12
Bern, late April 1945
In late April 1945, Fritz Kolbe was given a very delicate mission by the Americans. He had no idea that this episode would strike a severe blow against his reputation and would definitively ruin his career. The war was coming to an end. The Americans were preparing the cases against German leaders whom they intended to put on trial. They were intensely interested in Nazi financial holdings outside Germany, particularly in Switzerland. But the OSS had learned that the German legation in Bern was in the process of destroying its records in view of the imminent surrender. Allen Dulles sent Fritz as an emissary to Otto Köcher, the envoy of the Reich, to persuade him to stop the destruction of documents.
Otto Köcher was extremely irritated to see Kolbe, whom he had until then considered a subordinate and who now turned out to be a traitor. He answered very curtly, stating that he would not take any orders from the Americans, even less from a German who had gone over to the Allies. But Fritz Kolbe did not give up: He attempted to persuade Köcher that it was in his interest to resign from his position. The Americans were proposing to make him part of an embryonic pro-Allied government that could quickly put an end to the war. “You have to choose between Hitler and Germany. The whole world has its eyes on you,” Fritz explained to his compatriot. Otto Köcher was angry and indignant. Unlike Kolbe, Köcher had a sense of duty and patriotism. His son was serving in the Wehrmacht. He would remain at his post until the end, in accordance with the oath of loyalty to the führer that he had taken. There was nothing further to discuss. Fritz Kolbe was unceremoniously shown to the door.
On leaving the envoy’s residence, Fritz was arrested by two plainclothes Swiss policemen who were watching the comings and goings of Otto Köcher, who was suspected of engaging in major financial manipulations for the leaders in Berlin. Some of the financial reserves of the Foreign Ministry (dozens of kilos of gold pieces) had just been secretly shipped to Bern. Was the Swiss capital about to become a rear base for the hard-core supporters of the Reich? Was the gold going to finance a pro-Nazi fifth column in Switzerland? These were the fears of the Swiss authorities, largely shared by the Americans. Thanks to the intervention of Allen Dulles, at whose home Fritz was living, the suspicions of the Swiss police about Kolbe were quickly removed. But they did not want to release him right away. They too sent him to Otto Köcher to try to get an answer to the simple question: Where is the gold of the Reich? The following evening, following orders, Fritz Kolbe made a second visit to the diplomat. Of course, he was given no information. He barely had the time to warn Köcher on behalf of the Swiss authorities against any misappropriation of funds for which he could later be prosecuted. For the second time in twenty-four hours, Ribbentrop’s representative slammed the door in Fritz’s face.
The visits had accomplished nothing but to worsen the position of Otto Köcher in the eyes of the Americans. They did everything to ensure that the German diplomat would not receive asylum in Switzerland after the surrender of the Reich. Köcher had strong friendships in Swiss political circles and he had been promised that he could stay in Switzerland and not be handed over to the Allies. But the combined pressure of the Allies and a portion of Swiss public opinion caused the Federal Council to give in, and he was deported to Germany in July 1945. The former head of the German legation in Bern was placed in an American internment camp in Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart. The Allied military authorities began to question him about the secret relations between the Reich and Switzerland during the war. But they were unable to complete their investigation: On December 27, 1945, the body of Otto Köcher was found hanging in his cell. The “Köcher file,” so promising for the investigators assigned to dissect the machinations of the Third Reich, maintained all its mysteries.
Inside the Ludwigsburg internment camp, the death of Otto Köcher provoked lively discussions among the German prisoners, some of whom were former employees of the Foreign Ministry. One of them started a rumor that would spread and cause Fritz Kolbe great harm. He said that Köcher had been betrayed by a German. A scum. A traitor who had been working for the Americans for a good while. “His name: Fritz Kolbe.”
Hegenheim, May 1945
Fritz stayed in Bern until the middle of May 1945. It was there while he was staying with Allen Dulles that he learned of Germany’s surrender. He did not celebrate the event as it deserved, because everyday concerns had already come to the fore again. Fritz’s visa had long since expired, and he had to leave Switzerland. Allen Dulles had his agent secretly taken to an OSS barracks in Hegenheim, in Alsace, very near the Swiss border. Even though he was confident about his future, Fritz was growing bored and felt isolated far from his friends. To keep himself occupied, it was no longer enough to exercise and go running. He took English lessons and wrote various reports and memoirs for the Americans.
In April, Allen Dulles had asked him to supply a description of the state of affairs in the Foreign Ministry. The file was accompanied by a commentary by Fritz on each of its members, with good and bad marks (“This one is an out-and-out Nazi, that one might possibly be employed again at the ministry”). Before leaving Bern for Hegenheim, Fritz had been asked to write down a summary of his own history. The result was a seven-page document written in English by Ernst Kocherthaler, with the title “The Story of George.” Allen Dulles placed this document in his personal archives with the intention of using it one day. In Hegenheim, Fritz continued writing, throwing down on paper more details of his life as a spy, speaking of friends who had helped him during the war, giving their names and addresses in order to recommend them to the American administration.
