7
Berlin, mid-August 1943
Sunday, August 15, 1943, at around seven in the evening, Fritz Kolbe went to the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. He was to take the 8:20 train for Basel. Fritz arrived early. The distance between the Foreign Ministry and the station was not great (it took only a half hour walking toward the south). The city was bathed in soft summer light. The shadows of the few passersby stretched out on the ground. This neighborhood of government offices at the end of the day seemed immobile and curiously calm. After leaving his Kurfürstendamm apartment, Fritz had stopped at Wilhelmstrasse to pick up the files that had to be turned over to the German legation in Switzerland. The assignment was a routine operation: The transmission of diplomatic mail from Berlin to Bern took place twice a week, leaving Berlin on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. The task was rotated among mid-level officials and never given to a woman.
In his inside jacket pocket, Fritz had carefully placed his diplomatic passport and his orders. The latter document would serve as his pass at every checkpoint. It was an invaluable talisman, highly prized in the ministry and in German diplomatic offices throughout the world. There were many candidates in Berlin for trips to the capitals of neutral countries, particularly to Bern, which was reputedly a very pleasant city.
In the diplomatic mail office, Fritz had been given a leather briefcase containing a thick envelope with a wax seal. The envelope was rather large, forty by fifty centimeters. Fritz did not know what was in it, except that it included official mail for the head of legation and his colleagues, the latest official memoranda, and various confidential messages (including those of the secret services, which sometimes created friction between Himmler and Ribbentrop). He was not to open it on any pretext. The briefcase was at no time to be left unguarded.
A little earlier in the day, the rest of the diplomatic pouch had already been brought to the station. Even though Fritz Kolbe was not personally carrying this second transmittal, he was administratively responsible for it. It consisted of several bags or cases containing nonsecret documents or voluminous objects. These packages, stamped “official dispatch,” were not examined by customs (no more than was the envelope containing diplomatic cables). This part of the diplomatic pouch had to be deposited at the station before noon. The members of the ministry took advantage of this system to send private letters or gifts to friends and relatives in Switzerland. Officially, the diplomatic pouch might weigh no more than one hundred kilograms. In fact, it was often twice that, despite official warnings.
Before leaving the ministry building, Fritz went to his office and carefully closed and locked the door behind him. He opened the metal safe in which he kept the most important documents and removed from it two gray envelopes, which were not sealed. Then, after closing the safe, he took off his pants, wrapped the two envelopes around his thighs, and fastened them with sturdy string. He tied several knots that he had learned in the Wandervogel, made certain that the arrangement was solid, and put his pants back on. He left his office, went down the large empty staircases of the ministry (since it was Sunday, almost no one was there), and came out into the street. This peculiar operation—which obviously had had no witnesses—had lasted for only a few minutes.
At this time the next day, Fritz would be in Bern. It was the first time after two years of asking that he had received authorization to go abroad as a diplomatic courier. Gertrud von Heimerdinger had done things well. Her push in the right direction had been necessary for Fritz Kolbe’s name to be placed on the list of the privileged authorized to spend a weekend of semivacation in Switzerland. Ambassador Karl Ritter had not opposed the trip. He had seen it as a way of compensating his faithful assistant, whose energy and devotion he still appreciated. To enable his subordinate to leave, he had had to guarantee his political reliability in writing. Fritz himself had had to promise, also in writing, to return to Germany at the conclusion of his mission.
Fritz was lucky and yet he was in a feverish state. “Have I forgotten something?” he asked himself as he walked down Wilhelmstrasse. He passed in front of the Reich Chancellery, at the corner of Vosstrasse, with its cold and imposing colonnade. The area was calm and almost lifeless. The entire street seemed deserted. Only a few armed sentinels stood guard at the entry to official buildings. At every street corner, Fritz felt as though he was being watched.
Across the street from the Reich Chancellery was the Ministry of Propaganda. Several people could be seen working there even though it was Sunday. The ministry had its work cut out for it right now in commenting on the series of debacles of the Wehrmacht. For several days the press had been hailing the “triumphant retreat” of the German army in Sicily and congratulating its leaders for having limited the losses of men and materiel in their “magnificent” maneuver of withdrawal to Italy. “We have avoided total annihilation,” was the uniform headline for the editorials. These victorious proclamations could not mask the essential: German radio had announced Mussolini’s fall on July 26.
Continuing on his way, Fritz passed in front of Göring’s Air Force Ministry. Huge black limousines were parked in the courtyard. A little further along, he passed the buildings of the RSHA (the Gestapo and the other security services of the Reich) and could not repress a shiver. Himmler’s empire occupied a whole stretch of Wilhelmstrasse, between Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and Anhalter Strasse. It was common knowledge that inside the walls of these palaces from the imperial period, people were assassinated and tortured. Fritz walked faster. He turned to the right and saw the station. Finally, a neighborhood with a little more life! Opposite the large Anhalter station was the Askanischer Platz. Despite the war, the plaza had remained welcoming, with its large hotels, its commotion, and its numerous restaurants and beer halls.
