Escape from the Third Reich: Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses
287
Escape from the Third Reich: Folke Bernadotte and the White Buses
287eBook
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Overview
The Swedish Red Cross expedition to the German concentration camps in March–April 1945 was the largest rescue effort inside Germany during WWII. Sponsored by the Swedish government and led by Count Bernadotte of Wisborg, the mission became known for its distinctive buses. Each bus was purposely painted entirely white, except for the Red Cross emblem on the side, so that they would not be mistaken for military targets.
Due to the chaotic conditions during the last weeks of the war, it is impossible to say exactly how many prisoners were liberated by the expedition, but according to conservative figures, by May 4, 1945, at least 17,000 had been transported to Sweden by the so-called White Buses. Of these, some 8,000 were Danes and Norwegians, around 6,000 were Poles, and more than 2,000 were French citizens.
This is the first book to tell the full story of this remarkable and hazardous operation. It also details Bernadotte’s harrowing expedition to Ravensbrück concentration camp and his extraordinary negotiations with Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS who was in charge of the German concentration camps, and tells how, during the course of these discussions, Himmler also made an offer of German surrender—an offer that was rejected by the Allies.
Includes never before published photographs
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781783469512 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Pen & Sword Books Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 287 |
| Sales rank: | 484,206 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Rescue
The Miracle
The year is 1945. The greatest drama in the history of the world until this point in time – the Second World War – is drawing to a close. The German Third Reich, Hitler's grand creation, by March 1945 has been reduced to a narrow strip of land between the river Oder in the east and the Rhine on the western flank. In the east the Soviet Red Army is preparing its final offensive aimed at the German capital, Berlin. To the north-west, Montgomery's army units cross the Rhine on the 24th and British forces begin to approach Bremen, Hamburg and one of the very worst of the German concentration camps, Neuengamme. On the south-western side, US and French troops have pushed into Germany, with the Americans crossing the Rhine on the 8th and setting the stage for the last big thrust into the heart of the German land mass – there to link up with their Soviet allies. The stranglehold on Nazi Germany is at hand.
The Germans, however, offered stubborn resistance and tens of thousands of German lives were sacrificed during the final months of the war. The Führer, Adolf Hitler, declared that Germany will resist defeat until the very last man. In February he issued orders for everything of value to be destroyed in the path of the enemy as it approached the central parts of Germany. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, was to see to the destruction of all important urban areas, industrial plants and factory premises. The only protests emerging against Hitler's instructions came from Albert Speer, minister of armaments. Hitler also gave orders for all the hundreds of thousands of prisoners in German concentration camps, jails and hard labour camps to be liquidated prior to the arrival of the Allied forces. Among those condemned to imminent death in the hellish German camps were thousands of Danish and Norwegian inmates, but mainly tens of thousands of Jews.
In Stockholm, in the meantime, the Swedish government had reached a bold decision: the Scandinavian internees in German camps were to be rescued by a Swedish expedition organised on military lines – before Hitler and Himmler could bring their deadly plans into execution. This rescue operation would formally take the shape of a Red Cross expedition using the White Buses and under the command of Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg. During the final months of the war, from March until the beginning of May 1945, a few hundred Swedish men and women managed to rescue tens of thousands of camp prisoners from the Nazi inferno and take them to freedom and safety in Sweden. The various trips made by the Swedes penetrating an increasingly narrower corridor of land in a Germany already on fire and on the brink of collapse claimed their tribute in the shape of one fatal casualty, but only one. The other Swedes returned home alive but haunted for the rest of their days by the nightmares they had experienced.
It is with this miraculous search and rescue from the Nazi inferno that this book is concerned.
