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

Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Masson: Lieutenant-Colonel Masson’s services had several irons in the fire: their contacts with the Americans did not keep them from sustained dialogue with the German intelligence services, headed by Walter Schellenberg, who went to Switzerland several times in 1943.

a large German community: The Swiss NSDAP had been banned since the assassination of its leader Wilhelm Gustloff by the Yugoslavian student David Frankfurter in February 1936 in Davos. Nazi Germany attached little importance to the country’s neutrality, as demonstrated by the 1935 kidnapping of the German pacifist militant Berthold Jacob by German agents in Basel.

(Sicherheitsdienst, foreign intelligence services: Headed by Walter Schellenberg, the SD was under the Central Security Service of the Reich, the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), another name for Heinrich Himmler’s police empire. The SD was Department VI of the RSHA, the Gestapo Department IV.

“unconscious” of the Germans: See Bancroft, Autobiography of a Spy.

Ecumenical Council of Churches: Willem Visser’t Hooft: his friends called him simply Wim, and in Dulles’s secret correspondence with Washington, he was merely number 474. Sauerbruch had number 835 for the OSS, while Kocherthaler seems not to have had a number.

Dulles’s close collaborators: This visit was full of meaning for Dulles: The threat of a shift of German liberal elites toward communism was very real. This appeal was all the more troubling because it came from a man, von Trott, who had had some of his schooling in England and knew the United States well.

“unconditional surrender” of Germany: Policy defined at the Casablanca conference between Roosevelt and Churchill, from January 24 to 26, 1943. This strategy seemed dangerous to Allen Dulles because in his view it risked humiliating the Germans and driving them into the arms of the Russians. “We rendered impossible internal revolution in Germany and thereby prolonged the war and the destruction,” Dulles wrote after the war. Letter of January 3, 1949 to Chester Wilmot (Australian war correspondent), Allen W. Dulles papers, Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton.

contact for the future: Relations between Allen Dulles and Prince Hohenlohe were used after the war by Soviet propaganda to discredit after the fact American policy during the war. See James Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1999), pp. 261–67.

rest of the world: Connections by air between Switzerland and the rest of the world had been practically nonexistent since the beginning of the war, except for flights to Germany. Source: Rudolf J. Ritter, Grub, Switzerland.

postal and telecommunications service: Allen Dulles, The Secret Surrender (New York: Harper & Row, 1966). Dulles telephoned Washington four or five times a week to provide general political analyses and news summaries without operational implications.

numbered only about fifteen: The two permanent agents assigned as cipher clerks received reinforcements from American aviators blocked in Switzerland after forced landings. Source: Bern, summary of the OSS Bern office during the war, National Archives. In Bern, Dulles had four intelligence officers (Gero von Schulze-Gaevernitz, Gerald Mayer, Frederick Stalder, and Royall Tyler), and about ten cipher clerks, not counting about one hundred informants working regularly for him.

concerned sensitive information: The series of dispatches dealt with the political situation in Italy and the rise of anti-German feeling in Mussolini’s entourage. Soon thereafter (was this coincidental?), they learned of the disgrace of Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, and of several of his friends who wished to end the German alliance. Source: Bern.

the German Enigma code: “Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of British cryptanalysts, and the cooperation of Polish, Czech, and French liaison colleagues, and a lone German spy [Hans-Thilo Schmidt], the Nazi military and intelligence ciphers had been broken sometime before Kolbe became active. This success—code name ULTRA—rivaled only by the American triumph of breaking Japanese ciphers (code name MAGIC), was one of a handful of the great secrets of World War II. The Ultra information made a vital contribution to the Allied victory in Europe and Africa.” Richard Helms, A Look Over My Shoulder. “Enigma” was the name of the sophisticated machine used to encrypt the secret messages of the German army. “Ultra,” the system for decoding Enigma messages set up in England during the war, was located in Bletchley Park, not far from London, and employed dozens of expert mathematicians working in absolute secrecy.

and to General Oster: General Hans Oster (1887–1945) was number two in the Abwehr. He informed the Dutch of the imminent invasion of their country by the troops of the Wehrmacht in the spring of 1940. He played an initiating role in several seditious anti-Nazi plots but was placed under Gestapo surveillance by 1943 and was relieved of duty in the spring of 1944. He was executed in April 1945 in the Flossenbürg concentration camp.

explained that these rockets: “V” was the abbreviation for Vergeltungswaffe, retaliatory weapon. The V-1 rocket was made up of an aerodynamic fuselage with two small wings propelled by a jetpulse engine in the rear. This was the first cruise missile in history. This flying bomb loaded with explosives was launched from an inclined ramp and was not very precise. The V-2 (or A4), developed and built at Peenemünde (a Baltic Sea resort), was a veritable rocket, having a range of about 320 kilometers and capable of being launched from mobile ramps that were easily camouflaged. This rocket and its principal inventor, Wernher von Braun, made possible the development of American space research after the war. The first V-1 missile was fired on London in June 1944. In September, it was the turn of the V-2 to enter into action. Thousands of V-2s were launched in 1944 and 1945, chiefly on London and Antwerp, causing tens of thousands of deaths. Thanks to Philippe Ballarini and Michel Zumelzu for their invaluable web sites ( www.aerostories.org and www.perso.club-internet.fr/mzumelzu/home.htm ).

a Baltic Sea resort: Allen Dulles learned of the existence of Peenemünde in several stages: first from the Swiss industrialist Walter Boveri (February 1943), then from Hans-Bernd Gisevius (May 1943), then from Franz Josef Messner (chief executive of a company in Vienna). Peenemünde was bombed on August 17, 1943. Bern, National Archives.

bad with utmost confidence: Srodes, Allen Dulles, Master of Spies, p. 268.

given to a woman: Circular of June 10, 1941 on the organization of diplomatic mail, Foreign Ministry archives, Berlin.

offices throughout the world: Excerpt from the circular of June 10, 1941: “We have recently noticed an abusive increase in missions to our offices abroad [ Kurierausweis ]. In many cases, these are merely documents of convenience used primarily to offer the beneficiary the opportunity to travel comfortably and to pass easily through customs. This is not acceptable.”

between Himmler and Ribbentrop: “We encounter constant difficulties because of the inopportune activities of your services abroad,” Ribbentrop wrote to Himmler on June 11, 1941. Foreign Ministry archives.