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

  A little further on, he reported that “General Jodl sent a wire in the first week of October 1944 to the Commander-in-Chief in the west saying that this was not a propitious time, politically, to launch these bombs against Paris, and that no attack should be made in that region for the present.”

  With reference to Japan, there were dozens of details that could be used by the Allied armies. The Japanese were expecting an American landing in the Philippines in mid-November, and they were preparing for a major British offensive against Rangoon, Bangkok, and Saigon. Marshal Terauchi, supreme commander of Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific, was preparing the withdrawal of his headquarters from Manila to Saigon. The Japanese authorities were beginning to work on preparing their public opinion for a German defeat.

  The information about Hungary was not of a military nature but concerned the fate of the Jewish population. Fritz Kolbe had sent to the Americans some cables from Budapest, one of which said the following: “There were said to be one hundred and twenty thousand Jews in Budapest including children who were unfit for work and whose fate had not yet been decided. This was said to depend largely on available transportation. The person responsible was said to be SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Another document, based on information dating from late October 1944, indicated that “the remaining Jews in Budapest” were to be placed “in ghettos at the edge of town.” For some of them, according to another document, “preparations were under way for a proposed trek on foot. The Jews were to be … taken to the Reich territory for work in the labor service.” There was no clear mention of the extermination of the Jews, but of forced labor and “conscription.” At every step there was the name of Eichmann, SS-Obersturmbannführer. This person was “not identified further,” as indicated by a footnote in one of the cables of the Boston series.

  By that date, the American leaders knew very well what awaited the deportees. But the Boston cables repeated word for word the vocabulary of the German diplomatic cables: “Latest available statistics showed that conscription of the province during the summer of 1944 had amounted to 440,000 people.” In fact, these 440,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz. All that remained was the Jewish community of Budapest, which had been provisionally saved by the changing political circumstances in the city. In early July, Marshal Horthy had decided to put an end to the deportations in order to facilitate a rapprochement between Hungary and the Allies, and he had eventually announced his intention to leave the Axis. Berlin reacted harshly. On October 15, 1944, Horthy was brutally replaced by a man entirely under Berlin’s thumb, Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross movement. From that point on, Hungary was one of the last ramparts of the Reich, and the “final solution” was pursued there systematically, beginning with the elimination of the Jews of Budapest.

  Washington, December 1944

  What would become of Fritz Kolbe after the war? This question began to be asked in Washington in late 1944.

  We are asked specifically what we are prepared to do in their behalf [those of German nationality who work for us behind German lines]. In regard to offering firm guarantees of protection and post armistice privileges to Germans whom we recruit and who work loyally for our organization. Among these privileges would be permission for entry into the United States after the War, the placing of their earnings on deposit in an American bank and the like…. On this we will need authority which only you can give.

  These words were addressed to President Roosevelt in a letter dated December 1, 1944.

  A few days later, the president responded negatively to the head of the OSS:

  I do not believe that we should offer any guarantees of protection in the post-hostilities period to Germans who are working for your organization. I think that the carrying out of any such guarantees would be difficult and probably widely misunderstood both in this country and abroad. We may expect that the number of Germans who are anxious to save their skins and property by coming over to the side of the United Nations at the last moment will rapidly increase. Among them may be some who should properly be tried for war crimes or at least arrested for active participation in Nazi activities. Even with the necessary controls you mention I am not prepared to authorize the giving of guarantees.

  There would be no American sanctuary for the German friends of the Allies. Provisions of this kind could have applied to Fritz Kolbe and Hans-Bernd Gisevius, to whom Allen Dulles wanted to be able to offer some postwar prospects. The intransigence of the American president was in conformity with the policy that had been his officially since January 1943: The surrender of Germany had to be “unconditional” and nothing should be done to encourage any hypothetical internal resistance.

