“If you are satisfied with me, send me some Nescafé. If you no longer want me to send you information, send me a pair of scissors,” Fritz had added, clearly sulking a little, no longer sure whether the Americans still needed him. “If you have things to ask me, send me cigarettes and put something in them please, because I’ll smoke them myself,” he added in one of the coded messages he liked to use. The letter ended with these words: “I will not fail to seize any coming opportunity to write to you, even if I have to set to work in the early morning hours after an air raid. Sorry for my disjointed writing. I’m so overwhelmed that I no longer know what I’m doing. My fiancée complains that I am neglecting her. And yet I love her!”
The Americans’ answer, slipped into a package of cigarettes, tried to be reassuring: “Try to come to see your former father-in-law in Zurich. Find a pretext connected with the settling of your divorce.” But Fritz did not receive the message. In late May, when Mackeben was getting ready to return to Germany with the “cigarettes” intended for Fritz, Ernst Kocherthaler received a terse telegram from Berlin: “Please no cigarettes,” signed “Georg.”
Berlin, May 31, 1944
There was a meeting that evening in Berlin of the Wednesday Club at Sauerbruch’s. The Grunewald neighborhood was half in ruins, but Sauerbruch’s house on Herthastrasse was still standing. The speaker was General Beck, who was delivering a presentation on Marshal Foch,
“our great French adversary,” whom he was honored to have known personally. Despite his reservations about the Versailles treaty and “the mistakes of French policy in the Rhineland after 1918,” General Beck delivered a very laudatory speech about the old adversary of the armies of von Klück and Moltke. Of course, he said in substance, Foch can be criticized for having been impulsive, stubborn, and sometimes a little rigid in his approach to the offensive. But Beck was full of admiration for this man, who had always acted within the limits of what was possible and whom he described in conclusion as “a great man and a great general.” The applause was warm. Then the eight guests went to the table and the conversation quickly changed to other subjects. “Sauerbruch always serves sparkling wine. And since we never have much in our stomachs, the atmosphere soon gets lively,” in the words of one of the people present that evening, the philosopher Eduard Spranger.
Some members of the Wednesday Club knew that General Beck was involved with a group of conspirators who intended to eliminate Hitler, overthrow the Nazi regime, and negotiate a separate peace with the Western powers. If the plan were to succeed, Ludwig Beck was supposed to become head of state in place of the führer. Ulrich von Hassell, who was also at Sauerbruch’s that evening, was the prospective foreign minister. It was here in Ferdinand Sauerbruch’s house that Ludwig Beck had met for the first time a young and brilliant officer who was supposed to become secretary of state in a future ministry of war after the coup d’état: Colonel von Stauffenberg, chief of staff of the Army Supply Services. Count von Stauffenberg had been treated in Munich by Professor Sauerbruch for serious wounds suffered in Africa. Struck by a mine explosion, he had lost an eye, his right hand, and two fingers of his left hand. Stauffenberg did not take part in the meetings of the Wednesday Club. But most of its members knew him well and knew that he represented, along with Carl Goerdeler (future chancellor in the event the coup was successful), a central element in the resistance to the regime.
Through the intermediary of their friend Hans-Bernd Gisevius in Switzerland, General Beck and Carl Goerdeler had sent several messages to Allen Dulles, in early April and early May 1944. In the name of their resistance organization, which included dozens of high-ranking officers and various political figures, conservatives, and old Social Democrats, these men were asking for help from the United States in case their coup were to succeed. They proposed to the Americans the capitulation of the Wehrmacht on condition that they be able to continue the war in the East against the Soviets. They were in favor of a massive landing of Western troops in Germany and asked particularly that several American airborne divisions be parachuted into Berlin. But Dulles’s reply had not been encouraging: “My orders are clear: the surrender of Germany will be unconditional and nothing can be done without the Soviets,” he had told them in substance.
