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

The information about Hungary was not of a military nature but concerned the fate of the Jewish population. Fritz Kolbe had sent to the Americans some cables from Budapest, one of which said the following: “There were said to be one hundred and twenty thousand Jews in Budapest including children who were unfit for work and whose fate had not yet been decided. This was said to depend largely on available transportation. The person responsible was said to be SS-Obersturmbannführer Eichmann.” Another document, based on information dating from late October 1944, indicated that “the remaining Jews in Budapest” were to be placed “in ghettos at the edge of town.” For some of them, according to another document, “preparations were under way for a proposed trek on foot. The Jews were to be… taken to the Reich territory for work in the labor service.” There was no clear mention of the extermination of the Jews, but of forced labor and “conscription.” At every step there was the name of Eichmann, SS-Obersturmbannführer. This person was “not identified further,” as indicated by a footnote in one of the cables of the Boston series.

By that date, the American leaders knew very well what awaited the deportees. But the Boston cables repeated word for word the vocabulary of the German diplomatic cables: “Latest available statistics showed that conscription of the province during the summer of 1944 had amounted to 440,000 people.” In fact, these 440,000 Jews had been sent to Auschwitz. All that remained was the Jewish community of Budapest, which had been provisionally saved by the changing political circumstances in the city. In early July, Marshal Horthy had decided to put an end to the deportations in order to facilitate a rapprochement between Hungary and the Allies, and he had eventually announced his intention to leave the Axis. Berlin reacted harshly. On October 15, 1944, Horthy was brutally replaced by a man entirely under Berlin’s thumb, Ferenc Szálasi, leader of the Arrow Cross movement. From that point on, Hungary was one of the last ramparts of the Reich, and the “final solution” was pursued there systematically, beginning with the elimination of the Jews of Budapest.

Washington, December 1944

What would become of Fritz Kolbe after the war? This question began to be asked in Washington in late 1944.

We are asked specifically what we are prepared to do in their behalf [those of German nationality who work for us behind German lines]. In regard to offering firm guarantees of protection and post armistice privileges to Germans whom we recruit and who work loyally for our organization. Among these privileges would be permission for entry into the United States after the War, the placing of their earnings on deposit in an American bank and the like…. On this we will need authority which only you can give.

These words were addressed to President Roosevelt in a letter dated December 1, 1944.

A few days later, the president responded negatively to the head of the OSS:

I do not believe that we should offer any guarantees of protection in the post-hostilities period to Germans who are working for your organization. I think that the carrying out of any such guarantees would be difficult and probably widely misunderstood both in this country and abroad. We may expect that the number of Germans who are anxious to save their skins and property by coming over to the side of the United Nations at the last moment will rapidly increase. Among them may be some who should properly be tried for war crimes or at least arrested for active participation in Nazi activities. Even with the necessary controls you mention I am not prepared to authorize the giving of guarantees.

There would be no American sanctuary for the German friends of the Allies. Provisions of this kind could have applied to Fritz Kolbe and Hans-Bernd Gisevius, to whom Allen Dulles wanted to be able to offer some postwar prospects. The intransigence of the American president was in conformity with the policy that had been his officially since January 1943: The surrender of Germany had to be “unconditional” and nothing should be done to encourage any hypothetical internal resistance.

The technical evaluation of the source named “George Wood” was completed in late 1944. Lieutenant Thomas Dunn, one of the best analysts of the Kappa material in the counterespionage department of the OSS, received a summary inventory of the best deliveries of “Wood.” This inventory had been prepared by Colonel McCormack. The document indicated which messages sent by the Berlin agent since his first visit to Bern in August 1943 had been of “considerable value.” Files 215 to 218, which covered the reports of Generals Kretschmer and Gronau on Japan, headed the list. They were followed by the Kappa messages dealing with clandestine deliveries of tungsten from Spain to Germany (373 and 402). McCormack’s inventory next mentioned everything concerning the “great game” of diplomacy in Europe. They had been able to follow the shifting alliances in central Europe (Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria) and life behind the scenes in all the puppet regimes controlled by the Reich (particularly Vichy) with great precision thanks to “Wood.” Colonel McCormack cited as an example cable number 386, which illustrated in great detail the anxieties of Berlin in July 1944, concerning Bulgaria and its inclination to leave the Axis (which it in fact abandoned in the late summer of 1944). He also mentioned cable number 388, which spoke of German plans to move some key institutions of the Vichy regime to the east of France. Oddly, Colonel McCormack did not mention any of the Kappa cables dealing with military production sites, particularly for the V-1 and V-2 rockets. Nor was there any reference in McCormack’s inventory to the fate of the Jews of Rome or Hungary.

Bern, January–February 1945

Fritz Kolbe was able to return to Bern in late January 1945. He had tried to get to Switzerland for the Christmas holidays, but the confederation authorities had rejected his visa application for unexplained reasons. On January 28, 1945, Allen Dulles wrote to Washington that

“George Wood” had arrived with two hundred photographed documents. Many of them had probably been hastily done: They were out of focus and a substantial part of the film was unreadable. “These documents are harder to decipher than a crossword puzzle,” Dulles wrote to his Washington colleagues.

The trip had been even more uncomfortable than in April 1944, the date of his last visit. Fritz had made the trip with a colleague from the Foreign Ministry, because the rule was now that a courier never traveled alone. The journey from Berlin to Basel had taken sixty rather than the normal sixteen hours: two days and two nights in a railroad car without a window. The line now ran through Nuremberg, Ulm, and Friedrichshafen, on the shores of Lake Constance. Fritz and his colleague had spent a night there in a hotel infested by the Gestapo. The next day, they had taken a boat across the lake to get to Switzerland.

As he had the first time, Fritz carried the documents in a little box hidden between his legs: fortunately, film was much less bulky than bundles of paper. This batch contained a series of cables dealing with recent high-level negotiations between the Swiss National Bank and the German Reichsbank. On December 10, 1944, Ernst Weber, president of the Swiss National Bank, had invited Emil Puhl, vice president of the Reichsbank, to dinner. The principal subject under discussion had been the purchase of German gold by Switzerland. For reasons of security, Weber “would take charge personally of the transfer of gold across the border.” In exchange, the Reichsbank agreed to facilitate the delivery of German coal to Switzerland. The discussions had taken place in “the usual atmosphere of trust,” as Otto Köcher, chief of the German legation in Bern, noted.