But Fritz wanted action. He was soon given a new mission by Dulles: He was to go to Bavaria in search of Karl Ritter and especially of Ribbentrop, both of whom had disappeared and were actively sought by the occupation authorities. He was also asked to track down the secret archives on Russia whose existence he had revealed a few weeks earlier. The Americans provided him with a jeep and a driver. Fritz left on his assignment in early June. He was helped by the prelate Schreiber, who went with him for part of the trip. But he brought back no solid information and he even unknowingly relayed some useless tips (“Eva Braun was recently arrested on the banks of the Tegernsee”). He saw the Gauleiter of Munich fleeing (“He was seen on foot, with a knapsack, near Wiessee. He then headed toward Kreuth”). Beyond that, there was no trace of Ribbentrop or of Ritter, nor of the secret archives on Russia. Fritz Kolbe thought that the former foreign minister of the Reich had taken refuge in Italy, but he was mistaken. Ribbentrop was found by the British in Hamburg and arrested on June 14, 1945.
Wiesbaden, June 30, 1945
Even though he was no longer a spy in the strict sense of the word, “George Wood” continued to be useful to the Americans. In fact, he was considered a “person of reference,” whose opinion could be asked at any time to guide the actions of the American occupation authorities. In the context of the establishment of the international tribunal that was going to judge the Nazi criminals, the OSS asked him to give evidence to Judge Robert H. Jackson, who was preparing the cases for the prosecution. The meeting took place in early July in Wiesbaden, on the premises of the Henkell company (champagne, wines, and spirits), chosen more or less by chance as the new base for the OSS in Germany.
On entering Judge Jackson’s office, Fritz Kolbe was introduced for the first time to General Donovan. Donovan was eager to meet the celebrated “George Wood,” who had just been called “the prize intelligence source of the war” by the British secret services. “I was introduced by Allen Dulles with very warm words,” Fritz wrote to his friend Kocherthaler. The discussion concerned war criminals. Judge Jackson questioned Kolbe about the personalities of Ribbentrop and his closest collaborators. Fritz told what he knew of the actions of the former minister and described the climate that prevailed in the ministry during the war. He thought that Ribbentrop’s first crime had been to “persuade Hitler to invade Poland, while assuring him that Great Britain would not react.” He then spoke about Karl Ritter, whom he presented as a yes-man whose role had been to encourage Ribbentrop in his worst initiatives (notably the inhuman treatment meted out to prisoners of war, especially Soviet prisoners).
Fritz Kolbe was not the only representative of the German resistance in Judge Jackson’s office. Next to him was Eugen Gerstenmaier, a leader of the Protestant Church, who had barely escaped a death sentence after the plot against Hitler. Gerstenmaier was questioned about the place of religion under Nazism. He answered by saying that the churches had been the principal center of opposition to Hitler. Fritz did not at all agree with him and had no hesitation in saying so.
What was beginning to annoy him intensely was the incredible number of German figures who claimed to have played an important role in the fight against Hitler. “Whose turn is it now?” he said to himself as he met one or another of them in the corridors of the Henkell company. He had a great deal of difficulty standing for Hans-Bernd Gisevius, who was also in Wiesbaden. He thought that this preferred informant of the Americans was a veritable impostor. He had not forgotten that Gisevius had begun his career in the Gestapo in the early years of the Nazi regime.
Berlin, July 1945
On July 17, Fritz returned to Berlin on board a US Army C-47. He finally saw Maria again, from whom he had heard nothing for three months. She was in a state of total exhaustion. She had not for a moment given up her work at the Charité hospital. It was a burdensome mission: the hospital was constantly full of the wounded, refugees dying from exhaustion, and victims of the typhus epidemic that had just broken out in the capital. Professor Sauerbruch held a high office in the administration of Berlin, in the Soviet zone. Adolphe Jung had returned to France. Maria told Fritz about what was happening in the Soviet zone: widespread rape, dismantling of factories, and systematic pillage of all property. The chaos was complete. Fritz could hardly believe his ears, he who thought that the Russians—who had not bombed German cities—would be greeted as liberators by the Germans. At that very moment he realized that the page of Nazism had finally been turned. Even if the Nazi “death squads” had not completely disappeared, the danger had changed its character and was now located in the East. On July 20, 1945, there was a celebration of the failed plot against Hitler. The press was full of praise for Count Stauffenberg and his friends. Fritz was stunned at the speed with which the wheels of history were turning.
“This new life did not seem to us worth living,” Maria said much later, recalling the year 1945. However, compared to most Berliners, Fritz and Maria were aware that they were in a privileged position. They did not need a ration card to live, and they were housed by the Americans. Allen Dulles, who had just taken charge of the OSS for all of Germany, lived close by, frequently asked after them, and provided them with CARE packages containing food. Fritz had the use of a car and—the height of luxury—was free to travel anywhere. He was not unhappy to have his friends benefit from his influence with the American occupation authorities. People came to see him to get a pass, a ration card, medicine, or a job. The question of his professional future had not yet arisen; for the moment Fritz was employed by the American military administration (OMGUS, Office of Military Government for Germany, United States), although he did not know how long that would last.
