IN THE WOLF'S LAIR
Between Berlin and East Prussia, September 18, 1941
In the train taking him to Hitler's headquarters in East Prussia, Fritz Kolbe read the newspapers and glanced through a few dispatches that he had to hand over the next day to the führer's diplomatic staff. Since his departure from the Berlin-Grunewald station, he had been alone in his compartment. The car was reserved for officers and government officials headed for the front or on missions to the reserve lines. Since the beginning of the Russian campaign in June 1941, the führer's headquarters had been in the "wolf's lair" (Wolfsschanze) at the eastern edge of the country. Fritz was carrying a large quantity of documents, most of which were classified "secret Reich business" (geheime Reichssachen, the highest level of confidentiality for the Nazis). Under no circumstances was he to be separated from the briefcase containing them. The documents were intended for his superior, Ambassador Karl Ritter, one of the highest officials in the Foreign Ministry, who was in consultation with military headquarters.
Born in Bavaria and trained as a lawyer, Karl Ritter had been the undisputed specialist for economic questions in the Foreign Ministry since the 1930s. Since the beginning of the war he had headed a key department in the ministry, political-military affairs (Pol I M). He had a typical title for the time: he was an "ambassador on special mission," which meant that he was there to bypass on an ad hoc basis the traditional decision-making networks of the ministry. Although he was a career diplomat, he enjoyed Ribbentrop's complete confidence. Ritter dealt in particular with the "economic aspects of the war," as well as high-level relations between the Foreign Ministry and the Wehrmacht. Since the beginning of the war he was almost always away from the ministry. This skilled professional negotiator was known for his unscrupulous intelligence, cold cynicism, and strength of character, all qualities that made him able to impose himself on Wehrmacht generals, even though he himself had no military experience.
A party member since 1938, but never having been in the SS (nor in the SA, like Luther), Ritter had no illusions about the criminal character of the regime. He had nevertheless chosen to serve the Nazis out of professional conscience, with an attitude of indifference. "Here, at least, you travel," he said one day in Fritz Kolbe's presence. He held Ribbentrop in contempt, although he never showed it openly (on the contrary, he behaved toward him with almost obsequious deference, which caused extreme annoyance to his subordinate Fritz Kolbe). Appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro in 1937, he had been expelled in 1938 by the dictator Getulio Vargas, who considered him a dangerous pro-Nazi agitator.
On his return from Rio, Ritter had wanted to resign on the grounds of age-he was slightly under sixty-but Ribbentrop, who needed his talents, had insisted that he remain in the service. Karl Ritter had finally agreed because he had been offered a key post endowed with broad responsibilities. From that moment, he had been at the heart of his country's principal diplomatic negotiations, like the Munich agreements of September 1938, but above all the Nazi-Soviet pact in August 1939. This agreement between Hitler and Stalin, which was unexpected, to say the least, had in part been drafted by him, in close cooperation with Friedrich-Wilhelm Gaus, the ministry's chief lawyer and another Weimar man who had learned to adapt to circumstances.
Like Gaus, Ritter had complete command of the science of treaties. He knew Russia well from his experience supervising major German industrial programs there in the 1920s (following the 1922 Rapallo agreements). In order to follow through on the Hitler-Stalin pact, and in particular to monitor the exchange of raw materials and armaments between the two countries, he had even lived in Moscow between October 1939 and March 1940. When he spoke of Stalin, with whom he had been in close contact on several occasions in connection with that mission, Karl Ritter did not conceal his very great admiration for the man.
Fritz Kolbe had been Karl Ritter's personal assistant since late 1940 or early 1941. This promotion had been due to the intervention of Rudolf Leitner, the former head of the German legation in Pretoria, who had been a member of Karl Ritter's cabinet since his return from South Africa. Rudolf Leitner had never let Fritz drop, and Fritz was deeply grateful to him for making it possible for him to leave the "German" department and its stifling atmosphere. But now, he found himself assistant to the chief of political-military affairs in the midst of the war! "It's really farcical," Fritz had been telling himself since he assumed his new duties. "I hate the Nazis and I can't manage to get out of the highest circles of power!"
