Things were more difficult with the Swiss. The authorities in Bern were intent on maintaining equal distance from all the countries involved in the conflict. But the reality was entirely different: the majority of the population sympathized with the Allies. Dulles soon had his own network of trusted men inside the Swiss intelligence service, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Masson.
At all times, one had to be wary of the Germans. Among the countless networks of informers present in the country, those working for Germany were particularly effective and well established on the ground thanks to the existence of a large German community. German newspapers had numerous correspondents in Bern. And there were Swiss Germanophile circles, particularly in the army. For years, this small world had been receiving active support from the German legation. In addition, the German consulates in Switzerland were more often than not headed by men from the Abwehr or the SD (Sicherheitsdienst, foreign intelligence services).
Hitler had given up the idea of invading Switzerland in 1940. He needed a solid economic and financial conduit bordering Germany, and Switzerland provided Germany, in exchange for gold, the currency it needed to procure raw materials indispensable for the war. Nevertheless, Hitler judged that, sooner or later, Switzerland would become a part of the “Greater Reich.” Rumors of a plan of attack constantly came to the ears of the authorities in Bern. The threat grew as the new strategic context became clear in late 1942 and early 1943, marked by the advance of Allied forces in North Africa and the weakening of Italy. Was Germany not going to “swallow” Switzerland in order to strengthen its southern flank? Living with the perpetual threat of invasion, the authorities of the Swiss Confederation were in a state of maximum alert. From time to time they expelled one foreign diplomat or another when his activities seemed to exceed the terms of his mission. All citizens of countries involved in the conflict were subject to strict surveillance. The Allied intelligence services were more tolerated than their German counterparts, but neutrality was not to be trifled with in light of the knowledge that Berlin needed only a pretext to invade Switzerland. The entire country lived in fear of a fifth column.
Allen Dulles thus found that his work was naturally handicapped. Nevertheless, his address book was filled every day with new names, and his scanty knowledge of German did not prevent him from communicating with all kinds of people: anti-Nazi exiles from all milieus (political, cultural, union), diplomats and intelligence agents of all nationalities—including Chinese—lawyers, bankers, industrialists, publishers, journalists, churchmen, and even German bargemen authorized to travel on the Rhine between Germany and Switzerland. He met fairly frequently with Carl Gustav Jung in Zurich, who presented his analysis of the psychology of the Nazi leaders and of the “collective unconscious” of the Germans.
Allen Dulles had very good informants in Geneva. One of his most interesting contacts was the Dutchman Willem A. Visser’t Hooft, general secretary of the Ecumenical Council of Churches. He was also well acquainted with William Rappard, former rector of the University of Geneva, who had also represented Switzerland at the League of Nations. Through one or another of his friends, he entered into contact with Adam von Trott zu Solz in January 1943. This young and brilliant German diplomat, an eminent member of the Kreisau Circle, wished to obtain American aid for the underground opposition movements in Germany. “Support us or we will be tempted to turn to the Soviets,” was the substance of his message in a conversation on Swiss territory with one of Dulles’s close collaborators. Allen Dulles had instructions to promise nothing to anyone, especially since the policy defined by Churchill and Roosevelt was the “unconditional surrender” of Germany (a formulation that Dulles personally considered a “catastrophe” because it stifled any impulse toward resistance in Germany). The German diplomat thus left empty-handed.
At about the same time (mid-January 1943), Dulles was visited by Prince Maximilien Egon Hohenlohe von Langenberg, one of his old acquaintances from the time of the First World War. Prince Hohenlohe was a German aristocrat with roots in Sudetenland, who divided his time among Germany, Spain, and Mexico—where his wife, a Spanish marquise, owned large estates. He himself had a passport from Liechtenstein, a neutral country like Switzerland, which enabled him to travel almost everywhere in the world. He was in contact with very high officials throughout Europe (the Aga Khan was among his friends), but especially in Berlin, and notably with Heinrich Himmler. “Help the SS; they are the only ones who can protect Germany against communism and maintain order in the country,” Hohenlohe had told Dulles. The prince encouraged a simple solution: elimination of Hitler, a seizure of power by the SS, a separate peace with the West, and a united front of Western democracies against the Russians. No one knows precisely what Dulles answered, but it seems that the American spymaster left all doors open in order to maintain contact for the future.
It was not easy for Dulles to communicate with Washington, particularly with complete security. Since the end of the unoccupied zone in France, Switzerland had literally been cut off from the rest of the world. Diplomatic mail was suspended. All connections with the outside had to be by telegraph or telephone. Telephones were of course tapped, and nothing confidential could be said over that channel. For telegraphy, a very secure system of encryption had to be used because the only lines available were those of the Swiss postal and telecommunications service. As a result, this work required two full-time employees out of the small OSS Bern crew, which numbered only about fifteen. Dulles and his colleagues were not exceedingly cautious. As a method of encryption, they used simple transpositions of letters, a technique as old as the hills that consisted of changing the order of letters by constructing more or less sophisticated anagrams.
In the spring of 1943, Allen Dulles learned that the Germans had succeeded in deciphering a series of dispatches that he had sent from Bern to Washington. That day, he had used—for convenience—the coding system of the State Department, normally used by the American legation in Bern. This method was even less secure than that of the OSS. This technical failure might have been very costly to the Americans if the leak had concerned sensitive information.
From that day onward, Dulles was encouraged to strengthen the security of his communications. He multiplied encryption keys by using systems with double or triple transpositions. This did not save his system from remaining rather rudimentary in comparison to the complexity of the German Enigma code.
The man who had informed Dulles of the leak was a German. Six feet five inches tall, myopic (the lenses of his glasses were as thick as bottles), his appearance was not very prepossessing. “He looks like a Latin teacher,” thought Dulles when he met him for the first time during the first few weeks of 1943. This was Hans-Bernd Gisevius, vice-consul of the Reich in Zurich, but above all member of the Abwehr, the military intelligence service. After carrying out a long and very meticulous investigation of this obscure figure, Dulles had agreed to enter into contact with him.