group were far-fetched. Nevertheless, it is apparent that in or before October 1944 Fritz Kern became a member of the resistance group. Popitz, Canaris and Oster were all unmasked and during the closing weeks of the war executed for their treason. Through a sense of duty, by the time the University of Bonn was destroyed in a bomb attack on 18 October 1944, Kern was back in town. He survived the destruction and made his way to Berlin, but before Christmas 1944 was back in Kißlegg. In February 1945 Fritz Kern entrusted his German assets to the custody of a lawyer in the border-town of Lindau, and on 27 April he crossed into Switzerland. Two days the Swiss authorities arranged for Kern's wife and child to be "most gently kidnapped" (to quote the English language term used in an allied report of the matter) and bought across the frontier to join him. Had Kern been aware that the German surrender was less than two weeks away, and that he would be banned from returning to Germany for the next three years, it is far from certain that he would have chosen the "emigration" option. Swiss exile After May 1945 the eastern third of Germany became parts of Poland and the Soviet Union while the western two thirds were divided between the principal allied powers into four military occupation zones. The military occupation authorities saw no reason to prioritize the return of exiled Germans, which was accordingly prohibited by default. It was not the 1918-style armistice that Kern had anticipated and for which he had been prepared. In Switzerland he had no money and no work permit. Instead of a quick return home he was stuck in Basel with his wife and their youngest child, surviving on the small amounts of income that his wife was able to earn from domestic work in the homes of strangers (which was allowed without a work permit). It was a period of acute privation. Optimistic that they would soon be allowed home, Kern remained near the frontier, in Basel. As far as hunger and his always delicate health permitted, he worked in the libraries there on his latest academic preoccupations. After accepting that the enforced Swiss exile was not coming to an end any time soon he moved to Fribourg, settling near the university. He was able to obtain some support for historical research