The work for Karl Ritter was interesting. Instead of stamping passports and visas, every morning Fritz Kolbe received dispatches from German diplomatic posts abroad, sorted them according to their importance, and summarized them for his boss. Kolbe was to destroy the documents already read by Ritter. Summaries of conversations between high officials of the ministry with foreign diplomats posted to Berlin also came across his desk. Finally, Fritz received and read the foreign press (with a few days' delay, because the English and American press, for example, came through Lisbon) and summarized its content for Ritter. "In a short time, I became one of the best informed officials in the ministry," Fritz wrote a few years later. By early 1941, Fritz was one of the first to know of the secret preparations for the Russian campaign: Karl Ritter's role was specifically to prepare the movement of German troops toward Russia through its allied countries in central Europe (Finland, Hungary, Romania).
In personal terms, Fritz had no complaints: Karl Ritter was not very likable, but he was fair to his subordinates. And he was a man of the world, not at all like the coarse Luther with his brutal manners. Ritter had always been at the heart of German social life and besides, he clearly had panache, with his twinkling eye, his careful language, and his elegant hands (Luther had often had dirty fingernails). Ritter spoke most European languages, he knew most of the big industrialists in the country, he frequented art openings, he went to the opera.
The relationship between Ritter and Fritz Kolbe was essentially professional, and since both men were workhorses, they got on fairly well together. Both were short, a detail not without importance. On a few occasions, their conversation took a personal turn. When Kolbe had joined Karl Ritter's staff, Ritter had let him know that he knew of his reputation as a "hothead." He tried to reassure Fritz by telling him that here, what counted was above all competency and work done well. To set him at ease, he said that the Nazis didn't like him either. "You know I have a reputation as a democrat in this house. The authorities know that I drafted almost all the commercial treaties of the Weimar period. I spent all my time in the Reichstag. Since my drafts were passed by the SPD or the Zentrum, that was enough to sabotage my reputation in some eyes."
A little later, Ritter had questioned Fritz Kolbe briefly about his experience in South Africa. "I too know Africa well," he had said. "Some of my studies were at the Colonial Institute in Hamburg, where I learned many fascinating things: tropical hygiene, applied botany, colonial law, and even Swahili. Just before the Great War, I was appointed to a position in the imperial government in Cameroon. The war put an end to that adventure, and I had to return to Berlin."
When Karl Ritter had learned where Fritz's family came from, he had spoken to him spontaneously of the Pomeranians of Brazil, entire families of whom had gone into exile there to escape famine and poverty. Though Brazil might seem unlikely, in fact there were already German colonies in the south of the country, established early in the nineteenth century.
Fritz Kolbe recalled these scraps of conversation as he headed for the führer's headquarters on the night of September 18, 1941. This mission was something new for him. Ritter wanted his mail to be delivered personally. The ambassador had lost confidence in the diplomatic mail services. At the end of August 1941, he had complained about the careless way in which confidential documents were sent to him. "My mail was found in the headquarters kitchen, another time at the telephone switchboard!" he had informed his Berlin office. As a result, he wanted his subordinates to be their own telegraph operators.
Fritz was not overjoyed with this trip. Of course, it gave him an opportunity to leave Berlin, but he had no desire to get closer to Hitler, Ribbentrop, and the top generals of the Wehrmacht. He had been dreaming of exile for months now, but not to the East. He pined for Spain and South Africa (sometimes he thought of Switzerland, which had the virtue of being a neutral country and seemed to have been spared by events). From time to time, he looked out the window of his compartment. The German-Polish plain with its endless birch forests exuded melancholy, despite a splendid sunset shining through the woods. Autumn and the climate of war enveloped the landscape in matchless sadness.
Having nothing else to do, Fritz plunged into reading the newspapers. The press was entirely subject to party propaganda, but the most important facts could be found in it: "The wearing of a yellow star is obligatory for Jews beginning this month of September 1941." News from the front was more difficult to decipher. The triumphant communiqués of the army high command (the OKW, or Oberkommando der Wehrmacht) hardly made it possible to get a precise idea of the real situation. "Siege of Leningrad, imminent fall of Kiev": that was about all that could be learned from the day's papers. There was no need to try to find out more, the rest was merely a long lyrical and indigestible outpouring on the theme of the "heroic action of the soldiers of the Wehrmacht" or on the battle of Kiev, "the greatest of all time."
