>
International Committee of the Red Cross
>
History

Comité International de la Croix Rouge - History



1940-1949


-1940-1945, France: chaired since 1932 by Marquis Edmond de Lillers, the CRF (Croix-Rouge Française) has to cope with various emergencies after France declares war on Germany in September 1939. Despite the support of its American counterpart and the establishment in 1938 of a national council to coordinate its relations with the Ministries of Health and Defence, the French Red Cross is overwhelmed by the influx of two million Belgian refugees and three million evacuees during the exodus of May 1940. After the Armistice of June 1940, France is de facto separated into a Nazi-occupied zone in the North and a ‘free’ zone in the South, governed by the Vichy regime of Marshal Philippe Pétain. As part of a ‘national recovery plan’, the Société de secours aux blessés militaries is forced to merge with the Association des Dames Françaises and the Union des Femmes de France. Following a communiqué released on 23 July 1940 and confirmed by a law of 7 August 1940, a decree of 1st January 1941 and a ruling of 25 April 1945, the three previous entities are dissolved and can no longer use their former names; the number of members fall accordingly from 300,000 in 1939 to 126,000 in 1940, until the recruitement of young volunteers and first-aid workers reverse the trend from 307,000 in 1941 to 465,000 in 1942 and almost a million in 1943. The new French Red Cross, which attempts to reunite families separated during the exodus, is soon under pressure. A Member of Parliament in 1924 and an ambassador in Berlin in 1931-1938 and Rome in 1939-1940, its Germanist president, André-Pierre Poncet, is immediately declared persona non grata by the Nazis (arrested by the Gestapo and detained in Austria until his liberation by the American Army in 1945, he will then become the governor of the French Zone in Germany from 1949 to 1955, ambassador in Bonn in 1953-1955 and president of the CRF from 1955 up to 1967). His replacement is a professor and grandson of Louis Pasteur, Louis Pasteur Vallery-Radot, who resigns after three months, joins the resistance and launches an underground health department in Paris in June 1942. On 2 April 1941, he is succeeded by Dr Louis Bazy, who tries to preserve the independence of the Red Cross despite the monopoly of fundraising given to the Secours National after a law of 4 October 1940. Signed on 18 September 1941, then on 2 February 1942, two agreements are supposed to organise the sharing of the resources of public givings amongst the main war relief agencies. Yet the French Red Cross looses ground because it has to rely only on its members’ subscriptions and governmental subsidies in the South, where the regimes tries to favour its official charitable body, the Secours National. The organisation can’t be ignored, although. The needs are enormous and, in the North, the Germans prefer to deal with the CRF rather than the Secours National, which is essentially a propaganda outfit of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Under the aegis of the secretary of state for war, the chief task is to supply French soldiers captured and detained by the Wehrmacht. These relief operations are supposed to justify the collaboration with the Nazis since the Vichy government agreed in November 1940 to replace the United States as the authority in charge of protecting French prisoners of war in Germany. By becoming ‘civilian workers’ in the military industry of the Third Reich, however, the latter lose the prisoner-of-war status that secured the assistance of the ICRC and the protection of the Geneva Conventions. Designed as another means of meeting the demand for labour in German weapons factories, the compulsory service of the STO (Service du Travail Obligatoire) exacerbates the problem and organises exchanges on the basis of three civilians for the release of one soldier. Meanwhile in France on 28 October 1940, the CRF is initially given permission to cross the demarcation line to provide supplies in the German-occupied Northern zone after a meeting between Philippe Pétain and Adolf Hitler in Montoire. Suspended the following year, the agreement is renegotiated with the DRK (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz) and the Nazis, who issue ausweis sparingly and introduce tighter border controls. Because some CRF employees supply clothes, money and false identity cards to gain admission to the South of France, the German authorities and Pierre Laval force Dr Louis Bazy to resign in October 1942 and replace him for the next two years by the Marquis Benoit Joseph Bertrand Marie Gabriel of Mun. In the same vein, explains Jean-Pierre Le Crom, the chief executive of the organisation, Pierre Gentil, has to leave room to Jacques de Rohan-Chabot. Following the invasion of the ‘free’ zone by the Wehrmacht in November 1942, the net tightens still further and a general director of the French Red Cross is briefly imprisoned in early 1944. Under the honorific patronage of the wife of Marshall Philippe Petain, the organisation has to comply with the ideology of the ‘national revolution’. Not content with charging families for the parcels sent to civilian detainees, it thus gives nationalist books to prisoners jailed at Fresnes and some of its supplies are diverted by crooks, provoking a scandal related by Fabrice Grenard. Such an attitude is criticized by Gérard Chauvy, an historian, and the Lyon-based doctor Jean Rousset, a member of the resistance network ‘Combat’, arrested in November 1942 and deported to Buchenwald. In September 1941, the CRF had already withdrawn from a coordination committee in which the CIMADE (Comité inter-mouvements auprès des évacués), the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Alliance), the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) and the ARC (American Red Cross) had expressed their disapproval of its complacent attitude towards the repressive Vichy policies and its inability to intervene in prisoners camps in the South of France. By contrast, it reactivated the Youth Red Cross, which grew from 32,000 members in 1941 to 200,000 members in 1942. Although the initiative does not strictly speaking come within the duties of the Secours National, it aims to fulfil the objectives of Marshal Philippe Pétain. Likewise, the CRF delivers first-aid diplomas that are recognized by the French state in 1943, and works with young volunteers of the “national teams” created by the government in 1942 on the basis of a fascist and racial model (maintained after the Liberation as the Service civique de la jeunesse, this organization will eventually be incorporated within the communist Union de la jeunesse républicaine). If it helps to hide and evacuate Jewish children to Switzerland, the French Red Cross has to apply racial laws. It fails to be exempted from the general rule and is forced to revoke three Israelite employees; all its staff must sign a declaration declaring they’re not Jews. The CRF, reports Jean-Pierre Le Crom, even takes over a domain seized to a Jewish family in Mareille-Guyon, a property that it will not use and that will be returned to its owners at the end of the war. Accused of spying because he tried to identify and locate prisoners despite the German prohibition, the chief executive of the organisation, Jacques de Rohan-Chabot, is jailed in March 1944 and released two months later because of his personal connection to Pierre Laval. Out of the seven other CRF staff put