In Washington, however, Dulles did not have an excellent reputation. In late April 1943, the head of American intelligence in Switzerland received the following telegram from his superiors in the OSS:
It has been requested of us to inform you that “all news from Bern these days is being discounted 100% by the War Department.” It is suggested that Switzerland is an ideal location for plants, tendentious intelligence and peace feelers but no details are given. As our duty requires we have passed on the above information. However, we restate our satisfaction that you are the one through whom our Swiss reports come and we believe in your ability to distinguish good intelligence from bad with utmost confidence.
7
A VISA FOR BERN
Berlin, mid-August 1943
Sunday, August 15, 1943, at around seven in the evening, Fritz Kolbe went to the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. He was to take the 8:20 train for Basel. Fritz arrived early. The distance between the Foreign Ministry and the station was not great (it took only a half hour walking toward the south). The city was bathed in soft summer light. The shadows of the few passersby stretched out on the ground. This neighborhood of government offices at the end of the day seemed immobile and curiously calm. After leaving his Kurfürstendamm apartment, Fritz had stopped at Wilhelmstrasse to pick up the files that had to be turned over to the German legation in Switzerland. The assignment was a routine operation: The transmission of diplomatic mail from Berlin to Bern took place twice a week, leaving Berlin on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. The task was rotated among mid-level officials and never given to a woman.
In his inside jacket pocket, Fritz had carefully placed his diplomatic passport and his orders. The latter document would serve as his pass at every checkpoint. It was an invaluable talisman, highly prized in the ministry and in German diplomatic offices throughout the world. There were many candidates in Berlin for trips to the capitals of neutral countries, particularly to Bern, which was reputedly a very pleasant city.
In the diplomatic mail office, Fritz had been given a leather briefcase containing a thick envelope with a wax seal. The envelope was rather large, forty by fifty centimeters. Fritz did not know what was in it, except that it included official mail for the head of legation and his colleagues, the latest official memoranda, and various confidential messages (including those of the secret services, which sometimes created friction between Himmler and Ribbentrop). He was not to open it on any pretext. The briefcase was at no time to be left unguarded.
A little earlier in the day, the rest of the diplomatic pouch had already been brought to the station. Even though Fritz Kolbe was not personally carrying this second transmittal, he was administratively responsible for it. It consisted of several bags or cases containing nonsecret documents or voluminous objects. These packages, stamped “official dispatch,” were not examined by customs (no more than was the envelope containing diplomatic cables). This part of the diplomatic pouch had to be deposited at the station before noon. The members of the ministry took advantage of this system to send private letters or gifts to friends and relatives in Switzerland. Officially, the diplomatic pouch might weigh no more than one hundred kilograms. In fact, it was often twice that, despite official warnings.
Before leaving the ministry building, Fritz went to his office and carefully closed and locked the door behind him. He opened the metal safe in which he kept the most important documents and removed from it two gray envelopes, which were not sealed. Then, after closing the safe, he took off his pants, wrapped the two envelopes around his thighs, and fastened them with sturdy string. He tied several knots that he had learned in the Wandervogel, made certain that the arrangement was solid, and put his pants back on. He left his office, went down the large empty staircases of the ministry (since it was Sunday, almost no one was there), and came out into the street. This peculiar operation—which obviously had had no witnesses—had lasted for only a few minutes.
At this time the next day, Fritz would be in Bern. It was the first time after two years of asking that he had received authorization to go abroad as a diplomatic courier. Gertrud von Heimerdinger had done things well. Her push in the right direction had been necessary for Fritz Kolbe’s name to be placed on the list of the privileged authorized to spend a weekend of semivacation in Switzerland. Ambassador Karl Ritter had not opposed the trip. He had seen it as a way of compensating his faithful assistant, whose energy and devotion he still appreciated. To enable his subordinate to leave, he had had to guarantee his political reliability in writing. Fritz himself had had to promise, also in writing, to return to Germany at the conclusion of his mission.