Although Fritz sometimes put on an American uniform when he traveled around town incognito, he did not shout from the rooftops that he was working for the conquerors. “Lackey of the Allies” and “traitor to the fatherland” were starting to become common insults. He was often looked at askance. Almost everywhere, Fritz seemed to be thought of as a “foreign body.” Maria’s family, in particular, regarded him with suspicion. He didn’t care, but she was deeply hurt. When Fritz Kolbe was asked what his current occupation was, he claimed that with the fall of the Foreign Ministry he wanted to make use of his skills as a former railroad employee. “I am trying to set up transportation firms,” he said. Only his close friends knew of his official mission. He was a member of the OMGUS office in charge of the settlement of refugees and displaced persons, but he also worked as an interpreter and driver for the Americans. A few months later, he was even accredited as a journalist to the Allied press service, which made it possible for him to interview major German political figures.
At bottom, the real nature of his work remained very vague. Everyone knew—and that was the essential point—that Fritz enjoyed a privileged position and that he had a long reach. He had people call him “George.” His house in the Nikolassee neighborhood became a meeting place for a swarm of friends delighted to escape from privation, if only for one evening. One would often encounter Professor Sauerbruch, Gertrud von Heimerdinger, old childhood friends, and newcomers to the “circle,” such as the industrialist Viktor Bausch and his wife Erika von Hornstein, a painter, or the popular writer Felicitas von Reznicek. Among regular visitors to the house were also a few young American OSS officers: The bon vivant Harry Hermsdorf was a liaison with Allen Dulles, and Tom Polgar, Fritz’s neighbor, spent hours playing with him with electric trains.
Fritz continued to supply pieces of information to the Americans and to draft reports for them. His area of expertise was the Social Democratic Party, in which he had a rich network of contacts, particularly in the Soviet zone. He closely observed the gradual seizure of control of the Social Democratic Party by the Communist Party in the East. In the analyses that he submitted to the OSS, he did not hesitate to assimilate the “Bolsheviks” to the Nazis. He even considered the communists “more brutal and more primitive” and regretted that it had not been possible to continue the war against the USSR.
On August 7, 1945, an accident almost cost him his life. While he was riding in an American army jeep, there was a violent collision with a truck at a Berlin intersection. Fritz suffered fractures of the skull and jaw, and several broken ribs. He spent three weeks in the hospital and needed a long convalescence before he could get back on his feet.
Wiesbaden, September 26, 1945
Fritz had barely recovered when he was again called to Wiesbaden to testify before a commission headed by DeWitt C. Poole, of the U.S. State Department, who was questioning as many of the former members of the Foreign Ministry as he could in connection with the trials that were soon to begin in Nuremberg. The young OSS officer, Peter Sichel, who was now posted to Berlin, accompanied Fritz in the jeep to Wiesbaden. During the long trip, the two men spoke mostly of sports and physical exercise. Fritz Kolbe showed off a few sports medals that he had won over the years. “It was his principal source of pride,” Peter Sichel recalled.
On September 26, 1945, Fritz was questioned in Wiesbaden by a member of the Poole commission. He spoke of his activities during the war. He explained that he had had about twenty “friends” who shared his convictions and had helped him to act. He again presented a precise description of every figure in the Foreign Ministry. He spoke at length of the clandestine organization of the traffic in strategic materials between Franco Spain and Nazi Germany. For the Americans, it was essential to have firsthand testimony to substantiate the prosecution in Nuremberg.
The OSS, however, feared for the safety of its protégé and did not want to provide too many opportunities for “George Wood” to speak publicly. Allen Dulles had tried to dissuade him from going before the Poole commission. Fritz had insisted, wishing as he did to participate in the work of justice being carried out by the Allies. But unlike others, notably Hans-Bernd Gisevius, he was not called to the witness stand at the international military tribunal, which began its proceedings in November 1945. Having been only a spy with no political responsibility, his testimony had to remain secret.
Berlin, 1946 to 1948
Even though he was relatively protected by his anonymity, Fritz Kolbe was not in a comfortable situation. His cooperation with the Americans made him particularly vulnerable in the context of the nascent cold war. In late June 1946, General Donovan sent a warning note to Allen Dulles: “The situation in Berlin has altered drastically since you left. There may be danger to some of those people who worked with you there…. There have been disappearances of many people whose names have appeared in the press as having been of assistance to the Allies during the war.” In his reply, Dulles explicitly raised the question of Fritz Kolbe’s future: “Certainly the possibility you suggest always exists and I understand that steps are being taken to extract ‘Wood’ of Boston-platinum fame and bring him over here for a cooling off period. I understand that he is still about the most useful man we have in Berlin but certain events have caused our people over here to feel that he is no longer safe.”