under arrest are Baroness Jacqueline Mallet, the head of the socio-medical service for prisoners of war since August 1940, held for five months in the prison of Fresnes, and Suzanne Treillis, an assistant who will be deported and die in a concentration camp near Ravensbrück in February 1945. As soon as 3 September 1943 according to Joël Le Bras, the Germans suspected the French Red Cross to support Charles de Gaulle and smuggle weapons to the Resistance. As a result, it is very difficult to help the enemies of the Nazis. Thanks to an agreement reached with the Vichy Home Office on 10 December 1941, the French Red Cross gains access to some Jews, Communists and Spanish Republicans detained in the South of France. From January 1942, it opens permanent offices in the camps of Gurs, Recebedon, Noé, Vernet, Brens, Saint-Sulpice La-Pointe, Rivesaltes, Barcarès, Milles and Fort Barreaux, while its delegates are able to visit Sisteron, Saint-Paul d’Izeaux and Nexon on a regular basis. In Northern France by contrast, the French Red Cross meets greater resistance in seeking to enter the camps of Drancy and Compiègne where Jewish prisoners are held pending their deportation. Pushed aside in March 1942, the organization makes an unsuccessful attempt to hand over its relief operations to the ICRC, which does not secure a right to intervene either, and fails to save the victims of the big roundup of the Vélodrome d’Hiver in Paris in July 1942. The CRF is only able to assist the victims of Allied air raids, especially in Nantes, where 12 employees die at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital on 16 September 1943, and Brest, where 26 nurses perish during the conflagration of the Sadi-Carnot safehouse on 9 September 1944. This is probably the most deadly event ever suffered by the organisation. Despite the Red Cross emblem, the Sadi-Carnot blockhaus is bombed because it also stocked ammunitions in violation of the Geneva Conventions. In total, 373 persons die, including 28 health staff and 15 CRF nurses, namely: Marie-Thérèse Delalande, Marie Michel, Suzanne Février, Marie Nouvel de la Flèche, Marguerie Crespin, Yvonne Martenot, Marie-Antoinette Tardieu de Maleyssie, Anne Niox, Madeleine Savary, Anne Chevillotte, Paule Tessier, Jeanne Fournier, Jeanne Laporte, Marie-Thérèse Martenot, and Denise Lefeuvre. Western France is indeed very much affected by Allied air raids. The Red Cross thus looses nurses like Régine Tanneau, Marie-Rose Le Bloch, Marie-Yvonne Gouzien and Estelle Laru, as well as a stretcher-bearer, Roger Pellen, during the bombings of Bohars, Telgruc-sur-Mer and Lambézellec on 1, 3 and 10 September 1944. Together with Allied air raids, the CRF also suffers from the fighting on ground when France is liberated. In Quimper, one of its volunteer, Julien Urvois, is executed on 7 August 1944 because he collected bullets in the streets. During the battle to liberate Paris, the CRF looses some 20 unarmed stretcher-bearers, including young Claude Hanriot, who is accused of supporting the Resistance and shot dead by the Germans on 26 August 1944. In Lambézellec, another stretcher-bearer, Olivier Michel, is indeed a liaison officier for the French Forces of the Interior (Forces françaises de l’Intérieur), executed with three combattants on 4 September 1944. In total, claims Joël Le Bras, the CRF lost 414 employees: 314 doctors and nurses, 9 ambulance drivers and 91 volunteers. Most died during service. Others were deported and perished in concentration camps, especially women working at the headquarters like Yvonne Baratte, Alice Soulange-Bodin, Hélène Wolkonsky and Mrs Getting, Garfunkel and de Breteville (Simone Bescond is an exception: based in Brest, she was a courier and she forged papers for the Resistance in Paris; yet she was never arrested). Thanks to the courage of its volunteers, the French Red Cross is quite popular; respectively 93% and 77% of the people know and appraise its activities according to one of the first polls conducted in France, by the Dourdin Office in January 1944, as quoted by Jean-Pierre Le Crom. After the defeat of the Third Reich, the Gaullists and the FFL (Forces Françaises Libres) take control of the CRF. This is hardly surprising: although their government in exile in London had no official recognition, the supporters of General Charles de Gaulle had already set up a humanitarian branch through a relief charity founded in Brazzaville by René Cassin on 23 August 1941 and formally affiliated with the Vichy Red Cross. With the agreement of the British on 13 December 1943, a London temporary committee of the French Red Cross was then established and chaired by Adolphe Sicé, a former director of the health department in Brazzaville. It is this committee that provides the personnel that reorganizes the CRF after the Liberation of France, while the Swedish Red Cross and the ICRC assist the inhabitants of the last remaining pockets of the German Army in La Rochelle, Dunkirk, Lorient and Saint-Nazaire. Run by Gaullists such as Count Jacques de Bourbon Busset from August 1944 and Louis-Eugène Justin-Besancon from December 1944, the independence of the French Red Cross is threatened with state control as part of a large-scale programme of nationalization of industries. A ruling of 25 April 1945 compels the organisation to become democratic, introducing trade unionists in its board and reducing the price of members’ subscriptions. Humanitarian abuses are reported. In North Africa, from March 1944, the FFL force German prisoners to carry out dangerous demining operations, causing a number of deaths. After the capitulation of the Third Reich in Berlin in May 1945, the French Red Cross does not merely facilitate the return of deported detainees, prisoners of war and young workers of the STO. Between August and October 1945, it also begins to transfer 400,000 German prisoners of war held by the Americans, unfit for work and sent to France to help rebuild and demine the country in violation of the Geneva Conventions. The ICRC, which finally succeeds in stopping this deportation, provides legal aid and secures social protection for soldiers of the Wehrmacht who now work as civilians under contract. But it is unable to prevent ‘accidents’ that kill 3,000 and injure 6,000 of the 55,000 German former prisoners of war used to demine the country in the following eighteen months. As for the CRF, it is purged of Vichy collaborators and almost bankrupt when gouvernmental subsidies fall from 230 millions of French Francs in 1946 to 61 in 1947. Under the presidency of Adolphe Sicé from 1946, Dr. Georges Brouardel from 1947, Ambassador André-François Poncet from 1955, Director of the Army Health Department Raymond Debenedetti from 1967, lawyer Marcellin Carraud from 1969, ambassadors Jean-Marie Soutou from 1979 and Louis Dauge from 1984, Minister Georgina Dufoix from 1989, and Professors of medicine André Delaude from 1992, Marc Gentilini from 1997 and Jean-Francois Mattéi from 2005, the organisation has to adapt to a new era. As the defence forces do not need it as before, the CRF gets decentralized and more democratic. To improve coordination with local authorities, it changes its regional organization in the 1980s and stops following a military model. In the same vein, it publishes journals like Vie et Bonté (1948-1971), Présence Croix-Rouge (1972-1998), Le Fil Croix-Rouge (1996-2001) and Agir Ensemble (since 2001) to try to reach the general public, yet sees its membership fall from 1.2 million subscribers in 1946 to a million in 1986.
