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

Allen Welsh Dulles was officially the special assistant for legal affairs of the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland. The son of a Presbyterian minister, a member of the East Coast establishment, this 1914 Princeton graduate knew Europe remarkably well. In 1917 and 1918 he already was an attaché at the American embassy in Bern charged with gathering intelligence about Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans. He then spent a few months behind the scenes at Versailles during the treaty negotiations, with other young diplomats who had recently graduated (most of them from Princeton), whom President Wilson liked to have around him. Dulles felt all the more at ease in these surroundings because Robert Lansing, the secretary of state, was his uncle, and because his grandfather, General John W. Foster, had held that post a few decades earlier. During the negotiations, and in the years following the restoration of peace, the young Allen W. Dulles had traveled extensively through France and Germany devastated by the war. He was convinced that a solid alliance between the United States and Germany would make it possible to create a solid rampart against the spread of Bolshevism.

Although he had given up a diplomatic career to become a Wall Street lawyer, Allen Dulles had continued to be of service to the State Department. In 1933, in the course of a diplomatic mission to Germany, he had met Hitler in person. Although he felt nothing but disgust for the Nazis, Dulles was a friend to Germany.

In November 1942, Dulles was back in Bern. At the last moment, he had crossed through France from Spain, just when the German troops were seizing the southern zone. He had been able to reach Switzerland only through the providential assistance of a not overly scrupulous French customs agent who had not informed the Gestapo of his passage. Once there, Dulles had not attempted in the slightest to conceal his arrival or especially hidden the nature of his work. In the Swiss press, an article presented him as the “personal representative of President Roosevelt,” charged with a “special duty.” From then on everyone knew that Mr. Dulles was a key figure in American espionage in continental Europe. In fact, he had been appointed by the Office of Strategic Services, the American intelligence organization that had just been established by President Roosevelt in June. Oddly, the publicity around his name did not trouble him in the least, whereas it irritated some of his English counterparts, who were a little suspicious of this “dilettante” intruding on their preserve.

Dulles’s notoriety and his natural charm, but also the rather substantial financial resources he had at his disposal, meant that large numbers of people came to see him. Everyone who had information to offer (or to sell) came to knock at his door. Every night, after curfew, shadows slipped furtively beneath the arcades leading to his house, and left through the back garden, which sloped steeply toward the River Aare, hidden from prying eyes. Among these night visitors were double agents, manipulators, charlatans. Over a drink, Dulles listened to them more or less attentively. He usually put people at ease by seating them before a fire, and let them talk while he stirred the embers and smoked his pipe. “The Swiss knew very well that their country was the scene of all manner of intrigues; agents of the secret service, spies, revolutionaries and agitators infested the hotels of the principal towns”: this description of the country in 1914 by Somerset Maugham in Ashenden applied to Bern in 1943. Dulles had enough confidence in his own instincts to be able to sort out the true from the false.

His mission was to gather all the intelligence possible about occupied Europe, particularly about Germany, but also relating to France, Italy, and other countries allied to the Reich. Among other things, he had been asked to “establish and maintain contacts with underground anti-Nazi movements in Germany.” Dulles personally would have liked to provide active assistance to those movements, but he could not because of a lack of political support in Washington.

The British were of course his privileged interlocutors, even though some old intelligence veterans complained about his casual manner. He was considered an eccentric, but they recognized his talent. The French agents of the Deuxième Bureau in Bern were all prepared to work for him since the Vichy regime, in November 1942, had lost its last illusions about its sovereignty. The French agreed to be financed by the OSS in Bern, which helped them send intelligence to the authorities of Free France, now based in Algiers. Within a very short time, Dulles thus had an excellent observation network at his disposal in occupied France. The Poles also offered him their services: Dulles soon made the acquaintance of Halina Szymanska, the widow of a Polish officer based in Bern, who was the mistress of Admiral Canaris, chief of military intelligence (Abwehr). Not infrequently, when Admiral Canaris wanted to “let slip” a piece of intelligence intended for the Allies, he confided a secret to Mme. Szymanska (for example, in June 1941, Hitler’s imminent invasion of Russia). Several diplomats from Axis countries stationed in Bern, wishing to establish relations with the Allies, also became preferred sources. Baron Bakach-Bessenyey, the Hungarian envoy, was notably among them.

Things were more difficult with the Swiss. The authorities in Bern were intent on maintaining equal distance from all the countries involved in the conflict. But the reality was entirely different: the majority of the population sympathized with the Allies. Dulles soon had his own network of trusted men inside the Swiss intelligence service, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Masson.

At all times, one had to be wary of the Germans. Among the countless networks of informers present in the country, those working for Germany were particularly effective and well established on the ground thanks to the existence of a large German community. German newspapers had numerous correspondents in Bern. And there were Swiss Germanophile circles, particularly in the army. For years, this small world had been receiving active support from the German legation. In addition, the German consulates in Switzerland were more often than not headed by men from the Abwehr or the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, foreign intelligence services).

Hitler had given up the idea of invading Switzerland in 1940. He needed a solid economic and financial conduit bordering Germany, and Switzerland provided Germany, in exchange for gold, the currency it needed to procure raw materials indispensable for the war. Nevertheless, Hitler judged that, sooner or later, Switzerland would become a part of the “Greater Reich.” Rumors of a plan of attack constantly came to the ears of the authorities in Bern. The threat grew as the new strategic context became clear in late 1942 and early 1943, marked by the advance of Allied forces in North Africa and the weakening of Italy. Was Germany not going to “swallow” Switzerland in order to strengthen its southern flank? Living with the perpetual threat of invasion, the authorities of the Swiss Confederation were in a state of maximum alert. From time to time they expelled one foreign diplomat or another when his activities seemed to exceed the terms of his mission. All citizens of countries involved in the conflict were subject to strict surveillance. The Allied intelligence services were more tolerated than their German counterparts, but neutrality was not to be trifled with in light of the knowledge that Berlin needed only a pretext to invade Switzerland. The entire country lived in fear of a fifth column.

Allen Dulles thus found that his work was naturally handicapped. Nevertheless, his address book was filled every day with new names, and his scanty knowledge of German did not prevent him from communicating with all kinds of people: anti-Nazi exiles from all milieus (political, cultural, union), diplomats and intelligence agents of all nationalities—including Chinese—lawyers, bankers, industrialists, publishers, journalists, churchmen, and even German bargemen authorized to travel on the Rhine between Germany and Switzerland. He met fairly frequently with Carl Gustav Jung in Zurich, who presented his analysis of the psychology of the Nazi leaders and of the “collective unconscious” of the Germans.