Operation Sunshine/Sunrise 1945: Swiss, Nazis & US OSS

[TonyGosling]

Operation sunshine where former Nazi war criminals Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie and others organised coups and drug trafficking throughout South America in the 1950s and 1960s.

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/81999
Angela Belassie interviews author of new book 'Drugs As Weapons Against Us' John Potash from the USA. He talks about Operation sunshine where former Nazi war criminals Josef Mengele, Klaus Barbie and others organised coups and drug trafficking throughout South America in the 1950s and 1960s. Also MK Ultra joint CIA working with London's Tavistock Institute to poison the minds of anti-Vietnam activists, musicians, and their fans. Finally looking at Operation Mockingbird using money from drug trafficking to buy up the mainstream media for the CIA's own use, both print and broadcasting.


Operation sunrise
May 1945: Nazi Germany Surrenders, But… on May 7, 8, or 9?
By Jacques R. Pauwels Global Research, May 06, 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/may-1945-operation-sunrise-nazi-germany-s urrenders-but-on-may-7-8-or-9/5334299
After the Casablanca Conference of January 1943, the Americans, British, and Soviets had agreed that there would be no separate negotiations with Nazi Germany with respect to its capitulation, and that the Germander surrender would have to be unconditional. In the early spring of 1945, Germany was as good as defeated and the Allies were getting ready to receive its capitulation. The expected unconditional German capitulation vis-à-vis all three Allies would have to be concluded somewhere, but where – on the Eastern Front, or on the Western Front?

If only for reasons of prestige, the Western Allies preferred that this would happen on the Western Front. Secret talks with the Germans, which the British and Americans were holding at that time (i.e. in March 1945) in neutral Switzerland, code-named Operation Sunrise, were useful in that context, not only with an eye on a German surrender in Italy, which had actually led to the talks, but also in view of the coming general and supposedly unconditional German capitulation, of which intriguing details – such as the venue of the ceremony – might possibly be determined in advance and without input from the the Soviets. There were many possibilities in this respect, because the Germans themselves kept approaching the Americans and the British in the hope of concluding a separate armistice with the Western powers or, if that would prove impossible, of steering as many Wehrmacht units as possible into American or British captivity by means of “individual” or “local” surrenders, i.e. surrenders of larger or smaller units of the German army in restricted areas of the front.

The Great War of 1914-1918 had ended with a clear and unequivocal armistice, namely in the form of an unconditional German surrender, which everybody knows went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The Second World War, on the other hand, was to grind to a halt, in Europe at least, amidst intrigue and confusion, so that even today there are many misconceptions regarding the time and place of the German capitulation. The Second World War was to end in the European theatre not with one, but with an entire string of German capitulations, with a veritable orgy of surrenders.

It started in Italy on April 29, 1945, with the capitulation of the combined German armies in southwestern Europe to the Allied forces led by Alexander, the British field marshal. Signatories on the German side included SS General Karl Wolff, who had conducted the negotiations with American secret agents in Switzerland about sensitive issues such as the neutralization of the kind of Italian anti-fascists for whom there was no room in the American-British post-war plans for their country. Stalin had expressed misgivings about the arrangement that was being worked out between the Western Allies and the Germans in Italy, but in the end he gave his blessing to this capitulation after all.

Many people in Great Britain firmly believe even today that the war against Germany ended with a German surrender in the headquarters of another British field marshal, namely Montgomery, on the Luneburg Heath in northern Germany. Yet this ceremony took place on May 4, 1945, that is, at least five days before the guns finally fell silent in Europe, and this capitulation applied only to German troops that had hitherto been battling Montgomery’s British-Canadian 21st Army Group in the Netherlands and in Northwest Germany. Just to be on the safe side, the Canadians actually accepted the capitulation of all German troops in Holland the next day, May 5, during a ceremony in the town of Wageningen, a town in the eastern Dutch province of Gelderland.[1] In America and also in Western Europe the event on the Luneburg Heath is rightly viewed as a strictly local capitulation, even though it is recognized that it served as a kind of prelude to the definitive German capitulation and resulting ceasefire. As far as the Americans, French, Belgians, and others are concerned, this definitive German surrender took place in the headquarters of General Eisenhower, the supreme commander of all Allied forces on the Western Front, in a shabby school building in the city of Reims on May 7, 1945, in the early morning. But this armistice was to go into effect only on the next day, May 8, and only at 11:01 p.m. It is for this reason that even now, commemoration ceremonies in the United States and in Western Europe take place on May 8.