 
-1941-1947, Croatia: alongside the creation of a new Croatian state built on the ruins of Yugoslavia in April 1941, a national Red Cross society is founded under the impulse of Ante Pavelíc and its Ustaše militia. The authorities recognize the Geneva Convention in December 1942 and allow the ICRC to appoint a delegate in Zagreb, Julius Schmidlin, the son of the first Swiss consul in the city. However, when civilian detainees are finally given the status of prisoners of war in January 1944, it is already too late since most of them have already been deported or killed. After the defeat of the Nazis and the departure of Julius Schmidlin, who was forced to flee the country on 5 May 1945, the Yugoslavian Red Cross is reorganized under the aegis of the communists and emerges as one of the most virulent opponents of the ICRC. It blames the Committee for giving supplies to war criminals that were in fact destined for the Jasenovac camp, where hundreds of thousands of prisoners were exterminated. It also accuses the institution of having misled public opinion by describing the situation of the Stalag VIII B in Lamsdorf as satisfactory for Allied prisoners of war, despite the fact that Geneva could not assist Soviet or Yugoslavian inmates condemned to “disappear”. As a result, the ICRC can only appoint one powerless delegate in Belgrade, François Jaeggy, who is accepted by the Yugoslavian Red Cross because he belongs to a left-wing organization, the Centrale Sanitaire Suisse, with close links to the Labour party and the communist partisans that he personally helped in 1944 and 1945. In the face of a blockade imposed by the authorities, Geneva eventually closes its delegation in Belgrade in April 1947.
 
-1942-1974, Greece: like Oxfam, the ICRC pressures London to secure permission to break the Allied blockade and to send supplies from Istanbul to the Greek victims of a famine in a country starved by the German and Italian occupations. Chartered by the Turkish Red Crescent and the Swedish Red Cross, several ships are able to unload food in the port of Pirée, though the journey is not without risk: fully operational from August 1941, the Kurtulus hits a rock, sinks near the island of Marmara on 19 January 1942 and is replaced by another Turkish ship, the Dumlupinar, until the following August. On 9 June 1942, again, the Stureborg is attacked by the Italian air force off the south-west coast of Cyprus, causing the death of the near totality of the crew: twenty men, including the Swiss delegate (Richard Heider), an Egyptian radiographer (Ahmad Abbas Fareei), two Portuguese drivers (Alfredo Martins and Francisco Teodoro) and sixteen Swedish sailors (John Persson, Axel Martensson, Torsten Bengtsson, Herbert Hedenborg, Arne Persson, Markus Malmkvist, Gustav De Vahl, Assar Peterson, Georg Waegele, Ake Mattson, Stig Johannson, Teodor Alfonso Hammar, Knut Erik Isakson, Axel Peterson, Hilding Jonsson and Carl Olsson). In Greece, the situation is no easier when it comes to helping prisoners of war and freedom fighters held on the continent. Through sheer determination, the ICRC delegate in Athens, André Lambert, is briefly able to access the Hardari camp and assist Jewish detainees in the process of being deported. In Turkey, which remains neutral throughout the conflict, the Committee also monitors exchanges of Italian and British prisoners of war on hospital-ships in Izmir on 7 April 1942 and on 9, 18 and 19 April 1943. In the Greek islands of the Aegean Sea, where agricultural production is not enough to feed the population and where the Axis Forces forbid local residents from fishing to prevent the risk of escape, itinerant delegates such as Raymond Courvoisier and Robert Brunel organize relief convoys on small Turkish boats destined for Chios, Furni, Nicaria, Samos and Mytilene in June-November 1942 and July 1943. Despite the diversion of food by customs in Mytilene, these operations are subsequently extended in February 1945 to the islands of Leros, Cos, Kalymnos, Calchi, Pserimo and Rhodes in the Dodecanese. After the withdrawal of Italian and German soldiers, the Geneva Committee remains in Greece to assist the victims of the conflict between the ‘royalists’ and the British army on one side, and the communist guerrillas who operate near the Albanian border on the other. Having secured in March 1945 the commitment of the People’s Army of National Liberation ELAS (Ellinikós Laikós Apelevtherotikós Stratós) to comply with the Convention of July 1929 on prisoners of war, the ICRC delegates monitor the release of civilian hostages and the exchanges of prisoners held by the rebels or by the British. However, the authorities in Athens, who deny the existence of a civil war, soon turn down the services offered by Geneva and only authorize material assistance through the intermediary of the Greek Red Cross. While it is denied access to the communist zones, which receives aid from the Romanian Red Cross, the ICRC gains unsupervised access to prisoners on the government side from May 1947, and more importantly from June 1948 when its delegate Adrien Lambert is relieved from other relief operations designed to assist displaced persons. After the rebellion is crushed in 1949, Geneva attempts to reunite families separated by the conflict, especially the children taken to the neighbouring countries of the Soviet bloc, mainly Yugoslavia and Albania. According to ELAS, the objective was to spare them the suffering of war… or to be in a better position to indoctrinate them, according to the government in Athens. Meanwhile in Greece, access to political prisoners continues unabated: 260 detainees are visited in 89 different locations between 1947 and 1957; 297 in 60 different locations between 1958 and 1970. Though Geneva closes its delegation in Athens in 1955 and the last communist insurgents are released in 1963, the coup d’état of 1967 revives the activities of the ICRC with the arrest of 6,500 suspects. In action immediately, the Committee reports a significant improvement in the conditions of detention in a press statement of 20 November 1967. But to avoid compromising its ongoing operations, it remains deliberately vague about the actual locations visited by its delegates. Arguing that it has already declined similar requests by the League of Nations and the United Nations about