The Americans were beginning to fear that the Soviets might kidnap Kolbe. Wasn’t he as Dulles wrote, “the most useful man” for the Americans in Berlin? Fritz himself was beginning to consider living in the United States. In February 1946, he wrote to Ernst Kocherthaler that he was considering definitively giving up German citizenship and settling on the other side of the Atlantic to begin a “new life.” With his usual optimism, he hoped to find “a job in industry or in the State Department.” Eager to see his son Peter again, he thought it would be easier for him to get to South Africa from the United States. In Germany, it was impossible for him to get the foreign currency he needed for the trip.
But things were not that simple. It took three years of effort on Fritz’s part before he could go to America. His departure was delayed at first because of his divorce, the proceedings for which were still going on. But the principal difficulty lay elsewhere. In accordance with the instructions given by President Roosevelt before his death, Fritz had been given no guarantee about his future by the American authorities. Generally speaking, Germans were suspect in the eyes of the American immigration authorities. Obtaining a long-term visa came up against huge administrative difficulties. There was always a piece missing from the file. “Details are lacking on how contact with you was established, through whom and under what guise. No statement concerning George’s ideology, his reasons for entering into what is otherwise a traitorous relationship with the Allies…. Particularly important is your assessment of George’s motivation for having cooperated with the Allies, including an attestation of his sincere desire to overthrow the Nazi regime and in the end to serve his own country by contributing to the establishment of a democratic German government.” These were some of the questions to which Allen Dulles had to respond in the course of 1947.
On January 15, 1948, Dulles testified to the good faith of Fritz Kolbe in a notarized affidavit he submitted in New York. The affidavit explained that Fritz had taken “incalculable risks” in order to help the Allied cause. “Kolbe worked entirely for ideological reasons…. He refused any monetary reward for his work…. After the war was over, when Kolbe volunteered to continue to do difficult and dangerous work for us, I set aside, with General Donovan’s approval, a trust account in the amount of Sw. Fcs. 20,000. This was intended largely to protect a minor son in case any accident should befall him. I understand he has not touched this money. It was set aside for him without his having requested it…. I volunteered that I would do everything in my power to protect and assure his future…. I have no hesitation in saying that Fritz Kolbe is a brave man of high principles and a sincere believer in what this country stands for. He deserves well of us.” A few months later, in another notarized affidavit, Allen Dulles committed himself to Fritz’s financial support in the event of any difficulties.
Fritz was not yet authorized to enter the United States, but he was determined to leave Germany. In early April 1948, Fritz and Maria moved to Switzerland, where other tedious formalities awaited them. Because of the suicide of Otto Köcher, the former envoy of the Reich in Bern, the Swiss federal authorities suspected Fritz of having played a dubious role in the final days of the war. He was subjected to extensive questioning by the Swiss police before being allowed to move freely. For a few months he worked for the Commercial Development Corporation, an import-export business that his friend Ernst Kocherthaler had just established in Zurich. When his divorce from Lita Schoop became final in July, nothing further stood in the way of his departure. The atmosphere in Germany was becoming very unpleasant. The blockade of Berlin was in full swing. But the wait lasted months longer. Fritz and Maria had the time to get married in December 1948. Finally, on March 16, 1949, they took a liner for America sailing from Cuxhaven.
New York, spring 1949
Peter Sichel was in New York to greet the couple as they got off the boat. The weather was extremely hot. In their little hotel near Washington Square, without air conditioning, the atmosphere was stifling. From the outset, the “new life” of Fritz and Maria bore no resemblance to any illusions they might have had. The State Department obviously had no position to offer to this minor German official. With only limited mastery of the English language, Fritz did not feel at all as comfortable as he had hoped. In April 1949, Allen Dulles wrote to Fritz that he was looking for a job for him at Yale or the University of Michigan, “as a librarian or a research assistant.” But these leads, modest as they were, led to nothing. By the month of May, Fritz was writing to his old friend Walter Bauer to tell him that he intended to return to Germany. Bauer advised him to stay in the United States. “In your place, with your possibilities, I would not come back at the first difficulties,” he told him. Ernst Kocherthaler sent him the same message, advising him to “get hired by Standard Oil or Texaco.” But Fritz disliked American society and its appetite for unbridled consumption (“People never stop eating,” he observed scornfully).
Nevertheless, he tried his hand in business, thinking he had accumulated enough entrepreneurial skills working for the Commercial Development Corporation of his friend Ernst Kocherthaler. With the small nest egg he had put together with the help of Allen Dulles, he set up a small business selling asbestos. An old acquaintance from South Africa had suggested that they go into the business together. But his partner turned out to be a swindler, and he disappeared with Fritz’s capital of $25,000. This was too much. Fritz and Maria decided to return to Germany immediately. They had been in the United States for barely three months. In July 1949, the couple settled near Frankfurt. “His trip here did not work out as well as one might have expected,” Allen Dulles observed bluntly a few months later. As Ernst Kocherthaler said, to sum up the whole affair: “George is not a businessman type.”
