Gisevius had long been a friend of Hjalmar Schacht, former economics minister of the Reich. He was also close to Admiral Canaris and to General Oster, the mysterious heads of the Abwehr. Finally, he said that he had close contacts with the Protestant circles opposed to the regime. Gisevius had a Nazi past and had even been a member of the Gestapo in 1933 and 1934. Having gradually become an opponent of the regime, he had a mission to make contact with the Allies for the purpose of obtaining support for the plots that were being hatched against Hitler. The English were suspicious of him and had refused to take him seriously. But by revealing to the Americans a technical secret of great importance, Gisevius had given them a token of his good faith. He soon became known as “Tiny,” as a joke on his great height. He became “512” in the internal nomenclature of the OSS.
Dulles and Gisevius met fairly often, at night after curfew, in Bern or Zurich. Gisevius was (along with a few others) one of the first to reveal to Dulles the existence of long-range German missiles designed to be fired on London. In February 1943, he explained that these rockets were being built “somewhere in Pomerania.” In June, Dulles learned from another source that this “somewhere” was in fact Peenemünde, a Baltic Sea resort. The information provided by Gisevius was hence of the highest quality. Thanks to him, Dulles was also able to transmit to Washington precise details about the state of mind of the German population and the balance of power inside the Nazi regime. Gradually, the head of the American secret services in Switzerland was beginning to become a serious competitor of his British colleagues.
In Washington, however, Dulles did not have an excellent reputation. In late April 1943, the head of American intelligence in Switzerland received the following telegram from his superiors in the OSS:
It has been requested of us to inform you that “all news from Bern these days is being discounted 100% by the War Department.” It is suggested that Switzerland is an ideal location for plants, tendentious intelligence and peace feelers but no details are given. As our duty requires we have passed on the above information. However, we restate our satisfaction that you are the one through whom our Swiss reports come and we believe in your ability to distinguish good intelligence from bad with utmost confidence.
7
A VISA FOR BERN
Berlin, mid-August 1943
Sunday, August 15, 1943, at around seven in the evening, Fritz Kolbe went to the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin. He was to take the 8:20 train for Basel. Fritz arrived early. The distance between the Foreign Ministry and the station was not great (it took only a half hour walking toward the south). The city was bathed in soft summer light. The shadows of the few passersby stretched out on the ground. This neighborhood of government offices at the end of the day seemed immobile and curiously calm. After leaving his Kurfürstendamm apartment, Fritz had stopped at Wilhelmstrasse to pick up the files that had to be turned over to the German legation in Switzerland. The assignment was a routine operation: The transmission of diplomatic mail from Berlin to Bern took place twice a week, leaving Berlin on Sunday and Wednesday evenings. The task was rotated among mid-level officials and never given to a woman.
In his inside jacket pocket, Fritz had carefully placed his diplomatic passport and his orders. The latter document would serve as his pass at every checkpoint. It was an invaluable talisman, highly prized in the ministry and in German diplomatic offices throughout the world. There were many candidates in Berlin for trips to the capitals of neutral countries, particularly to Bern, which was reputedly a very pleasant city.
In the diplomatic mail office, Fritz had been given a leather briefcase containing a thick envelope with a wax seal. The envelope was rather large, forty by fifty centimeters. Fritz did not know what was in it, except that it included official mail for the head of legation and his colleagues, the latest official memoranda, and various confidential messages (including those of the secret services, which sometimes created friction between Himmler and Ribbentrop). He was not to open it on any pretext. The briefcase was at no time to be left unguarded.
A little earlier in the day, the rest of the diplomatic pouch had already been brought to the station. Even though Fritz Kolbe was not personally carrying this second transmittal, he was administratively responsible for it. It consisted of several bags or cases containing nonsecret documents or voluminous objects. These packages, stamped “official dispatch,” were not examined by customs (no more than was the envelope containing diplomatic cables). This part of the diplomatic pouch had to be deposited at the station before noon. The members of the ministry took advantage of this system to send private letters or gifts to friends and relatives in Switzerland. Officially, the diplomatic pouch might weigh no more than one hundred kilograms. In fact, it was often twice that, despite official warnings.
Before leaving the ministry building, Fritz went to his office and carefully closed and locked the door behind him. He opened the metal safe in which he kept the most important documents and removed from it two gray envelopes, which were not sealed. Then, after closing the safe, he took off his pants, wrapped the two envelopes around his thighs, and fastened them with sturdy string. He tied several knots that he had learned in the Wandervogel, made certain that the arrangement was solid, and put his pants back on. He left his office, went down the large empty staircases of the ministry (since it was Sunday, almost no one was there), and came out into the street. This peculiar operation—which obviously had had no witnesses—had lasted for only a few minutes.
At this time the next day, Fritz would be in Bern. It was the first time after two years of asking that he had received authorization to go abroad as a diplomatic courier. Gertrud von Heimerdinger had done things well. Her push in the right direction had been necessary for Fritz Kolbe’s name to be placed on the list of the privileged authorized to spend a weekend of semivacation in Switzerland. Ambassador Karl Ritter had not opposed the trip. He had seen it as a way of compensating his faithful assistant, whose energy and devotion he still appreciated. To enable his subordinate to leave, he had had to guarantee his political reliability in writing. Fritz himself had had to promise, also in writing, to return to Germany at the conclusion of his mission.
Fritz was lucky and yet he was in a feverish state. “Have I forgotten something?” he asked himself as he walked down Wilhelmstrasse. He passed in front of the Reich Chancellery, at the corner of Vosstrasse, with its cold and imposing colonnade. The area was calm and almost lifeless. The entire street seemed deserted. Only a few armed sentinels stood guard at the entry to official buildings. At every street corner, Fritz felt as though he was being watched.
Across the street from the Reich Chancellery was the Ministry of Propaganda. Several people could be seen working there even though it was Sunday. The ministry had its work cut out for it right now in commenting on the series of debacles of the Wehrmacht. For several days the press had been hailing the “triumphant retreat” of the German army in Sicily and congratulating its leaders for having limited the losses of men and materiel in their “magnificent” maneuver of withdrawal to Italy. “We have avoided total annihilation,” was the uniform headline for the editorials. These victorious proclamations could not mask the essentiaclass="underline" German radio had announced Mussolini’s fall on July 26.