the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1936 or the South African apartheid after 1960, the institution refuses in January 1968 to disclose first-hand information to the Council of Europe, where the Scandinavian states demand an official inquiry into human rights violations in Greece. As noted by James David Armstrong, the Committee thus makes it possible for the United States to maintain good relations with the military junta, on the grounds that the use of torture is not confirmed by the ICRC. Worse still, extracts from a Geneva confidential report published by the nationalist press in Athens allege that the conditions of detention are satisfactory. Accused by the opposition of conspiring with the junta and the very conservative president of the Greek Red Cross, the ICRC protests in vain against the leaks. Less conciliatory than his predecessor Germain Colladon, a new delegate, Laurent Marti, is appointed in Athens in January 1968 and is able to secure the release of elderly or ill prisoners by threatening to withdraw from the country. While the Greek colonels attempt to handle Western public opinion and the human rights commission of the Council of Europe, the ICRC is granted the right to distribute supplies and to freely access all detention centres without prior notice. Signed on 4 November 1969, the authorization also applies to police stations, and not only to prisons. However, the agreement is rescinded on 3 November 1970 as a result of a decision by the junta to withdraw from the Council of Europe rather than be expelled. Realizing that the threats of international sanctions failed to liberalize the regime, the ICRC leaves Greece in February 1971, on the grounds that its presence has failed to improve conditions of detention. In fact, it even contributed to promoting a positive image of the dictatorship, as explained by a junta official in the New York Times of 9 November 1970. The ICRC only returns to Greece in 1973, during a period of student uprisings, and again in 1974, during the Cyprus crisis.
 
-1943-1947, Romania: in a country allied with Nazi Germany, the ICRC appoints a delegate, Karl Kolb, in Bucharest in August 1943. The Committee, which already assisted Polish refugees in Romania in September 1939, is keen to preserve its neutrality and to avoid favouring any particular minority. It therefore forbids Karl Kolb from issuing emigration certificates to Israelites and only allows him to distribute funds from the Joint, a Jewish diaspora organization based in the United States. Until the Soviet invasion of Bucharest in August 1944, however, the Romanian authorities cooperate with Geneva because they hope to negotiate a separate armistice with the Allies. The rise to power of the communists paradoxically restricts the opportunities for humanitarian action. According to Folke Bernadotte, for instance, the Swedish Red Cross struggles to keep control of the distribution of its food supplies, but to no avail. The communists seek to favour their supporters and to prevent Western humanitarian organisations from working with members of the Romanian Red Cross close to the former regime, particularly retired army officers, who are eventually forced to resign in 1947.
 
-1944-1945, Hungary: following the German invasion of Hungary in March 1944, the imminence of the final solution is foreseen by the ICRC delegate appointed in Budapest in October 1943, Jean de Bavier. A brother of the chief delegate of the Committee in Athens, Jean de Bavier attempts to facilitate the emigration of Jews, particularly those of foreign origins such as the Poles. But he comes up against the reluctance of his superiors, who, overwhelmed, have been slow to respond to the many appeals made by the Hungarian Red Cross since December 1941. As usual, the Committee is keen to avoid being accused of interference in the domestic affairs of a country. It therefore recalls Jean de Bavier to Geneva, officially under the pretext that he cannot speak German, though the actual reason is that he is planning to publicly denounce the Nazi atrocities. However, his replacement in May 1944 by a German speaker, Friedrich Born, fails to solve the problem. The new ICRC demegate equally tries to persuade Geneva to press the government of Miklós Horthy to spare the Jews. Because the Nazis are beginning to lose ground and Hungary is the last country to implement the final solution, deportations are very visible and easier to prove. Following the intervention of the Swedish Red Cross and the declarations of the Allies, who view Admiral Miklós Horthy as being personally responsible for the Jewish pogroms in Hungary, the president of the ICRC, Max Huber, decides to break his silence and sends an official letter to the government in Budapest on 5 July 1944. However, deportations are resumed after the coup d’état of 15 October 1944, which brings Ferenc Szalasi to power. On his own initiative, Friedrich Born decides to issue safe-conducts to the Jews, to corrupt the ‘authorities’ and to group the survivors in buildings protected by the Red Cross emblem. In retaliation, his assistant, Otto Komoly, is assassinated on 1 January 1945 by the Arrow Cross Party, a Nazi militia beyond all control since the government went into exile when the Soviets started to bomb Budapest on 14 December 1944. ICRC ambulances are seized, employees arrested and Red Cross premises arbitrarily shut down. The looting of the Jewish ghetto only stops with the Soviet occupation of Budapest on 18 January 1945. Replaced by Hans Weyerman, Friedrich Born is criticized by Geneva for having tarnished the Red Cross emblem, paid bribes and issued false papers. It is argued that the 1,500 safe-conducts for Jews failed to put an end to the pogroms, while attempts to ‘buy’ the mercy of the Arrow Crosses were a great cause for concern for the Soviets, who believed that the ICRC was helping Nazi collaborators to escape. Hans Weyerman is also accused of misappropriation of funds by Jewish American charities, which eventually withdraw their complaint and resolve the issue after reaching an agreement with the Geneva Committee. Meanwhile, the general secretary of the Hungarian Red Cross, Aron Gabor, a journalist on the Russian front, is deported to the gulag because of his writings; it is only in 1960 that he is allowed to return to his country.
