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

  He introduced himself: “Despite my Protestant background, we became good friends.” “Course of Life.”

  “crimes of the Nazis?”: Clemens August von Galen (1878–1946), bishop of Münster, protested vigorously against the euthanasia measures implemented by the Nazi regime in three public sermons (July–August 1941). This public intervention brought about a halt to the program of extermination of the mentally and physically handicapped.

  “one reason or another”: The prelate is supposed to have spoken the following words to Fritz: “It has nothing to do with high treason when you break your word given to a criminal.” “Course of Life.” “Prälat Schreiber … had confirmed [Fritz] by declaring him free of an oath to Hitler,” explains Ernst Kocherthaler in “The Background of the George Story” (1964, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney). At the time of this conversation with Georg Schreiber, Fritz Kolbe had the intention of fleeing Germany by using a network of smugglers across the Swiss border. Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

  in Germany’s best interests: In May 1943, an internal circular from Ribbentrop warned the members of the Foreign Ministry that “any defeatist language will be severely punished.” Officials were called on to give an example and not influence “public opinion” (Volksstimmung) negatively. Source: Foreign Ministry.

  was never carried out: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  him by a friend: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  to go to Switzerland: Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe in Berlin in early January 1947; personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

  the middle of 1942: One of the best-informed figures in the Reich was without any doubt the chief of foreign intelligence for the SS, Walter Schellenberg. In early August 1942, Schellenberg was seized by a great sense of uncertainty. At a meeting with his boss Heinrich Himmler in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, he offered to work for a separate peace with the Western powers, a solution that would enable Germany to maintain its conquests without weakening itself further. Himmler gave him a free hand to sound out the Western powers on condition that he spoke to no one about it. He explained that if word of this conversation reached the führer’s ears, he would deny everything and would not “cover” him. Walter Schellenberg, Mémoires (Paris, 1957).

  of his own country: “How to get rid of the Nazis? I was of the opinion that there was only one way to get there: the defeat of Germany,” Fritz wrote in the autobiographical document of May 15, 1945. “Wood’s opinion is that we should continue the fight until a definite military decision against the present gang is obtained. He says there is no hope of any effective action being taken by opposition groups.” “Wood’s oral report,” OSS Bern message to Washington, April 12, 1944, National Archives.

  yet heard of Goerdeler: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (1884–1945), along with Ludwig Beck, was one of the principal figures in the German resistance. A former mayor of Leipzig, he would have become head of government if the July 20, 1944 putsch had succeeded. But the failure of the attempt against Hitler signed his death warrant. He was executed on February 2, 1945 at the Plötzensee prison in Berlin.

  of the Kreisau Circle: The Kreisau Circle (Kreisauer Kreis) took its name from the meeting place for a group of opponents of the Nazi regime around Helmuth James von Moltke, who owned a large estate in Kreisau in Lower Silesia (now Krzyzowa in Poland).

  perfectly ordinary passenger train: Source: Alfred Gottwalt, curator for railroads at the Technical Museum in Berlin.

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  “combined into a whole”: Letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, April 1882.

  plotted here and there: A core of conspirators around General Hans Oster had been very active since 1938 in the Abwehr, the military intelligence service headed by Admiral Canaris. In the army, networks were taking steps to eliminate Hitler. In March 1943, a bomb concealed in the führer’s plane flying from Smolensk to Berlin did not explode because of a defect in the detonator. A few days later in Berlin, Hitler left an exhibition early where a young officer loaded with explosives had planned to blow himself up in his presence. Another network, the “Red Orchestra” (Rote Kapelle), which was working for Moscow, had been brutally dismantled in late 1942. Its leaders had been executed by hanging in the Plötzensee prison in Berlin in December 1942. In February 1943, a group of young students in Munich (the “White Rose”) had been arrested and all its members executed for distributing leaflets calling on the German people to overthrow the regime.

