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

  “realized what that meant”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  undying memory of the city: Two visits to Paris (March 1928 and June 1929) are recorded in the Fritz Kolbe file in the Foreign Ministry archives.

  the legal affairs department: Fritz Kolbe spent only a few months in this post. “Course of Life.”

  Germany for interrogation: The two agents of the Intelligence Service, Sigismund Payne Best and Richard Stevens, were to spend the rest of the war in detention in Germany. The Venlo episode led the British authorities to refuse all contact with representatives of the German resistance for the rest of the war.

  settle some internal scores: Otto Strasser, an old rival of Hitler’s and brother of Gregor Strasser (one of the leading figures of the SA, who was assassinated in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives), was accused of having conspired with the British in the Munich attempt, which made it possible to remove him definitively from the circles of power.

  Chapter 3

  place of relative freedom: The meetings in the Café Kottler were described by Fritz to an American journalist who interviewed him after the war. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  “association” created by fritz klobe:: “The Story of George.”

  work for the Wehrmacht: The Walter Girgner company, established in 1932, still exists (Trumpf Blusen, Munich). It is now one of the largest shirtmakers in Europe.

  of a confirmed bachelor: “In Berlin, I met up again with my friends from the youth movements. It was as though we had never been apart. All my friends, except for two, had the same political convictions that I did. Some of them were virulent anti-Nazis who wanted to take action…. One of them lost his post in the Berlin city administration, two others were sentenced to two-and three-year terms in concentration camps. Another, who was arrested while working on a clandestine printing press, hanged himself in prison.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

  explained after the war: “The Story of George.” The phrase can also be found in the autobiographical document of May 15, 1945, and in the document written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  “Hitler and the party”: Based on “Es geht alles vorüber / es geht alles vorbei,” a famous song by Fred Raymond, a popular Viennese composer of the 1920s, who also wrote “I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg.” Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives, College Park.

  at certain late hours: The episode of the anonymous letters is narrated in detail in “The Story of George,” as well as in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  “Among craven humankind”: Excerpt from the song of the knights, Wallenstein’s Camp by Schiller, tr. Charles Passage (New York: Ungar, 1958), p. 40. Schiller’s songs in the Café Kottler are mentioned in the biographical document of Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  “devil take them!”: Ibid.

  “general of all time”: In German: Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten or Gröfaz.

  superiors, in professional terms: Allen Dulles later wrote that Kolbe’s “employers have an excellent opinion of him.” Letter from Allen Dulles to OSS headquarters in Washington, October 30, 1943, National Archives.

  “have been a Nazi!”: Fritz Kolbe said that he had “continually been asked to join the party.” “The Story of George.” “The Nazis would have liked George to join them—they desired energetic men in their ranks—but George refused…. Again and again the Nazis tried to get him into their organization.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  to by his superiors: “During the day he worked hard at his official post, even on Sundays. Only if his activity was considered outstanding could he keep exempt from military service.” “The Story of George.”

  father of the Reformation: On Martin Luther, see his portrait in Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Die Braune Elite (Darmstadt, 1999), v. 2, pp. 179–91.

  visas for foreign travel: Fritz Kolbe worked for Martin Luther and the “German” department until the summer or winter of 1940 (the dates differ according to available documents). Curriculum vitae prepared after the war (undated) and biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  extensive list of contacts: Martin Luther had managed to avoid legal trouble after involvement in some murky affairs when he was a municipal councilor in Zehlendorf (a Berlin district) shortly after Hitler’s accession to power. Döscher, Die Braune Elite.

  away, on Rauchstrasse: It was Martin Luther who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, where a dozen high officials brought together by Reinhard Heydrich agreed in the course of an hour and a half on the practical organization of the “final solution.” In Ribbentrop’s name, Martin Luther secured agreement that all measures concerning Jews outside the borders of the Reich (for example, in occupied France) would require close cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, which would consequently have veto power over the question. It never made use of that power. Beginning in March 1942, Martin Luther organized, with Adolf Eichmann, the deportation of the Jews of France. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich; Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978).

  “Jewish race in Europe”: “Annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”: expression used by Adolf Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag in Berlin, January 30, 1939.

  and a “Russian desk”: The “Jewish desk” had been established within a few months of the Nazi accession to power, while the ministry was still headed by Constantin von Neurath. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

  then a French protectorate: The “Madagascar plan” was an old idea that had been revived in Poland in the early 1930s. The French Popular Front authorities had also thought about it (there was a fear in Paris of being submerged by Jewish immigration from Germany). The plan had also been defended by the English, who wanted to do everything to prevent German Jews from going to Palestine. With the Blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940, Germany contemplated a radical version of the plan: the expulsion of French citizens living there would have made possible the establishment of German control over the island, intended to become a large ghetto. Administration of the island was to be turned over to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. In the Foreign Ministry, Franz Rademacher worked in close collaboration with Adolf Eichmann, head of the “Jewish desk” of department IV of the RSHA (the Gestapo). Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

