11
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.
Bern/Washington, September 1944
In September 1944, Switzerland was plunged into a new world. Annemasse and Annecy had been liberated on August 18, Paris on August 25, and Lyon on September 3. In September, the American Seventh Army, under the command of General Alexander Patch, reached the Swiss border near Geneva. Following the Allied landings in Normandy and on the Mediterranean coast, a great breath of fresh air was rushing through the West, and Switzerland’s isolation was coming to an end.
Allen Dulles took advantage of the new context to go back to Washington, passing through London. He made the entire trip in the company of General Donovan, who wanted to discuss various questions related to the future. Dulles was away from Bern between early September and late October. He spent a few weeks in New York and visited OSS headquarters in Washington, which he found hard to recognize, so great had the changes been. Now it was necessary to wear a badge in order to be authorized to enter the building, which had become a veritable fortress. The amateur spies had become professionals.
In discussing the future of the OSS with him, General Donovan expressed the view, shared by Dulles, that once peace had been restored, the United States would need more than ever a highly specialized intelligence agency, directly responsible to the president and operating around the world. The OSS was already becoming as interested in the Soviet Union as in Nazi Germany, if not more so. These new prospects made the question of the placement of the principal figures in American intelligence a matter of urgency. During the trip, there was much discussion of Allen Dulles’s professional future. He wanted to become the European head of the organization, taking the place of David Bruce in London. But General Donovan had a different view: He wanted to place Dulles in charge of the German branch of the OSS as soon as Hitler’s regime had surrendered.
Asked to suggest priorities for action in postwar Germany, Dulles proposed to continue the work he had carried out in Switzerland:
Immediately contact a series of persons already placed in strategic positions in Germany whose existence is known only to us and who could be contacted only by us because of the carefully created relationships over the past two years. These persons, if they survive the German collapse, could be most helpful in obtaining secret records and files of certain German government departments and in giving us inside information as to the exact organization and location of secret government agencies and their new hideouts.
Back in Europe, Allen Dulles passed through Paris, where a major OSS office had just been established at 70, avenue des Champs Élysées. In Bern, he thoroughly reorganized his “shop,” which had been run during his absence by his assistant, Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz. Dulles began by supplying his office with a luxurious fleet of automobiles. Before then, he had had available only a small Ford, whose use was limited by the lack of fuel coupons. After September 1944, he acquired a Chevrolet and a Packard, as well as a front-wheel-drive Citroën equipped with a gas generator. At the time, the American legation had only a single car, reserved for the envoy, Leland Harrison.
Dulles established new posts in Bern, Geneva, Zurich, and Basel. He assembled a team of new recruits charged with setting up networks in Germany, on the model of what had been done in France before the June 6 landing. A Swiss intellectual whom he had met in New York, Emmy Rado, was given the task of making contacts in the German churches. Another brilliant mind, Gerhard van Arkel, was given the same kind of mission for the working-class circles of the old unions of the Weimar Republic. Everything had to be built from the bottom up. Except for Fritz Kolbe, the OSS had no regular source of information in the heart of the Reich. Hans-Bernd Gisevius and his friends in the Abwehr had been neutralized after the failure of the July 20 plot. Those who had not been executed were struggling to survive and were no longer operational.
The OSS soon had to turn to a new kind of source: German prisoners of war. In the course of the liberation of France, the Americans had captured tens of thousands of enemy soldiers. The Allied generals wanted to take advantage of this resource. They came up with the idea of transforming some Wehrmacht officers into secret agents and sending them behind enemy lines in their original uniforms but with false identities, forged documents, and clandestine radio transmitters.
The new agents selected by the OSS in the prison camps had an exclusively operational role: They were asked to indicate the location of arms factories, Wehrmacht units, and the like. “Though no doubt our efforts in the last nine months of the war were useful, they could not replace Fritz, who after all produced intelligence of strategic importance,” according to Peter Sichel, who was one of the handful of American officers of German origin assigned to select this new variety of agent. Peter Sichel came from a Jewish family in Mainz that had fled Germany in 1934. Back in Europe in an American uniform, he had arrived in Annemasse in October 1944 with the Seventh Army of General Patch. There he learned of the existence of “George Wood,” “a spy who greatly enhanced Dulles’s prestige,” Sichel recalls.
