NOTES

Introduction

stirrings of their conscience: A quotation from Winston Churchill, speaking in 1946 of the conspirators in the failed plot against Hitler on July 20, 1944.

source of the war: Memorandum for the President, June 22, 1945, to President Truman from General Donovan, National Archives, College Park (entry 190c, microfilm 1642, roll 83).

agent in World War II Richard Helms (with William Hood), A Look Over My Shoulder (New York: Random House, 2003), p. 37.

done something against Nazism: See Peter Steinbach, Widerstand im Widerstreit (Paderborn, 2001).

so-called simple people: Interview conducted by Dominique Simonnet, L’Express, December 28, 2000.

Prologue

head of the OSS: The Office of Strategic Services was established in June 1942 and placed under the command of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Its role was to take charge of “unconventional warfare”—in other words, to gather intelligence and organize clandestine operations against the Axis powers. William Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer and a Republican, but above all a man of action and a First World War hero, was chosen by President Roosevelt to head the agency, which he did until 1945.

dated January 10, 1944: Memorandum for the President, National Archives (entry 190c, microfilm 1642, roll 18).

extraordinarily difficult to obtain: The distinction was already being made between the interception of enemy signals (signals intelligence, or SIGINT) and espionage based on human sources (human intelligence, HUMINT).

view to “liquidating” it: This German diplomatic cable had been transmitted to Washington on December 30, 1943, signed by Eitel Friedrich von Moellhausen, assistant to the Reich’s ambassador in Rome, Rudolf Rahn. See Robert Katz, Black Sabbath: A Journey Through a Crime Against Humanity (London: Barker, 1969). Thanks to Astrid M. Eckert, Berlin.

“be the only winner”: Message from the Swiss bureau of the OSS in Bern to Washington headquarters dated January 4, 1944, based on a cable from Ambassador von Weizsäcker of December 13, 1943. “Weizsäcker reports that the Pope hopes that the Nazis will hold on the Russian Front and dreams of a union of the old civilized countries of the West with insulation of Bolshevism towards the East.” Memorandum for the President, January 10, 1944, National Archives.

went over to the enemy: Message from the OSS Bern bureau, December 31, 1943, National Archives.

United States, Henry Wallace: Memorandum for the President, January 11, 1944. The Germans knew the content of a conversation between Vice President Wallace and the Swiss ambassador to Washington, his brother-in-law. The conversation had to do with the tensions between the Western allies (Great Britain and the United States) and the USSR. The Germans apparently had a good source in the Foreign Ministry in Bern. This affair probably hastened the disgrace of Wallace, who was replaced on the November 1944 election ticket by Harry Truman.

Chapter 1

“will also be prohibited”: The “law for the protection of German blood and German honor” and the “law on German citizenship” had been adopted during an NSDAP congress in Nuremberg. They laid the foundation for the total and definitive exclusion of the Jews from German society.

von Welczeck, the ambassador: Germany maintained embassies in the major capitals: Madrid, London, Paris, Rome, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, and even Rio de Janeiro. Everywhere else, diplomatic representation did not have the title of embassy (Botschaft) but that of legation (Gesandtschaft), and the head of mission did not have the title of ambassador (Botschafter) but that of “envoy” (Gesandte).

A legation is a diplomatic mission maintained by a government in a country in which it does not have an embassy. The head of the legation, like an ambassador, is accredited to the sovereign or the head of state.

The Congress of Vienna (March 19, 1815) had distinguished two classes of diplomatic agents: ambassador (and legate or nuncio) and chargé d’affaires (accredited only to the foreign minister of the country). The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (November 21, 1818) added an intermediate class for resident ministers and extraordinary envoys. It is to this class that belongs a head of legation, who has the character of a plenipotentiary minister. He is addressed as “Minister,” or, by custom, “Your Excellency.” Thanks to Serge Pétillot-Niémetz, chargé de mission for the Dictionary of the Académie Française.

Count Johannes von Welczeck (1878–1974), ambassador to Madrid, was a diplomat of the old school. He had joined the ministry before the 1914 war, a period when a diplomatic career was still restricted to rich aristocrats able to pay their own way.

Biarritz, or Hendaye: German Foreign Ministry, Johannes von Welczeck file.

figures in the Spanish capital: Ernst Kocherthaler was vice president of the petroleum traders association in Spain. He represented the interests of major oil companies: first Shell and then the Soviet oil conglomerates favored by Madrid since the late 1920s. He was born in Madrid in 1894. His father, who came from a family of modest Jewish merchants of Würtemberg, had amassed a considerable fortune by carrying on trade between Germany and Spain. The family had returned to settle in Berlin at the end of the nineteenth century. Ernst Kocherthaler had converted to Protestantism as an adolescent. He had studied law and economics in Berlin before joining the prestigious Warburg Bank in Hamburg. In the early 1920s, he attended international financial negotiations on the stabilization of the mark as an expert. On this occasion, he met the economist John Maynard Keynes, with whom he had become rather close. He had settled in Spain in the mid-1920s. Source: private documents of the Kocherthaler family (Sylvia and Gérard Roth, Geneva).

of Jews in Germany: Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich (Berlin: Siedler, 1987).

of a Baltic beach: The Kraft durch Freude organization was established in November 1933 in order to organize the free time of the masses, particularly through tourism and vacation camps.

his perfectly polished shoes: “My father always had perfectly polished shoes.” Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.

have a certain charm: “Fritz had a good deal of charm.” Gudrun Fritsch, interview in Berlin, January 5, 2002.

become, immediately, a Spanish citizen: Source: private documents of the Kocherthaler family in Geneva. This episode of Kocherthaler’s renunciation of German nationality is also reported in Edward P. Morgan’s article, “The Spy the Nazis Missed,” True, July 1950.

officially considered “impure”: When Ernst Kocherthaler converted to Protestantism shortly before 1914, this was because he sincerely wanted to contribute to the assimilation of Jews and Germans, and because it was better not to be a Jew in the German army.

distinguished war medal: Ernst Kocherthaler was awarded the Iron Cross after being wounded at the battle of the Somme in 1916. Nearly one hundred thousand Jews had served in the German Army during the First World War. Their patriotism had not protected them from many forms of discrimination during and after the war.

Nazi accession to power: Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

“part of the resistance”: German Foreign Ministry, Berlin, Johannes von Welczeck file.

no university education: Franz Neumann, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (London: Victor Gollancz, 1942).

not joined the party: Fritz Kolbe, “Course of Life,” personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney. See also biographical document written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe, undated (in German, 59 pages), same collection. “Beginning in 1938, you could no longer progress in the diplomatic career if you were not a member of the party” (Hans-Jürgen Döscher, interview in Osnabrück, May 14, 2002).

German community of Madrid: “Under the authority of the commercial counselor, I worked on various economic matters: information about companies, assistance in setting up local offices, customs information, credit questions, requests for bids, etc.” Curriculum vitae of Fritz Kolbe prepared after the war (undated, in German), personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

“cards and radio music”: Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf, tr. Basil Creighton (1929; New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), p. 165.

spark in his gaze: All reports agree on this paradox: With a rather banal external appearance, Fritz Kolbe had rather strong personal magnetism and a very penetrating gaze. “When he entered a room, you could not fail to notice him,” recalled Erika von Hornstein (interview of October 27, 2001 in Berlin). “There was something consecrated about him,” according to Gerald Mayer (Edward P. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed”).

to avoid suspicion: Most of the major names in the German resistance to Nazism were members of the NSDAP: not only the major personalities of the Foreign Ministry (Ulrich von Hassell, Adam von Trott zu Solz), but also, for example, Oskar Schindler and Stalin’s spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge.

agents of the state: Since the Nazi accession to power, the oath for officials (Beamteneid) had been made in the name of the führer, to whom they swore obedience and loyalty.

“Brown House” in Munich: The Braunes Haus had been the national headquarters of the NSDAP since 1931. It was located at Briennerstrasse 45 in Munich (the building is no longer there).

automatically suspicious of diplomats: Not belonging to the party was not necessarily a sign of resistance. Many officials wanted to join the party but were not accepted. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

attractions of National Socialism: Fritz Albert Karl Kolbe was born on September 25, 1900 in Berlin. “My parents were in good health, not at all rich, but lived in relative material comfort. I grew up without experiencing poverty, in harmonious family circumstances.” Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe on May 15, 1945 (in German, 10 pages), personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

had not developed overnight: “He was always in the opposition. Before and after 1933, he attempted to persuade his colleagues not to join the party.” Biographical document written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

the love of freedom: Autobiographical document by Fritz Kolbe, May 15, 1945.

“until the cold grave”: Fritz Kolbe often quoted this German popular song, the words for which are by Ludwig Hölty on a melody by Mozart from The Magic Flute (Papageno’s aria). In German: Üb immer Treu und Redlichkeit / Bis an dein kühles Grab.” Source: Peter Kolbe, Sydney.

had never forgotten it: Many documents mention the quotation by Fritz Kolbe of this passage from the gospel of Matthew (16:26). Biographical document written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe, and autobiographical document by Fritz Kolbe, May 15, 1945. See also Edward P. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

time there in 1931: A few years later, during the Second World War, Ernst Kocherthaler had become ferociously anticommunist. He considered the USSR as “a feudal, reactionary society, totally outside historical development” (letter of Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, April 1950, Allen W. Dulles Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton).

or even a believer: “As my parents came from North Germany (Mecklenburg-Pomerania), they were Protestants, and I was baptized in the Protestant Church.” Fritz Kolbe, “Course of Life.”

“the other one doesn’t”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

fellow-feeling for the socialists: “I had a social conscience, even though I was not a member of the Social Democratic Party.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. “He was not a member of any party, but his sympathies were clearly with the left.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

neighborhood of Luisenstadt: Now Kreuzberg.

“submissive spirit,” he said: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

a mark on him: Conversation of the author with Martin and Gudrun Fritsch, Berlin, January 2002. This novella by Heinrich von Kleist, published in 1810, tells the story of a horse dealer, despoiled of his property by a nobleman, who decides to take justice into his own hands.

display, Kocherthaler thought: See Willy Brandt, Berlin, My City. “Berliners are clever and skeptical…. The Nazis could not possibly like them.”

palm with his right fist: Many witnesses remember this gesture, which seems to have been a tic of Fritz’s. See Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

as a “go-getter”: In German: Draufgänger.

Berlin military hospital: Anita Falkenhain’s family came from Silesia. Her parents, former peasants, had been part of the great migration to Berlin in the 1890s, like Fritz Kolbe’s parents. Anita and Fritz met at the end of the First World War. Fritz had an infected foot and had had to fight to prevent having his leg amputated. Anita, a nurse’s assistant in the Berlin military hospital where he was treated, had taken care of him. Conversation with Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.

the point of obsession: “I can still run four hundred meters in less than one minute.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“successful life,” “inner truth”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. Fritz spoke frequently about his time in the Wandervogel. All the autobiographical documents written after the war refer in detail to this important episode of his upbringing.

remained a bit skeptical: In a book published after the war, Allen Dulles established a parallel between the “adolescent romanticism” of the Wandervogel and the rise of Nazism. Germany’s Underground, new ed. (New York: Da Capo, 2000), p. 19. Rudolf Hess and Adolf Eichmann, who belonged to the generation of Fritz Kolbe, had also been members of the Wandervogel.

great success in England: The book was Scouting for Boys, published in England in 1908 and subsequently widely translated. This book is still considered the “bible” of scouting.

time in his life time: Anecdote recounted by Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.

the National Socialist “Revolution”: Episode recounted in Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“I was simpleminded”: “Always seem dumber than you are” was a method favored by Fritz to keep the Nazis off balance. The episode of the interrogation in Madrid appears in several autobiographical documents written after the war; for example, “The Story of George” written by Ernst Kocherthaler in the spring of 1945 (personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney).

translated into German: Monetary Reform was published in England in 1923 and in German translation in 1924.

press agency of the time: Fritz Kolbe left school with a certificate of completion of primary education (einjähriges Zeugnis). “I was not a very good student but I learned quickly.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

of the German railroads: In German: Zivil-supernumerar.

“freight, and currency administrator”: In German Oberbahnhofs-Güter-und Kassenvorsteher. Fritz Kolbe was in charge of the freight department of the Silesia station (Schlesischer Bahnhof). Curriculum vitae of Fritz Kolbe prepared after the war (undated), personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

Ministry in March 1925: “He wanted to learn about the rest of the world and he joined the Foreign Ministry in order to be sent abroad.” “The Story of George.” Fritz Kolbe joined the Foreign Ministry on March 16, 1925 and was sent to Madrid in October. German Foreign Ministry, Berlin, Fritz Kolbe file.

native of Moorish origin: The details about the professional development of Fritz Kolbe are found in the autobiographical document of May 15, 1945. Many details are also found in the “Fritz Kolbe” file in the archives of the German Foreign Ministry in Berlin. Fritz replaced the German consul in Seville from September to November 1930 and from October to November 1931.

of the “original God”: The project led to the publication of a book entitled Das Reich der Antike in Baden-Baden in 1948, which was intended as the first volume of a great “universal history” based on a “spiritual vision of history,” as opposed to the materialist vision of the Marxists.

Madrid early in 1936: Because of his wife’s illness, Fritz Kolbe spent only three months at his post in the Polish capital (January to March 1936) and asked for an early transfer to Berlin.

Chapter 2

Cape Town, Fritz Kolbe: “Officially, I was acting consul at the German consulate in Cape Town.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Fritz Kolbe had been transferred to Cape Town in February 1938. German Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

never forget that look: Most of the details about Fritz Kolbe’s time in South Africa are based on statements from Peter Kolbe given in Sydney in November 2001.

in Pretoria, Rudolf Leitner: Rudolf Leitner (1891–1947) was Austrian. Before joining the NSDAP in 1936, he had been consul in Chicago in the 1920s, and then a diplomatic counsellor in Washington for a part of the 1930s. He was appointed envoy of the Reich to Pretoria in October 1937. He died in captivity in a Soviet detention camp. German Foreign Ministry, Rudolf Leitner file.

former ambassador to Spain: Rudolf Leitner was then vice-director of the political department of the ministry.

years of mismanagement: Curriculum vitae of Fritz Kolbe prepared after the war (undated, in German).

controlled all foreign appointments: The liaison office between the Foreign Ministry and the NSDAP was called the “Organization for Foreign Countries (Auslandsorganisation or AO). The head of this office, Ernst Bohle, was one of the most powerful figures in the ministry and held the rank of junior minister. Born in Cape Town in 1903, and having spent his youth in South Africa, he closely examined the files dealing with that country. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

with an aching heart: “If I had stayed in South Africa, I would have caused a good deal of harm to Leitner, who had really stood up for me.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Same argument in “Course of Life.”

with no legal accountability: Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS (Reichsführer SS), controlled all the police machinery of the regime through the many police tentacles of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt, or “Central Security Office of the Reich,” responsible notably for the Gestapo).

record his license plate: Anecdote recounted by Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.

brutality to his subordinates: In internal documents of the Foreign Ministry, Joachim Ribbentrop was known as the “RAM” (Reichsaussenminister, or Minister of Foreign Affairs). Ribbentrop had not joined the Nazi Party until 1932, which caused him serious problems of internal legitimacy. To compensate for this insufficiency, the minister was a member of the SS brotherhood, with the rank of SS-Obergruppenführer, equivalent to general. The esprit de corps of the SS was comparable to that of the Knights of the Round Table. Source: German Foreign Ministry, and Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

in the key positions : Career diplomats continued to head the three principal departments of the ministry (political, economic, and legal affairs), but their real influence was in steep decline, The closest collaborators of the minister were new men who had come from the “Ribbentrop Office” (Dienststelle Ribbentrop), a kind of shadow cabinet set up when the head of diplomacy for the Reich was still Baron Constantin von Neurath, an opportunistic career diplomat who had been replaced by Ribbentrop in February 1938.

belonged to the SS: Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

the Reich in Europe: There were veritable pro-Nazi mass movements in South Africa, like the Ossewa Brandwag and the Grey Shirts, that counted several hundred thousand members. These sects seized every occasion to give violent expression to their anti-Semitism, for example when the liner Stuttgart arrived at the port of Cape Town in October 1936 with six hundred German Jewish refugees on board. The Afrikaner nationalists denounced the “cosmopolitan network” of Jewish financiers of Cape Town, associated in their mind with the “Freemason international” and the despised big British banks.

its clearly German origins: The port of Lüderitz was built by indigenous prisoners who had survived the terrible massacres carried out by the Germans during the war against the Nama and the Herero between 1904 and 1908.

a vast colonial project: The “colonial office” of the NSDAP, directed by Franz Ritter von Epp, intended to split Africa into four zones that would have been divided among Spain, Italy, Germany, and England.

of training overseas imitators: There were even a few “Winter Assistance” (Winter-hilfswerk) centers, a kind of soup kitchen invented by the Nazis, distributing clothing and providing meals.

member of the SS: Walter Lierau was selected for the post in Windhoek after training in agitation and propaganda as consul in Reichenberg (Liberec, Czechoslovakia) in the early 1930s. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

wood in the forest: Fritz explained after the war why he had not brought his son back with him to Germany: “I did not want him to be contaminated by Nazi ideology, nor did I want him to be plunged into the chaos of Europe, which I foresaw as inevitable at the end of the war.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

refugees from Germany: Fritz says that he gave German émigrés in South Africa—political refugees and Jews—stateless person passports (or “Nansen passports,” delivered under the authority of the League of Nations), which allowed them to avoid deportation to Germany and internment as German citizens after the onset of World War II. Memorandum of August 19, 1943 (9 pages), OSS Bern, National Archives, College Park. See also the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

from his own country: Fritz loathed nationalism in all its forms. “The slogan ‘right or wrong, my country’ is a devil’s slogan apt to kill every individual conscience.” “The Story of George.”

