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

at the Charité hospital: An Alsatian surgeon who stayed in Strasbourg after the Reich annexed Alsace in 1940, Dr. Jung (1902–92), as an Alsatian, had been considered a Volksdeutscher since 1940, that is, a member of the Germanic community without full German citizenship. Since Germany needed physicians and surgeons to replace those sent to the front, Adolphe Jung was transferred to Lake Constance and then Berlin in 1942. Source: Frank and Marie-Christine Jung, son and daughter-in-law of Adolphe Jung, Strasbourg.

“archbishop of Lyon”: “The Story of George.” This document notes that Cardinal Gerlier “had saved a lot of Jewish children.” In the fall of 1942, Cardinal Gerlier was in fact informed of the danger of arrest hanging over him (we do not know whether the signal came from Fritz Kolbe, but it’s not impossible). Finally, the Germans did not dare to imprison him. Source: Bernard Berthod (Lyon), biographer of Cardinal Gerlier, conversation with the author, December 2002.

large store in Strasbourg: Robert Jung managed a large store in Strasbourg. He was criticized after the war for doing business with the occupying forces. Source: Francis Rosenstiel, Strasbourg.

had to work together: Personal notebooks of Adolphe Jung written in Berlin during the war. Unpublished document kindly made available by Frank and Marie-Christine Jung in Strasbourg.

Sauerbruch’s staff in Berlin: This assignment was probably secured through the recommendation of the French surgeon René Leriche, who had a position in France comparable to Sauerbruch’s. Adolphe Jung had been one of René Leriche’s closest colleagues in Strasbourg. Source: Jung family, Strasbourg.

Wilhelmstrasse 74–76: The file on Gertrud von Heimerdinger disappeared from the Foreign Ministry archives, probably in the course of Allied bombing at the end of the war.

she shared his opinions: “One got so one could almost smell the difference between enemy and friend,” Fritz told Edward P. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”

had been cut adrift: Fritz learned much later that Gertrud von Heimerdinger was close to Adam von Trott zu Solz, a diplomat associated with the Kreisau Circle (von Trott was executed the following year, after the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Hitler). She was also close to other figures opposed to the regime (Beppo Roemer, Richard Kuenzer, Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, Herbert Mumm von Schwarzenstein). Rudolf Pechel, Deutscher Widerstand. After the war, she worked for the American occupation administration in Wiesbaden. German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file.

the opportunity might arise: Fritz Kolbe reviewed approximately 250 diplomatic cables a day. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.

danger and disillusionment: “People no longer cared how the war ended, just as long as it ended. They didn’t care who won,” according to Mary Bancroft’s German housekeeper (Bancroft was an agent and Allen Dulles’s mistress in Switzerland) in the summer of 1943. Mary Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy (New York: Morrow, 1983), p. 178.

“one of the last times”: Account by August von Kageneck, wounded on the Russian front in the summer of 1942, in Examen de conscience (Paris: Perrin, 1996), p. 81.

finally near Tempelhof airport: Foreign Ministry, Fritz Kolbe file.

telephone number was 976.981: Portrait of Fritz Kolbe (2 pages), August 19, 1943, OSS Bern, National Archives. A few months later the Americans corrected the telephone number, which ended in 0, not 1. But they never used it.

of being “taken away”: Abgeholt: the word alone summed up the terror inspired by the Gestapo.

thoroughly, nothing more serious: Autobiographical document, May 15, 1945.

by a personal chauffeur: Allen Dulles’s chauffeur was a Frenchman named Édouard Pignarre, totally loyal and extraordinarily discreet. Source: Cordelia Dodson-Hood, conversation with the author, Washington, March 21, 2002.

ambassador to Switzerland: The details about Allen Dulles and the Bern office of the OSS are drawn from several sources. An internal undated 36-page OSS document describes in detail the activities of the Bern office during the war (titled Bern, National Archives). The two standard biographies of Allen Dulles (by James Srodes and Peter Grose) as well as extensive correspondence with James Srodes, have also been very helpful. The memoirs of Mary Bancroft, colleague and mistress of Allen Dulles in Switzerland during the war ( Autobiography of a Spy ), are full of descriptions and anecdotes.

a few decades earlier: Dulles was “well born, well bred, well connected.” John Waller, The Unseen War in Europe (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 272.

a Wall Street lawyer: Allen Dulles worked at Sullivan & Cromwell, a firm founded in 1879 that still exists. According to Peter Sichel, “he was a rainmaker.” Interview, May 25, 2002, New York.

a friend to Germany: This reputation injured Dulles, who was often accused after the Second World War of having been close to certain German financial interests compromised with Nazism (notably the Schrœder Bank in London, connected to the banker Kurt von Schrœder in Cologne, who had helped finance Hitler’s rise to power).

seizing the southern zone: Since June 1941, there had been a German customs control station at Annemasse. Its mission was to exercise control over goods and people moving between Switzerland and France. It frequently moved along the border. On November 11, 1942, three days after the Allied landing in North Africa, the Wehrmacht did away with the unoccupied zone. The French-Swiss border was thenceforth completely closed.

now based in Algiers: Lieutenant-Colonel Pourchot, head of the Deuxième Bureau in Switzerland, became one of Dulles’s preferred informants. “Shortly after the Deuxième Bureau was suppressed by Vichy its financing was taken over jointly by OSS and the American Military Attaché, General Legge.” Internal OSS Bern report on France ( French Intelligence ), undated, National Archives.

disposal in occupied France: Pierre de Bénouville, of the Combat network, was a regular visitor to Herrengasse 23, where he was fed and lodged.

mistress of Admiral Canaris: Wilhelm Canaris (1887–1945) was one of the most enigmatic figures of the Third Reich. An ultraconservative nationalist, he nevertheless tried discreetly to counter Hitler’s belligerent plans. His double game finally came into the open and he lost his post in February 1944. He was executed in April 1945. See Heinz Höhne, Canaris, tr. J. Maxwell Brownjohn (New York: Doubleday, 1979).

military intelligence (Abwehr): The Abwehr, which designated all the intelligence services of the German army, was expert in counterespionage. The agency was established by Prussia in 1866, during the war with Austria.

also became preferred sources: In a letter of December 10, 1943, Hugh R. Wilson (a high official in the OSS) wrote to Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle: “On the second of November we informed our representative in Bern that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had instructed us to do what we could to detach the satellite countries, Bulgaria, Hungary and Rumania immediately from the Axis.” Foreign Relations of the United States 1943, vol. 1.