Fritz was lucky and yet he was in a feverish state. “Have I forgotten something?” he asked himself as he walked down Wilhelmstrasse. He passed in front of the Reich Chancellery, at the corner of Vosstrasse, with its cold and imposing colonnade. The area was calm and almost lifeless. The entire street seemed deserted. Only a few armed sentinels stood guard at the entry to official buildings. At every street corner, Fritz felt as though he was being watched.
Across the street from the Reich Chancellery was the Ministry of Propaganda. Several people could be seen working there even though it was Sunday. The ministry had its work cut out for it right now in commenting on the series of debacles of the Wehrmacht. For several days the press had been hailing the “triumphant retreat” of the German army in Sicily and congratulating its leaders for having limited the losses of men and materiel in their “magnificent” maneuver of withdrawal to Italy. “We have avoided total annihilation,” was the uniform headline for the editorials. These victorious proclamations could not mask the essential: German radio had announced Mussolini’s fall on July 26.
Continuing on his way, Fritz passed in front of Göring’s Air Force Ministry. Huge black limousines were parked in the courtyard. A little further along, he passed the buildings of the RSHA (the Gestapo and the other security services of the Reich) and could not repress a shiver. Himmler’s empire occupied a whole stretch of Wilhelmstrasse, between Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and Anhalter Strasse. It was common knowledge that inside the walls of these palaces from the imperial period, people were assassinated and tortured. Fritz walked faster. He turned to the right and saw the station. Finally, a neighborhood with a little more life! Opposite the large Anhalter station was the Askanischer Platz. Despite the war, the plaza had remained welcoming, with its large hotels, its commotion, and its numerous restaurants and beer halls.
Fritz saw a large crowd at the entrance to the station. There were many families leaving to seek refuge far from the city. It had been strongly recommended that the women and children of Berlin leave the capital of the Reich to get away from the bombing. It was a headlong flight. “What is most striking walking in the streets of Berlin today is the huge crowd that forms from time to time in certain neighborhoods around certain stations of the Stadtbahn. People are heading for an unknown destination without noise, I even often have the impression without a word. Even in the most crowded rush hours for the métro, I never saw such a compact crowd in the streets of Paris,” wrote Adolphe Jung in his diary of Berlin at war.
On the way to his train, Fritz noticed in the shop windows on the plaza facing the station the first tangible signs of the beginnings of shortages. There was not a single razor blade to be found; specialized stores offered to sharpen used blades. Continuing through the mass of departing travelers, Fritz saw young boys in military uniforms: the draft age had just been lowered to seventeen. The ogre of the Wehrmacht was devouring the youth of the country. Perhaps Fritz thought of his son, who was now eleven. He had received one or two postcards from him, mailed from SouthWest Africa, but he had not answered. (Why this silence? Perhaps to preserve the boy and avoid attracting police attention.)
Fritz entered the station building. He was holding the timetable, which showed on one side the “schedule valid from November 1942 on,” and on the other an advertisement for the Dresdner Bank. Inside the building, the huge glass-l
ined hall multiplied the echoes of human voices and steam locomotives. The place was rather grandiose. This early August 1943, the locomotives were decorated with swastikas and propaganda posters: “The wheels of our trains must roll in the direction of victory.” Other very large posters were hanging on the walls of the station: one sign indicated the direction to the air raid shelter in the station basement, another asked the traveler to avoid any unnecessary trip.
As night began to fall, the station was plunged into semidarkness. There was no longer any real lighting on the platforms. The bulbs in the lampposts had been painted blue in order not to attract the eyes of enemy pilots. Everywhere, pylons had been covered in white paint up to two meters from the ground so that travelers would not bang into them. On platform 1, the train for Basel was beginning to fill up. Fritz went into a special compartment reserved for travelers on official missions, in the front of the train.
