A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II

by Delattre, Lucas

  Fritz had managed to secure an assignment to Switzerland. This was his third visit to Bern since August. Because of the holidays at the end of the year, there was no other candidate for the trip. By going, he was doing a service for Fräulein von Heimerdinger, to whom he confessed that he was going “to talk to German émigré circles in Switzerland,” no longer attempting to justify his trip by the formalities of his divorce. The only difficulty was to provide a motive for this new absence to his boss, Karl Ritter, who finally signed his orders and asked Fritz to bring back a box of good cigars from Brazil, which he paid for, as usual, in advance. It took Fritz two days to travel from Berlin to Bern. The Anhalter Bahnhof had been bombed: the building was still standing but all the tracks had been destroyed. He had to go to Potsdam to take the train.

  Fritz stayed in Bern over the holidays. Every night, he saw the Americans for many hours. It was on the occasion of this trip that he gave Allen Dulles von Papen’s cables alluding to Cicero, along with many other things. Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer had never had to absorb so much information all at once. Fritz had brought more than two hundred documents, not only copies of cables but also handwritten notes that only Ernst Kocherthaler was able to decipher.

  In the course of this third meeting with Kolbe, the Americans gathered information of all kinds. Night after night, Fritz unleashed a torrent of information. Revelations of a military nature were particularly interesting. Kolbe indicated the location of a Junkers factory where engines for the new Messerschmitt 262 were assembled, the first jet plane in the Luftwaffe (in Dessau, south of Berlin). He also provided one of the places where the new secret German rockets were stored. Fritz Kolbe did not know the name of these weapons, but Professor Sauerbruch had spoken to him of a site where he had seen launching pads aimed at England when he was traveling in Belgium. This was probably Helfaut-Wizernes, near Saint-Omer in the northern part of France that had been annexed to Belgium. The position was bombed some weeks later (from March 11 to September 1, 1944), although it is not known whether the information provided by Fritz had helped to identify the target.

  Fritz Kolbe was well informed about the results of the most recent Allied bombing in Germany and the rest of Europe. He spoke at length about the ruins of Berlin and described daily life in the capital of the Reich. He revealed that the oil fields of Ploesti in Rumania had resumed production after being heavily bombed in August 1943. He also spoke of atrocities committed in the occupied countries. A cable from Athens dated January 2, 1944 revealed, for example, that as reprisal against the resistance, all the male inhabitants of the village of Kalavrita in the Peloponnese had been massacred, including young boys.

  The most substantial information provided by Kolbe concerned the international relations of the Reich, particularly its links with the members of the Axis and with neutral countries close to Germany, such as Spain and Portugal. It was clear from reading the dispatches from Berlin that that Europe was beginning to fall apart and was now held together only by force. Even fear of the Soviets was no longer a sufficient adhesive force.

  With reference to Italy, the cables brought by Fritz sketched an image of a defeated country, torn in two, under the iron grip of the Nazis (the north and the capital had been occupied by the Wehrmacht since September 1943). One dispatch reported recent discussions in Belluno, in the Italian Alps, between Mussolini and the German ambassador to Rome, Rudolf Rahn. “Mussolini attacked the German scorched-earth policy in a recent discussion with Rahn. The former said that this policy would make the Italian people so angry that it would result in preventing any effective Italian cooperation in fighting alongside the Nazis.”

  On Spain, one dispatch described in a few words the state of relations between the two countries: “Conti [Franco] still wants Germans to win…. Unfavorable news from battlefront bothers Conti who wants news of military developments from HQ.” To be sure, Spain was continuing to supply strategic materials to Germany—one dispatch provided the tonnage of tungsten delivered by Spain to Germany between January and September 1943 (more than seven hundred tons). These exports were disguised as “shipments of sardines,” sometimes as “shipments of oranges,” and a little later as “shipments of lead.” But Franco’s ministers were not all in agreement about continuing these exports and some were beginning to think that it was time to shift to the side of the Allies. At the same time, Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, the Reich’s envoy to Lisbon, was warning Berlin that Portugal intended to increase the prices for its raw materials (tungsten, especially) shipped to Germany.

  The Americans were probably a little disappointed that Fritz had brought so little material coming from Japan. But there was an interesting cable from Tokyo, dated December 20, 1943, in which the German ambassador reported that he had heard that “Stalin has recently been a victim of ‘Herzasthma’ and his physicians have urged that he take a rest.”

  The hesitations of central European countries that were allied with Berlin appeared openly. All of a sudden, thanks to Kolbe, it was possible to see the gradual crumbling of Hitler’s alliances, prelude to a direct assumption of power by the Reich authorities. Bulgaria and Rumania seemed to be the first to want to change sides. Sofia, October 29, 1943: “The state of mind of the Bulgarian population is growing much worse.” Bucharest, November 1943: “The situation in Rumania is becoming serious. The arms supplied by Germany remain in the country and are not used in the fight against Russia.” Indications of gradual detachment by each of these allied countries proliferated in the press (there were no more attacks on Stalin, war propaganda grew weaker, and there was better treatment of the Jews, according to the documents provided by Kolbe). With reference to Hungary, Fritz delivered more ambiguous reports. “Hungary remains firmly on the side of the Reich. What can the Americans offer us? Guarantee our borders?” explained Otto Hatz, a high official in the Hungarian intelligence services in mid-December.