Fritz saw a large crowd at the entrance to the station. There were many families leaving to seek refuge far from the city. It had been strongly recommended that the women and children of Berlin leave the capital of the Reich to get away from the bombing. It was a headlong flight. “What is most striking walking in the streets of Berlin today is the huge crowd that forms from time to time in certain neighborhoods around certain stations of the Stadtbahn. People are heading for an unknown destination without noise, I even often have the impression without a word. Even in the most crowded rush hours for the métro, I never saw such a compact crowd in the streets of Paris,” wrote Adolphe Jung in his diary of Berlin at war.
On the way to his train, Fritz noticed in the shop windows on the plaza facing the station the first tangible signs of the beginnings of shortages. There was not a single razor blade to be found; specialized stores offered to sharpen used blades. Continuing through the mass of departing travelers, Fritz saw young boys in military uniforms: the draft age had just been lowered to seventeen. The ogre of the Wehrmacht was devouring the youth of the country. Perhaps Fritz thought of his son, who was now eleven. He had received one or two postcards from him, mailed from South-West Africa, but he had not answered. (Why this silence? Perhaps to preserve the boy and avoid attracting police attention.)
Fritz entered the station building. He was holding the timetable, which showed on one side the “schedule valid from November 1942 on,” and on the other an advertisement for the Dresdner Bank. Inside the building, the huge glass-lined hall multiplied the echoes of human voices and steam locomotives. The place was rather grandiose. This early August 1943, the locomotives were decorated with swastikas and propaganda posters: “The wheels of our trains must roll in the direction of victory.” Other very large posters were hanging on the walls of the station: one sign indicated the direction to the air raid shelter in the station basement, another asked the traveler to avoid any unnecessary trip.
As night began to fall, the station was plunged into semidarkness. There was no longer any real lighting on the platforms. The bulbs in the lampposts had been painted blue in order not to attract the eyes of enemy pilots. Everywhere, pylons had been covered in white paint up to two meters from the ground so that travelers would not bang into them. On platform 1, the train for Basel was beginning to fill up. Fritz went into a special compartment reserved for travelers on official missions, in the front of the train.
The train left Berlin punctually at 8:20. Fritz did not sleep, or barely. The car was full throughout the journey through Germany, but few travelers were going as far as the Swiss border. The night passed without incident. Apart from routine verification of tickets on leaving Berlin, there was no checking on the passengers. Fritz watched stations go by throughout the night. Halle, 10:35. Erfurt, 12:25 A.M. Frankfurt am Main, 4:34. Heidelberg, 6:27. Karlsruhe, 7:22. Freiburg im Breisgau, 9:40. During the trip, there were several long halts; this was not because of air raid warnings but because the locomotive was changed several times. Finally, they arrived in Basel, German station (Basel DRB, for Deutsche Reichsbahn), close to the scheduled time, 11:11. It was Monday morning, August 16, 1943.
The “German station” in Basel was an enclave of the Reich in Switzerland. Fritz had heard that this border station was a favorite observation post for the Nazis and a nest of German spies. As he left the train, Fritz looked around him, not very reassured. At a bank counter, he was given the regulation ten marks (no more) to which every German leaving the Reich had the right. Then he approached the border post, where he managed more or less to conceal his nervousness as he presented his papers. His heart was beating like mad. If there had been a body search, he would have had no hope of escape.
Fritz Kolbe’s papers were in order: he had an authorization to stay for four days (until Friday, August 20). As could be verified inside his passport, he had a German visa furnished by the Foreign Ministry (visa no. 4235), and a Swiss visa, provided by the Swiss legation in Berlin (visa no. 519). The German customs officer, with a look as cold as a statue, signaled him to move on. The hardest part was over. Fritz was in Switzerland. He felt an immense relief.
After taking a shuttle to the Swiss station in Basel (Basel SBB), Fritz got on another train, for Bern. He took a deep breath. Perhaps he had seen in the Basel station German trains full of coal or military materiel moving slowly toward Italy through the Gothard tunnel (the route connecting Rome and Berlin). But he suddenly felt transported into another world. Switzerland was a strange country, both very close to and very far from Germany. A country where you could find German political refugees, Jews, resistance fighters from around Europe trying to lie low, German, Italian, and Austrian deserters, escaped prisoners of war, Allied airmen who had survived missions in Germany…
Bern, Monday, August 16, 1943
On his arrival in Bern, Fritz was immediately picked up by a diplomatic vehicle that took him to the German legation in fifteen minutes. He was astonished by the beauty of the site and at the same time surprised to discover the modest size of the Swiss capital. He soon noticed that Bern had absolutely no road signs and that it was thus very easy to get lost if you didn’t know your way around. He found out that the road signs had been removed because of the prospect of a German attack: Everything had to be done to make the invader lose his way. He also noticed that the car in which he was riding did not display a Nazi flag.
