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

Berlin, March 1945

March 1945 brought general and headlong flight from Berlin. The Russians were in the process of recapturing Poland. Many people, particularly important officials of the Nazi Party, were attempting to leave the city. The others were forcibly enlisted in the Volkssturm, a pathetic people’s militia armed with improvised weapons. Nothing was more precious at the time than a vehicle with a full fuel tank. A car could not be found, even in miserable condition, for less than fifteen or twenty thousand marks (bear in mind that Fritz Kolbe’s monthly salary was nine hundred marks). The price of a liter of gasoline was forty marks or twenty cigarettes. Forged papers and passes were extremely expensive.

It was at this very moment that Fritz was given a confidential mission by his boss. Nothing professional: Karl Ritter had a mistress whom he wanted at all costs to send to safety to his house in Bavaria. She was a singer of light music, used to dressing in the latest fashion and never separated from her makeup case. She had a two-year-old daughter. Fritz was asked to drive the young woman and her child to the other end of the country in the ambassador’s official Mercedes. In order to allow the vehicle to get through checkpoints, he was given orders for Switzerland, duly stamped by the relevant services of the ministry.

“In March 1945, Kolbe came to the hospital for the last time,” wrote Adolphe Jung. “He had received orders to go to Switzerland…. All night, documents were photographed. Everything that had any importance for the American embassy was set on the stand facing the camera. He was nervous and worried. He left us knowing that Berlin would soon be literally crushed by Allied aircraft, that we would probably have to suffer through the final struggle of the Nazis against the Russian army. His fiancée was crying. I myself was worried. Would I be able to see my country and my family again? He promised to have us picked up as soon as possible on a plane by our friend D. [Dulles].” When he left, Fritz gave instructions to his three friends in the ministry, Fräulein von Heimerdinger, Karl Dumont, and Willy Pohle: “When the Americans arrive, you have to go to an American officer, claim to belong to a resistance group, and give the password ‘George 25900.’”

Fritz left Berlin on March 16 or 18, 1945. Professor Sauerbruch had asked him to take his wife along, so that, including the baby, there were four people in the car. Everyone was squeezed into the front seat, since the back seat was filled with an impressive quantity of suitcases and Oriental rugs belonging to Karl Ritter and his young companion. The passengers had to shift their legs to the right so that Fritz could operate the gearshift. Comical at first, this situation soon became embarrassing.

At first, Fritz intended to leave at breakfast time, but an American air raid forced him to delay getting on the road until noon. The sky was gray, the cold biting, and there was ice on the roads. Fritz could see nothing in the limousine’s rearview mirror because of everything piled in the back seat (there was even a baby carriage tied to the top of the car). The journey promised to be arduous; they had to drive early in the morning or in the early evening to avoid attacks from hedgehopping enemy fighters. The brakes on the Mercedes did not work well, and the car broke down on the very first night. They had to be towed by a truck belonging to the SS, secured through the savoir faire of Karl Ritter. The SS truck had a charcoal-burning motor and went no faster than thirty kilometers an hour, with frequent stops to clean the pipes, so that it took almost four days to get from Berlin to Bavaria. Between Berlin and Munich, there were four to six identity checks, carried out either by the army or by SS units.

Crossing the country from north to south, they had the impression that they were in a scene from the Thirty Years’ War. Families of refugees were walking toward no specific destination; they could see dead animals in the fields; they came across burned-out vehicles on the sides of the road. The branches of the trees were often covered with strips of aluminum foil dropped by enemy planes to jam German radar. The singer and her baby spent the entire trip crying and screaming. Fritz was more than impatient to reach Bavaria.

When he got to the town of Kempten, in the Allgäu region of Bavaria, Fritz was finally able to rid himself of Karl Ritter’s mistress, the baby, the baby carriage, the car, and the SS. Too bad about the car, he thought, but the escort was a little burdensome. Still accompanied by Professor Sauerbruch’s wife, he then went to Ottobeuren, not far from there, where the prelate Georg Schreiber was waiting for him, living in hiding in a large Benedictine monastery. Fritz was able to rest for a day or two in Ottobeuren, although he continued his activities. He took the time to photograph in the monastery library some documents that he had brought with him from Berlin. Thanks to the protection of the monks, he was not obliged to register with the local police as a traveler who was passing through. The atmosphere of the cloister impressed him a great deal, especially the meals in the great hall of the monastic community. The feeling was restful, and the food in Bavaria was better than in Berlin: potatoes were not rationed.

The pause was short-lived. A few days later, Fritz Kolbe and Margot Sauerbruch took the train from Ottobeuren to Weiler, an Allgäu village that was the home of Wilhelm Mackeben, a businessman, former diplomat, and friend of Fritz. Despite the short distance, they had to change trains twice. As they were waiting for the connection at Memmingen, Fritz and Margot Sauerbruch had the terrifying experience of being stopped by a Gestapo brigade that took them into a windowless office to be interrogated. After a few frightening moments, Fritz realized that this was probably a simple routine procedure. Margot’s suitcase was inspected but not Fritz’s bag, which contained some highly compromising rolls of film. Fritz grew angry and demanded to be treated with all the respect due an official courier of the Foreign Ministry, pointing out that his papers were in order, including his exit visa from Germany. The policeman called the Gestapo in Munich to verify that Herr Fritz Kolbe was indeed someone from the Foreign Ministry on an official mission. They were finally able to leave without further trouble. Professor Sauerbruch, who was in the area, was reunited with his wife, and Fritz continued the journey alone.

When he reached the village of Weiler, Fritz met with his friend Wilhelm Mackeben, who kept the doors of his chalet open to all kinds of people in a constant stream: During his stay, Fritz met a Peruvian woman, an Iranian student from Teheran who had been stranded in Germany since the beginning of the war, and two German officers with whom he had a long nighttime conversation. These two Wehrmacht officers were part of a detachment assigned to transport in trucks a substantial quantity of secret documents to be hidden in southern Germany. With a knowing air, Fritz pretended to know what was involved, which allowed him to learn more. The trucks were transporting documents on the Soviet Union, the Red Army, and even a list of pro-German agents infiltrated into the USSR. They belonged to a military espionage service with expertise on Russia, and their leaders intended to use their treasure as a bargaining chip with the Allies once the war was over.

Very pleased at having gathered this information, Fritz resumed his journey to Switzerland. He went to Bregenz on a bicycle that had been graciously lent to him by Mackeben’s Iranian student friend. In Bregenz, the Swiss consulate stamped his diplomatic passport without difficulty and confirmed the validity of his visa, good for a period of five days. It was April 2, 1945. The next day, he took the train at Sankt Margarethen for Zurich and Bern. The comfort was unexpected and there were no police barriers. The only check that Fritz had to go through was a medical check on entering Swiss territory: It was verified that he had neither dysentery, nor smallpox, nor scabies.