Also in the fall of 1944, some German émigrés in London and the United States began to return to German territory in order to work secretly for the Allied cause. A Social Democrat, Jupp Kappius, was parachuted into Germany by the OSS in September 1944. Hidden in the Ruhr region, he lived in Bochum, from which he sent regular reports to the Americans. Kappius was surprised at the relative “normality” of the living conditions of the German people. The factories were operating, the mail was delivered, the telephone lines were not cut, nor was gas or electricity. Food was rationed but no one was dying of hunger. People were well dressed. “They eat butter, not margarine!” he wrote, while noting the astonishing spiritual impoverishment of the population, that was living in a state of doubt, cynicism, and the pursuit of narrow self-interest.
Rastenburg, September 1944
Fritz spent the end of August and almost the entire month of September in the “Wolf’s Lair” (Wolfsschanze), Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia. Ambassador Karl Ritter needed him to replace an ailing colleague. Here, very close to the front, he had the unpleasant feeling of having no control over events. In Berlin he could take action. Here he felt he had become a spectator of history. There was no possibility of contacting Bern, and he had a painful awareness of the passage of time. He had no way to predict whether the war would last for another month, or another year. A few dozen kilometers away, the soldiers of the Red Army were preparing their next great offensive.
In the course of this long stay in the “wolf’s lair,” Fritz spent most of his time drafting reports for his boss. He was bored and wished only to return to Berlin as soon as possible. Instead of calming him down, the aromas of nature and the sound of the wind in the birch trees only increased his irritation. But he did cross paths by accident with a mysterious figure whose appearance reminded him of a composer or orchestra conductor (Fritz noticed that he had “long fingers” and a face that was “like Wilhelm Furtwängler’s”). He learned that this high official frequently went to Stockholm, where he had been in contact with Soviet diplomats for more than a year. Who was this man? Fritz wondered. What was the purpose of his negotiations with the Russians? Who had asked him to take these steps: Ribbentrop or Hitler in person? Fritz was stunned to discover the existence of secret exchanges between Berlin and Moscow. He did not at the time find out what was really at stake in the discussions between the emissaries from the two capitals.
After a few days, he learned that the man’s name was Peter Kleist and that he was close to Ribbentrop. Kleist had gone to Stockholm in early September to meet some Russian diplomats, but they had refused to see him. The wish to negotiate thus originated in Berlin! Fritz came to the conclusion that high German diplomatic officials were not about to abandon their efforts and that other secret attempts would be made in Stockholm. Unable to find out anything further, Fritz was nevertheless very pleased to have in his possession a piece of information of the highest importance that he would transmit to the Americans in Bern as soon as he returned to Berlin.
With nothing further to do at the führer’s headquarters, he decided to make every effort to return to the capital. He faked a stomach ailment and stopped eating, despite the superior quality of the meals in the “wolf’s lair.” He complained of complications from an appendicitis operation he had had in 1940. His colleagues realized that Fritz was really ill when they saw him refuse cold chicken at breakfast one morning. Soon, armed with a medical certificate, he returned to Berlin around September 20, 1944. On his return, he had himself treated by his doctor friends at the Charité hospital, who agreed to prescribe fictitious treatments.
Bern, September–October 1944
“In the early part of September 1944, Dr. Bruno [sic] Kleist, Ministerial Dirigent of the Ost Ministerium, made a trip to Stockholm as the agent of high ranking German officials… in order to attempt to make contact with the Russians. In Stockholm, however, Soviet Counsellor of Embassy Semenov served notice that this action was not suitable. In spite of this, the Germans are said to be continuing efforts along these same lines…. Hitler has not entirely abandoned the idea of reaching an agreement with the Soviets.” This OSS document was written on the basis of information supplied by Fritz Kolbe in early October 1944. It provoked disbelief among the experts in Washington who considered it “of great importance, if it is true.” Colonel McCormack’s staff turned up its collective nose and thought that the cable should be treated with great wariness. McCormack thought it was impossible for the German authorities to enter into contact with the Soviets, despite the fact that the Japanese wanted a separate peace with the Russians. Less negative than McCormack, Allen Dulles thought that the hypothesis of a new German-Soviet agreement was now in the realm of the possible and that everything had to be done to prevent it. He did not at all appreciate the announcement in late September of the “Morgenthau Plan,” which envisaged the deindustrialization of Germany and its transformation into a vast agricultural zone. This kind of American initiative could in his view only strengthen certain pro-Soviet tendencies that were beginning to appear in the higher reaches of the German government.
