Lucas Delattre - A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich

“What does that mean exactly?” asked Karl Ritter, whose mission was to translate the führer’s orders into carefully chosen terms. “Well,” answered the OKW officer, “that means, for example, that a prisoner who shows the slightest inclination to disobey orders should be shot without warning.”

In the antechamber of the railroad car, Fritz listened aghast to this incredible dialogue. He knew that horrors had taken place since the beginning of the war in Poland and Russia, but until now he had not known that transgression of the laws of war was coldly encouraged by the highest leaders of the state and the army. The fact that his own boss, Karl Ritter, was associated with this kind of wrongdoing only increased his indignation. He strained his ears to continue to capture the conversation when he heard that an aide de camp had informed Ritter of his presence. “Kolbe is here!” exclaimed Ritter. “But what is he doing here, not saying anything? Send him in right away!” Fritz was led into the room. He made a Hitler salute to everyone and handed Ritter a thick sheaf of documents from his briefcase. Ritter did not have the time to consult these papers right away. He quickly dismissed his assistant and made an appointment with him for the following day after asking briefly about news from his Berlin office.

It was noon. Fritz was taken to an attractive hunting lodge ten kilometers away that was used as a residence for employees of the Foreign Ministry. On the edge of a forest and overlooking a large lake, it had been built for the 1936 Olympics as a residence for competitors in the ice boat event. The inn provided comfortable conditions unknown in Berlin. There were bouquets of flowers on the tables, fine wines, and plentiful supplies of liquor and cigarettes. A French chef selected by the occupation forces in Paris had been installed in the kitchen (“the food is much better at Ribbentrop’s than at Hitler’s,” Fritz told himself that night as he savored a dish of game with berries). A Volksempfänger radio broadcast through static the latest Wehrmacht reports and popular songs, such as “ Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern ” (“That can’t frighten a sailor”) and “Lili Marlene.”

In the following days, Fritz had a lot of free time. He took advantage of it to go for long runs around the lake that the windows of his room looked out on. Ten days at Hitler’s headquarters; Fritz had not expected to stay that long. Busy with countless different tasks, Karl Ritter took time to write answers to the dispatches brought from Berlin and have them signed by Ribbentrop (who always signed in green ink).

One of Ritter’s missions was to assist the admiralty in choosing combat zones for submarine warfare. It was also his responsibility to draft Berlin’s official reactions in the event of a “blunder,” notably when a neutral country complained about German aggression. Among the dispatches that Fritz had brought from Berlin were vigorous protest notes from Washington following attacks without warning by German U-boats against American ships. On each occasion, President Roosevelt had increased the intensity of expression of his anger. In a message to Congress in June, he had denounced the sinking of the Robin Moor as “an act of piracy.” And in a fireside chat on September 11, referring to the Nazi leaders, he had said: “But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him,” and noted that it was “the time for prevention of attack.”

Walking by the lake, Fritz Kolbe was surprised that he did not feel comfortable. He should have been enjoying the magnificent country, but he had only one wish, to leave the “wolf’s lair,” its poisonous atmosphere, and its mosquitoes. He was finally authorized to return to Berlin with a satchel full of documents signed by the minister. Time was short. His return this time was on board a military plane, a Junkers Ju 52.

Berlin, November 1941

“Do you control / Yourself? Are you the master of yourself? / Do you stand free amid the world as I do / So you may be the author of your actions?” ( The Death of Wallenstein, Act 3, Scene 2).

Back in Berlin, Fritz had plunged into Schiller and was meditating on these words of Wallenstein. Since his trip to the “wolf’s lair” and the astounding conversation that he had overheard between Karl Ritter and Walther Hewel, he had decided to leave Germany. He saw no other way to remain true to himself. He could no longer defend his country now that he knew it was guilty of such injustices and unspeakable abominations. What had happened since late 1939 exceeded in horror everything that had been seen between 1914 and 1918. Fritz was beginning to understand that the “war of extermination” conducted by the Nazis was leading to an apocalypse. Whatever the outcome—victory or defeat of Germany—nothing allowed the slightest hope for the future: either Germany won the war and multiplied its criminal power, or it lost and found itself outcast from the civilized world.

On returning from his stay at Hitler’s headquarters, Fritz had heard of the activities of “mobile task forces” of the secret police headed by Reinhard Heydrich (the Einsatzgruppen) in the rear of the Russian front. The mission of the Einsatzgruppen was to massacre Jews, on the pretext of “forestalling the risk of spreading epidemics behind the front lines.” The foreign ministry had received very precise reports stating that men, women, and even children had indiscriminately been machine-gunned, had their throats cut, been burned alive, or sometimes murdered with blows of a pickax or a hammer.

Fritz was beginning to think that if he continued to rub shoulders with evil he would end up being its accomplice. He had had enough of behaving like the good soldier Svejk. Playing the stupid and narrow-minded petty official led to nothing, except protecting himself. He sometimes saw himself in dreams in a foreign uniform, bearing arms, fighting against the men of the Wehrmacht. He immediately reproached himself for denying his own people. After all, German soldiers had not wanted, for the most part, to be involved in this kind of criminal adventure. The only ones who deserved to be eliminated were the leaders of the country. These questions tormented him. In that fall of 1941, it was not uncommon for him to wake up in the middle of the night with violent cramps in his stomach. In addition to the multiple pains he suffered from his constant excessive exercise, Fritz was beginning to hurt everywhere.

By chance, since he had met Professor Sauerbruch’s assistant in the spring of 1940, Fritz had easy access to the Charité hospital. At the request of Maria Fritsch, the famous surgeon had agreed to treat Fritz’s knees and had prescribed a thermal cure at Bad Brambach in southern Saxony, where he had spent three weeks at the end of the summer of 1940.

Fritz gradually developed the habit of going to the hospital once or twice a week for no medical reason. Located not far from the Foreign Ministry, the hospital was a veritable enclave in the city, with fifteen red brick buildings with neo-Gothic façades. There were even hot-houses for the cultivation and wintering of plants and trees. Fritz went to see Maria on leaving his office and spent a good bit of time chatting with her at the hospital. One evening, he even played her an old song from the Wandervogel, accompanying himself on a guitar that happened to be sitting in a corner of the room. He sang well, with a warm voice, and the words of the song were a declaration of love. “Come, let’s go into the fields, the cuckoo is calling us from the pine forest / Young girl, let yourself go in the dance.” Maria had been unable to conceal her emotion.

From that moment on, the two were inseparable. They met in the restaurants of Charlottenburg, then went to the cinema. Fritz felt all the more comfortable at the Charité because he had the feeling of being protected from prying eyes. At the Foreign Ministry, he knew that he was under surveillance and had to be constantly careful not to say one wrong word. This wasn’t true at the hospital, which was like an island protected from the outside world, even though it was in the heart of the capital of the Reich. The Gestapo did not penetrate there, and Fritz did not feel he was being spied on. On the contrary, he was the one in an observation post, trying to identify the figures who came to see Professor Sauerbruch. And there were many of them. You might encounter the surgeon in the company of a doctor in an SS uniform, and then the next day with a man who was under heavy surveillance by the regime.