  “the first to disappear”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  the game of chess: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Fritz Kolbe’s passion for chess is also mentioned in the article by Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  the most hardened Nazis: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  “waves kiss the beach?”: Words from a popular song composed by a Pomeranian poet, Martha Mueller, in 1907.

  corridors of the ministry: The circumstances of this first meeting with Maria Fritsch are set out in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe; also in a document by Maria Fritsch (October 1972), Gudrun and Martin Fritsch collection, Berlin. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  Sauerbruch was a great doctor : Ferdinand Sauerbruch was born in 1875. His career began before the First World War. In 1928, he was appointed director of the prestigious surgical service of the Charité hospital in Berlin. He was a prominent figure in German public life. A volatile and authoritarian personality, he took part in the great political debates of the time. His relationship with Nazism was ambiguous.

  be moved at will: Sauerbruch had experimented with this artificial hand notably on Italian officers and soldiers during the invasion of Abyssinia after October 1935 (when Ethiopians took prisoners, it was not unusual for them to cut off right hands). Source: Pierre Kehr, surgeon in Strasbourg, former assistant of Adolphe Jung.

  self-importance or even vanity: Sauerbruch bore
the illustrious title of “court privy councilor” (Geheimer Hofrat or Geheimrat, a distinction presented to him at the royal court of Bavaria before World War I), and that of “Prussian councilor of state,” presented by Göring in 1934. At the annual NSDAP congress in Munich in 1937, he had received the highest political-scientific distinction of the Nazi regime, the “National Prize,” conceived by Hitler as an alternative to the Nobel Prize (which the Nazis hated since it had been attributed in 1936 to the dissident journalist Carl von Ossietzky). During the Second World War, Sauerbruch was appointed “doctor general of the armies” (beginning in 1942).

  unions—his hemorrhoids: Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Mes souvenirs de chirurgien, French translation (Paris, 1952).

  in the Reich chancellery: “At the time of Hitler’s first battles in Munich, Sauerbruch had endeavored, without paying attention to Hitler’s political aims, to do only his duty to him as a doctor, without becoming involved in the struggles of the new regime, which he did not approve in any way. Hitler is supposed to have said to him at the time: ‘As long as I live, nothing will happen to you.’” Adolphe Jung, unpublished notebooks written in Berlin during the war (Frank and Marie-Christine Jung collection, Strasbourg).

  in the concentration camps: Sauerbruch was head of the prestigious Surgery Society of Berlin and of the departments of medicine of the highest scientific research bodies in the Reich. At an interrogation in a de-Nazification proceeding in April 1949, he indicated that he knew nothing of medical experiments in the concentration camps. “I only did my duty as a doctor and a soldier,” he said. But it now seems that Sauerbruch allowed the performance, without opposing them, of some of the worst medical experiments of the century. Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Mythos Sauerbruch,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2000. See also Notker Hammerstein, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1999).

  of speech and action: “A great doctor like him is one of the few persons to remain entirely free. He can permit himself many things impossible for others.” Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, reprinted 1997.

  the biologist Eugen Fischer: Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) was head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of “anthropology, studies of heredity, and eugenics.” He was one of the most important theoreticians of the racial doctrines from which the Nazis drew their inspiration.

  General Ludwig Beck: Ludwig Beck (1880–1944) was at the center of all the circles opposed to the regime. He was to be closely associated with the preparation of the attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944. Proposed as head of state in the event the putsch succeeded, he committed suicide when he learned of its failure.

  invasion of Czechoslovakia: The meetings of the Wednesday Club took place on one or two Wednesdays each month. Each of the members played host in turn. The purpose of the association, according to by-laws dating from 1863, was to foster “scientific discussion” among a few figures of the first rank of all disciplines. The sixteen members of the club were exclusively male, chosen on the basis of cooptation, “independently of their personal orientations.” See Klaus Scholder, Die Mittwochsgesellschaft (Berlin, 1982).

  Chapter 4

  Prussia, September 18, 1941 : Fritz Kolbe was sent on a mission to Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia (Wolfsschanze, the “wolf’s lair”) from September 18 to 29, 1941. Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

  Ambassador Karl Ritter: Fritz Kolbe was appointed private secretary (Vorzimmermann) to this high ministry official in 1940. Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Karl Ritter (1883–1968) had been an official at the Foreign Ministry since 1924. He had been in charge of the department of economic affairs (Wirtschaftsabteilung). In July 1937, he had been appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.

  Ministry since the 1930s: In the Almanach de Gotha of 1935, we find that Karl Ritter is in charge of “the national economy and reparations policy” in the “Foreign Office of the Reich.”