“tomorrow the entire world”: In German: “Denn heute gehört uns Deutschland / Und morgen die ganze Welt,” from a song composed by Hans Baumann (1914–88) [“Es zittern die morschen Knochen”], the words of which had been slightly modified by the Nazis.

suicide after being tortured: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“who never get caught”: Freely adapted from Ernst Jünger, Récits d’un passeur du siècle, conversations with F. de Towarnicki (Paris: Éditions du Rocher).

subject to severe penalties: The obligatory darkening of windows was known as Verdunkelung, and those who did not obey this order were considered criminals (Verdunkelungsverbrecher) subject to long prison terms.

from Antwerp to Berlin: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

considered “k. v.” (available): In German: “u. k.”: unabkömmlich; “k. v.”: kriegsverwendungsfähig.

to the Foreign Ministry: Wilhelmstrasse 76: this building of the old Prussian nobility, the “Pannewitz palace,” had once been Bismarck’s office.

dagger on his belt: Ribbentrop imposed a special dress code on diplomats on duty. The new uniforms, modeled on those of the SS, but also on those of the German navy, were designed by a stylist personally designated by the minister’s wife. Ribbentrop himself wore the black SS uniform with large leather boots that came up to his knees. This code did not apply to officials of the middle rank like Fritz Kolbe. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

more dazzling than Fritz’s: Hans Schroeder (b. 1899) had obtained the rank of “legation adviser” in 1938. A few months later, he was given the post of assistant head of personnel, with the rank of director. Schroeder was a protégé of Rudolf Hess, the head of the NSDAP, who had met him in Egypt in the late 1920s, brought him into the party in 1933, and helped him after that to quickly climb the rungs of the diplomatic career ladder. German Foreign Ministry, Berlin, Hans Schroeder file, and interview with Hans-Jürgen Döscher (Osnabrück, May 14, 2002).

“What do you think?”: After the war, Hans Schroeder confirmed in writing, in 1954, that he had indeed offered the post of consul in Stavanger to Fritz Kolbe, which some people had doubted. Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

never to become Pg: Pg: Partei-Genosse, literally “party comrade.”

not to accept the offer: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

“do much for you”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“but not without honor”: Wehrlos aber nicht ehrlos: an expression used by the Social Democratic deputy Otto Wels on the occasion of the Reichstag vote granting plenary powers to Hitler on March 23, 1933. The 94 SPD deputies were the only ones to vote no.

“realized what that meant”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

undying memory of the city: Two visits to Paris (March 1928 and June 1929) are recorded in the Fritz Kolbe file in the Foreign Ministry archives.

the legal affairs department: Fritz Kolbe spent only a few months in this post. “Course of Life.”

Germany for interrogation: The two agents of the Intelligence Service, Sigismund Payne Best and Richard Stevens, were to spend the rest of the war in detention in Germany. The Venlo episode led the British authorities to refuse all contact with representatives of the German resistance for the rest of the war.

settle some internal scores: Otto Strasser, an old rival of Hitler’s and brother of Gregor Strasser (one of the leading figures of the SA, who was assassinated in 1934 during the Night of the Long Knives), was accused of having conspired with the British in the Munich attempt, which made it possible to remove him definitively from the circles of power.

Chapter 3

place of relative freedom: The meetings in the Café Kottler were described by Fritz to an American journalist who interviewed him after the war. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“association” created by fritz klobe:: “The Story of George.”

work for the Wehrmacht: The Walter Girgner company, established in 1932, still exists (Trumpf Blusen, Munich). It is now one of the largest shirtmakers in Europe.

of a confirmed bachelor: “In Berlin, I met up again with my friends from the youth movements. It was as though we had never been apart. All my friends, except for two, had the same political convictions that I did. Some of them were virulent anti-Nazis who wanted to take action…. One of them lost his post in the Berlin city administration, two others were sentenced to two- and three-year terms in concentration camps. Another, who was arrested while working on a clandestine printing press, hanged himself in prison.” Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

explained after the war: “The Story of George.” The phrase can also be found in the autobiographical document of May 15, 1945, and in the document written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“Hitler and the party”: Based on “Es geht alles vorüber / es geht alles vorbei,” a famous song by Fred Raymond, a popular Viennese composer of the 1920s, who also wrote “I Lost My Heart in Heidelberg.” Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives, College Park.

at certain late hours: The episode of the anonymous letters is narrated in detail in “The Story of George,” as well as in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“Among craven humankind”: Excerpt from the song of the knights, Wallenstein’s Camp by Schiller, tr. Charles Passage (New York: Ungar, 1958), p. 40. Schiller’s songs in the Café Kottler are mentioned in the biographical document of Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“devil take them!”: Ibid.

“general of all time”: In German: Grösster Feldherr aller Zeiten or Gröfaz.

superiors, in professional terms: Allen Dulles later wrote that Kolbe’s “employers have an excellent opinion of him.” Letter from Allen Dulles to OSS headquarters in Washington, October 30, 1943, National Archives.

“have been a Nazi!”: Fritz Kolbe said that he had “continually been asked to join the party.” “The Story of George.” “The Nazis would have liked George to join them—they desired energetic men in their ranks—but George refused…. Again and again the Nazis tried to get him into their organization.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

to by his superiors: “During the day he worked hard at his official post, even on Sundays. Only if his activity was considered outstanding could he keep exempt from military service.” “The Story of George.”

father of the Reformation: On Martin Luther, see his portrait in Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Die Braune Elite (Darmstadt, 1999), v. 2, pp. 179–91.

visas for foreign travel: Fritz Kolbe worked for Martin Luther and the “German” department until the summer or winter of 1940 (the dates differ according to available documents). Curriculum vitae prepared after the war (undated) and biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

extensive list of contacts: Martin Luther had managed to avoid legal trouble after involvement in some murky affairs when he was a municipal councilor in Zehlendorf (a Berlin district) shortly after Hitler’s accession to power. Döscher, Die Braune Elite.

away, on Rauchstrasse: It was Martin Luther who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, where a dozen high officials brought together by Reinhard Heydrich agreed in the course of an hour and a half on the practical organization of the “final solution.” In Ribbentrop’s name, Martin Luther secured agreement that all measures concerning Jews outside the borders of the Reich (for example, in occupied France) would require close cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, which would consequently have veto power over the question. It never made use of that power. Beginning in March 1942, Martin Luther organized, with Adolf Eichmann, the deportation of the Jews of France. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich; Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978).

“Jewish race in Europe”: “Annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”: expression used by Adolf Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag in Berlin, January 30, 1939.

and a “Russian desk”: The “Jewish desk” had been established within a few months of the Nazi accession to power, while the ministry was still headed by Constantin von Neurath. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

then a French protectorate: The “Madagascar plan” was an old idea that had been revived in Poland in the early 1930s. The French Popular Front authorities had also thought about it (there was a fear in Paris of being submerged by Jewish immigration from Germany). The plan had also been defended by the English, who wanted to do everything to prevent German Jews from going to Palestine. With the Blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940, Germany contemplated a radical version of the plan: the expulsion of French citizens living there would have made possible the establishment of German control over the island, intended to become a large ghetto. Administration of the island was to be turned over to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. In the Foreign Ministry, Franz Rademacher worked in close collaboration with Adolf Eichmann, head of the “Jewish desk” of department IV of the RSHA (the Gestapo). Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

“the first to disappear”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

the game of chess: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Fritz Kolbe’s passion for chess is also mentioned in the article by Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

the most hardened Nazis: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“waves kiss the beach?”: Words from a popular song composed by a Pomeranian poet, Martha Mueller, in 1907.

corridors of the ministry: The circumstances of this first meeting with Maria Fritsch are set out in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe; also in a document by Maria Fritsch (October 1972), Gudrun and Martin Fritsch collection, Berlin. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

Sauerbruch was a great doctor : Ferdinand Sauerbruch was born in 1875. His career began before the First World War. In 1928, he was appointed director of the prestigious surgical service of the Charité hospital in Berlin. He was a prominent figure in German public life. A volatile and authoritarian personality, he took part in the great political debates of the time. His relationship with Nazism was ambiguous.

be moved at will: Sauerbruch had experimented with this artificial hand notably on Italian officers and soldiers during the invasion of Abyssinia after October 1935 (when Ethiopians took prisoners, it was not unusual for them to cut off right hands). Source: Pierre Kehr, surgeon in Strasbourg, former assistant of Adolphe Jung.

self-importance or even vanity: Sauerbruch bore the illustrious title of “court privy councilor” (Geheimer Hofrat or Geheimrat, a distinction presented to him at the royal court of Bavaria before World War I), and that of “Prussian councilor of state,” presented by Göring in 1934. At the annual NSDAP congress in Munich in 1937, he had received the highest political-scientific distinction of the Nazi regime, the “National Prize,” conceived by Hitler as an alternative to the Nobel Prize (which the Nazis hated since it had been attributed in 1936 to the dissident journalist Carl von Ossietzky). During the Second World War, Sauerbruch was appointed “doctor general of the armies” (beginning in 1942).

unions—his hemorrhoids: Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Mes souvenirs de chirurgien, French translation (Paris, 1952).

in the Reich chancellery: “At the time of Hitler’s first battles in Munich, Sauerbruch had endeavored, without paying attention to Hitler’s political aims, to do only his duty to him as a doctor, without becoming involved in the struggles of the new regime, which he did not approve in any way. Hitler is supposed to have said to him at the time: ‘As long as I live, nothing will happen to you.’” Adolphe Jung, unpublished notebooks written in Berlin during the war (Frank and Marie-Christine Jung collection, Strasbourg).

in the concentration camps: Sauerbruch was head of the prestigious Surgery Society of Berlin and of the departments of medicine of the highest scientific research bodies in the Reich. At an interrogation in a de-Nazification proceeding in April 1949, he indicated that he knew nothing of medical experiments in the concentration camps. “I only did my duty as a doctor and a soldier,” he said. But it now seems that Sauerbruch allowed the performance, without opposing them, of some of the worst medical experiments of the century. Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Mythos Sauerbruch,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2000. See also Notker Hammerstein, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1999).

of speech and action: “A great doctor like him is one of the few persons to remain entirely free. He can permit himself many things impossible for others.” Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, reprinted 1997.

the biologist Eugen Fischer: Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) was head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of “anthropology, studies of heredity, and eugenics.” He was one of the most important theoreticians of the racial doctrines from which the Nazis drew their inspiration.

General Ludwig Beck: Ludwig Beck (1880–1944) was at the center of all the circles opposed to the regime. He was to be closely associated with the preparation of the attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944. Proposed as head of state in the event the putsch succeeded, he committed suicide when he learned of its failure.

invasion of Czechoslovakia: The meetings of the Wednesday Club took place on one or two Wednesdays each month. Each of the members played host in turn. The purpose of the association, according to by-laws dating from 1863, was to foster “scientific discussion” among a few figures of the first rank of all disciplines. The sixteen members of the club were exclusively male, chosen on the basis of cooptation, “independently of their personal orientations.” See Klaus Scholder, Die Mittwochsgesellschaft (Berlin, 1982).

Chapter 4

Prussia, September 18, 1941 : Fritz Kolbe was sent on a mission to Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia (Wolfsschanze, the “wolf’s lair”) from September 18 to 29, 1941. Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

Ambassador Karl Ritter: Fritz Kolbe was appointed private secretary (Vorzimmermann) to this high ministry official in 1940. Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Karl Ritter (1883–1968) had been an official at the Foreign Ministry since 1924. He had been in charge of the department of economic affairs (Wirtschaftsabteilung). In July 1937, he had been appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.

Ministry since the 1930s: In the Almanach de Gotha of 1935, we find that Karl Ritter is in charge of “the national economy and reparations policy” in the “Foreign Office of the Reich.”

“ambassador on speical mission,”: In German: Botschafter z. b. V. (zur besonderen Verwendung). After the war, Ritter claimed that he had agreed to work for Ribbentrop in 1939 on condition of not being involved in the “routine” of the ministry. He said that he had been a “free electron.” Source: interrogation of Karl Ritter for the Nuremberg tribunal, July 24, 1947 (U.S. Chief Counsel for War Crimes, Hans Jürgen Döscher collection, Osnabrück) Karl Ritter and Friedrich-Wilhelm Gaus (the ministry’s chief lawyer), were, according to Fritz Kolbe, the only two diplomats in the ministry to “have permanent and unlimited access to Joachim von Ribbentrop.” Source: conversations of Fritz Kolbe with the De Witt C. Poole commission (September 26, 1945), National Archives.

away from the ministry: Karl Ritter was always with the foreign minister, whether at Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia or at Fuschl castle near Salzburg. Boston document no. 469, National Archives.

dangerous pro-Nazi agitator: This expulsion took place after a failed putsch by the “Integralists,” a Brazilian fascist movement drawn to the Third Reich and very strongly supported by a Nazi Party cell based in the German embassy with the full agreement of Karl Ritter.

return from South Africa: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

“highest circles of power!”: Ibid.

its content for Ritter: Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

wrote a few years later: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

went to the opera: Karl Ritter was present at major German social events. He was on board the first transatlantic flight of the Hindenburg in May 1936, the famous zeppelin that crashed tragically a year later not far from New York. Foreign Ministry, Karl Ritter file.

didn’t like him either: Karl Ritter was considered a little too lukewarm an anti-Semite. During the Weimar Republic he had wanted to marry a young woman from the Jewish Ullstein family, one of the largest newspaper publishers in Berlin. In addition, he was never a member of the SS, unlike many high officials in the ministry.

in the nineteenth century: Around 1820, demobilized Prussian soldiers were hired by Emperor Pedro I of Brazil to establish an army worthy of the name, defend the newly independent country, and make war on Argentina. This emperor married Amelie von Leuchtenberg, a Bavarian princess. There are still German towns in southern Brazil (Blumenau, Pomerode).

informed his Berlin office: Source: Foreign Ministry, Berlin.

and even the curtains!: Ulrich von Hassell, Die Hassell Tagebücher (Berlin, 1988).

a swastika in its claws: Internal circular of the Foreign Ministry on duty uniforms, November 27, 1942. See also Jill Halcomb, Uniforms and Insignia of the German Foreign Office (Crown/Agincourt, 1984).

between Ribbentrop and Hitler: Walther Hewel was one of the few high-ranking Nazis who had experienced the outside world: He had lived for several years on the island of Java, where he had managed a tea plantation for an Anglo-Dutch company. Enrico Syring, article on W. Hewel in Die Braune Elite, v. 2.

“all its natural resources!”: In May and June 1941, the Wehrmacht high command gave orders intended to guarantee the “unprecedented rigor” demanded by Hitler with respect to Russia. Soviet prisoners of war were not treated in conformity with the norms of the international laws of war. Between the summer of 1941 and the spring of 1942, more than two million Soviet prisoners died in German detention.

“of the Geneva Conventions”: Informal conversations transcribed by Heinrich Heims at Hitler’s East Prussia headquarters, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, 1941–1944 (Hamburg, 1980).

“sailor”) and “Lili Marlene”: “Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern” was composed for a film by Kurt Hoffmann, Paradies der Junggesellen (Bachelors’ Paradise), with Heinz Rühmann. “Lili Marlene” was composed in 1938 by Norbert Schulze, a popular composer of light music. The version sung by Lale Andersen had become the unofficial anthem of the Wehrmacht.

complained about German aggression: “Course of Life,” personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection.

U-boats against American ships: The Greer was attacked off the coast of Iceland in early September 1941. A few months earlier, the Robin Moor had been sunk in the South Atlantic.

did not feel comfortable: “In Ritter’s staff, I had the chance to see with my own eyes all the atrocities… of the Nazis…. [N]ow I could see what war really was!” “Course of Life.”

plane, a Junkers Ju 52: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

a pickax or a hammer: Reports from the Einsatzgruppen on the massacres in Russia circulated in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin beginning in December 1941. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

went to the cinema: It is not impossible that Fritz and Maria went to the Capitol cinema, near the zoo, where on October 31, 1941 the first color film from the Ufa studios was shown, a musical comedy with waltzes, fox-trots, and frills, entitled Women Are Much Better Diplomats, with two stars of the time, Maria Rökk and Willy Fritsch. Nor is it impossible that they saw The Important Thing Is to Be Happy, with Heinz Rühmann, which was shown at the Gloria Palast in the spring of 1941.

him home several times: “Sauerbruch and Kolbe became good friends.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

the despised “old system”: The meeting with Schreiber is recounted in detail in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. Georg Schreiber (1882–1963) was simultaneously a theologian, a university professor, and a politician. The pope had given him the honorific title of “prelate” in 1922. A Zentrum deputy in the Reichstag from 1920 to 1933, he avoided Nazi harassment with the help of Ferdinand Sauerbruch, who gave him a medical certificate enabling him to avoid a forced transfer to East Prussia. The prelate nevertheless had to give up all his duties at the University of Münster and accept a post as professor emeritus. Source: Professor Rudolf Morsey, Neustadt (former colleague of Georg Schreiber after the war).

He introduced himself: “Despite my Protestant background, we became good friends.” “Course of Life.”

“crimes of the Nazis?”: Clemens August von Galen (1878–1946), bishop of Münster, protested vigorously against the euthanasia measures implemented by the Nazi regime in three public sermons (July–August 1941). This public intervention brought about a halt to the program of extermination of the mentally and physically handicapped.