The information that Fritz had gleaned in the Wolfsschanze reached Bern in early October. The Foreign Ministry courier Willy Pohle himself handed the confidential package to Ernst Kocherthaler. Instead of using the usual mailbox, the two men met for lunch in a Bern restaurant on October 6. In the envelope there were about thirty documents on film—this was the first time this method worked—and a handwritten note from Fritz dated October 3. This was little in comparison to the usual delivery. Fritz apologized and explained that an increasing quantity of diplomatic cables were no longer reaching the foreign ministry because they were carried directly to Hitler. The most important document in this batch was the one revealing the activities of Peter Kleist in Stockholm. But there were also very interesting details about the atmosphere in the führer’s headquarters: “The climate is worse and worse,” wrote Fritz, adding that “the pressure is unbelievably high.” Der Druck ist unerhört stark: the sentence was repeated in German in the summary prepared by Allen Dulles. In addition, Fritz no longer said anything about his “militia” but asked the Americans whether he would now be more useful in Bern than in Berlin. “Recommend a reconciliation with my wife, and that will mean that I should join you.”
Berlin, October 1944
The reading and processing of “George Wood’s” letters were now part of the ordinary work of the Bern office of the OSS. Meanwhile in Berlin, Fritz’s life was becoming ever more difficult and dangerous. To the first serious food shortages in late October was added one of the coldest winters that Germany had experienced for a long time. But above all, the danger of being discovered was constantly increasing.
Fritz was beginning to learn how to use the camera supplied by the Americans. His favorite place to work was Adolphe Jung’s room in the Charité hospital. According to the French surgeon:
In the hospital, the documents were worked on until late at night. Sometimes he [Fritz] started right in to photograph them, fastening them with clips or thumbtacks onto a piece of cardboard well exposed to daylight or several electric lights. He had an excellent little camera that took extremely precise pictures two centimeters by two centimeters. I helped him as best I could. When he had to leave, he left the documents with me, particularly the ones that had not been photographed. I was often very uneasy. In my room I had only an old desk that did not lock very securely. Usually I took the papers and put them in n envelope that I sealed. On it I wrote Manuscrit pour le Journal de Médecine and locked it in the desk. At night I jumped when the sirens went off. I hastily dressed and went downstairs with a small suitcase and a leather briefcase containing my essential papers, into which I also stuffed the documents. Sometimes I was forced to leave them upstairs. I imagined a bomb landing on the hospital and half destroying the room, and I saw the personnel and the firemen emptying out the room to save books and papers and throwing everything in a pile. What would happen to me if I was wounded? Suppose they discovered all the documents in my possession. What would happen if one day one of the Nazis decided to search my room while I was working?
The day before the diplomatic pouch was to leave for Switzerland, on October 4, 1944, Fritz went to the mail service of the Foreign Ministry to register one or two packages that he wished to send to Bern. He found himself facing a new employee whom he did not know, a young man full of zeal who began a thorough search of the contents of the packages—clothing supposedly left behind in Berlin by accident belonging to a colleague in the Bern legation. The suspicious employee went through shirts, trousers, and even pairs of socks, inspecting every nook and cranny. Fritz watched in terror as the young man got ready to unfold a coat, the inside pockets of which held the rolls of film he was sending to the Americans. Fritz had his hand on the little revolver that he always carried with him. But suddenly another colleague came into the room. Fritz engaged the newcomer in “an interesting conversation.” The conscientious employee took part in the discussion and stopped concentrating on his work. He closed up the packages, put on the regulation seals, and put them in a large canvas sack for the next day’s train to Bern. After that moment of extreme tension, Fritz locked himself in his office and drank a double cognac. “My knees were a little wobbly,” he confessed many years later.