  without shivering in fear: The information about the gong used during air raids comes from the archives of the Foreign Ministry. In offensive terms, Allied aviation was really operational only from late 1942 on. Beginning in early 1943, American and British planes relentlessly dropped their loads of bombs on German cities (the former in broad daylight, the latter at night). This massive deluge affected first of all the large metropolises of the Ruhr, then the rest of the country as far as Berlin. Berlin was hit for the first time in mid-January 1943. Fritz Kolbe, like all Foreign Ministry diplomats, was instructed to place a container of water in the cabinets where he kept his documents. In case of fire, water vapor was supposed to protect papers from burning (archives of the Foreign Ministry). After each attack, there were special distributions of food and an improvement in rations (cigarettes, coffee, meat).

  ever, one for hesitation: On February 2, 1943, the Germans were beaten at Stalingrad; this spectacular defeat marked a turning point. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad, three months after the British victory at El Alamein, seemed to herald the end of German advances. Paradoxically, the fighting energy of the Nazi regime was strengthened. They had now entered into “total war” (the expression used by Joseph Goebbels at a rally at the Sports Palace in Berlin on February 18, 1943). No longer able to win major successes on the military fronts abroad, the murderous energy of the Nazis turned inward: the culmination of the deportations of the Jews of the Reich took place in the spring of 1943.

  1942 or early 1943: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  “to the Hitler regime”: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

  completely trusted each other: Kolbe mentions Karl Dumont in most of the autobiographical documents written after the war.

  Waldersee at Professor Sauerbruch’s: Alfred Graf von Waldersee (1898–1984) was a reserve officer in the Wehrmacht. He had been attached to military headquarters in France and then in Stalingrad (from which he had been evacuated after being wounded in 1942). In civilian life, he was an industrialist and businessman. His mother’s family, the Haniels, owned large coal mines in the Ruhr. In April 1944, he became director of Franz Haniel & Kompanie GmbH (coal merchants and river transport). His wife was Baroness Etta von le Fort (1902–78), who had joined the Red Cross at the beginning of the Second World War. Source: Dr. Bernhard Weber-Brosamer (Franz Haniel & Kompanie, Duisburg).

  at the Charité hospital: An Alsatian surgeon who stayed in Strasbourg after the Reich annexed Alsace in 1940, Dr. Jung (1902–92), as an Alsatian, had been considered a Volksdeutscher since 1940, that is, a member of the Germanic community without full German citizenship. Since Germany needed physicians and surgeons to replace those sent to the front, Adolphe Jung was transferred to Lake Constance and then Berlin in 1942. Source: Frank and Marie-Christine Jung, son and daughter-in-law of Adolphe Jung, Strasbourg.

  “archbishop of Lyon”: “The Story of George.” This document notes that Cardinal Gerlier “had saved a lot of Jewish children.” In the fall of 1942, Cardinal Gerlier was in fact informed of the danger of arrest hanging over him (we do not know whether the signal came from Fritz Kolbe, but it’s not impossible). Finally, the Germans did not dare to imprison him. Source: Bernard Berthod (Lyon), biographer of Cardinal Gerlier, conversation with the author, December 2002.

  large store in Strasbourg: Robert Jung managed a large store in Strasbourg. He was criticized after the war for doing busine
ss with the occupying forces. Source: Francis Rosenstiel, Strasbourg.

  had to work together: Personal notebooks of Adolphe Jung written in Berlin during the war. Unpublished document kindly made available by Frank and Marie-Christine Jung in Strasbourg.

  Sauerbruch’s staff in Berlin: This assignment was probably secured through the recommendation of the French surgeon René Leriche, who had a position in France comparable to Sauerbruch’s. Adolphe Jung had been one of René Leriche’s closest colleagues in Strasbourg. Source: Jung family, Strasbourg.