“one reason or another”: The prelate is supposed to have spoken the following words to Fritz: “It has nothing to do with high treason when you break your word given to a criminal.” “Course of Life.” “Prälat Schreiber… had confirmed [Fritz] by declaring him free of an oath to Hitler,” explains Ernst Kocherthaler in “The Background of the George Story” (1964, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney). At the time of this conversation with Georg Schreiber, Fritz Kolbe had the intention of fleeing Germany by using a network of smugglers across the Swiss border. Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

in Germany’s best interests: In May 1943, an internal circular from Ribbentrop warned the members of the Foreign Ministry that “any defeatist language will be severely punished.” Officials were called on to give an example and not influence “public opinion” (Volksstimmung) negatively. Source: Foreign Ministry.

was never carried out: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

him by a friend: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

to go to Switzerland: Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe in Berlin in early January 1947; personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

the middle of 1942: One of the best-informed figures in the Reich was without any doubt the chief of foreign intelligence for the SS, Walter Schellenberg. In early August 1942, Schellenberg was seized by a great sense of uncertainty. At a meeting with his boss Heinrich Himmler in Zhytomyr, Ukraine, he offered to work for a separate peace with the Western powers, a solution that would enable Germany to maintain its conquests without weakening itself further. Himmler gave him a free hand to sound out the Western powers on condition that he spoke to no one about it. He explained that if word of this conversation reached the führer’s ears, he would deny everything and would not “cover” him. Walter Schellenberg, Mémoires (Paris, 1957).

of his own country: “How to get rid of the Nazis? I was of the opinion that there was only one way to get there: the defeat of Germany,” Fritz wrote in the autobiographical document of May 15, 1945. “Wood’s opinion is that we should continue the fight until a definite military decision against the present gang is obtained. He says there is no hope of any effective action being taken by opposition groups.” “Wood’s oral report,” OSS Bern message to Washington, April 12, 1944, National Archives.

yet heard of Goerdeler: Carl Friedrich Goerdeler (1884–1945), along with Ludwig Beck, was one of the principal figures in the German resistance. A former mayor of Leipzig, he would have become head of government if the July 20, 1944 putsch had succeeded. But the failure of the attempt against Hitler signed his death warrant. He was executed on February 2, 1945 at the Plötzensee prison in Berlin.

of the Kreisau Circle: The Kreisau Circle (Kreisauer Kreis) took its name from the meeting place for a group of opponents of the Nazi regime around Helmuth James von Moltke, who owned a large estate in Kreisau in Lower Silesia (now Krzyzowa in Poland).

perfectly ordinary passenger train: Source: Alfred Gottwalt, curator for railroads at the Technical Museum in Berlin.

Chapter 5

“combined into a whole”: Letter from Vincent Van Gogh to his brother Theo, April 1882.

plotted here and there: A core of conspirators around General Hans Oster had been very active since 1938 in the Abwehr, the military intelligence service headed by Admiral Canaris. In the army, networks were taking steps to eliminate Hitler. In March 1943, a bomb concealed in the führer’s plane flying from Smolensk to Berlin did not explode because of a defect in the detonator. A few days later in Berlin, Hitler left an exhibition early where a young officer loaded with explosives had planned to blow himself up in his presence. Another network, the “Red Orchestra” (Rote Kapelle), which was working for Moscow, had been brutally dismantled in late 1942. Its leaders had been executed by hanging in the Plötzensee prison in Berlin in December 1942. In February 1943, a group of young students in Munich (the “White Rose”) had been arrested and all its members executed for distributing leaflets calling on the German people to overthrow the regime.

without shivering in fear: The information about the gong used during air raids comes from the archives of the Foreign Ministry. In offensive terms, Allied aviation was really operational only from late 1942 on. Beginning in early 1943, American and British planes relentlessly dropped their loads of bombs on German cities (the former in broad daylight, the latter at night). This massive deluge affected first of all the large metropolises of the Ruhr, then the rest of the country as far as Berlin. Berlin was hit for the first time in mid-January 1943. Fritz Kolbe, like all Foreign Ministry diplomats, was instructed to place a container of water in the cabinets where he kept his documents. In case of fire, water vapor was supposed to protect papers from burning (archives of the Foreign Ministry). After each attack, there were special distributions of food and an improvement in rations (cigarettes, coffee, meat).

ever, one for hesitation: On February 2, 1943, the Germans were beaten at Stalingrad; this spectacular defeat marked a turning point. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad, three months after the British victory at El Alamein, seemed to herald the end of German advances. Paradoxically, the fighting energy of the Nazi regime was strengthened. They had now entered into “total war” (the expression used by Joseph Goebbels at a rally at the Sports Palace in Berlin on February 18, 1943). No longer able to win major successes on the military fronts abroad, the murderous energy of the Nazis turned inward: the culmination of the deportations of the Jews of the Reich took place in the spring of 1943.

1942 or early 1943: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“to the Hitler regime”: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

completely trusted each other: Kolbe mentions Karl Dumont in most of the autobiographical documents written after the war.

Waldersee at Professor Sauerbruch’s: Alfred Graf von Waldersee (1898–1984) was a reserve officer in the Wehrmacht. He had been attached to military headquarters in France and then in Stalingrad (from which he had been evacuated after being wounded in 1942). In civilian life, he was an industrialist and businessman. His mother’s family, the Haniels, owned large coal mines in the Ruhr. In April 1944, he became director of Franz Haniel & Kompanie GmbH (coal merchants and river transport). His wife was Baroness Etta von le Fort (1902–78), who had joined the Red Cross at the beginning of the Second World War. Source: Dr. Bernhard Weber-Brosamer (Franz Haniel & Kompanie, Duisburg).

at the Charité hospital: An Alsatian surgeon who stayed in Strasbourg after the Reich annexed Alsace in 1940, Dr. Jung (1902–92), as an Alsatian, had been considered a Volksdeutscher since 1940, that is, a member of the Germanic community without full German citizenship. Since Germany needed physicians and surgeons to replace those sent to the front, Adolphe Jung was transferred to Lake Constance and then Berlin in 1942. Source: Frank and Marie-Christine Jung, son and daughter-in-law of Adolphe Jung, Strasbourg.

“archbishop of Lyon”: “The Story of George.” This document notes that Cardinal Gerlier “had saved a lot of Jewish children.” In the fall of 1942, Cardinal Gerlier was in fact informed of the danger of arrest hanging over him (we do not know whether the signal came from Fritz Kolbe, but it’s not impossible). Finally, the Germans did not dare to imprison him. Source: Bernard Berthod (Lyon), biographer of Cardinal Gerlier, conversation with the author, December 2002.

large store in Strasbourg: Robert Jung managed a large store in Strasbourg. He was criticized after the war for doing business with the occupying forces. Source: Francis Rosenstiel, Strasbourg.

had to work together: Personal notebooks of Adolphe Jung written in Berlin during the war. Unpublished document kindly made available by Frank and Marie-Christine Jung in Strasbourg.

Sauerbruch’s staff in Berlin: This assignment was probably secured through the recommendation of the French surgeon René Leriche, who had a position in France comparable to Sauerbruch’s. Adolphe Jung had been one of René Leriche’s closest colleagues in Strasbourg. Source: Jung family, Strasbourg.

Wilhelmstrasse 74–76: The file on Gertrud von Heimerdinger disappeared from the Foreign Ministry archives, probably in the course of Allied bombing at the end of the war.

she shared his opinions: “One got so one could almost smell the difference between enemy and friend,” Fritz told Edward P. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

had been cut adrift: Fritz learned much later that Gertrud von Heimerdinger was close to Adam von Trott zu Solz, a diplomat associated with the Kreisau Circle (von Trott was executed the following year, after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler). She was also close to other figures opposed to the regime (Beppo Roemer, Richard Kuenzer, Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, Herbert Mumm von Schwarzenstein). Rudolf Pechel, Deutscher Widerstand. After the war, she worked for the American occupation administration in Wiesbaden. German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file.

the opportunity might arise: Fritz Kolbe reviewed approximately 250 diplomatic cables a day. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

danger and disillusionment: “People no longer cared how the war ended, just as long as it ended. They didn’t care who won,” according to Mary Bancroft’s German housekeeper (Bancroft was an agent and Allen Dulles’s mistress in Switzerland) in the summer of 1943. Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (New York: Morrow, 1983), p. 178.

“one of the last times”: Account by August von Kageneck, wounded on the Russian front in the summer of 1942, in Examen de conscience (Paris: Perrin, 1996), p. 81.

finally near Tempelhof airport: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

telephone number was 976.981: Portrait of Fritz Kolbe (2 pages), August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives. A few months later the Americans corrected the telephone number, which ended in 0, not 1. But they never used it.

of being “taken away”: Abgeholt: the word alone summed up the terror inspired by the Gestapo.

thoroughly, nothing more serious: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

Chapter 6

by a personal chauffeur: Allen Dulles’s chauffeur was a Frenchman named Édouard Pignarre, totally loyal and extraordinarily discreet. Source: Cordelia Dodson-Hood, conversation with the author, Washington, March 21, 2002.

ambassador to Switzerland: The details about Allen Dulles and the Bern office of the OSS are drawn from several sources. An internal undated 36-page OSS document describes in detail the activities of the Bern office during the war (titled Bern, National Archives). The two standard biographies of Allen Dulles (by James Srodes and Peter Grose) as well as extensive correspondence with James Srodes, have also been very helpful. The memoirs of Mary Bancroft, colleague and mistress of Allen Dulles in Switzerland during the war (Autobiography of a Spy), are full of descriptions and anecdotes.

a few decades earlier: Dulles was “well born, well bred, well connected.” John Waller, The Unseen War in Europe (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 272.

a Wall Street lawyer: Allen Dulles worked at Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm founded in 1879 that still exists. According to Peter Sichel, “he was a rainmaker.” Interview, May 25, 2002, New York.

a friend to Germany: This reputation injured Dulles, who was often accused after the Second World War of having been close to certain German financial interests compromised with Nazism (notably the Schrœder Bank in London, connected to the banker Kurt von Schrœder in Cologne, who had helped finance Hitler’s rise to power).

seizing the southern zone: Since June 1941, there had been a German customs control station at Annemasse. Its mission was to exercise control over goods and people moving between Switzerland and France. It frequently moved along the border. On November 11, 1942, three days after the Allied landing in North Africa, the Wehrmacht did away with the unoccupied zone. The French-Swiss border was thenceforth completely closed.

now based in Algiers: Lieutenant-Colonel Pourchot, head of the Deuxième Bureau in Switzerland, became one of Dulles’s preferred informants. “Shortly after the Deuxième Bureau was suppressed by Vichy its financing was taken over jointly by OSS and the American Military Attaché, General Legge.” Internal OSS Bern report on France (French Intelligence), undated, National Archives.

disposal in occupied France: Pierre de Bénouville, of the Combat network, was a regular visitor to Herrengasse 23, where he was fed and lodged.

mistress of Admiral Canaris: Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Third Reich. An ultraconservative nationalist, he nevertheless tried discreetly to counter Hitler’s belligerent plans. His double game finally came into the open and he lost his post in February 1944. He was executed in April 1945. See Heinz Höhne, Canaris, tr. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (New York: Doubleday, 1979).

military intelligence (Abwehr): The Abwehr, which designated all the intelligence services of the German army, was expert in counterespionage. The agency was established by Prussia in 1866, during the war with Austria.

also became preferred sources: In a letter of December 10, 1943, Hugh R. Wilson (a high official in the OSS) wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle: “On the second of November we informed our representative in Bern that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had instructed us to do what we could to detach the satellite countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania immediately from the Axis.” Foreign Relations of the United States 1943, vol. 1.

Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Masson: Lieutenant-Colonel Masson’s services had several irons in the fire: their contacts with the Americans did not keep them from sustained dialogue with the German intelligence services, headed by Walter Schellenberg, who went to Switzerland several times in 1943.

a large German community: The Swiss NSDAP had been banned since the assassination of its leader Wilhelm Gustloff by the Yugoslavian student David Frankfurter in February 1936 in Davos. Nazi Germany attached little importance to the country’s neutrality, as demonstrated by the 1935 kidnapping of the German pacifist militant Berthold Jacob by German agents in Basel.

(Sicherheitsdienst, foreign intelligence services: Headed by Walter Schellenberg, the SD was under the Central Security Service of the Reich, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), another name for Heinrich Himmler’s police empire. The SD was Department VI of the RSHA, the Gestapo Department IV.

“unconscious” of the Germans: See Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy.

Ecumenical Council of Churches: Willem Visser’t Hooft: his friends called him simply Wim, and in Dulles’s secret correspondence with Washington, he was merely number 474. Sauerbruch had number 835 for the OSS, while Kocherthaler seems not to have had a number.

Dulles’s close collaborators: This visit was full of meaning for Dulles: The threat of a shift of German liberal elites toward communism was very real. This appeal was all the more troubling because it came from a man, von Trott, who had had some of his schooling in England and knew the United States well.

“unconditional surrender” of Germany: Policy defined at the Casablanca conference between Roosevelt and Churchill, from January 24 to 26, 1943. This strategy seemed dangerous to Allen Dulles because in his view it risked humiliating the Germans and driving them into the arms of the Russians. “We rendered impossible internal revolution in Germany and thereby prolonged the war and the destruction,” Dulles wrote after the war. Letter of January 3, 1949 to Chester Wilmot (Australian war correspondent), Allen W. Dulles papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton.

contact for the future: Relations between Allen Dulles and Prince Hohenlohe were used after the war by Soviet propaganda to discredit after the fact American policy during the war. See James Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999), pp. 261–67.

rest of the world: Connections by air between Switzerland and the rest of the world had been practically nonexistent since the beginning of the war, except for flights to Germany. Source: Rudolf J. Ritter, Grub, Switzerland.

postal and telecommunications service: Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Dulles telephoned Washington four or five times a week to provide general political analyses and news summaries without operational implications.

numbered only about fifteen: The two permanent agents assigned as cipher clerks received reinforcements from American aviators blocked in Switzerland after forced landings. Source: Bern, summary of the OSS Bern office during the war, National Archives. In Bern, Dulles had four intelligence officers (Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerald Mayer, Frederick Stalder, and Royall Tyler), and about ten cipher clerks, not counting about one hundred informants working regularly for him.

concerned sensitive information: The series of dispatches dealt with the political situation in Italy and the rise of anti-German feeling in Mussolini’s entourage. Soon thereafter (was this coincidental?), they learned of the disgrace of Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, and of several of his friends who wished to end the German alliance. Source: Bern.

the German Enigma code: “Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of British cryptanalysts, and the cooperation of Polish, Czech, and French liaison colleagues, and a lone German spy [Hans-Thilo Schmidt], the Nazi military and intelligence ciphers had been broken sometime before Kolbe became active. This success—code name ULTRA—rivaled only by the American triumph of breaking Japanese ciphers (code name MAGIC), was one of a handful of the great secrets of World War II. The Ultra information made a vital contribution to the Allied victory in Europe and Africa.” Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder. “Enigma” was the name of the sophisticated machine used to encrypt the secret messages of the German army. “Ultra,” the system for decoding Enigma messages set up in England during the war, was located in Bletchley Park, not far from London, and employed dozens of expert mathematicians working in absolute secrecy.

and to General Oster: General Hans Oster (1887–1945) was number two in the Abwehr. He informed the Dutch of the imminent invasion of their country by the troops of the Wehrmacht in the spring of 1940. He played an initiating role in several seditious anti-Nazi plots but was placed under Gestapo surveillance by 1943 and was relieved of duty in the spring of 1944. He was executed in April 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

explained that these rockets: “V” was the abbreviation for Vergeltungswaffe, retaliatory weapon. The V-1 rocket was made up of an aerodynamic fuselage with two small wings propelled by a jetpulse engine in the rear. This was the first cruise missile in history. This flying bomb loaded with explosives was launched from an inclined ramp and was not very precise. The V-2 (or A4), developed and built at Peenemünde (a Baltic Sea resort), was a veritable rocket, having a range of about 320 kilometers and capable of being launched from mobile ramps that were easily camouflaged. This rocket and its principal inventor, Wernher von Braun, made possible the development of American space research after the war. The first V-1 missile was fired on London in June 1944. In September, it was the turn of the V-2 to enter into action. Thousands of V-2s were launched in 1944 and 1945, chiefly on London and Antwerp, causing tens of thousands of deaths. Thanks to Philippe Ballarini and Michel Zumelzu for their invaluable web sites (www.aerostories.org and www.perso.club-internet.fr/mzumelzu/home.htm).

a Baltic Sea resort: Allen Dulles learned of the existence of Peenemünde in several stages: first from the Swiss industrialist Walter Boveri (February 1943), then from Hans-Bernd Gisevius (May 1943), then from Franz Josef Messner (chief executive of a company in Vienna). Peenemünde was bombed on August 17, 1943. Bern, National Archives.

bad with utmost confidence: Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies, p. 268.