Another day in the fall of 1944, Fritz was visited at home by his Blockwart, the local party official assigned among other things to watch the population in the neighborhood. This routine questioning could be dangerous. Fritz did not know whether he was under suspicion after the failed plot of July 20. But he was reassured to learn that the Blockwart was a decent bus driver without malice or brutality. Fritz did not hide the fact that he was not a member of the party. But he denied listening to the BBC and presented himself as being neither a “moaner” nor a “spreader of false rumors.” At the end of the conversation, the Blockwart asked Fritz for his opinion about the war: “I hope with all my heart for our final victory,” said Fritz. The inspector was obviously very pleased. The expression “final victory” [Endsieg] had had an effect. The minor party official conscientiously wrote the expression down in his notebook and let Fritz know that his report would not be negative.
On still another occasion, while he was walking to his mother’s carrying “material” (documents to be photographed), a large air raid caught him crossing Alexanderplatz. He was forced to seek refuge in a public underground shelter. On the way down the stairs, he said a prayer that he would not lose consciousness. If that were to happen, the documents might have been found and he would be done for.
Bern, November 1944
During the month of November, Allen Dulles continued to improve the working conditions in the Bern office of the OSS. The office was equipped with a radio transmitter that was installed in an attic in the Dufourstrasse buildings. For the first time, it was no longer necessary to use the Swiss mails or the “cover” of American diplomatic representation to transmit information to Washington and London. The Swiss secret services, who were probably aware of the existence of this illegal and undeclared transmitter, behaved as though nothing had happened and did not carry out a search.
Allen Dulles was gaining increased autonomy and influence. He received more and more visits in his Bern office. The time was long gone when his information was considered with some disdain by Washington headquarters. He was far from infallible, however. Dulles was excessively optimistic by nature and thought that the end of the war was near. To be sure, Aix-la-Chapelle had fallen on October 21, 1944. But Germany still had ten million men in uniform. The OSS office in Bern did not at all foresee the Ardennes counteroffensive that would begin in the middle of December.
Toward the middle of November, a new message from Fritz reached Bern. This time the rolls of film had been hidden in a box containing a watch to be repaired. The Foreign Ministry courier, as usual, was not aware of the real content of what he was carrying. One hundred pages of documents had been photographed. The most interesting messages had to do with Japan, Hungary, and the latest developments in German armaments.
Fritz revealed precise details about the V-2 rockets and added personal comments to suggest priorities for action:
There are said to be V-2 launching pads in the Eifel Mountains area. There is an assembly plant in Rübeland which is almost entirely subterranean, on the railroad line from Elbingerode to Blankenberg. It is felt that the bombing of railroads and road communications would produce excellent results for the Allies… A-4 is said to be the designation applied to the V-2 bomb by the experts. It is said to be manufactured at Saint Gallen, some forty kilometers southeast of Steyr in Austria. The parts are assembled in the Mittel Deutsche Werke in Hartz, Germany. The buildings where this work is done are all located underground. The smashing of the rail shipment lines would be the most effective way to cripple this production.
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.’”
Fritz left Berlin on March 16 or 18, 1945. Professor Sauerbruch had asked him to take his wife along, so that, including the baby, there were four people in the car. Everyone was squeezed into the front seat, since the back seat was filled with an impressive quantity of suitcases and Oriental rugs belonging to Karl Ritter and his young companion. The passengers had to shift their legs to the right so that Fritz could operate the gearshift. Comical at first, this situation soon became embarrassing.
At first, Fritz intended to leave at breakfast time, but an American air raid forced him to delay getting on the road until noon. The sky was gray, the cold biting, and there was ice on the roads. Fritz could see nothing in the limousine’s rearview mirror because of everything piled in the back seat (there was even a baby carriage tied to the top of the car). The journey promised to be arduous; they had to drive early in the morning or in the early evening to avoid attacks from hedgehopping enemy fighters. The brakes on the Mercedes did not work well, and the car broke down on the very first night. They had to be towed by a truck belonging to the SS, secured through the savoir faire of Karl Ritter. The SS truck had a charcoal-burning motor and went no faster than thirty kilometers an hour, with frequent stops to clean the pipes, so that it took almost four days to get from Berlin to Bavaria. Between Berlin and Munich, there were four to six identity checks, carried out either by the army or by SS units.
