Тайные переговоры между США и Германией в 1945 году.

Secret negotiations between US and Germany

Operation Sunrise (sometimes called the Berne incident) was a series of World War II secret negotiations from February to May 1945 between representatives of Nazi Germany and the United States to arrange a local surrender of German forces in northern Italy. Most of the meetings took place in the vicinity of Bern, Switzerland, and the lead negotiators were Waffen SS General Karl Wolff and American OSS agent Allen Dulles. The meetings provoked Soviet suspicion that the Americans were seeking to sign a separate peace with the Germans and led to heated correspondence between Joseph Stalin and Franklin Roosevelt, an early episode of the emerging Cold War.

During the Second World War, Allen Dulles was in charge of the Office of Strategic Services station attached to the American embassy in Bern from November 1942 onward, which he used as a base for launching intelligence operations. Dulles had a diplomatic cover, but he made little secret of his real work, and it was widely known due to The New York Times short story published on 17 September 1942 stating that he was "being replaced as committee treasurer because of his war work with government Office of Strategic Services". The Office of Strategic Services was a newly founded agency, and it was not clear if it would be allowed to continue beyond the Second World War as the CIG (Central Intelligence Group), then later the CIA. The Army and Navy were both opposed to its existence (in fact, the OSS was disbanded in October 1945). The OSS chief, William Donovan, was lobbying very strongly for the OSS to be continued after the war, and as such OSS operatives were under strong pressure to achieve successes that might justify continuing the agency. Dulles for his part having accomplished very little during his three years in Bern was desperate for any sort of success that would allow him to end the war on a high note and justify the continued existence of the OSS.

In July 1943, following the Allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini was arrested by order of King Victor Emmanuel III, provoking a civil war. Italy's military outside of the Italian peninsula collapsed, its occupied and annexed territories falling under German control. Italy capitulated to the Allies on 3 September 1943. The subsequent German occupation of northern Italy in September 1943 led to a guerrilla war being waged by Italian insurgent bands loyal to the National Liberation Committee (CLN) against the Germans and the forces of Fascist "Salo Republic". The majority of the Italian people considered the CLN rather than the rump government in Rome headed by the extremely unpopular King Victor Emmanuel III to be their legitimate government, much to the discomfort of the American and even more so the British government, who preferred to deal with the Rome government. On the night of 8–9 September 1943 when Operation Axis, the German occupation of Italy was launched, the king, instead of trying to rally his people, had issued only vague and contradictory orders in an unsigned document written in pencil and instead fled Rome under the cover of night. The king's lack of leadership on the night of 8–9 September had greatly aided the German occupation as the majority of Italian officers had no idea of what they were supposed to do, and fatally discredited the House of Savoy. The monarchy was especially unpopular in the north of Italy, where people felt that it was Victor Emmanuel who by his incompetence and cowardice was responsible for them having to endure an occupation by Nazi Germany. The collapse of living standards caused by the German occupation in the north had caused the Italian Communist Party, traditionally popular with the working classes in the industrial cities of northern Italy, to surge in appeal as many people in northern Italy wanted to see an utopian "people's republic" to be modelled after the Soviet Union (which was viewed in certain quarters in Italy as a land of freedom and equality) after the war. In Italy, a return to the pre war order would mean a return to Fascism, leading to anti Fascist Italians to argue that what was needed was a break with the past.

Since the fall of 1944, the Red Army had been advancing up the Danube river valley and on 26 December 1944 the Battle of Budapest began, which ended with Budapest surrendering on 13 February 1945. After the fall of Budapest, the Red Army advance continued up the Danube river valley towards Vienna. The German forces in northern Italy were holding out against an Allied offensive in the Po river valley, waging a fierce defensive campaign, but an Allied bombing campaign had reduced their supplies coming down from the Brenner Pass to the minimum, making the German situation in Italy highly precarious. The initial purpose behind the talks in Switzerland, as proposed by Wolff, was not to have Army Group C surrender to the Allies, but rather to surrender northern Italy to the Allies in order to allow the 800,000 men of Army Group C to withdraw over the Brenner Pass to defend Vienna against the Red Army. On 23 February 1945, Dulles accepted Wolff's offer to explore terms of a local surrender. In an 8 March meeting in Lucerne organized by Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel, Wolff offered the following plan: Army Group C goes into Germany, while Allied Forces Commander Harold Alexander advances in the direction of the South of France. Wolff believed at first that the Anglo American acceptance of his plan just might break up the "Big Three" alliance of the Soviet Union, Great Britain and the United States.

Roosevelt denied that there were any negotiations for surrender taking place in Switzerland. Dulles, however appears to have made, apparently at his own discretion, a verbal agreement to protect SS General Wolff from prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials as they worked out details of surrender. Although Switzerland was neutral during World War II, the Swiss intelligence officer Max Waibel and the school director Max Husmann arranged for the meetings. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was following the discussion closely, and said he believed that "misunderstandings" with the Soviets were resolved with Roosevelt's death on 12 April. Churchill cynically referred to the negotiations as Operation Crossword, apparently because he found them puzzling. In spite of warnings from other officials that he was violating the Casablanca agreement that called for all dealings with Axis members to be on terms of unconditional surrender, Dulles worked supportively with Wolff, determined to end the war before the "communists" reached Trieste.

President Harry Truman officially closed down talks with the Germans in Switzerland, and made sure that a Soviet general was represented at the talks in Caserta, Italy that finalized the surrender of the entire force. Nonetheless, fallout from the incident seems to have discouraged full Soviet participation in the founding United Nations conference later that month. Wolff and his forces were being considered to help implement Operation Unthinkable, a secret plan to invade the Soviet Union which Winston Churchill advocated during this period. Wolff was later proven to be complicit in the murder of 300,000 Jews. On 26 April, the SS general was captured by Italian partisans, but was rescued by Dulles' Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Swiss intelligence. Victory in Europe Day occurred on 8 May.

Dulles later recounted the events of Sunrise in his book, The Secret Surrender (1966). Dulles avidly promoted his role in the affair in order to advance his career. Operation Sunrise was documented in Seventeen Moments of Spring, a Soviet historical TV series, which called it "Operation Sunrise Crossword".