  Many documents had to do with France. Fritz Kolbe allowed them to see, almost day by day, the serious crisis of confidence in the fall of 1943 between Vichy and the Reich, which would lead to increased control by Berlin over the regime and the gradual establishment of a “militia state.” In late October 1943, the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, revealed to Ribbentrop that Pétain was trying to make contact with the Allies. The marshal’s immediate entourage was subject to intensified suspicion on the part of the Germans. Conversely, Pierre Laval enjoyed the confidence of the German authorities and was constantly seeking Berlin’s support in his struggle for influence against Pétain. In addition, in a conversation with Roland Krug von Nidda, Otto Abetz’s representative at Vichy, on October 27, 1943, “he requested that he be allowed to undertake the job of cleaning up Pétain’s group of associates.” Another cable signed by Otto Abetz on December 3 considered the possibility of forcing Pétain to resign without directly offending French public opinion. “For French consumption,” Abetz wrote, “it is essential to show that Pétain failed in an historic mission and led the country almost to ruin…. Inside France, the Pétain regime produced national stagnation and reaction.”

  Abetz wrote again on December 14, 1943: “The increasing poverty of the French laboring masses has created the fear of a gradual shift toward communism.” And on December 16: “Doriot’s headquarters imply that they do not wish to participate in the government unless the Cabinet is selected by Doriot himself.” And on December 19, a dispatch provided a statistical summary of attacks committed by the French Resistance. The figures gave evidence of a continuous increase.

  And then there was an astonishing document dated December 24, 1943: a list of thirty-five prominent French personalities that the Gestapo proposed to have arrested, although it had not been able to reach its goal, “the various German authorities not having succeeded in coming to an agreement” on those arrests. As a consequence, Otto Abetz decided to send the list to Berlin in order to get definitive instructions from his ministry. The list, presented in alphabetical order, contained no names of
political figures, except for that of a former minister, Lucien Lamoureux, characterized as an “active radical-socialist” but defended by the German military authorities against the Gestapo. Principally targeted were the mayors of a certain number of French towns characterized as “opponents of collaboration,” “pro-Jewish Gaullists,” “Freemasons,” or even “members of the Rotary Club.” The mayors of Caen, Rennes, Rouen, Poitiers, Abbeville, Lunéville, Versailles, Fontainebleau, Chartres, Pontivy, and even Vichy were suspected. There were also some prefects (Alpes-Maritimes, Hérault, Calvados). But in every case Ambassador Abetz or the military occupation authorities pointed out that there was no evidence of an offense and refused to authorize the arrests. There were also important figures from the world of finance, such as Henri Ardant, the influential president of the Société Générale (the Gestapo denounced his “anti-German attitude,” but the military authorities defended him) and Yves Bréart de Boisanger, governor of the Bank of France (called “disloyal” by the Gestapo, but Hans-Richard Hemmen, the Reich’s delegate for economic and financial questions to the French authorities, opposed his arrest. There were also several actors: Jean-Louis Barrault, Marie Bell, Béatrice Bretty (“the embassy expresses reservations, because they are politically insignificant; very much appreciated as artists”), and personalities of the intellectual world like the publisher Jean Fayard, whom the embassy defended because he had “published books favorable to National Socialism before the war.” In the end, the composition of this “blacklist” had no consequences. The weakness of the accusations, the competition among the different occupation authorities, and the complexity of the protective networks were stronger than the Gestapo.

  Bern/Berlin, early January 1944

  Because of the holiday at the end of the year, Fritz had stayed an entire week in Bern. He returned to Berlin on Sunday, January 2. Later, speaking of this trip, he remembered that he had returned home in a state of advanced fatigue, “not at all rested or rejuvenated, but pale with exhaustion, having gone without sleep for several nights, and always a little nervous.” The last adjective is a euphemism: Every time he returned to Germany, Fritz was terrified at the idea of being picked up by the Gestapo when he got off the train. But this time again, he could return home as though nothing had happened.

  In Bern, the Americans were staggering under the workload. Every night between Christmas and New Year’s Day had been spent talking with Kolbe. During the day, Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer wrote summaries that they immediately turned over to their technical staff for coding. Dulles made several reports to Washington after each of his conversations with “Wood.” He used some general elements of analysis to supply material for his telephone conversations with Washington headquarters, which took place every evening in the form of news flashes. Cables went off day and night. On the basis of the “secret cables of the Reich” (geheime Reichssachen) brought by Fritz, the Kappa messages were developed for London and Washington. Once there, they would be reworked and summarized under the name of “Boston series.” As usual, the OSS Bern experts had to be particularly careful to disguise all proper names. Von Papen became Milit and Sükrü Saracoglu, the Turkish prime minister, Harem. Numan Menemencioglu, the foreign minister, was Penni. Otto Köcher, the German envoy to Bern, was called Lomax, and Switzerland was designated as Rasho. In the period from Christmas to the middle of January, OSS Bern was working at top speed. It took at least two weeks after every visit from Kolbe to digest all the documents that he had brought.