Crossing the country from north to south, they had the impression that they were in a scene from the Thirty Years’ War. Families of refugees were walking toward no specific destination; they could see dead animals in the fields; they came across burned-out vehicles on the sides of the road. The branches of the trees were often covered with strips of aluminum foil dropped by enemy planes to jam German radar. The singer and her baby spent the entire trip crying and screaming. Fritz was more than impatient to reach Bavaria.
When he got to the town of Kempten, in the Allgäu region of Bavaria, Fritz was finally able to rid himself of Karl Ritter’s mistress, the baby, the baby carriage, the car, and the SS. Too bad about the car, he thought, but the escort was a little burdensome. Still accompanied by Professor Sauerbruch’s wife, he then went to Ottobeuren, not far from there, where the prelate Georg Schreiber was waiting for him, living in hiding in a large Benedictine monastery. Fritz was able to rest for a day or two in Ottobeuren, although he continued his activities. He took the time to photograph in the monastery library some documents that he had brought with him from Berlin. Thanks to the protection of the monks, he was not obliged to register with the local police as a traveler who was passing through. The atmosphere of the cloister impressed him a great deal, especially the meals in the great hall of the monastic community. The feeling was restful, and the food in Bavaria was better than in Berlin: potatoes were not rationed.
The pause was short-lived. A few days later, Fritz Kolbe and Margot Sauerbruch took the train from Ottobeuren to Weiler, an Allgäu village that was the home of Wilhelm Mackeben, a businessman, former diplomat, and friend of Fritz. Despite the short distance, they had to change trains twice. As they were waiting for the connection at Memmingen, Fritz and Margot Sauerbruch had the terrifying experience of being stopped by a Gestapo brigade that took them into a windowless office to be interrogated. After a few frightening moments, Fritz realized that this was probably a simple routine procedure. Margot’s suitcase was inspected but not Fritz’s bag, which contained some highly compromising rolls of film. Fritz grew angry and demanded to be treated with all the respect due an official courier of the Foreign Ministry, pointing out that his papers were in order, including his exit visa from Germany. The policeman called the Gestapo in Munich to verify that Herr Fritz Kolbe was indeed someone from the Foreign Ministry on an official mission. They were finally able to leave without further trouble. Professor Sauerbruch, who was in the area, was reunited with his wife, and Fritz continued the journey alone.
When he reached the village of Weiler, Fritz met with his friend Wilhelm Mackeben, who kept the doors of his chalet open to all kinds of people in a constant stream: During his stay, Fritz met a Peruvian woman, an Iranian student from Teheran who had been stranded in Germany since the beginning of the war, and two German officers with whom he had a long nighttime conversation. These two Wehrmacht officers were part of a detachment assigned to transport in trucks a substantial quantity of secret documents to be hidden in southern Germany. With a knowing air, Fritz pretended to know what was involved, which allowed him to learn more. The trucks were transporting documents on the Soviet Union, the Red Army, and even a list of pro-German agents infiltrated into the USSR. They belonged to a military espionage service with expertise on Russia, and their leaders intended to use their treasure as a bargaining chip with the Allies once the war was over.
Very pleased at having gathered this information, Fritz resumed his journey to Switzerland. He went to Bregenz on a bicycle that had been graciously lent to him by Mackeben’s Iranian student friend. In Bregenz, the Swiss consulate stamped his diplomatic passport without difficulty and confirmed the validity of his visa, good for a period of five days. It was April 2, 1945. The next day, he took the train at Sankt Margarethen for Zurich and Bern. The comfort was unexpected and there were no police barriers. The only check that Fritz had to go through was a medical check on entering Swiss territory: It was verified that he had neither dysentery, nor smallpox, nor scabies.
