In 1926, he took the plunge he’d been preparing for since the Texas oil-fields. He gave up his salary and went independent, risking his savings on starting a small petroleum company. Erickson built the firm using his skills as a salesman and a punishing work ethic, then sold it off to one of the majors. He immediately took the profits and started another company. It was a strategy that any American oilman would have recognized: Maximum risk for maximum reward. “Each well, whether successful or unsuccessful,” said William Mellon, founder of Gulf Oil, “provided the stimulus to drill another.” After a few years, Erickson sold his latest venture and doubled down, plowing the money into the construction of an oil terminal in Stockholm. When the terminal was completed, tankers from South America or the Middle East began to dock and unload their oil, which Erickson sold to the Nordic and central European markets.
At the start of the 1930s, the Third Reich was rising to power in Germany, and Erickson was building yet another oil company, which he named Pennco. He and Elsa spent their summers in the bay town of Krokek. During the rest of the year, he traveled widely to negotiate oil contracts – from Teheran to Bucharest to Tokyo. When Stalin needed a Westerner to supervise the building of a refinery in Baku, Erickson was tapped for the job. He kept and rode a stable of expensive horses, gambled in the South of France and owned a swank apartment in the fashionable Ostermälm neighborhood of Stockholm.
Erickson had earned a life of fancy dinner parties, well-cut suits and fine English silver. These were the rewards of a long, often bitter struggle. He was content.
How was he to know that war would soon change everything about his beautiful life?
Chapter Three
The Blacklist
On a map of Europe, Sweden is poised like a dagger above the northern border of Germany. But by the mid-1930s, it was the larger country that began to pose a danger to its smaller, neutral neighbor. Adolf Hitler was transforming Germany into an economic and military powerhouse. He frightened his neighbors with chest-thumping aggression and talk of lebensraum, or “living space,” code words for the Reich’s territorial expansion in the East. As the leading industrial producer in Scandinavia and home to high-grade iron-ore mines, the Swedes suspected that the country lay squarely in Hitler’s sights.
For Erickson, Germany’s resurgence in the 1930s meant fat profits, as he exported and imported petrochemicals to and from Germany. He may not have agreed with Hitler’s racial policies, but he was a businessman in a ruthless industry. “I hated Hitler and everything he stood for,” Erickson would later say, and his war record backs him up fully. Still, in the beginning, he didn’t mind making a fortune off the Reich.
Erickson’s business ledger for Pennco shows that in 1939 he cleared a profit of 2.75 million Swedish kronor. A very conservative estimate of that figure in today’s dollars would be $10 million. After twenty years in the oil business, Erickson was raking in astonishing sums. A Texas-sized dynasty wasn’t out of the question.
As his star rose, Erickson became part of an informal circle centered around the American Embassy in Stockholm. Two men there made an especially strong impression on him: Laurence Steinhardt, a Jewish-American diplomat who’d served as Minister to Sweden in 1933, and his successor in Stockholm, Fred Sterling. “Steinhardt asked me to keep my eyes and ears open to anything that could be of use to the Allies,” Erickson remembered. “And Sterling mentioned that to his way of thinking the most important way of getting to the Nazis was to deprive them of oil.” But for now, it was just talk. America, like Sweden, was still neutral.
Germany invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway in April, 1940 and Finland allied itself with Hitler. Sweden was essentially surrounded by the Reich. The country was a hostage to its own geography. By careful concessions and the use of delaying tactics, Sweden maintained its neutrality, which it had prized since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. But its ports were blockaded by both sides and its freighters and tankers were attacked on the open seas. King Gustav V appeased Hitler by supplying his military with essential products: ball bearings, wood, food, ships and iron ore, which made up 30 percent of Germany’s imports, and by opening up its northern borders to the Reich. Inside Sweden there was no stigma attached to doing business with Hitler. It was even considered patriotic. Most Swedes understood that if they withheld essential war supplies from Germany, the Reich would invade.