Acknowledgements
The purpose of this book has been to attempt a portrayal of the White Bus expedition of 1945. In this I have had the help of a large number of people in Sweden. At the Swedish National Record Office in Stockholm I had the indispensable help of keeper of the records Erik Norberg, of Lars Hallberg, Per-Gunnar Ottosson, Lars-Olof Welander and Lena Ånimmer. Lena's assistance at the Arninge depot led to unexpected and elucidating discoveries. The Swedish Red Cross archives were in a fairly chaotic state, but thanks to Sonja Sjöstrand's and Agneta Greayer's efforts I gained access to relevant and exciting material – including confidential documents that on my first visit were still kept in a safe under lock but no key! Daniel Backman at the Swedish Foreign Office helped me uncover some interesting documentation in their department archives. The staff at the Swedish Military Record Office (Lars Ericson), the Royal Swedish Library (Jack Zawistowski), the provincial record offices in Gothenburg (Per Clemenson) and Lund (Annika Tergius) as well as Malmö City Archives (Staffan Gudmundsson) have been invariably accommodating. At the Jewish Community premises in Stockholm I was given access to their archives in the vaults; I wish to thank the supervisor Hans Kraitsik as well as Marianne Kirsch for their generosity. Inga Gottfarb has been a marvellous help to me. On a number of points at issue I have benefited from interesting documents and/or information offered by Wilhelm Carlgren, Silvia Frykman, Svante Hansson, Uno Hedin, Barbro Jerring, Axel Molin, Karl Molin, Miriam Nathanson and Sverker Åström. I was also sent Harald Folke's memoirs in manuscript as well as his frank comments on one of my chapters only a few weeks before he passed away, in December 1999. Some of the children of key people in this book have been of invaluable assistance in gaining access to their fathers' private archives. In this respect I mostly have in mind Folke Bernadotte jr, Arno Kersten and Carin Lembre, who in 2006 sent me her grandfather Sigurd Melin's memoranda. My colleague Alf W. Johansson has read the whole of the book in manuscript and offered his comments. Parts have also been read by Bertil Bernadotte, Inga Gottfarb, Axel Molin, Marcus Storch and Krister Wahlbäck. A sincere thank you to all and every one!
I have not conducted any detailed study of original sources in Norway but instead have relied on the large quantity of research material, white books and accounts already in existence, and here mainly Kristian Ottosen's books. Ottosen has read the chapters dealing with Norwegian issues, as have Wanda Hjort-Heger, Bjarte Bruland and Anders Thunberg in Stockholm. I extend my thanks also to those who made it possible for me to see certain material in the archives at the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Nobelinstituttet in Oslo.
The Danish National Record Office proved to be a veritable gold mine, with more detailed source material in some respects than the Swedish. 'This inquisitive Swede' received enormously kind and obliging assistance from Birgit Lögstrup, Peter Birkelund and Hans Sode-Madsen. Finn Nielsen's son, Ole Finn Nielsen, devoted much of his time to me and granted me the use of his office, where I discovered very interesting documents about his father. Takk til Danmark!
I enjoyed the huge benefit of being able to meet Gilel Storch before that fantastic man left this world. He supplied me with a large number of copies of essential documents – he wanted me even then, a full thirty years ago (1979), to proceed with the work that has only now been completed. His private files are housed in Jerusalem, in the Central Zionist Archives (CZA). In the course of an intensive week's research at these archives I was provided with the greatest help conceivable by the supervisor, Rochelle Rubinstein, who went as far as allowing me to peruse still uncatalogued material from the World Jewish Congress. It was the former head of the CZA, Yoram Mayorek, however, who introduced me to the archives and who during his stay in the United States sent me copies of documents from the US National Archives in Washington, DC. Toda raba!
No book sees its pages printed without the purely technical work performed at a publishing house. In this final stage of production I have been lucky to have benefited from the views offered by Tomas Fischer, Leif G.W. Persson and Eva Tigerschiöld for the Swedish-language manuscript. Eva and my wife Aase have read this final Swedish draft and applied a handsome stylistic varnish to my rougher work.
Close to three years' work (1999–2002) lies behind this book, made possible by the generous financial aid provided by RJ, the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Grants from the Swedish–Norwegian Cooperation Fund and the Letterstedt Association have enabled me to work on this book for three intensive weeks in ideal circumstances in Norway at the Voksenåsen Centre, Norway's national gift to Sweden as a token of appreciation for the help Sweden and its people gave during the Second World War. The San Michele Foundation has also allowed me to enjoy the hospitality of Villa San Michele at Anacapri in Italy, where I was able to complete central parts of my manuscript in March 2001, immersed in unsurpassably beautiful surroundings. Grazie!