 
-1945-1955, Germany: the victory of the United States and the surrender of the Nazis on 8 May 1945 sanction the almighty power of the ARC (American Red Cross) and cause tensions with the ICRC over the direction of the Red Cross movement, as in 1918. Funded by a budget in excess of 420 million dollars, the American organization employs nearly 40,000 people abroad in 1945, as opposed to just 5,000 in 1941. With 36,645,000 members in 1945, i.e. a quarter of the American population, the ARC boasts a larger ‘electorate’ than any political party in power in Washington. Having established an advisory council in 1946, it proceeds to revise its charter and becomes more democratic by abolishing the conditions for membership that barred poor applicants if the amount of their contribution to the organisation was too low. Compared with the previous system, which dated back to 1904 and included only a third of elected members, the reform of 8 May 1947 establishes an executive board renewed every three years and composed of 50 people, including 8 appointed by the President of the United States, 12 co-opted on merit and 30 nominated at national conventions by local chapters. However, the post-war period and the decline of patriotic fervour result in a decrease of the activities and financial resources of the ARC, pressed by the anti-communists to stop its fundraising operations with American syndicates. With a budget reduced to 50 million dollars in 1947, the organization also suffers a sharp fall in popularity when returning soldiers begin to complain publicly about the services it provided for the GI (General Infantry). According to a survey conducted in 1947 and quoted by Foster Rhea Dulles, just 20% of Americans agree that the ARC is the first institution to which they would be prepared to make a donation, as opposed to 60% in 1944. Reports from Europe do nothing to improve the reputation of the ARC. In Germany in particular, the recreational centres managed by the ARC for the GIs increase the number of illegitimate children born of American fathers and abandoned in orphanages. Other problems stem from the occupying authorities. Since the hostilities have officially ended by this stage, the Americans refuse to grant the status of prisoner of war to German and Japanese soldiers who have surrendered. Within their zone of occupation in West Germany, they prevent the ICRC from assisting military and civilian detainees accused of crimes against humanity. Likewise on the Soviet side, the Committee is denied access to prisoners of war who are eventually repatriated in 1956… or who go missing. The organization, which can only continue to supply food to children and orphans in East Germany until 1950, is forced to refocus its activities on civilians by facilitating the relocation of refugees and internally displaced persons. Among other things, the Committee helps German minorities – in total over 11 million people who, as a result of the measures adopted at the Inter-Allied conference held in Potsdam in July 1945, are temporarily detained pending their deportation to Germany from Czechoslovakia, Poland or Romania. As for the CTA (Central Tracing Agency) of the ICRC, it is ratified on a perma nent basis in 1949 and it perseveres in tracking down prisoners of war and civilians dispersed by the conflict: a family reunification programme that affects over 700,000 people from 1947. In the same vein, the Geneva Committee is given the responsibility of running the ITS (International Tracing Service) in 1955, and it agrees to pay compensations granted by the West German government to prisoners subjected to Nazi experiments, mainly Czechs and Poles. Established in January 1946 in Arolsen, a German town situated at the geographical centre of the American, British, French and Russian zones, the ITS performs a similar role to the CTA: it initially aims to meet the primary needs of released prisoners, then to reunite families separated by the conflict. However, because it operates under the aegis of the Allied High Commission for Germany from April 1951 onwards, it fails to gain the trust of the Soviet Union, which only agrees to grant it access to its archives… in 1989! In the context of the Cold War, the Geneva Committee is indeed seen as an “imperialist” tool of the United States, keen not to reinforce the “biological military strength of the enemy”. Thus in 1948, a secret memorandum inspired by the Americans puts an abrupt end to the search and repatriation programme of 200,000 Polish children kidnapped and transferred to Germany by the Nazis, 30,000 of whom were found by the ICRC. The member countries of the Warsaw Pact act no differently and hinder family reunification in cases that involve the transfer of individuals to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Completely taken over by the communists and purged of the supporters of the government in exile in London during the war, the Polish Red Cross, for instance, only seeks to secure the repatriation of Polish citizens and decides in 1947 to stop sending children to join their parents in Western Europe. In this context, the ICRC struggles to avoid becoming involved in political controversies. Keen to preserve its neutrality, it refuses in 1951 to take part in the appointment of a United Nations Commission to repatriate prisoners of war. Yet its Central Tracing Agency, the CTA, is not immune to criticism and fails to identify war criminals amongst German asylum seekers recommended by the Catholic Church in Rome and assisted legally by an autonomous branch of the Italian Red Cross, the AGIUS (Assistenza Giuridica agli Stranieri). Using false names, a number of famous Nazis such as the Auschwitz chief doctor, Josef Mengele, the SS officer in charge of concentration camps, Adolph Eichmann, and the head of the Gestapo in France, Klaus Barbie, obtain travel documents from the ICRC to flee respectively to Paraguay in 1949, Argentina in 1950 and Bolivia in 1951. In July 2003, the opening of the archives in Buenos Aires and research by historian Uki Goñi uncover further cases of war criminals who were issued a passport by the Red Cross through the Vatican, including Ivo Heinrich, financial advisor to the Ustaše government of Ante Pavelíc in Croatia, and Friedrich Rauch, the SS colonel in charge of concealing the gold of the German Central Bank in 1945. In an article published by the Italian daily Il Secolo XIX on 31 July 2003, the Serbian writer Branko Bokun confirms these findings by providing a first-hand account since he was himself an employee of the ICRC delegation in Rome at the time...