Frankfurt, summer 1949
The blockade of Berlin by the Soviets had just come to an end when Fritz and Maria returned from the United States. They had been away from Germany for a year, dreaming in vain of a “new life.” They had lost a substantial part of their savings. They had no prospects for the future. In order to survive, Fritz did some sales work for his old friend Ernst Kocherthaler, who was involved in all kinds of business in Zurich. At his request, Fritz looked for markets for all kinds of products (diesel engines, reinforced concrete, steel, printing machinery). Preoccupied by material concerns, he had not yet tried to see his son, who was still in southern Africa and who was desperately waiting for his father to deign to take an interest in him. Peter Kolbe, who was in his early adolescence (he had his thirteenth birthday in April 1945), felt toward his absent father a mixture of indifference and resentment.
When he was still in the United States, Fritz had responded to a notice of an employment opportunity in the administration of the new Federal Republic. The new German government did not yet have an autonomous diplomatic service, but it had the right to open consulates or commercial offices abroad. Dozens of positions were beginning to open up. In his first letter of application on May 9, 1949, Fritz explained that he had the necessary language skills, the required experience, and a “political past” that made him fit for an assignment in the new consular services. To support his candidacy, he asked for help from Walter Bauer, who knew many people in the embryonic future German administration. Bauer for the moment had only an economic post and was based in Frankfurt.
That summer, Fritz sent out many unsolicited letters of application. He wrote to the SPD deputy Carlo Schmid (who did not have time to see him), to the administration of the Marshall Plan, to the foreign policy department of the Social Democratic Party. In his letters, he did not hesitate to mention the fact that he had never been a member of the Nazi Party, specifying that he had maintained close “contacts” with the Americans during the war, and that he had been a part of the “other Germany.” He believed that these elements would strengthen his chances of being selected. Had he not read in a German newspaper in July 1949 that the British military governor, Sir Brian Robertson, demanded that future German diplomats be “absolutely politically clean”? Fritz Kolbe’s file was probably too clean: Not only had he never joined the NSDAP, but he had never been imprisoned for acts of resistance. Imagine his surprise when he learned that his interlocutors at the Marshall Plan “did not understand why he had not been a member of the party.” Walter Bauer went out of his way to help Fritz. But when he questioned the heads of the Frankfurt administration, they answered that pieces were missing from the file. “Could Fritz Kolbe name more ‘references’ to support his candidacy? Could he in particular provide the names of former members of the Foreign Ministry?” he was told in November 1949. Fritz Kolbe complied with the request and provided a list of people whom he hoped would speak in his favor. Among these putative “sponsors” were found Hans Schrœder (former chief of personnel of the Foreign Ministry under Ribbentrop), Count Welczeck, and Karl Ritter in person. He had to dare to use that name. The necessities of the moment required that he compromise his convictions. Fritz was convinced that Karl Ritter wished him no ill (“He changed subordinates as he changed shirts. But me he kept”). Fritz Kolbe resumed contact with him in late 1949. Ritter had just gotten out of prison after serving a sentence of four years for “war crimes” and was living in solitude in his house in Bavaria. Fritz felt that he could count on him (“We are corresponding, and he writes to me in a very friendly way”).
Frankfurt, spring 1950
“We regret to inform you that the position referenced above has been given to someone other than you.” This brief letter from the economic administration of Frankfurt, dated February 4, 1950, put an end to Fritz’s hopes of finding a position in the consular services of the new Germany. He thought he still had possibilities at the future Foreign Ministry, whose rebirth was being actively prepared by the Federal chancellery in Bonn. In October 1949, Fritz had written to Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld, chief of protocol at the Chancellery in Bonn, to ask him officially for his “readmission into the services of the Foreign Ministry.” This time, instead of putting forward his status as a former “Allied contact” during the war, he had merely said that he represented the interests in Germany of a company based in Switzerland (“Maurer & Co., Bern, exporters of woolen looms,” a company controlled by Ernst Kocherthaler). He had added a copy of a document that certified that he “was not affected by de-Nazification measures.” But he never received any response to his request.
Obviously, someone was standing in his way, but Fritz never found out who it was. The reasons for the obstacles he faced, however, were clear: The old networks of the Nazi period were resuming control of the ministry and were trying everything to keep this “traitor” away. The foreign policy adviser to Chancellor Adenauer, Herbert Blankenhorn, had served in the German legation in Bern. He proclaimed publicly that the new members of the German diplomatic corps had to be “new men… democratic and pro-Western,” but behind the scenes the reality was quite different.
Fritz Kolbe was without any question democratic and pro-Western. His only mistake was to have been those things before everyone else. A few months later, in May 1950, Walter Bauer spoke of the “Kolbe case” to Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard in person: “I told him that your hiring by the consular services was a problem because, apparently, they are unwilling to recognize your political activity since 1942. That deeply shocks me,” Bauer explained to Fritz Kolbe shortly after this interview in Bonn. What if Allen Dulles, or his brother John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State, got wind of this story? “You can imagine what impact that would have on the mutual trust between Germany and the United States!” Bauer pointed out. Apparently, Ludwig Erhard was aware of the problem and shared this point of view. In the course of his conversation with Walter Bauer, the economics minister had turned to his secretary of state and asked him to note down Fritz Kolbe’s name. The file was to be sent to the federal chancellery. The matter was to be cleared up. But that was the end of it, and the initiative had no consequences.