However, even the important event in Reims was not the final surrender ceremony. With the permission of Hitler’s successor, Admiral Dönitz, German spokesmen had come knocking on Eisenhower’s door in order to try once again to conclude an armistice only with the Western Allies or, failing that, to try to rescue more Wehrmacht units from the clutches of the Soviets by means of local surrenders on the Western Front. Eisenhower was personally no longer willing to consent to further local surrenders, let alone a general German capitulation to the Western Allies only. But he appreciated the potential advantages that would accrue to the Western side if somehow the bulk of the Wehrmacht would end up in British-American rather than Soviet captivity. And he also realized that this was a unique opportunity to induce the desperate Germans to sign in his headquarters the general and unconditional capitulation in the form of a document that would conform to inter-Allied agreements; this detail would obviously do much to enhance the prestige of the United States.

In Reims it thus came to a byzantine scenario. First, from Paris an obscure Soviet liaison officer, Major General Ivan Susloparov, was brought over in order to save the appearance of the required Allied collegiality. Second, while it was made clear to the Germans that there could be no question of a separate capitulation on the Western Front, a concession was made to them in the form of an agreement that the armistice would only go into effect after a delay of forty-five hours. This was done to accommodate the new German leaders’ desire to give as many Wehrmacht units as possible a last chance to surrender to the Americans or the British. This interval gave the Germans the opportunity to transfer troops from the East, where heavy fighting continued unabatedly, to the West, where after the signing rituals in Luneburg and then Reims hardly any shots were being fired anymore. The Germans, whose delegation was headed by General Jodl, signed the capitulation document at Eisenhower’s headquarters on May 7 at 2:41 a.m.; but as mentioned earlier, the guns were to fall silent only on May 8 at 11:01 p.m. Local American commanders would cease to allow fleeing Germans to escape behind their lines only after the German capitulation actually went into effect. It can be argued, then, that the deal concluded in the Champagne city did not constitute a totally unconditional capitulation.[2]



The document signed in Reims ( see image left) gave the Americans precisely what they wanted, namely, the prestige of a general German surrender on the Western Front in Eisenhower’s headquarters. The Germans also achieved the best they could hope for, since their dream of a capitulation to the Western Allies alone appeared to be out of the question: a “postponement of execution,” so to speak, of almost two days. During this time, the fighting continued virtually only on the Eastern Front, and countless German soldiers took advantage of this opportunity to disappear behind the British-American lines.[3]

However, the text of the surrender in Reims did not conform entirely to the wording of a general German capitulation agreed upon previously by the Americans and the British as well as the Soviets. It was also questionable whether the representative of the USSR, Susloparov, was really qualified to co-sign the document. Furthermore, it is understandable that the Soviets were far from pleased that the Germans were afforded the possibility to continue to battle the Red Army for almost two more days while on the Western Front the fighting had virtually come to an end. The impression was thus created that what had been signed in Reims was in fact a German surrender on the Western Front only, an arrangement that violated the inter-Allied agreements. In order to clear the air, it was decided to organize an ultimate capitulation ceremony, so that the German surrender in Reims retroactively revealed itself as a sort of prelude to the final surrender and/or as a purely military surrender, even though the Americans and the Western Europeans would continue to commemorate it as the true end to the war in Europe.[4]



General Keitel signs Germany’s unconditional surrender in Berlin (right)

It was in Berlin, in the headquarters of Marshal Zhukov, that the final and general, political as well as military, German capitulation was signed on May 8, 1945 or, put differently, that the German capitulation of the day before in Reims was properly ratified by all the Allies. The signatories for Germany, acting on the instructions of Admiral Dönitz, were the generals Keitel, von Friedeburg (who had also been present in Reims) and Stumpf. Since Zhukov had a lower military rank than Eisenhower, the latter had a perfect excuse for not attending the ceremony in the rubble of the German capital. He sent his rather low-profile British deputy, Marshal Tedder, to sign, and this of course took some luster away from the ceremony in Berlin in favour of the one in Reims.[5]

