Thanks also to: Peter Sichel (New York, Bordeaux), head of the CIA in Berlin after the war, who greatly helped me at all stages of this book.
Hans-Jürgen Döscher (Osnabrück), historian of the German Foreign Ministry, who granted me the benefit of his incomparable knowledge of the German diplomatic administration and its history.
Axel Frohn and Hans-Michael Kloth (Der Spiegel), who made me want to write this book.
Philippe Garnier (Denoël, Paris), for his patience and encouragement.
Florence and all the children: Juliette, Jean-Baptiste, Milán, Benjamin, Eléna, and Mateo, for their infinite patience.
George Holoch, for his great translation and his personal dedication to all the details.
For their invaluable testimony, I would also like to thank Gudrun and Martin Fritsch in Berlin, Sylvia and Gerald Roth in Geneva, and Marie-Christine and Frank Jung in Strasbourg. I would like to thank each of them as well for kindly making available important unpublished documents, notably some photographs reprinted here, as well as notes and diaries that were used extensively.
My thanks finally, to all those who have in one way or another made valuable contributions to the writing of this book.
Yves-Marc Ajchenbaum, Paris.
Fabrice d’Almeida, Paris.
Nickie Athanassi, Paris.
Hervé Audibert, Joinville-le-Pont.
Lucienne Bastien, Paris.
Gerhard A. Bayer, Bundesverband Deutscher Eisenbahn-Freunde e. V., Füssen-Weisensee.
Ludwig Biewer, archives of the German Foreign Ministry, Berlin.
Dennis E. Bilger, Harry S. Truman Library.
Antoine and Madeleine Bosshard, Lausanne.
Marie-Françoise Bothorel, Paris.
Daniel Bourgeois, Swiss Federal Archives, Bern.
Greg Bradsher, United States National Archives, College Park.
Pierre Braunschweig, Paris.
Jacques Bureau, Paris.
Marianne Brück, Ottobeuren.
Didier Cantarutti, Paris.
Danielle Delattre, Paris.
Micheline Delattre, Noisy-le-Roi.
Cordelia Dodson-Hood, Washington.
Louis-Marie and Nicole Duchamp, Paris.
Wolfgang U. Eckart, Heidelberg.
Bruce Edwards, Rutland, Vermont.
François Fejtö, Paris.
Louis de Fouchécour, Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Mark Fritz, New York.
François George, Paris.
Alfred Gottwaldt, Museum of Science and Technology, Berlin.
Hélène Gournay, Service pédagogique La Coupole.
Jean-Paul Guilloteau, Paris.
Peter Hantke, August Horch Museum, Zwickau.
A. Herrbach, Sélestat.
Stefan Hausherr, Winterthur.
Christine Herme, Paris.
Ronald Hermsdorf, New Boston, New Hampshire.
William Hood, Amagansett, New York.
Erika von Hornstein, Berlin.
Brigitte Kaff, Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, Sankt Augustin.
Peter Kamber, Bern.
Dr. Pierre Kehr, Strasbourg.
Professor Klemens von Klemperer, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Karin Kolbe, Sydney.
Ursula Kolbe, Sydney.
August von Kageneck, Neuilly-sur-Seine.
Arnold Kramish, Reston, Virginia.
Dr. Ursula Krause-Schmidt, Studienkreis deutscher Widerstand, Frankfurt.
Dominik Landwehr, Kollbrunn, Switzerland.
Linda Martin, CBS News Productions, New York.
Christof Mauch, Washington.
Gerald M. Mayer, Jr., Newbury, New Hampshire.
Fritz Molden, Vienna.
Beth Montandon, Lausanne.
Professor Dr. Rudolf Morsey, Neustadt.
Melissa Müller, Munich.
David Oxenstierna, Boston.
Anne Perfumo, Paris.
Serge Pétillot-Niémetz, Paris.
Gregor Pickro, German Federal Archives, Koblenz.
Tom Polgar, Maitland, Florida.
Norbert Prill, Strasbourg and Bonn.
Rudolf J. Ritter, Grub, Switzerland.
Constantin Roman, London.
Francis Rosenstiel, Strasbourg.
Olivier Rubinstein, Paris.
Ulrich Sahm, Bodenwerder.
Serguei, Paris.
Thomas Sparr, Siedler Verlag, Berlin.
James Srodes, Washington.
Olivia Stasi, Paris.
Dr. Christoph Stamm, Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Bonn.
Hansjakob Stehle, Vienna.
Ute Stiepani, Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand, Berlin.
Jean-Pierre Tuquoi, Paris.
Professor Klaus Urner.
Professor Jean-Marie Vetter, Strasbourg.
Dr. Bernhard Weber-Brosamer, Franz Haniel & Co., Duisburg.
Abbot Paulus Weigele, Ottobeuren.
Professor Gerhard Weinberg, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Nigel West, Berkshire, England.
Neville Wylie, School of Politics, University of Nottingham.
SOURCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Personal archives of Fritz Kolbe, Sydney
Peter Kolbe graciously made available his father’s archives, which he has preserved in Sydney. Fritz Kolbe kept a written record of most of the events of his life. His correspondence is extraordinarily rich (he even kept copies of letters he sent to his correspondents). A large number of documents covering the entire life of Kolbe was available for consultation. For several decades, these documents had been held in Bad Dürrheim, in the Black Forest region, by Maria Fritsch, Kolbe’s third wife, who died in June 2000 at the age of ninety-eight. The widow had not wanted to divulge them. Several historians and journalists vainly attempted to persuade her to open the files in her possession (for example, Klemens von Klemperer in the late 1970s, and Hansjakob Stehle of the weekly Die Zeit in 1986). She preferred to turn over all the documents in her possession to Peter Kolbe in Australia, to whom she sent, bit by bit, in the mail, the documents that she had preserved in the cellar of her house.
I have been able to consult all these documents—all previously unpublished—at the home of Peter Kolbe. Most of them were typed. When this was not the case (for example, the postwar correspondence between Fritz Kolbe and Ernst Kocherthaler), Peter Kolbe kindly took the trouble to decipher his father’s handwriting (very difficult to read because of old German script).
Among the most useful items was a fifty-nine-page typed document in German written by Gerald Mayer and Fritz Kolbe, unfortunately undated. Perhaps it was a sketch for the autobiography that Fritz Kolbe intended to write in the late 1960s. It is impossible to say. The text is written in the third person, and Kolbe is named in it “König.” Mayer’s and Kolbe’s points of view are blended together. The text is a bit novelistic (it begins: “On 18 August 1943, we meet him for the first time…”).
“The Story of George” (seven typed pages in English), written by Ernst Kocherthaler in the spring of 1945, was also of great help in reconstructing the life of Fritz Kolbe, along with various autobiographical documents that Kolbe wrote after the war (notably a ten-page autobiographical text in German, dated May 15, 1945). In the 1960s, Ernst Kocherthaler wrote another summary, “The Background of the George Story” (four typed pages in English, November 1964) to assist in the rehabilitation of his friend.
The problem with all these documents is that they present the point of view of a man on his own story, with all the distortions (voluntary or not) that that presupposes. “Human history is made up of many fables mixed with a few truths” (Chateaubriand). In every autobiographical narrative, the author seeks to justify his actions and to explain the coherence of his acts after the fact.
Hence the importance of all the dry and factual administrative documents, which are also found in abundance in Fritz Kolbe’s personal archives. Private and public correspondence, orders, passports, photographs… This type of document, which is invaluable, makes it possible to provide a multiplicity of perspectives on the picture.