White Buses - Evacuate or "stay Put"?

Evacuate or "stay Put"?

As the Allied forces approached Germany at the end of 1944, SHAEF decided what should be done regarding Allied prisoners. Within the Norwegian government Major Johan Koren Christie wrote a memorandum on September 23; the Norwegian prisoners should "stay put", and wait until they were liberated by the advancing Allied forces. The Gross Kreutz group got to know about this policy a month later and reacted swiftly, with Johan Bernhard Hjort writing a report advising against the proposal. His arguments were that the prisoners risked being murdered and that they had to be rescued from Germany before the country was occupied.

He wrote:

It is therefore strongly suggested that the Norwegian government considers the possibility that the Swedish government could be induced to intervene to help at least the Norwegian and Danish civil prisoners in Germany, including those in prisons, with the aim of transporting them to Sweden, where they if feasible may stay until the war has ended.

The October 1944 report from Hjort was the first time a Swedish operation for the Scandinavian prisoners is mentioned; the proposal was, however, initially unfavourably received. Rescuing the prisoners was seen as a Norwegian responsibility and the Norwegian government was reluctant to give the Swedes any chance to distinguish themselves at the end of the war.

The energetic diplomat Niels Christian Ditleff in Stockholm refused to accept the guidelines from the Norwegian government and continued to implore both Swedes and the Swedish foreign department to have Sweden rescuing Scandinavian prisoners. In September 1944 Ditleff raised the question with Count Folke Bernadotte who was immediately positive about the plan. On November 30 Ditleff handed over his memorandum "Reasons for a Swedish operation for rescuing prisoners" to the Swedish foreign office, but still on his own initiative. On December 29 the Norwegian government changed its position and instructed its embassy in Stockholm to discuss the possibility of a Swedish operation targeting the Scandinavian prisoners.

While Ditleff tried to influence the exiled Norwegian government the Danes obtained a German permit to retrieve prisoners. The first ones transported back to Denmark were Danish policemen from Buchenwald, the first transport started on December 5. Until the end of February 1945, the Danes transported 341 prisoners home, most of them ill. These journeys gave the Danes valuable experience that would later benefit the "White Buses".