Erickson’s non-German business suffered. Fuel was a main target of the British embargo, grouped with ammunition, explosives and other items as “absolute contraband.” Swedish imports of petroleum products plunged by 88 percent between 1938 and 1944. Cut off from Western markets, Germany became the only game in town. And Erickson was hardly alone in doing business with the Reich: much to the fury of the British, Standard Oil of New Jersey was supplying the Luftwaffe with tetraethyl lead gasoline for the Messerschmitt planes that were bombing London. The oil business had always been amoral. The product went where the price was highest.
Even after the West imposed a boycott on trade with Germany, Erickson scored contract after contract with the Nazis. Perhaps the profits were so fabulous he couldn’t walk away; perhaps he saw it as a matter of survival. Erickson had come of age in an industry with a highly specific vision of success and failure. “For a great many, the oil business was more like an epic card game,” said William Mellon, founder of Gulf Oil, “in which the excitement was worth more than the great stack of chips … None of us was disposed to stop, take his money out of the wells, and go home.” Walking away from the game made a man “worthless as teats on a bull.”
The American was placed on the Allied blacklist of war collaborators. His greed had become a source of embarrassment to his family back in America, especially to his closest sibling, Henry. One day in 1942, Erickson received a letter from his brother, who was now working for the War Production Board. Henry’s son, the boy who, at eight months, had looked so much like his father and uncle, had joined the Army and was training to fight in Europe. (There were, in fact, two of Eric’s nephews in the services: Lt. William Erickson of the Marines Ordinance Division and Corporal Henry Erickson of the 191st tank battalion, which would later fight its way across the Rhine at Aschaffenburg.) In the letter, Henry told Eric how mortified he was that his own brother was betraying his own country to help a dictator responsible for the deaths of so many, including, potentially, his own nephews. Henry cut off all contact with his sibling. “He would have nothing to do with me,” Erickson recalled.
The letter from Henry pained him deeply. Pacing in his Stockholm apartment, Erickson recited his defense. Henry didn’t understand the oil business. The industry, like arms-dealing, was beyond right and wrong. If I don’t sell to the Reich, someone else will, he thought. Henry hadn’t been in Texas. He hadn’t absorbed the winner-take-all ethos of the oilmen. Eric had and it had changed him.
Nor did Henry understand Sweden, a country under direct threat of invasion from the Third Reich. Trading with the Nazis wasn’t only socially acceptable, it was necessary. Even King Gustav V was doing it! The United States itself had only recently joined the economic blockade on the Nazis, in December 1941. Up until then, Dupont and Lockheed and other companies had been supplying the Reich with millions of dollars’ worth of war material. How could Henry condemn him when American businessmen were just as guilty?
Erickson desperately tried to convince himself that his arguments were right. He brooded over his memories of Brooklyn—the teeming house on Sterling, the sandlots, his parent’s gratitude toward the country that had taken them in. The prodigal son, he must have yearned once again to make his family proud.
Slowly, the flaws in his defense became clearer. His arguments were tactical. Henry’s were moral. Days later, his defense collapsed, and Erickson was filled with remorse. No matter which way he looked at it, he had been collaborating with the Nazis.
Instead of writing Henry back, Erickson left his apartment and hurried to the U.S. Embassy. He asked to
meet with Wilho Tikander, the Finnish-American chief of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) mission in Scandinavia. Once in Tikander’s office, Erickson begged to be taken off the blacklist. Tikander knew about Erickson, a big man in Stockholm, his lucrative oil deals with the Reich a matter of public record. The OSS chief wasn’t inclined to help a businessman who’d gotten fabulously rich off the war.
“All you have to do,” Tikander said drily, “is quit doing business with the Germans.”
It was a simple solution, and, even better, it was exactly what Henry had asked him to do. But his brother had accused him of high crimes, and having his name removed wasn’t going to appease Erickson’s shame. He needed to show Henry and his family and everyone else that they’d underestimated his capacity for atonement.
