The white buses—a rescue expedition to Germany

It was February 1945 and World War II had entered its decisive final stage. The German Army was still putting up a desperate resistance, but Allied forces were forging ahead on all fronts. German-controlled territory was becoming smaller and smaller. As they retreated, the Germans were trying to expunge any traces of their horrifying concentration camps, where many millions of people, most of them Jews, had been murdered by the Nazis. In Stockholm, Gilel Storch, a Jewish refugee from Latvia since 1940, was serving as the representative of the World Jewish Congress. In a telegram to Storch dated January 23, 1945, the secretary general of the World Jewish Congress had directed a dramatic appeal to him:

“IN OUR DESPERATE EFFORTS TO SAVE REMNANTS EUROPEAN JEWRY DIRECTING FOLLOWING APPEAL TO YOU STOP OVER FIFE (sic) MILLION EUROPEAN JEWS WERE KILLED BY NAZIS AND THEIR SATELLITES DURING PRESENT WAR STOP 50,000 ARE STILL UNDER THEIR DOMINATION AND MAY DIE UNLESS IN THIS TWELFTH HOUR THE WORLD WILL INTERVENE EFFICIENTLY STOP LET RED CROSS SECURE FOOD FOR JEWS IN CONCENTRATION CAMPS AND INVESTIGATE THEIR SITUATION LET NEUTRAL GOVERNMENTS RAISE STRONGEST PROTEST AGAINST GERMAN EXTERMINATION POLICY LET THEM GRANT PROTECTION TO JEWS ALL POSSIBLE FORMS AND DECLARE WILLINGNESS TO ADMIT JEWS FROM AXIS TERRITORIES IN THEIR COUNTRIES FOR THE DURATION LET THE DEMAND FOR EXCHANGE OF JEWS BE RAISED IN STRONGEST POSSIBLE FORM STOP URGE YOU CALL PUBLIC MEETINGS TO PROCLAIM THESE DEMANDS SEND DELEGATIONS TO YOUR GOVERNMENT AND REPRESENTATIVES OTHER GOVERNMENTS AND INSTITUTIONS CONCENTRATE PUBLIC OPINION AROUND FUNDAMENTAL AND SACRED TASK OF RESCUING REMNANTS EUROPEAN JEWRY STOP”

Since 1943, the World Jewish Congress in London had been corresponding with Count Folke Bernadotte, a nephew of Sweden´s King Gustav V. He had become vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross that same year. Its chairman, Prince Carl—Folke Bernadotte’s paternal uncle—was then 82 years old, so in reality Folke Bernadotte was the acting head of the Swedish Red Cross. During 1943– 45, Bernadotte and Storch had worked together in sending about 70,000 food parcels to Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps.

But in the final stage of the war, Sweden had also begun taking steps to try to secure the release of Norwegian and Danish prisoners in Germany. These efforts were planned by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Foreign Minister Christian Günther bore the ultimate responsibility. Another person who urged such action was Niels Christian Ditleff, ambassador to Stockholm of the Norwegian exile government in London. In November 1944, Ditleff suggested that a Swedish Red Cross delegation headed by Folke Bernadotte be sent to Germany to negotiate with the Germans.

Negotiations in Germany

Beginning in February 1945, Folke Bernadotte traveled to Germany four times, mainly to negotiate with Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS as well as interior minister and head of the Gestapo, or secret police. Bernadotte also met with the foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop; the head of the German security police, Ernst Kaltenbrunner; and the head of German intelligence abroad, Walter Schellenberg.

The key individuals on the German side were Himmler and Schellenberg. As interior minister, Heinrich Himmler was also in charge of the Nazi concentration camps. Now in the final stage of the war, Himmler was intriguing against Adolf Hitler. He was trying to bring about a separate peace with the Western Allies, while in Himmler’s view the war against the Russians should continue on the Eastern front. Via Bernadotte and Storch, Himmler wanted to get into contact with Stephen Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress, who was also a close friend of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

A third key individual in Germany was Himmler’s personal masseur Felix Kersten. Kersten was born in Estonia, a Finnish citizen and Himmler’s private physician since 1941. Himmler suffered from chronic abdominal cramps. As his physician, Kersten came to exercise great direct influence on Himmler. In 1945 Kersten succeeded in persuading Himmler to make a number of concessions concerning Jews. In February 1945, Kersten had met with Storch in Stockholm. On his return trip to Germany, he carried a memorandum of the issues on which he would negotiate with Himmler.