Everyone knew in the fall of 1941 that there could no longer be any question of a quick end to the war. Fritz recalled the rumors heard in Berlin: there were more and more frequent whispers that Hitler had had terrible outbursts of fury. The führer was said to have an increasingly pronounced tendency to lose his composure in the face of the enemy. He had been heard to howl with anger when Rudolf Hess went to England in May 1941, and when Churchill and Roosevelt offered assistance to Stalin in mid-August 1941, making possible for the first time a coordinated war on two fronts. According to an unverifiable rumor, sometimes Hitler would bite anything at hand: his handkerchief, a cushion, and even the curtains!
In the train taking Fritz to the "wolf's lair," the night was very dark: it was traveling through what used to be the Danzig corridor with all lights out, for fear of bombardment or sabotage by the Polish resistance. At break of day, following the instructions he had received, he put on the uniform that he would have to wear at the führer's headquarters, a feldgrau-colored uniform provided by the ministry. He had difficulty recognizing himself in the mirror. He hesitated particularly before putting on the headgear: a peaked cap with a double strand of aluminum above the visor and a badge representing an eagle holding a swastika in its claws.
Fritz arrived in the early morning at Gerdauen, a little town that looked like a border post, sixty kilometers southeast of K?nigsberg. A Foreign Ministry car was waiting to take him directly to Karl Ritter. They went through the countryside of Masuria and the forest of Rastenburg (still more birch woods), with silvered lakes and magnificent glades, but also marshes and peat bogs. "The region is infested with mosquitoes," warned the driver, advising Fritz to cover his hands and neck with Dr. Zinsser's lotion, made in Leipzig, "excellent as a preventive measure."
After the little town of Angerburg, they plunged again into the forest. There was no way of telling where they were, no indication of the "Führerhauptquartier." If the road signs were to be believed, the car was headed toward an enigmatic factory supposedly belonging to a celebrated precision instrument maker (Askania Werke). "Askania? That's all nonsense. That lets them conceal the real nature of the place," the driver told Fritz in answer to his question about the meaning of these strange signs.
After half an hour had passed, and they had gone through several guard posts at the entry of various "forbidden zones" protected by high fences, barbed wire, and patrols, they could see the first wooden huts and half-buried bunkers. They finally arrived at a clearing where three trains were standing. They could not be seen from a distance because they were thoroughly camouflaged, like the railroad track, with nets covered in fake foliage. And yet they occupied a space as large as a marshaling yard. One of the three trains held the "field offices" of the foreign minister. Next to Ribbentrop's was G?ring's-the most beautiful of all, a veritable palace on wheels-and finally Heinrich Himmler's. This had been the first "railroad headquarters" to see the light, and since then all the high officials of the regime had wanted to have, like the Reichsführer SS, their private train (Sonderzug) close to the front. The three trains were equipped with everything necessary: private salons, radio room, dining car, toilets, and showers (and even a screening room in Himmler's train). At the ends of the cars were antiaircraft batteries in case of enemy attack.
It was after ten in the morning and the heat was stifling, even in the shade. A smell of tar drifted through the air. Fritz was brought to one of the cars of Ribbentrop's train, where he was asked to wait for a few minutes. Karl Ritter was not yet there. While waiting for his boss in a little compartment that resembled an antechamber, Fritz glanced outside. There were patrols with dogs. Fritz also noticed a small group of officers having a conversation, each with mosquito netting around his head. Fritz held back his laughter.
Soon, an armored car arrived, stirring up the dust. This was Karl Ritter's car. At Ritter's right, Fritz thought he recognized Walther Hewel, a close confidant of the führer. Hewel, a Nazi stalwart from the early days, ensured constant contact between Ribbentrop and Hitler. There were also a stenographer and a few officers of the high command of the Wehrmacht whom Fritz did not know. Everyone was in uniform. Karl Ritter looked even smaller than usual when he was seen next to Walther Hewel, a strong man with a powerful presence. Hewel did not at all correspond to the clichéd image of the Aryan man (he was dark-haired), which had not prevented him from becoming an SS-Brigadeführer, the equivalent of a brigadier general in the elite order of the Nazi regime.