On leaving the station, Fritz had had the time to leave his personal belongings at his hotel, which was not far from the station. This was the Hotel Jura (on Platz Bubenberg), a modest hotel, but quite comfortable. He had taken the opportunity to hide the documents he had concealed beneath his pants. The day passed in consultations with his colleagues in the German legation, which was located in a villa in the Brunnadern district, in the southern part of the city (Willadingweg 78). Perhaps Fritz had a brief conversation with Otto Köcher, head of the legation, whom he had known well since Spain.
Crossing through the city by car, he had seen the handsome residences of the Kirchenfeld district. All the diplomatic missions of the world were there, to judge from the flags decorating the façades. What was striking, coming from Berlin, was the idyllic nature of the place. There was a liveliness and an apparently gentle way of life, which was no longer known in Berlin, even if Fritz was a little disappointed by the absence of chocolate and pastries from the store windows in the center of town. Getting out of the car that deposited him in front of the German legation, he felt surrounded by calm and silence. Just the sound of the wind in the trees and the “pock” of tennis rackets hitting a ball nearby.
That evening, Fritz was invited to a diplomatic reception. He had the time to go back to his hotel to change, and it was probably then that he managed to reach his old friend Ernst Kocherthaler from a public telephone. Kocherthaler had been living in Switzerland since September 1936. After fleeing the civil war and the Falangists (who suspected him of having supplied arms to the Republicans), he had settled with his family in Adelboden, a little mountain village in the Alps near Bern, an hour and a half south of the capital. Fritz knew his telephone number (“146 in Adelboden,” he said to the operator). This was the first time that the two men had spoken in eight years. They were moved by the reunion, but the poor quality of the telephone line made it impossible for them to speak for long. They arranged to meet in Bern the next morning.
Bern, Tuesday, August 17, 1943
No one knows the name of the restaurant or café in Bern where Fritz Kolbe and Ernst Kocherthaler met. All the newspapers of the day carried the headline that Sicily had come entirely under Allied control. For Fritz, this was good news. But Ernst Kocherthaler greatly feared that this event would lead to the German invasion of Switzerland. Despite worries about the future, the two friends were happy to see each other again. Kocherthaler was delighted to rediscover Fritz’s outspokenness and good humor. He immediately questioned him about rumors he had heard from an industrialist friend in Berlin: “There is talk of plans of a coup d’état against Hitler, a suggestion of a military government headed by Rommel. What is Himmler doing about it? They say he’s more powerful than ever.”
Fritz told Ernst about the atmosphere in Berlin, about the bombing, and about the general feeling of extreme lassitude (“Many Berliners,” he said, “have only one wish: to sleep”). In the summer of 1943, more and more Germans were becoming pro-Russian, because of a very simple argument: At least the Russians were not bombing German cities.
After a few minutes, the two men began to speak in lower tones. Fritz informed his friend of the reason for his coming to Bern: He wanted to transmit information to the Allies. “Ernst, you can certainly help me meet someone, I’m sure you know names and addresses.” Ernst Kocherthaler started, taken aback. He had been expecting anything but that. He had already met the head of the British legation, Clifford Norton, at a reception. Would he remember? There was nothing to keep him from trying, but he would have to act quickly because Fritz was going back to Berlin on Friday. “What do you have to offer?” asked Ernst. It was then, after furtively looking around to make sure that no one was watching them, that Fritz took from his briefcase a little bundle of secret documents he had taken from Wilhelmstrasse. “Here, see if that may interest someone and tell them that I have other things with me.”
What happened next has given rise to many different versions. After 1945, the facts were reconstructed by the principal protagonists on the basis of often foggy memories. The truth suffered from more or less conscious or voluntary approximations. Indications of dates are often contradictory and most of the time false. Only Fritz Kolbe’s passport makes it possible to locate fairly precisely the unfolding of events in the week from August 17 to 20, 1943. According to a version frequently reported, Fritz went himself to see a member of the British legation. He is said to have told him that he had information to offer and that he was prepared to collaborate with the Allies without compensation. The English diplomat, still according to legend, showed him out with the following words: “You’re probably a double agent, or else some kind of cad!”