In other words, behind Bernadotte’s expeditions to Germany and the transports of concentration camp prisoners to Sweden in the famous “white buses” were the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, headed by Günther, Storch as the representative of the World Jewish Congress and Kersten in Germany with direct influence on Himmler. And in Germany, Himmler and Schellenberg, who knew that the end of the war was near, were using Folke Bernadotte as a channel for achieving a separate peace with the Western powers, thereby saving their own skins. Bernadotte had a strong negotiating position with the Germans: he was a nephew of the king of Sweden, he had a leading position within the Swedish Red Cross, he had good connections with the Americans and now he was also formally authorized to negotiate on behalf of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Folke Bernadotte’s original assignment in Germany was only to arrange the release of Norwegian and Danish prisoners in Germany. The strategy of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Bernadotte was to begin by presenting only very limited requests to Himmler, if Bernadotte was able to meet him at all. During his first visit to Berlin on February 16, 1945, Bernadotte openly declared that—aside from his official assignment to inspect the Swedish Red Cross office in Berlin—he also wished to meet Himmler and discuss the concentration camps. On February 19, Bernadotte met Himmler for the first time. He presented a personal gift: a 17th century book about Swedish runic inscriptions (Himmler’s hobby). Himmler reluctantly gave Bernadotte permission to bring all Scandinavian concentration camp prisoners to Neuengamme, near the Danish border. Bernadotte had thus succeeded in obtaining permission for Swedish transport vehicles to enter Germany and move within German territory.

The Swedish humanitarian relief effort

On March 12, 1945, the first column of Swedish buses, painted white and bearing large red crosses—“the white buses”—drove across the border into Germany. Serving in the expedition were 250 Swedish Army officers and soldiers, as well as Red Cross nurses, handpicked by Bernadotte. By March 30, these buses had carried 4,500 Norwegian and Danish prisoners to Neuengamme. On April 2, Bernadotte again met Himmler. The German military fronts were giving away under the mounting pressure of Allied assaults from both east and west. Sweden’s wedge in the Nazi leadership was driven deeper by Bernadotte. Himmler now gave permission for all sick Scandinavians, all women, all Danish policemen and all Norwegian students to be evacuated from Neuengamme to occupied Denmark and continue to Sweden. By April 20—Hitler’s birthday— 4,300 Norwegians and Danes, as well as 900 people of other nationalities, had been rescued from Neuengamme and taken to Denmark and then Sweden.

In March 1945, Kersten had made it known that Himmler was prepared to release 10,000 Jews to be transported to Sweden. On March 27, Bernadotte had been authorized by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs to also “request the transfer to Sweden of a number of Jews.”

On April 7, 1945, Peter Kleist, Ministerialdirigent at the German Foreign Ministry and von Ribbentrop’s man in Sweden, told Storch that Kaltenbrunner had ordered Hungarian SS men to blow up the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp at 6 a.m. the following day. Kaltenbrunner was a rival of Himmler and tried to thwart his plans. Storch contacted Folke Bernadotte, who was in Germany. Bernadotte immediately contacted Rudolf Brandt and other leading Nazis. This played a major role in preventing the destruction of Bergen-Belsen and the prisoners there. Upon his return to Stockholm, Folke Bernadotte wrote on April 17 to Storch:

“In reference to your letter of April 11, I wish to inform you that in conjunction with my negotiations with Reichsführer Himmler, I was told that the concentration camps for Jews in Germany will not be evacuated but will probably be handed over intact to the appropriate Allied military authority. The camps named specifically were Theresienstadt, Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald. As for the fate of the Norwegian and Danish Jews, today I can announce that 423 Jews are expected to arrive tomorrow in Sweden, where they are to remain until the end of the war. According to information provided by the Swedish Red Cross delegate who picked them up at Theresienstadt, these 423 individuals comprise all of the Scandinavian Jews who were in Theresienstadt and nearby camps.”

