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

Fritz had managed to secure an assignment to Switzerland. This was his third visit to Bern since August. Because of the holidays at the end of the year, there was no other candidate for the trip. By going, he was doing a service for Fräulein von Heimerdinger, to whom he confessed that he was going “to talk to German émigré circles in Switzerland,” no longer attempting to justify his trip by the formalities of his divorce. The only difficulty was to provide a motive for this new absence to his boss, Karl Ritter, who finally signed his orders and asked Fritz to bring back a box of good cigars from Brazil, which he paid for, as usual, in advance. It took Fritz two days to travel from Berlin to Bern. The Anhalter Bahnhof had been bombed: the building was still standing but all the tracks had been destroyed. He had to go to Potsdam to take the train.

Fritz stayed in Bern over the holidays. Every night, he saw the Americans for many hours. It was on the occasion of this trip that he gave Allen Dulles von Papen’s cables alluding to Cicero, along with many other things. Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer had never had to absorb so much information all at once. Fritz had brought more than two hundred documents, not only copies of cables but also handwritten notes that only Ernst Kocherthaler was able to decipher.

In the course of this third meeting with Kolbe, the Americans gathered information of all kinds. Night after night, Fritz unleashed a torrent of information. Revelations of a military nature were particularly interesting. Kolbe indicated the location of a Junkers factory where engines for the new Messerschmitt 262 were assembled, the first jet plane in the Luftwaffe (in Dessau, south of Berlin). He also provided one of the places where the new secret German rockets were stored. Fritz Kolbe did not know the name of these weapons, but Professor Sauerbruch had spoken to him of a site where he had seen launching pads aimed at England when he was traveling in Belgium. This was probably Helfaut-Wizernes, near Saint-Omer in the northern part of France that had been annexed to Belgium. The position was bombed some weeks later (from March 11 to September 1, 1944), although it is not known whether the information provided by Fritz had helped to identify the target.

Fritz Kolbe was well informed about the results of the most recent Allied bombing in Germany and the rest of Europe. He spoke at length about the ruins of Berlin and described daily life in the capital of the Reich. He revealed that the oil fields of Ploesti in Rumania had resumed production after being heavily bombed in August 1943. He also spoke of atrocities committed in the occupied countries. A cable from Athens dated January 2, 1944 revealed, for example, that as reprisal against the resistance, all the male inhabitants of the village of Kalavrita in the Peloponnese had been massacred, including young boys.

The most substantial information provided by Kolbe concerned the international relations of the Reich, particularly its links with the members of the Axis and with neutral countries close to Germany, such as Spain and Portugal. It was clear from reading the dispatches from Berlin that that Europe was beginning to fall apart and was now held together only by force. Even fear of the Soviets was no longer a sufficient adhesive force.

With reference to Italy, the cables brought by Fritz sketched an image of a defeated country, torn in two, under the iron grip of the Nazis (the north and the capital had been occupied by the Wehrmacht since September 1943). One dispatch reported recent discussions in Belluno, in the Italian Alps, between Mussolini and the German ambassador to Rome, Rudolf Rahn. “Mussolini attacked the German scorched-earth policy in a recent discussion with Rahn. The former said that this policy would make the Italian people so angry that it would result in preventing any effective Italian cooperation in fighting alongside the Nazis.”

On Spain, one dispatch described in a few words the state of relations between the two countries: “Conti [Franco] still wants Germans to win…. Unfavorable news from battlefront bothers Conti who wants news of military developments from HQ.” To be sure, Spain was continuing to supply strategic materials to Germany—one dispatch provided the tonnage of tungsten delivered by Spain to Germany between January and September 1943 (more than seven hundred tons). These exports were disguised as “shipments of sardines,” sometimes as “shipments of oranges,” and a little later as “shipments of lead.” But Franco’s ministers were not all in agreement about continuing these exports and some were beginning to think that it was time to shift to the side of the Allies. At the same time, Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, the Reich’s envoy to Lisbon, was warning Berlin that Portugal intended to increase the prices for its raw materials (tungsten, especially) shipped to Germany.

The Americans were probably a little disappointed that Fritz had brought so little material coming from Japan. But there was an interesting cable from Tokyo, dated December 20, 1943, in which the German ambassador reported that he had heard that “Stalin has recently been a victim of ‘Herzasthma’ and his physicians have urged that he take a rest.”

The hesitations of central European countries that were allied with Berlin appeared openly. All of a sudden, thanks to Kolbe, it was possible to see the gradual crumbling of Hitler’s alliances, prelude to a direct assumption of power by the Reich authorities. Bulgaria and Rumania seemed to be the first to want to change sides. Sofia, October 29, 1943: “The state of mind of the Bulgarian population is growing much worse.” Bucharest, November 1943: “The situation in Rumania is becoming serious. The arms supplied by Germany remain in the country and are not used in the fight against Russia.” Indications of gradual detachment by each of these allied countries proliferated in the press (there were no more attacks on Stalin, war propaganda grew weaker, and there was better treatment of the Jews, according to the documents provided by Kolbe). With reference to Hungary, Fritz delivered more ambiguous reports. “Hungary remains firmly on the side of the Reich. What can the Americans offer us? Guarantee our borders?” explained Otto Hatz, a high official in the Hungarian intelligence services in mid-December.

Many documents had to do with France. Fritz Kolbe allowed them to see, almost day by day, the serious crisis of confidence in the fall of 1943 between Vichy and the Reich, which would lead to increased control by Berlin over the regime and the gradual establishment of a “militia state.” In late October 1943, the German ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, revealed to Ribbentrop that Pétain was trying to make contact with the Allies. The marshal’s immediate entourage was subject to intensified suspicion on the part of the Germans. Conversely, Pierre Laval enjoyed the confidence of the German authorities and was constantly seeking Berlin’s support in his struggle for influence against Pétain. In addition, in a conversation with Roland Krug von Nidda, Otto Abetz’s representative at Vichy, on October 27, 1943, “he requested that he be allowed to undertake the job of cleaning up Pétain’s group of associates.” Another cable signed by Otto Abetz on December 3 considered the possibility of forcing Pétain to resign without directly offending French public opinion. “For French consumption,” Abetz wrote, “it is essential to show that Pétain failed in an historic mission and led the country almost to ruin…. Inside France, the Pétain regime produced national stagnation and reaction.”

Abetz wrote again on December 14, 1943: “The increasing poverty of the French laboring masses has created the fear of a gradual shift toward communism.” And on December 16: “Doriot’s headquarters imply that they do not wish to participate in the government unless the Cabinet is selected by Doriot himself.” And on December 19, a dispatch provided a statistical summary of attacks committed by the French Resistance. The figures gave evidence of a continuous increase.