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

Ernst reassured him: It was better to be an object of contempt than of suspicion. Solitude, all things considered, was better than prison. Kocherthaler himself felt deeply isolated. “My friends are becoming increasingly rare,” he said. “Sometimes, I’m looking for a word, a quotation, and there is no one to help me. I have the impression that I am unlearning German. The worst thing is that now in Madrid we’re exposed to denunciation and ill will from some members of the German community. Informers are everywhere. As though the Nazis had nothing better to do than to spend their time persecuting émigrés! I’ve learned that they are spreading falsehoods about me. I’m suspected of selling arms to the communists.”

Kocherthaler had decided to take his three daughters out of the German school, where the atmosphere was oppressive. Despite his friendship with the ambassador, he had noticed that he was impotent in the face of the growing influence of the party. “Our friendship, dear Fritz Kolbe, is for me as unexpected as it is pleasant! You are the only German I want to talk to now,” he confessed.

The rapport between the two men was sealed. Fritz began to call his friend “Ernesto” or “don Ernesto.” He could not follow everything that Ernst Kocherthaler told him (particularly when he spoke about political economy or about Keynes, one of whose books he had translated into German). But he was thoroughly charmed by the man and thought that—after the Englishman in the Harz Mountains—this was the second “gentleman” whom he had had the opportunity to meet.

The rapport between the two men was all the more surprising because their lives to this point had been very different. Everything separated them: age, social background, culture. Before the war, Kocherthaler had carried on advanced studies in law and economics. At the time, Kolbe was attending primary school in a working class neighborhood of Berlin. In 1917, when one was nursing his wound from the battle of the Somme, the other was leaving secondary school prematurely to fulfill his military obligations as a young civil agent with Wolff, the German press agency of the time.

After his four months of service in 1918, Kolbe had in January 1919 taken a position as a trainee administrator in the Berlin office of the German railroads. He thought that this path would open the way to a career in Africa, “an old childhood dream,” he admitted with some amusement. Unfortunately for his plans, Cameroon and Togo were no longer colonies of the Reich after the Treaty of Versailles. Chance dictated that Kolbe soon found himself in the accounting division of the German railway system. “How boring!” he acknowledged.

Fritz wanted to get out of this dead end. He took evening classes to complete his secondary education. Once he had his diploma, he decided to take concentrated courses in a business school to learn economics and languages (English, French, and Spanish). By doing this, he counted on improving his status in the railway administration. The wager paid off: In 1922 he was put in charge of the freight department of a large Berlin station. In February 1922, he was promoted to the title of “chief station, freight, and currency administrator.” But he soon grew weary of counting locomotives, train cars, and boxes of freight.

Finally he had the opportunity to join the Foreign Ministry in March 1925. The ministry had positions open in consular services. Fritz Kolbe applied, took a test, and was accepted. After a few weeks of an internal training course and after being declared fit to serve in all climates, including the tropics, he was sent to Madrid.

The Spanish capital was beautiful, with a quality of life far superior to that in Berlin. The expenses of a long stay abroad—particularly moving costs—were, to be sure, far from negligible, but the ministry was generous and often advanced money if requested. Of course, inflation and the 1929 crisis had spared no one. Fritz Kolbe’s salary was paid in marks; he had deposited his savings in the “bank for German officials” and had lost everything at the end of the 1920s. But the cost of living was lower in Madrid than in Germany, the atmosphere less oppressive than in Berlin, and family outings in the Pyrenees or on the Catalan coast were a taste of paradise. As for the advantages of the job, they were significant: Fritz traveled throughout Spain and even into France. On several occasions, he had replaced the vacationing German consul in Seville. He had taken the opportunity to visit Andalusia and was amused often to be taken there for a native of Moorish origin.

Madrid, December 1935

A kind of intimacy developed, in their Spanish exile, between Kocherthaler, the upper-class German of Jewish ancestry, and Kolbe, the minor consular employee. By the end of 1935, the two men were no longer meeting in Madrid’s large cafés; it was too dangerous for Fritz, who was afraid that he was under surveillance, so they met at Kocherthaler’s home. One Sunday, toward the end of 1935, Fritz, Anita, and their young son Peter, then aged three, were invited to visit in the late afternoon. The family was rarely together; since 1933, Fritz was often alone in Madrid. Anita spent part of the year in a sanatorium in Germany, and little Peter in Berlin, living part of the time in his grandmother’s apartment and part of the time in a Red Cross shelter.

The day they had tea with the Kocherthalers, Fritz put on his best flannel suit. Although they were in Spain, the tea and cakes were definitely German. The apartment was spacious. Old master paintings on the walls (a Goya, a Canaletto) and the many antiques decorating the apartment made it look like a museum.

Ernst Kocherthaler had a passion for history and ancient mythology, with a particular predilection for Egypt. He explained to his guests that he was working on a project for a book on the theme of the “original God.” Fritz was a little distracted. He had just learned that he was being transferred to Warsaw and that he was going to leave Madrid early in 1936. He regretfully declined the invitation extended to him and his family to spend a few days vacation on Kocherthaler’s property in Malaga. Tea that day had a taste of farewell. Anita was pale and seemed only distantly connected to the conversation. She soon went to rest on a chaise longue. When Ernst sat down at the piano to play an andante from a Beethoven sonata, the apartment was suddenly filled with deep sadness. Fortunately, Ernst’s wife Martha, an elementary school teacher from Switzerland, cheered things up a bit. This was the first time that Fritz had met her. She too had been in the scouting movement as an adolescent and was passionately interested in discussing pedagogy.

Unfortunately, Anita Kolbe was exhausted and asked to go home.

Cape Town, October 20, 1939

The port of Cape Town was crowded. Hundreds of Germans were leaving South Africa because they had become undesirable in the country. England and France were at war with the Reich. The member countries of the Commonwealth (India, Australia, and New Zealand) had joined the conflict on September 3. South Africa, after a few days’ hesitation and a serious government crisis, had decided to side with London on September 6. General Smuts, in favor of joining the war against Germany, had taken over as prime minister from General Hertzog, who had favored neutrality.

The German community of South Africa was under strict surveillance. Dozens of arrests had already taken place. Many preferred to return home rather than risking internment on the charge of “intelligence with the enemy.” But the German liners of the Woermann Linie were no longer authorized to drop anchor in the ports of the Union of South Africa. The great repatriation was thus taking place under a neutral flag. That evening the Bloemfontein, a ship of the Holland Africa Line sailing to Antwerp, was mobbed by people wanting to leave. On the deck of the Dutch ship could be seen Germany’s acting consul in Cape Town, Fritz Kolbe. He waved a final farewell to his son. Standing on the dock, the seven-year-old child was dressed in Bavarian style, with gray-green lederhosen and a baggy white shirt. He held the hand of a young woman, and then he hung onto the skirts of an older woman (perhaps his grandmother). The little boy seemed to be saying: “Why are you leaving me?” His gaze was firm and he held back his tears. Fritz knew that he would never forget that look.