The “Kállay file” would not come into the hands of the OSS. This was a pity, because Fritz knew that the Americans in Bern were vitally interested in everything concerning developments in countries allied to Germany. He had already provided them, since late 1943, with information of the greatest importance about Hungary. Thanks to Fritz, the Americans knew that the Germans were aware of some of their secret conversations with envoys of the Kállay government. During the last week of 1943, Adolf Beckerle, German envoy in Sofia, had transmitted to Berlin an Abwehr report disclosing very confidential statements made by a lieutenant colonel of the Hungarian secret services well known to the secret services in Washington. The man’s name was Otto Hatz. He had disclosed to the Germans the complete contents of his discussions with an American diplomat in Istanbul. The document had come into the hands of the OSS through the good offices of Fritz. It was thus learned in Washington that some Hungarian interlocutors of the United States were playing a double game. Beckerle spoke of this Lieutenant Colonel Hatz as a “trustworthy man,” resolutely “pro-German.” In a Kappa cable sent to Washington in late December 1943, the OSS officers in Bern had pointed out that Trude (Otto Hatz) “is maybe pulling our legs.”
This information of the highest importance was not used as it should be, and the Americans allowed themselves to be caught in a trap with terrible consequences. On March 16, 1944, a team of three American spies, equipped with a radio transmitter, was secretly parachuted into Hungary to prepare a reversal of alliances (the operation, christened “Sparrow,” was masterminded from OSS Bern). But the three agents were captured shortly after their arrival on Hungarian territory and sent to Berlin for interrogation. Furious at the secret dealings of some governing circles in Budapest with the Allies, Hitler had decided to strike a great blow. On March 19, 1944, Germany invaded Hungary and put an end to any inclination toward the emancipation of the country. In place of the Kállay government, a collaborationist government under the leadership of General Döme Sztójay was set up. The strong man of Hungary was now a German from the foreign ministry, the ambassador plenipotentiary, and SS Brigadeführer Edmund Veesenmayer, a career diplomat who specialized in carrying out the regime’s dirty work (posted to the Balkans since 1941, he had been in charge of eliminating the Jews of Serbia).
Hitler knew that the Hungarian leaders were having discussions with the Allies. This was what motivated his decision to invade Hungary. The Americans knew, through Kolbe, that the Germans were closely following their negotiations with the Kállay government. But they did not take precautions to neutralize Lieutenant Colonel Hatz. If they had taken into account information provided by “George Wood,” they might have enabled Hungary to escape a catastrophe: Beginning in late March 1944, the country was placed under the thumb of the SS. A merciless system of repression was put in place. The opposition was sent to concentration camps. Systematic deportation of the Jewish population began.
After the occupation of the country by the Germans, the Americans continued to be very well informed, through Fritz Kolbe, of what was going on in Hungary. In the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador Karl Ritter was the principal contact for Edmund Veesenmayer, the Reich’s proconsul in the Hungarian capital. But it would appear that all of that did no good. In Washington, “George Wood” was not yet considered a totally trustworthy source.
In early spring 1944, everyone in Berlin was savoring something of a respite in Allied bombing. In late March, Fritz learned that he would soon have a mission to Bern. The prospect of resuming contact with the Americans filled him with both enthusiasm and anxiety. Border controls had been reinforced during the last few weeks. The Nazi leaders were more than ever suspicious of people in contact with foreign countries (particularly with neutral countries). They knew from their intelligence services that leaks from Hitler’s headquarters were spreading through neutral countries. Fortunately for Fritz, no one thought of suspecting him in particular, but it was now not infrequent for diplomatic couriers to be subject to a body search when they crossed the border. Sometimes they even had to disclose the contents of their briefcases.
Fritz feared that his trips to Bern had attracted the attention of the Gestapo. Always well informed, the surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch had warned Fritz that the chief of protocol of the Foreign Ministry, Alexander von Dörnberg, was interested in his comings and goings in Switzerland. “Something is in the air,” Fritz told himself with foreboding. The intuition had an even firmer basis because he was now part of an active resistance group. For the first time, he was participating in clandestine meetings attended by influential men. More and more often, he met Count Alfred von Waldersee, a former major in the Wehrmacht and an anti-Nazi, who was in the process of going into business through family connections in the Ruhr. Through Ernst Kocherthaler, he had met Walter Bauer, who was close to Carl Goerdeler and resolutely determined to take action.
An economist and an intellectual, Walter Bauer was a former student of Husserl and Heidegger at the University of Freiburg. He had worked for a large coal company in Prague controlled by a Jewish family. When the company was “Aryanized,” the Nazis had offered to make him its head, but he had refused and resigned from his position. Having become independent, he remained active in industry, but he spent a great deal of time in Protestant church circles opposed to the regime. Fritz greatly admired him. He was a self-made man. He had completed his high school studies in evening courses after having been brought up, like Fritz, in the school of the youth movement. The two men were about the same age.
Walter Bauer’s office, at Unter den Linden 28, was a place for meetings and discussions. Fritz was there very often. Those who frequented the address were not unknown: you could meet Goerdeler, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and other eminent figures among the anti-Nazi Christians. Fritz had no direct contact with these major figures of the time, but he came to recognize them. He probably did not always feel at ease in the midst of this intellectual community used to wide-ranging debates. Similarly, he chose to remain in the background at the Wednesday Club when Professor Sauerbruch honored him with an invitation to address it in 1944. “Those people intimidate me,” he said in explanation to the surgeon. What he didn’t tell Sauerbruch was that he found the members of the Wednesday Club “too old” for his taste.
However, Fritz felt perfectly at ease with a seventy-year-old man, Paul Löbe, a major figure in the SPD and a living embodiment of the Weimar Republic. The circumstances of their meeting are impossible to specify (probably in January 1944, maybe at Walter Bauer’s office, perhaps at the home of friends from prewar Social Democratic circles). Paul Löbe was the last president of the democratic Reichstag. Replaced in his parliamentary seat by Hermann Göring in 1932, he had been sent to a concentration camp in Silesia when the Nazis came to power. Abused and tortured, he had finally been released after several months’ detention. A former typesetter, he had survived on three hundred marks a month (one-third of Fritz’s salary) by proofreading for a Berlin publisher. Fritz was impressed by Löbe’s simplicity, an eminent figure who had remained close to the people and knew how to work with his hands. Even though it is impossible to say whether the two men met often and whether they had thorough discussions, Fritz felt that they were close, and even more, thought of him as a comrade in arms.