“I want to go further,” Erickson told Tikander. “I want to go to Germany.”
Erickson volunteered to become an Allied agent. His target would be the Nazi oil industry. Henry had accused him of being small and greedy, so he would reply with an audacious gamble. Beyond the rightness of the work—helping to defeat Hitler—it was the size of the bet that appealed to Erickson. There was one other thing: He’d accept only $1 for his services. His detractors thought he’d gotten rich off blood money, so Erickson would work for practically nothing.
After a thorough interrogation, Tikander allowed Erickson to audition as a spy. He put the oilman in touch with two diplomats at the embassy, Walter Surrey and Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Sweden Herschel Johnson. These men, along with Tikander, would be Erickson’s link to the OSS and Allied Bomber Command.
Together they outlined a mission that would send Erickson all over Germany and central Europe to locate the sources of the magical elixir with which Hitler was obsessed: the synthetic oil plants.
Erickson’s response to Henry’s letter would be stark: either his redemption or his death.
Chapter Four
Cover
To fool the enemy, Erickson needed two things: acting skills and entree. A Brooklyn-born Nazi wasn’t going to be an easy sell. He’d attended one of America’s finest universities, his brother had fought the Germans during World War I, and most of his wife’s family spoke out against the Nazis. Erickson was going to have to convince the people of Stockholm and beyond that he’d sincerely converted to fascism. His survival depended on it.
In the early 1940s, Stockholm was an insular city whose social life still revolved around age-old traditions. Local worthies wore silk top hats to public gatherings, and it was almost de rigeur to own a boat and sail the archipelago. But the capital was undergoing a schizophrenic reaction to the war. Pro-Nazi parties openly advocated for a Hitler-friendly government, their rallies in the local concert halls drawing thousands of supporters. At the same time, many Swedes were firmly against Hitler and the Nazis. The country had given asylum to some 8,000 Danish Jews destined for Berkinau and Auschwitz, and did its best to protect them throughout the war. King Gustav V sent letters to Berlin, pleading with the Reich to treat its Jews more humanely. Many Stockholmers wanted England and its allies to win the war. One popular joke said that “when it rains in London, Stockholmers immediately pull out their umbrellas.”
There were clear social and political boundaries between the two camps, and in the early ‘40s, Eric Erickson was inching farther and farther across the invisible line that separated the liberals of Stockholm from the Hitlerites.
In the beginning, to build his new identity and to spread his name among the German expat community, the spy orchestrated several small deals with Berlin businessmen living in Sweden. He attended receptions and parties at the German embassy—glittering affairs where he chatted up luminaries like Wilhelm Kortner, a high-ranking official who was rumored to be the personal representative in Sweden of Heinrich Himmler. Before long Erickson could be spotted at Stockholm’s best restaurants, giving Hitler salutes to his new friends as they joined him for dinner. He was heard laughing at their viciously anti-Semitic jokes (including the ones that referred to Jews as Judesvin, or “Jewish swine”) and making unconscious “slips” where he revealed a growing enchantment with Mein Kampf. Erickson always made sure that these slips happened with one or more Germans in earshot.
It was not until one of his new Berlin friends sponsored him for membership in the German Chamber of Commerce that Erickson’s pro-Nazism became more than a rumor. Erickson showed up at every meeting. He listened intently to the speeches and tried to understand how Nazis saw the outside world; how they spoke and flirted and did business; what they valued and what they despised. He was especially fascinated by the Gestapo men that came through Stockholm and enjoyed long, leisurely dinners with their fellow Germans. “Some of the SS men were rather decent people,” Erickson remembered, “except for the fact that they believed in Hitler and all that he stood for: murder and treachery.”
