Dr. August Rudolf Lindt (5 August 1905 – 14 April 2000), also known as Auguste R. Lindt, was a Swiss lawyer and diplomat. He served as Chairman of UNICEF in 1953 and as United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1956 to 1960.
Lindt was born in Bern, Switzerland, the son of August Ludwig Lindt, a pharmacist and chocolate manufacturer, and Lina Rüfenacht. He was the nephew of Rudolf Lindt of Lindt & Sprüngli.
Lindt was married four times. Through his second marriage he was son-in-law to Major-General Lionel Charles Dunsterville, a life-long friend of Rudyard Kipling and inspiration for the character of Stalky in Kipling's Stalky & Co. His third marriage was to Ileana Maria Pociovălişteanu Bulova, widow of Arde Bulova, Chairman of the Bulova Watch Company.
As a result of Lindt's strong personality, his independence and extensive international experience, he is regarded as one of Switzerland's most important figures of the 20th century. His career, which extended far beyond mere diplomacy, was closely linked to contemporary Swiss and international history. His life was shaped by his moral courage and his commitment to freedom, democracy and human rights. The newspaper Neue Zürcher Zeitung described August R. Lindt as increasingly representing Switzerland's moral conscience.
Switzerland's humanitarian tradition was not always official policy, but it often grew out of resistance. Lindt managed to combine the two. His views were not always well received. For example, several Swiss politicians were outraged that, as a Swiss representative at the UN's International Conference on Human Rights in 1968, he morally condemned the apartheid system. As Commissioner General of the ICRC for the Nigeria-Biafra aid operation, he reported the Bührle company's arms deliveries to Nigeria to the Swiss Federal Council, which later led to the so-called Bührle scandal.
In 1987 he publicly campaigned against what he saw as the dismantling of the right to asylum, and in later life he warned against a hardening of political attitudes towards real refugees.
In 1928 Lindt earned a Doctorate in Law from the University of Bern with a dissertation on Soviet corporate law. Later in life he received honorary doctorates from the Universities of Geneva and Wilmington, Delaware, United States.
Between 1928 and 1930, Lindt worked in banks in Paris and London, something he later said himself he was not at all suited, making numerous embarrassing mistakes and costing his employers dearly.
During Lindt's time in Paris, he met two Russian émigrés, André Galitzine and Boris Kaufman, and produced and financed their first film, an early social documentary short called Les Halles centralle (c. 1929). Kaufman went on to become a cinematographer who shot for Jean Vigo (L'Atalante) and helped introduce a neo-realistic style into American films, including On the Waterfront and 12 Angry Men. He won two Oscars.
Between 1932 and 1939, Lindt was based in London working as a foreign correspondent for Swiss, German and British newspapers. His work took him to Manchuria, Liberia, Palestine, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia and Romania. During the winter of 1939–1940, he was a war correspondent with Finnish forces during the Russo-Finnish War. Lindt's experience of how a small population could resist a strong aggressor had a strong influence on his later advocacy of radical measures for Swiss resistance during the Second World War.
Whilst in England he met and married his second wife, Susannah Dunsterville, while she was a member of the Old Vic Theatre Company. The couple had three children.
Upon the outbreak of the Second World War Lindt joined the Swiss horse mounted cavalry as a corporal before in 1941 joining Swiss military intelligence for the rest of the war.
Part in the Swiss Resistance Movement
Offiziersverschwörung (Officers' Conspiracy)
In 1940, following the fall of much of Europe, including France and the Netherlands, an ambiguous radio address by Swiss Federal President Marcel Pilet-Golaz was taken by many as signalling a potential weakening of the government and army's resolve in the face of what appeared to be an imminent Nazi invasion. This and other government broadcasts also appeared to reflect a growing impatience from conservatives with the slowness of the Swiss system and their desire for a more authoritarian style of government. Consequently, Corporal Lindt together with several officers gathered in secret and formulated a plan to, if necessary, take control of the army, ensuring it would continue to fight even if the government and the army leadership capitulated. They drew up a manifesto at the meeting which called for unconditional armed resistance and the renewal of Switzerland based on the following basic principles: military comradeship and discipline, the federal principle of democracy, the unconditional respect for the individual and the family, and the rejection of a totalitarian state.
However, whilst arranging a follow-up meeting, news of the Offiziersverschwörung and its intentions accidentally got out, and several members were arrested and imprisoned, initially suspected of being part of a defeatist organization and for high treason. Lindt, who had escaped arrest, made a direct appeal on the group's behalf to politician Hans Oprecht and through him to General Guisan, the commander of the Swiss army. He informed them of the group's true motivations and objectives. This directly led to the prisoners' sentences being reduced, and ultimately all were pardoned and reinstated to their previous positions. In an extraordinary final move, members of the group were given direct unfettered access to General Guisan, in spite of repeated calls for their dismissal from the Federal President Pilet-Golaz. As the officers' objectives were broadly in line with the majority of political and civilian opinion at the time, it has been questioned by historian Willi Gautschi whether the term coup as an objective of the group is really appropriate. Many members, including Lindt, continued to form and be part of other secret resistance groups protecting the principal of Switzerland's armed-neutrality, such as the Aktion Nationaler Widerstand.
From 1941 to the end of the war, Lindt was head of the Civil Reconnaissance Service in the Heer und Haus division of the Swiss Army Command. Heer und Haus was conceived by intelligence operative Hans Hausamann and Lindt, using his background in journalism. The division was Switzerland's most important tool in building and strengthening the morale to defend and resist among the Swiss army and civilian population. It did this by developing and maintaining the bond of Swissness across a nation which included a German-speaking majority in the face of Aryan propaganda and Nazi aggression. Heer und Haus provided entertainment and sporting activities for soldiers and shows and festivals for civilians. Most importantly, there were weekly public lectures on the war, including the current military situation and the ongoing will to fight. Lecturers stated clearly that Hitler was the enemy and left people who attended the lectures to spread the word. In this way, an entire communications network pervaded the country completely free of the national press censorship. This was done in the full knowledge that anything written or published would be seized on by the Germans as a violation of Swiss-declared neutrality and justification in their eyes for an invasion.
Immediately after the war, Lindt made his first move into humanitarian work. He took part in organizing the Swiss donation for the benefit of shattered Europe and went to a devastated Berlin as a delegate for the International Red Cross (ICRC) to set up the committee's activities in the Soviet occupation zone.