Fritz Kolbe
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Photo:US Gov Archives
Fritz Kolbe (September 25, 1900 - February 16, 1971) was a German diplomat who became America's most important spy against the Nazis in World War II.
He was motivated by his opposition to Nazi crimes and refused to accept any payment. He was cold-shouldered by successive post-war German governments as someone who had betrayed Germany. While former Nazis were eagerly accepted into West Germany's diplomatic corps, he was refused a job at the foreign ministry. Only after the generation of Germans who were involved in the Nazi crimes had mostly died out did the government of the reunited Germany finally recognize him as a freedom fighter and dedicate a room to him in the German Foreign Office in Berlin.
[edit] Career
Fritz Kolbe was employed as a junior diplomat by the German foreign ministry before World War II and had postings to Madrid and Cape Town, but his refusal to join the Nazi party led him to be assigned lowly clerical work in Berlin from 1939. He was influenced by the anti-Nazi surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch and around November 1941, became determined to actively help defeat the Nazis.
It was not until 1943, however, that an opportunity arose when a fellow anti-Nazi in the ministry reassigned him to higher grade work as a diplomatic courier. On 19 August 1943, he was entrusted to travel to Berne in Switzerland with the diplomatic bag. While there, he tried to offer mimeographed secret documents to the British embassy. They rebuffed his approach, so he went to the Americans, who decided to take a chance on him. By 1944, they realised they had an agent of the highest quality. He was given the code name "George Wood". His US intelligence handler was Office of Strategic Services agent Allen Welsh Dulles. Altogether, by the end of the war, he passed along 2,600 documents. He was later described by the CIA as the most important spy of the war.
He provided details of:
- German expectations 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,
- exposure of a German agent, Elyesa Bazna, working as a butler in the British embassy in Ankara.
Kolbe’s reporting on the mood in Berlin and character analysis was particularly prized by the Americans, according to James Srodes, author of Allen Dulles: Master of Spies. "The information he brought, plus his personal insights were unique and powerful and intensely valuable," Srodes said.
In 1949, Kolbe tried to settle in the U.S., but could not find suitable work. In 1951, he applied to return to work for the German Foreign Office, the AA. Its political director at that time, Herbert Blankenhorn, was a former Nazi, so he was refused. Kolbe finally found a living as a representative of an American power-saw manufacturer.
Fritz Kolbe died of Cancer in Bern in 1971.
[edit] Quotes
- "My objective was to shorten the war and to help spare the unfortunate people in the concentration camps further suffering."
[edit] References
- A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Life of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II, Lucas Delattre, Atlantic Monthly Press, ISBN 0-87113-879-4 (2005)