  To get the materials from “George Wood” to London and Washington, the Americans had had access to a new means of communication since the fall of 1943. Of course, the telegraph remained the favored means of transmission—there was nothing faster or more secure. But since the liberation of Corsica in October, Allied troops were no longer very far from Switzerland, and OSS contacts in the Resistance made it possible to transmit documents through Geneva, Lyon, and Marseille to Calvi or Bastia. This system was useful for conveying copies of original documents or maps. Files were first microfilmed. Then the precious little package was given to a locomotive engineer on the train between Geneva and Lyon. The railroad man placed the package in a little hatch above the boiler, ready to destroy it quickly in case of an untimely visit from the Gestapo. In Lyon, a “friend” received the envelope and carried it to Marseille by bicycle. From there, a fishing boat took it to Corsica, where it was put on board a plane for Algiers, then on to London and Washington. Between the departure and the arrival of the package, ten to twelve days went by.

  The quantity and quality of documents supplied by “George Wood” in the course of this Christmas visit considerably increased his credibility. Even before Fritz’s departure for Berlin, Allen Dulles had taken up his pen to sum up their third encounter: “I now firmly believe in his good faith and am ready to stake my reputation that they are genuine. I base my conclusion on internal evidence and on the nature of the documents themselves,” he wrote on December 29, 1943 to his usual correspondents in the OSS. In Washington as well, they were beginning to become convinced of the good faith of the Berlin agent. “Seemingly authentic and vastly more interesting,” was now the word in General Donovan’s entourage (telegram from Washington headquarters to the OSS London office, 7 January 1944).

  On January 10, the head of the OSS decided to present the first fourteen Kappa/Boston cables to President Roosevelt. The file was extremely confidential, and its distribution correspondingly restricted: There was a copy for the White House, another for the State Department, one for the War Department, and one for the Navy. And then a few selected items were given to one or another department of the OSS, especially counterespionage (X-2), but also the research and analysis department. A few fragments were communicated to the army intelligence services (G2). In all, no more than about ten people were kept informed of the revelations from “George Wood.”

  Berlin/Bern, February–March 1944

  It was impossible for Fritz to return to Switzerland after his long stay at Christmas. Too many absences would have been noticed. To get around the difficulty, he approached a colleague who had had the good fortune, in early 1944, to be placed on a list of regular couriers for Bern. A member of the Nazi Party, Willy Pohle had all the requisite qualities for the position. But Fritz trusted him, knowing that he could give him his personal correspondence with no fear. Fritz even dared to tell him, as he had already confided in Fräulein von Heimerdinger, that he wished to inform certain “German émigré circles in Switzerland” about what was really going on in Germany. Willy Pohle willingly agreed to be of service to him. After all, this kind of small gesture was common in the ministry. Fritz was able to show his gratitude. He asked his colleague to go to see Walter Schuepp in person in Bern (Gryphenhübeliweg 19), to withdraw the sum of fifty Swiss francs “due from a friend” (not telling him, of course, that this was left over from the two hundred francs given to him by Dulles). Fritz suggested to Pohle that he use some of that money for his personal expenses and that he buy cigars with the rest, in order to be able to offer some to Karl Ritter.

  Professor Sauerbruch also had occasion to go to Switzerland from time to time for conferences or surgical operations. Most of the time he went to Zurich. When the opportunity arose—as it did, for example, in mid-February 1944—Fritz asked him to mail a letter to Walter Schuepp. The explanation that he gave to the surgeon was the same one he had given to Pohle: He said that he had regular connections with “German émigré circles.” Fritz would never have dared to tell the surgeon the truth.

  “Sauerbruch doesn’t know what’s in the letter. If you should be in contact with him don’t give me away. He would be deeply hurt,” Fritz wrote in a letter that he passed to the Americans through Ernst Kocherthaler toward the middle of February 1944. This was a letter of eight crowded pages, seven in tight script and one typed single-spaced. Once again, Kocherthaler had to be enlisted to transcribe the script. It was cast in the form of a dialogue between two fictional figures who
agreed that the outcome of the war was already decided, and it supported this thesis by a sort of survey of the world situation in which the evidence was drawn from diplomatic cables supplied by Fritz and other sources of inside information. Fritz had no doubt wanted to amuse himself by using a fictional register. Had the purpose been to conceal the nature of his message, the device was not very prudent: If a letter like this one had been opened, it would have led him to the gallows. “I passed many sleepless nights when the ‘material’ was on its way,” Fritz confessed after the war. The letter ended hurriedly: “I have to stop. Too bad. What good are these air raids?”

  In Bern, this letter troubled and confused Allen Dulles: “It is hard to decipher all the cases as well as to differentiate … Foreign Office documents or policy from Wood’s own opinions,” he cabled to his Washington colleagues on February 21. A few days later, Dulles explained that “this letter was written in a hurry and part of it was apparently composed during an air raid. These facts may explain the inconsistencies.”