 
-1946-1948, Switzerland: the American Basil O’Connor, successor to the Swiss doctor Jean de Muralt as head of the LRC in 1946, attempts to democratize the Red Cross movement and to employ paid professionals in addition to volunteers. As he dismantles the joint relief commission that had sanctioned a de facto monopoly of the ICRC on emergencies since 1940, he paradoxically benefits from the support of the communists, who blame the Committee for its silence and its failure to protect Soviet prisoners of war held by the Nazis. Despite the establishment in 1946 of diplomatic relations severed since 1918, Moscow accuses Switzerland of having traded with the Third Reich for the entire duration of the conflict and of interning Russians who had managed to flee Germany. The ICRC, in particular, is viewed with deep distrust and deliberately excluded from the operations conducted in the Soviet Union to release prisoners of war. Following the surrender of Germany in May 1945, its two remaining delegates in Berlin, Otto Lehner and Albert de Cocatrix, are deported by the Red Army along with two local collaborators, secretary Ursula Rauch and driver André Frütschy, to camp 27 in Krasnogorsk and camp 20B in Planernaya near Moscow. Before their liberation in Vienna the following October, they are used as hostages to negotiate a compulsory repatriation of 9,000 Soviet citizens who had escaped from Nazi prisons and taken refuge in Switzerland, from where they were likely to settle in Western Europe. Besides the personal position of Josef Stalin, who ignored the Geneva Conventions from the very beginning, the hostility of Moscow is fuelled by the attitude of the ICRC during the fighting. In a statement released on 30 December 1943, for instance, Geneva condemned the measures of retaliation taken against prisoners of war. The objective was to prevent the Japanese from executing American pilots accused of bombing cities. But it was viewed by the president of the Soviet Alliance of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, professor Sergei Alexandrovich Kolesnikoff, as an attack on the first trials of German war criminals conducted by the Soviets in Kharkov. According to Drago Arsenijevic, various indications also led Moscow to believe that Geneva was more afraid of the Soviets than of the Nazis. According to a letter forwarded to the Soviets and sent on 23 July 1941 to the Foreign Office by the British ambassador in Turkey, Geoffrey Harrington Thompson, the ICRC delegate in Ankara, Marcel Junod, supported the idea of a separate peace between London and Berlin to counter the increasing communist threat. Indeed, the Marxist-Leninist ideology never appealed to the humanitarian institution. According to Oran Young, the Committee members were even stauncher anti-communists than the Americans, especially Carl-Jacob Burckhardt, president of the ICRC from 1945 to 1947, suspected of belonging to a think tank hostile to the Third International, the “Théodore-Aubert Committee”. At the end of World War One, the institution had actively contributed to containing the “Reds” in Poland or Caucasia. For example, in 1926, it had deliberately sabotaged a plan elaborated by the famous philanthropist Fridtjof Nansen, who intended to establish an Armenian Republic with the support of the Soviets; instead, the Geneva Committee facilitated a definitive relocation of the survivors of the Turkish genocide in territories under French mandate, namely Syria and Lebanon. As a result, the ICRC struggles to preserve its image of neutrality in the middle of the Cold War. Criticisms come from all sides and not merely from the Soviet camp. In August 1948, the Soviet Union, Belgium, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia all refuse to attend the seventeenth international Red Cross conference held in Stockholm. They blame the Committee for failing to save the Jews, condemn Nazi atrocities and sanction or expel the national societies of totalitarian regimes. Calls are even made for the ICRC to be abolished altogether and to turn it into a UN agency or a truly international and democratic organization with Red Cross delegates representing all countries. As a neutral nation active in humanitarian work during World War Two, the Swedes support the Soviet plans for a radical reform of the Geneva Committee. However, in his autobiography, the prestigious president of the Swedish Red Cross, Count Folke Bernadotte, denies any intention or desire to dissolve the ICRC. He explains that he attempted to reinforce the Geneva Committee with other nationals who, in the event of war in their own country, would have been replaced by citizens of neutral states. Convinced of the merits of a Swiss organisation against the communists that he saw infiltrating the Red Cross societies in Eastern Europe, Count Folke Bernadotte quickly abandons his project, admitting that there are not enough neutral states to widen the composition of the ICRC. He therefore supports the proposal made by the president of the Belgian Red Cross, Pierre Depage, to increase the powers of the permanent commission overseeing the ICRC and the League between each international Red Cross conference. To no avail: the historian Caroline Moorehead notes that in the face of criticism, the Geneva Committee becomes more rigid and develops an excessive cult of secrecy under the leadership of its new president since March 1948, Paul Ruegger, a catholic and a former Swiss ambassador declared persona non grata in Fascist Italy. As remarked by Catherine Rey-Schyrr, the intensity of the communist attacks paradoxically saved the institution from disappearing. Because it underlined the need to preserve a neutral intermediary, the rise of the Cold War prevented the ICRC from an internationalization that would have opposed the American and Soviet blocs.