In fact, things did not happen in quite that way. That Tuesday, August 17—probably in late morning—it was Ernst Kocherthaler who presented himself at the British legation of Bern, located on Thunstrasse (a long street running through the Kirchenfeld district, along which one would travel from the center of town to the German legation). Without an appointment, he asked to see the head of legation in person, or, failing that, his deputy, “for a matter of the greatest importance,” and he showed a German diplomatic cable in order to indicate the purpose of his visit. As was to be feared, he was told that it was impossible to see Mr. Norton, and that the legation’s number-two could not see him either. Kocherthaler insisted, refusing to budge, demanding to be presented to someone. He was made to wait for a long time. Finally, a certain Captain Reid came to see him in the lobby to see what this was all about. Once again, Kocherthaler introduced himself as a friend of the British envoy, Clifford Norton, showed his German diplomatic cable, and said that he had a “friend in a high position in the Foreign Ministry in Berlin, who is now in Bern, and who is offering to work for the Allied cause by providing firsthand information.”
Finally, Colonel Cartwright agreed to talk to him, but briefly. Colonel Henry Antrobus Cartwright had served as military attaché since September 1939. He was not the ideal interlocutor. His principal mission in this period consisted of debriefing British pilots who had managed to hide in Switzerland after being shot down over Germany. He then tried to evacuate them to London. He would have done better to meet the air force attaché, Freddie West, an intelligence specialist, but he was not necessarily in Bern that day, and Kocherthaler had no time to lose.
Colonel Cartwright did not listen to him for long. He realized rather quickly that Kocherthaler, who claimed to be in touch with Clifford Norton and the legation’s number two, Douglas MacKillop, knew neither one very well. He did not trust this man claiming to serve as an intermediary for a mysterious German diplomat who said he was prepared to turn over information for nothing and whose name he refused to reveal. He soon dismissed his visitor, politely refusing his offer. He did not even tell his colleagues in the secret service about the visit.
Cartwright had just passed up a historic opportunity, but his caution was understandable. The English were very suspicious of secret (or supposedly secret) offers coming from Germany. They had received very strict instructions from the Foreign Office, which had warned them against traps. And then, English diplomatic circles were hesitant as a matter of principle about any contact with the German resistance. The reason for this was simple: they were afraid that the Russians were doing the same thing and were seeking to sign a separate peace with Germany, behind the backs of the English and Americans.
Ernst Kocherthaler left the British legation annoyed. He immediately thought of contacting a representative of the United States, but did not know how to go about finding the right door to knock on and an attentive ear. It occurred to him to get in touch with his friend Paul Dreyfuss, a banker in Basel. Kocherthaler knew that Dreyfuss had an address book even larger than his own. So he called and told him briefly what he wanted to do.
At the same time, Tuesday evening around six, in Bern, Colonel Cartwright crossed paths with Allen Dulles in the street. The scene took place in Dufourstrasse, very close to the American legation (which was a little further along, at Alpenstrasse 29 and 35). Dulles came by, as always, with his coat pockets full of newspapers and his pipe in his mouth. Cartwright spoke a few words in passing, before going on his way (the colonel had no time to dawdle, someone was with him): “You’ll probably receive a call from a German I just met. I don’t remember his name. A name with ‘tal’ in it: Knochenthaler or Kochenthaler, something like that. I think this cove will turn up at your shop in due course, so you should be on the lookout for him.”
Bern, Wednesday, August 18, 1943
The American diplomat Gerald (Gerry) Mayer got an early-morning phone call. It was 7:30. It is not known whether he was still at home or already in his office on Dufourstrasse. At the other end of the line was Paul Dreyfuss. The two men did not know each other very well. Paul Dreyfuss was calling the American to recommend to him one of his friends who wished to see him to talk to him about an “extremely important” matter. Who is he? “A Spanish citizen of German origin,” Herr Kocherthaler, who was going to call him at nine that morning.
At nine o’clock on the dot, the telephone rang in Mayer’s office. A few minutes later Kocherthaler was in front of Gerald Mayer and set before him a sheaf of diplomatic cables from Berlin (accounts vary on how many documents: three, sixteen, twenty-nine?). He offered him a meeting with a diplomat friend from the foreign ministry, “a devoted anti-Nazi, prepared to work for the Allies by providing information.” This meeting would have to take place “before noon on Friday.”
Kocherthaler did not know Gerry Mayer, an elegant man (thin mustache, twinkling gaze, half-smile) who, like Allen Dulles, bore the title of “special assistant” to the American envoy in Bern, Leland Harrison. In fact, Mayer was the local specialist for American propaganda, employed by the Office of War Information (OWI). In that capacity, he worked in close collaboration with Allen Dulles and the OSS, whose offices were in the same building as his, Dufourstrasse 26. Dulles was very appreciative of his young colleague at the OWI, particularly for his extensive knowledge of Germany.
Not knowing that his interlocutor spoke German, Kocherthaler spoke to Gerry Mayer in English. The conversation was not long. It remained vague enough so that nothing confidential came out. The name of Fritz Kolbe was not mentioned, nor his position—Kocherthaler merely said that he was a “rare bird”—but the purpose of the offer was clear. There was something concrete on the table: a pile of copies of German cables stamped “top secret” (geheime Reichssache). Gerry Mayer leafed through them distractedly. He adopted a cool attitude, as though he had seen others like them, but he was beginning to find this very interesting. He asked his mysterious visitor to wait a moment in the anteroom.