The train left Berlin punctually at 8:20. Fritz did not sleep, or barely. The car was full throughout the journey through Germany, but few travelers were going as far as the Swiss border. The night passed without incident. Apart from routine verification of tickets on leaving Berlin, there was no checking on the passengers. Fritz watched stations go by throughout the night. Halle, 10:35. Erfurt, 12:25 A.M. Frankfurt am Main, 4:34. Heidelberg, 6:27. Karlsruhe, 7:22. Freiburg im Breisgau, 9:40. During the trip, there were several long halts; this was not because of air raid warnings but because the locomotive was changed several times. Finally, they arrived in Basel, German station (Basel DRB, for Deutsche Reichsbahn), close to the scheduled time, 11:11. It was Monday morning, August 16, 1943.
The “German station” in Basel was an enclave of the Reich in Switzerland. Fritz had heard that this border station was a favorite observation post for the Nazis and a nest of German spies. As he left the train, Fritz looked around him, not very reassured. At a bank counter, he was given the regulation ten marks (no more) to which every German leaving the Reich had the right. Then he approached the border post, where he managed more or less to conceal his nervousness as he presented his papers. His heart was beating like mad. If there had been a body search, he would have had no hope of escape.
Fritz Kolbe’s papers were in order: he had an authorization to stay for four days (until Friday, August 20). As could be verified inside his passport, he had a German visa furnished by the Foreign Ministry (visa no. 4235), and a Swiss visa, provided by the Swiss legation in Berlin (visa no. 519). The German customs officer, with a look as cold as a statue, signaled him to move on. The hardest part was over. Fritz was in Switzerland. He felt an immense relief.
After taking a shuttle to the Swiss station in Basel (Basel SBB), Fritz got on another train, for Bern. He took a deep breath. Perhaps he had seen in the Basel station German trains full of coal or military materiel moving slowly toward Italy through the Gothard tunnel (the route connecting Rome and Berlin). But he suddenly felt transported into another world. Switzerland was a strange country, both very close to and very far from Germany. A country where you could find German political refugees, Jews, resistance fighters from around Europe trying to lie low, German, Italian, and Austrian deserters, escaped prisoners of war, Allied airmen who had survived missions in Germany …
Bern, Monday, August 16, 1943
On his arrival in Bern, Fritz was immediately picked up by a diplomatic vehicle that took him to the German legation in fifteen minutes. He was astonished by the beauty of the site and at the same time surprised to discover the modest size of the Swiss capital. He soon noticed that Bern had absolutely no road signs and that it was thus very easy to get lost if you didn’t know your way around. He found out that the road signs had been removed because of the prospect of a German attack: Everything had to be done to make the invader lose his way. He also noticed that the car in which he was riding did not display a Nazi flag.
On leaving the station, Fritz had had the time to leave his personal belongings at his hotel, which was not far from the station. This was the Hotel Jura (on Platz Bubenberg), a modest hotel, but quite comfortable. He had taken the opportunity to hide the documents he had concealed beneath his pants. The day passed in consultations with his colleagues in the German legation, which was located in a villa in the Brunnadern district, in the southern part of the city (Willadingweg 78). Perhaps Fritz had a brief conversation with Otto Köcher, head of the legation, whom he had known well since Spain.
Crossing through the city by car, he had seen the handsome residences of the Kirchenfeld district. All the diplomatic missions of the world were there, to judge from the flags decorating the façades. What was striking, coming from Berlin, was the idyllic nature of the place. There was a liveliness and an apparently gentle way of life, which was no longer known in Berlin, even if Fritz was a little disappointed by the absence of chocolate and pastries from the store windows in the center of town. Getting out of the car that deposited him in front of the German legation, he felt surrounded by calm and silence. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the “pock” of tennis rackets hitting a ball nearby.
