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

Berlin, October 1944

The reading and processing of “George Wood’s” letters were now part of the ordinary work of the Bern office of the OSS. Meanwhile in Berlin, Fritz’s life was becoming ever more difficult and dangerous. To the first serious food shortages in late October was added one of the coldest winters that Germany had experienced for a long time. But above all, the danger of being discovered was constantly increasing.

Fritz was beginning to learn how to use the camera supplied by the Americans. His favorite place to work was Adolphe Jung’s room in the Charité hospital. According to the French surgeon:

In the hospital, the documents were worked on until late at night. Sometimes he [Fritz] started right in to photograph them, fastening them with clips or thumbtacks onto a piece of cardboard well exposed to daylight or several electric lights. He had an excellent little camera that took extremely precise pictures two centimeters by two centimeters. I helped him as best I could. When he had to leave, he left the documents with me, particularly the ones that had not been photographed. I was often very uneasy. In my room I had only an old desk that did not lock very securely. Usually I took the papers and put them in n envelope that I sealed. On it I wrote Manuscrit pour le Journal de Médecine and locked it in the desk. At night I jumped when the sirens went off. I hastily dressed and went downstairs with a small suitcase and a leather briefcase containing my essential papers, into which I also stuffed the documents. Sometimes I was forced to leave them upstairs. I imagined a bomb landing on the hospital and half destroying the room, and I saw the personnel and the firemen emptying out the room to save books and papers and throwing everything in a pile. What would happen to me if I was wounded? Suppose they discovered all the documents in my possession. What would happen if one day one of the Nazis decided to search my room while I was working?

The day before the diplomatic pouch was to leave for Switzerland, on October 4, 1944, Fritz went to the mail service of the Foreign Ministry to register one or two packages that he wished to send to Bern. He found himself facing a new employee whom he did not know, a young man full of zeal who began a thorough search of the contents of the packages—clothing supposedly left behind in Berlin by accident belonging to a colleague in the Bern legation. The suspicious employee went through shirts, trousers, and even pairs of socks, inspecting every nook and cranny. Fritz watched in terror as the young man got ready to unfold a coat, the inside pockets of which held the rolls of film he was sending to the Americans. Fritz had his hand on the little revolver that he always carried with him. But suddenly another colleague came into the room. Fritz engaged the newcomer in “an interesting conversation.” The conscientious employee took part in the discussion and stopped concentrating on his work. He closed up the packages, put on the regulation seals, and put them in a large canvas sack for the next day’s train to Bern. After that moment of extreme tension, Fritz locked himself in his office and drank a double cognac. “My knees were a little wobbly,” he confessed many years later.

Another day in the fall of 1944, Fritz was visited at home by his Blockwart, the local party official assigned among other things to watch the population in the neighborhood. This routine questioning could be dangerous. Fritz did not know whether he was under suspicion after the failed plot of July 20. But he was reassured to learn that the Blockwart was a decent bus driver without malice or brutality. Fritz did not hide the fact that he was not a member of the party. But he denied listening to the BBC and presented himself as being neither a “moaner” nor a “spreader of false rumors.” At the end of the conversation, the Blockwart asked Fritz for his opinion about the war: “I hope with all my heart for our final victory,” said Fritz. The inspector was obviously very pleased. The expression “final victory” [ Endsieg ] had had an effect. The minor party official conscientiously wrote the expression down in his notebook and let Fritz know that his report would not be negative.

On still another occasion, while he was walking to his mother’s carrying “material” (documents to be photographed), a large air raid caught him crossing Alexanderplatz. He was forced to seek refuge in a public underground shelter. On the way down the stairs, he said a prayer that he would not lose consciousness. If that were to happen, the documents might have been found and he would be done for.

Bern, November 1944

During the month of November, Allen Dulles continued to improve the working conditions in the Bern office of the OSS. The office was equipped with a radio transmitter that was installed in an attic in the Dufourstrasse buildings. For the first time, it was no longer necessary to use the Swiss mails or the “cover” of American diplomatic representation to transmit information to Washington and London. The Swiss secret services, who were probably aware of the existence of this illegal and undeclared transmitter, behaved as though nothing had happened and did not carry out a search.

Allen Dulles was gaining increased autonomy and influence. He received more and more visits in his Bern office. The time was long gone when his information was considered with some disdain by Washington headquarters. He was far from infallible, however. Dulles was excessively optimistic by nature and thought that the end of the war was near. To be sure, Aix-la-Chapelle had fallen on October 21, 1944. But Germany still had ten million men in uniform. The OSS office in Bern did not at all foresee the Ardennes counteroffensive that would begin in the middle of December.

Toward the middle of November, a new message from Fritz reached Bern. This time the rolls of film had been hidden in a box containing a watch to be repaired. The Foreign Ministry courier, as usual, was not aware of the real content of what he was carrying. One hundred pages of documents had been photographed. The most interesting messages had to do with Japan, Hungary, and the latest developments in German armaments.

Fritz revealed precise details about the V-2 rockets and added personal comments to suggest priorities for action:

There are said to be V-2 launching pads in the Eifel Mountains area. There is an assembly plant in Rübeland which is almost entirely subterranean, on the railroad line from Elbingerode to Blankenberg. It is felt that the bombing of railroads and road communications would produce excellent results for the Allies… A-4 is said to be the designation applied to the V-2 bomb by the experts. It is said to be manufactured at Saint Gallen, some forty kilometers southeast of Steyr in Austria. The parts are assembled in the Mittel Deutsche Werke in Hartz, Germany. The buildings where this work is done are all located underground. The smashing of the rail shipment lines would be the most effective way to cripple this production.

A little further on, he reported that “General Jodl sent a wire in the first week of October 1944 to the Commander-in-Chief in the west saying that this was not a propitious time, politically, to launch these bombs against Paris, and that no attack should be made in that region for the present.”

With reference to Japan, there were dozens of details that could be used by the Allied armies. The Japanese were expecting an American landing in the Philippines in mid-November, and they were preparing for a major British offensive against Rangoon, Bangkok, and Saigon. Marshal Terauchi, supreme commander of Japanese forces in the Southwest Pacific, was preparing the withdrawal of his headquarters from Manila to Saigon. The Japanese authorities were beginning to work on preparing their public opinion for a German defeat.