Max Husmann

Max Husmann (born March 9, 1888 in Proskurow , Ukraine ; † February 19, 1965 in Rome , Italy ) was a Swiss peace mediator and educator who helped initiate and direct Operation Sunrise . These secret negotiations (also known as the crossword ) led to the premature surrender of German troops in Italy in 1945, heralding the end of the Second World War .

Ending the war was a monumental task, especially because of the tenacity and loyalty of the German officers, who fought relentlessly, even in the face of the impending catastrophic defeat. Max Husmann played a key role in convincing high-ranking officers of the Wehrmacht and the SS to work towards a surrender of the German troops despite Hitler's orders. He also made a decisive contribution to ensuring that the operation continued and stayed on course during the difficult months of spring 1945. Max Husmann was originally a teacher. In 1926, based on his firm conviction that education can contribute to building a more tolerant and peaceful world, he founded the Montana Institute : a boarding school on the Zugerberg in Switzerland.

biography

Max Husmann was born in Proskurow in what is now Ukraine. When he was ten years old, his family emigrated to Switzerland, possibly because of their Jewish roots. The Husmanns settled in Zurich , where Max obtained his Matura and then studied mathematics at the ETH . In 1915 he obtained a doctorate from the University of Zurich . Max Husmann, who had partially financed his studies with private tuition, then founded a private school which later merged with the Minerva Institute and in which he prepared students for admission to the ETH. In 1925, Husmann bought the former Grand-Hôtel Schönfels on the Zugerberg with a view over Lake Zug in order to set up a school there. The Montana Institute was opened a year later and expanded in 1937 by acquiring the nearby Felsenegg Hotel. This expansion enabled the construction of sports facilities and a swimming pool as well as the establishment of scientific laboratories and studios. In 1938 almost 300 boys were enrolled in the boarding school. The Montana Institute only barely survived the war years. The school not only suffered a drastic decline in the number of students and teachers. A large part of their buildings was also used to accommodate soldiers and refugees. In 1946, Husmann transferred day-to-day business to Dr. Josef Ostermayer and at the same time called the Dr. Max Husmann Foundation in order to uphold the principles on which he had built his school. He spent much of the rest of his life in Rome, where he died of arteriosclerosis in 1965 . Max Husmann was buried in Zug.

Husmann as a peace broker

In February 1945, an Italian baron named Luigi Parrilli contacted Max Husmann and informed him of an alleged plan by the Germans to level northern Italy: If the Wehrmacht troops were to be forced to retreat by the advancing Allied forces, they would have the order Destroying agriculture, industrial facilities and homes. But Parrilli also claimed that he had contacts with German officers who would be willing to negotiate a surrender and prevent this catastrophe. Husmann passed this information on to Major Max Waibel from the Swiss Intelligence Service , with whom he had already worked and was on friendly terms. Waibel, for his part, contacted Allen Dulles , the head of the office of the American secret service OSS in Bern , who used Switzerland's neutral status to work from there in all discretion. Husmann's role in Operation Sunrise was partly of a logistical nature. He met the German negotiating partners Guido Zimmer , Eugen Dollmann and Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff and accompanied them on their secret journeys from the Swiss-Italian border to meetings in Lugano , Ascona , Zurich and Lucerne . But he was also heavily involved in negotiations, thanks to which the German and Allied parties succeeded in finding a common basis for constructive discussions. In his report, Max Waibel described several crucial phases of Operation Sunrise, in which Husmann's argumentative skills were the key to moving talks forward that would otherwise have stalled and probably failed. According to Waibel, an important episode was the trip from Wolff to Zurich, where he was to meet Allen Dulles for the first time. Husmann accompanied the German delegation on the train across the Alps and ensured that the presence of the high-ranking Nazi officers in the neutral territory of Switzerland remained undetected. In his report, Waibel provides a detailed description of the conversation between the Obergruppenführer and the pedagogue in a separate train compartment. His recollections agree with Wolff's later declaration of how he turned away from absolute belief in Hitler and came to the realization that continuing the war would be against the interests of the German people. On March 19, 1945, Husmann again took on an important mediating role, namely at a meeting between the Germans and the Allied Generals Lemnitzer and Airey , who had been sent to Ascona from their headquarters in Caserta to negotiate a surrender. In the weeks that followed, between March and April 1945, when the Allies launched a massive offensive against German troops, who still clung to Italy, Operation Sunrise faced a number of threats and setbacks. These included the danger that Himmler and Hitler would get wind of Wolff's secret visits to Switzerland, the growing tensions between the Anglo-American and Soviet allies and the heated discussions between Wolff and the German generals responsible for the troops in northern Italy about the Laying down of arms. When Dulles received the order to terminate the operation from the Allied headquarters, Waibel and Husmann decided to wait together with the German envoys in this difficult situation on Waibel's estate near Lucerne. Their decision was to pay off: only a little later, Dulles' order was withdrawn and the signing of the declaration of surrender was initiated, which finally became a fact on April 29, 1945. The laying down of arms in northern Italy was the first and only surrender in World War II before the death of Adolf Hitler was announced on May 1, 1945. Waibel wrote about Husmann's contribution to Operation Sunrise:

“Nobody was more qualified for such a task than Dr. Husmann. As an outstanding educator, he not only has a rare ability to empathize with the psyche of his interlocutors, but also an extraordinary dexterity and quick-wittedness in debating. It can be said without exaggeration that the decisive intellectual influence on the SS leaders who took part in the negotiations was almost exclusively Dr. Husmann's merit was. This Swiss educator coped with his task with astonishing success. He, the civilian, succeeded in convincing higher and highest SS leaders that their thoughts and thus also their position of power rested on a fallacy and were ripe for collapse. "

After Operation Sunrise in 1945 initially attracted some attention and was covered in the press, details of these secret negotiations were kept from the public. This was particularly true in Switzerland, where Husmann and Waibel were forbidden to speak or write about the operation due to complex considerations in connection with the policy of neutrality and the war economy. Waibel's report wasn't published until 1981 and was the first document in which Husmann's role was fully described. On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Operation Sunrise in 2005, the importance of Switzerland in these negotiations and the roles of Waibel and Husmann were officially recognized by the Swiss government .

Husmann as an advocate for Karl Wolff at the Nuremberg Trial

On May 12, 1945 Karl Wolff was arrested and taken to Nuremberg, where he was to be charged with his involvement in the atrocities of the Nazis. Max Husmann testified in court in favor of Wolff, as did the other participants in Operation Sunrise - Allen Dulles, Lyman Lemnitzer, Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz and Terence Airey. Dulles and the other members of the Anglo-American team denied that any arrangements had been made with Wolff during the operation; Wolff had shown courage and determination to bring the war to an end, and therefore deserved indulgence. In contrast, Husmann (like Parrilli) insisted that a certain immunity from prosecution had been discussed and agreed. In a letter dated August 1947, which Husmann had written at the request of Telford Taylor , the leading US Prosecutor, he confirmed promises in this regard. However, due to the delicate political situation, Dulles was unable to record anything in writing. Operation Sunrise called for a pact with the devil , but the merits of surrender had priority. Research, meanwhile, has shown that agreements were made with a high degree of probability and those who advocated surrender were promised protection in war crimes trials in return. This may also have been the reason for the mild verdict that was finally passed against Karl Wolff.

Husmann as a teacher

Documents from the 1920s and 1930s, which give an insight into the first years of the Montana Institute, show that Max Husmann had very special ideas about education and its goals when he founded his school. These were summarized in a lecture that Husmann's colleague Huldreich Sauerwein gave at a conference for teachers at Harrow College in 1938 . According to Husmann's vision, an international boarding school, in which students from all over the world learn together, would help to awaken tolerance and respect for other cultures in young people and thus prevent further wars. The focus on developing thinking skills would help build a generation that would be resistant to propaganda . Finally, Pestalozzi's teaching that attention must be paid to every child would help the development of a more considerate, caring society.