On April 21, Himmler promised Bernadotte that all Scandinavian prisoners could be sent to Sweden and that, in addition, women of all nationalities could be saved from the notorious Ravensbrück concentration camp. In a single day, April 22, 2,873 women—of Polish, French, Belgian and Dutch origins, as well as 1,607 Jews—were evacuated from Ravensbrück. On April 25, on false pretenses the Swedes secured the release of 4,000 more women from the same camp. By the end of the war, “V-E Day,” more than 20,000 condemned camp prisoners had been saved and brought to Sweden on the white buses. After V-E Day, a further 10,000 prisoners from German concentration camps were brought to Sweden. Altogether, the Swedish white buses directed by Folke Bernadotte saved the lives of more than 30,000 people. Of these, at least 10,000 were Jews. As Storch later emphasized, the main credit for saving most of these thousands of Jewish lives belonged to Folke Bernadotte.

Although many other people participated through various channels in this Swedish humanitarian effort, it was Folke Bernadotte who personally succeeded in gradually expanding its scope through his skillful direct negotiations with Himmler. “To someone who was present at many of his functions and talks in Germany in the spring of 1945, it is difficult to imagine a person in that situation who would have been more suitable as a negotiator, expedition leader and intermediary. As a negotiator, Bernadotte was simultaneously calm, inventive, patient and alert.” (Torsten Brandel in the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, April 23, 1975.) The Swedish relief effort involved constant personal risk. During February–May 1945, Allied forces were closing in from west and east. Nazi- controlled territory was rapidly shrinking. Large-scale Allied bomb attacks occurred daily. A number of Swedes in the rescue expedition were killed.

Great power politics

On April 24, six days before Hitler committed suicide, Folke Bernadotte was also drawn into great power politics. According to Bernadotte’s own notes, Himmler informed him that, “In the situation that has now arisen I consider my hands free. In order to save as great a part of Germany as possible from a Russian invasion I am willing to capitulate on the Western front in order to enable the Western Allies to advance rapidly towards the east. But I am not prepared to capitulate on the Eastern front. I have always been, and I shall always remain, a sworn enemy of bolshevism. In the beginning of the World War I fought tooth and nail against the Russo-German pact. Are you willing to forward a communiqué on these lines to the Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs, so that he can inform the Western powers of my proposal?” (The Curtain Falls. New York, 1945, pp. 110-111.)

Bernadotte now made it a condition that Denmark and Norway also be included in the surrender. Himmler promised this and had no objection to the occupation of Denmark and Norway by American, British or Swedish troops, at which time German troops would lay down their weapons. Folke Bernadotte—via the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs—then communicated Himmler’s sensational surrender offer to the Western Allies. The latter rejected this offer, however, repeating their earlier demand for an unconditional German surrender on all fronts. On May 7, Germany surrendered. This also applied to Germany’s entirely intact forces in Norway and Denmark.

By June 1945, Folke Bernadotte was writing the foreword of his book The Curtain Falls. The book was an international success, translated into eighteen languages and published as a series of articles in a leading British newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. Bernadotte was now world-famous. Ralph Hewins, a British correspondent in Stockholm, wrote that there were two conceivable candidates for the leadership of a future United States of Europe: Winston Churchill and Folke Bernadotte. Who was this remarkable Swede?

Count, scout leader, Swedish Red Cross chairman, military officer, man of the world

Count Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg was born in 1895. His father, Prince Oscar Bernadotte, was the son of Oscar II, king of Sweden (1872–1907) and of Norway (1872–1905; Sweden and Norway were in a union from 1814 to 1905). By birth, Folke Bernadotte thus had relatives in all the royal houses of Europe. In his own words, his upbringing was characterized by earnestness, austerity and a warm religious faith. His father believed that children should learn to obey their father before the age of two. His parents emphasized honesty, obedience and punctuality. His childhood upbringing obviously left its impression on Folke Bernadotte for the rest of his life. Earnestness, honesty, dutifulness, loyalty, piety—and a sense of humor—are epithets that everyone, even his enemies, ascribed to Folke Bernadotte.

Folke Bernadotte had a decidedly practical disposition. He was not an intellectual. The hymn book, the Bible—and a detective novel—often lay on his bedside table. But he was gifted in languages and spoke fluent English, German and French. He became a military officer, a skilled horseman and a good organizer. However, from an early age he had health problems. He suffered from gastric ulcers and recurrent internal bleeding which eventually compelled him to leave the Swedish Army in 1930. In 1928 he had married Estelle Manville, the daughter of a wealthy American businessman. Estelle Manville-Bernadotte was a remarkably astute woman. There is no question that her support and good judgment were indispensable to Folke Bernadotte’s later career. He now also came into contact with leading American banking and industrial circles. In 1930–31 he studied banking in New York and Paris, but his later work showed that he was not cut out to be a businessman. Given his deep religious faith, humanitarian work was more natural for him. In 1937 he became the head of the Swedish scouting movement and in 1943 vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross.

