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

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.