Chapter 7

given to a woman: Circular of June 10, 1941 on the organization of diplomatic mail, Foreign Ministry archives, Berlin.

offices throughout the world: Excerpt from the circular of June 10, 1941: “We have recently noticed an abusive increase in missions to our offices abroad [Kurierausweis]. In many cases, these are merely documents of convenience used primarily to offer the beneficiary the opportunity to travel comfortably and to pass easily through customs. This is not acceptable.”

between Himmler and Ribbentrop: “We encounter constant difficulties because of the inopportune activities of your services abroad,” Ribbentrop wrote to Himmler on June 11, 1941. Foreign Ministry archives.

packages, stamped “official dispatch”: In German, völkerrechtlich immun. The stamp had both French and German phrases.

envelope containing diplomatic cables: “Since he traveled on a diplomatic passport, the border controls never thought once to inspect closely the large envelope which he carried.” Unpublished, undated memoir by Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles Papers (box 114, file 11), Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton.

despite official warnings: Internal circular of the Foreign Ministry (February 27, 1943) concerning the organization of diplomatic mail, Foreign Ministry archives.

with sturdy string: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

as a diplomatic courier: Fritz Kolbe had been trying unsuccessfully to secure an assignment as diplomatic courier to Switzerland since 1940. “The fact that he did not belong to the party kept him from being placed on the lists.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

semivacation in Switzerland: The circle of the “privileged” was rather large, because the transport of diplomatic mail between Berlin and Bern took place every day, at least in the first years of the war. Those charged with carrying diplomatic mail were not supposed to have to high a rank in the ministry hierarchy.

his political reliability in writing: Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe in Berlin in early January 1947.

the Ministry of Propaganda: Propaganda Ministerium, or Promi in common speech.

not repress a shiver: The Central Security Office of the Reich, Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA).

the Askanischer Platz: The names are references to German history. The old princely house of Askania reigned over the duchy of Anhalt until 1918.

not bang into them: Source: Alfred Gottwaldt, Berlin, January 10, 2002. All the technical details on trains (including the schedules) were kindly provided by Mr. Gottwaldt, curator of the railroad department in the Technical Museum in Berlin.

front of the train: In 1939, the diplomat Theo Kordt traveled from Bern to Berlin in first class “because he was carrying dispatches” (Foreign Ministry, Theo Kordt file). During the war, first class was abolished on German trains (Alfred Gottwaldt).

Berlin (visa no. 519): Fritz Kolbe’s diplomatic passport has been kept by his son, Peter Kolbe, in Sydney. See illustrations.

Italian, and Austrian deserters: One of Fritz Kolbe’s friends had wanted to desert and go secretly to Switzerland. Kolbe had succeeded in dissuading him and brought him back to his barracks before his absence was noticed. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

not display a Nazi flag: German diplomats feared hostile reactions from the Swiss population and made themselves as discreet as possible.

concealed beneath his pants: Where were the documents hidden? It is impossible to say. The hotel was not a secure place, because the owners had good relations with the German authorities (reservations were made by the Foreign Ministry).

known well since Spain: Otto Köcher had the title “envoy” (Gesandte), not ambassador (Botschafter, which was reserved for diplomats serving in the major capitals; see ch. 1, n. 2) Otto Köcher was born in Alsace in 1884. He joined the Foreign Ministry in 1912, was vice-consul in Naples, then first secretary in Bern; legation adviser in Mexico City in 1924; consul general in Barcelona in 1933. Joined the NSDAP on October 1, 1934 (number 2,871,405). Head of the German legation in Switzerland from March 29, 1937. Very favorably evaluated by the hierarchy of the National Socialist Party. Also very much appreciated by the Swiss authorities (note that Köcher’s mother was Swiss). “George, from his Spanish times, was well acquainted with… Herr Köcher, who had been formerly Consul general in Barcelona” (Ernst Kocherthaler, “The Background of the George Story”).

nature of the place: “Everywhere, only happy people could be seen,” wrote Klaus Mann in his novel The Volcano.

south of the capital: Ernst Kocherthaler had settled in the heart of the Bern Oberland in September 1936 after fleeing from the Spanish Civil War. All his movements were closely scrutinized. His mail was opened. “Mr. Kocherthaler spends his time taking photos of the region,” “he receives many letters from abroad,” “he lives in the same chalet as Dr. Hans Schreck, a Bavarian who spied for Germany in 1916.” These are some of the observations noted down in police reports of the time, now preserved in the Ernst Kocherthaler file of the Swiss public archives (Federal Archives, Bern).

to many different versions: The first meeting among Fritz Kolbe, Allen Dulles, and Gerald Mayer is described in several archival documents: Memorandum of Gerry Mayer and Allen Dulles of August 28, 1943, National Archives; memorandum of OSS Bern of August 31, 1943, National Archives; biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe; various undated documents written by Allen Dulles (Allen W. Dulles Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton).

attaché since September 1939: Cartwright was a man of action. He had escaped dozens of times from German internment camps during the First World War. Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies, p. 280.

in Bern that day: On the British intelligence network in Switzerland during the war, see the article by Neville Wylie in Intelligence & National Security, vol. 11, no. 3 (July 1996).

Alpenstrasse 29 and 35: This scene is described in the memorandum of Gerry Mayer and Allen Dulles of August 28, 1943, National Archives.

his office on Dufourstrasse: The OSS offices in Bern (officially the offices of the “special assistant to the American envoy”) occupied the second, third, and fourth floors of two residential buildings in the Kirchenfeld district. The ground floor was occupied by the offices of the Office of War Information (OWI) headed by Gerald Mayer, “press attaché” of the American legation. The premises were covered by diplomatic immunity. Miscellaneous Activities OSS Bern, undated internal document of the OSS Bern office, National Archives.

at nine that morning: Memorandum of August 28, 1943 by Gerry Mayer and Allen Dulles, National Archives.

War Information (OWI): Gerald Mayer sent thousands of leaflets, pamphlets, newspapers, brochures, and other printed matter into enemy territory during the war. “Mr. Mayer worked closely with Mr. Allen Dulles… and was of inestimable help to him, particularly in developing a contact which went into the heart of the German Foreign Office. This contact was generally recognized as being one of the outstanding intelligence sources of the war.” Statement of War Services of Mr. Gerald Mayer, sent April 24, 1947 by Allen Dulles to General Donovan, Allen W. Dulles Papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton. See also Miscellaneous Activities OSS Bern, National Archives.

“is okay with me”: Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies (New York: Harper & Row, 1975).

in the Kirchenfeld district: Gerald Mayer’s apartment was at Jubiläumsstrasse 97. Swiss Federal Archives, Gerald Mayer file.

“Mr. Douglas, Mayer’s assistant”: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“Dulles considered honest determination”: Unpublished, untitled document of 1954 in the personal archives of Allen Dulles. Allen W. Dulles Papers.

out of the envelope: How many documents were there in this first “delivery” from Fritz Kolbe? The figure of 186 cables is commonly put forward. Correspondence between Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer, Allen W. Dulles Papers. But in an unpublished and undated memorandum, Allen Dulles speaks of only “20 copies of documents.” Allen Dulles/Fritz Kolbe correspondence, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

State Secretary Martin Luther: Martin Luther, Fritz Kolbe’s former superior, tried to provoke Ribbentrop’s fall in early February 1943. The “coup” just failed, and Martin Luther was arrested and sent to the concentration camp of Sachsenhausen. Behind Luther was probably Walter Schellenberg, Himmler’s chief of foreign intelligence, who had been trying to initiate negotiations with the Allies since the summer of 1942 and wanted to take over the reins of German foreign policy himself. For Schellenberg and Himmler, Ribbentrop remained the man of the Nazi-Soviet pact, in short the “friend of Moscow.” He was known to be opposed to any separate peace with the West, and his hatred for England was boundless.

“meters to the north”: Kappa message of August 26, 1943, National Archives. See also memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

on August 7, 1943: On the August 7 Cairo cable, see Kappa message of August 25, 1943, National Archives.

out of his sleeve: “He had information that literally came out of his sleeve.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“tungsten to the Germans”: Memorandum of August 20, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives. Tungsten, a metal that serves to harden steel, is indispensable for the arms industry.

“for days on end”: Memorandum of August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

minister of aeronautic production: Ibid.

in the Irish capital: Ireland had declared its neutrality in 1939. Berlin, which supported the Irish independence forces, wished to use the island as a base for observation and clandestine operations against England. The Reich had parachuted several secret agents in 1940, including Hermann Görtz. The United States vigorously protested to Eamon de Valera, head of the Irish government, against the presence of a clandestine German transmitter in Dublin, which was finally seized and neutralized during the winter of 1943–44. See Kappa message of April 12, 1944 and Boston documents nos. 12 and 124, National Archives. See also Enno Stephan, Spies in Ireland, tr. Arthur Davidson (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1965).

ships in the southern oceans: On Lourenço Marques, see Kappa message of August 26, 1943, National Archives. A few months later, Fritz Kolbe provided information making it possible to trap Leopold Wertz, the German consul in Lourenço Marques: “Dr. Wertz has a weakness for women.” Kappa message of October 22, 1943.

“and original cipher results”: Memorandum of August 19, 1943 OSS Bern, National Archives.

to talk about himself: Portrait of Fritz Kolbe, August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

serve as a guarantee: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“reimbursement of modest expenses”: “George answered that he would refuse any money for his collaboration, as he was driven by the conviction that only by helping now the Americans, Germany would merit a backing by the U.S., which tomorrow would prove necessary against the Russian threat.” Kocherthaler, “The Background of the George Story.”

“joke?” they both said: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

Fritz felt “deep satisfaction”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Fritsch (“nicknamed ‘little rabbit’”: Häschen in German.

“just sense of reality”: Fritz Kolbe’s mother was opposed to the Nazis. In the early 1930s, she had moved out of her Berlin apartment because its windows overlooked an SA barracks and she could not bear the sight of the paramilitary uniforms. Anecdote recounted by Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001; also in Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“still a good brother”: Hans was an electronic engineer employed by the Loewe firm in Berlin and was not a member of the Nazi Party. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“the last few years”: Manuscript will (dated August 19, 1943) and typewritten transcript, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

eight in the morning: Memorandum of August 28, 1943, Gerry Mayer and Allen Dulles, National Archives.

“also a lukewarm Nazi”: Memorandum of August 20, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

two hundred Swiss francs: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. The sum of two hundred Swiss francs was rather large, considering that the monthly salary of a high school teacher was seven hundred Swiss francs during the war. Source: Antoine Bosshard, Lausanne.

feeling of great success: “He felt the same exhilarating sensation he remembered having when he made his first successful ski jump after long and careful practice.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

he asked himself anxiously: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Chapter 8

“roasting in the sun”: Words from the anthem of the Germans of the “Südwest,” the “Südwesterlied.” Source: Peter Kolbe.

X-2 of the OSS: “The only element of OSS known to me to have had access to ULTRA on a continuing basis was the London office of X-2, the OSS counterespionage section in England. Although General Donovan was ‘indoctrinated’—the term for having been briefed and granted access to the ULTRA material—he was rarely in a position to follow it on a regular basis. To my knowledge James Murphy, chief of X-2, was the only OSS officer based in Washington who was indoctrinated and fully informed. It was his responsibility to keep General Donovan briefed on the most important ULTRA data.” Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder, p. 37.

name is a mystery: “Nobody remembered later just how the name George Wood was invented.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

being better than one: In the internal nomenclature of the OSS, Allen Dulles was number 110. He was also called “Burns.”

description of the man: Portrait of Fritz Kolbe, August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

Secret Intelligence Service (SIS): The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), or MI6 (for Military Intelligence 6), had been headed since 1939 by Lieutenant-Colonel Stewart Menzies. It was subdivided into ten sections, including section V, which specialized in counterespionage.

assessment of the file: The note from Dansey to David Bruce was dated August 25, 1943, only five days after Fritz’s return to Berlin. Everything had gone very quickly. Source: National Archives.

“a fierce proprietary obsession”: Kim Philby, My Silent War (New York: Grove Press, 1968), p. 103.

unknown figure, Kim Philby: Ibid., pp. 103–04. Kim Philby (1912–88) was, with Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, one of the most famous spies and “traitors” in British and European history.

“674” (Fritz Kolbe): Message from Russell G. D’Oench to Whitney Shepardson, September 1, 1943, National Archives.

on the wrong track: Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies, p. 286.

work for the Americans: If there had been a separate peace with the West, the Soviets would have been left alone in the face of the enemy. Kim Philby, therefore, had to do everything in his power to prevent these discussions from coming to fruition.

“cause,” explained Kim Philby: Philby, My Silent War, p. 50.

“hatred, passion, or revenge”: Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy, The Life of Allen Dulles (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), p. 320.

Austria-Hungary had demonstrated: Colonel Alfred Redl, one of the principal intelligence officers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, betrayed his country to Russia, but also to France and Serbia on the eve of the First World War. He was unmasked and committed suicide in 1913.

“things in the world”: These words are those of John Foster Dulles, Allen’s brother, secretary of state under President Eisenhower. Allen W. Dulles Papers.

Berlin in the 1920s: The facts about Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz come from a four-page biographical document in the National Archives. Gerhart von Schulze-Gaevernitz, his father, was involved in the Quaker movement in support of peace and had great admiration for the Anglo-American world. He had sent his son Gero, when he was barely of age, to make his way in the United States with $100 in his pocket. He was also a friend of Max Weber.

of the Stinnes family: The Stinnes family was one of the most powerful industrial dynasties in Germany, dominated by the figure of the founding father, Hugo Stinnes (1870–1924), who had created a coal and steel empire in the Ruhr.

in one of his memoirs: Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 17.

had come from Berlin: That summer, he had been visited in particular by the German lawyer Carl Langbehn, a personal friend of Heinrich Himmler (who was already considering the idea of a separate peace with the Anglo-American forces, hoping to save the Nazi regime by means of a grand alliance against the Soviets). Langbehn paid a visit to Bern in August 1943 but was arrested by the Gestapo on his return to Berlin and “dropped” by Himmler, who pretended not to know him in order not to compromise himself in the führer’s eyes.

Warburg & Co, Hamburg: Sigmund Warburg (1902–82) had left Hamburg for London in 1933. He is considered one of the founding fathers of modern finance. See Jacques Attali, Un homme d’influence (Paris, 1985).

“education of German teachers”: Memorandum of August 31, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

assist the ongoing investigation: Dulles seems not to have wondered about the reasons that could explain why Kocherthaler, when he wanted to approach the Americans to talk to them about Fritz Kolbe, had not spoken directly to Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz. Why had he asked for advice from Paul Dreyfuss, his banker friend in Basel, about making contact with the Americans? The mystery remains.

Kolbe, Fritz’s only brother: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Fritz’s real intentions: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Walter Bauer, November 15, 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

his visit to Bern: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

not said his last: Anthony Quibble, “Alias George Wood,” Studies in Intelligence, 1966.

sent books, radios, phonographs: “We have noted increased abuse of the diplomatic mail service for the purpose of transporting private letters. It is absolutely indispensable to limit this phenomenon,” according to a circular from the German minister in Bern, Otto Köcher, in November 1941. Source: German Foreign Ministry.

Sport Club of Sélestat: Article by Maurice Kubler in the Nouveau dictionnaire de biographie alsacienne.

travel secretly to London: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Bur was a rare jewel: “With the agreement of Allen Dulles, I gave Albert Bur documents concerning France (activities of collaborators), but also information concerning German espionage activities in the entourage of Winston Churchill,” Fritz wrote in an autobiographical document in January 1947 in Berlin.

meant Wood’s cross-examination: Kappa messages of October 8 and 9, 1943, National Archives.

assignment as diplomatic courier: Fritz’s second meeting with the Americans in Bern is described in several documents, particularly the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

for making “defeatist” statements: “The climate is one of pure terror,” wrote Ulrich von Hassell in his diary on October 9, 1943, Die Hassell Tagebücher (Berlin, 1988). “Nothing in Germany any longer has a face, neither streets nor men,” wrote Jean Guéhenno on October 6, 1943, following the account of a friend who had come back from the other side of the Rhine. Journal des années noires (Paris: Gallimard, 1947).

warden smiled with pleasure: This episode is recounted in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

a pouch with a false top: “When the sealed envelope was handed him in Berlin, Kolbe merely placed it, together with the documents scooped out of his private safe, in a larger official envelope to which he affixed a Foreign Office seal.” Unpublished memoir by Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles Papers (box 114, file 11).

turned into a disaster: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

day from his schedule: This episode is reported in Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

them in his coat: Unpublished memoir by Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles Papers (box 114, file 11).

ashes down the bowl: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“because of the curfew”: Ibid.

easy to pass unseen: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

was in Herrengasse 23: “Meetings with secret agents were held in Mr. Dulles’s private house after blackout. This house, in addition to its entrance on the street, had a private entrance in the rear, which went through a garden into a back street where surveillance was almost impossible.” Miscellaneous Activities OSS Bern, National Archives.

armaments industry desperately needed: The deliveries of Spanish tungsten to the Reich were handled in secret by a company called Sofindus (Sociecad Financiera y Industrial). The Americans subjected Franco Spain to an oil embargo after learning of these deliveries of strategic raw materials to the Reich, contrary to Franco’s promises. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

U-boats in the Atlantic: Several secondary sources indicate that the information provided by Kolbe enabled the Americans to save a maritime convoy that was going to be attacked by German submarines. See, for example, Andrew Tully, CIA, the Inside Story (New York: Morrow, 1962).

housing the Leibstandarte SS: Hitler’s personal guard (Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler) had been established as early as March 1933 by Josef “Sepp” Dietrich, the führer’s chief bodyguard. Its strength was that of a division (20,000 men in December 1942). It participated in most of the major military operations of the war.

“Hitler’s personal guard”: Document of OSS Bern, October 9, 1943, National Archives.

his family, his opinions: “This time we had more time to talk,” Fritz said about his October visit. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

course of the conversation: Message from OSS Bern to Washington, October 4, 1943, National Archives.

door of Herrengasse 23: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

colleagues in the legation: Ibid.

connection might attract suspicion: Ibid.

specialized in venereal diseases: Ibid.

of a later interrogation: Fritz Kolbe recounts that he was indeed interrogated by a security officer on his return from Bern. “We know that you were absent from your hotel on the night of 9 October. What do you have to answer?” The doctor’s bill enabled him to calm the suspicions of the interrogator, and Kolbe escaped with a verbal warning. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” Morgan places the scene in August 1943, apparently mistakenly.

