German commander in Italy", on Vietinghoff's opposition to a "premature" surrender, on the Soviet suspicion of a separate peace and Molotov's protest of 22 March 1945, and on Truman's closing of the talks in Switzerland. ↩
9. Wikipedia (English), "Operation Sunrise (World War II)" (above); Senn et al., "Weltkrieg, Zweiter" (above). ↩
10. Peter Müller-Grieshaber and Marco Jorio, "Waibel, Max", in HLS, version of 20 August 2013, https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/024381/: "Die von Waibel mit Wissen seiner militärischen Vorgesetzten vermittelte Teilkapitulation war neutralitätspolitisch heikel, da die Sowjetunion eine Verstärkung der deutschen Truppen an der Ostfront befürchtete. Daher belegte der Bundesrat Waibel mit einem Schweigegebot, das dieser 1946 missachtete und deswegen vom Bundesrat getadelt wurde." On Blankart's statement see Wikipedia (English), "Max Waibel", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Waibel (consulted as a last resort). ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.