Jan Bonde Nielsen has very generously provided the financial assistance which made this English-language version possible and which has enabled me to research relevant documents at the UK Public Record Office in London, now part of the National Archives. Valuable pictorial material, in the shape of unique photographs taken in 1945 by the German photographer Heinz Ahrens, has been made available especially for this English-language edition by kind permission of his daughter Anita Ahrens de Mari and his grandson Marzio de Mari. The translation of this book from Swedish into English is the work of my friend Graham Long. Finally, I should like to thank my British publisher, Michael Leventhal, for his never-failing patience. To all of you: thank you so much!
The exceedingly comprehensive notes belonging to the original Swedish edition have been reduced to include only source material in English and German, although reference is made to some of the more central Swedish, Danish and Norwegian sources. Those readers wishing to gain access to the complete list of footnotes should consult the Swedish-language edition: Vi åker till Sverige. De vita bussarna 1945 (published in Rimbo, Sweden, by Bokförlaget Fischer & Co., 2002).
Count Folke Bernadotte
The White Bus expedition in 1945 was the biggest and most important humanitarian operation performed by Sweden in the course of the past century. It was in all probability the boldest and most successful act a Swedish government had undertaken during the twentieth century. The undisputed leader of the entire operation was Count Folke Bernadotte. Who was this remarkable man?
Count Folke Bernadotte of Wisborg was born in 1895. His father, Prince Oscar Bernadotte, was the second son of Oscar II, king of Sweden between 1872 and 1907, and also king of Norway from 1872 until the two countries separated in 1905. Sweden's king from 1907 to 1950 was, then, Folke Bernadotte's uncle.
Bernadotte himself would later characterise his upbringing as strict. The home environment was fraught with gravity and piety. The children were taught early on the virtues of obedience, punctuality and honesty. Folke was not of an intellectual disposition, and suffered from difficulties in reading and writing. The term 'dyslexia' was relatively unknown at this time, and a proper understanding of this handicap was probably all but non-existent. He passed his final school-leaving examinations with difficulty. He had a gift for languages, however, and learnt fluent English, German and French. Following his graduation he became an officer and gained a reputation as a competent horseman and organiser. Nevertheless, he was to suffer from ill-health at an early age, and in 1930 was forced to leave the army with the rank of captain. For the rest of his life he would have to put up with gastric ulcers and a regular series of treatment with vitamins.
In 1928 Bernadotte married Estelle Manville, the daughter of a wealthy American businessman. Estelle Bernadotte was a remarkable woman, of an intellectual disposition with a fine sense of judgement, and she was to mean a lot in the formation of Folke's future career. Through his wife Bernadotte gained access to leading industrial and bank circles in New York. During 1930 and 1931 he studied banking in New York and Paris and made two unsuccessful attempts in business from 1933 to 1935. He subsequently abandoned the active world of business but remained on the board of a number of Swedish companies: AGA, Facit, NK, Nordisk Resebureau and Reader's Digest, for the last of which he and his wife converted their publication into the more Swedish-sounding Det Bästa.
His marriage and his many travels inclined Bernadotte to take more and more interest in international issues. It was now that he received his first Swedish public commissions, all of them, significantly, in the United States. He represented the Swedish king at the Swedish exhibition in Chicago in 1933 and 1934, and was vice-chairman of the committee appointed to celebrate the Swedish colonisation of Delaware in 1638. Finally, he acted as general commissioner at the Swedish pavilion at the New York World Fair in 1939.
When the Second World War broke out in Europe Bernadotte was in the United States. According to his own account he had been appointed by a group of prominent Swedes to organise and finance a voluntary body to aid Finland in its war with the Soviet Union. This project collapsed when the two countries declared an armistice in March 1940. Following the German occupation of Norway and Denmark on 9 April 1940, Bernadotte was mobilised into the Swedish army. Promoted to major, he was in charge of the army's recreational section and internment camps for people coming from countries engaged in warfare. This latter field of activity brought him the responsibility for the exchange of prisoners – British and American for German – carried out in Gothenburg in south-west Sweden in 1943 and 1944. His attempts at arranging similar exchanges of prisoners between Germany and the Soviet Union met with no success, however. This was because the Germans did not consider themselves bound by the Geneva Convention regulations concerning the treatment of prisoners of war since the Soviet Union had never ratified the Convention.