literature

• Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy . Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen 1981, ISBN 3-907160-87-8 .
• Sara Randell: End the war. Operation Sunrise and Max Husmann. Stämpfli Verlag , Bern 2018, ISBN 978-3-7272-6013-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ian Kershaw: The End: Fight to Doom. Nazi Germany 1944/45. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-421-05807-2 .
2. ^ Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy. Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen 1981.
3. ^ Allen Dulles, Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz: Company SUNRISE. The secret story of the end of the war in Italy. Econ-Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna 1967.
4. ^ Joseph Mächler: How Switzerland saved itself. Pro Libertate 2017, ISBN 978-3-9523667-3-8 , pp. 479-486.
5. ^ Inge Ginsberg: How Switzerland shortened the war. In: Die Weltwoche. Number 17, April 23, 2015.
6. ↑ maxhusmann.ch
7. ^ Josef Ostermayer: 50 Years of the Institut Montana Zugerberg 1926–1976. Montana-Verlag, Zugerberg 1976.
8. ^ Bradley F. Smith, Elena Aga Rossi: Operation Sunrise, The Secret Surrender. Basic Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-465-05290-8 , pp. 68-69.
9. ^ Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy. Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen 1981.
10. ↑ Jon Kimche: Spying for Peace: General Guisan and Swiss Neutrality. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London 1961, p. 105.
11. ^ Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy. Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen 1981.
12. ↑ Stephen Halbrook: 'Operation Sunrise: America's OSS, Swiss Intelligence the German Surrender 1945' in “Operation Sunrise” '. In: Marino Viganò, Dominic M. Pedrazzini (eds.): Atti del convegno internazionale (Locarno, 2 maggio 2005). Lugano 2006.
13. ^ Kerstin von Lingen: SS and Secret Service. "Conspiracy of Silence": The Karl Wolff Files. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76744-8 , p. 67.
14. ^ Bradley F. Smith, Elena Aga Rossi: Operation Sunrise, The Secret Surrender. Basic Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-465-05290-8 , pp. 68-69.
15. ^ Bradley F. Smith, Elena Aga Rossi: Operation Sunrise, The Secret Surrender. Basic Books, New York 1979, ISBN 0-465-05290-8 , pp. 68-69.
16. ↑ H.-R. Fuhrer, Michael Olsansky: Drivers and Driven. The “German participants” and the early end of the war in Italy, 1945. In: Marino Viganò, Dominic M. Pedrazzini (ed.): Operation Sunrise. Atti del convegno internazionale. (Locarno, 2 maggio 2005). Lugano 2006, p. 105.
17. ^ Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy. Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen, 1981.
18. ^ Max Waibel: Operation Sunrise, 1945 - Surrender in Northern Italy. Original report from the intermediary. Novalis Verlag, Schaffhausen 1981, p. 39.
19. ^ Kerstin von Lingen: SS and Secret Service. "Conspiracy of Silence": The Karl Wolff Files. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76744-8 , p. 238ff.
20. ^ Marino Viganò: “Operation Sunrise”. Atti del convegno internazionale (Locarno, 2 maggio 2005). Lugano 2006.
21. ^ R. Breitmann, N. Goda, T. Naftale, R. Wolfe: US Intelligence and the Nazis. Cambridge 2005, ISBN 0-521-61794-4 .
22. ^ Kerstin von Lingen: SS and Secret Service. "Conspiracy of Silence": The Karl Wolff Files. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76744-8 , p. 163f.
23. ^ Kerstin von Lingen: SS and Secret Service. "Conspiracy of Silence": The Karl Wolff Files. Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-76744-8 .
24. ↑ Michael Salter: Nazi War Crimes, US Intelligence and Selective Prosecution at Nuremberg. Routledge Cavendish 2007, ISBN 978-1-904385-80-6 .
25. ^ Huldreich Sauerwein: International Education. In: Problems in Modern Education. Ed. ED Laborde, Cambridge University Press 1939.
26. ^ Institut Montana: Announcement of new publication by Sara Randell: End the war
27. ↑ Winfried Pogorzelski: Education and training in the service of peace. To the book by Sara Randell "Ending the War - Operation Sunrise and Max Husmann". Time Questions, January 15, 2019