The plot was nevertheless closely followed by the Americans. While the British refused to accept the very idea of a “German resistance,” Dulles transmitted to his superiors the names of the principal conspirators and the contents of their plans. He had for a long time now been in contact with another member of the conspiracy, who was also calling in vain for Allied help in overthrowing Hitler: the diplomat Adam von Trott zu Solz, who had gone to Bern several times in the course of 1943 and in early 1944. In the language of the OSS, the conspirators had become Breakers, General Beck was Tucky, Goerdeler was Lester, and Adam von Trott was 800.
Berlin, June–July 1944
Life in Berlin was more and more dangerous for Fritz. In late June, he sent another message to Bern in which he confessed: “The last few days have been very difficult for me. Suspicions seemed to be weighing on me, but then they seem to have been dissipated. In any case, I have heard nothing further.” He nevertheless continued to provide information. The quality of the “material” did not decline; quite the contrary. In late June 1944, he revealed that “the Germans are still expecting a landing in the Pas-de-Calais, even after 6 June, and are not withdrawing troops from the Belgian coast for that reason.” In early July, he provided a series of details on the V-1s and future V-2s: “The flight control mechanism is produced in Gdynia, at the Ascania works, on the Baltic (near Danzig). The jets are built by Krupp in Wuppertal, additional parts which are not named are manufactured by the Siemens factories north of Augsburg…. Both the V-1 and V-2 models are made in the lower Danube region, in the vicinity of St. Valentin.” Other electronic equipment intended for the V-2 is manufactured “in the Siemens factory in Arnstadt, in Thuringia, about forty-five kilometers west of Orlamünde.” “In comparison with the V-1, the V-2 travels through the stratosphere. It is radio controlled and therefore a more accurate weapon. In addition, it possesses a longer range. This new model will be in use by the Nazis within 60 days at the outside.”
Fritz helped the Americans to identify the fallback regions for all the advanced German industries: Thuringia and its deep underground shelters. Still in early July, Fritz gave the location of a factory where the first supersonic airplane in history was manufactured. He did not give its name, but it was the Messerschmitt 262. The factory was located in Kahla, in Thuringia: “near Orlamünde, between Rudolstadt and Jena. Factory in part underground. Already bombed in late June, but the damage is minimal, and the factory will soon enter the production phase.”
Fritz never forgot to speak of Berlin, where an American bombing raid on June 21, 1944 was particularly devastating:
The factory manufacturing diesel engines for submarines was destroyed. AEG is still operating in some of the factories of the city; the cable plant, however, is no longer running. The Hotel Continental and a block of houses around the hotel were destroyed by fire. The Friedrichstrasse railroad station was badly damaged and the Schlesischer railroad station was hit during the raid. The Osram factory was also hit but is still operating…. The Siemensstadt plant is almost at a standstill…. The AEG factory manufacturing precision instruments for submarines and the Knorr-Bremse plant, both of which are located at Treptower Park, were said to have been untouched.
Dulles was satisfied, as were his Washington colleagues. What they did not know was that Fritz Kolbe was also involved in seditious activities. The telegram from Fritz that was received on May 20 (“Please, no cigarettes”) had hinted that he was in danger. Sometime in the spring, he was supposed to go with Walter Bauer to a secret meeting in Potsdam with some civilian and military conspirators close to Count Waldersee. Because of an organizational error due to faulty internal communication, neither he nor Walter Bauer went to the meeting. Waldersee was also absent. This w
as lucky for them, because the list of people present at this secret meeting fell into the hands of the Gestapo. A few months later, all of them were to be executed.
11
FINAL REVELATIONS
Berlin, late July 1944
After the Allied landing in Normandy, the armies of the Reich carried out a vast defensive withdrawal, but they were still fighting. Was this the beginning of the end? The failed assassination attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944 was enough to make the enemies of Nazism lose all hope. The only virtue of the plot, despite its failure, had been “that the German resistance movement [had taken] the plunge before the eyes of the world and of history.” For all those who dreamed of the fall of the regime, there seemed to be no way out but to turn in on themselves, to “love one’s country in silence and in silence scorn its leaders.” The most incredulous were obliged to agree that Hitler seemed to be protected by providence.