 
-1947-1957, Vietnam: while the Viet Minh communists fight for independence in the North, the ICRC is quickly granted access by the French colonial authorities to the rebels imprisoned in the South, some 65,000 people in the early 1950s. Appointed in June 1946 and based in Hanoi in January 1947, the ICRC delegate, Charles Aeschlimann, succeeds Henri Hurlimann, appointed in Saigon in August 1945 to provide supplies and facilitate the repatriation of Allied and Japanese prisoners of war. During a ceasefire negotiated by the ICRC on 28 February 1947, the communist guerrillas agree to release 29 civilians through the intermediary of the ‘Vietnamese’ Red Cross of Dr Ton That Tung. Diplomatically isolated, the Viet Minh is in dire need of international recognition and still believes that a peace treaty with France can be reached. But it soon refuses to allow the ICRC to access its prisoner-of-war camps, where mortality rates reach 75% according to first-hand accounts given by survivors. Infuriated, one Committee delegate, Dr Pierre Descoeudres, issues an ultimatum to the guerrilla in August 1947… and is recalled to Geneva because the move only serves to further block the situation. Therefore, prisoner exchanges and evacuations of the injured, such as those conducted in February 1951 and October 1950 in Cao Bong, are negotiated directly between the Viet Minh and the colonial authorities via the French Red Cross, which only begins to coordinate its interventions with the ICRC in 1952. Because it is entirely absorbed by the Palestinian question since 1948, the Committee suspends its activities in North Vietnam, which is officially recognized as a “democratic republic” by the Soviet Union and China in 1950. At the request of Paris and Washington, the ICRC only returns to assist 25,000 soldiers of General Chiang Kai-shek who, after the defeat of the Chinese nationalists in 1949, sought refuge in Indochina and were held by the colonial authorities on the island of Phu Qhoq. As the French military refuses to grant the status of prisoner of war to the Viet Minh rebels in the North, the Committee is equally timorous in the South, where it visits the prison of Con Son on just two occasions between 1947 and 1954. Forced several times to recall its personnel to Geneva, it eventually bans its delegate André Durand, appointed in Saigon in February 1952, from attempting to establish contact with the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, which the ICRC seeks to approach through diplomatic channels in New Delhi, Moscow and Beijing. In the North, the organization makes no attempt to protest against colonial obstructions, forced labour and the employment of civilians for dangerous work, the transport of ammunition or the construction of fortifications involving 2,500 military prisoners during the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The ICRC also abstains from communicating its visit reports to the belligerents because Paris deems that there is no state of war and that the fighting is a domestic issue since the Democratic Republic of Vietnam is not recognized by the international community and has not signed up to the 1929 Convention on prisoners of war. Therefore the Committee opts to remain silent until the Geneva Conventions of August 1949 come into force in December 1951 and the French are defeated in Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. In the field, however, the appointment in 1952 of a new High Commissioner in Indochina, Jean Letourneau (1907-1986), enables significant progress by authorizing the provision of medical supplies to the enemy without any guarantee that they would be exclusively distributed to prisoners of war rather than communist fighters. The ICRC had initially hoped that an agreement could be reached with the Viet Minh by proposing aid in exchange for access to prisoners. Yet the communists had waited in vain for Geneva to deliver medical supplies that were provided by the Indian Red Cross and seized by the authorities in Saigon and returned to sender in 1947. Moreover, the Committee was perceived as “imperialist” because it was entirely dependent on French military logistics and escorts to circulate in Vietnam and to access prisoner-of-war camps. Worse still, a meeting between the ICRC and the guerrillas was used by the military to locate and bomb a communist position in 1947. Likewise, on 26 July and 15 October 1951 in Hung Hoa, approximately fifty kilometres north-west of Hanoi, the final negotiations between the Geneva Committee and the Viet Minh were deliberately undermined by the High Commissioner in Indochina, General Jean-Marie de Lattre de Tassigny (1889-1952), keen to prove that the rebels refused to release their prisoners. Meanwhile, the French Red Cross sided with the colonial authorities and took an active part in their operations. Having landed in Hanoi with the expeditionary corps in October 1945, it worked in military hospitals, opened centres specifically designed for soldiers and intervened directly on the front to provide first aid during attacks. After an initial mission lasting from October 1945 to February 1947, special nurses known as IPSA (Infirmières Pilotes Secouristes de l’Air) were even incorporated into the Air Force and three of them were killed in combat. Under these circumstances, the ICRC is unable to negotiate the evacuation of the dead and injured during the battle of Dien Bien Phu from March to May 1954. The belligerents accuse each other of violating international humanitarian law by attacking hospitals and relief convoys. According to General Nguyen Chuong, captured by the French and quoted by Le Monde on 23 April 2004, the African soldiers of the colonial corps finish off all injured Vietnamese soldiers. The Viet Minh fares no better. Since it has no air force, it has nothing to gain from authorizing aerial evacuations and suspects the medical helicopters of the French army of attempting to supply ammunitions and bombing enemy positions. Negotiated in the absence of the ICRC, the principle of an evacuation is only admitted during peace talks that eventually lead to an armistice and the Geneva Agreements of July 1954. After the withdrawal of the French, the Committee attempts to act through the intermediary of the Indian Red Cross and is still not trusted by the communists, now fully in power in North Vietnam. Based in the British consulate in Hanoi, the ICRC delegate from January 1955 to January 1957, Jacques de Reynier, is not authorized to search for civilians or soldiers killed in combat. He is only able to provide a small amount of aid and to monitor the transfer of legionnaires who had defected to the Viet Minh and who were keen not to return to France. In the South, he coordinates his activities with the LRC and leaves the latter to assist some 800,000 Vietnamese refugees, mostly Catholics, who escaped from the North.

-1948-1956, Israel/Palestine: while the Jews of Palestine are fighting to create an independent state of Israel and to gain independence from British colonial rule, the ICRC begins to work on all sides of the conflict in January 1948. As a neutral institution, the Committee declines the offer of the British authorities to be given the responsibility of managing all public hospitals. To preserve its political independence, the ICRC also refuses the protection of armored vehicles belonging to the British army, which leaves the country on May 15. The institution seeks to cooperate with all the belligerents despite the fact that their relief societies are not officially recognized by Geneva, not least because of their emblems – a red star of David on the Israeli side and a mixture of a red cross and a red crescent for the Arabs of Transjordan. On April 3, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem makes a commitment to comply with the Geneva Convention. The Arabs follow suit two days later after negotiations with the head of the High Committee for Palestine in Cairo, Hadj Amin al-Hussein, a former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and a highly controversial figure as a result of meeting Adolf Hitler in 1941 and promoting support for Nazi Germany. However, the ICRC witnesses cases of significant abuse. On the Israeli side, the Zionist army Haganah opens fire on Arab ambulances and hospitals, while its military formations use the Red Cross emblem to advance into enemy territory. On 9 April 1948, the extremists of the Irgun