Now everything would move very quickly. Mayer rushed to Allen Dulles’s office on the floor above and told him of the surprising offer from his “German visitor,” a “man with the air of a Prussian general, clean-shaven, as straight as an I.” Dulles listened attentively, his pipe in his mouth. He asked Gerry Mayer to give him an hour or two, mindful that the day before, he had heard of Kocherthaler purely by accident from Colonel Cartwright. Before going back down to the ground floor, Mayer put the cables from Berlin on Dulles’s desk. It was a series of exceptional documents. Each one of them was signed by a German ambassador and personally addressed to Foreign Minister Ribbentrop. In one of them, Otto Abetz, ambassador of the Reich in Paris, spoke of the Vichy regime setting up a network of pro-German agents behind the Allied lines in North Africa. In another, the former minister Constantin von Neurath, now plenipotentiary in Prague, described the rise of anti-Nazi resistance in the Czech population. From Ankara, the German ambassador, Franz von Papen, sent an alarm signal about British agents, more and more of whom were entering Turkey through Istanbul. Based on these documents, Allen Dulles asked Gerald Mayer to maintain contact with Kocherthaler and to let him know that they would call him back later that day.
Once Mayer had left his office, Dulles picked up the phone and called Colonel Cartwright at the British legation. “Can I come to see you right away?” The colonel could see him in half an hour. It was 11:30. Dulles went to see the British military attaché, who offered him a whiskey and told him about the interview of the day before with Kocherthaler, encouraging him not to take the offer seriously.
When he got back to his office, Dulles weighed the pros and cons. With his pipe in his mouth, he looked distractedly out the window, entirely lost in thought. Was Kocherthaler an agent provocateur? Were the Swiss laying a trap for the Americans, so that if they were caught they could be expelled from the country? That would show the Germans that the Swiss were as harsh with Allied as with Axis intelligence agents. In that case, Dulles would be taking a big risk: Espionage was illegal in Switzerland and he could not fall back on diplomatic immunity. It could also be a trap set by the Germans themselves, handing him information without importance so they could decipher American code when he sent it to Washington. A classic trick. It was all too good to be true, Dulles concluded.
But Dulles remembered an experience that had shaped his professional life. When he was posted to Bern the first time in early 1917, he had been sought out by an obscure Russian revolutionary who wanted to meet him. It was a Sunday. Dulles hadn’t even taken the trouble to talk to him, preferring not to cancel the tennis game he had scheduled that morning with a beautiful woman. A few weeks later, he had realized that the man who had wanted to see him was none other than Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin. From that day on, Allen Dulles had promised himself that he would never again turn down any meeting with an unknown. Without going that far back in his memories, he thought of a pronouncement made a few months earlier by General Donovan, the head of the OSS: “Every man or woman who can hurt the Hun is okay with me.”
He had to agree to see this diplomat from Berlin. It was a risk that had to be taken as a professional duty. Back in his office, Dulles let Gerry Mayer know that he wanted to meet the German and his intermediary, Dr. Kocherthaler, as soon as possible. “Between now and then,” Dulles added, “do a little investigation of this Kocherthaler.”
Bern, Thursday, August 19, 1943
There are contradictory versions of subsequent events. According to the most common, “a meeting was set for midnight in the apartment of Dulles’s assistant [Gerry Mayer] in the Kirchenfeld district. Dulles, in disguise, was to meet them at half past twelve. When he arrived, Dr. O. [Kocherthaler] and the secret courier, a man in a black leather jacket, were already there. Dulles was introduced as a Mr. Douglas, Mayer’s assistant.”
Fritz Kolbe and, very likely, Ernst Kocherthaler (although his presence is not absolutely certain) arrived at Gerald Mayer’s apartment. Fritz Kolbe was wearing a black leather jacket, probably a little warm for the season. The two men were wearing hats. The atmosphere at the beginning was rather tense. They were evaluating, “sniffing” one another. No one had shaken hands in greeting. For an hour or a little more, Ernst and Fritz conversed with Gerry Mayer in German. After a while, Allen Dulles entered the room. The mood became a bit more relaxed. Even though everyone remained wary, Dulles’s presence tended to create a pleasant atmosphere around him. The man seemed benevolent and his words were often punctuated with a strong, infectious laugh.
“Mr. Douglas” looked like a giant next to Gerald Mayer and Fritz, who was charmed by this man with the air of a gentleman. He saw some traits in common with Ernst Kocherthaler: same class, same warm ease, and same imposing height. But Dulles spoke very bad German, his accent was deplorable. He had Gerald Mayer translate some of Fritz’s statements. Before anything else, he looked at this small man from Berlin and silently analyzed Fritz Kolbe’s face. “He was short, stocky, and bald. He looked more like an ex-prizefighter than a diplomat. His eyes were sharp and searching, with a look that Dulles considered honest determination.” Dulles, who for the moment followed his intuition, did not make an initially negative judgment on the unknown man.
At that moment, Fritz took a large brown envelope from his inside jacket pocket, with a red wax seal stamped with a swastika. The envelope was open, the seal already broken. Fritz took a sheaf of documents out of the envelope. He set the stack on the table.
A stunned silence greeted this unexpected gesture. Dulles began to look through some of the cables. Some of them were carbon copies of original documents (or at least presented as such by this unknown man whom he still greatly mistrusted); others were almost illegible handwritten notes. Fritz Kolbe’s handwriting was particularly difficult to decipher. One of the cables dealt with the morale of German troops on the Russian front, another drew up a provisional summary of sabotage actions by the anti-German resistance in France, yet another dealt with a secret conversation between Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and the Japanese ambassador in Berlin.
A long conversation got under way between Dulles and Fritz on Germany, Berlin, what went on behind the scenes in the regime. Fritz described the atmosphere in Berlin, the growing sense of fear, the German-language programs on the BBC that people listened to secretly. He described in detail the mini-“putsch” of Deputy State Secretary Martin Luther and answered questions from the two Americans about the strength of the SS apparatus. He described the morose atmosphere of the German legation in Bern (“morale in Bern legation is bad”).
One of the highlights of the evening came when Fritz set out to describe very precisely the location of Hitler’s headquarters in East Prussia, and made a sketch of it in pencil, with the help of a map spread out on a coffee table. “The East Prussian German HQ is located on the east shore of a small Lake Schwanzeitsee… Headquarters are established about 7 kilometers east of Rastenburg and 28 kilometers south of Angerburg. Everything is extremely well camouflaged. Here is Hitler’s bombproof hideout situated underground… Here is Ribbentrop’s train… there are railroad sidings where Himmler and Göring set up quarters… A restaurant for diplomats, Jägerhöhe, is located 300 meters to the north…”
The tension relaxed. Drinks were served. Fritz continued to provide revelations of the greatest importance. The Germans, he explained, had managed to decipher an American diplomatic message sent from Cairo on August 7, 1943. Dulles and Mayer thus realized that the State Department’s cipher had probably been broken. It was urgent to warn Washington of this security breach threatening the United States’s secret communications.
And that was not all. Kolbe was like a magician pulling dozens of surprises out of his sleeve. Strategic revelations (“how the Spanish are delivering tungsten to the Germans,” “planned retreat of German troops as far as the Dnieper,” “German and Japanese submarines at the Cape of Good Hope”). Indications on the location of industrial sites worth bombing (“the Telefunken factory in Lichterfelde, near Berlin, which provides precision equipment to the Luftwaffe”). Details on the increasing disorganization of the German industrial system (“Long-term planning has completely disappeared in German war industry. Plans are made from day to day and subject to constant change. As a result many newly appointed women employees are advised to come to work but to bring their knitting because they might be without work for days on end”).
At some point late in the evening, Fritz Kolbe indicated that the Germans had a spy who had first-hand information coming from London (code name “Hector” or “Hektor”). The source had direct access to Stafford Cripps, the minister of aeronautic production. In Dublin, another German spy, a “Dr. Götz,” was flourishing, and the Germans had a clandestine radio transmitter in the Irish capital. At the other end of the world, the Portuguese colony of Mozambique was an important German observation post. The consulate of the Reich in Lourenço Marques in particular regularly provided precise information about the movements of Allied ships in the southern oceans. The Americans were extremely interested. If they were true, these pieces of information were of vital importance for the future course of the war.
To crown it all, Fritz gave the details of the cryptography used by the German Foreign Ministry. It was a very effective coding system. He explained its functioning: “A normal cipher book is used. Every word has a number group. In addition to this the outpost and the Foreign Office have identical pads, each page of which is usable once only. These pages are covered with numbers in 48 groups of five. These numbers are added to the original cipher number at the transmitting end and deducted at the receiving end. Sum total, without adding decimals, is received at Foreign Office, their pad additions are subtracted, and original cipher results.” This was known as the “one-time pad” system, which was much more secure than the American coding methods (where each letter corresponded to a given number). Unfortunately, Fritz could not say more about it. Codes changed constantly, and the Americans could not make much concrete use of these revelations. They sent the details provided by Fritz Kolbe to London for another evaluation.
The Americans asked the unknown man from Berlin to tell them his name and to talk about himself. Fritz Kolbe laid his cards on the table, revealed his identity, told the story of his life, talked about the Wandervogel, and described his work for Ambassador Karl Ritter. He did not consider that he was in any way under suspicion and cited as proof of this that he worked in the Political/Military Department. He provided dates, gave a summary of his career, and supplied details on the subversive activities he had carried out in secret since the beginning of the war. In particular, he described the fraudulent use of passports brought back from Cape Town, which he said he had given to Jews to help them flee Germany. He told them that his earnings at the outbreak of the war were 700 marks monthly, plus 200 marks special confidence bonus. He even talked about his son and gave them his address in South-West Africa (“c/o Ui and Otto Lohff, in Swakopmund”) to establish his credibility and serve as a guarantee. He also mentioned the name of Toni Singer, his best friend in Cape Town. They asked him about his motivations. Did he want money? Fritz Kolbe said no, explaining the reason for his decisions: “What I do I do for an ideal, I ask for no remuneration except possibly for reimbursement of modest expenses.”
This remark surprised the two Americans. “Is this a joke?” they both said. Ernst defended his friend’s good faith: “He thinks it is not enough to clench one’s fist and hide it in one’s pocket. The fist must be used to strike.” Fritz in turn added a few words: “It is not only one’s right but one’s duty to fight such a government…. My wish is to shorten the war. And at the end of the war, Nazism, fascism, and all the other isms of the totalitarian states should end. We will need American help against the Russians tomorrow in our and in their interest, but we must help them now. That is why I wish to establish contact with the Western democracies. All we ask as payment for our services is help and encouragement and support after the war.” “The war,” said Dulles, “must first be won. It is too soon to speak of what comes afterward.”
Despite the late hour (it was three in the morning, according to Dulles’s memoirs), they continued to bombard Fritz with questions: Could he provide other information? Did he come to Bern often? Fritz answered that he might come back, but that it was not certain. A system of communication between Berlin and Bern had to be organized. In order to finalize all these practical matters, a second appointment was made for Friday morning, again in Mayer’s apartment. The four men took leave of one another. When he returned to his hotel that night—as he was to say later—Fritz felt “deep satisfaction.” He nevertheless wondered if he had not been in too much of a hurry to reveal everything he knew. “Perhaps this haste was judged badly,” he thought. For their part, the two Americans, still in Mayer’s apartment, briefly shared their first impressions of the man whose name they pronounced as Fritz Colby. They agreed in observing that the German had asked practically no questions and had not tried to lead the conversation into any specific subject. This was a rather good sign, but they shouldn’t allow themselves to be lulled by what might be a trap wrapped up in a remarkable performance.
Back in his hotel room Fritz did not go to bed immediately. He sat at the small dimly lit table facing his bed and wrote down his last will and testament, which he intended to give to the Americans before he left. These few lines (a page and a half) were to be given to the appropriate person, “in the event of…”
“If I leave this life in one way or another,” wrote Fritz, “I would like little Peter to be placed in good hands…. Peter should be brought up in my spirit. Do not instill in him hatred of the enemy nor hatred of those who may assassinate me, but rather the unconditional will to fight and to defend our ideals…. No one can deny that my action is guided by ideals. Does existence have any meaning when you no longer have freedom, as is now the case in Germany?”
Fritz then gave a list of people to whom his son might be entrusted: If he wishes, Peter may stay with the Lohff family in Swakopmund in South-West Africa, or else return one day to Berlin to stay with one of Fritz’s close friends (“Walter Girgner, Lankwitz, Leonorenstrasse,” or “Leuko,” a nickname for Kurt Weinhold, his friend the engineer at Siemens). Maria Fritsch (“nicknamed ‘little rabbit,’ assistant to Professor Sauerbruch”), might possibly “become a good mother” for him. “In any case,” Fritz added, “I would have married her eventually.” Peter might also be raised by Ernst Kocherthaler: “This man,” he wrote, directly addressing his son, “may in particular take care of your needs and finance your education.” Fritz than asked Peter to “pay attention to Grandma Kolbe,” Fritz’s mother. “She is old but she has a surprisingly good and just sense of reality.” And Fritz added a sentence about his brother Hans, “with whom I have sometimes quarreled, but who is still a good brother.”
The recommendations to Peter then became very precise: “About your future profession, my dear Peter! I have always thought that you might become a sports doctor if that is something that would interest you. Perhaps your gift for mathematics will enable you to become an engineer. That would suit me, or you might be a lawyer. In any case, try above all to become an upright man, keep your youthful enthusiasm, and keep your heart pure! Respect women. The finest of them all was your mother. Always think of that when you’re with a girl. And always fight for truth and justice. Even when that seems hopeless to you. Go to meet the enemy with the same weapons that he has and do not forget the goal: our final victory [Endsieg].”
In conclusion, Fritz paid homage to his own father (“I feel united with him in the respect for what is right”), and asked his son to do the same with him (“ask my friends about my motives”). The will concludes with a moving appeal to Peter: “I remain your papa. Speak to me at night, as I have done to you so often in the last few years.”