As far as the Soviets and the majority of Eastern Europeans were concerned, the Second World War in Europe ended with the ceremony in Berlin on May 8, 1945, which resulted in the arms being laid down the next day, on May 9. For the Americans, and for most Western Europeans, “the real thing” was and remains the surrender in Reims, signed on May 7 and effective on May 8. While the former always commemorate the end of the war on May 9, the latter invariably do so on May 8. (But the Dutch celebrate on May 5.) That one of the greatest dramas of world history could have such a confusing and unworthy end in Europe was a consequence, as Gabriel Kolko writes, of the way in which the Americans and the British sought to achieve all sorts of big and small advantages for themselves – to the disadvantage of the Soviets – from the inevitable German capitulation.[6]

The First World War had ended de facto with the armistice of November 11, 1918, and de jure with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919. The Second World War came to an end with an entire string of surrenders, but it never did come to a peace treaty à la versaillaise, at least not with respect to Germany. (Peace treaties were in due course concluded with Japan, Italy, and so on.) The reason for this is that the victors – the Western Allies on the one side and the Soviets on the other side – were unable to come to an agreement about Germany’s fate. Consequently, a few years after the war two German states emerged, which virtually precluded the possibility of a peace treaty reflecting an agreement acceptable to all parties involved. And so a peace treaty with Germany, that is, a final settlement of all issues that remained unresolved after the war, such as the question of Germany’s eastern border, became feasible only when the reunification of the two Germanies became a realistic proposition, namely, after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

That made the “Two-plus-Four” negotiations of the summer and fall of 1990 possible, negotiations whereby on the one hand the two German states found ways to reunify Germany, and whereby on the other hand the four great victors of the Second World War – the United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union – imposed their conditions on the German reunification and cleared up the status of the newly reunited country, taking into account not only their own interests but also the interests of other concerned European states such as Poland. The result of these negotiations was a convention that was signed in Moscow on September 12, 1990, and which, faute de mieux, can be viewed as the peace treaty that put an official end to the Second World War, at least with respect to Germany.[7]

Notes

[1] German surrenders in Italy and on Lüneburg Heath: Germany Surrenders 1945, Washington, DC, 1976, pp. 2-3.

[2] Germans want separate surrender or at least gain time: Herbert Kraus, “Karl Dönitz und das Ende des Dritten Reiches”»,in Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Ende des Dritten Reiches- Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs: Eine perspektivische Rückschau, Munich and Zürich, 1995, pp. 4-5, 12; Germany Surrenders 1945, p. 6; Klaus-Dietmar Henke, Die Amerikanische Besetzung Deutschlands, Munich, 1995, pp. 687, 965-67; Helene Keyssar and Vladimir Pozner, Remembering War: A U.S.-Soviet Dialogue, New York and Oxford, 1990, p. 233.

[3] Germans profit from delay: Henke, op. cit., pp. 967-68.

[4] Questionable procedures in Reims: Gabriel Kolko, The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945, New York, 1968, p. 387; Germany Surrenders 1945, p. 8.

[5] Ceremony in Berlin: Germany Surrenders 1945, pp. 8-9.

[6] Kolko-quotation: Kolko, op. Cit., p. 388.

[7] “2+4 negotiations”: Ulrich Albrecht, Die Abwicklung der DDR: Die «2+4 Verhandlungen »: Ein Insider-Bericht, Opladen, 1991.

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

How Nazi butcher Klaus Barbie helped kill Che Guevara and unleash global cocaine scourge
20:06, 13 NOV 2015 UPDATED 20:07, 13 NOV 2015 BY WARREN MANGER
Instead of putting the SS monster on trial, the US recruited him as a spy – a move which backfired when he joined forces with South American drug lords

German-SS-officer-and-Nazi-war-criminal-Klaus-Barbie-1913-1991.jpgGett y
Monster: Barbie’s crimes saw him nicknamed the Butcher of Lyon
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/how-nazi-butcher-klaus-barbie- 6828080

As the brutal Butcher of Lyon, notorious Nazi Klaus Barbie spent the Second World War torturing children and sending whole families to the death camps.