On June 1, 1950, Walter Bauer wrote to the deputy Walter Tillmans, one of the cofounders of the CDU, who had promised to help him. Walter Bauer had explained to him that Fritz Kolbe “had acted exclusively out of patriotism” and that it was “frightening” that his candidacy was blocked because of his pro-Allied activity during the war. On June 14, 1950, Fritz—still optimistic—wrote to Walter Bauer to tell him that Dr. Tillmans seemed to be having some success: “Several deputies are said to have spoken in my favor,” he explained.
Fritz Kolbe was wrong to hope. It did not take him long to understand the origin of the ostracism of which he was the target. In a letter of July 30, 1950, Walter Bauer wrote to Fritz to ask him for details on a specific episode of his biography: “I have been told that you went to the German legation in Bern shortly before the surrender to ask that Köcher turn over to you the legation’s gold. I have also been told that Köcher’s death is not unconnected to you. Can you tell me more about this?” The fatal misadventure had thus taken place in the last days of the war. Fritz had been wrong to play the role of emissary from the Americans to the envoy of the Reich, who had complained about him to several of his colleagues before committing suicide. Five years later, Fritz was considered not only a traitor but an assassin. The Americans could do nothing to help their former agent to get a position. In early August 1950, Allen Dulles met Herbert Blankenhorn in Bonn, but nothing concrete came out of the conversation. It was obvious that Fritz would never again have a position in the ministry.
Frankfurt, July 1950
At the end of the war, Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer had managed to persuade Fritz to write his memoirs, even though, for security reasons, there were no plans to publish them. Ernst Kocherthaler had taken down Fritz’s account and translated it into English in a seven-page document (“The Story of George”). “The important thing,” Kocherthaler had said in order to persuade his friend to speak out, “is for the Americans to know that there was a positive side to Germany.” Fritz had no doubts about it. He even thought that he had played the role of a “leader” in the German resistance, and he was flattered by the interest taken in him. But at the same time his pride led him to refuse to put himself forward. “What does Allen want to do with all this?” Fritz asked in May 1945. “Unlike other people, I don’t want to gain fame through my story,” he added in a letter to Ernst Kocherthaler in July. Observing that “memoirs of resistance to Nazism” were becoming a literary genre in their own right, Fritz had reasons for not associating himself with a huge enterprise of collective mystification.
The idea of publishing something about Fritz, however, remained alive in the mind of Gerald Mayer, who had left the world of intelligence for the movie industry (he headed the Paris office of the Motion Picture Association). In September 1949, Mayer suggested to Fritz that he write his story so that it could be made into “a film or a book.” Fritz would not hear of it and refused to go to Paris to discuss the plan, as Gerald Mayer had suggested. Mayer was not discouraged, and put Fritz in contact with an American journalist, Edward P. Morgan, who wrote for the magazine True. Fritz was at first reticent. “Who still cares about what happened then?” he said. “All that’s in the past.” Finally he agreed to see Morgan. The meeting took place in early 1950 in Fritz’s apartment near Frankfurt.
“In the last two years of World War II, ‘George Wood’ brought to the Allies no fewer than 2600 secret documents from Hitler’s Foreign Office, some of them of the highest importance. Eisenhower called him one of the most valuable agents we had during the entire war.” These lines introduced the article published in True in July 1950, under the title “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” This fourteen-page article was somehow typically American, with an alluring title, illustrations worthy of a detective story, and written in a lively style. Edward P. Morgan did not mention Fritz Kolbe’s real name, but the article circulated among German diplomats, who had no difficulty in identifying the figure. This was even more the case when the article was translated in full and published a year later in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche, with a darker title than the American version: “The Double Game of a Diplomat.” This publication in German, which Allen Dulles had unsuccessfully attempted to prevent, helped to destroy Fritz’s reputation: Instead of seeing him as a member of the resistance, most of his former colleagues considered him as an informer and a renegade.
Frankfurt, October 1950
Had Fritz been a traitor to his country? Confronting the wall of silence that faced him, he began to have reasons to question himself. Fortunately, he was not alone with his conscience. Some of his friends helped him to reflect on his past, to legitimate his action, and to preserve his personal dignity. One of them was a major intellectual, Rudolf Pechel, whom Fritz had probably met through Professor Sauerbruch. Pechel embodied the continuity of German thought: Since 1919, he had headed the editorial board of the Deutsche Rundschau, a prestigious monthly established in 1874, comparable to the Revue des Deux Mondes in France. Banned by the Nazis in 1942, it had been relaunched in 1946 by securing a British license. Fritz Kolbe became a permanent employee of the publication in October 1950. He was in charge of managing subscriptions and single-issue distribution, particularly in the Soviet zone, where the journal circulated in secret.
