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

father of the Reformation: On Martin Luther, see his portrait in Hans-Jürgen Döscher, Die Braune Elite (Darmstadt, 1999), v. 2, pp. 179–91.

visas for foreign travel: Fritz Kolbe worked for Martin Luther and the “German” department until the summer or winter of 1940 (the dates differ according to available documents). Curriculum vitae prepared after the war (undated) and biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

extensive list of contacts: Martin Luther had managed to avoid legal trouble after involvement in some murky affairs when he was a municipal councilor in Zehlendorf (a Berlin district) shortly after Hitler’s accession to power. Döscher, Die Braune Elite.

away, on Rauchstrasse: It was Martin Luther who represented the Foreign Ministry at the Wannsee Conference on January 20, 1942, where a dozen high officials brought together by Reinhard Heydrich agreed in the course of an hour and a half on the practical organization of the “final solution.” In Ribbentrop’s name, Martin Luther secured agreement that all measures concerning Jews outside the borders of the Reich (for example, in occupied France) would require close cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, which would consequently have veto power over the question. It never made use of that power. Beginning in March 1942, Martin Luther organized, with Adolf Eichmann, the deportation of the Jews of France. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich; Christopher Browning, The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940–43 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978).

“Jewish race in Europe”: “Annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe”: expression used by Adolf Hitler in a speech to the Reichstag in Berlin, January 30, 1939.

and a “Russian desk”: The “Jewish desk” had been established within a few months of the Nazi accession to power, while the ministry was still headed by Constantin von Neurath. Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich.

then a French protectorate: The “Madagascar plan” was an old idea that had been revived in Poland in the early 1930s. The French Popular Front authorities had also thought about it (there was a fear in Paris of being submerged by Jewish immigration from Germany). The plan had also been defended by the English, who wanted to do everything to prevent German Jews from going to Palestine. With the Blitzkrieg victory over France in 1940, Germany contemplated a radical version of the plan: the expulsion of French citizens living there would have made possible the establishment of German control over the island, intended to become a large ghetto. Administration of the island was to be turned over to Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. In the Foreign Ministry, Franz Rademacher worked in close collaboration with Adolf Eichmann, head of the “Jewish desk” of department IV of the RSHA (the Gestapo). Döscher, Das Auswärtige Amt im Dritten Reich .

“the first to disappear”: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

the game of chess: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945. Fritz Kolbe’s passion for chess is also mentioned in the article by Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

the most hardened Nazis: Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

“waves kiss the beach?”: Words from a popular song composed by a Pomeranian poet, Martha Mueller, in 1907.

corridors of the ministry: The circumstances of this first meeting with Maria Fritsch are set out in the biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe; also in a document by Maria Fritsch (October 1972), Gudrun and Martin Fritsch collection, Berlin. See also Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

Sauerbruch was a great doctor : Ferdinand Sauerbruch was born in 1875. His career began before the First World War. In 1928, he was appointed director of the prestigious surgical service of the Charité hospital in Berlin. He was a prominent figure in German public life. A volatile and authoritarian personality, he took part in the great political debates of the time. His relationship with Nazism was ambiguous.

be moved at will: Sauerbruch had experimented with this artificial hand notably on Italian officers and soldiers during the invasion of Abyssinia after October 1935 (when Ethiopians took prisoners, it was not unusual for them to cut off right hands). Source: Pierre Kehr, surgeon in Strasbourg, former assistant of Adolphe Jung.

self-importance or even vanity: Sauerbruch bore the illustrious title of “court privy councilor” ( Geheimer Hofrat or Geheimrat, a distinction presented to him at the royal court of Bavaria before World War I), and that of “Prussian councilor of state,” presented by Göring in 1934. At the annual NSDAP congress in Munich in 1937, he had received the highest political-scientific distinction of the Nazi regime, the “National Prize,” conceived by Hitler as an alternative to the Nobel Prize (which the Nazis hated since it had been attributed in 1936 to the dissident journalist Carl von Ossietzky). During the Second World War, Sauerbruch was appointed “doctor general of the armies” (beginning in 1942).

unions—his hemorrhoids: Ferdinand Sauerbruch, Mes souvenirs de chirurgien, French translation (Paris, 1952).

in the Reich chancellery: “At the time of Hitler’s first battles in Munich, Sauerbruch had endeavored, without paying attention to Hitler’s political aims, to do only his duty to him as a doctor, without becoming involved in the struggles of the new regime, which he did not approve in any way. Hitler is supposed to have said to him at the time: ‘As long as I live, nothing will happen to you.’” Adolphe Jung, unpublished notebooks written in Berlin during the war (Frank and Marie-Christine Jung collection, Strasbourg).

in the concentration camps: Sauerbruch was head of the prestigious Surgery Society of Berlin and of the departments of medicine of the highest scientific research bodies in the Reich. At an interrogation in a de-Nazification proceeding in April 1949, he indicated that he knew nothing of medical experiments in the concentration camps. “I only did my duty as a doctor and a soldier,” he said. But it now seems that Sauerbruch allowed the performance, without opposing them, of some of the worst medical experiments of the century. Wolfgang U. Eckart, “Mythos Sauerbruch,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2000. See also Notker Hammerstein, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republik und im Dritten Reich (Munich, 1999).

of speech and action: “A great doctor like him is one of the few persons to remain entirely free. He can permit himself many things impossible for others.” Ursula von Kardorff, Berliner Aufzeichnungen, reprinted 1997.

the biologist Eugen Fischer: Eugen Fischer (1874–1967) was head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of “anthropology, studies of heredity, and eugenics.” He was one of the most important theoreticians of the racial doctrines from which the Nazis drew their inspiration.

General Ludwig Beck: Ludwig Beck (1880–1944) was at the center of all the circles opposed to the regime. He was to be closely associated with the preparation of the attempt against Hitler on July 20, 1944. Proposed as head of state in the event the putsch succeeded, he committed suicide when he learned of its failure.