by William Korey

Why was Wallenberg arrested on January 17, 1945? If the Kremlin knew that he was engaged in a humanitarian mission for the United States, would that be perceived as threatening Soviet interests? And, if so, in what way? The cold war had not yet begun. In fact, the arrest took place just weeks before the Yalta Conference, a high point in the cooperation of the three allied leaders—Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin. It was at Yalta that the final stage of the struggle against Hitlerism was mapped out and plans laid for coordinating the war against Japan.

According to a secret official Kremlin report—not prepared, however, until April 1956, eleven years after the imprisonment—Wallenberg was arrested on the charge of spying for the Nazis against the Soviet Union. A more blatant absurdity is difficult to conceive, and the document offered no evidence to back up the allegation, although the spy charge would be consistent with the "prisoner of war" designation that Wallenberg was given in Lubyanka. The 1956 report, officially requested by the Central Committee on April 3, 1956, was dated April 28 and signed by the head of the KGB, Ivan Serov, and the minister of foreign affairs, Vyacheslav M. Molotov.37

This Kremlin report was itself kept from public view until the demise of the USSR in December 1991, over thirty years after it was signed. The secretiveness of the totalitarian monolith totally blanketed the Wallenberg case. In the early postwar years, all requests for information about him were met by a standard response ordered by the ruthless Abakumov: "Wallenberg is not in the USSR."38 Even after Abakumov was removed from his post by Stalin in 1952, and then executed in 1954, the suffocating silence remained. In late 1991, however, the KGB logs in which Wallenberg’s name was inked out, as well as "absolutely secret" memos on him that circulated among the KGB, the Party Central Committee, and the Foreign Ministry, were finally disclosed.39

Back in 1945, however, the Soviet security organs were shrouded in secrecy, and it was difficult for anyone to respond immediately to Wallenberg’s disappearance. Information first came to the Swedish embassy in Moscow in a memo dated one day before the disappearance. Soviet deputy foreign minister Vladimir Dekanosov wrote that "Russian military authorities have taken measures to protect Raoul Wallenberg and his belongings."40 The date of the Dekanosov memo—January 16—suggested that the Kremlin already knew the details of the Bulganin order of January 17, had prepared the specifics of the arrest, and had set in motion how the violation of international law would be rationalized, at least initially. The Dekanosov memo would mark the first stage in a long history of Kremlin deception and cover-up. In February, Wallenberg’s mother queried the Soviet ambassador to Sweden, Aleksandra Kollontai, about her son and was officially informed that he was safe in Russia and would soon return. According to one Wallenberg biographer, the Soviet ambassador said to her: "He will be back, but don’t make too much noise about it."41 Kollontai gave similar information to the Swedish foreign minister’s wife, saying: "Yes, Wallenberg is in Russian hands safe and sound."42

These private assurances were put into question in March when the Soviet-controlled Kossuth Radio in Hungary broadcast a story that Wallenberg had been murdered en route to Debrecen by Hungarian fascists or by "agents of the Gestapo."43 If the Swedish public was now concerned, so too were American officials. The U.S. minister in Stockholm cabled the State Department to instruct the American ambassador in Moscow, Averell Harriman, to assist the Swedish legation in the USSR, as the United States "had a special interest in Wallenberg’s mission to Hungary."44 On April 9, Secretary of State Edward Stettinius cabled Harriman to extend "all possible support" to the Swedes. At about the same time, Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. advised the executive director of the War Refugee Board (which operated under the Treasury’s jurisdiction) to "let Stettinius know that [he was] personally interested in this man."45

Strangely, Staffan Söderblom, Sweden’s ambassador in Moscow, rejected the offer of U.S. assistance. He told Harriman that "the Russians are doing everything they can already." His hostile query to the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm was equally odd: "What good would the Americans’ interference do?" Even more unsettling was a conversation he had with Stalin a year later, on June 15, 1946, in which he raised the Wallenberg case. Stalin asked: "You say his name was Wallenberg?" (Stalin was certainly aware of Wallenberg, as the decision to arrest the Swede could hardly have been taken without his approval.) "Yes, Wallenberg," was the response. Söderblom spelled the name out and Stalin wrote it out on a pad in front of him. But the Swede went on to say that "I am personally convinced that Wallenberg fell victim either to a road accident or bandits." Whether the comment resulted from stupidity or a genuine belief that Wallenberg was dead, it could only have had a devastating effect on Wallenberg’s fate. Swedish prime minister Tage Erlander later called the conversation "dangerous and perhaps disastrous."46

