“This new life did not seem to us worth living,” Maria said much later, recalling the year 1945. However, compared to most Berliners, Fritz and Maria were aware that they were in a privileged position. They did not need a ration card to live, and they were housed by the Americans. Allen Dulles, who had just taken charge of the OSS for all of Germany, lived close by, frequently asked after them, and provided them with CARE packages containing food. Fritz had the use of a car and—the height of luxury—was free to travel anywhere. He was not unhappy to have his friends benefit from his influence with the American occupation authorities. People came to see him to get a pass, a ration card, medicine, or a job. The question of his professional future had not yet arisen; for the moment Fritz was employed by the American military administration (OMGUS, Office of Military Government for Germany, United States), although he did not know how long that would last.
Although Fritz sometimes put on an American uniform when he traveled around town incognito, he did not shout from the rooftops that he was working for the conquerors. “Lackey of the Allies” and “traitor to the fatherland” were starting to become common insults. He was often looked at askance. Almost everywhere, Fritz seemed to be thought of as a “foreign body.” Maria’s family, in particular, regarded him with suspicion. He didn’t care, but she was deeply hurt. When Fritz Kolbe was asked what his current occupation was, he claimed that with the fall of the Foreign Ministry he wanted to make use of his skills as a former railroad employee. “I am trying to set up transportation firms,” he said. Only his close friends knew of his official mission. He was a member of the OMGUS office in charge of the settlement of refugees and displaced persons, but he also worked as an interpreter and driver for the Americans. A few months later, he was even accredited as a journalist to the Allied press service, which made it possible for him to interview major German political figures.
At bottom, the real nature of his work remained very vague. Everyone knew—and that was the essential point—that Fritz enjoyed a privileged position and that he had a long reach. He had people call him “George.” His house in the Nikolassee neighborhood became a meeting place for a swarm of friends delighted to escape from privation, if only for one evening. One would often encounter Professor Sauerbruch, Gertrud von Heimerdinger, old childhood friends, and newcomers to the “circle,” such as the industrialist Viktor Bausch and his wife Erika von Hornstein, a painter, or the popular writer Felicitas von Reznicek. Among regular visitors to the house were also a few young American OSS officers: The bon vivant Harry Hermsdorf was a liaison with Allen Dulles, and Tom Polgar, Fritz’s neighbor, spent hours playing with him with electric trains.
Fritz continued to supply pieces of information to the Americans and to draft reports for them. His area of expertise was the Social Democratic Party, in which he had a rich network of contacts, particularly in the Soviet zone. He closely observed the gradual seizure of control of the Social Democratic Party by the Communist Party in the East. In the analyses that he submitted to the OSS, he did not hesitate to assimilate the “Bolsheviks” to the Nazis. He even considered the communists “more brutal and more primitive” and regretted that it had not been possible to continue the war against the USSR.
On August 7, 1945, an accident almost cost him his life. While he was riding in an American army jeep, there was a violent collision with a truck at a Berlin intersection. Fritz suffered fractures of the skull and jaw, and several broken ribs. He spent three weeks in the hospital and needed a long convalescence before he could get back on his feet.
Wiesbaden, September 26, 1945
Fritz had barely recovered when he was again called to Wiesbaden to testify before a commission headed by DeWitt C. Poole, of the U.S. State Department, who was questioning as many of the former members of the Foreign Ministry as he could in connection with the trials that were soon to begin in Nuremberg. The young OSS officer, Peter Sichel, who was now posted to Berlin, accompanied Fritz in the jeep to Wiesbaden. During the long trip, the two men spoke mostly of sports and physical exercise. Fritz Kolbe showed off a few sports medals that he had won over the years. “It was his principal source of pride,” Peter Sichel recalled.
On September 26, 1945, Fritz was questioned in Wiesbaden by a member of the Poole commission. He spoke of his activities during the war. He explained that he had had about twenty “friends” who shared his convictions and had helped him to act. He again presented a precise description of every figure in the Foreign Ministry. He spoke at length of the clandestine organization of the traffic in strategic materials between Franco Spain and Nazi Germany. For the Americans, it was essential to have firsthand testimony to substantiate the prosecution in Nuremberg.
The OSS, however, feared for the safety of its protégé and did not want to provide too many opportunities for “George Wood” to speak publicly. Allen Dulles had tried to dissuade him from going before the Poole commission. Fritz had insisted, wishing as he did to participate in the work of justice being carried out by the Allies. But unlike others, notably Hans-Bernd Gisevius, he was not called to the witness stand at the international military tribunal, which began its proceedings in November 1945. Having been only a spy with no political responsibility, his testimony had to remain secret.
Berlin, 1946 to 1948
Even though he was relatively protected by his anonymity, Fritz Kolbe was not in a comfortable situation. His cooperation with the Americans made him particularly vulnerable in the context of the nascent cold war. In late June 1946, General Donovan sent a warning note to Allen Dulles: “The situation in Berlin has altered drastically since you left. There may be danger to some of those people who worked with you there…. There have been disappearances of many people whose names have appeared in the press as having been of assistance to the Allies during the war.” In his reply, Dulles explicitly raised the question of Fritz Kolbe’s future: “Certainly the possibility you suggest always exists and I understand that steps are being taken to extract ‘Wood’ of Boston-platinum fame and bring him over here for a cooling off period. I understand that he is still about the most useful man we have in Berlin but certain events have caused our people over here to feel that he is no longer safe.”
The Americans were beginning to fear that the Soviets might kidnap Kolbe. Wasn’t he as Dulles wrote, “the most useful man” for the Americans in Berlin? Fritz himself was beginning to consider living in the United States. In February 1946, he wrote to Ernst Kocherthaler that he was considering definitively giving up German citizenship and settling on the other side of the Atlantic to begin a “new life.” With his usual optimism, he hoped to find “a job in industry or in the State Department.” Eager to see his son Peter again, he thought it would be easier for him to get to South Africa from the United States. In Germany, it was impossible for him to get the foreign currency he needed for the trip.