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

A few minutes later, Fritz Kolbe was in Herrengasse 23. Glass in hand, he savored this moment of stolen freedom and appreciated the very “old England” comfort of the ground floor living room. The principal lighting in the room came from a large fire in the fireplace. Allen Dulles—a poker in one hand, his pipe in the other—frequently stirred the fire and added logs when necessary. Gerald Mayer arrived a few minutes later. Dulles contemplated the sheaf of documents that Fritz had just deposited on a coffee table. There were two hundred pages of documents, half copies of cables, half Fritz’s handwritten notes in German, in a cramped handwriting that only Ernst Kocherthaler was able to decipher. Dulles did not have time to read the documents in detail that night. Out of curiosity, he skimmed through the “delivery.”

The ambassador of the Reich in Paris, Otto Abetz, gave a list of the French whom he suspected of sympathizing with the Allies and whom he recommended should be arrested. From Spain, there was a message that the Falangist authorities had agreed to make new deliveries of “oranges” to Germany. The “oranges,” as Fritz was to explain a short time later, designated tungsten, a strategic material that the German armaments industry desperately needed. From Latin America came information that a particular Allied sea lane was threatened by U-boats in the Atlantic. Was Dulles interested? He let nothing show.

The conversation continued late into the night. Even more than the documents he had brought from Berlin, Fritz’s opinions seemed to intrigue the Americans. They asked him even more questions than in August. He indicated on a map of Berlin some sites that, according to him, were worth bombing. “This particular Telefunken plant produces precision instruments for the Luftwaffe…. There in the Lichterfelde district is the enlarged SS barracks, housing the Leibstandarte SS, Hitler’s personal guard.”

Fritz had time to dwell at some length on his motivations, his family, his opinions. The Americans wanted to gather information, but they also wanted to determine whether Fritz contradicted himself and whether his explanations were plausible. They spoke again of the Wandervogel, and at length about Madrid and Cape Town. Fritz was made to understand that no detail was superfluous. Dulles and Mayer were interested in everything, including details that might seem useless. “Where are the principal shoe factories in Germany?” they asked him in the course of the conversation.

Life in Berlin and the general atmosphere of the capital of the Reich seemed to interest them just as much as revelations of a political or military nature. Fritz was asked to speak of his friends and contacts in Berlin. He naturally mentioned his friend Karl Dumont in the ministry, but also Count Waldersee, the Wehrmacht officer whom he had met in Professor Sauerbruch’s circle, with whom he had hit it off in the summer of 1943.

Between Friday, October 8 and Tuesday, October 12, the date of his departure for Berlin, Fritz came to see Dulles several times, using all possible tricks to avoid being followed. He slipped furtively through the arcades of the old city, plunged into shops that had back doors, and multiplied zigzag movements, always arriving at the back door of Herrengasse 23. Most of the time, meetings took place late at night. In his nocturnal movements through Bern, Fritz wore his hat pulled low on his forehead and used a different coat from the one he wore during the day. To avoid attracting the slightest suspicion, he accepted all dinner invitations from his colleagues in the legation. Dulles and Mayer never saw him arrive before eleven at night and did not let him leave before two or three in the morning. He came to see Dulles in company with Ernst Kocherthaler. The two friends had stopped meeting during the day, because they thought that their connection might attract suspicion.

This nocturnal activity was harmful to Fritz’s reputation. The managers of the Hotel Jura looked at him strangely. Obviously they were suspicious of him. Was the hotel in contact with the Gestapo? To avoid any unpleasant surprises, Fritz decided to pass himself off as a Don Juan. In his discussions with colleagues from the German legation, he frequently spoke teasingly of the “pretty Swiss women, who were not all that timid.” One night, he spent a few hours in a brothel in Bern (Café Colombine), after which he made an appointment with a local doctor who specialized in venereal diseases. At the end of the visit, he was presented with a bill, which he carefully preserved in order to have concrete evidence available in the event of a later interrogation.

On Tuesday, October 12, 1943, Fritz had to leave for Berlin. Before his departure, the Americans agreed with him about ways of improving their future collaboration. It was not certain whether Fritz would be able to return to Bern anytime soon: Diplomatic courier assignments were handed out sparingly. Could they figure out a secure and regular means of communication? Sending mail to Ernst Kocherthaler, as Fritz had done with his September 16 letter, was much too dangerous for everyone. “You have to be much more cautious!” the Americans admonished him.

One idea was decided on: Fritz could from time to time send to a third person based in Bern a perfectly innocuous message on an ordinary postcard. Alerted by this signal, the Americans would know that Dr. Bur had brought home to Obernai “material” provided by Fritz in Berlin. An American agent could come to get the package in Alsace a few days later. The envoy would be introduced as M. or Mme. König. It was decided that Fritz’s “mailbox” in Bern would be that of Kocherthaler’s brother-in-law, Walter Schuepp. A librarian by profession, Walter Schuepp was, according to Fritz, a “good Swiss citizen” who was perfectly ordinary. He had the twofold advantage of being completely unnoticed in the local scene and of living very near the OSS offices in Bern (his address was Gryphenhübeliweg 19). Even though they were not really very close, Ernst Kocherthaler trusted him enough to involve him in this delicate enterprise.

And suppose the Americans wanted to contact their agent in Berlin? Fritz proposed a scenario: “One of your contacts in Berlin just has to call me at my office (telephone number: 11.00.13) claiming to be ‘Georg Merz.’ We’ll arrange to meet at my apartment on Kurfürstendamm.” Dulles and Mayer carefully noted this proposal. What Fritz did not know was that apart from him, the Americans had no contacts in Berlin. Even if they had, they never would have sent one of their agents to Fritz’s apartment, not yet being able to state with certainty whether he was a sincere friend of the Allies or a double agent working for the Gestapo.

Fritz was delighted with these secret arrangements. The more schemes and complicated tricks there were, the happier he was. He insisted that he be informed by certain coded signals whether his messages had in fact been received. Thanks to his contacts in business circles who were constantly going back and forth between Switzerland and the Reich, Ernst Kocherthaler could have food parcels sent to Fritz, containing sardines, butter, coffee… These parcels, Fritz suggested, could be sent at regular intervals but would contain coffee only if the messages from Berlin had been received in Bern. The Americans and Kocherthaler were not enthusiastic, but they promised Fritz that they would do as he wished.

Before leaving, “Kaiser” wanted to repay the 200 Swiss francs that he had been given on his first trip by Allen Dulles. In order to do this, he had brought with him two gold rings (probably the wedding rings from his two marriages). He wanted to exchange them for money at a jewelry shop in Bern. The Americans dissuaded him, telling him that he should use his time for more useful things. They nevertheless agreed to keep the two rings as mementos of him.