Indeed, almost from the beginning, and despite the fact that Wallenberg came from one of Sweden’s most prominent families, Swedish officials avoided getting deeply involved. From the very start of Wallenberg’s humanitarian mission in Budapest, in fact, Stockholm officials registered an obvious lack of enthusiasm. Several weeks after Wallenberg started his Jewish rescue initiatives in Budapest, Iver Olsen notified Washington: "The Swedish Foreign Ministry are somewhat disturbed over Wallenberg’s activities in Budapest…. I am sure they would prefer he had dealt with the Jewish problem along diplomatic lines…." This, he added, "would mean not helping Jews."47

The journalist who tracked down this document, after studying the early responses of the Swedish government to the disappearance of Wallenberg, concluded that instead of pursuing his case "vigorously" and "insisting forcefully on Wallenberg’s return, Swedish officials merely inquired about his whereabouts."48 She called attention to a secret telegram from the Swedish ambassador in Moscow to his Foreign Office in Stockholm in April, only a couple of months after the disappearance, saying that the truth about what happened to Wallenberg will probably never be known. This "strangely pessimistic attitude" of the Swedish Foreign Ministry, she found, seemed to have been noticed by the American embassy in Stockholm. In the initial draft of a cable to the State Department in September 1945, it reported that the Swedes feel "the Soviets will never produce Wallenberg alive."

Nor did Sweden respond positively to U.S. offers of assistance. When U.S. officials, in April 1945, offered their services to the Swedish ambassador in Moscow, Stockholm’s reply was negative.49 As spelled out in a memorandum by the U.S. embassy in Moscow to Washington, Stockholm believed "that Soviets are doing what they can to locate him [Wallenberg] and they [Swedish officials] do not feel that an approach on our part to Soviet Foreign Office would be desirable.50 The negativism and pessimism of the Swedes extended to the patriarch of the Wallenberg family, Marcus Wallenberg. According to Suzanne Berger, President Harry Truman, in 1947, offered Marcus U.S. assistance and his response was: "He [Raoul] is probably already dead by now."51

As late as 1949 the United States continued to offer assistance to Stockholm but the response was still negative. The then Swedish ambassador to Moscow, Rolf Sohlman, said: "We cannot drive in tandem with the Americans."52 Per Anger, the distinguished Swedish diplomat and close colleague of Wallenberg, commented on these missed opportunities:

As is now known, the Americans showed through their embassy in Moscow great interest in the Wallenberg case as early as 1945. But the Swedes never followed up on this, and no cooperative effort on this matter was ever established between the American and Swedish missions in Moscow. Still another example of the paralysis that characterized the Swedish behavior in the beginning!53

Why the United States gave in to this Swedish attitude is not altogether clear. Conceivably, the United States could have raised the question of Wallenberg’s disappearance at Yalta. It did not. With the death of President Roosevelt in April, the U.S. embassy in Moscow may have been too preoccupied to follow up on the Harriman initiative. Two years later, the acting secretary of state, Dean Acheson, offered an explanation. In a letter to the Senator Arthur Vandenberg, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had wondered why the State Department could not make a "special effort" on Wallenberg’s behalf, Acheson replied:

In view of the fact that Mr. Wallenberg acted as a member of the Swedish mission in Budapest, the initiative in inquiries directed toward the Soviet Government rests with the Swedish authorities.54

U.S. diplomacy certainly followed the Wallenberg case at least until the fall of 1945. A telegram sent by the State Department on September 20 to its Moscow embassy and signed by Acting Secretary of State Acheson notes that diplomatic sources reported that Wallenberg was still alive. The telegram, which was located only recently, called upon the embassy to make "further inquiries" about the Swedish prisoner and pointed out that Soviet authorities were understood to have seized all of Wallenberg’s documents and notes "for use in proceedings against Hungarian collaborators."55 Why they would have had to be "seized" is not made clear. Would not Wallenberg have given them to Moscow upon request?

The State Department document includes a deletion that raises some serious questions. A line of dark ink was drawn through the section that explains that Swedish officials believed that the Soviets would "never produce Wallenberg alive."56 This deletion suggests that the section, for reasons unknown, may have been removed from the actual telegram. Both the initial draft formulation and excision are puzzling in the extreme. Even more puzzling is why the United States, aware of the grave danger confronting Wallenberg, didn’t demand his release at the time.

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