  “ambassador on speical mission,”: In German: Botschafter z. b. V. (zur besonderen Verwendung). After the war, Ritter claimed that he had agreed to work for Ribbentrop in 1939 on condition of not being involved in the “routine” of the ministry. He said that he had been a “free electron.” Source: interrogation of Karl Ritter for the Nuremberg tribunal, July 24, 1947 (U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Hans Jürgen Döscher collection, Osnabrück) Karl Ritter and Friedrich-Wilhelm Gaus (the ministry’s chief lawyer), were, according to Fritz Kolbe, the only two diplomats in the ministry to “have permanent and unlimited access to Joachim von Ribbentrop.” Source: conversations of Fritz Kolbe with the De Witt C. Poole commission (September 26, 1945), National Archives.

  away from the ministry: Karl Ritter was always with the foreign minister, whether at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia or at Fuschl castle near Salzburg. Boston document no. 469, National Archives.

  dangerous pro-Nazi agitator: This expulsion took place after a failed putsch by the “Integralists,” a Brazilian fascist movement drawn to the Third Reich and very strongly supported by a Nazi Party cell based in the German embassy with the full agreement of Karl Ritter.

  return from South Africa: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

  “highest circles of power!”: Ibid.

  its content for Ritter: Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

  wrote a few years later: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

  went to the opera: Karl Ritter was present at major German social events. He was on board the first transatlantic flight of the Hindenburg in May 1936, the famous zeppelin that crashed tragically a year later not far from New York. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.

  didn’t like him either: Karl Ritter was considered a little too lukewarm an anti-Semite. During the Weimar Republic he had wanted to marry a young woman from the Jewish Ullstein family, one of the largest newspaper publishers in Berlin. In addition, he was never a member of the SS, unlike many high officials in the ministry.

  in the nineteenth century: Around 1820, demobilized Prussian soldiers were hired by Emperor Pedro I of Brazil to establish an army worthy of the name, defend the newly independent country, and make war on Argentina. This emperor married Amelie von Leuchtenberg, a Bavarian princess. There are still German towns in southern Brazil (Blumenau, Pomerode).

  informed his Berlin office: Source: Foreign Ministry, Berlin.

  and even the curtains!: Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell Tagebücher (Berlin, 1988).

  a swastika in its claws: Internal circular of the Foreign Ministry on duty uniforms, November 27, 1942. See also Jill Halcomb, Uniforms and Insignia of the German Foreign Office (Crown/Agincourt, 1984).

  between Ribbentrop and Hitler: Walther Hewel was one of the few high-ranking Nazis who had experienced the outside world: He had lived for several years on the island of Java, where he had managed a tea plantation for an Anglo-Dutch company. Enrico Syring, article on W. Hewel in Die Braune Elite, v. 2.

  “all its natural resources!”: In May and June 1941, the Wehrmacht high command gave orders intended to guarantee the “unprecedented rigor” demanded by Hitler with respect to Russia. Soviet prisoners of war were not treated in conformity with the norms of the international laws of war. Between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1942, more than two million Soviet prisoners died in German detention.

  “of the Geneva Conventions”: Informal conversations transcribed by Heinrich Heims at Hitler’s East Prussia headquarters, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 1980).

  “sailor”) and “Lili Marlene”: “Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern” was composed for a film by Kurt Hoffmann, Paradies der Junggesellen (Bachelors’ Paradise), with Heinz Rühmann. “Lili Marlene” was composed in 1938 by Norbert Schulze, a popular composer of light music. The version sung by Lale Andersen had become the unofficial anthem of the Wehrmacht.

  complained about German aggression: “Course of Life,” personal
archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection.

  U-boats against American ships: The Greer was attacked off the coast of Iceland in early September 1941. A few months earlier, the Robin Moor had been sunk in the South Atlantic.

  did not feel comfortable: “In Ritter’s staff, I had the chance to see with my own eyes all the atrocities … of the Nazis…. [N]ow I could see what war really was!” “Course of Life.”

  plane, a Junkers Ju 52: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

  a pickax or a hammer: Reports from the Einsatzgruppen on the massacres in Russia circulated in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin beginning in December 1941. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

  went to the cinema: It is not impossible that Fritz and Maria went to the Capitol cinema, near the zoo, where on October 31, 1941 the first color film from the Ufa studios was shown, a musical comedy with waltzes, fox-trots, and frills, entitled Women Are Much Better Diplomats, with two stars of the time, Maria Rökk and Willy Fritsch. Nor is it impossible that they saw The Important Thing Is to Be Happy, with Heinz Rühmann, which was shown at the Gloria Palast in the spring of 1941.

  him home several times: “Sauerbruch and Kolbe became good friends.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  the despised “old system”: The meeting with Schreiber is recounted in detail in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. Georg Schreiber (1882–1963) was simultaneously a theologian, a university professor, and a politician. The pope had given him the honorific title of “prelate” in 1922. A Zentrum deputy in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933, he avoided Nazi harassment with the help of Ferdinand Sauerbruch, who gave him a medical certificate enabling him to avoid a forced transfer to East Prussia. The prelate nevertheless had to give up all his duties at the University of Münster and accept a post as professor emeritus. Source: Professor Rudolf Morsey, Neustadt (former colleague of Georg Schreiber after the war).