Folke Bernadotte never played any political role in Sweden. In elections, he voted for the Conservative Party. In the international arena, he seems to have combined a conservative philosophy with a faith in Swedish neutrality, Nordic solidarity and a sense that Sweden had a civilizing mission in the world.

His numerous travels abroad and his marriage to Estelle Manville led to a growing interest in international issues. He performed his first public duties. Significantly, they were all in the United States. In 1933 he represented the king on Sweden Day at the Chicago Century of Progress exhibition. In 1938 he served as vice chairman of the organizing committee for the celebration of the 300th anniversary of Sweden’s short-lived colonization of Delaware. In 1939 he was the commissioner general of the Swedish exhibition at the New York World’s Fair.

After Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in 1940, Folke Bernadotte was mobilized. He became a major in the Swedish Army and was assigned such tasks as directing the exchange of disabled German and British and American war prisoners in Göteborg (Gothenburg) during 1943 and 1944. During these years, Bernadotte also visited neutral Switzerland, Britain and liberated France. Those he met included the British foreign minister, Anthony Eden, and the Allied supreme commander, Dwight D. Eisenhower.

During 1945–48, Folke Bernadotte devoted himself to his work for the Red Cross. In 1946 he became chairman of the Swedish Red Cross. Beginning in June 1945, he organized the Swedish Red Cross relief effort in the British-occupied zone of Germany and from 1946 in all occupation zones in Berlin. His attempts to bring the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries into Red Cross work failed, however, despite trips in 1947 to Poland, Romania, Hungary and Austria. In March 1947, he also visited Finnish Lapland and in March–April 1948, Greece and Turkey. By that time, he was considered one of the leading figures in the international Red Cross movement. This work was crowned by his successful chairmanship of the 17th International Red Cross conference in Stockholm in August 1948, the first after the war.

In 1948, Folke Bernadotte was internationally well-known. Behind him were many years of training in leadership, responsibility and international diplomacy. He had a reputation as a highly skilled organizer. But his work had focused only on Europe and North America. The rest of the world was beyond his horizon, and that of most other Swedes as well. In the Cold War between East and West that was already underway by 1948, all his sympathies lay on the American- British side. His ideology was anti-Communist. Privately, he strongly opposed the expansionary foreign policy of the Soviet Union and the Sovietization of other Eastern European countries after the war.

On May 20, 1948, he again found himself in the international spotlight, when the United Nations appointed him as its mediator in Palestine. This was his first, fateful encounter with the Middle East.

The first UN mediator

The question of Palestine had been brought to the United Nations in 1947 by the British Government, then the Mandatory Power in Palestine. On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly had adopted a plan for the partition of Palestine in two states, one Arab and one Jewish, within one economic union. The City of Jerusalem, including the surrounding villages and towns, was to become a demilitarized and neutral city. Very soon, a civil war erupted in Palestine, with Jewish forces taking the offensive in April and May 1948. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed—but no State of Arab Palestine. On May 15, 1948, armed forces from Egypt, Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon intervened in Palestine to assist their Palestinian Arab brethren. The first Arab-Israeli war had begun.

In Resolution 186 of May 14, 1948, the General Assembly empowered the UN mediator in Palestine, inter alia,

• to use his good offices with the local authorities to promote a peaceful adjustment of the future situation in Palestine
• to cooperate with the Truce Commission appointed by the Security Council
• to invite, with a view to promoting the welfare of the inhabitants, the assistance of specialized agencies of the UN and of the International Red Cross.

This was the first time that the UN had intervened directly in a political conflict and—in its role as a world organization—appointed a mediator to resolve it. It should be noted, however, that the resolution gave the UN mediator no resources whatsoever to enforce his views. The resolution originated from a British suggestion and was drafted by the United States. The Soviet Union, seeing no reason to appoint a UN mediator, voted no. The Arab states abstained.

The truce and the refugees

When Folke Bernadotte arrived in Cairo on May 28, 1948, he was greeted with skepticism and even ridicule. What could this Swede accomplish in Palestine, after Britain and the United Nations had failed so dismally? Bernadotte’s optimism and dynamism were seen as naiveté. But skepticism was soon replaced by respect, admiration—and hatred. Like a whirlwind, the UN mediator set out for hectic rounds of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East. By August 14, Bernadotte had logged 215 flight hours. The two sides wrote as follows about him:

“It did not take long for him (Bernadotte) to learn. It was amazing to see how quickly he became oriented about all labyrinths of the problem. His eagerness to learn and understand was untiring, his capacity for work fantastic... His sense of duty was first class, his interest never faltered... His agreeable manners, his willingness to listen, his eagerness to understand opinions of other people were all invaluable assets during these discussions. He was truly a gentleman.” Israeli Minister for Foreign Affairs Moshe Sharett, in Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg. Stockholm, 1949, p. 241.

“He had an independent mind and if he found injustices, he said so—that cost him his life. He did not change his attitude in spite of the threats. The assassination of Count Bernadotte was a big loss for the area and, especially, for the Arabs, because he brought the question of justice into the political problem. The sense of justice guided him and that is the difference between him and his successors, Bunche, Jarring, Rogers, Kissinger.” Henry Cattan, statement to the author of this publication, 1975. (Cattan was a member of the Arab Delegation of Experts to Rhodes which held discussions with Bernadotte, June 21–27, 1948.)

Against all odds, the UN mediator succeeded in arranging a four-week truce in the Palestinian war, effective from June 11. “He was the only one who could have done it,” wrote Ralph Bunche, closest aide during the negotiations. After a new round of Arab-Israeli fighting, Bernadotte gave a vigorous speech to the UN Security Council. Then on July 15 the Security Council, for the first time in UN history, ordered a new truce in Palestine, which was to remain in force until a peaceful settlement had been achieved.

The truce arrangements in Palestine had to be supervised by a UN mechanism to be set up by the mediator. Bernadotte had to start from scratch. The concept of UN peacekeeping missions did not yet exist. But Bernadotte, in a very short time, succeeded in building a small truce supervision body with a Swedish colonel, Thord Bonde, as its first appointed Chief of Staff. This was the beginning of UNTSO (the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization), still an important UN tool in Middle East peacekeeping operations.

Another of Folke Bernadotte’s accomplishments was his handling of the refugee issue. The mediator was appalled by the plight of the Palestinian Arab refugees: “I have made the acquaintance of a great many refugee camps; but never have I seen a more ghastly sight than that which met my eyes here at Ramallah.” (Folke Bernadotte, in To Jerusalem, London 1951, p. 200.)


As early as in his first plan, signed June 27, he suggested “the right of the residents of Palestine... to return to their homes without restriction and regain possession of their property.” This is the origin of the important UN resolution 194 of December 11, 1948, permitting refugees to return to their homes. In the practical field, Bernadotte, with his vast experience of Red Cross work, initiated the humanitarian relief program for Palestinian Arab refugees. This marked the beginnings of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which is still at work.

Plans for a political solution

To promote a peaceful adjustment of the situation in Palestine, in accordance with his mandate, Bernadotte presented two plans, one after the other.

The first plan, dated June 27, 1948, suggested that Palestine—defined as the Mandate of 1922, thus including Transjordan—would form a Union, comprising two “Members.” All or part of the Negev would be included in Arab territory, while all or part of Western Galilee would be Jewish territory. The City of Jerusalem would be in the Arab territory. An implication of this plan was that King Abdallah of Transjordan would rule not only Arab Palestine, as delimited in the General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947, but also the City of Jerusalem and part of the Negev. The Palestinian Arab state mentioned in the resolution would be divided between Israel and Transjordan. The Jewish “member state,” however, would have been drastically reduced in size and its sovereignty circumscribed in several important aspects.

The June 27 plan was rejected by both sides. The Arabs were totally against a Zionist state in Palestine. Israel also flatly rejected Bernadotte’s suggestions, stating that no encroachment or limitation upon the free sovereignty of the State of Israel was acceptable. Especially objectionable to the Israelis was the mediator’s handing over Jerusalem to the Arabs. Bernadotte now became a hated man in Israel.

In Bernadotte’s second plan, signed on September 16, the mediator recognized the Jewish state as a reality. The whole of Galilee, he suggested, was to be defined as Jewish territory. Arab Palestine was still to be merged with Transjordan and the whole of Negev was to be given to the Arab state. The City of Jerusalem was now to be placed under UN control. Bernadotte had thus made major changes to reconcile the Israelis, but the main winner was still King Abdallah of Transjordan (and indirectly, his British allies). The Jewish state, now recognized as a fact, would have covered only some 20 percent of Palestine.