  The technical evaluation of the source named “George Wood” was completed in late 1944. Lieutenant Thomas Dunn, one of the best analysts of the Kappa material in the counterespionage department of the OSS, received a summary inventory of the best deliveries of “Wood.” This inventory had been prepared by Colonel McCormack. The document indicated which messages sent by the Berlin agent since his first visit to Bern in August 1943 had been of “considerable value.” Files 215 to 218, which covered the reports of Generals Kretschmer and Gronau on Japan, headed the list. They were followed by the Kappa messages dealing with clandestine deliveries of tungsten from Spain to Germany (373 and 402). McCormack’s inventory next mentioned everything concerning the “great game” of diplomacy in Europe. They had been able to follow the shifting alliances in central Europe (Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria) and life behind the scenes in all the puppet regimes controlled by the Reich (particularly Vichy) with great precision thanks to “Wood.” Colonel McCormack cited as an example cable number 386, which illustrated in great detail the anxieties of Berlin in July 1944, concerning Bulgaria and its inclination to leave the Axis (which it in fact abandoned in the late summer of 1944). He also mentioned cable number 388, which spoke of German plans to move some key institutions of the Vichy regime to the east of France. Oddly, Colonel McCormack did not mention any of the Kappa cables dealing with military production sites, particularly for the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Nor was there any reference in McCormack’s inventory to the fate of the Jews of Rome or Hungary.

  Bern, January–February 1945

  Fritz Kolbe was able to return to Bern in late January 1945. He had tried to get to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays, but the confederation authorities had rejected his visa application for unexplained reasons. On January 28, 1945, Allen Dulles wrote to Washington that

  “George Wood” had arrived with two hundred photographed documents. Many of them had probably been hastily done: They were out of focus and a substantial part of the film was unreadable. “These documents are harder to decipher than a crossword puzzle,” Dulles wrote to his Washington colleagues.

  The trip had been even more uncomfortable than in April 1944, the date of his last visit. Fritz had made the trip with a colleague from the Foreign Ministry, because the rule was now that a courier never traveled alone. The journey from Berlin to Basel had taken sixty rather than the normal sixteen hours: two days and two nights in a railroad car without a window. The line now ran through Nuremberg, Ulm, and Friedrichshafen, on the shores of Lake Constance. Fritz and his colleague had spent a night there in a hotel infested by the Gestapo. The next day, they had taken a boat across the lake to get to Switzerland.

  As he had the first time, Fritz carried the documents in a little box hidden between his legs: fortunately, film was much less bulky than bundles of paper. This batch contained a series of cables dealing with recent high-level negotiations between the Swiss National Bank and the German Reichsbank. On December 10, 1944, Ernst Weber, president of the Swiss National Bank, had invited Emil Puhl, vice president of the Reichsbank, to dinner. The principal subject under discussion had been the purchase of German gold by Switzerland. For reasons of security, Weber “would take charge personally of the transfer of gold across the border.” In exchange, the Reichsbank agreed to facilitate the
delivery of German coal to Switzerland. The discussions had taken place in “the usual atmosphere of trust,” as Otto Köcher, chief of the German legation in Bern, noted.

  Some months earlier, in May 1944, Fritz had already provided the OSS with a cable from Otto Köcher revealing that Germany was selling six thousand kilos of gold a month to the Swiss National Bank. The bank’s president, Ernst Weber, even said he was “ready to take even more gold than the amount fixed in the monthly quota” established by the bilateral agreement between the two central banks. Otto Köcher characterized him as a “personal friend” of Emil Puhl.

  The existence of close economic and financial ties between Switzerland and Germany provoked the anger of the Allies. But there was something even more serious than the gold transactions between Berlin and Bern. A cable that Fritz brought in January 1945 revealed the existence of high-level negotiations between officials and industrialists of the two countries on weapons and advanced military technology. The Swiss wanted to acquire expertise in chemically propelled rockets and had frequent discussions with the heads of a major German company, Köln-Rottweil, part of the IG Farben conglomerate.