But when the conflict ended, the Gestapo captain didn’t face instant arrest and swift justice. Instead, the US allowed him to start a new life as a CIA spy, smuggling him into Bolivia where he helped hunt and kill the revolutionary Che Guevara .

It was a disastrous mistake. Once in South America, Barbie went on to join forces with some of the region’s most feared drug lords, including Pablo Escobar , to launch a global cocaine trade currently worth £60billion a year.

He even became a colonel in the Bolivian army, enlisted the help of terrorists called Fiances of Death and used drug money to fund a military coup, creating a narco-state where the traffickers could build a cocaine empire immune from prosecution.

A picture taken in Lima, Peru on January 25, 1972 shows Nazi Gestapo chief Klaus Barbie AFP/Getty Images
Still free: Barbie continues his life of brutality in Peru in 1972
Peter McFarren, an American journalist who tracked down Barbie and interviewed him several times, says: “Barbie may not have been physically involved in shipping kilos of drugs, but he played a decisive role in the growth of the cocaine trade in Bolivia, Peru and Columbia.


“He was the liaison between these kings of cocaine and the government, military and mercenaries.”

Barbie was the ultimate partner in crime for the drug lords. He proved his ruthlessness after he was appointed leader of Hitler’s secret police in Lyon in 1942, aged 29.

Charged with hunting down members of the French Resistance, he earned his Butcher nickname by personally torturing men, women and children with sexual abuse, electrocution and breaking bones.

Pablo Escobar mug shot
Acolyte: Notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar
After the war, some of Barbie’s new associates almost earned a similarly ferocious reputation. They included Pablo Escobar, the richest gangster in history who amassed a £30billion personal fortune and killed thousands of Colombians to maintain his empire.

The King of Cocaine held a monopoly on the import of coca paste from Bolivia to Colombia. At one point he was responsible for 80% of the powder smuggled into the US.

Read more: Chilling never-before-seen photos brutal Nazis

Barbie almost certainly visited him at his 5,000-acre estate, Hacienda Napoles, with its private airport and its own zoo.

It is likely the sadistic Nazi, who had a lucrative sideline as an arms trader, also supplied him with weapons.

But Barbie’s closest ally was Bolivian warlord Roberto Suarez Gomez, another notorious drug dealer, who inspired the character Alejandro Sosa in gangster film Scarface.

Roberto Suàrez Gomez
Partner in crime: “Scarface” gangster Roberto Suàrez Gomez
While not as rich as Escobar, when his eldest son was caught by US police in 1982, Suarez Gomez wrote to President Ronald Reagan offering to pay Bolivia’s £2.5billion foreign debt as a ransom for his release.

Barbie met Suarez Gomez regularly in the early 1980s, acting as a go-between for the drug lord and corrupt Bolivian army colleagues he wanted to bribe.

McFarren, who co-wrote a biography on Barbie called The Devil’s Agent, says: “I’ve spoken to people directly involved in those meetings, so we know Barbie received money from Suarez Gomez and the cocaine trade.”

But the pair had bigger plans. They plotted to overthrow an entire government. Barbie’s letters reveal he was paranoid there would be a Communist revolution in Bolivia and he would be deported to France to stand trial for war crimes.

Undated portrait of former SS officer Klaus Barbie Getty
Evil: Barbie escaped trial for his crimes for several decades
Meanwhile Suarez Gomez wanted the freedom to expand his cocaine empire without fear of prosecution. So they arranged a military coup to install General Luis Garcia Meza Tejada as commander of the army, then as president in 1980, all funded by cocaine cash.

For the next two years the government was directly involved in, and profited from, the cocaine trade. Corrupt officials ensured it left the drug dealers free to pursue a policy of ruthless expansion.

McFarren says: “Overthrowing a democratic government with money from the drug trade was unheard of. It set a dangerous precedent of how democracy could be interrupted by the dollars and terrorism of cocaine trafficking bandits.