Bern, Friday, August 20, 1943
The next day they met as agreed in Gerry Mayer’s apartment at eight in the morning. Fritz was probably free of professional obligations and at liberty to stroll around Bern. Despite the risk of being seen, he had agreed to this morning meeting in the midst of the American diplomatic district. He may have been discreetly deposited by a taxi. Gerry Mayer and “Mr. Douglas” (Allen Dulles) were there. Fritz had figured out that the mysterious Douglas was not a simple assistant in the legation, but he did not yet know his real name. Ernst Kocherthaler was probably present.
At the request of the two Americans, Fritz had used Thursday to gather some pieces of information from his diplomatic colleagues in Bern about the German espionage network in Switzerland. This network, Fritz explained, was divided into two departments, the collection of intelligence organized by Himmler’s services (SD, Sicherheitsdienst), and counterespionage (KO, Kriegsorganisation) under the Abwehr. The Americans certainly already knew that, but they took notes all the same.
Fritz then gave some names of diplomats who he thought were spies in disguise (for example, “legation adviser Frank”), but he did not seem very sure of himself. Fritz then stated with certainty that “the Germans have well-placed men in each of the enemy legations in Bern,” but in this case too, he gave no names (probably because he didn’t know any).
“Who might possibly work for us?” the two Americans asked him. Kolbe believed that “the Chief Commercial Attaché, Consul General Reuter, a Nazi by necessity rather than by conviction, was approachable. Reuter was a bachelor and liked the ladies. A second man mentioned was Kapler, Consular Secretary, who had lived in the United States for ten years and was also a lukewarm Nazi.”
Time passed quickly. Allen Dulles proposed that they move on to technical details: How could they organize future collaboration between Fritz and his new “friends” in Bern? They needed a password, in case Fritz were to travel to the capital of another neutral country, which would enable him to contact the Americans again. “Let’s take the figure 25900, since that’s your date of birth,” proposed Dulles, who went on: “If you come back here you only have to introduce yourself as Mr. König.” They brought up the possibility of reestablishing contact in Stockholm, in case Fritz were to be sent there as a courier. At another point, the name “Georg Sommer” was suggested, for no better reason than that it was the middle of the summer. Finally it was decided that when Fritz tried to establish contact with the Americans, he would use the name “George Merz.” And then, if by chance the Americans wanted to contact Fritz in Berlin, the agent would claim to be “Georg Winter” (“Anita Winter,” if it was a woman).
For the moment, they left it at that. Would they ever see one another again? Before taking his leave, Fritz gave the Americans an envelope from his hotel (the Hotel Jura) containing the two pages of his will—he had made a copy that he kept with him. He asked them if he could dictate the text of a telegram for his son in Swakopmund. The Americans strongly discouraged him from exposing himself in that way: “It’s madness, don’t do it.” Fritz did not insist.
When they left him, the two Americans gave Fritz a relatively large sum of money: two hundred Swiss francs. Fritz accepted the money to “cover his present and future taxi fares,” but also to buy cigars and chocolate, which would give great pleasure to his superiors at the ministry in Berlin. In Dulles’s view, this money should serve to maintain relations with Gertrud von Heimerdinger, who held the key to Fritz’s future trips to Bern.
The three men separated around 10:30. “Come back soon and bring us as many cables as possible”: this was, in substance, the farewell message of the two Americans to their new friend from Berlin. When he left Mayer’s apartment, Fritz Kolbe had a feeling of great success. The Americans were taking him seriously and were counting on him. It was up to him to feed their curiosity.
Fritz did not have much time to wander around the center of Bern, look in the shop windows, or go into the stores. Knowing that he did not have the right to keep foreign currency, he had given most of the two hundred Swiss francs to his friend Ernst Kocherthaler. With the rest, he had made some purchases so that he could bring back a few small gifts to Berlin. He took a train around noon. The same route as the preceding Sunday, in the opposite direction. The express for Berlin left Basel in the middle of the afternoon. Fritz’s passport was stamped by German customs at the Basel station at 4:46. The trip was fast, but he had had the feeling of being observed during the journey from Bern to Basel. The man watching him had looked neither Swiss nor German. Was it an American? “Don’t they trust me?” he asked himself anxiously. After crossing the German border, he felt lighter. As on the way there, there were few checks on the train. He arrived in Berlin the next morning at 7:41 (track 9, Anhalter Bahnhof, according to the timetable in force since November 1942). The first thing Fritz did when he got off the train was to buy a newspaper. That morning, there was an editorial by Goebbels in the Berliner Lokalanzeiger about the debacle in Sicily and Allied bombing of Peenemünde, the manufacturing site for the V-2. “Sometimes,” wrote Goebbels that August 21, “as we are moving toward final victory [Endsieg], we may find ourselves in the midst of a sunken lane where we can no longer see the goal of our march. But that does not mean that it is lost.”