“apartment on Kurfürstendamm”: Documents from OSS Bern, October 8 and 9, 1943, National Archives.

came to arrest him: “The Story of George.” Fritz Kolbe intended to shoot himself in the head if he were arrested. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

Kolbe (“Subject: Wood case”): Note from Norman Holmes Pearson (OSS London, chief of the counterespionage branch) to Colonel David K. E. Bruce, chief of the OSS in London, November 23, 1943, National Archives.

and the Ultra machine: See Chapter 6, note 20.

of the Royal Navy: Correspondence of the author with Nigel West, an English historian of espionage, and with David Oxenstierna in Boston, grandson of Johann Gabriel Oxenstierna.

“Josephine,” were disciplined: Count Oxenstierna was replaced in the spring of 1944 by another member of the Swedish aristocracy, Count Bertil. Among the high British officials who had to explain themselves on this matter was notably Sir William Strange, Assistant Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office.

“course of the war”: Letter from Claude Dansey to OSS London, November 5, 1943, National Archives.

which Kolbe had revealed: Kappa message of December 30, 1943, National Archives.

“factory was not hit”: Kappa message of October 11, 1943, National Archives.

“correct,” and so on: Messages from OSS London to Washington, Kappa series, November 19, 1943 and January 22, 1944, National Archives.

Chapter 9

the pay of Germany: Elyeza Bazna was born in 1904 in Pristina, in the western part of the Ottoman Empire. He came from a modest Muslim family. The British ambassador in Ankara hired him as a valet in 1942.

combining diplomacy with espionage: Von Papen had been expelled from the United States in 1915 for engaging in secret activities incompatible with his position as military attaché at the German embassy.

Schellenberg, head of foreign espionage: Department VI of the RSHA, the SD.

so, at what price?: Officially, Turkey was tied to England by a treaty of alliance dating from October 1939.

the German secret services: Ernst Kaltenbrunner had taken charge of the Reichsicherheitshauptamt after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942.

memoirs after the war: Franz von Papen, Memoirs (London: André Deutsch, 1952).

this mysterious source: Kappa message, December 29, 1943, National Archives.

“source designated as Cicero”: Kappa message from OSS Bern, December 30, 1943. The next message was dated January 1, 1944. These documents were summarized to constitute the very first documents of the “Boston series,” a shorter version of the Kappa messages. Document number 5 of the Boston series—intended for distribution to the top leadership of the United States—was concerned with the procurement of British documents by the German embassy in Ankara. Source: National Archives.

“from the Cicero sources”: Message from OSS London to OSS Bern, January 25, 1944, National Archives.

of the November cables: Message from OSS London to OSS Bern, February 19, 1944, National Archives.

“the identity of Cicero”: Kappa message, January 10, 1944, National Archives.

“with him to Cairo”: Kappa message received in Washington on February 22, 1944.

source of the leak: Allen Dulles gives his version of the events: “Of direct practical value of the very highest kind among Wood’s contributions was a copy of a cable in which the German Ambassador in Turkey, von Papen, proudly reported to Berlin (in November 1943) the acquisition of top secret documents from the British Embassy in Ankara through ‘an important German agent.’… I immediately passed word of this to my British colleagues, and a couple of British security inspectors immediately went over the British Embassy in Ankara and changed the safes and their combinations, thus putting Cicero out of business. Neither the Germans nor Cicero ever knew what was behind the security visit, which was, of course, made to appear routine and normal.” The Secret Surrender, p. 24.

wrote after the war: The Secret Surrender. After the war, the British secret services claimed that they had “turned” Cicero between January and March 1944 and used him to disseminate false intelligence to the Germans. For his part, Allen Dulles explained at the end of his life that “[i]t was obvious to me that the British were playing some sort of game with Cicero.” But the most current explanations are of a different nature: there is hardly any doubt about the negligence of the British ambassador. See Nigel West, “Cicero; A Stratagem of Deception?” in A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II (New York: Random House, 1985).

began to resemble fountains: Paul Seabury, The Wilhelmstrasse, A Study of German Diplomats under the Nazi Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954).

were evacuated to Silesia: The ministry retreated to Krummhübel (now Karpacz in Poland), in the Riesengebirge, or “mount of giants” region. See Kappa message, December 30, 1943, National Archives.

“soldiers all mixed together”: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung in the possession of Frank and Marie-Christine Jung, Strasbourg.

was in short supply: The “coal thief,” Kohlenklau, was denounced as a dangerous public enemy.

your civil defense kit: In German, Luftschutzkoffer. In every air raid, Fritz Kolbe put in this case the “hot” documents that he did not want to fall into the wrong hands. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Rome, Ulrich von Hassell: Ulrich von Hassell (1881–1944) belonged to the nationalist political persuasion, but he was also one of the strongest opponents of Hitler. German ambassador to Italy from 1932 to 1938, he then took refuge in internal exile and participated in the plot of July 20, 1944. Arrested after the failure of the assassination attempt against Hitler, he was tried by a “People’s Court” and executed on September 8, 1944. His diaries, published in Berlin in 1988, are among the richest and most interesting documents concerning the period.

singing old student songs: Klaus Scholder, Die Mittwochsgesellschaft (Berlin, 1982).

journalist Ursula von Kardorff: Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen (Munich, 1997).

“catastrophe” from their vocabulary: The word “catastrophe” was also eliminated from civil defense vehicles (formerly Katastropheneinsatz), which were now given the label “Emergency Help” (Soforthilfe). This observation comes from Victor Klemperer, who wrote in his diary on December 25, 1943: “The Nazis’ military reserves may be exhausted, their propaganda reserves are far from exhausted.” Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years 1942–1945, tr. Martin Chalmers (New York: Random House, 1999), p. 281.

“which is not likely”: Message from Allen Dulles to John Magruder, November 4, 1943. See also Kappa message, October 27, 1943: “805 is in no position to secure such information without risking his own security and thus causing a stoppage of information.” National Archives.

passed through his hands: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“his family. Merry Christmas!”: This letter is in the National Archives.

to Bern since August: This third visit is reported in particular in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

as usual, in advance: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Messerschmitt 262 were assembled: “About a month and a half ago production on a new fighter plane, having a top speed of almost 1000 kilometers an hour, was begun. Reports on this plane by Gallant, leading test pilot in the Reich, were enthusiastic.” Kappa message, December 30, 1943, National Archives. The Messerschmitt Me-262 in question here was flown for the first time in July 1942. It was the first operational jet plane in history. Hitler had it presented to him in December 1943 and asked whether the plane could carry bombs (he was dreaming of a fast bomber). But the Luftwaffe pilots needed a fighter plane. Hitler prohibited this two-engine jet from being used as anything but a light bomber. The plane might have modified the course of the end of the conflict, but it was a victim of Hitler’s obsession with offensive materiel to the neglect of defensive armaments. Source: Philippe Ballarini.

was traveling in Belgium: Debriefing of Fritz Kolbe on the night of December 27, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives.

bombed in August 1943: Kappa message, January 1, 1944, National Archives.

“fighting alongside the Nazis”: Kappa message, October 11, 1943.

“military developments from HQ”: Kappa message, October 13, 1943.

than seven hundred tons: Kappa message, January 7, 1944.

shipped to Germany: Kappa message, January 8, 1944.

“he take a rest”: Kappa message, October 20, 1943. The Japanese were very well informed about the Soviet Union. Fritz Kolbe transmitted several messages about Russia coming from Tokyo, notably a very precise evaluation of Russian military potential made by the Japanese (November 1943).

“Guarantee our borders?”: The cables about Bulgaria, Rumania, and Hungary are in the National Archives.

of a “militia state”: On the notion of “militia state,” see Jean-Pierre Azéma and Olivier Wieviorka, Vichy 1940–1944 (Paris: Perrin, 2000). In December 1943, Himmler demanded that René Bousquet be dismissed and replaced by the head of the Milice, Joseph Darnand. Bousquet was criticized, among other things, for having allowed the underground to develop.

part of the Germans: The following people were designated as suspect: Bernard Ménétrel, Jean Jardel, General Campet, and Lucien Romier. Kappa message, January 16, 1944 and Boston document no. 91, National Archives.

for influence against Pétain: Boston document no. 1067.

“Pétain’s group of associates”: Boston document no. 91.

“national stagnation and reaction”: Kappa message, January 8, 1944.

of a continuous increase: “Statistics for November 1943 (with the figures for November 1942 in parentheses); assassinations: 195 (15), destruction of rail lines: 293 (24), acts of sabotage using explosives: 443 (56), cable cutting: 48 (10), criminal arson: 94 (32).” National Archives.

former minister, Lucien Lamoureux: Lucien Lamoureux (1888–1970) represented the Allier department between the wars. He was a minister several times, of the budget (1933), of labor (1933–34), of colonies (1934), and of finance (1940). He voted in favor of granting full authority to Marshal Pétain.

such as Henri Ardant: On Henri Ardant, see Renaud de Rochebrune and Jean-Claude Hazéra, Les Patrons sous l’Occupation (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1995), pp. 693–722. Henri Ardant, as president of the Comité d’organisation des banques, was the principal spokesman for French private banks to the Germans and Vichy. He was convicted at the Liberation and spent thirteen months in prison from November 1944 to December 1945.

Yves Bréart de Boisanger: At the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the provisional government of General de Gaulle dismissed Yves Bréart de Boisanger from his post and replaced him with Emmanuel Monick. See Annie Lacroix-Riz, Industriels et banquiers sous l’Occupation (Paris: Armand Colin, 1999).

Marie Bell, Béatrice Bretty: Marie Bell (1900–85) was known primarily for her major roles in the theater (Phèdre at the Comédie-Française), but she also acted on screen (Carnet de Bal, Le Grand Jeu).

stronger than the Gestapo: This list of French personalities is preserved on microfilm in the National Archives (original German document of December 24, 1942).

“always a little nervous”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

though nothing had happened: It was a miracle that the Gestapo did not discover George’s activities.” “The Story of George.”

by Fritz, the Kappa: It is not known why the name “Kappa” was chosen to designate the information supplied by Fritz Kolbe. As for the term “Boston series,” this is probably a name chosen at random.

of Crosica in October: The liberation of Corsica took place from September to October 4, 1943. It was the first French department to be liberated. Corsica had been annexed by Italy on November 11, 1942. Four Italian divisions had occupied it, joined in July 1943 by a brigade of the Waffen-SS and in September 1943 by a German division transferred from Sardinia.

twelve days went by: Bern, undated internal document of the OSS, probably from immediately after the war, on the activities of the Bern office, National Archives.

correspondents in the OSS: National Archives.

cables to President Roosevelt: “From early July 1944 forward, General Donovan sent many of the Dulles reports to President Roosevelt verbatim, but aside from the case of Sunrise [the Wehrmacht surrender in Italy], there is scant record of White House reaction. Nor was Dulles’s input discussed by FDR and Churchill. One searches in vain for a single instance in which the riches of Bern’s intelligence on Germany made a difference on the high policy level.” Neal H. Petersen, “Allen Dulles and the Penetration of Germany,” in George Chalou, ed., The Secrets War: The Office of Strategic Services in World War II (Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 1992), p. 287.

revelations from “George Wood”: Document no. 1 of the Boston series, National Archives.

qualities for the position: “Although officially a member of the party, Pohle agreed to transmit my messages to Ernst Kocherthaler. Beginning in the spring of 1944, he went to Bern six or eight times,” Fritz wrote in an autobiographical document composed in Berlin in January 1947. “Several German diplomatic officials had to help. Most of them did it by friendship for George and by hatred against the Nazis, others because they liked George’s presents of cigars and chocolate which he brought home from his trips to Switzerland.” “The Story of George.”

some to Karl Ritter: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

the surgeon the truth: “Sauerbruch was never in the inner circle. I had always his whole confidence and trusted him completely, but it was not necessary to let him into my affairs. Of course he knew that I was dealing with the Allies, but I gave him neither details nor names except the name of Dr. Kocherthaler.” Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Allen Dulles, May 29, 1945 (written in Hegenheim), personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection.

one typed single-spaced: Kappa message received in Washington February 23, 1944. See also Anthony Quibble, “Alias George Wood,” Studies in Intelligence (a CIA publication), Spring 1966, vol. 10.

confessed after the war: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

“may explain the inconsistencies”: Kappa message, February 25, 1944.

“April and June 1944”: Kappa message, April 17, 1944 and Boston document no. 284. The source was Hans Thomsen, envoy of the Reich in Stockholm.

spies based in Ireland: Boston document no. 154.

“no other card available”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. The postcard is preserved in the National Archives.

his personal secret code: Fritz Kolbe had devised a secret code that he considered very secure and he had shown it to a specialist in the Foreign Ministry. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

German legation in Switzerland: The Americans were very surprised at receiving this postcard, which had taken three weeks to reach them. After some investigation, it was confirmed that an Edgar H. Yolland, who had worked for the American intelligence services in Turkey until August 1943 (when he had been dismissed), was in the process of approaching the Germans in order to obtain a German passport. In exchange, he offered to reveal the information in his possession. It is impossible to tell whether Edgar Yolland was neutralized in time. For Berlin, Yolland’s defection could not have come at a better time. A few weeks earlier, the Vermehrens, a couple of Abwehr agents based in the Reich’s consulate in Istanbul, had defected to the Allies. The event had brought about the definitive disgrace of Admiral Canaris in Germany, a prelude to Himmler’s seizure of control over the Abwehr.

Soviet regime in Germany: Kappa message, April 27, 1944 and Boston document no. 259. A little later, in November 1944, the Germans regretted the departure of Marcel Pilet-Golaz, whom they considered “their last support in the Swiss Federal Council.” Boston document no. 604.

letter received in February: German diplomatic cable, January 22, 1944, microfilm, National Archives.

the fall of 1943: A month later, in late February 1944, Jean Jardin tried to meet Allen Dulles, who at first refused to see him. On Jean Jardin, see the biography by Pierre Assouline, Une éminence grise (Paris: Balland, 1986), p. 125: “Laval and Pétain intended to make Jean Jardin into a veritable go-between with Allen Dulles.”

(the Abwehr) in Switzerland: Kappa message, March 13, 1944.

was located in Zurich: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Chapter 10

on January 22, 1944: National Archives.

we know the answers: Message from London to Bern and Washington, Kappa series, January 28, 1944.

document into the wastebasket: Quibble, “Alias George Wood.”

a former Chicago lawyer: The department headed by Alfred McCormack (Special Branch) had nearly four hundred employees. It was the largest military espionage unit, specializing in the interception of enemy signals (SIGINT). McCormack’s investigation was carried out in close cooperation with the British. See Quibble, “Alias George Wood.”

intelligence and counterespionage: Memorandum Re Procedure for Handling Kappa Intelligence, August 7, 1944, and Method of Control of Boston Series Material, February 29, 1944, National Archives. See also Quibble, “Alias George Wood.”

in late February 1944: Boston document no. 111 and Kappa message, March 29, 1944.

and the Far East?: Message from OSS Washington to Allen Dulles, March 22, 1944, National Archives.

of the Japanese administration: In August 1940, American military espionage had succeeded in cracking the Japanese diplomatic code. This decoding system was given the name Magic. Thanks to Magic, the imminence of a diplomatic break between the United States and Japan was known before the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. But the information was not treated as it might have been, for want of relevant analysis.

when the opportunity arose: The episode of the Japanese postcard is recounted in detail in the following: “The Story of George”; the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe; Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” Allen Dulles often told the story in his postwar writings. See, for example, The Craft of Intelligence (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).

prime minister of Hungary: Unpublished memoir by Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles papers (box 114, file 11).

on March 22, 1944: Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, Der Schattenmann (1947; Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1984).

breakdown over the incident: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

good offices of Fritz: Boston document no. 1166.

maybe pulling our legs: Kappa message, December 29, 1943.

trap with terrible consequences: This is the analysis of Timothy Naftali, an American historian specializing in intelligence and the Second World War. Interview on Fritz Kolbe produced by Linda Martin for The History Channel in September 2003 with the title “The Too Perfect Spy.” Available in The History Channel Store: http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.jhtml?id=43836.

to Berlin for interrogation: Bern, a summary of OSS Bern activities during the war, National Archives.

in the Hungarian capital: Questioned by the Americans after the war, Ritter claimed to have worked with Veesenmayer for only a few weeks. He claimed not to have been aware of the program for the extermination of the Jews of Hungary (he thought they were being sent to “work camps”) and said that Veesenmayer was overwhelmed by the actions of the SS. Interrogation of Karl Ritter, July 24, 1947 (US Chief Counsel for War Crimes document in the collection of Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Osnabrück).

spreading through neutral countries: In October 1942 and January 1943, warning messages on this subject were circulated in the Foreign Ministry. Source: German Foreign Ministry.

and goings in Switzerland: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

determined to take action: Walter Bauer came from Heilbronn in southern Germany. This industrialist was close to Christian intellectual circles in Freiburg who were thinking about the democratic future of Germany. As the assassination attempt of July 20, 1944 approached, he frequented Carl Goerdeler, who was supposed to become chancellor after the putsch. Bauer drafted the cultural segment of the policy speech that Goerdeler intended to deliver if he became chancellor.

by a Jewish family: The coal conglomerate of the brothers Ernst and Ignatz Petschek was at the time one of the most powerful companies in the sector in central Europe.

came to recognize them: After the failure of the July 20, 1944 plot, Fritz Kolbe volunteered to help Carl Goerdeler escape to Switzerland, but the plan was not carried out in time. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“too old” for his taste: Sauerbruch proposed to Fritz Kolbe not that he become a member of the Wednesday Club but that he address it. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

of the Weimar Republic: Paul Löbe was born near Breslau in 1875. He was trained as a typesetter. A deputy beginning in 1920, he was president of the Reichstag between 1920 and 1932. In June 1933, he took the head of the Social Democrats who had decided to remain in Germany, as opposed to those who had taken refuge in Prague. After the SPD was banned by the Nazis on June 22, 1933, he lived in hiding and was sent to a concentration camp. Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn.

a comrade in arms: There is no indication that Fritz crossed paths with other major figures of the underground Social Democrats of the time, such as Julius Leber and Wilhelm Leuschner.

after the fall of Nazism: Kappa message, June 13, 1944.

individualism of Western civilization: National Archives.

in Post-War Europe: The Jewish Question in Post-War Europe, dated March 6, 1944, National Archives.

terror of being arrested: “Fritz’s heart was beating so hard as he went through customs that he was afraid it would give him away.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

for a handsome tip: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

headquarters cabled back: Kappa message, April 11, 1944.

quality of the document: Apparently only the military attaché and his Air Force colleague sent their cables to the Foreign Ministry, which was not the case for the naval attaché, according to a remark in a notarized document written by Allen Dulles in January 1948 to facilitate Fritz Kolbe’s immigration to the United States. Allen W. Dulles Papers.

the Thai prime minister: In December 1938, Pibul Songgram became prime minister of Thailand and implemented a “pan-Thai” policy that was nationalist, expansionist, and racist (anti-Chinese). Siam at that time adopted the name Thailand. In 1941, Songgram drew his country, initially neutral, onto the side of Japan. In recompense, he received part of Laos and Cambodia, the northern part of Malaya, and part of Burma. But in Washington and London the Free Thai movement of Seni Pramoj and, in the country, the network of Pridi Phanomyong, then regent, organized the resistance. Thanks to the contacts the resistance made with the Allies starting in 1944, Thailand was not treated as an enemy by the United States after the Japanese capitulation in 1945.

transmitted to Washington: Bern, National Archives.

more than ten sections: Kappa messages, April 19 and 21, 1944.

espionage network in Sweden: Kappa message, April 17, 1944, list of the principal members of the Abwehr in Sweden.

same kind for Spain: Kappa message, April 18, 1944.

on the Russian front: Kappa message, April 12, 1944.

