The Curtain Falls: The Last Days Of The Third Reich

COUNT FOLKE BERNADOTTE attracted the whole world’s attention during the hectic months that preceded the total collapse of the Third Reich and the capitulation of the German forces. About the middle of February 1945 he set out from Sweden for Germany to try to establish contact with Heinrich Himmler and induce him to allow all Danes and Norwegians in German concentration camps to be transported to Sweden for internment until the end of the war.

In this book, which is based on his own notes and reports, Count Bernadotte describes his various missions, which were repeated up to the very day of the surrender, his meetings with Himmler and other leading figures of the Nazi regime, and gives Intimate close-ups of the events and the weird atmosphere in which the last act of the drama of the Third Reich was played. He explains, further, how his project, which originally had had a purely humanitarian character, developed a political one of great importance when, long past the eleventh hour, he was asked to convey, via the Swedish Government, Himmler’s offer of surrender to the western Powers.

After the war, Bernadotte was unanimously chosen by the victorious powers to be the United Nations Security Council mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1947-1948. He was assassinated in Jerusalem in 1948 by members of the underground Zionist group Lehi while pursuing his official duties.