World War II

Whilst stationed in Rome during the Second World War, Bismarck would pass on German intelligence to the Italian Foreign Office and privately speak ill of the Nazi regime, in particular Ribbentrop, Goering, and Hitler.^[1] "The Prince used to tell Italian Foreign Office officials much of what he knew, but, as Ciano discovered, 'he was hellishly afraid of being found out, and implored me in Heaven's name not to pass his confidential information to anyone.' He was convinced of the inevitability of Germany's defeat but did not, unfortunately, mount the big political guns which had so often enabled his grandfather to avert disaster."^[2] Of Bismarck and the Nazi alliance with Italy, King Umberto II said, "The military element is strong in Germany, and even Bismarck who was truly exceptionally intelligent, had to submit to it."^[3]

In 1942, Bismarck played a role in the disclosure of Nazi intelligence that allowed Balkan Jews to be saved. Jews, mostly from Croatia, had fled to the parts of Yugoslavia which the Italian army occupied during 1941 and had since that time lived in peace under the protection of the Royal Italian Army. They had run from the unsystematic butchery of the Croatian fascists, the Ustaši, but by the middle of 1942 they were threatened with the systematic extermination planned for them under the Nazi "new order" in Europe. In August of 1942 the German government formally asked the Italian government to hand them over. Mussolini agreed; a handful of Italian diplomats and generals said no. By refusing the German request and disobeying an explicit order of the Duce, the conspirators set a perilous course which in the end crossed not merely the murderous ambition of Mussolini but that of Hitler, Himmler and the SS. At the start they had no conclusive evidence of what is now known as "the final solution", but the Italian Foreign Ministry had received a broad hint. On 18 August 1942, Prince Bismarck, called on the Marchese Lanza d'Ajeta at the Italian Foreign Ministry. Bismarck had orders to demand that the Italian government instruct its military authorities "to actuate those measures devised by the Germans and the Croatians for a transfer in mass of the Jews of Croatia to territories in the East". Prince Bismarck let slip the fact that the measures would lead to the "dispersion and elimination" of such Jews.^[4] Indeed, in the original text d'Ajeta had recorded the word 'liquidation'.^[5] Italy now faced the holocaust squarely. Bismarck himself had whispered the truth to the cabinet chief of Count Ciano: the Jews were not being transferred to the east to work but to die.^[6] Mussolini was perfectly prepared to grant his Nazi ally the bodies of a few thousand Croatian Jews. In his large hand he wrote "nulla osta" (no objection) across the memorandum. Mussolini apparently did not care what happened to the Jews of Croatia or refused to believe Bismarck's hint. It was that 'order' of Mussolini's that the conspirators decided to disobey.^[5]

He worked as an envoy at the German Embassy at the Quirinal in Rome until August 1943. From November 1943 to November 1944, Bismarck was head of the Italy Committee in the Foreign Office in Berlin. He was then released because of his contacts with members of the resistance group, however lack of evidence and the legend of the name Bismarck saved him from personal persecution. He then continued to manage the family property Friedrichsruh near Hamburg.

At the end of the war Bismarck's home of Friedrichsruh became one of the headquarters of the "White Buses" operation undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country. Although the operation was initially targeted at saving citizens of Scandinavian countries, it rapidly expanded to include citizens of other countries. Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, a Swedish nobleman and diplomat who was then vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, negotiated the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps. Bismarck's wife Princess Ann-Marie had been a lifelong friend of Bernadotte having been classmates at school in Stockholm.^[7] In spite of its clearly visible Red Cross markings on the roof, the Friedrichsruh manor house was destroyed during a RAF raid in the last days of World War II, due to the (false) rumor that Heinrich Himmler was hiding there. After the war, the premises were rebuilt at the behest of prince Otto von Bismarck.

Post-war career

In the 1950s Bismarck considered becoming a member of the FDP (the liberal party), which offered him a nomination for Parliament, but eventually joined the Christian-conservative CDU instead. He served as a Member of Parliament for the constituency of Herzogtum Lauenburg (Duchy of Lauenburg; his grandfather held the title Duke of Lauenburg) from 1953 to 1965, and as a member of the foreign affairs committee. He was also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and served as its Vice President from 1959 to 1960 and from 1961 to 1966.^[8] He was also chairman of the Deutsche Parlamentarische Gesellschaft from 1957 to 1961. He received the Great Cross of Merit in 1965. He died in West Germany.