Bern, April 1945
“Wood arrived last night after laborious trip from Berlin, which he left about March 16.” This was the message Dulles cabled to Washington on April 4, 1945. On that day, the final pockets of German resistance were falling in the Ruhr, and the Allies were already in the center of the Reich (Kassel, Gotha, and Erfurt were in the process of being taken). Fritz was debriefed as usual, but the Americans in Bern had less need for him. Allen Dulles was entirely taken up with his secret negotiations with Karl Wolff, Himmler’s former right-hand man. This time, Ernst Kocherthaler took on the task of taking notes on his conversations with Fritz.
Fritz had a good deal to say, particularly about Japan. German Ambassador Heinrich Stahmer described the growing sense of political crisis in Tokyo and said he was convinced that the Japanese leaders were more and more unpopular among their people. In another cable, Stahmer set out in detail the latest technical developments in Japanese aviation. On the topic of Germany, Fritz provided the latest examples of the dissolution of Hitler’s power.
All of that was very interesting, but for Allen Dulles, the usefulness of “George Wood” had now changed its character. The head of the Bern office of the OSS wanted to make him a permanent employee, based with the Americans and able to return to Germany to fulfill precise missions as required. At first, he wanted to send him to southern Bavaria to investigate the setting up of a “national (Alpine) Redoubt” in which Dulles was convinced the Nazi leaders would take refuge to conduct their final battle. “Almost Wagnerian,” he said in his cables to Washington. Like Dulles, the leading American generals firmly believed in this scenario. For the moment, Fritz remained in Bern. Dulles asked him to investigate behind the scenes in the Reich legation, to encourage his fellow diplomats to resign, and to get hold of archive documents that might interest the Allies, notably on the financial affairs of the Nazi leaders who hoped to place their holdings in Switzerland after the defeat.
After five days in Bern, Fritz’s visa was no longer valid. From that moment on, his fate was entirely in the hands of his American friends. “George Wood” had become a stowaway living under the personal protection of Allen Dulles.
Berlin, April 1945
On April 21, 1945, Walter Bauer—the anti-Nazi entrepreneur associated with Fritz—came out of prison. He had been arrested in September 1944 in connection with the investigation of the 20 July plot and subjected to inhuman treatment for several months. On the day of his liberation, the Gestapo was considerate enough to give him two subway tickets so he could go home. Three days later, on April 24, 1945, Russian troops arrived in Berlin. Pillage and rape prevailed. Maria Fritsch had remained alone in the capital of the Reich, and Fritz had no news. She left no record about this terrible period, and no one will ever know how she lived through those days of sorrow, shame, and deliverance. On every corner could be seen bodies crushed by tanks, “emptied like toothpaste tubes.” The odor of death was mixed with the odor of springtime. In the midst of the ruins, birds, flowers, and fruit trees lived their lives as though nothing were happening.
The Charité hospital continued to fulfill its mission as well as possible. Doctors and medical personnel subsisted on whiskey and crackers and spent as much time in the hospital’s underground shelter as on the wards, three-quarters of which were destroyed. Professor Sauerbruch was back in Berlin. Adolphe Jung, still on his staff, recorded a constant flow of the wounded: “In the operating room, we are presented indiscriminately with soldiers and civilians, women and children, wounded. In the square in front of the hospital, despite the danger, the crowd still lines up at the bakery. A shell fell on the crowd of women and children. We have to operate without stopping” (April 22, 1945). “There are hardly any houses left in Berlin that have not been hit. Most of them have collapsed. Among those still standing, it is rarely possible to inhabit anywhere above the first floor. Of course there are no more telephones, no electricity or water, because even where the pipes are intact the pressure is so low that you can barely get a few drops in the cellars” (April 21). “Every two minutes, a large shell falls inside the walls of the hospital… When will I be hit?” (April 24).
On Tuesday, May 1, at 9:30 in the evening, Hamburg radio announced to the German people that serious news was about to be broadcast. Excerpts of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony were played. Finally, Admiral Dönitz announced the death of the führer the day before in Berlin. At the Charité hospital, now treating Soviet soldiers, there was not much time to listen to the radio. The Third Reich was already practically forgotten; everyone was against it, had always been against it.