The total rejection of Bernadotte’s first plan had been a hard lesson to him. While preparing his second proposal, Bernadotte had received two extremely secret visitors, one from the British Foreign Office and one from the U.S. State Department. Bernadotte’s second plan was supported by the two main Western powers and it represented the first joint UK-US action program on Palestine since the 1920s. The UK-US master plan was to be presented by the UN mediator to the UN, to be endorsed by the Security Council. Then the British and American governments were to ensure that the Arab and Israeli authorities acquiesced in the mediator’s recommendations. Thus the Palestine question would be solved, enabling the two Western powers to focus their efforts on the Berlin crisis and the looming threat of a Third World War with the Soviet Union.

The assassination

On September 17, 1948, the day following the signing of the second plan, Folke Bernadotte was assassinated in an ambush in the Israeli-controlled sector of Jerusalem. The murderers were never found and no one was ever convicted of the assassination. It was, however, commonly surmised from the very beginning that members of the Lohamei Herut Yisrael (LEHY), or the Stern Gang, carried out the assassination. It is now well established that the decision to kill the UN mediator was made by the Central Committee of the LEHY, which included Yitzhak Yezernitzky-Shamir. LEHY saw Count Bernadotte as the main obstacle to an Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and to Jewish control of all Palestine. (Yitzhak Shamir went on to serve as prime minister of Israel in 1983–84 and 1986–92.) The man who held the gun is believed to have been Yehoshua Cohen. (See S. Persson, Mediation & Assassination: Count Bernadotte’s Mission to Palestine 1948 [1979], pp. 208 ff.; A. Ilan, Bernadotte in Palestine, 1948 [1989], pp. 212-220, 233-237; K. Marton, A Death in Jerusalem [1994], pp. 208-223, 253-257.)

The assassination of the UN mediator in Palestine sent a shock wave around the world. All flags in Sweden flew at half staff. Memorial services were held all over the world. The funeral procession of Folke Bernadotte was watched by hundreds of thousands of Stockholmers. The United Nations and the major powers condemned the deed. But no sanctions or other practical actions against Israel were ever undertaken. The UN swallowed this astounding challenge. Both in Israel and the Arab states, respect and trust for the world organization vanished. In Israel, the assassination of Bernadotte was viewed with indifference. The police in Jerusalem made no real effort to arrest the murderer.

After his death, Bernadotte’s second plan was also abandoned. The final blow came when President Truman, facing an uphill battle in the autumn 1948 U.S. presidential election campaign, repudiated Bernadotte’s proposals in a pro-Israeli declaration on October 28. In the United Nations, a strange alignment of forces, comprising the Arab states and their allies, and Israel and her supporters, including the Soviet bloc, together rejected the mediator’s plan. After the United States withdrew its support, the British could not push the Bernadotte plan through the UN alone.

Bernadotte’s legacy

Count Folke Bernadotte’s outstanding leadership of the Swedish relief expedition to the German concentration camps in the final stage of World War II, like the humanitarian contributions of the other Swedes in the “white buses,” deserves the admiration and praise of posterity.

Folke Bernadotte’s 1948 mediation mission in Palestine, however, was unquestionably a failure. His actual achievements during the brief period from May to September are greatly underrated, however. He did succeed, against heavy odds, in imposing a truce, later to be transformed into the 1949 armistice agreements. For these agreements, Ralph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950. Bunche had succeeded Bernadotte as mediator and had a lot to thank him for. Bernadotte also laid the foundation for UNTSO, the very first UN peacekeeping mission, and for UNRWA and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian Arab refugees.

As for his politico-diplomatic failure, half a century later there is reason for sober afterthoughts. How true is the common assessment of Bernadotte as a naive and inexperienced diplomat? The fact that Bernadotte’s own boss, UN Secretary- General Trygve Lie, was secretly working at cross purposes by collaborating with Israel was something that Bernadotte certainly could not have imagined. The fact that the UN was not going to provide him with any real means to enforce his decisions in Palestine was a bitter realization that dawned on Bernadotte too late. His main, and fatal, mistake—the proposal to hand over Jerusalem to the Arabs— actually cannot be blamed on him. It has become clear from the research carried out by the author of this book that from the very beginning, Bernadotte himself wanted Jerusalem to be an international city. It was, in fact, Ralph Bunche and other experts on Bernadotte’s staff who overruled him on Jerusalem. His suggestion for a merger of Arab Palestine and Transjordan is close to today’s plans for a Palestinian-Jordanian confederation. However, the Palestinian Arabs would have been in a far more advantageous position in 1948 than they can be in 1998.

