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

After July 20, the Americans heard nothing from Fritz until mid-August. Knowing his reckless character, they anxiously wondered whether he had been taken in the Gestapo’s nets. But in mid-August, OSS Bern finally received a letter from Berlin through Ernst Kocherthaler. Allen Dulles was able to send a reassuring message to Washington: “His position apparently unaffected by putsch but he gives little info about it stating that notwithstanding July 20 he continues to work with Volksmiliz.”

In the letter he sent to Kocherthaler, Fritz said that his greatest hope was to see a quick end to the war in the West, while it continued in the East: “Communism is not what Germany needs…. More and more, people here are realizing that.” On the basis of this conviction, Fritz had concocted his own battle plan: “The Russians will drive to the Oder. At that time the Americans will land parachute troops in Berlin. On the critical day I’ll be in position with from 30 to 100 men. Can’t I get by radio advance word on when and where? Peter, Peter, say on the 9 P.M. cast? I am the only one who knows my plan in detail. I haven’t let anyone in on the secret.”

Ernst Kocherthaler took it upon himself to transmit to the Americans the complicated secret codes that Fritz wanted to use in his contacts with the American army: “‘X Bäume wachsen’ = in X/2 hours American troops will land in Berlin. ‘X blühende Bäume wachsen’ = A. D. with troops will land in X/2 hours. ‘X Bäume blühen’ = A. D. will join in X/2 hours.”

Allen Dulles and Gerald Mayer probably smiled when they learned of this naïve and appealing message. What interested them in this letter of mid-August 1944 were not Fritz’s personal battle plans but the invaluable information that he continued to deliver.

In late August, a new series of Kappa cables was sent to London and Washington (they were given the name “Kagust” for Kappa and August). In this new batch, there were troubling details on the exercise of Soviet power, following what had happened in Poland. Stalin had brutally abandoned his allies in the Polish National Army, and Ribbentrop had hastened to disseminate this news to the principal German diplomatic posts. A dispatch from the Deutsches Nachrichten-Büro (DNB, the official press agency) dated August 9, 1944 reported the disarmament and imprisonment of Polish units to the rear of the Russian front. The officers had been deported to Kiev. Among them, the non-communists had disappeared from one day to the next. Ribbentrop saw in the event the emergence of a new “Polish enslavement.” For once, the Americans were tempted to believe German propaganda.

The other details in this “delivery” were devoted to the more usual questions of the Reich and its satellites and allies. Through “George Wood,” the Americans learned in particular that the Germans intended to revive the National Assembly of the Third Republic in France in the hope of placing French institutional legality on their side. At the same time, the German authorities wanted to install the principal French institutions “in a major eastern city,” perhaps Strasbourg. The Banque de France, the secret services, the radio services, the First Regiment of France, the Milice, and the Journal Officiel were to be moved. Surprising, and now pathetic, efforts.

Reading these documents, the Americans in Bern asked themselves a very simple question: How could they get “Wood” to come back to Switzerland? Allen Dulles wanted to use the device that had already served the purpose: Fritz’s divorce. Lita Schoop, Fritz’s second wife, was in detention in East Africa, like thousands of other Germans living in British territory. Using his daily professional contacts with London, Dulles tried to organize the repatriation of Lita Schoop to Switzerland, thinking that Fritz could thereby more easily justify a trip to Zurich “for personal reasons.” Germany and South Africa periodically exchanged their respective nationals. During the summer of 1944, some Swedish steamships entered the port of Lisbon with dozens of German families on board. Lita Schoop was not among the passengers. Allen Dulles never found out why his plan had failed.

Bern/Washington, September 1944

In September 1944, Switzerland was plunged into a new world. Annemasse and Annecy had been liberated on August 18, Paris on August 25, and Lyon on September 3. In September, the American Seventh Army, under the command of General Alexander Patch, reached the Swiss border near Geneva. Following the Allied landings in Normandy and on the Mediterranean coast, a great breath of fresh air was rushing through the West, and Switzerland’s isolation was coming to an end.

Allen Dulles took advantage of the new context to go back to Washington, passing through London. He made the entire trip in the company of General Donovan, who wanted to discuss various questions related to the future. Dulles was away from Bern between early September and late October. He spent a few weeks in New York and visited OSS headquarters in Washington, which he found hard to recognize, so great had the changes been. Now it was necessary to wear a badge in order to be authorized to enter the building, which had become a veritable fortress. The amateur spies had become professionals.

In discussing the future of the OSS with him, General Donovan expressed the view, shared by Dulles, that once peace had been restored, the United States would need more than ever a highly specialized intelligence agency, directly responsible to the president and operating around the world. The OSS was already becoming as interested in the Soviet Union as in Nazi Germany, if not more so. These new prospects made the question of the placement of the principal figures in American intelligence a matter of urgency. During the trip, there was much discussion of Allen Dulles’s professional future. He wanted to become the European head of the organization, taking the place of David Bruce in London. But General Donovan had a different view: He wanted to place Dulles in charge of the German branch of the OSS as soon as Hitler’s regime had surrendered.

Asked to suggest priorities for action in postwar Germany, Dulles proposed to continue the work he had carried out in Switzerland:

Immediately contact a series of persons already placed in strategic positions in Germany whose existence is known only to us and who could be contacted only by us because of the carefully created relationships over the past two years. These persons, if they survive the German collapse, could be most helpful in obtaining secret records and files of certain German government departments and in giving us inside information as to the exact organization and location of secret government agencies and their new hideouts.

Back in Europe, Allen Dulles passed through Paris, where a major OSS office had just been established at 70, avenue des Champs Élysées. In Bern, he thoroughly reorganized his “shop,” which had been run during his absence by his assistant, Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz. Dulles began by supplying his office with a luxurious fleet of automobiles. Before then, he had had available only a small Ford, whose use was limited by the lack of fuel coupons. After September 1944, he acquired a Chevrolet and a Packard, as well as a front-wheel-drive Citroën equipped with a gas generator. At the time, the American legation had only a single car, reserved for the envoy, Leland Harrison.

Dulles established new posts in Bern, Geneva, Zurich, and Basel. He assembled a team of new recruits charged with setting up networks in Germany, on the model of what had been done in France before the June 6 landing. A Swiss intellectual whom he had met in New York, Emmy Rado, was given the task of making contacts in the German churches. Another brilliant mind, Gerhard van Arkel, was given the same kind of mission for the working-class circles of the old unions of the Weimar Republic. Everything had to be built from the bottom up. Except for Fritz Kolbe, the OSS had no regular source of information in the heart of the Reich. Hans-Bernd Gisevius and his friends in the Abwehr had been neutralized after the failure of the July 20 plot. Those who had not been executed were struggling to survive and were no longer operational.