  This information was transmitted to Washington in early February (“Jakka” messages, for January and Kappa). During his stay in Bern, Fritz did not merely share his information with Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer. He openly made the argument for an overthrow of the Nazi regime to some of his colleagues at the German legation. At least two of the diplomats whispered to him that they agreed and that something had to be done to bring things to an end. They wanted to resign their positions, but they did not know if they could get political asylum in Switzerland. The atmosphere in the German legation had never been so gloomy. As for Fritz, he left for Berlin on February 2, 1945, making the return trip in a freight car. He used a backpack as a pillow and slept through most of the trip.

  On his return to the capital of the Reich, Fritz lived through the most violent bombing he had ever experienced. The Allied raids of February 3, 1945 remained in memory as exceptionally deadly and destructive. That day, the Reich Chancellery was hit, along with the buildings of the Gestapo and the People’s Court. The city was unrecognizable. The railroad stations witnessed apocalyptic scenes of hysteria. The streets were clogged with masses of refugees and with troops on the way to the front. On January 30, the Red Army had crossed the Oder, provoking the flight of millions of Germans to the west. Fifty thousand a day were arriving in the capital of the Reich, fleeing the swift and terrifying advance of T-34 tanks, mounted Cossacks, and the Russian infantry, which, rumor had it, consisted, particularly in the lower ranks, of countless pillagers and rapists.

  Crossing through Berlin on his way home, Fritz felt that he was in a city under siege. Corpses were scattered everywhere, barely covered by paper bags, with heads and feet exposed at either end. On February 7, 1945, Adolphe Jung described in his diary the new face of Berlin: “People are building barricades in the streets with whatever they find there from the houses demolished by bombing. Everything is used. Large and small bricks or stone blocks from the sidewalks; wooden beams or iron bars taken from neighboring ruins. Trees, if there are any, are cut down and used. There thus arise barricades two meters wide and two meters high that almost completely close off the street.”

  And yet Berliners as a whole remained calm. The restaurants were full even if the menus were meager. And above all, no one spoke about the war. People seemed resigned, but not at all defeatist or even rebellious. Official Nazi propaganda recognized the existence of a “crisis,” but there was as yet no talk of defeat. Goebbels’s latest slogan was simple: “We will win because we must win!”

  Returning to his Wilhelmstrasse office, Fritz realized that all the cables that he had carefully preserved in his safe had been destroyed by a colleague. He had been obliged to give him his key when he left for Switzerland, and the minister had ordered that “documents of no immediate interest” be destroyed in all the offices of the Foreign Ministry.

  Bern, February 1945

  In Bern, Allen W. Dulles was irritated to learn that the materials supplied by “George Wood” were considered by his Washington colleagues as “museum pieces” and regretted that their “full operational value” had not been obtained. He said that he “had never understood” why the “Wood” file had been treated first of all by the counterespionage service, which was endlessly concerned with verifying the authenticity of the source. Dulles finally complained about jurisdictional disputes among the army, the OSS, and the State Department. Information did not circulate, and the result was that his favorite source was treated with extreme neglect: “Again emphasize that to get full value out of this material will require staff of workers thoroughly competent German, with some background Wood material, knowledge of personalities and German diplomatic procedure plus ability decipher crossword puzzles.”

  In Washington, the neglect of “George Wood” was not a matter of chance. Some members of the intelligence community and the army were enthusiastic about this miraculous source, General Donovan among them, but others had mixed feelings about the general quality of the Kappa material. One of them thought: “While much of this material has been of interest and importance from different aspects, it has not seemed top-drawer save for certain few exceptions. It would seem to be more the type of communications which the old Chiefs of Divisions in the State Department used to get and give and not the information which went directly to or came from the Secretary, Undersecretary, and President …”

  A short time later, on February 16, 1945, Dulles again complained to General Donovan: “You have requested us to have Wood concentrate on Far Eastern material and we endeavored to comply and gave transmission of this material absolute priority. I have no clue whatever whether this material proved of value to you.”