That evening, Fritz was invited to a diplomatic reception. He had the time to go back to his hotel to change, and it was probably then that he managed to reach his old friend Ernst Kocherthaler from a public telephone. Kocherthaler had been living in Switzerland since September 1936. After fleeing the civil war and the Falangists (who suspected him of having supplied arms to the Republicans), he had settled with his family in Adelboden, a little mountain village in the Alps near Bern, an hour and a half south of the capital. Fritz knew his telephone number (“146 in Adelboden,” he said to the operator). This was the first time that the two men had spoken in eight years. They were moved by the reunion, but the poor quality of the telephone line made it impossible for them to speak for long. They arranged to meet in Bern the next morning.
Bern, Tuesday, August 17, 1943
No one knows the name of the restaurant or café in Bern where Fritz Kolbe and Ernst Kocherthaler met. All the newspapers of the day carried the headline that Sicily had come entirely under Allied control. For Fritz, this was good news. But Ernst Kocherthaler greatly feared that this event would lead to the German invasion of Switzerland. Despite worries about the future, the two friends were happy to see each other again. Kocherthaler was delighted to rediscover Fritz’s outspokenness and good humor. He immediately questioned him about rumors he had heard from an industrialist friend in Berlin: “There is talk of plans of a coup d’état against Hitler, a suggestion of a military government headed by Rommel. What is Himmler doing about it? They say he’s more powerful than ever.”
Fritz told Ernst about the atmosphere in Berlin, about the bombing, and about the general feeling of extreme lassitude (“Many Berliners,” he said, “have only one wish: to sleep”). In the summer of 1943, more and more Germans were becoming pro-Russian, because of a very simple argument: At least the Russians were not bombing German cities.
After a few minutes, the two men began to speak in lower tones. Fritz informed his friend of the reason for his coming to Bern: He wanted to transmit information to the Allies. “Ernst, you can certainly help me meet someone, I’m sure you know names and addresses.” Ernst Kocherthaler started, taken aback. He had been expecting anything but that. He had already met the head of the British legation, Clifford Norton, at a reception. Would he remember? There was nothing to keep him from trying, but he would have to act quickly because Fritz was going back to Berlin on Friday. “What do you have to offer?” asked Ernst. It was then, after furtively looking around to make sure that no one was watching them, that Fritz took from his briefcase a little bundle of secret documents he had taken from Wilhelmstrasse. “Here, see if that may interest someone and tell them that I have other things with me.”
What happened next has given rise to many different versions. After 1945, the facts were reconstructed by the principal protagonists on the basis of often foggy memories. The truth suffered from more or less conscious or voluntar
y approximations. Indications of dates are often contradictory and most of the time false. Only Fritz Kolbe’s passport makes it possible to locate fairly precisely the unfolding of events in the week from August 17 to 20, 1943. According to a version frequently reported, Fritz went himself to see a member of the British legation. He is said to have told him that he had information to offer and that he was prepared to collaborate with the Allies without compensation. The English diplomat, still according to legend, showed him out with the following words: “You’re probably a double agent, or else some kind of cad!”
In fact, things did not happen in quite that way. That Tuesday, August 17—probably in late morning—it was Ernst Kocherthaler who presented himself at the British legation of Bern, located on Thunstrasse (a long street running through the Kirchenfeld district, along which one would travel from the center of town to the German legation). Without an appointment, he asked to see the head of legation in person, or, failing that, his deputy, “for a matter of the greatest importance,” and he showed a German diplomatic cable in order to indicate the purpose of his visit. As was to be feared, he was told that it was impossible to see Mr. Norton, and that the legation’s number-two could not see him either. Kocherthaler insisted, refusing to budge, demanding to be presented to someone. He was made to wait for a long time. Finally, a certain Captain Reid came to see him in the lobby to see what this was all about. Once again, Kocherthaler introduced himself as a friend of the British envoy, Clifford Norton, showed his German diplomatic cable, and said that he had a “friend in a high position in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, who is now in Bern, and who is offering to work for the Allied cause by providing firsthand information.”
A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Story of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II Page 10