Karl Ritter looked irritated when he came into the train car, soon followed by his colleagues, and sat at a table covered with campaign maps. He had not seen Fritz, who was hidden by a door ajar at the other end of the compartment and who was waiting to be called before showing himself. "Where can the minister be?" Ritter asked in an exasperated tone. "We had an appointment for ten o'clock!" "Mister Ambassador," said Walter Hewel, "the minister usually gets up late, you know that very well. Right now, he is probably being taken care of by his personal barber in his private apartment," he added, with a little ironic smile. Like many others, Walther Hewel detested Ribbentrop. He made no attempt to disguise his disregard for him, since Hewel was one of the few historic companions in arms of Adolf Hitler, and had personally participated at his side in the failed 1923 Munich putsch.
While waiting for Ribbentrop's arrival, Karl Ritter questioned Walther Hewel about the evenings with Hitler in "forbidden zone number one," a few kilometers from there. "It's cold," replied Hewel, "the führer never heats the rooms where he is. No one dares to speak for fear of being ridiculous. When he invites us into his 'tea house' after dinner, he spends the entire evening carrying on long monologues while drinking a brew made of fennel. He is attentive only to his dog Blondi. Sometimes he doesn't seem to realize that there are ten people around him thinking only of going to bed. Last night he spoke for more than an hour about vegetarian cooking and the nausea meat makes him feel. He detests the idea that animals are killed so they can be eaten!" Karl Ritter displayed a sneering attitude and asked if it was allowed "at least to play bridge" (one of his favorite pastimes) at the führer's evenings.
In Adolf Hitler's circle, neither bridge nor any other game was played. The führer preferred long discussions in front of a skimpy fire. Walther Hewel described how, the night before, the führer had spoken at length of his plans for Russia, and that he had seemed very optimistic about the conquest of Moscow, "which shouldn't take long to fall after Kiev." He explained to his audience that once Moscow and Leningrad had been captured they should simply be wiped off the map. Russia would be a vast agricultural province and a source of raw materials from which Germany would take everything it needed. "When we have conquered the territory," Hewel went on, "the führer thinks that it will not take much effort to control it. A bit like the British in India: an administration of 250,000 men should suffice, and a few divisions to put down possible rebellions." The Russian, Hewel asserted, had a slave mentality: "The Russian, at bottom, is a kind of rabbit," he said. "He doesn't have the ability to transform himself into a 'bee' or an 'ant,' as we Germans can. There is no point in trying to make the Russian more intelligent than he is." The Russia of tomorrow, Hewel continued, would look like something new: "German towns, and all around them countryside where Russian peasants will work. A little further on, there will be large territories for our army training." There was a proposal to settle on the borders of this "oriental empire" peoples close to the Germans by blood, such as the Norwegians, Danes, and Swedes, who would protect Germany from the "Asiatic hordes." The führer thought that in the future Europe would be entirely united against America. "Even the English will be with us once we have conquered the Russian landmass and all its natural resources!"
"You really believe all this talk? You think that Moscow is easy to capture? Believe me, I know Russia, and everything you tell me is very pretty but not very realistic!" remarked Karl Ritter, who trusted Walther Hewel enough to tell him frankly what he thought. Hewel, who respected Ritter, and retained some degree of independent thinking, had a contemplative air. "But after all, what does it matter?" Ritter continued. "Right now, let's talk about urgent matters. I would like to have details about what is to be done with prisoners of war. We've settled the question of political prisoners, who have to be liquidated. Do you have figures on the number of political commissars in the Red Army already killed? And where are we in reference to ordinary prisoners?"
Walther Hewel turned to an OKW officer to ask for more information. The officer took from his briefcase a recent circular and read a few passages: "Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of Germany. For the first time German soldiers are facing an enemy trained not only as a soldier but as a political agent in the service of Bolshevism. He has learned to fight against National Socialism with all available means: sabotage, demoralizing propaganda, assassination…The Bolshevik soldier has thereby lost the right to be treated as an ordinary combatant according to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions."
"What does that mean exactly?" asked Karl Ritter, whose mission was to translate the führer's orders into carefully chosen terms. "Well," answered the OKW officer, "that means, for example, that a prisoner who shows the slightest inclination to disobey orders should be shot without warning."