There was another miracle: Fritz Kolbe’s clandestine activities remained unnoticed. Fritz had even received a promotion in early July, rising from the rank of “consular secretary” to “secretary of the chancellery” (Kanzler). The party, as usual, had a right of veto over this promotion. The ministry had sent a four-page form to the regional headquarters of the NSDAP (Hermann-Göring-Strasse 14 in Berlin), a document in which it was stated that Fritz was not a member of the party but that he was “of German blood” and that he “worked tirelessly and well for the National Socialist state.” Even though four months had gone by before the party deigned to respond to the request, all the required stamps had been obtained and the ministry’s decision had been ratified. Fritz continued to give his best efforts to his work in order to be well judged by his superiors.
However, the climate of anxiety was constantly intensifying. Although not closely associated with any of the conspirators, Fritz felt directly concerned by the slaughter that struck the ranks of the resistance during those bloody weeks. Several members of the Foreign Ministry were soon arrested and sentenced to death. Ferdinand Sauerbruch was questioned by the Gestapo because he had been in regular contact with friends of Count Stauffenberg. “Sauerbruch thinks that we are lost, he and I. He may be right,” wrote Fritz in one of his messages to Bern. If someone like the professor himself was no longer safe, the worst was to be feared.
Adolphe Jung recounts how the surgeon saved his own skin:
After the failure of the assassination attempt, Sauerbruch lived in fear. He went to the country, to property owned by his wife, near Dresden, and spent about a week there. In fact, he was aware of what had been attempted, although he himself did not participate. After the fact, some allusions he had made before the attempt relating to “events of great importance soon about to happen” became meaningful for me. Five people in his immediate entourage and among his close friends had participated and were shot or hanged. In addition, one of Sauerbruch’s three sons, a career officer, who had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel, was a close friend of Count von Stauffenberg. Soon thereafter, then, he was incarcerated and seriously interrogated for three weeks. Very worried, Sauerbruch called or wrote to friends and colleagues who were members of the party or the SS. Time was short. With his son in prison, things could have quickly turned nasty for him. In any event, his son would not have been released so quickly if Sauerbruch had not immediately gotten in touch with, among others, Max de Crinis, a professor of neurology, a friend of Hitler, and an important figure in the party, and with Professor Gebhardt, a military doctor with the rank of general in the army…. It was probably through their discreet and effective support that Sauerbruch was not imprisoned and could escape from the reprisals that followed the attempt.
Sauerbruch was spared, but many of his friends did not survive the repression of the summer of 1944. On July 12, the Wednesday Club met as though everything were normal, with a presentation by Werner Heisenberg on the history of astronomy. The session had concluded with a feast of fresh raspberries picked in the garden of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Physics Institute in Dahlem. This was the last meeting at which General Beck was present: He shot himself in the head on the evening of July 20, 1944 in Berlin. Johannes Popitz was arrested on July 21, Ulrich von Hassell on July 28. Their imminent execution was not in doubt. On July 26, the Wednesday Club convened for the last time. The meeting took place at the home of the journalist and critic Paul Fechter, who spoke about literature in a room that was three-quarters empty.
Bern, August 1944
The failure of the plot was a catastrophe for the Americans. Even though Allen Dulles mistrusted Count Stauffenberg, vaguely suspected of wanting to make a deal with the Soviets, the news of the fiasco filled him with bitterness and perplexity. “I never saw Dulles and Gaevernitz so downtrodden,” according to the Bavarian Social Democrat Wilhelm Hoegner, who met them in Bern shortly after the events of July 20. If Hitler had been assassinated, the war could have been brought to a rapid conclusion. In addition, this evil stroke of fate would probably facilitate the rise to power of the hardest elements in the Nazi regime. In a message to Washington dated August 8, 1944, Dulles wrote that “Himmler and the Gestapo took advantage of the Putsch to finish off the job.” Radicalization of the resistance was also predictable. On August 9, Dulles wrote: “The most efficiently organized body for work is now the Communist group.” As for the military situation, it was taking a turn dangerously favorable to Stalin. In mid-August 1944, the first Soviet soldiers reached the borders of the Reich in East Prussia. The Americans, for their part, were not yet in Paris.