faction massacre civilians in Deir Yassin: of the village’s 400 inhabitants, the ICRC delegate Jacques de Reynier is able to rescue just 3 survivors. The Arabs also violate international humanitarian law. On 12 April 1948, they attack a convoy of the Red Shield of David (Magen David Adom) heading for the Hadassah hospital under the protection of Haganah soldiers in a Jewish enclave on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem. In the middle of the fighting, the ICRC has to request the right to evacuate Israeli inhabitants and to escort supplies unarmed. To protect civilian populations in Jerusalem, the Committee attempts to establish safe areas in a number of locations, including the King David Hotel, the premises of the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Alliance), the Terra Santa convent, and the Government Palace in May 1948. Some of these sanctuaries fail to materialize or serve merely to provide shelter to a small number of diplomats and UN employees. Others are soon exposed on the frontline and are partially occupied by Israeli forces in July 1948. In order to gain access to areas supposedly protected by the Red Cross flag, displaced persons must agree not to resell supplies on the black market and to contribute to expenses wherever possible. They are also not permitted to leave the place without official authorization since it is feared that they may communicate vital information to the enemy and compromise the neutrality of the safe haven (two drivers working for the Jerusalem delegation, for instance, are accused of spying by the Israeli authorities). The Committee is careful to preserve the trust of all parties, particularly after the arrival in Jerusalem on June 12 of the UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte onboard a Red Cross airplane to propose a partition plan which is rejected by the Palestinians. To prevent supplying combatants amongst civilians and to avoid further irritating the Arabs, who are aiming to starve the Israelis entrenched in Jerusalem, the ICRC decides to provide relief supplies exclusively to hospitals and not to the general population, a responsibility entrusted to the Committee by article 8 of a truce signed on July 9 1948 under the auspices of the United Nations. However, during a moment of respite, families separated by the events are reunited and Geneva is able to take care of prisoners of war threatened with forced labor. The issue is that the Israeli authorities went against the grain of common practices by granting a prisoner of war status to all imprisoned non-combatants old enough to carry a weapon, thereby enabling ‘repatriations’, i.e. expulsions of detainees aimed at emptying Jewish strongholds of all Arab inhabitants. In a report dated July 1948 quoted by Catherine Rey-Schyrr, Jacques de Reynier notes that his interventions in Israeli detention centers are ‘perhaps made easier by the desire of the Israelis to see all Arabs leave’. Nevertheless, the ICRC begins in May 1948 to operate outside Jerusalem, in Haifa, Nablus, Ramallah and Jaffa, where it is able to evacuate 3,000 Egyptian civilians by boat. After the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte by Israeli terrorists belonging to the Stern group on 17 September 1948, fighting resumes in the Negev Desert on 15 October and the ICRC opens a delegation in Gaza to provide relief supplies to some 200,000 refugees. During the conflict, seven of the organization’s eighteen employees on site are injured, while three of their eight vehicles are machine-gunned and destroyed. Although the Geneva Committee withdraws on 15 July 1949, two delegates remain in the area: one in Jerusalem, the other in Tel Aviv. The humanitarian institution continues to operate through its agency for Palestinian refugees, created in November 1948 and funded by the United Nations. Headed by Alfred Escher, first adviser of the Swiss legation in London, this agency oversees the provision of relief in Israel (from Haifa) and Jordan (from Beirut). With the support of various NGOs, including the LWF (Lutheran World Federation) and the YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Alliance), the Committee distributes food, medicine and school supplies. The challenge is to balance the restrictions imposed by the financial backers with the pressures exerted by the Jordanian and Palestinian authorities, which deliberately overestimate the numbers of refugees by including all war victims in order to receive more aid. In addition, the provision of supplies causes tension with local residents since food rations are destined solely for displaced populations. The Geneva Committee therefore uses its own funds to assist civilians without refugee status until it suspends its operations on 1 May 1950, when the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees) takes over under the leadership of a Canadian general, Howard Kennedy. Of the 14,000 people previously assisted by the ICRC in Jerusalem, 11,000 are transferred to the responsibility of the United Nations, while the remaining 3,000 receive aid from the Lutherans of the LWF. Meanwhile, the LRCS (League of Red Cross Societies) continues to support Palestinian refugees in Transjordan, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, leaving the Quakers of the AFSC (American Friends Service Committee) in charge of the Gaza Strip under the aegis of the UN. During the 1956 crisis opposing Egypt to France and the United Kingdom over the nationalization of the Suez Canal, the ICRC returns to the region to provide relief to the inhabitants of Port Said and to repatriate Egyptian prisoners of war by plane, thereby inaugurating the first direct air route between the two countries since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. The LRCS and the national Red Cross societies are also involved. From Paris, they help to resettle 160 French families with no contacts in metropolitan France after being expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser. As for the ICRC, it assists until late 1957 some Israelis deprived of their citizenship and viewed as stateless people in Egypt. In total, the Committee facilitates the evacuation of half of all Jews expelled from their country at the risk of assenting to the eviction of an entire community as part of a large-scale anti-Semitic deportation process.

-12 August 1949, Switzerland: in Geneva, the ICRC organizes the signature of the four Conventions for ‘the amelioration of the condition of the wounded and sick in armed forces in the field’, ‘the amelioration of the condition of the wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of armed forces at sea’, ‘the treatment of prisoners of war’, and ‘the protection of civilian persons in time of war’. Motivated by the desire to prevent a repeat of the Nazi horrors, the new provisions represent a significant advance compared to the 1864 version. The prisoner of war status, for instance, applies to resistance movements in occupied countries. Inspired by the discussions held in Tokyo at the fifteenth international Red Cross conference in 1934, the protection of civilians is extended to cover air raids on towns and military actions resulting in collateral and non-intentional damage. Common to all four Conventions, article 3 imposes a minimal standard in the humanitarian treatment of non-combatants, including in the event of an insurrection, and prohibits reprisals in the form of hostage-taking, executions, torture, etc. Article 23 of the 4th Convention provides for the free passage of medical goods and supplies required ‘for children under fifteen, expectant mothers and maternity cases’. Articles 59 and 61 stipulate that an occupying power must agree to rescue operations for civilians in occupied territories. It can only search consignments and control the distribution of supplies, which is entrusted to non-partisan bodies, i.e. the ICRC. However, the deficiencies of the ‘Geneva Law’ remain blatant during the era of decolonization, particularly in the area of national liberation struggles. The 1949 Conventions protect prisoners of war involved in regular armies, not guerrillas. Although liberation movements are not subject to the international obligations imposed on states, the ICRC argues unsuccessfully that they are bound by treaties which they have not signed. In practice, guerrillas will not comply with the Geneva Conventions despite their claims to governmental capacity.