Antwerp, or maybe Norway: Ibid.

Reich’s envoy in Dublin: See, for example, Kappa message, April 12, 1944, and Boston document no. 154 (“there is a tank arsenal and a sizeable airfield for heavy bombers located at Hatfield…. Most of the tanks are reported to be of the Sherman type. Ninety per cent of the total number of pursuit planes are said to be built in this general neighborhood…. American forces are reaching Bristol constantly, night and day.”)

used by the Allies: Germany had been working since late 1943 on the development of the technology of miniaturized submarines, like the Biber (Beaver), which had a one-man crew. The use of these submarines beginning in the spring of 1944 produced mixed results because of many technical problems.

the invasion even starts: Kappa message, April 12, 1944.

their arms for liquor: Kappa message, April 13, 1944.

gathered around Marthe Bibesco: Marthe Bibesco (1889–1973) was a figure in literary and social life in Paris and Bucharest. The author of many books, she was surrounded by crowned heads and famous writers.

alone win him over: Kappa message, April 12, 1944, reprinted in Neal H. Petersen, ed., From Hitler’s Doorstep: The Wartime Intelligence Reports of Allen Dulles, 1942–1945 (University Park: Penn State University Press, 1996), pp. 267–68.

they are more severe: Kappa message, April 15, 1944.

the object of pity: Ibid.

at 60% of capacity: Kappa message, April 14, 1944.

Chetniks and the Germans: “The Chetnik leaders have decided to join the further movements of the German Wehrmacht. They wish to continue the struggle against communism under all circumstances…. They are also ready to enter into action frontally with the German Wehrmacht against the Russian Army.” Boston document no. 553.

“favoring Muslim autonomy”: Kappa messages, April 15 and 18, 1944. After the invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941, puppet states under the boot of the Reich had been set up in Croatia (Ante Pavelic) and in Serbia (Milan Nedic). Beginning in February 1943, the British chose to give increased support to Tito’s resistance at the expense of Mihailovich’s Chetniks, who then turned to the Germans.

“Peter,” his son’s name: Kappa message, April 11, 1944.

a few years later: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

comments and photograph them: “I sent undeveloped film. There were up to sixty exposures per roll and two to four rolls in each shipment…. I took the photographs in Maria Fritsch’s on-site apartment in the Charité hospital. This was where the documents were kept, which was not without danger with the bombing,” Fritz wrote in an autobiographical document in Berlin in January 1947. The sending of photographic documents did not really begin to function until the fall of 1944. Bern, National Archives.

of cables every time: See, for example, Boston document no. 163. It is one of the longest of the series: twelve pages entirely devoted to deliveries of Spanish tungsten to Germany.

the situation is ripe: Document of April 25, 1944 (Germany in April 1944), based on a conversation with Fritz Kolbe, OSS Bern, National Archives.

friends in the Abwehr: Among the few regular informers of the OSS coming from the Reich, there was notably Eduard Wätjen, a colleague of Hans-Bernd Gisevius at the German consulate in Zurich, a member of the Abwehr who had been trained as a lawyer. His mother was American, and his sister had married a Rockefeller.

an occasional businessman: Notably Eduard Schulte, a German industrialist who was one of the first to inform the Allies of the existence of Auschwitz, in the first months of 1942.

the cafés of Basel: Message from OSS Bern to Washington, October 30, 1943, National Archives.

and without Festung Europa: Kappa message, April 12, 1944. Document sent to the White House: Memorandum for the President, April 15, 1944, microfilm (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 18). Document sent to the military leadership: letter from Edward Buxton to the secretary of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, April 18, 1944, microfilm (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 18), National Archives.

gaining the victory now: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. The document can be found online at: www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box4.

defense against invasion: Kappa message, April 17, 1944; Memorandum for the President, April 19, 1944. This continuation of the story was also distributed to the military leadership, letter from Edward Buxton to the secretary of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, April 19, 1944, microfilm (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 18), National Archives.

any hot invasion material: Quoted in Petersen, ed., From Hitler’s Doorstep.

“in Burma,” he wrote: Final report of Alfred McCormack on the Boston series, May 6, 1944, National Archives.

was false or incorrect: Quibble, “Alias George Wood.”

the material on Japan: Message from David Bruce, May 12, 1944, quoted by Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies, p. 296.

with his useful suitcase: Philby, My Silent War, pp. 107–08.

Shepardson, known as “Jackpot”: Whitney H. Shepardson had headed the espionage branch of the OSS (Secret Intelligence Branch or SI) since 1943. Shepardson, a businessman and lawyer, was on old friend of Allen Dulles. They had both been members of the American delegation to the Versailles treaty negotiations in 1919.

quite usual in conspirators: Kappa message, April 26, 1944.

of the Weimar Republic: The largest league for the defense of republican institutions was the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, established in 1924, which had three million members in the late 1920s.

this small underground army: There are several sources on the “militia” of Fritz Kolbe, notably a document of April 25, 1944 (Germany in April 1944) based on a conversation with Fritz Kolbe (OSS Bern, National Archives), as well as the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

Alfred Graf Waldersee: This list was transmitted to Washington in April 1944. Kappa message, April 26, 1944.

most useful for us: “It was not easy to persuade George, and we argued it back and forth for many hours. Finally, he agreed to stay on the job, and I breathed a sigh of relief.” Allen Dulles commenting on Edward P. Morgan’s article in the anthology Dulles edited, Great True Spy Stories(New York: Harper & Row, 1968), p. 29.

authorized to travel abroad: Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe in Berlin in January 1947.

at Pentecost in 1944: “Sauerbruch was going to Switzerland, to Zurich, to operate on a diplomat from South America who was staying there for a while. He got permission from the government to travel there by car and also received enough fuel for a round trip to the Swiss border.” (Adolphe Jung, unpublished notebooks, private archive, Strasbourg.) “Sauerbruch went to Switzerland three or four times, each time taking with him material for Bern on my behalf,” Fritz wrote in the autobiographical document of January 1947.

to leave the ministry: Wilhelm Mackeben (b. 1892) had joined the Foreign Ministry in 1919. He had had trouble with the Nazis as early as 1933. At the time, he was representing Germany in Guatemala as chargé d’affaires. His work consisted of negotiating commercial contracts. He could not stand being challenged and even violently criticized by the parallel diplomacy of the Nazi Party, and he was forced to return to Germany. Foreign Ministry, Wilhelm Mackeben file. Fritz Kolbe considered Mackeben an “eccentric.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

a former Norwegian consul: Boston document no. 332.

Eberswalde (northeast of Berlin): See Boston document no. 296. Eberswalde, near Berlin, harbored an important communications center for the Navy. In particular, it provided guidance for the operations of German submarines.

‘are you still asleep?’”: Kappa message, May 4, 1944.

“yet I love her!”: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to his “friends in Bern,” May 10, 1944, National Archives.

“no cigarettes,” signed “Georg”: This telegram, received by Ernst Kocherthaler on May 20, 1944, is in the National Archives.

philosopher Eduard Spranger: Klaus Scholder, Die Mittwochsgesellschaft (Berlin, 1982).

Army Supply Services: Colonel Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg was chief of staff of the Army Supply Services (the Allgemeines Heeresamt, in charge of supervising the arming and equipment of the Wehrmacht) and was soon to be appointed Chief of Staff of the Home Army. The unit to which he belonged was the 17th Cavalry Regiment of Bamberg, in which Peter Sauerbruch, the surgeon’s son, also served; he was supposed to participate in plans for the assassination attempt but was sent to the Russian front in February 1944. Thanks to August von Kageneck.

decline; quite the contrary: Once again, the documents were sent on paper. Apparently, Fritz had not yet mastered the operation of the camera.

vicinity of St. Valentin: “Lower Danube”: perhaps the Zipf camp, an annex of Mauthausen.

days at the outside: Boston documents nos. 339 and 360. These documents were transmitted to President Roosevelt and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Memorandum for the President, July 10, 1944, microfilm (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 18). In The Secret Surrender (p. 29), Dulles writes: “He turned in to us some of the best technical and tactical information on the V-weapons.”

enter the production phase: Boston documents nos. 341 and 607. These details were also transmitted to President Roosevelt and to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The site in Kahla where the Me-262 plane was to be built, was an old mine (See Chapter 9, note 29).

to have been untouched: Boston document no. 380.

were to be executed: Several documents mention this story—for example, “The Story of George”; also “The Spy the Nazis Missed”; and the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. According to Edward P. Morgan, Maria Fritsch intentionally failed to inform Fritz of the meeting out of fear of the danger.

Chapter 11

world and of history: Henning von Tresckow, speaking shortly before the assassination attempt, quoted in Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000), p. 716.

silence scorn its leaders: Albert Camus, editorial of August 24, 1944, in Camus à Combat. Éditoriaux et articles d’Albert Camus, 1944–1947 (Paris, Gallimard, 2002).

decision had been ratified: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file, official document sent by the ministry to the NSDAP on March 30, 1944.

his messages to Bern: Quibble, “Alias George Wood.”

Max de Crinis: Max de Crinis (1889–1945): a neurologist and head of the department of psychiatry in the Charité hospital, he also held a high rank in the SS. He was one of the figures behind the euthanasia program implemented by the Nazi regime against the physically and mentally handicapped (70,000 victims between 1939 and the summer of 1941). He committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule at the end of the war.

and with Professor Gebhardt: Karl Gebhardt (1897–1948) was one of the most honored doctors in the Nazi regime and held a high position in the SS. He was head of a hospital in Hohenlychen, about one hundred kilometers north of Berlin, where he carried out sinister experiments, such as tests with sulfonamides, on inmates of the nearby camp of Ravensbrück. Sentenced to death by an American military tribunal after the war, he was executed on June 2, 1948. He was a former student of Professor Sauerbruch, with whom he was in regular contact.

that followed the attempt: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung. Frank and Marie-Christine Jung collection, Strasbourg.

events of July 20: Wilhelm Hoegner had been the prosecutor in Hitler’s trial after the failed Munich putsch of 1923. He had been living in exile in Switzerland since the early years of Nazism.

dated August 8, 1944: R. Harris Smith, OSS, The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), p. 221.

finish off the job: From Hitler’s Doorstep, p. 358.

now the Communist group: Ibid., p. 360.

to work with Volksmiliz: Kappa message, August 18, 1944.

in on the secret: Letter of August 14, 1944 to Ernst Kocherthaler, National Archives.

join in X/2 hours: Undated manuscript note of Ernst Kocherthaler (Key for Wood), National Archives.

legality on their side: See Boston document no. 358. The Germans intended to revive politically Édouard Herriot and a few other politicians of the Third Republic.

First Regiment of France: In November 1942, with the end of the unoccupied zone, the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon, and the dissolution of the Armistice Army, the French Army had only one remaining regiment, christened the First Regiment of France.

his plan had failed: Memorandum of August 22, 1944 sent to the British secret services by Allen Dulles, National Archives.

had the changes been: Bern, National Archives.

spies had become professionals: The OSS hired the best experts from the major universities and law firms of the East Coast. It employed experts from many fields, including psychoanalysts asked to analyze the depths of the German soul, chemists working on sometimes lunatic plans (for example, adding various drugs to Hitler’s food), and even writers, particularly Germans (including Carl Zuckmayer, Franz Neumann, Herbert Marcuse, and Erich Maria Remarque).

and their new hideouts: Letter from Allen Dulles to William Donovan, September 23, 1944, microfilm (MF1642, roll 81), National Archives.

lack of fuel coupons: Letter from Allen Dulles to his wife Clover, December 9, 1942, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

the envoy, Leland Harrison: “This situation did not fail to provoke the diplomats’ jealousy,” according to Cordelia Dodson-Hood, a colleague of Dulles in Bern in 1944 and 1945 (interview in Washington, March 21, 2002).

of the Weimar Republic: Miscellaneous Activities OSS Bern, undated internal document of OSS Bern, National Archives.

the July 20 plot: Hans-Bernd Gisevius, who had returned to Berlin to participate in preparations for the plot, lived underground for six months before returning to Bern with forged Gestapo papers fabricated by the OSS. Bern, National Archives.

“Dulles’s prestige,” Sichel recalls: Interview with Peter Sichel, December 1, 2001, Bordeaux. After the war, Peter Sichel headed the Berlin branch of the CIA (1949–52), later directed CIA operations in Eastern Europe, and then took over the Hong Kong office in 1956.

of narrow self-interest: Joseph Persico, Piercing the Reich (New York: Viking, 1979).

headquarters in East Prussia: This episode has been reconstructed in part on the basis of a letter of October 4 from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, National Archives, and the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

“like Wilhelm Furtwängler’s”: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Allen Dulles, June 28, 1962, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

to prescribe fictitious treatments: Fritz Kolbe relied more than once on the complicity of his medical friends. On one occasion, he had Adolphe Jung give him an injection causing a fever so that he could take a few days off to work on the files that he wanted to transmit to the Americans. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed,” and biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

of the Ost Ministerium: In the fall of 1944, the Ministry of the Occupied Territories in the East (Reichsministerium für die Besetzten Ostgebiete or Ostministerium, headed by Alfred Rosenberg), was nothing but an empty shell, as most of the territory in question had been retaken by the Red Army.

agreement with the Soviets: Kappa message, October 7, 1944 and Boston document no. 426. The attempts at an approach to the Soviet Union by Peter Kleist had been mentioned in the American press in July 1944, but had been the subject of an official denial by the authorities of the Reich. Boston document no. 411.

a vast agricultural zone: Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau’s plan, revealed in September 1944, was widely used by Nazi propaganda to denounce America’s “criminal” intentions toward Germany.

prepared by Allen Dulles: Kappa message, October 7, 1944.

I should join you: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, November 14, 1944, National Archives.

supplied by the Americans: “With the camera, the volume of documents processed increased enormously.” Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

while I was working?: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung.

confessed many years later: This episode is recounted in detail in “The Story of George” and in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. Fritz Kolbe had the habit of drinking a cognac after moments of great anxiety. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

population in the neighborhood: Episode recounted in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe and in “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” The Blockwart’s function was to be a liaison between the NSDAP and society. There were two million of these “little führers” in wartime. They observed the neighborhood, organized informing on deviant behavior, and the like.

caught him crossing Alexanderplatz: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

in the Dufourstrasse buildings: Complete Diary of Clandestine Radio Communications in Bern, Switzerland from November 24, 1944 through the Month of June 1945, National Archives.

carry out a search: Bern, National Archives.

a watch to be repaired: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

region for the present: Boston documents nos. 415 and 470. This information was transmitted by the OSS to President Roosevelt. Memorandum for the President, October 11, 1944, microfilm (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 18).

for a German defeat: Boston documents nos. 475, 478, and 479.

SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann: Boston document no. 471.

forced labor and “conscription”: Boston document no. 534.

of the Boston series: Boston document no. 542.

amounted to 440,000 people: Boston document no. 733.

the Jews of Budapest: In late December 1944, Fritz Kolbe informed the Americans that “Obersturmbannführer Eichmann has been ordered back to Berlin,” his mission accomplished. See Boston document no. 733.

dated December 1, 1944: Microfilm document (MF1642, roll 18).

the giving of guarantees: Ibid.

best deliveries of “Wood”: Evaluation of Boston Series, December 28, 1944, National Archives.

to his Washington colleagues: Hansjakob Stehle, “Der Mann, der den Krieg verkürzen wollte,” Die Zeit, May 2, 1986.

courier never traveled alone: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

legation in Bern, noted: Boston document no. 802.

