A Time to Spy

Every once in a while I come across a story that reminds me of how the average person with grounded principles can rise to the occasion and do something extraordinary, not for riches or fame, but instead risks all that they have to fight for the suffering. This is one of those rare special stories.

“My objective was to shorten the war and to help spare the unfortunate people in the concentration camps further suffering.”- Fritz Kolbe

Affixed to the door of one of the conference rooms in the German foreign ministry building is a name, that according to Tony Paterson, most Germans have never even heard of. Fritz Kolbe is the name on this door, representing a small unassuming middle-aged man who became, by his own accord, one of the most important spies of WWII. As a diplomatic courier for the Nazi regimes foreign ministry, Kolbe functioned as a major source for the allied forces by passing documents to American intelligence completely undetected until the end of the war. Despite the lack of recognition and being dismissed as a traitor by successive German governments after the war, Kolbe never once regretted his participation in spying against his own country, and for according to himself, “shortening the war” for his countrymen.

Fritz Kolbe has been described by the CIA as quote, “the most important spy of the Second World War”. Kolbe was a little known name until the publication of original documents and private letters by the CIA in 2000 that prompted a review by the German government and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer who named the conference room after Kolbe. To those who knew him, Kolbe was a mild natured man who kept mostly to himself while living in Germany during the rise of the Nazi regime. Originally recruited at the age of 25 and employed as a junior diplomat for the German foreign ministry before the Second World War, Kolbe worked primarily out of Madrid and Cape Town. Eventually the Nazi regime took power in Germany, but Kolbe adamantly refused to join and was subsequently re-assigned as a lowly clerical employee and stationed in Berlin around 1939. While working in Berlin Kolbe was responsible for stamping passports and visas at the ministry under the command of Von Ribbentrop. For the first few years after the start of the war, Kolbe was an “underground” critic of the Nazi regime and occasionally distributed anti-Nazi leaflets in telephone boxes around Berlin. It wasn’t until November of 1941 that Kolbe became committed to the protest of the Nazi regime. After a meeting with the now famous anti-Nazi surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, he learned of the Nazi program to systematically murder thousands of mentally ill and “undesirables”, and it was then that Kolbe became a determined resistor to the Nazi party. Yet it was not until 1943 that Kolbe got his chance to make a significant impact on the war against his own country. Around August of 1943, a fellow Nazi critic and superior to Kolbe put him on a list of “privileged” individuals permitted to act as couriers for the Third Reich.

Kolbe made his first attempt at treason on August 15th, 1943 when he locked himself in his office at the foreign ministry and strapped two large envelopes filled with mimeographed secret documents to his inner legs. He then traveled aboard a Nazi train to the Swiss capital of Berne with a bag full of official Nazi dispatches. After delivering his documents he went immediately to the British embassy to attempt to make contact as a spy, but was laughed at and promptly dismissed. Undeterred and fueled by a moral obligation to humanity, Kolbe went to the Americans, who were quick to trust him initially, as they realized the potential he had for vital intelligence. By 1944, it was evident to the Americans the value that Kolbe had for the Allied forces.

Fritz Kolbe was given the code name “George Wood” by the Office of Strategic Services and assigned agent Allen Welsh Dulles as his official handler. Regular meetings occurred between Dulles and Kolbe until the end of the war. It is believed that by the end of the war Kolbe passed a total of 2,600 documents to the Allied forces. Most of this information became vital to the eventual outcome of the war. Some of the documents Kolbe passed included the details of the German expectation of the site of the D-day landings, V-1 and V-2 rocket programs, the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter, Japanese plans in Southeast Asia, and the exposure of the Nazi agent, Elyse Bazna, who was working in the British embassy in Ankara. Although this information was extremely valuable, its impact could have been far greater had the Americans not been overly cautious with the fear that Kolbe was a double agent. Kolbe it seems was compelled to spy on his country by a genuine commitment to humanity and he adamantly refused to accept any payment for his activities during the war. Although commendable in retrospect, the effect of his refusal of compensation is most likely the reason for the suspicion of his loyalty to the allied forces.

Despite the fears of the OSS, the documents passed on by Kolbe, at great risk to his own life, were extremely valuable. Allen Welsh Dulles, Kolbe’s handler who later became the first civilian Director of the CIA and member of the Warren Commission noted, “The risks Kolbe took were incalculable…I just hope that the injustice done to him will be reversed one day and that his country recognizes his true role”. After the war successive German governments painted Kolbe as a traitor and his attempts to rejoin the foreign ministry in 1949 were rejected. Kolbe then tried to come to the U.S. to settle but was unable to find “suitable” work. He was ultimately forced to work as a chainsaw salesman for an American company in Switzerland until his death in 1971. Only until recently has Kolbe been realized as a hero for what he has done. In 2004, the French Historian Lucas Delattre wrote a book entitled, Fritz Kolbe, the Second World War’s Most Important Spy, which has managed to affect the German public and spark a transition in the perception of Kolbe in German hearts and minds. It is not enough that the Germans know of their countrymen’s fight for humanity, but we Americans too owe Fritz Kolbe the honor of remembrance of a hero. It is important that we see from looking at Kolbe’s life the understanding that it is not only with guns that wars can be fought. We all must do what we can to make a difference, never losing sight of our moral obligation to humanity, even when the enemy is your own people. We must put humans first, when we do this, our paths will be as clear as day, and the future will remember us as heroes.

-The Rooster.

by: Eric M. Rosenberg