Although Fritz was cut off from his professional milieu, he found welcome spiritual comfort in this new work. Rudolf Pechel had unquestionable moral authority. He was not a man of the left (he came out of the “revolutionary conservatism” of the 1920s), but he had been persecuted by the Nazis, who had sent him to a concentration camp from 1942 to 1945. The Deutsche Rundschau published accounts by victims of Nazism and works by prestigious authors (Carlo Schmid, Golo Mann, Wilhelm Röpke) who wrote high-minded essays on the major questions of the time: resistance, treason, democracy. Through the journal, Fritz Kolbe sharpened his ideas on the themes that constantly preoccupied him. The Deutsche Rundschau fought in defense of the honor of the members of the German resistance to the Third Reich. It regularly denounced the return by Nazis to key positions in the Federal Republic of Germany. It gave a platform to the conspirators of July 20, 1944, who explained why their “treason” had been a patriotic gesture.
For his part, Fritz Kolbe had never doubted that he had acted as a patriot. But he needed to understand why the accusation of “treason” was sticking to him. The “right to resistance” against dictatorship was inscribed in the Fundamental Law of the new Federal Republic only in 1968. What he was reproached with, in the end, was perhaps with having supplied information that caused the death of hundreds of Germans. At the Nuremberg trial, the diplomat Hasso von Etzdorf had declared that he “had respected certain limits that mark the difference between a traitor and a patriot” and that he “had not sold Germany to foreign countries,” specifying that it would have been easy for him “to supply information of a military nature to Lisbon, Stockholm, or Madrid.” Hans-Bernd Gisevius, as well, had always been careful not to tell the Americans everything he knew, keeping some information to himself with the aim of saving lives. Fritz Kolbe had not had the same scruples. He had supplied industrial and military targets, aware that the Allied bombings would create many innocent victims. In the end, he had followed his job as a spy to its logical conclusion, acting as an American or British soldier would have done.
Frankfurt, September 1951
In September 1951, the daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau published a sensational investigation revealing that former Nazis were resuming power in the new German Foreign Ministry. It had been authorized to come back into existence a few months earlier under the direct authority of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. The outcry produced by this series of articles was so huge that a parliamentary investigative committee was set up in the Bundestag.
Less than a year later, in June 1952, this committee turned in its final report, demanding much more rigor in future appointments and recommending the suspension of four high officials in the Foreign Ministry who were particularly compromised. In a Bundestag debate in October, Chancellor Adenauer did not attempt to conceal the facts and recognized that the great majority of new German diplomats (66 percent) were former members of the NSDAP. He went on to say, however, that in his view, “it was not possible to do otherwise” and that the country needed people who had “experience and skill.” After being suspended for a year or two, the principal diplomats incriminated by the investigative committee were partially rehabilitated. Chancellor Adenauer appointed a new chief of personnel for the Foreign Ministry and gave him the mission of eradicating “the spirit of Wilhelmstrasse” from the ministry. The new appointee soon discovered that “it was already too late.”
Frankfurt, 1953
Fritz continued working at various odd jobs. The salary from the Deutsche Rundschau was not enough to live on, and the Americans had stopped paying him when he left Berlin in April 1948. In early 1953, he tried to secure a position as a correspondent for a German press agency in Switzerland. His application had been accepted, the contract was on the point of being signed, but at the last moment, for reasons that he never discovered, the employer terminated discussions. Fritz was no longer surprised by anything: His name seemed to have been placed on a blacklist.
Fortunately, life was not reduced to these repeated disappointments. Fritz remained a lover of life and never complained. In April 1953 his son had reached the age of twenty-one, the age required to get a South African passport and to be able to travel to Europe. Fritz had put money aside to finance the trip. The reunion took place on July 6, 1953, in the Dutch port of Hoek. Fritz and Maria had come to pick up Peter in a car. Maria remembered that “Fritz was eager to see his son again.” Peter, for his part, never thought that that was the case. The son’s feelings toward the father were mixed at the very least:
He was a complete stranger to me. I was surprised to see how small he was. He had an ideal, abstract image of me; he treated me like a child. He wanted me to put on a sweater so I wouldn’t catch cold and he absolutely insisted on carrying my luggage. I hated the way he had of wanting to repair the damage after such a long absence. He could have written to me after the war. But he didn’t, just giving me a few very distant signs of life. I had expected something from him which never came.
It wasn’t the presence of Fritz’s new wife that troubled him. Peter was meeting Maria for the first time, and they got on quite well together. He soon began calling her “Muschka.” “If she had not been there, things would have gone badly with my father,” Peter confessed fifty years later. Fritz could not stop lecturing his son, as though he wanted to recover the lost years of bringing him up. “You must do your duty every day without complaining,” he said, using as an example all the workers who got to their factories early in the morning as though eager to begin working. This frenzy of work was impressive. There were construction sites everywhere in Frankfurt, swarming with activity at all hours of day and night. Peter had never seen that in South Africa.
Peter confessed that he was more interested by the trip to Europe than by the meeting with Fritz. After fourteen years of silence, the reunion seemed almost impossible. Peter was irritated by his father’s conduct toward women. Fritz played the role of seducer. He amused himself by trying to pick up women with his friend Harry Hermsdorf of the CIA. As for Fritz, he was sorry that his son was not conducting himself in a more docile manner. When they played chess, Fritz felt a fierce desire to win. He hoped that Peter would stay in Germany and was absolutely determined to find a position for him in the chemical or pharmaceutical industry. But Peter had no intention of staying in a country that was not his own, even though he spoke the language very well. At the end of three months, he decided to leave. He went from Frankfurt to Venice by bicycle, then took a boat, and was back in South Africa in January 1954.
