his family, his opinions: “This time we had more time to talk,” Fritz said about his October visit. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.
course of the conversation: Message from OSS Bern to Washington, October 4, 1943, National Archives.
door of Herrengasse 23: Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.
colleagues in the legation: Ibid.
connection might attract suspicion: Ibid.
specialized in venereal diseases: Ibid.
of a later interrogation: Fritz Kolbe recounts that he was indeed interrogated by a security officer on his return from Bern. “We know that you were absent from your hotel on the night of 9 October. What do you have to answer?” The doctor’s bill enabled him to calm the suspicions of the interrogator, and Kolbe escaped with a verbal warning. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.” Morgan places the scene in August 1943, apparently mistakenly.
“apartment on Kurfürstendamm”: Documents from OSS Bern, October 8 and 9, 1943, National Archives.
came to arrest him: “The Story of George.” Fritz Kolbe intended to shoot himself in the head if he were arrested. Morgan, “The Spy the Nazis Missed.”
Kolbe (“Subject: Wood case”): Note from Norman Holmes Pearson (OSS London, chief of the counterespionage branch) to Colonel David K. E. Bruce, chief of the OSS in London, November 23, 1943, National Archives.
and the Ultra machine: See Chapter 6, note 20.
of the Royal Navy: Correspondence of the author with Nigel West, an English historian of espionage, and with David Oxenstierna in Boston, grandson of Johann Gabriel Oxenstierna.
“Josephine,” were disciplined: Count Oxenstierna was replaced in the spring of 1944 by another member of the Swedish aristocracy, Count Bertil. Among the high British officials who had to explain themselves on this matter was notably Sir William Strange, Assistant Undersecretary of State at the Foreign Office.
“course of the war”: Letter from Claude Dansey to OSS London, November 5, 1943, National Archives.
which Kolbe had revealed: Kappa message of December 30, 1943, National Archives.
“factory was not hit”: Kappa message of October 11, 1943, National Archives.
“correct,” and so on: Messages from OSS London to Washington, Kappa series, November 19, 1943 and January 22, 1944, National Archives.
Chapter 9
the pay of Germany: Elyeza Bazna was born in 1904 in Pristina, in the western part of the Ottoman Empire. He came from a modest Muslim family. The British ambassador in Ankara hired him as a valet in 1942.
combining diplomacy with espionage: Von Papen had been expelled from the United States in 1915 for engaging in secret activities incompatible with his position as military attaché at the German embassy.
Schellenberg, head of foreign espionage: Department VI of the RSHA, the SD.
so, at what price?: Officially, Turkey was tied to England by a treaty of alliance dating from October 1939.
the German secret services: Ernst Kaltenbrunner had taken charge of the Reichsicherheitshauptamt after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague in May 1942.
memoirs after the war: Franz von Papen, Memoirs (London: André Deutsch, 1952).
this mysterious source: Kappa message, December 29, 1943, National Archives.
“source designated as Cicero”: Kappa message from OSS Bern, December 30, 1943. The next message was dated January 1, 1944. These documents were summarized to constitute the very first documents of the “Boston series,” a shorter version of the Kappa messages. Document number 5 of the Boston series—intended for distribution to the top leadership of the United States—was concerned with the procurement of British documents by the German embassy in Ankara. Source: National Archives.
“from the Cicero sources”: Message from OSS London to OSS Bern, January 25, 1944, National Archives.
of the November cables: Message from OSS London to OSS Bern, February 19, 1944, National Archives.
“the identity of Cicero”: Kappa message, January 10, 1944, National Archives.
“with him to Cairo”: Kappa message received in Washington on February 22, 1944.
source of the leak: Allen Dulles gives his version of the events: “Of direct practical value of the very highest kind among Wood’s contributions was a copy of a cable in which the German Ambassador in Turkey, von Papen, proudly reported to Berlin (in November 1943) the acquisition of top secret documents from the British Embassy in Ankara through ‘an important German agent.’… I immediately passed word of this to my British colleagues, and a couple of British security inspectors immediately went over the British Embassy in Ankara and changed the safes and their combinations, thus putting Cicero out of business. Neither the Germans nor Cicero ever knew what was behind the security visit, which was, of course, made to appear routine and normal.” The Secret Surrender, p. 24.
wrote after the war: The Secret Surrender. After the war, the British secret services claimed that they had “turned” Cicero between January and March 1944 and used him to disseminate false intelligence to the Germans. For his part, Allen Dulles explained at the end of his life that “[i]t was obvious to me that the British were playing some sort of game with Cicero.” But the most current explanations are of a different nature: there is hardly any doubt about the negligence of the British ambassador. See Nigel West, “Cicero; A Stratagem of Deception?” in A Thread of Deceit: Espionage Myths of World War II (New York: Random House, 1985).
began to resemble fountains: Paul Seabury, The Wilhelmstrasse, A Study of German Diplomats under the Nazi Regime (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954).
were evacuated to Silesia: The ministry retreated to Krummhübel (now Karpacz in Poland), in the Riesengebirge, or “mount of giants” region. See Kappa message, December 30, 1943, National Archives.
“soldiers all mixed together”: Unpublished notebooks of Adolphe Jung in the possession of Frank and Marie-Christine Jung, Strasbourg.
was in short supply: The “coal thief,” Kohlenklau, was denounced as a dangerous public enemy.
your civil defense kit: In German, Luftschutzkoffer. In every air raid, Fritz Kolbe put in this case the “hot” documents that he did not want to fall into the wrong hands. Biographical document by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe.
Rome, Ulrich von Hasselclass="underline" Ulrich von Hassell (1881–1944) belonged to the nationalist political persuasion, but he was also one of the strongest opponents of Hitler. German ambassador to Italy from 1932 to 1938, he then took refuge in internal exile and participated in the plot of July 20, 1944. Arrested after the failure of the assassination attempt against Hitler, he was tried by a “People’s Court” and executed on September 8, 1944. His diaries, published in Berlin in 1988, are among the richest and most interesting documents concerning the period.