Though entry into German circles came relatively easy, Erickson sensed there was something missing in his performance. Every imposter needs a prop, not just to fool his enemies, but for his own immersion in the role—a kind of psychological totem. One afternoon, Erickson went shopping at an art store in Stockholm, browsed the aisles, and returned home with a package under his arm. He unwrapped his purchase and carefully mounted it above the fireplace in his study, where his new friends were sure to see it. Once it was up, Erickson stepped back to eye it from across the room. The edges were straight. The glow of the fire flickered across the oiled surface, lending the object a lambent warmth. Erickson smiled. It was perfect.
The portrait of Adolf Hitler would hang in his study until the end of the war.
As Erickson made progress in his transformation into a Nazi, he was failing miserably as a secret agent. Talk at parties and Chamber of Commerce meetings was spiced with references to Göring and Hess, but no introductions were forthcoming. There were tantalizing references to new oil plants being built in Germany, but few specifics. Erickson tried to pursue the leads but got nowhere; the diplomats and businessmen who’d become his friends turned out to be too far from the action. Erickson realized that his real work was in Berlin and not in this distant, frozen capital.
It became increasingly difficult to keep up the charade of being a Nazi. Erickson had already destroyed his good name, and for what? He was a non-factor in the war. He hadn’t passed a single bit of actionable intelligence to the Allies. He traveled to Germany occasionally, but met only with his old contacts, who let him tour the same refineries over and over again. He couldn’t get meetings with the officials who controlled the major oil contracts. Without those contracts, he had no excuse to visit the factories. And without those visits, he couldn’t tell the Allies where to bomb.
Erickson didn’t give up. He showed up religiously at pro-Nazi dinners at popular Stockholm restaurants, where he soaked up the latest Wehrmacht gossip—who in the High Command was up and who was down, whose wife had a drinking problem or difficulty keeping her dresses on—while trying to ignore the disapproving gazes of former friends. The American had time on his hands to parse the reactions of his ex-pals, and he found the varieties of disgust fascinating. Some Swedes looked at him in horror, believing he’d fallen under the spell of Mein Kampf. They spotted him and quickly looked away, the blood draining from their faces. But the more sophisticated of his former friends would often catch his eye and offer a discreet smile or a nod. It took a few weeks for Erickson to figure out what was happening; eventually, he heard a piece of gossip that explained those lingering glances. These men weren’t fooled. Erickson was no National Socialist. Instead, they believed, Erickson was carrying out the long-range plot of ingratiating himself with the Hitlerites in case of a German invasion of Sweden, or a Nazi victory in the war. If either of those things happened, not only would Erickson be protected, he would vault to the top of the Swedish oil business. Erickson found the stares of these highly intelligent men–which said, I almost wish I could do what you’re doing, old man–hard
er to take than the stricken looks of those who considered him a monster.
He grew depressed. His mission felt spectral; he seemed to be an actor in a one-man play with no audience. More than once he thought of quitting.
Tikander and the American handlers were carefully monitoring his progress, but they had other pressing business, sources that were actually producing information. Erickson followed his own instincts, receiving little guidance from the OSS as he built his cover identity. He wondered why he’d received no specific instructions. At one point, months into his mission, a letter did arrive by messenger at his Stockholm apartment, with no return address. Erickson opened the envelope:
“Erickson:
The deal you discussed with Laurence seems to be going nicely. The commission arrangement you suggested is acceptable: five per cent to yourself and two percent to each of your two associates. This is to assure you that we have been moving ahead at our end and are keeping track of all developments with keen interest. We expect it to prove profitable for all concerned. Keep up the good work and count on our full cooperation …
Best wishes,
Richard”
The American smiled, feeling a surge of gratitude. The message appeared to be an ordinary note from a business contact, one of the dozens he received monthly as the owner of his company. But he’d never met “Richard,” and doubted he even existed. The letter was a cleverly-worked message from the OSS, telling him they approved of his work. If it had been intercepted, no one except Erickson and the man who sent it would be able to glean its true meaning. Erickson read the note again, then took it to the fireplace and tossed it into the flames. For a brief moment he felt like a genuine spy.
The Secret Agent Page 2