And for the Israelis, a peaceful settlement in 1948, under an American-British- French umbrella, might have saved the State of Israel from the scars of several more Arab-Israeli wars plus the Palestinian intifada. In May 1995, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres expressed his government’s regret over the assassination of Folke Bernadotte. Soon afterward, the Jerusalem Post printed a letter from Stanley Goldfoot:

“Acting on orders from L/E/HY (Stern Group) High Command, I planned and helped organize the execution of Count Folke Bernadotte in Jerusalem— September 17, 1948, at 17:10 hours. This historic, vital operation was necessitated by the Bernadotte Plan which virtually prescribed the strangulation of the new-born Jewish State at birth.... Thus, Peres’s recent ‘condemnation’ of the Bernadotte execution is a cheap political trick, and his ‘apology’ to the Bernadotte family is an act of rank hypocrisy. Peres should rather apologize to the Jewish nation for the disaster he is bringing upon us.” (Jerusalem Post International Edition, June 24, 1995.)

At an Israeli-Palestinian peace meeting on November 4, 1995, Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist. The use of murder as a condoned political tool wielded by Jewish extremists, sanctioned at the time of the assassination of Folke Bernadotte in 1948, had thereby now reached the heart of the State of Israel itself.

Bibliography

Bernadotte, Folke
Instead of Arms: Autobiographical Notes. Stockholm, New York, 1948. 229 pp.

Istället för vapen. Stockholm, 1948. 281 pp.

Människor jag mött. Stockholm, 1947. 115 pp.

Slutet: Mina humanitära förhandlingar i Tyskland våren 1945 och deras politiska följder. Stockholm, 1945. 161 pp.

The Curtain Falls. Last Days of the Third Reich. New York, 1945. 154 pp.

Till Jerusalem. Stockholm, 1950. 296 pp.

To Jerusalem. London, 1951. Westport, Conn., 1976. 280 pp.

Other authors:
Death of a Mediator. Institute for Palestine Studies. Beirut, 1968. 96 pp.

Folke Bernadotte af Wisborg: Svensken och världsmedborgaren. Stockholm, 1949. 323 pp.

Folke Bernadotte: En minnesbok av 43 författare. (Ed. Åke Stavenow). Uppsala, 1949. 366 pp.

Hewins, Ralph, Count Folke Bernadotte: His Life and Work. Minneapolis, 1950. 279 pp.

Ilan, Amitzur, Bernadotte in Palestine, 1948. A Study in Contemporary Humanitarian Knight-Errantry. London, 1989. 308pp.

Marton, Kati, A Death in Jerusalem, New York, 1996. 321 pp.

Persson, Sune, Mediation & Assassination: Count Bernadotte’s Mission to Palestine in 1948. London, 1979. 354 pp.

Sachar, Howard M., Europe leaves the Middle East, 1936–1954. New York, 1972. 687 pp. (Includes one chapter about Folke Bernadotte.)

Svensson, Sven, Folke Bernadotte: Fredskämpe och folkförsonare. (Preface by Lennart Bernadotte.) Stockholm, 1950. 158 pp.

Touval, Saadia, The Peace Brokers: Mediators in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1948– 1979. (Bernadotte pp. 24–53.) Princeton, 1982. 377 pp.

By: Sune Persson

Sune Persson, born in 1938, is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, University of Göteborg. His dissertation “Mediation and Assassination: Count Bernadotte’s Mission to Palestine in 1948” was published in London in 1979. His books include “Palestina- konflikten”(The Palestine Conflict) published in five editions, Lund 1971–94, and “Svensk militär på Cypern: SWEDBAT och UNFICYP 1964, 1974 och 1987” (Swedish Army on Cyprus: SWEDBAT and UNFICYP 1964, 1974 and 1987), 1991, and “UNIK: United Nations Operations in Iraq and Kuwait, 1991–92”, Stockholm 1993.

The author alone is responsible for the opinions expressed in this biography.

Translated by: Victor Kayfetz