In the antechamber of the railroad car, Fritz listened aghast to this incredible dialogue. He knew that horrors had taken place since the beginning of the war in Poland and Russia, but until now he had not known that transgression of the laws of war was coldly encouraged by the highest leaders of the state and the army. The fact that his own boss, Karl Ritter, was associated with this kind of wrongdoing only increased his indignation. He strained his ears to continue to capture the conversation when he heard that an aide de camp had informed Ritter of his presence. "Kolbe is here!" exclaimed Ritter. "But what is he doing here, not saying anything? Send him in right away!" Fritz was led into the room. He made a Hitler salute to everyone and handed Ritter a thick sheaf of documents from his briefcase. Ritter did not have the time to consult these papers right away. He quickly dismissed his assistant and made an appointment with him for the following day after asking briefly about news from his Berlin office.
It was noon. Fritz was taken to an attractive hunting lodge ten kilometers away that was used as a residence for employees of the Foreign Ministry. On the edge of a forest and overlooking a large lake, it had been built for the 1936 Olympics as a residence for competitors in the ice boat event. The inn provided comfortable conditions unknown in Berlin. There were bouquets of flowers on the tables, fine wines, and plentiful supplies of liquor and cigarettes. A French chef selected by the occupation forces in Paris had been installed in the kitchen ("the food is much better at Ribbentrop's than at Hitler's," Fritz told himself that night as he savored a dish of game with berries). A Volksempf?nger radio broadcast through static the latest Wehrmacht reports and popular songs, such as "Das kann doch einen Seemann nicht erschüttern" ("That can't frighten a sailor") and "Lili Marlene."
In the following days, Fritz had a lot of free time. He took advantage of it to go for long runs around the lake that the windows of his room looked out on. Ten days at Hitler's headquarters; Fritz had not expected to stay that long. Busy with countless different tasks, Karl Ritter took time to write answers to the dispatches brought from Berlin and have them signed by Ribbentrop (who always signed in green ink).
One of Ritter's missions was to assist the admiralty in choosing combat zones for submarine warfare. It was also his responsibility to draft Berlin's official reactions in the event of a "blunder," notably when a neutral country complained about German aggression. Among the dispatches that Fritz had brought from Berlin were vigorous protest notes from Washington following attacks without warning by German U-boats against American ships. On each occasion, President Roosevelt had increased the intensity of expression of his anger. In a message to Congress in June, he had denounced the sinking of the Robin Moor as "an act of piracy." And in a fireside chat on September 11, referring to the Nazi leaders, he had said: "But when you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him," and noted that it was "the time for prevention of attack."
Walking by the lake, Fritz Kolbe was surprised that he did not feel comfortable. He should have been enjoying the magnificent country, but he had only one wish, to leave the "wolf's lair," its poisonous atmosphere, and its mosquitoes. He was finally authorized to return to Berlin with a satchel full of documents signed by the minister. Time was short. His return this time was on board a military plane, a Junkers Ju 52.
Berlin, November 1941
"Do you control / Yourself? Are you the master of yourself? / Do you stand free amid the world as I do / So you may be the author of your actions?" (The Death of Wallenstein, Act 3, Scene 2).
Back in Berlin, Fritz had plunged into Schiller and was meditating on these words of Wallenstein. Since his trip to the "wolf's lair" and the astounding conversation that he had overheard between Karl Ritter and Walther Hewel, he had decided to leave Germany. He saw no other way to remain true to himself. He could no longer defend his country now that he knew it was guilty of such injustices and unspeakable abominations. What had happened since late 1939 exceeded in horror everything that had been seen between 1914 and 1918. Fritz was beginning to understand that the "war of extermination" conducted by the Nazis was leading to an apocalypse. Whatever the outcome-victory or defeat of Germany-nothing allowed the slightest hope for the future: either Germany won the war and multiplied its criminal power, or it lost and found itself outcast from the civilized world.
On returning from his stay at Hitler's headquarters, Fritz had heard of the activities of "mobile task forces" of the secret police headed by Reinhard Heydrich (the Einsatzgruppen) in the rear of the Russian front. The mission of the Einsatzgruppen was to massacre Jews, on the pretext of "forestalling the risk of spreading epidemics behind the front lines." The foreign ministry had received very precise reports stating that men, women, and even children had indiscriminately been machine-gunned, had their throats cut, been burned alive, or sometimes murdered with blows of a pickax or a hammer.