  Was Dulles’s outburst heard? A “special unit” was soon established in the OSS to analyze the Kappa messages. The “George Wood” file was no longer under the jurisdiction of the OSS counterespionage service and was now located in the secret intelligence department. An entirely separate administrative unit was specifically dedicated to the analysis of information provided by Fritz Kolbe, including a total of fifteen people, dividing files into geographical zones, and including two colonels assigned to elucidate the most technical questions.

  Allen Dulles thought that these initiatives had come too late. Since Washington had not known how to make use of the information from “George Wood,” the chief of OSS Bern was now determined to take steps on his own to end the war more quickly. He was more than ever prepared to sidestep the hierarchy and act on his own hook. For example, he decided in late February 1945 not to refuse the hand extended to him by the commander of SS troops in Italy, Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, Heinrich Himmler’s former right-hand man. Wolff was acting on his own. Like other high political or military officials of the Reich, he thought that “although Germany had lost the war, it could still choose its conqueror.”

  After communicating through a Swiss intelligence officer and an Italian industrialist, Allen Dulles and Karl Wolff met in person in Zurich on March 8, 1945 and then in Ascona on March 19. These two meetings took place in the most complete secrecy. Contacts continued throughout March and April. In messages from Bern to Washington, Wolff was designated by the code name “Critic,” and the discussions with him were given the name of “Operation Sunrise.” President Roosevelt, who was already dying, did not oppose these negotiations when he learned of their existence. On April 29, 1945, the Wehrmacht laid down its arms in Italy, in a surrender without conditions. The Soviets were informed at the last minute and felt that they had been stabbed in the back. The Kremlin reacted very vigorously to this attempt toward a “separate peace” of the Western powers with the Germans. The last written contacts of Stalin with Roosevelt had to do with Dulles’s secret maneuvers in Italy. The extremely harsh tone of these messages was an early sign of the coming cold war.

  Berlin, March 1945

  March
1945 brought general and headlong flight from Berlin. The Russians were in the process of recapturing Poland. Many people, particularly important officials of the Nazi Party, were attempting to leave the city. The others were forcibly enlisted in the Volkssturm, a pathetic people’s militia armed with improvised weapons. Nothing was more precious at the time than a vehicle with a full fuel tank. A car could not be found, even in miserable condition, for less than fifteen or twenty thousand marks (bear in mind that Fritz Kolbe’s monthly salary was nine hundred marks). The price of a liter of gasoline was forty marks or twenty cigarettes. Forged papers and passes were extremely expensive.

  It was at this very moment that Fritz was given a confidential mission by his boss. Nothing professional: Karl Ritter had a mistress whom he wanted at all costs to send to safety to his house in Bavaria. She was a singer of light music, used to dressing in the latest fashion and never separated from her makeup case. She had a two-year-old daughter. Fritz was asked to drive the young woman and her child to the other end of the country in the ambassador’s official Mercedes. In order to allow the vehicle to get through checkpoints, he was given orders for Switzerland, duly stamped by the relevant services of the ministry.

  “In March 1945, Kolbe came to the hospital for the last time,” wrote Adolphe Jung. “He had received orders to go to Switzerland…. All night, documents were photographed. Everything that had any importance for the American embassy was set on the stand facing the camera. He was nervous and worried. He left us knowing that Berlin would soon be literally crushed by Allied aircraft, that we would probably have to suffer through the final struggle of the Nazis against the Russian army. His fiancée was crying. I myself was worried. Would I be able to see my country and my family again? He promised to have us picked up as soon as possible on a plane by our friend D. [Dulles].” When he left, Fritz gave instructions to his three friends in the ministry, Fräulein von Heimerdinger, Karl Dumont, and Willy Pohle: “When the Americans arrive, you have to go to an American officer, claim to belong to a resistance group, and give the password ‘George 25900.’”