  Wilhelmstrasse 74–76: The file on Gertrud von Heimerdinger disappeared from the Foreign Ministry archives, probably in the course of Allied bombing at the end of the war.

  she shared his opinions: “One got so one could almost smell the difference between enemy and friend,” Fritz told Edward P. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

  had been cut adrift: Fritz learned much later that Gertrud von Heimerdinger was close to Adam von Trott zu Solz, a diplomat associated with the Kreisau Circle (von Trott was executed the following year, after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler). She was also close to other figures opposed to the regime (Beppo Roemer, Richard Kuenzer, Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, Herbert Mumm von Schwarzenstein). Rudolf Pechel, Deutscher Widerstand. After the war, she worked for the American occupation administration in Wiesbaden. German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file.

  the opportunity might arise: Fritz Kolbe reviewed approximately 250 diplomatic cables a day. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

  danger and disillusionment: “People no longer cared how the war ended, just as long as it ended. They didn’t care who won,” according to Mary Bancroft’s German housekeeper (Bancroft was an agent and Allen Dulles’s mistress in Switzerland) in the summer of 1943. Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (New York: Morrow, 1983), p. 178.

  “one of the last times”: Account by August von Kageneck, wounded on the Russian front in the summer of 1942, in Examen de conscience (Paris: Perrin, 1996), p. 81.

  finally near Tempelhof airport: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

  telephone number was 976.981: Portrait of Fritz Kolbe (2 pages), August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives. A few months later the Americans corrected the telephone number, which ended in 0, not 1. But they never used it.

  of being “taken away”: Abgeholt: the word alone summed up the terror inspired by the Gestapo.

  thoroughly, nothing more serious: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

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  by a personal chauffeur: Allen Dulles’s chauffeur was a Frenchman named Édouard Pignarre, totally loyal and extraordinarily discreet. Source: Cordelia Dodson-Hood, conversation with the author, Washington, March 21, 2002.

  ambassador to Switzerland: The details about Allen Dulles and the Bern office of the OSS are drawn from several sources. An internal undated 36-page OSS document describes in detail the activities of the Bern office during the war (titled Bern, National Archives). The two standard biographies of Allen Dulles (by James Srodes and Peter Grose) as well as extensive correspondence with James Srodes, have also been very helpful. The memoirs of Mary Bancroft, colleague and mistress of Allen Dulles in Switzerland during the war (Autobiography of a Spy), are full of descriptions and anecdotes.

  a few decades earlier: Dulles was “well born, well bred, well connected.” John Waller, The Unseen War in Europe (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 272.

  a Wall Street lawyer: Allen Dulles worked at Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm founded in 1879 that still exists. According to Peter Sichel, “he was a rainmaker.” Interview, May 25, 2002, New York.

  a friend to Germany: This reputation injured Dulles, who was often accused after the Second World War of having been close to certain German financial interests compromised with Nazism (notably the Schrœder Bank in London, connected to the banker Kurt von Schrœder in Cologne, who had helped finance Hitler’s rise to power).

  seizing the southern zone: Since June 1941, there had been a German customs control station at Annemasse. Its mission was to exercise control over goods and people moving between Switzerland and France. It frequently moved along the border. On November 11, 1942, three days after the Allied landing in North Africa, the Wehrmacht did away with the unoccupied zone. The French-Swiss border was thenceforth completely closed.

  now based in Algiers: Lieutenant-Colonel Pourchot, head of the Deuxième Bureau in Switzerland, became one of Dulles’s preferred informants. “Shortly after the Deuxième Bureau was suppressed by Vichy its financing was taken over jointly by OSS and the American Military Attaché, General Legge.” Internal OSS Bern report on France (French Intelligence), undated, National Archives.

  disposal in occupied France: Pierre de Bénouville, of the Combat network, was a regular visitor to Herrengasse 23, where he was fed and lodged.

  mistress of Admiral Canaris: Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Third Reich. An ultraconservative nationalist, he nevertheless tried discreetly to counter Hitler’s belligerent plans. His double game finally came into the open and he lost his post in February 1944. He was executed in April 1945. See Heinz Höhne, Canaris, tr. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (New York: Doubleday, 1979).

  military intelligence (Abwehr): The Abwehr, which designated all the intelligence services of the German army, was expert in counterespionage. The agency was established by Prussia in 1866, during the war with Austria.

  also became preferred sources: In a letter of December 10, 1943, Hugh R. Wilson (a high official in the OSS) wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle: “On the second of November we informed our representative in Bern that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had instructed us to do what we could to detach the satellite countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania immediately from the Axis.” Foreign Relations of the United States 1943, vol. 1.

  Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Masson: Lieutenant-Colonel Masson’s services had several irons in the fire: their contacts with the Americans did not keep them from sustained dialogue with the German intelligence services, headed by Walter Schellenberg, who went to Switzerland several times in 1943.

  a large German community: The Swiss NSDAP had been banned since the assassination of its leader Wilhelm Gustloff by the Yugoslavian student David Frankfurter in February 1936 in Davos. Nazi Germany attached little importance to the country’s neutrality, as demonstrated by the 1935 kidnapping of the German pacifist militant Berthold Jacob by German agents in Basel.

  (Sicherheitsdienst, foreign intelligence services: Headed by Walter Schellenberg, the SD was under the Central Security Service of the Reich, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), another name for Heinrich Himmler’s police empire. The SD was Department VI of the RSHA, the Gestapo Department IV.

  “unconscious” of the Germans: See Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy.

  Ecumenical Council of Churches: Willem Visser’t Hooft: his friends called him simply Wim, and in Dulles’s secret correspondence with Washington, he was merely number 474. Sauerbruch had number 835 for the OSS, while Kocherthaler seems not to have had a number.

  Dulles’s close collaborators: This visit was full of meaning for Dulles: The threat of a shift of German liberal elites toward communism was very real. This appeal was all the more troubling because it came from a man, von Trott, who had had some of his schooling in England and knew the United States well.

  “unconditional surrender” of Germany: Policy defined at the Casablanca conference between Roosevelt and Churchill, from January 24 to 26, 1943. This strategy seemed dangerous to Allen Dulles because in his view it risked humiliating the Germans and driving them into the arms of the Russians. “We rendered impossible internal revolution in Germany and thereby prolonged the war and the destruction,” Dulles wrote after the war. Letter of January 3, 1949 to Chester Wilmot (Australian war correspondent), Allen W. Dulles papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton.

  contact for the future: Relation
s between Allen Dulles and Prince Hohenlohe were used after the war by Soviet propaganda to discredit after the fact American policy during the war. See James Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999), pp. 261–67.

  rest of the world: Connections by air between Switzerland and the rest of the world had been practically nonexistent since the beginning of the war, except for flights to Germany. Source: Rudolf J. Ritter, Grub, Switzerland.

  postal and telecommunications service: Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Dulles telephoned Washington four or five times a week to provide general political analyses and news summaries without operational implications.

  numbered only about fifteen: The two permanent agents assigned as cipher clerks received reinforcements from American aviators blocked in Switzerland after forced landings. Source: Bern, summary of the OSS Bern office during the war, National Archives. In Bern, Dulles had four intelligence officers (Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerald Mayer, Frederick Stalder, and Royall Tyler), and about ten cipher clerks, not counting about one hundred informants working regularly for him.

  concerned sensitive information: The series of dispatches dealt with the political situation in Italy and the rise of anti-German feeling in Mussolini’s entourage. Soon thereafter (was this coincidental?), they learned of the disgrace of Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, and of several of his friends who wished to end the German alliance. Source: Bern.

  the German Enigma code: “Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of British cryptanalysts, and the cooperation of Polish, Czech, and French liaison colleagues, and a lone German spy [Hans-Thilo Schmidt], the Nazi military and intelligence ciphers had been broken sometime before Kolbe became active. This success—code name ULTRA—rivaled only by the American triumph of breaking Japanese ciphers (code name MAGIC), was one of a handful of the great secrets of World War II. The Ultra information made a vital contribution to the Allied victory in Europe and Africa.” Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder. “Enigma” was the name of the sophisticated machine used to encrypt the secret messages of the German army. “Ultra,” the system for decoding Enigma messages set up in England during the war, was located in Bletchley Park, not far from London, and employed dozens of expert mathematicians working in absolute secrecy.