Back in his hotel room Fritz did not go to bed immediately. He sat at the small dimly lit table facing his bed and wrote down his last will and testament, which he intended to give to the Americans before he left. These few lines (a page and a half) were to be given to the appropriate person, “in the event of…”
“If I leave this life in one way or another,” wrote Fritz, “I would like little Peter to be placed in good hands…. Peter should be brought up in my spirit. Do not instill in him hatred of the enemy nor hatred of those who may assassinate me, but rather the unconditional will to fight and to defend our ideals…. No one can deny that my action is guided by ideals. Does existence have any meaning when you no longer have freedom, as is now the case in Germany?”
Fritz then gave a list of people to whom his son might be entrusted: If he wishes, Peter may stay with the Lohff family in Swakopmund in South-West Africa, or else return one day to Berlin to stay with one of Fritz’s close friends (“Walter Girgner, Lankwitz, Leonorenstrasse,” or “Leuko,” a nickname for Kurt Weinhold, his friend the engineer at Siemens). Maria Fritsch (“nicknamed ‘little rabbit,’ assistant to Professor Sauerbruch”), might possibly “become a good mother” for him. “In any case,” Fritz added, “I would have married her eventually.” Peter might also be raised by Ernst Kocherthaler: “This man,” he wrote, directly addressing his son, “may in particular take care of your needs and finance your education.” Fritz than asked Peter to “pay attention to Grandma Kolbe,” Fritz’s mother. “She is old but she has a surprisingly good and just sense of reality.” And Fritz added a sentence about his brother Hans, “with whom I have sometimes quarreled, but who is still a good brother.”
The recommendations to Peter then became very precise: “About your future profession, my dear Peter! I have always thought that you might become a sports doctor if that is something that would interest you. Perhaps your gift for mathematics will enable you to become an engineer. That would suit me, or you might be a lawyer. In any case, try above all to become an upright man, keep your youthful enthusiasm, and keep your heart pure! Respect women. The finest of them all was your mother. Always think of that when you’re with a girl. And always fight for truth and justice. Even when that seems hopeless to you. Go to meet the enemy with the same weapons that he has and do not forget the goaclass="underline" our final victory [Endsieg].”
In conclusion, Fritz paid homage to his own father (“I feel united with him in the respect for what is right”), and asked his son to do the same with him (“ask my friends about my motives”). The will concludes with a moving appeal to Peter: “I remain your papa. Speak to me at night, as I have done to you so often in the last few years.”
Bern, Friday, August 20, 1943
The next day they met as agreed in Gerry Mayer’s apartment at eight in the morning. Fritz was probably free of professional obligations and at liberty to stroll around Bern. Despite the risk of being seen, he had agreed to this morning meeting in the midst of the American diplomatic district. He may have been discreetly deposited by a taxi. Gerry Mayer and “Mr. Douglas” (Allen Dulles) were there. Fritz had figured out that the mysterious Douglas was not a simple assistant in the legation, but he did not yet know his real name. Ernst Kocherthaler was probably present.
At the request of the two Americans, Fritz had used Thursday to gather some pieces of information from his diplomatic colleagues in Bern about the German espionage network in Switzerland. This network, Fritz explained, was divided into two departments, the collection of intelligence organized by Himmler’s services (SD, Sicherheitsdienst), and counterespionage (KO, Kriegsorganisation) under the Abwehr. The Americans certainly already knew that, but they took notes all the same.
Fritz then gave some names of diplomats who he thought were spies in disguise (for example, “legation adviser Frank”), but he did not seem very sure of himself. Fritz then stated with certainty that “the Germans have well-placed men in each of the enemy legations in Bern,” but in this case too, he gave no names (probably because he didn’t know any).
“Who might possibly work for us?” the two Americans asked him. Kolbe believed that “the Chief Commercial Attaché, Consul General Reuter, a Nazi by necessity rather than by conviction, was approachable. Reuter was a bachelor and liked the ladies. A second man mentioned was Kapler, Consular Secretary, who had lived in the United States for ten years and was also a lukewarm Nazi.”
Time passed quickly. Allen Dulles proposed that they move on to technical details: How could they organize future collaboration between Fritz and his new “friends” in Bern? They needed a password, in case Fritz were to travel to the capital of another neutral country, which would enable him to contact the Americans again. “Let’s take the figure 25900, since that’s your date of birth,” proposed Dulles, who went on: “If you come back here you only have to introduce yourself as Mr. König.” They brought up the possibility of reestablishing contact in Stockholm, in case Fritz were to be sent there as a courier. At another point, the name “Georg Sommer” was suggested, for no better reason than that it was the middle of the summer. Finally it was decided that when Fritz tried to establish contact with the Americans, he would use the name “George Merz.” And then, if by chance the Americans wanted to contact Fritz in Berlin, the agent would claim to be “Georg Winter” (“Anita Winter,” if it was a woman).
For the moment, they left it at that. Would they ever see one another again? Before taking his leave, Fritz gave the Americans an envelope from his hotel (the Hotel Jura) containing the two pages of his will—he had made a copy that he kept with him. He asked them if he could dictate the text of a telegram for his son in Swakopmund. The Americans strongly discouraged him from exposing himself in that way: “It’s madness, don’t do it.” Fritz did not insist.
When they left him, the two Americans gave Fritz a relatively large sum of money: two hundred Swiss francs. Fritz accepted the money to “cover his present and future taxi fares,” but also to buy cigars and chocolate, which would give great pleasure to his superiors at the ministry in Berlin. In Dulles’s view, this money should serve to maintain relations with Gertrud von Heimerdinger, who held the key to Fritz’s future trips to Bern.
The three men separated around 10:30. “Come back soon and bring us as many cables as possible”: this was, in substance, the farewell message of the two Americans to their new friend from Berlin. When he left Mayer’s apartment, Fritz Kolbe had a feeling of great success. The Americans were taking him seriously and were counting on him. It was up to him to feed their curiosity.
Fritz did not have much time to wander around the center of Bern, look in the shop windows, or go into the stores. Knowing that he did not have the right to keep foreign currency, he had given most of the two hundred Swiss francs to his friend Ernst Kocherthaler. With the rest, he had made some purchases so that he could bring back a few small gifts to Berlin. He took a train around noon. The same route as the preceding Sunday, in the opposite direction. The express for Berlin left Basel in the middle of the afternoon. Fritz’s passport was stamped by German customs at the Basel station at 4:46. The trip was fast, but he had had the feeling of being observed during the journey from Bern to Basel. The man watching him had looked neither Swiss nor German. Was it an American? “Don’t they trust me?” he asked himself anxiously. After crossing the German border, he felt lighter. As on the way there, there were few checks on the train. He arrived in Berlin the next morning at 7:41 (track 9, Anhalter Bahnhof, according to the timetable in force since November 1942). The first thing Fritz did when he got off the train was to buy a newspaper. That morning, there was an editorial by Goebbels in the Berliner Lokalanzeiger about the debacle in Sicily and Allied bombing of Peenemünde, the manufacturing site for the V-2. “Sometimes,” wrote Goebbels that August 21, “as we are moving toward final victory [Endsieg], we may find ourselves in the midst of a sunken lane where we can no longer see the goal of our march. But that does not mean that it is lost.”