“In Columbia and Peru there were individual government officials and military police who were part of the cocaine trade. But I can’t think of another regime that was completely in the pocket of the trade, and Barbie played a key part in that.”

The german Nazi official and chief of the Schutzstaffel (SS) Heinrich Himmler Getty
SS chief: Barbie worked for Heinrich Himmler – then moved on to the CIA
It is remarkable Barbie even made it to Bolivia. In the Second World War he was responsible for 14,000 deaths, but after Germany’s defeat he was recruited by the CIA to fight communism.

When it emerged Barbie may face prosecution for his horrific war crimes, the CIA enlisted the help of the Vatican to change his name to Klaus Altmann, and he fled to Bolivia in 1951.

Read more: Auschwitz survivor on playing cello for Nazi doctor Josef Mengele

Once in South America he kept a low profile, working at a remote lumber mill for 10 years. But Barbie found a new outlet for his sadistic talents by the 1960s, advising the Bolivian military on interrogation and torture techniques.

“We know he was involved in several cases where people were tortured and killed in Bolivia” says McFarren.

Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro (L) lights his cigar while Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara
Revolutionaries: Barbie claimed he helped catch Che Guevara (right, with Fidel Castro)
He also boasted he helped the CIA hunt down Che Guevara in 1967. The Argentinian had played a key role in the Communist revolution in Cuba, but was now leading a guerilla army in Bolivia.

Barbie’s position of power guaranteed him safety from extradition to France and he went to great lengths to preserve it, betraying anyone without hesitation.

When the daughter of close friend Hans Ertl, who made propaganda for Hitler, joined an anti-government guerilla group, Barbie denounced her so she could be captured and killed.

Klaus Barbie, hidden under a blanket, is escorted by military guards STAFF/AFP/Getty Images
Captured: Barbie was finally arrested in 1983
McFarren says: “There were people who found it abhorrent Barbie was able to live well in Bolivia and become a public figure after everything he’d done. But many people were indifferent to it, he blended into the fabric of Bolivia.

“He wasn’t seen as a horrible Nazi murderer. He became a grandfatherly figure. I saw him on the streets with his wife, hanging out in the local cafe.”

Yet Barbie remained paranoid that his past would catch up with him, as McFarren learned in 1981 as a freelance journalist for New York Times.

While investigating the drug money flooding the Bolivian government, McFarren traced Barbie to his villa in Cochabamba city, near the Andes.

Handcuffed, Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie (C) is escorted by two security guards STAFF/AFP/Getty Images
Justice: Barbie was brought to trial in France in 1987
Barbie appeared on his balcony but, when pressed for an interview, called the local barracks. McFarren was soon staring down a machine gun barrel.

McFarren says: “Heavily armed civilians surrounded the whole district and had us arrested. They threatened to torture us and pull out our finger nails.Their main concern was how we found out where Barbie lived.

“After a few hours of interrogation we were let loose, but we had to leave the country the next day because we got all kinds of death threats.”

The military coup, and the arrest of McFarren, put Barbie back on the map. It was precisely what he hoped to avoid.

Klaus Barbie STAFF/AFP/Getty Images
No conscience: Barbie was sentence to life but was unrepentant
After the collapse of the military dictatorship, Barbie was extradited to France in 1983 to stand trial. By then 70, he remained unrepentant for his many crimes, declaring: “When I stand before the throne of God I shall be judged innocent.”

Tried on 41 counts of crimes against humanity, he was found guilty and jailed for life in July 1987. He died four years later of leukaemia and cancer of the spine.

McFarren says: “Most Nazis who escaped prosecution disappeared, often to South America, but they stayed off the radar.

“But Barbie became a public figure. That makes him unique. And, despite that, he was able to live with impunity in Bolivia for more than 30 years. In that respect, America has a lot to answer for.”





RELATED TOPICS : CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY, NAZIS, WAR CRIMES, COCAINE, DRUGS, CRIME, PABLO ESCOBAR, RONALD REAGAN, CHE GUEVARA, KLAUS BARBIE, WORLD WAR 2