How did the Allies make decisions about whom to prosecute in the aftermath of World War II? That is the basic question at the heart of Kerstin von Lingen's study of Karl Wolff, the head of the Schutzstaffel (SS) in Italy at the end of the war and the key German involved in negotiations with Allen Dulles, the chief of the Bern Office of Strategic Services (OSS), that led to an early German surrender on the Italian Front. Von Lingen, an expert on war crimes and the trials of Nazis in Italy, argues that a conspiracy of sorts existed that allowed Wolff to escape prosecution. Wolff, who arrived in Italy in 1943, had been Heinrich Himmler's chief of staff in the SS prior to the war. He was later involved in wartime SS operations linked to deportations to the Treblinka death camp, as well as to the violence perpetrated against civilians, which was part of the Nazi anti-partisan campaign in Italy.

Operation Sunrise, the deal brokered between Dulles and Wolff that ended the Italian war just days before V-E Day, did not include any specific agreements about immunity from war crimes persecution. Yet, Wolff—who was arrested in Italy on May 13, 1945, and subsequently held in Nuremberg until his British denazification hearing in 1947—was not charged at this time. He appeared at the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg as an expert witness on the workings of the SS. In many ways, the decision not to charge him at this point reflected a clear belief by Dulles and many others in the OSS that not every Nazi leader was a true Nazi. Noting that almost one-third of the prosecution team at Nuremberg came from the OSS, von Lingen argues that these ideas were widespread, and that Dulles used his considerable influence to keep hidden the fact that Sunrise meant that there had been a negotiated–not unconditional–surrender between the Allies and these supposed non-Nazi Germans. The subtle pressure of Dulles, alongside Wolff's own case for immunity, were enough to convince U.S. prosecutor Telford Taylor that Wolff did indeed deserve immunity.

Following the Nuremberg and Subsequent Nuremberg trials (where Wolff also appeared as a witness in the Otto Pohl and Einsatzgruppen trials), Taylor and U.S. Political Advisor in Germany Robert Murphy moved Wolff over to the relatively harmless denazification hearings in the British zone of occupation. With statements of support from Dulles and others, Wolff received a four-year sentence that was largely commuted. Despite his role as commander of all rearguard actions aimed at civilian populations in Italy, he never stood trial there. Instead, Wehrmacht General Alfred Kesselring was tried and held responsible for war crimes committed on the Italian front.

Von Lingen's greatest contribution is not only to tell this story, using new materials from the OSS files released by Congress since 1998, and from the papers of Dulles and OSS Director William Donovan, but also to argue that geopolitics—not just personal relations—lay behind the efforts to protect Wolff. At the heart of Operation Sunrise was a desire to keep its details secret: the motivation for arranging an early surrender was not only to free up Allied troops to move into southern Germany, but also to keep the Soviet Union completely out of the Italian postwar settlement. Joseph Stalin signed an agreement with Tito in March 1945 that focused on Yugoslavia's acquisition of Trieste. Given the growing divisions among the wartime Allies, Dulles and others wanted Trieste to remain Italian and not become communist territory—an objective that was finally realized when Italy acquired internationally-controlled Trieste in 1954. The belief of Dulles and others that not all Nazis were “Nazi” was also linked, of course, to the conviction that (West) Germans were necessary allies in the looming conflict with the Soviet Union. Wolff's personal story thus had larger implications, and, according to von Lingen, its impact on postwar trials and prosecutions needs to be seen through this geopolitical lens.

Wolff was not immune when the tide turned in the Federal Republic of Germany and more West German trials were held. He was arrested in 1962 and brought before the courts in Munich in a trial that ended in 1964 with a guilty verdict for war crimes. At this point, Wolff's case was merely seen as a missed opportunity from the Nuremberg era. Despite testimony from Taylor and letters of support from Dulles, who had recently been dismissed as head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the focus of this trial was on Nazi policy in Poland—not Wolff's service to the western Allies in Operation Sunrise. On May 2, 1965, the twentieth anniversary of the Sunrise deal, Dulles and others met in Switzerland to commemorate the agreement and talk about Wolff's plight. Dulles's 1966 memoir, The Secret Surrender, was a result of this meeting, as well as of his desire to have Wolff released, which finally occurred for medical reasons in 1969. Personal relations clearly played a role here, but, as the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union collapsed, larger questions about political allegiances did as well.