Fritz was beginning to think that if he continued to rub shoulders with evil he would end up being its accomplice. He had had enough of behaving like the good soldier Svejk. Playing the stupid and narrow-minded petty official led to nothing, except protecting himself. He sometimes saw himself in dreams in a foreign uniform, bearing arms, fighting against the men of the Wehrmacht. He immediately reproached himself for denying his own people. After all, German soldiers had not wanted, for the most part, to be involved in this kind of criminal adventure. The only ones who deserved to be eliminated were the leaders of the country. These questions tormented him. In that fall of 1941, it was not uncommon for him to wake up in the middle of the night with violent cramps in his stomach. In addition to the multiple pains he suffered from his constant excessive exercise, Fritz was beginning to hurt everywhere.
By chance, since he had met Professor Sauerbruch's assistant in the spring of 1940, Fritz had easy access to the Charité hospital. At the request of Maria Fritsch, the famous surgeon had agreed to treat Fritz's knees and had prescribed a thermal cure at Bad Brambach in southern Saxony, where he had spent three weeks at the end of the summer of 1940.
Fritz gradually developed the habit of going to the hospital once or twice a week for no medical reason. Located not far from the Foreign Ministry, the hospital was a veritable enclave in the city, with fifteen red brick buildings with neo-Gothic fa?ades. There were even hot-houses for the cultivation and wintering of plants and trees. Fritz went to see Maria on leaving his office and spent a good bit of time chatting with her at the hospital. One evening, he even played her an old song from the Wandervogel, accompanying himself on a guitar that happened to be sitting in a corner of the room. He sang well, with a warm voice, and the words of the song were a declaration of love. "Come, let's go into the fields, the cuckoo is calling us from the pine forest / Young girl, let yourself go in the dance." Maria had been unable to conceal her emotion.
From that moment on, the two were inseparable. They met in the restaurants of Charlottenburg, then went to the cinema. Fritz felt all the more comfortable at the Charité because he had the feeling of being protected from prying eyes. At the Foreign Ministry, he knew that he was under surveillance and had to be constantly careful not to say one wrong word. This wasn't true at the hospital, which was like an island protected from the outside world, even though it was in the heart of the capital of the Reich. The Gestapo did not penetrate there, and Fritz did not feel he was being spied on. On the contrary, he was the one in an observation post, trying to identify the figures who came to see Professor Sauerbruch. And there were many of them. You might encounter the surgeon in the company of a doctor in an SS uniform, and then the next day with a man who was under heavy surveillance by the regime.
Fritz's frequent comings and goings to see Maria Fritsch did not long go unnoticed by Sauerbruch. After hearing his assistant laugh during the evenings she spent with Fritz, the surgeon asked Maria to introduce her friend to him formally. The two men hit it off well. In this wartime period, lively minds like Fritz's were welcome. He had a gift for diverting his audience by telling anecdotes from behind the scenes in the ministry or reporting the latest comical details about Ribbentrop's life. And Sauerbruch adored gossip. He picked it up everywhere and spiced it up in his style in order to shine in Berlin salons. He liked Fritz a good deal and invited him home several times.
One evening at the surgeon's house toward the end of November 1941, Fritz noticed a clergyman dressed in black, noticeable by his wrinkled suit, his thick glasses, and his slightly dirty white collar. The unknown man had drawn his attention from the very beginning of the evening. He and Ferdinand Sauerbruch had carried on an apparently interesting conversation in low tones. Fritz had been unable to catch the slightest scrap of it, but he had immediately seen that the churchman was an enemy of the regime. Those things could soon be felt. It took only a glance or a way of pitching one's voice to be identified. Fritz wanted to know more about this figure. He learned that this was the prelate Georg Schreiber, former Reichstag deputy under the Zentrum label, the pre-1933 Catholic party. A theologian, university professor, and also a political man, Schreiber had been a very influential figure during the Weimar Republic. In his special fields of political action (church questions, culture, education, foreign policy, and science), he was an unquestioned authority. Since the Nazis had come to power they had subjected him to constant affronts. Research institutes and other learned societies over which he had presided had been forced to close down. For the leaders of the Third Reich, Georg Schreiber was the embodiment of the despised "old system."
Schreiber had been protected by Sauerbruch on more than one occasion. The two men were personally very close. The prelate often came to rest at the Charité where he was treated for "abdominal troubles." Fritz Kolbe was curious to meet a man of the cloth who had not compromised with the regime (it hardly mattered that he was a Catholic). He introduced himself.