“personal friend” of Emil Puhl: Boston document no. 355.

the IG Farben conglomerate: Boston document no. 804.

political asylum in Switzerland: In April 1945, several German diplomats left the legation in Bern and took refuge with Swiss friends. They returned to Germany after the fall of the Nazi regime. Handwritten notes of Ernst Kocherthaler, April 10, 1945, National Archives.

most of the trip: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

and the People’s Court: The ignoble chief prosecutor of the Nazi regime, Roland Freisler, died that day after being hit by a projectile while crossing the building’s courtyard.

close off the street: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung.

of the Foreign Ministry: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe. A large scale destruction of archives was to take place during the final weeks of the Nazi regime. Kappa message, April 5, 1945.

had not been obtained: Kappa message, February 5, 1945, in From Hitler’s Doorstep, p. 444. The question does indeed arise as to why the Americans never bombed Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, when Kolbe had indicated its precise location during his first visit in August 1943. According to the historian Klemens von Klemperer, the reason was the limited range of Allied aircraft, given the fact that the Soviets would not permit them to be refueled in the USSR.

decipher crossword puzzles: Kappa message, February 5, 1945.

Undersecretary, and President: Letter from Ferdinand L. Mayer to Whitney H. Shepardson, December 28, 1944, National Archives.

analyze the Kappa messages: OSS document dated February 20, 1945, entitled Special Unit, Kappa Material Organization and Handling, National Archives.

former right-hand man: Karl Wolff (1900–84) had been Heinrich Himmler’s right-hand man beginning in the mid-1930s. He was sent to Italy in 1943 to take charge of SS troops and protect what remained of Mussolini’s fascist regime. His role in the peaceful surrender of German troops in Italy in the spring of 1945 led to his being spared at the Nuremberg trials (at the time he benefited from the effective protection of Allen Dulles). He was again arrested in the early 1960s and sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his role in the deportation of hundreds of thousands of Jews to Treblinka. But he was released in 1970 for good behavior.

armed with improvised weapons: Fritz was enrolled for a few days in the Foreign Ministry brigade of the Volkssturm. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

singer of light music: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

our friend D. [Dulles]: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung.

the password ‘George 25900’: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

people in the car: The presence of Margot Sauerbruch on this journey is reported by Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” Morgan also indicates that Fritz Kolbe had proposed that Maria Fritsch come with him, but that she had refused, saying that her duty was to stay in the hospital. Margot Sauerbruch, the surgeon’s second wife (thirty years younger than he, thus born around 1905) was among Fritz Kolbe’s closest friends. Although she had been married to a close associate of Hitler in the Reich Chancellery, she was an anti-Nazi. She knew very precisely the nature of Fritz’s activities, unlike the surgeon, who was never told of the details. Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe in January 1947.

or by SS units: This traversal of Germany is reported in a document that is probably a debriefing of Kolbe by Ernst Kocherthaler in early April 1945, a ten-page document whose first page is missing, National Archives. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

who was passing through: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

leave without further trouble: This episode appears in several documents, notably “The Story of George.” According to this document, the arrest by the Gestapo was provoked by Fritz’s visit to the Ottobeuren monastery, which was under surveillance. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

long nighttime conversation: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

the war was over: These men were in the espionage department of the Wehrmacht that specialized in Russia (Fremde Heere Ost), headed by Reinhard Gehlen. He managed to sell his knowledge to the Americans, who seem to have heard of him for the first time from Fritz Kolbe. Gehlen became one of the most important figures in the cold war. He created the foreign intelligence services of the new German Federal Republic and became the first head of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND). Debriefing of Fritz Kolbe by Ernst Kocherthaler, April 1945.

nor smallpox, nor scabies: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

on April 4, 1945: Kappa message, April 4, 1945.

his conversations with Fritz: Message from Allen Dulles to Whitney H. Shepardson, April 5, 1945, National Archives.

developments in Japanese aviation: This information on Japan was the subject of two Kappa messages on April 6, 1945. See also Boston document no. 609.

believed in this scenario: The Germans knew that the Americans were very interested in the possibility of the “Alpine Redoubt” and succeeded in fostering their illusion for many long weeks. This maneuver had a decisive effect on the course of military operations. On April 14, 1945 (two days before Roosevelt’s death), American troops halted on the Elbe and stopped advancing toward Berlin in order to secure southern Germany. At the same time, on the night of April 15, the Russians launched their final great offensive against Berlin. See Antony Beevor, The Fall of Berlin, 1945(New York: Viking, 2002) and Persico, Piercing the Reich.

protection of Allen Dulles: Fritz Kolbe had had the good fortune never to be suspected by the Gestapo. He was very grateful to the Americans for having done everything to protect him during the war. “I had the privilege to collaborate now during years with two of your most distinguished diplomates [sic]. I have found them so cautious and discreet that none of the secrets my life depended on has been divulged.” “The Story of George.” “I am very grateful to my ‘partners’ in Bern for having done everything to prevent my being discovered. It must not always have been easy.” Autobiographical document written by Fritz Kolbe on May 15, 1945.

Fritz—came out of prison: Walter Bauer’s name had been found in the private diaries of some of the July 20 conspirators, such as Carl Goerdeler. He was jailed in the prison on Lehrterstrasse (Berlin-Moabit) and tortured. “Will he talk?” Fritz wondered anxiously. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

he could go home: Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin. Walter Bauer Archives.

“emptied like toothpaste tubes”: Report by Vassili Grossman, quoted by Antony Beevor in The Fall of Berlin, 1945.

“be hit?” (April 24): Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung.

Chapter 12

the destruction of documents: Episode reported in various documents, notably a memorandum written by Fritz Kolbe for the Swiss police, July 12, 1945 (personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney) and the record of the hearing of Fritz Kolbe by the Swiss authorities, April 26, 1948 (Swiss Federal Archives, document kindly supplied by Peter Kamber). See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

secretly shipped to Bern: These secret shipments of gold to Bern are mentioned by Robert Kempner, American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, in Das III. Reich im Kreuzverhör (p. 282): “700 kilos of gold were transferred to the German legation in Bern, with Ribbentrop’s approval, in the form of coins, in March 1945.” The building housing the German legation in Bern was placed under seal in May 1945. Swiss Federal Archives.

door in Fritz’s face: This series of visits to Otto Köcher is set out in detail in several documents from the personal archives of Fritz Kolbe: “The Background of the George Story”; letter from Fritz Kolbe to Walter Bauer, May 9, 1948; memorandum from Fritz Kolbe to Walter Bauer, August 4, 1950. Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

Ludwigsburg, north of Stuttgart: Ludwigsburg had been liberated by the French in April 1945, but had soon come into the American occupation zone, like the entire northern part of Würtemberg.

“His name: Fritz Kolbe”: “Köcher supposed that [the withdrawal of Swiss protection] was due to American influence provoked by George. This suspicion was told by him as a fact to the many German diplomats concentrated with him in the camp, and this was the reason for considering George responsible for the death of Köcher in the eyes of many of his colleagues.” “The Background of the George Story.”

confident about his future: “How full of confidence he was about the future after the war!” wrote Maria Fritsch many years later. Letter from Maria Fritsch to Peter Kolbe, May 31, 1978. Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

again at the ministry: Memorandum from “George Wood,” April 17, 1945, National Archives. Opinion of Fritz Kolbe on the members of the Foreign Ministry in late March 1945. Kolbe had filled several sheets of paper with the names of the principal diplomats in the ministry. A red star in front of a name meant “particularly dangerous” (besonders gefährlich). A blue star meant “not a member of the Nazi Party” (nicht Pg). A classification into four categories specified matters. The figure 1 meant “immediate expulsion desirable (sofortige Entfernung erwünscht), affecting 79 people. The figure 2 meant “expulsion in the near future desirable” (54 people). 3: “can be employed again on a trial basis after a warning” (84 people). 4: anti-Nazi (24 people mentioned, including Willy Pohle, Karl Dumont, Gertrud von Heimerdinger, and a few people in the ciphering office and the diplomatic courier service). Karl Ritter was in category 1 with a red star.

“The Story of George”: This undated document is sometimes in the first person, sometimes in the third. It recounts the principal events in Fritz Kolbe’s life as a spy. It contains the following noteworthy passage: “All these details of his adventures in fighting the Nazis we had to extract from his friends, because George himself dislikes publicity and surrounds himself by a wall of modesty.” The document is in Fritz Kolbe’s personal archives as well as in the National Archives.

banks of the Tegernsee: Eva Braun committed suicide on April 30, 1945 with Adolf Hitler, whom she had married the day before, in the underground bunker of the Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

headed toward Kreuth: Memorandum of prelate Schreiber about a trip to Bavaria from June 2 to 6 with Fritz Kolbe and an American officer. See also memorandum from Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, June 8, 1945, National Archives. The Gauleiter of Munich was Paul Giesler, designated by Hitler as the successor to Heinrich Himmler in the final hours of the war.

June 14, 1945: The circumstances of Ribbentrop’s arrest were bizarre. In Hamburg, the British had arrested someone who they were not sure was the former foreign minister. They confronted him with his sister, Ingeborg Ribbentrop, who immediately recognized him and could not help crying out “Joachim!” Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Verschworene Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1995).

the OSS in Germany: Peter Sichel, interview in New York, May 25, 2002.

time to General Donovan: General Donovan met “George Wood” several times thereafter and seemed to appreciate him. In a letter of March 16, 1949 to Allen Dulles, he wrote: “I am returning your letter from ‘George.’ I would like to see him again when he gets there.” Allen W. Dulles Papers.

the British secret services: “Usually skeptical and conservative British officials rated this contact as the prize intelligence source of the war.” Memorandum for the President, June 22, 1945, sent to President Truman by General Donovan, National Archives (entry 190c, MF1642, roll 83).

the plot against Hitler: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, July 2, 1945, Wiesbaden. Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe. Gerstenmaier was the representative of the Protestant bishop of Würtemberg in Berlin. He frequented the Kreisau Circle, one of the centers of opposition to the Nazi regime implicated in the July 20 plot. “Gerstenmaier was the kind of man who would have a Bible in one hand and a revolver in the other.” Peter Sichel, interview in Bordeaux, December 1, 2001.

hesitation in saying so: “The role played by the Protestant and Catholic Churches in the fight against Hitler was large but should not be overestimated. In no sense did the Churches have a monopoly in the combat against fascism. To grant them that role today would amount to favoring the creation of a clerical government in Germany,” Fritz Kolbe wrote in a document on the “question of the Churches” (zur Kirchenfrage) written in Wiesbaden, July 9, 1945. Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

of the Nazi regime: Hans-Bernd Gisevius went to live in the United States after the war. He worked for a think tank in Dallas, the Dallas Council on World Affairs. Presented as a great German resistance figure in the American press, he was considered an inveterate liar by the German press. Der Spiegel no. 18 (1960); Allen W. Dulles Papers.

US Army C-47: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, Wiesbaden, July 2, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

at the Charité hospital: In March and April 1945, “we lived on Scotch whiskey and Swedish crackers in the Charité shelter,” according to the memoirs of Ferdinand Sauerbruch.

in the Soviet zone: In May 1945, Professor Sauerbruch was named by the Soviets as director of health in the city administration. But in October of the same year, he was dismissed from all his political offices. In December 1949, he was removed from his medical and teaching posts in the Charité and in Humboldt University. Afflicted with a cerebral ailment, he nevertheless continued to operate almost until the end of his life. Several patients did not survive in the operating room. He died on July 2, 1951 at the age of seventy-six after publishing a book of memoirs that was a best-seller in Germany.

had returned to France: Adolphe Jung returned to Strasbourg, where he had a great deal of difficulty in reestablishing himself, because he was suspected of collaboration with the Germans. He asked for help from the Americans, but they could not do much to help the surgeon save his reputation. The wounds of the past are still very much alive in Strasbourg. Postwar correspondence between Adolphe Jung and Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles Papers; interview with Frank and Marie-Christine Jung and Pierre Kehr, Strasbourg, January 2003.

had not completely disappeared: Throughout 1945, Nazi commandos continued to create anxiety and insecurity in Germany. The terrorist groups were known as Werewolves. See handwritten notes of Ernst Kocherthaler, April 10, 1945, National Archives.

recalling the year 1945: Document written by Maria Fritsch in October 1972, private archives of Martin and Gudrun Fritsch, Berlin.

CARE packages containing food: CARE (Cooperative American Remittance for Europe) packages made it possible to avoid the rationing in force in Germany. They were distributed in Europe beginning in the spring of 1946.

medicine, or a job: Getting a pass required going through an obstacle course for everyone who did not have connections with the occupation authorities. To go from Berlin to Hamburg, for example, one needed an “interzone” pass, which was good for only one round trip and could not be obtained without a “favorable opinion” from the military authorities.

working for the conquerors: The details of Fritz’s work for the OMGUS are found in a letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, December 29, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

become common insults: In German, Aliiertenknecht and Vaterlandsverräter.

she was deeply hurt: The family of Maria Fritsch (from the petite bourgeoisie; one of her brothers owned a grocery store in Berlin) were hugely suspicious of Fritz but nonetheless came to see him for provisions supplied by the Americans, which they sold on the black market. Interview with Maria’s nephew Martin Fritsch, Berlin, January 5, 2002.

“transportation firms,” he said: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Allen Dulles, National Archives.

major German political figures: For example, Fritz Kolbe interviewed Kurt Schumacher for Tagesspiegel in the spring of 1946. Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, April 1, 1946, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

von Hornstein, a painter: “Fritz Kolbe was a mysterious person but he was full of life and spirit. There was incredible energy in his face. We knew that he was working for the CIA. He helped me get a pass so I could go to Bavaria with my two year old baby, who was ill with tuberculosis.” Interview with Erika von Hornstein, October 27, 2001, Berlin.

Felicitas von Reznicek: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Allen Dulles, July 28, 1945, National Archives. Felicitas von Reznicek, a friend of Gertrud von Heimerdinger, was a journalist and the author of successful novels and screenplays for crime films.

him with electric trains: Letter from Tom Polgar, May 13, 2002. Tom Polgar was to spend the rest of his career in the CIA, notably directing the Vietnamese branch during the war years. He was one of the last American citizens to leave Saigon in April 1975.

Party in the East: The forced merger of the SPD and the SED took place on April 21 and 22, 1946.

war against the USSR: Erika von Hornstein, interview, October 27, 2001, Berlin.

and several broken ribs: Letter from Maria Fritsch to Ernst Kocherthaler, August 23, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe; Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

by DeWitt C. Poole: Like Dulles, DeWitt C. Poole was a Princeton graduate. Posted as a diplomat to Moscow during the Russian Revolution, he had been involved in a planned assassination attempt against Lenin. He was violently anticommunist and also adopted a hard line against Germany.

to begin in Nuremberg: The trial of the Nazi leaders had been in preparation since late 1942. The establishment of a commission called on to judge the German leaders was announced in November 1943. In August 1945, the statute for the tribunal was adopted in London by the three principal Allies: the United States, England, and the USSR. The Nuremberg tribunal opened its doors in November 1945 and sentences were pronounced on October 1, 1946. Among other Nazi leaders, Joachim von Ribbentrop was executed by hanging on October 16, 1946 in a Nuremberg gymnasium.

“pride,” Peter Sichel recalled: This testimony mildly contradicts Edward P. Morgan, who quotes the following statement by Fritz Kolbe: “I won a lot of trophies, but I never took one of them. I do things for the sake of doing them. That is enough. I don’t like trophies or medals or uniforms.” “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

of the Poole commission: Fritz Kolbe was questioned by Harold C. Vedeler. The transcripts of the conversations, declassified since 1963, are on microfilm in the National Archives (M679, roll 2).

had to remain secret: An official document of the Nuremberg tribunal attests that Fritz Kolbe “has worked as an investigator for the War Crimes Commission from July 23, 1945 until this date. Subject has given outstanding service and is to be highly commended for the efficient and tactful manner in which he handled his assignments.” War Crimes Commission, document dated December 15, 1945, Peter Kolbe collection, Sydney.

