the language very welclass="underline" Even though he has never lived in Germany, Peter Kolbe speaks unaccented German and has a slight German accent when he speaks English.
Africa in January 1954: Peter returned to Germany several times and relations with his father grew a bit smoother over time. He studied science in South Africa and Australia and became a geologist. After post-doctoral studies at MIT and a position with an American company based in Canada, he moved to Australia, where he took up a position as professor of geology and geochemistry at Sydney University, where he spent the rest of his career. With the passage of time, Peter Kolbe has inwardly reconciled himself with his father and is finally grateful to him for not bringing him back to Germany in September 1939.
cement market in South Africa: Correspondence between Fritz Kolbe and his son, September 1953. “My father sent me letters in which he asked me for stacks of information about the economic needs of South Africa: concrete poles for telephone lines, wooden ties for railroad lines…. I found this completely ridiculous and I said to myself, what a loser!” Peter Kolbe, Sydney, November 2001.
to join the Masons: Peter Kolbe joined a lodge in Durban, but set foot in it only once or twice.
on February 26, 1953: “Without Kolbe, Allen Dulles would never have become head of the CIA,” according to Mary Bancroft, former informal collaborator and mistress of Allen Dulles, in an article by Barbara Ungeheuer in Die Zeit, May 1986.
influential New York organization: The Council on Foreign Relations was established after the First World War by young disciples of President Wilson, among them Allen Dulles. The organization saw the light of day at the Hotel Majestic in Paris in May 1919, during the negotiations on the Versailles treaty. Over time, the forum became a nursery for the upper echelons of the American leadership.
the Nazi Foreign Ministry: Allen W. Dulles Papers. On the death of Allen Dulles on January 30, 1969, all the obituaries in the American press mentioned the existence of “George Wood.”
the Kappa-Wood materiaclass="underline" Letter from General John Magruder to Allen Dulles, December 6, 1945, Allen W. Dulles Papers.
raids on German cities: Speech of President Truman reprinted in the press release from Macmillan in presentation of the book by Allen Dulles on German resistance to Nazism, Germany’s Underground (1947). Allen W. Dulles Papers.
by the United States: Among other sources, we may cite a letter from Fritz Kolbe to his son, dated May 1968, in which he criticizes Western consumer society and exhibits understanding for the rebellion of young people in France and around Europe, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.
had never dropped him: The two men remained in touch until the death of Allen Dulles. In the 1960s, they continued to meet in Bern or in the United States whenever the opportunity arose.
Fritz secure this position: From the mid-1950s on, Fritz was not content to be merely a sales representative for a chain saw company. He also represented in Switzerland the interests of his friend Walter Girgner, owner of a large clothing company in Germany (Trumpf shirts), and accumulated assignments for sales canvassing in all areas (steel, machinery, textiles, etc.).
were infested with snakes: German Federal Archives, Koblenz, Rudolf Pechel file, correspondence with Fritz Kolbe, April 1954.
$250 a month: The contract is in the personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.
what he could do: Peter Sichel, interview, Bordeaux, December 1, 2001.
Epilogue
that of Fritz Kolbe: See the illustrated volume 100 Jahre Auswärtiges Amt (1870–1970), published by the German Foreign Ministry in 1970, and Widerstand im auswärtigen Dienst, published by the ministry in 1994. The names of the martyrs of July 20, 1944 engraved in marble in the ministry were (and remain) the following: Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, Eduard Brücklmeier, Hans-Bernd von Haeften, Ulrich von Hassell, Otto Kiep, Herbert Mumm von Schwarzenstein, Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, Adam von Trott zu Solz, Herbert Gollnow, Richard Kuenzer, and Hans Litter, to which was added a few years later Rudolf von Scheliha. All these diplomats were executed between 1942 and 1945.
list of the “just”: Ludwig Biewer, director of archives for the Foreign Ministry.
to his friend intolerable: “The ironic result of the story is that a valiant patriot could have been considered a traitor to his country, when he really was one of the few who helped that in the decisive moments of German history a responsible American set of politicians could stop the Morgenthau policy and back Germany against Soviet Russia’s domination.” Ernst Kocherthaler, “The Background of the George Story.”
years left to live: Ernst Kocherthaler died in Bern on September 6, 1966.
suspicions weighing on him: Letter from Eugen Gerstenmaier, March 10, 1965, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.
to me my honor: Letter from Fritz Kolbe to Ernst Kocherthaler, January 10, 1965, personal archives of Fritz Kolbe.
February 16, 1971 in Bern: “He did not die peacefully,” says his son, who was present for his last moments in a Bern hospital. His last words were to ask his son whether he “had been a good father.” His estate, inventoried by a Bern notary, included among assets 47,746 Swiss francs, a 1968 Opel Commodore GS, and a guitar. Fritz Kolbe’s personal indebtedness amounted to 7882 Swiss francs.
director of the CIA: Richard M. Helms (1913–2002) was director of the CIA from 1966 to 1973. A former journalist, he had covered the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games for United Press and had interviewed Hitler. He joined the OSS in 1943 and continued his career in the CIA after the war. He succeeded Allen Dulles as chief of American intelligence in Germany after October 1945. After his return to Washington, Allen Dulles asked him to handle Fritz Kolbe’s immigration file between 1947 and 1949. He was appointed director of the CIA in 1966 under the presidency of Lyndon Johnson. In 1977, after refusing to testify before Congress on the role of the CIA in the 1973 coup d’état in Chile, he was given a suspended sentence of two years in prison and fined $2,000. The memoirs of Richard Helms, written in collaboration with William Hood, were published in the United States in the spring of 2003, with the title A Look Over My Shoulder.
in his own country: Unused material for Great True Spy Stories (1967), Allen W. Dulles Papers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My special thanks go to Peter Kolbe (Sydney), the son of Fritz Kolbe, who welcomed me to his home, opened his father’s archives to me, and answered all my questions. Without him, this book would not have been possible.
I would also like to thank Peter Kolbe for having made available the photographic documents, some of which are reproduced in this book.