After exchanging a few banalities about life behind the scenes in the Foreign Ministry and current sports (two areas in which Schreiber was well versed), Fritz dared to bring up politics. "What did you think," he asked, "of Clemens von Galen's recent speech against the elimination of the mentally handicapped? Why aren't there more men of the church like him who dare to denounce the crimes of the Nazis?" Schreiber, after making certain that no one was listening to their conversation, expressed his full support of the bishop of Münster. He revealed to Fritz that Professor Sauerbruch had information that the Nazis had already eliminated seventy thousand of the mentally handicapped since 1939 (including many children), and that they intended to kill "old people, the tubercular, the war wounded, and others unworthy to live (lebensunswerte Menschen), as they say."
This revelation startled Fritz. Now sensing that he could trust his interlocutor, he dared to ask the prelate to help him resolve his problems of conscience: "How can I continue to serve this regime? I want to leave the country, but that is not possible. If I stay, am I morally tainted by my status as an official? After all, I took an oath in the name of the führer, like all the others…" Georg Schreiber looked very serious and took him aside to answer him. The conversation lasted for more than an hour. No one knows exactly what Schreiber said that evening. In any event, Fritz retained the following message: "Do not leave Germany! Fight against the Nazis with the resources that you have. If you are in this post, this is because God willed it for one reason or another."
Berlin, 1942
Germany could only be reborn-from the Nazis' ashes. Fritz had known that since 1933. But for the regime to fall, Germany would have to lose the war. It took Fritz time to recognize that it was not shameful to be a "defeatist," that a quick surrender was in fact in Germany's best interests, but it took root in Fritz like a painfully obvious fact between late 1941 and early 1942. Not all his friends, far from it, could follow him into this way of seeing things. He himself sometimes began to doubt. Throughout all of 1942, he felt more alone and isolated than ever.
"You must opt for a party in the war…I have / No choice. I must use force or else endure it," Fritz repeated to himself as he read The Death of Wallenstein (Act 2, Scene 1). He made the following argument: One could not wish for a Nazi victory. In addition, the defeat of Germany was foreseeable once the United States had entered the war against Germany in December 1941 and Japan on its side took no steps to attack Russia and establish a second front in the Far East. Finally, the longer it took Germany to lay down arms, the weaker it would be at the end of the conflict. This situation of weakness would risk throwing it into the arms of the Communists.
Since the early 1930s, Fritz had been almost as vehemently opposed to the Communists as to the Nazis. To be sure, he had for a time been attracted by the revolutionary language that cut through the perpetual compromises of the Social Democrats. After October 1917, he had not been impervious to the "great light in the East." He had a few happy memories from that period of his life. For example, he still liked to sing, when he was in good company, songs of the radical left, full of mockery for the Social Democratic moderates: the "Revoluzzer" by Erich Mühsam was one of his favorite songs. But the dictatorial practices of the KPD had quickly snuffed any temptations in that direction. The possibility of the USSR invading Germany depressed him almost as much as that of Hitler attaining victory.
Even though Schreiber had advised him against engaging in dangerous activities, Fritz continued to write anti-Nazi leaflets throughout 1942. He left letters with "defeatist" content, supposedly written by a "soldier back from the Russian front"-a role with unassailable credibility in Germany at the time-in telephone booths. Fritz contemplated taking even bolder steps. He and two of his friends came up with the idea of blowing up a railroad bridge at Werder am Havel, a small town about thirty kilometers southwest of Berlin. But the plan, for unknown reasons, was never carried out.
This excited state, although dangerous, was pathetic and a little na?ve. With the position he occupied and the information at his disposal, Fritz had long known that he could do much better: provide information to the enemies of his country. From his time as a Wandervogel, he knew that espionage was very much an act of war, and that he would "have to be very clever at passing news secretly from one place to another," as Baden-Powell put it. He had been one of the boldest speaking out against the Nazis among the chatterers at the Café Kottler, and he had never lacked courage in writing anonymous propaganda against the regime, but this was something entirely different. Sharing intelligence with the enemy: these terrifying words frequently echoed in his mind, although he was unable to tell whether it was simple common sense or lunatic recklessness that had put such ideas into his head.