Allies during the war: Letter of William Donovan to Allen Dulles, June 29, 1946, Allen W. Dulles Papers. At the time, Allen Dulles had left the OSS to return to the practice of law in New York. The OSS itself no longer existed. The office had been renamed SSU (for Strategic Services Unit) before becoming the CIA in September 1947. The OSS had been dismantled in October 1945 by President Truman, who feared the rise to power of an American-style “secret police.”

is no longer safe: Letter from Allen Dulles to William Donovan, July 8, 1946, Allen W. Dulles Papers. The possibility of a kidnapping of Fritz Kolbe can be understood in the context of the time. It was not infrequent in postwar Berlin for people to “disappear” mysteriously. The journalist Dieter Friede was kidnapped in the fall of 1947. Walter Linse, a jurist and defender of human rights, was kidnapped in July 1952 and executed by the Soviets a few months later

the Americans in Berlin?: Peter Sichel believes that this evaluation by Dulles “was probably a little exaggerated.” Interview with Peter Sichel, May 25, 2002, New York.

in the State Department: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, June 1947, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

from the United States: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Allen Dulles, March 1, 1948, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

the American immigration authorities: After the German surrender, Allied soldiers did not have the right to communicate with German civilians. This policy of “non-fraternization” was not rescinded until mid-July 1945.

the course of 1947: Allen Dulles wondered what “George” could possibly be able to do in the United States, but he was prepared to help him in his plans. Correspondence between Fred Stalder and Allen Dulles, Allen W. Dulles Papers. The questions about Fritz were sent to Dulles by his Washington colleagues on November 21, 1947. National Archives.

submitted in New York: Affidavit notarized on January 15, 1948 by John. W. P. Slobadin, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

event of any difficulties: Affidavit notarized on April 26, 1948, same notary, Allen W. Dulles Papers. See also a letter from Richard Helms to Allen Dulles, April 21, 1948: “For your information, George has earned from us since 1945 the sum of $6,199.25. This is in addition to the 20,000 Swiss Francs which you left for him in Switzerland.” Allen W. Dulles Papers.

days of the war: Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, October 8, 1945, National Archives.

just established in Zurich: Curriculum vitae prepared by Fritz Kolbe after the war, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

was in full swing: The Berlin blockade lasted from June 1948 to May 1949.

or a research assistant: Letter from Allen Dulles to Fritz Kolbe, April 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

“difficulties,” he told him: Letter from Walter Bauer to Fritz Kolbe, May 21, 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

Standard Oil or Texaco: Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Fritz Kolbe, June 7, 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

Fritz’s capital of $25,000: Correspondence between Fritz Kolbe and Allen Dulles, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe; correspondence between Allen Dulles and Ernst Kocherthaler, Allen W. Dulles Papers. The CIA had offered Fritz the sum of $25,000 on his arrival on American soil (in addition to the 20,000 Swiss francs deposited by Allen Dulles in a trust account in Switzerland). Hansjakob Stehle, “Der Mann, der den Krieg verkürzen wollte,” Die Zeit, May 2, 1986.

a few months later: Letter from Allen Dulles to Ernst Kocherthaler, November 28, 1949, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

not a businessman type: Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, January 27, 1953, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

on May 9, 1949: Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

based in Frankfurt: Walter Bauer had a leading position in the embryonic economic administration in the land of Hesse, and he participated in the European negotiations on coal and steel. He was an insider who knew everyone. On several occasions, Chancellor Adenauer offered him a ministerial position, which he refused. He was one of the important figures in the employers’ organizations (the BDI), where he represented the interests of the textile industry. Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin, Walter Bauer file.

the Social Democratic Party: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Carlo Schmid, June 13, 1949 (and answer from Schmid’s office, August 17, 1949); letter of application to the Marshall Plan administration, July 11, 1949; letter from the head office of the SPD to Fritz Kolbe, October 18, 1949. Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

be “absolutely politically clean”: Newspaper article of July 1949. The quotation from Governor Robertson was underlined by Fritz Kolbe; personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

a member of the party: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Rudolf Pechel, August 11, 1949. German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file.

But me he kept: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Walter Bauer, November 15, 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

his house in Bavaria: In January 1948, the “Wilhelmstrasse” trial began against twenty-one former high-ranking diplomats, including Karl Ritter. He was sentenced in April 1949 to four years in prison for “war crimes” because of his decision-making responsibilities in the treatment of Allied prisoners of war. He was acquitted on other charges (notably of “crimes against humanity” in connection with the occupation of Hungary after March 1944). Karl Ritter had already served his sentence. He returned to his chalet in Bavaria and lived away from public life. (Fritz heard that Ritter was going back to Brazil in 1950 to marry a rich heiress. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed”).

the new Germany: Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

Federal Chancellery in Bonn: Fritz Kolbe had never officially left the ministry, as he had a life appointment; he was simply “on a leave of absence.” He was waiting for a new administration to be put in place. In 1950, the Foreign Ministry had still not been authorized by the occupying authorities to rise from its ashes. In September 1945, the Allies had officially put an end to the existence of the ministry, the embassies, and the consulates and other German representatives abroad. However, at the Chancellery in Bonn, a new diplomatic apparatus was being set up. “In late 1949 and early 1950, three months after the establishment of the federal government, the organization of the ministry and above all the attribution of positions was essentially settled…. The former Wilhelmstrasse diplomats occupied all the key positions in the ministry. Döscher, Verschworene Gesellschaft. The Allies did not try to influence appointments, except for the German embassies in Washington, London, and Paris. The Foreign Ministry of the new German Federal Republic was established in March 1951, and Chancellor Adenauer appointed himself head of the German diplomatic service.

the chancellery in Bonn: Letter of application from Fritz Kolbe to Hans-Heinrich Herwarth von Bittenfeld, October 15, 1949, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe. Herwarth was chief of protocol at the Chancellery in Bonn. His past was spotless: because he was one-fourth Jewish, he had had to leave the Foreign Ministry in 1939. He was not a member of the Nazi Party and he owed his life to the protection he enjoyed in high places. To thank all those who had helped him during the war, he used his position of power after 1945 to distribute certificates of good conduct to his friends, most of whom were former Nazis. Döscher, Verschworene Gesellschaft.

Chancellor Adenauer, Herbert Blankenhorn: Herbert Blankenhorn (1904–91) probably played a major role in blocking Fritz Kolbe’s career after the war. In March 1950, when Fritz was trying to get hired by the new German consul general in Washington, Ernst Kocherthaler wrote to Allen Dulles: “George is trying to get included into the staff of the new Consul General to Washington, Herr von Schlange-Schöningen, but I doubt that Herr Blankenhorn, who is Adenauer’s actual manager for foreign affairs, might tolerate him. Blankenhorn was one of Köcher’s assistants and Köcher attributed his personal catastrophe to George, who therefore is considered something like a traitor by this special group.” Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, March 28, 1950, Allen W. Dulles Papers. Herbert Blankenhorn was the “strong man” of the new Foreign Ministry (director of political affairs from 1951, he was subsequently ambassador to NATO, Paris, Rome, and London). But he was not a man without a past: he had been in charge of culture and propaganda at the German legation in Bern between 1940 and July 1943. He had of course been a member of the Nazi Party. But above all he had worked every day with Otto Köcher, whose hatred for Fritz Kolbe dated at least from the early days of May 1945.

this interview in Bonn: Letter to Fritz, May 20, 1950, Peter Kolbe collection. Ludwig Erhard (CDU) was Adenauer’s economics minister from September 1949 to October 1963.

activity during the war: Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

“my favor,” he explained: Ibid.

“me more about this?”: Letter from Walter Bauer to Fritz Kolbe, Fulda, July 30, 1950, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

out of the conversation: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Walter Bauer, August 4, 1950, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

position in the ministry: “Perhaps it’s just as well that I was not rehired by the ministry, because I might have greeted people in the corridors by saying ‘Heil Hitler!’ to them,” Fritz is supposed to have said. “Der Mann, der den Krieg verkürzen wollte.” There is no document in the archives in which Fritz was told that he would not be rehired by the ministry.

plans to publish them: “It seems that great things are afoot. Allen has asked me to speak at a little greater length about my motives…. You can imagine how little pleasure I take in continuing this exercise, which consists of talking about myself.” Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, May 29, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe. In the books that he published after the war, Allen Dulles mentioned “George Wood” several times.

(“The Story of George”): “Allen Dulles asked me for a ‘story’ about George. He says that you are too modest to write it yourself.” Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Fritz Kolbe, July 4, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

in the German resistance: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Toni Singer, September 30, 1946, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

Ernst Kocherthaler in July: Letter to Ernst Kocherthaler, written in Wiesbaden, July 2, 1945, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

enterprise of collective mystification: “Everybody and his brother, it seems, are writing their memoirs of the Hitler era.” Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

film or a book: In the late 1960s, Gerald Mayer began working seriously with Fritz Kolbe on a proposed book. He had the CIA in Washington send him a complete file on the activities of “Wood” during the war. Fritz’s death in 1971 put an end to the work. “I have seen George Wood in Bern on several occasions. He looks very fit and I hope to be of help to him in the writing of his memoirs,” Mayer wrote to Allen Dulles on July 14, 1968. Allen W. Dulles Papers. In October 1972, Maria Fritsch wrote a memo in which she said that “death struck Fritz down at a time when he was ready to write his memoirs as he had hoped to do for a long time.” Private archives of Martin and Gudrun Fritsch, Berlin.

for the magazine True: Correspondence between Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe, September 1949 to January 1950, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe. True was an abundantly illustrated mass market men’s magazine owned by the Fawcett group. Edward P. Morgan later had a career as a political journalist and television commentator.

Game of a Diplomat: Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe; Allen W. Dulles Papers.

unsuccessfully attempted to prevent: “I am sorry about George’s article as I fear the publication in Switzerland at this time will do him a good bit of harm and this is really very tragic.” Letter from Allen Dulles to Ernst Kocherthaler, April 20, 1951, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

major intellectual, Rudolf Pechel: Rudolf Pechel had been arrested in 1942 because of an article that had displeased Goebbels. He was born in Güstrow in 1888. He had been a naval officer before the First World War. Close to Moeller van den Bruck in the 1920s, he had later moved away from nationalism. During the war, he frequented the most active members of the German opposition (Carl Goerdeler, Wilhelm Leuschner). In 1947, Pechel wrote a book titled German Resistance (Deutscher Widerstand) in order to prove that there had been forms of rebellion in his country. He spent the end of his life in Switzerland, where he died in 1961.

journal circulated in secret: German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file.

Golo Mann, Wilhelm Röpke: Carlo Schmid (1896–1979): major postwar Social Democratic leader, he was also an activist for Franco-German reconciliation and the construction of Europe. Golo Mann (1909–94): historian, son of Thomas Mann. Wilhelm Röpke (1899–1966): economist, one of the spiritual fathers of the “social market economy.”

been a patriotic gesture: In their democratic and pro-Western declarations of faith, Rudolf Pechel, and Ernst Kocherthaler as well, were in sympathy with the Moral Rearmament movement founded by the American minister Frank Buchman, who promoted a “world without hatred, without fear, without egotism,” and who had committed himself to a “moral and spiritual reconstruction” of Europe, with the reconciliation of old enemies, particularly France and Germany, as a priority.

acted as a patriot: “I am convinced to have acted as a German patriot in having proved to some Allied personalities I got acquainted with that even in Germany the front of goodwill has existed and still exists.” “The Story of George.”

Republic only in 1968: Article 20, paragraph 4 of the Fundamental Law of the FRG, added to the 1948 Constitution in 1968, stipulated that “all Germans have the right to resist against anyone who undertakes to remove the democratic order, if no other means is possible.”

Lisbon, Stockholm, or Madrid: Mary Alice Gallin, German Resistance to Hitler: Ethical and Religious Factors (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1962). Hasso von Etzdorf was a conservative diplomat opposed to the Nazis during the Second World War.

aim of saving lives: Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy, p. 195.

soldier would have done: In a speech delivered on July 20, 1964 for the twentieth anniversary of the plot against Hitler, Eugen Gerstenmaier pointed out that the Germans who resisted Nazism had had “constantly to weigh the balance between rebellion against the government and loyalty to the people and the army.” Hans-Jakob Stehle, “Der Mann, der den Krieg verkürzen wollte.” “They’ll die, that’s what they deserve,” Fritz had said to Adolphe Jung about the Germans. See Chapter 5.

were particularly compromised: Among them was Werner von Bargen, former envoy of the Reich to Belgium, who shared responsibility for the deportation of Jews from Belgium during the war. Döscher, Verschworene Gesellschaft.

was already too late: Ibid.

Berlin in April 1948: According to Richard Helms and William Hood, Fritz Kolbe received a monthly pension from the CIA starting a few years later when he settled in Switzerland in the mid-1950s. A Look Over My Shoulder. According to Peter Kolbe, Fritz also received a pension from the Foreign Ministry in the last years of his life.

employer terminated discussions: Letter from Ernst Kocherthaler to Allen Dulles, February 20, 1953, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

life and never complained: “He was not plaintive in any sense. It was just those little things that an individual lets out, that shows that you were hurt by the fact that you have been thrown aside.” Richard Helms, interview with Linda Martin for The History Channel, September 2003. “Kolbe never expressed any feelings of bitterness or regret about his post-war fate.” Tom Polgar, letter to the author, May 13, 2002.

see his son again: Handwritten document written by Maria Fritsch in October 1972. Collection of Martin and Gudrun Fritsch.

him which never came: All these details come from an interview of Peter Kolbe in Sydney, November 2001.

Hermsdorf of the CIA: Relations between Fritz and his third wife, Maria, seem to have gone through some rough times in the 1950s. In her private diaries of the time, Maria confided her romantic unhappiness. At the end of her life, she admitted never having fully penetrated Fritz’s personality: “he came from another planet,” she said. Interview with Gudrun and Martin Fritsch, Berlin, January 2002.

the language very well: Even though he has never lived in Germany, Peter Kolbe speaks unaccented German and has a slight German accent when he speaks English.

Africa in January 1954: Peter returned to Germany several times and relations with his father grew a bit smoother over time. He studied science in South Africa and Australia and became a geologist. After post-doctoral studies at MIT and a position with an American company based in Canada, he moved to Australia, where he took up a position as professor of geology and geochemistry at Sydney University, where he spent the rest of his career. With the passage of time, Peter Kolbe has inwardly reconciled himself with his father and is finally grateful to him for not bringing him back to Germany in September 1939.

cement market in South Africa: Correspondence between Fritz Kolbe and his son, September 1953. “My father sent me letters in which he asked me for stacks of information about the economic needs of South Africa: concrete poles for telephone lines, wooden ties for railroad lines…. I found this completely ridiculous and I said to myself, what a loser!” Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.

to join the Masons: Peter Kolbe joined a lodge in Durban, but set foot in it only once or twice.

on February 26, 1953: “Without Kolbe, Allen Dulles would never have become head of the CIA,” according to Mary Bancroft, former informal collaborator and mistress of Allen Dulles, in an article by Barbara Ungeheuer in Die Zeit, May 1986.

influential New York organization: The Council on Foreign Relations was established after the First World War by young disciples of President Wilson, among them Allen Dulles. The organization saw the light of day at the Hotel Majestic in Paris in May 1919, during the negotiations on the Versailles treaty. Over time, the forum became a nursery for the upper echelons of the American leadership.

the Nazi Foreign Ministry: Allen W. Dulles Papers. On the death of Allen Dulles on January 30, 1969, all the obituaries in the American press mentioned the existence of “George Wood.”

the Kappa-Wood material: Letter from General John Magruder to Allen Dulles, December 6, 1945, Allen W. Dulles Papers.

raids on German cities: Speech of President Truman reprinted in the press release from Macmillan in presentation of the book by Allen Dulles on German resistance to Nazism, Germany’s Underground (1947). Allen W. Dulles Papers.

by the United States: Among other sources, we may cite a letter from Fritz Kolbe to his son, dated May 1968, in which he criticizes Western consumer society and exhibits understanding for the rebellion of young people in France and around Europe, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

had never dropped him: The two men remained in touch until the death of Allen Dulles. In the 1960s, they continued to meet in Bern or in the United States whenever the opportunity arose.

Fritz secure this position: From the mid-1950s on, Fritz was not content to be merely a sales representative for a chain saw company. He also represented in Switzerland the interests of his friend Walter Girgner, owner of a large clothing company in Germany (Trumpf shirts), and accumulated assignments for sales canvassing in all areas (steel, machinery, textiles, etc.).

were infested with snakes: German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file, correspondence with Fritz Kolbe, April 1954.

$250 a month: The contract is in the personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

what he could do: Peter Sichel, interview, Bordeaux, December 1, 2001.

Epilogue

that of Fritz Kolbe: See the illustrated volume 100 Jahre Auswärtiges Amt (1870–1970), published by the German Foreign Ministry in 1970, and Widerstand im auswärtigen Dienst, published by the ministry in 1994. The names of the martyrs of July 20, 1944 engraved in marble in the ministry were (and remain) the following: Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, Eduard Brücklmeier, Hans-Bernd von Haeften, Ulrich von Hassell, Otto Kiep, Herbert Mumm von Schwarzenstein, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Herbert Gollnow, Richard Kuenzer, and Hans Litter, to which was added a few years later Rudolf von Scheliha. All these diplomats were executed between 1942 and 1945.

list of the “just”: Ludwig Biewer, director of archives for the Foreign Ministry.

to his friend intolerable: “The ironic result of the story is that a valiant patriot could have been considered a traitor to his country, when he really was one of the few who helped that in the decisive moments of German history a responsible American set of politicians could stop the Morgenthau policy and back Germany against Soviet Russia’s domination.” Ernst Kocherthaler, “The Background of the George Story.”

years left to live: Ernst Kocherthaler died in Bern on September 6, 1966.

suspicions weighing on him: Letter from Eugen Gerstenmaier, March 10, 1965, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

to me my honor: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, January 10, 1965, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.

February 16, 1971 in Bern: “He did not die peacefully,” says his son, who was present for his last moments in a Bern hospital. His last words were to ask his son whether he “had been a good father.” His estate, inventoried by a Bern notary, included among assets 47,746 Swiss francs, a 1968 Opel Commodore GS, and a guitar. Fritz Kolbe’s personal indebtedness amounted to 7882 Swiss francs.

director of the CIA: Richard M. Helms (1913–2002) was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973. A former journalist, he had covered the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games for United Press and had interviewed Hitler. He joined the OSS in 1943 and continued his career in the CIA after the war. He succeeded Allen Dulles as chief of American intelligence in Germany after October 1945. After his return to Washington, Allen Dulles asked him to handle Fritz Kolbe’s immigration file between 1947 and 1949. He was appointed director of the CIA in 1966 under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. In 1977, after refusing to testify before Congress on the role of the CIA in the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, he was given a suspended sentence of two years in prison and fined $2,000. The memoirs of Richard Helms, written in collaboration with William Hood, were published in the United States in the spring of 2003, with the title A Look Over My Shoulder.

in his own country: Unused material for Great True Spy Stories (1967), Allen W. Dulles Papers.