In addition to his dyslexia and his incurable illness, however, Bernadotte also experienced other personal tragedies. Two of his children died suddenly at a young age. His wife later related how, on the death of his elder son Gustav, Folke said: 'We weren't brought into this world to be happy but rather to make others happy.' He realised that his personality was more suitable for humanitarian work; this is partly why he became chairman of the Swedish Scout Association in 1937 and vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross organisation in 1943.
Bernadotte's other uncle, Prince Carl, was chairman of the Swedish Red Cross but was more than eighty years old. This meant that to all intents and purposes Bernadotte became the operative head of Red Cross activities. As such he played a central rôle in the humanitarian efforts being made in war-ravaged Europe. For geographical reasons Sweden and Switzerland, when it came to humanitarian work, were the only two neutral countries that had any real clout in acting between the two alliances waging war in Europe. The Republic of Ireland, Portugal and Turkey were geographically too peripheral. Since Sweden and Switzerland were both neutral nations, their formal state institutions were unable to intervene in certain issues. They therefore handed over operations to humanitarian organisations, principally the Red Cross units in each respective country. The Swiss Red Cross was in a less favourable position than its fellow organisation in Sweden.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which in practice was a fully fledged Swiss state body, had become discredited on the Allied side – chiefly in the Soviet Union – for its passive attitude towards the Germans during the war. The ICRC came to see the Swedish Red Cross towards the end of the war as something of a direct competitor. The Swedish Red Cross, with the support of its government, was then in a position, and had acquired such resources, that enabled it to demand the same status as that of the ICRC. Moreover, the Swedish Red Cross and Stockholm were to act as hosts for the next International Red Cross conference, and Bernadotte was therefore automatically chairman of the standing committee representing all the various national Red Cross organisations. Bernadotte had visited the ICRC in 1943, and had met the Norwegian delegate Peter Anker, who then acquainted Bernadotte with the problems involved in getting help to prisoners in Germany.
When Bernadotte was given responsibility for the Swedish rescue operation in Germany in 1945, he was fifty years old and had a wide knowledge of languages as well as a knack of organising and getting things done. He was a good negotiator, capable of wielding influence over those around him with the innate self-confidence of a member of the upper classes, and with a dash of humour and aristocratic charm. He gravitated towards a politically conservative stance, voted for what was then the Swedish Tory Party and was most of all strongly anti-Communist, entertaining few illusions regarding the Soviet Union's future intentions. He was plainly pro-American, and occupied the post of chairman of the Swedish–American Society in Stockholm. Statements to the effect that he was pro-Nazi and anti-Jewish are pure lies. On the other hand Bernadotte publicly expressed his sympathy for the enormous hardships suffered by the German people in the final phases of the war – a not particularly popular point of view in 1945's Sweden, which was trimming its sails to accommodate a new political wind. In parallel with practically all other Swedes during the war, Bernadotte was a Swedish nationalist and a convinced promoter of Nordic unity. He was deeply religious. Some of his critics believed Bernadotte had a naïve attitude – not to say a hypocritical, arrogant belief that he had been allotted a 'divine mission'; I would instead characterise this as idealism and conscientiousness, a conviction that he was here on earth to carry out good deeds.
(Continues…)
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Copyright © 2002 Sune Persson.
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Table of Contents
List of abbreviations,
List of illustrations,
Introduction,
1 The Rescue,
2 The Realm of Death: Hitler's Germany,
3 The Jews and the Holocaust,
4 Norway Under German Occupation,
5 The Danish People Under German Occupation,
6 Sweden's Balance Between Neutrality and Activism,
7 Folke Bernadotte and the Swedish Relief Expedition,
8 The White Buses: Neuengamme,
9 The White Buses: Night and Fog,
10 The White Buses: Theresienstadt,
11 The White Buses: Ravensbrück,
12 Operation Rescue Norway!,
13 Final Days,
Endnotes,