After July 20, the Americans heard nothing from Fritz until mid-August. Knowing his reckless character, they anxiously wondered whether he had been taken in the Gestapo’s nets. But in mid-August, OSS Bern finally received a letter from Berlin through Ernst Kocherthaler. Allen Dulles was able to send a reassuring message to Washington: “His position apparently unaffected by putsch but he gives little info about it stating that notwithstanding July 20 he continues to work with Volksmiliz.”
In the letter he sent to Kocherthaler, Fritz said that his greatest hope was to see a quick end to the war in the West, while it continued in the East: “Communism is not what Germany needs…. More and more, people here are realizing that.” On the basis of this conviction, Fritz had concocted his own battle plan: “The Russians will drive to the Oder. At that time the Americans will land parachute troops in Berlin. On the critical day I’ll be in position with from 30 to 100 men. Can’t I get by radio advance word on when and where? Peter, Peter, say on the 9 P.M. cast? I am the only one who knows my plan in detail. I haven’t let anyone in on the secret.”
Ernst Kocherthaler took it upon himself to transmit to the Americans the complicated secret codes that Fritz wanted to use in his contacts with the American army: “‘X Bäume wachsen’ = in X/2 hours American troops will land in Berlin. ‘X blühende Bäume wachsen’ = A. D. with troops will land in X/2 hours. ‘X Bäume blühen’ = A. D. will join in X/2 hours.”
Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer probably smiled when they learned of this naïve and appealing message. What interested them in this letter of mid-August 1944 were not Fritz’s personal battle plans but the invaluable information that he continued to deliver.
In late August, a new series of Kappa cables was sent to London and Washington (they were given the name “Kagust” for Kappa and August). In this new batch, there were troubling details on the exercise of Soviet power, following what had happened in Poland. Stalin had brutally abandoned his allies in the Polish National Army, and Ribbentrop had hastened to disseminate this news to the principal German diplomatic posts. A dispatch from the Deutsches Nachrichten-Büro (DNB, the official press agency) dated August 9, 1944 reported the disarmament and imprisonment of Polish units to the rear of the Russian front. The officers had been deported to Kiev. Among them, the non-communists had disappeared from one day to the next. Ribbentrop saw in the event the emergence of a new “Polish enslavement.” For once, the Americans were tempted to believe German propaganda.
The other details in this “delivery” were devoted to the more usual questions of the Reich and its satellites and allies. Through “George Wood,” the Americans learned in particular that the Germans intended to revive the National Assembly of the Third Republic in France in the hope of placing French institutional legality on their side. At the same time, the German authorities wanted to install the principal French institutions “in a major eastern city,” perhaps Strasbourg. The Banque de France, the secret services, the radio services, the First Regiment of France, the Milice, and the Journal Officiel were to be moved. Surprising, and now pathetic, efforts.
Reading these documents, the Americans in Bern asked themselves a very simple question: How could they get “Wood” to come back to Switzerland? Allen Dulles wanted to use the device that had already served the purpose: Fritz’s divorce. Lita Schoop, Fritz’s second wife, was in detention in East Africa, like thousands of other Germans living in British territory. Using his daily professional contacts with London, Dulles tried to organize the repatriation of Lita Schoop to Switzerland, thinking that Fritz could thereby more easily justify a trip to Zurich “for personal reasons.” Germany and South Africa periodically exchanged their respective nationals. During the summer of 1944, some Swedish steamships entered the port of Lisbon with dozens of German families on board. Lita Schoop was not among the passengers. Allen Dulles never found out why his plan had failed.
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 20