Peter was not unaware of the fact that his father had worked for the Americans during the war, but he did not know any of the details of the story. “If something serious happens to you in life, speak to the American authorities and tell them that you are the son of George Wood,” was all Fritz had said. In June 1953, Peter had been to some parties in the American zone and had been able to see that his father had many friends in the CIA (Peter spoke English with them, pleased to see that his father did not understand everything they said). But at no time had it been possible to speak seriously with him about his past. Fritz preferred to talk about other things. He asked his son, for example, about the “prospects for the cement market in South Africa,” or advised him to join the Masons. Even in the presence of his own son, Fritz Kolbe hid himself behind a smokescreen.
Washington, 1953
Allen Dulles was appointed Director of the CIA on February 26, 1953. He had left the world of intelligence in late 1945 to resume his career as a Wall Street lawyer and to head the Council on Foreign Relations. General Eisenhower had been inaugurated as president of the United States in January 1953. With the return of the Republicans to power, the Dulles family was rewarded for its commitment and loyalty: John Foster, Allen’s older brother, was the new secretary of state. His younger sister Eleanor coordinated Berlin matters in the State Department. In a long portrait of Allen Dulles published in the New York Times Magazine on March 29, 1953, there were three paragraphs on one of the greatest “coups” of his career: During the war, Dulles had got hold of a German spy named “George Wood, the most valuable and the most prolific source of secret intelligence out of Germany.” Some years later, in September 1959, Allen Dulles was presented in the magazine True as “America’s global Sherlock,” “the man who stole two thousand six hundred secret documents from the Nazi Foreign Ministry.”
Since the end of the war, the reputation of Allen Dulles had rested to an appreciable degree on his encounter with Fritz Kolbe. In December 1945, when Dulles had resigned to return to the practice of law in New York, General John Magruder, one of the heads of the OSS, had written these words of farewell: “It is with a deep sense of loss that I accept your resignation…. As you know, the head of the British Intelligence Service credits you with the outstanding intelligence job on the Allied side in this war. That recognition would have been due as a result alone of the steady flow of intelligence from Bern and especially the Kappa-Wood material…” In July 1946, President Truman had awarded Allen Dulles the Medal of Merit for his good and loyal services and had particularly congratulated him for three pieces of information sent from Bern: the location of the base in Peenemünde where the V-2s were made (May 1943), the launch sites for “rocket bombs” in the Pas-de-Calais, and the regular reports of the results of Allied bombing raids on German cities. Except for Peenemünde, this information had all come from Fritz Kolbe.
Fritz was more than a little proud to see his old friend from Bern occupying a position of the first rank in the United States. The two men remained in touch, and Allen Dulles sought out news of Fritz whenever he could. This purely friendly relation was no longer based on the feeling of being engaged in the same battles. As much as he was an anticommunist, Fritz equally detested imperial and triumphant America. He was hostile to nuclear deterrence, in favor of a “middle way between capitalism and socialism,” and had nothing but contempt for “the prosperity devoid of spirituality” embodied by the United States. He was not fascinated by the CIA and what it symbolized. Nothing makes it possible to determine his reaction to the coups d’état fomented by the CIA in Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954. There is no surviving statement from him about the protection provided by the CIA to former Nazis or even SS officers. But he remained very close to Allen Dulles, who had never dropped him.
Stratford, Connecticut, spring 1954
In April 1954, Fritz traveled to the United States to negotiate the terms of a new employment contract. Through his friend Harry Hermsdorf, he had learned that a small Connecticut company, the Wright Power Saw & Tool Corporation, was looking for a sales representative in Europe, based in Switzerland. This company made various models of power and chain saws with pneumatic motors. It is not impossible that Allen Dulles had intervened to help Fritz secure this position.
In a letter to Rudolf Pechel, Fritz described this new experience in a few words: “I am in the technical department, where the saws are repaired. It is necessary to know things of this kind in order to do my work in Europe. But I ask myself countless questions: all this technical jargon, and everything is in English!” In a letter to Ernst Kocherthaler, Fritz wondered who on earth would buy these chain saws: “The market is not good.” To get a good understanding of the material that he was going to be promoting in Europe, Fritz had to spend two months training in the forests of Connecticut. The chain saws were too heavy for him. The woods were infested with snakes.
The contract was signed in June 1954. Fritz was paid a salary of $250 a month. On this trip to the United States, he had made a detour to Washington to visit Allen Dulles. The highs and the lows of his career did not prevent him from maintaining his good humor: Peter Sichel, who put him up during his stay in the capital, recalls that “Fritz amused himself by climbing the trees in the garden to show me what he could do.” Fritz crossed the Atlantic on a steamer to return to Europe. He was carrying some chain saws in his luggage.