For some time Fritz had already been acting on the edge of "high treason" (Hochverrat), by counterfeiting passports in South Africa and by distributing anonymous messages. These were very great risks. But in the event he were to provide information of a strategic nature to the Allies, he would be guilty of genuine "treason to his country" (Landesverrat), which meant not only a death sentence but also dishonor in the eyes of generations to come.
On every occasion, it was the words of the prelate Schreiber that enabled him to orient his compass: "Do not leave Germany! Fight against the Nazis with the resources that you have." On one occasion, he attempted to establish contact with an American diplomat posted in Berlin whose name had been given to him by a friend. But with the American entry into the war in December 1941, the United States embassy closed its doors and the American diplomatic corps left the capital of the Reich. On two or three occasions in 1941 and 1942, Fritz tried to secure a mission as diplomatic courier in order to go to Switzerland. He explained first that he wanted to take a well-deserved leave, then he claimed that he had to go to Switzerland to settle the formalities of his divorce, since his second wife-who had remained in Africa and from whom he was de facto separated-was from Zurich. This was only a pretext: Once in Bern, he would have tried to speak to his old friend Ernst Kocherthaler, who knew many people and who would no doubt have been able to help him contact the Allies. It was a wasted effort: every time, the request was refused without explanation, and in fact, Fritz learned that his refusal to join the party was the real reason for the rejection. He did not insist, for fear of awakening suspicion, but, weary of the battle, he was once again tempted to flee the country. Fritz was torn between his desire for exile, his will to resist, and his new passion for Maria.
What he did not know was that at the same time some Nazi leaders themselves were discreetly beginning to doubt Germany's victory. Of course, German offensives on the Russian front continued to be victorious. The Wehrmacht had reached the Volga, in the heart of the Caucasus, and was approaching the oil wells of Baku. In North Africa, Rommel's troops marched into Egypt and were preparing to advance toward the Suez Canal. In the Atlantic, Allied convoys were suffering heavy losses because of German submarines. But the most perceptive minds did not allow themselves to be blinded by these events and made longer-term calculations. Well-informed Germans (of whom Karl Ritter was one) knew that the economic and military potential of the United States was at least comparable to that of the Axis powers. They knew that there was a tendency to overestimate the power of Japan and to underestimate American power. The proliferation of fronts was making a German victory increasingly problematic. And since Hitler had had to give up his plan of taking Moscow before the winter of 1941–42, it was clear that Russia would not fall "like a house of cards." The likelihood of a long war was now in everyone's mind. The theater of operations was beginning to shift dangerously toward Germany itself, with the increase of bombing by the Royal Air Force of major German cities (Cologne had been very severely damaged in May 1942). Paradoxically, lucidity was greatest in Heinrich Himmler's circle. The regime's principal killers were the first to sense the wind shifting, toward the middle of 1942.
Unlike the SS leaders, Kolbe wanted to see the Nazi regime disappear and not merely limit the damage of a foreseeable defeat. Kolbe wished for the total defeat of his own country. Once this had been accomplished, it would be possible to sweep away the past and contribute to the birth of a new, more just, and more democratic Germany. As for the means of getting there, he merely dreamed of them. He had contacts with none of the small German opposition groups. He had not yet heard of Goerdeler or of the Kreisau Circle. He had no concrete plan. In the spring of 1942, he wanted to leave Karl Ritter's staff and find a post abroad, but he was made to understand that there was no point in trying.
He continued to perform his duties conscientiously. After his first visit to the führer's headquarters in East Prussia, Fritz returned there several times in the course of 1942. The mission became routine: He had to transmit to Karl Ritter the documents that Ritter did not want to entrust to the official mail services. Fritz went to the "wolf's lair" between late January and early February, in early April, and shortly before Christmas.
Every time, Fritz took the train at the Grunewald station. One day in the spring of 1942, looking out the window of his special compartment, he saw a train into which the police were forcing dozens of Jewish families (recognizable from their yellow stars). In October 1941, the government began deporting the Jews of Berlin to the East. At the time, the Reichsbahn was not yet using freight cars for deportations; this was a perfectly ordinary passenger train. No one knew where exactly they were going-nor did Fritz Kolbe, but he knew that the passengers in that train would not be coming back to Germany.