During
World War II,
Operation Crossword or
Operation Sunrise was a series of secret negotiations conducted in March 1945 in
Switzerland between representatives of the
Nazi Germany and the
U.S. to arrange a local surrender of
German forces in northern Italy. One of the most notable parts of the operation were secret negotiations between
Waffen-SS General
Karl Wolff and
Allen Dulles on
March 8,
1945 in
Luzern. Wolff offered the following plan:
Army Group C gets a possibility to go into Germany, while Allied Forces Commander
Harold Alexander advances in Southern
Alps direction. Subsequently, on
March 15 and
March 19, Wolff conducted further secret negotiations on the surrender with American general
Lyman Lemnitzer and British general
Terence Airey.
Although being an ally of the British and American Forces, the Soviet Union was not informed by them of the negotiations, but received information from Soviet spies and accused western powers of trying to reach a
separate peace. Among Soviet
intelligence officers, who uncovered the operation, was
Kim Philby.
On
March 12 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 Forces surrender in Italy. On the same day Molotov replied that the Soviet government would not object to negotiations between American and British officers and Wolff, provided that representatives of Soviet Military Command could also take part in them. However, on
March 16 the Soviet side was informed that its representatives would not be allowed to take part in negotiations with Wolff in any case.
On
March 22 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
March 25 and Stalin's reply on
March 29. The actual surrender in Italy occurred on
April 29,
1945.
Operation Crossword was depicted in the Soviet film
Seventeen Moments of Spring, named "Operation Sunrise Crossword" in the film.
Operation Crossword - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia