CIA Files: Fritz Kolbe, the OSS Spy 'George Wood'

: hen I first heard the story about George Wood, Be 3 : sa 
i 	I wouldn't believe it. I was having lunch in one Pyod 	x 
Bot of those Paris sidewalk restaurants with a friend z 4 
of mine, an American who had been an intelli- 
gence officer in Europe during the war. 
“This guy was a German diplomat,” he explained. 
i “Wood was not his real name, of course. That was the 
' ° security alias General Bill Donovan's espionage boys . 
?- gave him after he made his first contact with the Office 
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_ | 2 | "George Wood” brought the Allies no eas \, a 
“+ fewer than 2,600 secret documents 	ae Z 	| 
ne from Hitler’s Foreign Office, some of 	; 
| ° | them of the highest importance. 	es 
- | Ejsenhower called him one of the 	4 ; 
* | most valuable agents we had during 	aa 	; 
the entire war. Here’s how he did it 	| a 	; 
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of Strategic Services in Switzerland. He had a job in | 
the Auswaertige Amt—the Foreign Office—in Berlin. A 
real inside job. 
“All Wood did,” he went on, “was to establish a 
_ secret line of communication between himself in Berlin 
_ and the OSS in Bern, right in the middle of the war. 
Via this pe gap he managed to syphon out of the © 
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t classified documents, some of them secrets of the highest 
| importance. He even made five trips from ‘Berlin to Bern, 
j himself, between 1948 and 1945, through air raids and all. 
i carrying the staff with him.” 	: 
i Some fantastic things had hap nened, it’s true, but this 
business about Wood was incredible: 1 knew there had 
| been a few defections in high places in Der Fuchrer's 
: sinister hierarchy, but almost invariably the miscreants had 
' been found out in time and swiftly purged. “Your man 
1 Wood couldn't have been an individual of any great shakes,” 
| 1 insisted, “or he would have: been: rooted out before he 
| ever got started.” : 
' My friend took my necdling patiently. ; 
| “Actually,” he went on, “I never laid eyes on this fellow 
i myself. But ‘Operation George Wood’ became famous 
! among the high brass of Allied intelligence staffs. General 
Eisenhower is not a man given to the careless use of super- 
| latives, but Ike himself once remarked that Wood was once 
of the most valuable agents we had during the entire 
: war.” 
1 1 said I suppose the Nazis got him, in the end. 
! “They never did. He's alive today, and all in onc piece. 
| --. And, asa matter of fact, he’s among the unemplors. ood 
{ never got a dime for his services. Wouldn't take it. Nobody 
i that I know of even offered him a medal, and anyhow I 
| suspect he would have refused that too. 
i 	“He's an odd character. Sort of idealistic. A combination 
i of guts and shrewdness and a lot of luck, I guess. What 
| happened to Wood couldn't happen morc than once in a 
\ million times, but there was that once. He thumbed his 
‘ nose at the Nazis from the beginning, and got awa with it. 
| ~" But gossip got round, and it’s no accident that he has been 
| unable to find any kind of spot with the new German 
{ government at Bonn. There are a lot of ex-Nazis holding 
| down official jobs, but there's no room for Wood.” 
| 	“Hasn't Washington done something about him?” I in- 
business here. Did intelligence and psychological warfare 
work in Switzerland during the war. Go sce him.” 
I found Mayer easily cnough, in a handsome office near 
the Champs-Elysées. “I was in on the launching oy Opera- 
tion George Wood,” he said. “I happened to be the first 
American to contact him. It was in Bern, back in the sum- 
mer of 1943, A stranger fellow I never met, but he was 
absolutely priceless. You never could put your finger pre- 
cisely on what made him tick, You never knew when he 
was going to turn up, or what he was going to turn up with, 
but he always did and he always had the goods.” 
“Adventurers can come in handy sometimes,” I suggested. 
Mayer shook his head, “He didn’t run risks for the 
quired. 	excitement of it. Something more fundamental than that 
“Well,” my friend said, squinting his eyes. “I don’t doubt vay driving hi 	‘ee Ni ; 
, 	: : . 	g him. Nobody ever looked less like a knight 
that oe ea eta these LOM thon tricky business, in shining armor, but there was something consecrated 
Pena ike he Sh tasted hine if he had Wood's 2bout him, I know that sounds corny but I can’t explain 
H hb hi 	it any other way.” 	. 
sage tiaen eae band oa reach fake here in Paris wh He lighted his pipe arid then went on. “See here, [ can 
uM ri ° ell cos ad Ma = Oa aM hin “HH who give vou a lot of the facts but if you're really interested in 
ie ea an em ayer - l. Mayer. Heim ii, story. you must see Wood himself.” 
- +--+ T reminded him that I'd hoped he could help me find - 
Woot 
- Well. fn ashamed to say that I've lost track of him. He 
went to the States fot a while after the war. Somchow things 
didn’t pan out for him there and he came back to Europe. 
We've got a mutual friend in Zurich, though—a doctor. 
Let me give you his name.” 
In Zurich, the doctor had an address for him all right, in 
Krankfurt-on-Main, Germany. “He's having a bit of a hard 
time,” the doctor said, “and you may find him reluctant to 
lalk. Personally, | hope he does. It may make the Germans 
realize what they owe to the few of their countrymen who 
were brave cnough to stand up against Hitler.” 
: ‘Three years had gone by since my last visit to Frankfurt 
~~ and the transformation 6f the city astounded me. The 
hideous piles of rubble had disappeared trom the streets, 
Handsome new store fronts burgeoned oddly from the stony 
skeletons of buildings. Behind the plate glass windows, 
expensive cameras, alligator handbags, bolts of silk, carved 
bedroom sets, all beckoned with the opulent allure of Filth 
Avenue. Intersections were choked with traflic—not jeeps 
and six-by-sixes of the occupation [orce but passenger cars, 
SS ss 	many of them American makes with German plates. Some 
4 ee TN b] local citizens must certainly be in the dough, [ thought. 
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peeks THE EHS 
’ were writing their memoirs of the Hitler era. As fast as they 
-* before the secret “V” weapons could be fully utilized. A man 
- middle with a length of rubber stripped from an old inner tube. 
. as possible. I went back to my hotel expecting a long wait, but 
“and bananas bumped through the sidewalk crowds. In the 
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heavy-carpeted luxury of the Frankfurter Hof (in the wing that 
had been ey you could dine on caviar, poached salmon 
and Rhine wine, for a consideration, , Cs 
Other embellishments had beet added. Atmospheric embel- 
lishments, if you like. Everybody and his brother, it seemed, 
could stock them, the kiosks were sclling periodicals featuring 
the fateful saga of the German battleship Bismarck; a butler’s 
reminiscences of life with Der Fuchrer; the latest recipe for Ger- 
man recovery from the pen of Herr Dr. Schacht, the Nazi finance 
wizard acquitted as a major war criminal at Nuremberg; and the 
like. A newspaper reported that a crusty old pedagogue in 
Wurttemberg-Baden had asked his class to write a theme on the 
causes of Germany's defeat and then answered the question him- 
self with the explanation that traitors betrayed the country 
named Wonncrow leaped up in rightcous wrath in the provin- 
cial legislature of Schleswig-Holstcin to denounce the Taly 20, 
1944, attempt on Hitler's life, and demaad that those still alive 
among the schweinhund conspirators be hanged. And a cabinct 
minister at Bonn was cloquently justifying Germany's role in 
World War II. 
: 	3 3 
Er man who answered the door a che address the doctor 
had given me wore a rumpled pair of trousers tied around the 
He had a sallow face but a soft voice and a polite manner. “I 
am sorry,” he was saying, “but Herr Wood does not stay here. 
He lives in the country; he only comes here to get his mail. If 
you would care to leave a message, bitte?” 
I scrawled a long note on the back of an envelope and gave it 
to the man, explaining that I had come from Paris especially to 
mect Wood and that it was urgent that he get the message as soon 
to my surprise there was an answer from Wood the next morn- 
ing. He would be at home after lunch that day, if I cared to 
drive out. ; 	; 
The hamlet in which Wood lived lay snuggled in the Taunus 
Hills, a half hour's drive from Frankfurt, and not far from the 
massive Kronberg castle where.a U.S. army colonel and a WAC 
captain had, a few years back, perpetrated the sensational theft 
house he had BELLU SEA SAD HCMC eMO ROY Rama 
ture with a steep roof and a tiny yard. Cards bearing the names) 
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df three separate lamilics were ntiled to the gate. Whod -w 
sitting on the front steps and when I got out of the car he came 
irectly to mect me. 	. 
“So you've come,” he said, giving me a strong handshake. 
“But you hadn't been expecting me,” I said, puzzled, “not 
icfore you got my note?” 	: 
His bronzed face broke into a broad grin, “The doctor from *- 
Aurich wrote.that you were on the way.” 	; 
I regarded him closely. He was a short, wiry man with a bald 
ead rimmed with fine blond hair. His grey-green eyes were 
gcady, intense, almost cold, but his look was softened by friendly ™ 
Iitele wrinkles fanning out from under his cycbrows. He wote an ¥ 
Id s@t shirt, open at the throat, revealing a navy blue crew-, 
eck sweater. I would have guessed his age at fot more than 40 | 
Ithough I knew already, from Mayer, that he was nearly. 50. 4 
here was nothing of the stiff-nccked German diplomat about; ; 
him. He reminded me at first of a retired prizcfighter running | 
massage parlor, And yet easy access to him was blocked by a | 
Manner at once intense and distant, mysterious. 
“Come inside,” he said, nimbly leading the way up a narrow, 
#aircase to a small but cheery bedroom. Two enormous feather 
domforters seemed about to ascend like linen-covered balloons ! 
rom the twin beds. ‘This is home,” he said, “and this is Gerda.” ! 
is wife, a handsome brunctte, stepped in from a little railed | 
Blcory, beyond which in the warm afternoon sun I could sce | 
he valley of the Main rolling away from the Taunus. 
“You will be more comfortable out here on the balcony,” she 
fiid, “One room gets a little stuffy when you live in it all the 
ime. And the nuaailtie is lovely today; I'll leave you to enjoy it.” 
Wood and I chatted superficially at first about the world in § 
gencral. The Russians’ behavior depressed and alarmed him and 
¢ was convinced they were much farther along with atomic § 
bomb development than even recent events indicated. He re- 
alled that on a trip to Zurich in 1948, he learned that Swiss 
dcismographs had registered an enormous explosion, supposedly § 
n atomic blast in eastern Europe. This was more than a year 
D elore it was officially revealed that the Sovict Union had the§ 
pom Dd. 	5 
As for Germany? “This is my country,” he said. “There is 
reat energy here and there can be much hope if decent Ger 
mans are given more of a chance.” 
“Perhaps they have to take the chance,” I said, “like you did.’ 
He looked es quickly. “What I did is of no interest. It ig 
bf importance only to me. There were others who did as muctg 
br more than I did. Schwarz, the man with whom you left tha 
ote in Frankfurt, worked in the resistance too. He went to @ 
neentration camp. I did not.” 	Be 
I tricd to draw him out but he retreated into silence. “Listen, @ 
said, finally, “I know more alrcady about what you did thagg 
erhaps you think.” Then, groping for his confidence, I begat 
0 relate the story of his first meeting with Mayer, as Mayer hag 
old it to me. Wood made no move to interrupt but I had th 
ncomfortable feeling, when I began, of talking more to myscig 
han to him. 	2 
Mayer, who spent his fei Neila in Europe and spoke Germa& 
uently, had been sent to Bern from Washington in 1942 wit 
he elastic title of “special assistant” to the American ministe?3 
¢ was given two assignments. The first was to run a psycholog es 
‘Fal warfare branch of the Office of War Information, cooking 
p such projects as Icaflet raids on the German lines and advi¢g 
ng on propaganda broadcasts beamed to the Third Reich. Ig 
is other role, Mayer was a licutenant of Allen W. Dulles, chicg 
bf the Office of Strategic Services’ operations in Switzerland. 
On the morning of August 23, 1943, Mayer was riffling throug!g 
a stack of official mail in his office in the legation annex in Ber: 
hen his secretary came ‘in and said that a certain Dr. O. wa 
putside asking to sce him. Bern at that time, like Lisbon, Madridg 
and the rest of the neutral capitals, was a nest of agents, counter-§ 
Agents, and operatives as phony as rubber checks, and one of 
Mayer's jobs was to try to sort them out. Technically, in the 
yes of the neutral Swiss, both he and Dulles were spies them- 
selves, breaking the law twenty-four hours a day. Tacitly, the 
Swiss turned their backs on a good deal of sleuthing by both 
sicdtcs, But on¢ indiscreet move and the offender was pitched out £ 
on the car which he had been applying to more delicate opera- 
ions. The legation had already given these OSS men the routine 
arning that if such an emergency arose they would not be eligi- 
ble, fore j i ic i it r had never § 
RARE PST STAGES RBECRBAUA OY Ota him in 
y him 1 can spare only a couple of minutes,” he added. i 
* 
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PYRGAT 
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_. He looked up a few seconds later to see materializing in the 
doorway the epitome of a Prussian general, in multi. Tall and 
spare, with a smooth-shaven face and close-cropped grey hair, 
r. O, held himself as straight as a sword. He trained his ice-blue 
eyes on Mayer like a pair of pistols. The American half-expected 
him to whip out a swastika armband and give the Nazi salute. 
Ceremoniously the doctor introduced himself as a friend of a 
banker from Basel whom Mayer remembered having met cas- 
ually some months before. “It is he who has sent me to you,” 
he said, with an accent as thick as pumpernickel. 	i 
_. Phen he launched into an involved explanation of his own 
identity. He was a German but he had long since broken with the 
Hitler regime and now carried citizenship papers of a c@tain 
_Latin nation. “For a long time,” he said, “I have been cautiously 
secking a reliable contact with the Allies. I have faith in their 
]. ‘ultimate triumph, and I should like to do what I can to hasten 
the victory. My motives are not entirely unselfish. I am anxious 
to renew the peaceful pursuits to which my prewar life was de- 
voted.” (Like so many other Europeans bearing the same title, 
he was not a medic at all but a man of commercial affairs with a 
doctor's degree in something. or other.). 
_ Mayer sized his visitor up as a pompous ringer, at best a black- 
listed businessman who had cultivated the bleeding-heart a 
proach to the Allied cause in an effort to get some funds 
unblocked. Switzerland swarmed with such types. Mayer was 
anxious to get rid of him and asked him, quite bluntly, to come 
to the point, 
With that the doctor drew a long envelope from his inside 
coat pocket. He extracted three typewritten sheets from the 
envelope, unfolded them slowly and spread them out before 
Mayer on his desk. They were all in German and headed 
“Geheime Reich Sache"—secrct state document—addressed to 
Forgign Minister Ribbentrop, and signed von Papen, Abetz and 
Neurath, respectively. They were summarized copies of cables 
sent by these three ambassadors to their chief in Berlin. * 
From Paris, Abetz was relaying certain plans from the French 
Vichyites which might permit German agents to penetrate Amer- 
ican and British lines in North Africa, via Algiers. Neurath was 
reporting on Czech morale. Despite the barbaric liquidation of 
the town of Lidice as a reprieal” for the murder of Reinhardt 
Heidrich, the Nazi “hangman” of Prague, more than a year be- 
fore, the Germans feared Czcclf resistance had not been crushed; 
the capital was restive again. Von Papen, from his strategic baili- 
wick in Turkey, was alerting Berlin on British attempts to sneak 
operatives into the Balkans via Istanbul. 
TE authentic, this information was obviously red hot. Trying 
to keep his voice casual, Mayer asked Dr. O. where he had got it. 
4 hn doctor fixed him with a steady gaze. “There is more from 
the same source,” he replied in a low voice. “I am merely 
acting as an emissary for a friend who works in the Auswacrtige 
Amt. This man is here now in Bern. He arrived yesterday as 
a special diplomatic couricr. That was, how does one say it, the 
front which he used for travel. Actually be came with the 
avowed intention of effecting a liaison with the Allies. I have 
known him for years. I can assure you he is one hundred per cent 
anti-Nazi and is determined to work actively against Hitler, at 
his own sie He wants to mect you, personaily. As proof of his 
will he.sends you this data. He has much more information 
¢ wishes to give you.” ; 
Maycr asked Dr. O. to wait in the anteroom, and excused him- 
sclf. He bolted upstairs to Dulles’ office. Quickly he told Dulles 
what had pappenee and showed him the documents, The pros- 
pect of establishing a contact in the heart of Berlin, finding, as 
it were, a key to the top drawer of Nazi sccrets, was too preposter- 
ous. This must be a trap. 
“There are three possibilities,” Dulles said. “This could be an 
attempt to break our code. The Germans figure we'll bite, cipher £ 
§ this stuff and radio it to Washington. They monitor everything, } 
@ contents will give them the clue they need to decipher it. Or 
perhaps our friend is an agent provocateur, He plants the infor- 
'@ mation with us and then tips off the Swiss police that we are 
spying. His rendezvous with us is proof and we are kicked out f 
of the country, Still, there is just the glimmer of a chance that f 
| this man is on the square.” 
ug iad said he was keen to follow the glimmer, despite the 
odds. There was something about the doctor that had impressed 
him. Despite his over} goridigedtial Approve de 
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ing for these dispatches, in hope that a foreknowledge of the | 
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enuine. So Dulles agreed that they should purgue the game at 
cast until they xould see the courier,and size hinrrfp firsthand. 
Mayer hurried down and told Dr. 6. that Me ey to meét 
the couricr that evening. “fake it my hause al’midnight,” Mayer ° 
found himself saying, asic. ere arranging ‘#rendcivous with 
Dr. Fu Manchu. As i(hapnéid, the pa ~wa$ to dine that 
evening with a collea ug » theGerman legatidn: He and Dr. O. 
could mect airerwarts iyo to Mayer’s apartment together, 
Dulles was to join them, irf¢ognito, at 12:30. Mayer lived in an 
apartment house on the River Aare in the Kirchenfeld district, | § 
the middlc of the diplomatic colony. He drew the doctor a map 
so he could find his way without having to inquire and arouse 
unnecessary suspicion. Then the doctor left. 
t that stage of the war, Switzerland was more than ever an 
isolatcd island in a belligerent sea. It was completely sur- 
rounded by Nazi territory. In some respects the legation in 
Bern was more out of touch with home than troops in the field 
were. There was no APO address, and Mayer himself had gone 
as long as scven months without a letter from his wife. 
The only regular contact the legation had with Washington 
was via the Swiss radio. The only way to get out-te another 
neutral or an Allicd spot—short of attempting to run the perilous 
gauntlet of the underground—was by air, There was no secure 
schedule for a diplomatic pouch. Through a phenomenal gen- 
tleman of Moorish extraction nicknamed “The Spider" je was 
possible occasionally to pass something out to Lisbon, but this 
was a sporadic and unreliable route. And as it became pro- 
gressively harder to move around and gather information, the 
necd became more urgent. There were unceasing querics from 
Washington. With Mussolini toppled from his Roman pedestal, 
the Italian situation was what the experts loved to call “fluid"— 
and the south Italy landings (which, naturally for security rea- 
sons, Bern knew nothing about in advance) were in the final 
planning stage. The tempo of bomb strikes on the Reich~RAF 
y night, USAAF by day—was just quickening to a sustained 
rhythm of destruction. An opportunity to get even a keyhole 
view of what was going on in Berlin could hardly have ma- 
terialized at a more fortuitous time. 
Mayer reficcted on these matters as the day dragged on, and 
he found it difficult to address his mind to problems of psy- 
chological warfare. He dined alone that evening and then went 
home to the orderly loneliness of his bachelor apartment, on 
the floor above the suite of an assistant U.S, military attaché. 
He left the door of his flat ajar so his visitors would not have to 
one the bell. Then he mixed himself a highball and sat down 
with a magazine to wait, 
Punctually at midnight the door open softly. Dr. O. entered 
the room, followed by a short, stocky man in a black leather 
jacket. He was hatless and his bald head glistened in the soft 
fight of the room. With the doctor towering beside them, Mayer 
and the stranger stood there face to face, eyeing each other. 
There was no introduction. They did not shake hands. For a ° 
moment they just stood there, in silence. 
Then Mayer invited him to take off his jacket. Before the man 
did so he reached swiftly into his pocket. Mayer was unarmed 
and for a dizzy instant he wondered if he could rouse the Army 
officer below him if his visitor pulled a gun. But the German 
brought out a large, brown envelope, its flap open. There was 
the stamp of a swastika on the dark red wax which had sealed it. 
“Dr. O. has told you that I had more material,” he said, in f 
Berlin German, without preliminaries. “You will find here, if I 
remember rightly, one hundred eighty-six separate items of jn- 
formation,” And he laid the bundle on a low table in front of 
a -divan, 
Mayer examined the packet. It contained reports of Gérman 
, troop morale on the Russian front, an inventory of damage 
inflicted by underground saboteurs in France, memos of visits 
by the Japanese ambassador and other miscellaneous officials to

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Ribbentrop. Some of the papers weré verbatim copies of original 
documents; some contained: paraphrases of cables or dispatches 
in tight, meticulous German script; some werc filled with hastil 
scrawled shorthand notes. Each fragment of information woulc 
fit neatly somewhere in the vast, never-finished mosaic of stra 
tegic and tactical intelligence vital to the prosecution of thq 
war. 
_ 
As Mayer was scanning this material, Dulles came in, and wa 
introduced as a Mr. Douglas, Mayer's assistant. Mayer poured 
highballs for the four of them. But nobody relaxed. The ‘sus 
picion which had invaded the room seemed to emit waves of 
tension from the shadows, charging their postures and thei 
conversation with rigid formality:-the two Gorinans endeavor 
ing with 9 kind of desperate dignity to dissolve their identity a 
enemics; “the two Americans, aware, incredulous, challenging. 
They talked in German. 
_ “You gentlemen will ask whether these dispatches are au 
thentic and if so how I was able to get them,” the courier said 
“The? came from material which crossed my own desk in the 
Foreign Office.” 
He explained that he worked as an assistant to a Dr. Kar 
Ritter, who was the Auswacrtige Amt liaison officer with al 
the German armed services. Ritter dealt not only with cables and 
documents arriving by pouch from German missions abroad 
but with war plans, secrets of submarine warfarc, moves of thq 
army, including military government in occupied territories 
and the activities of Gocring’s Luftwaffe. 
“My job,” the courier went on, “is to sift this information 
to arrange its priority of importance before it reaches Ritter’ 
. desk for action.” 
Mayer and Dulles exchanged glances. Ritter was well know 
‘to them. As German ambassador in Rio de Janciro he hag 
once been one of the most active and dangerous principals i 
the huge Nazi spy network in Latin America. He was a col 
shrewd and ruthless bales His own defection or the spectacl 
of his having anybody but the most loyal Nazi fanatic as a 
aide seemed equally unthinkable. 
“How long have you had this position?” Mayer asked. 
“Three years,” came the crisp reply. “I tried long ago to ge 
out of Germany on a mission such as this but one has to b 
patient. However, I have been in the foreign service nearl 
twenty years, long before the Nazis ever came to power, and 
have acquired a certain experience.” He squared his shoulde 
as he said this and there was a defiant ring of pride in his voice 
’ 
a nn tte Legg Bt 
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Te Americans already knew that a tenuous German under 
- ground existed, a ghostlike web consisting of certain Arm 
_ officers and civilians, divided over the crucial issue of whethe 
they should assassinate Hitler or kidnap him and form an ant 
Nazi government to sue for peace. Among the plotters wer 
members of the old German nobility, labor leadcrs and polit 
probe the possibility now would. risk betrayal of informatio 
“We have no way of knowing,” Dulles put in, “that you are no 
an agent provocateur,” 	: 
“You would be naive,” the courier confessed, “if you did no 
suspect that. f cannot prove at this moment that I am not. If 
bring you the contents of so many documents. Two or thre 
would have sufficed.” 
his chair. “If my friend will a me,” he said, “I should lik 
to repeat a phrase he used when he came to my hotcl yesterda 
pocket. The fist must be used to strike.’ We drank a toast to that. 
genuincly impressed. Still. ... Damn it, even if he were on th 
of some captured German on the grounds that he was part a 
the conspiracy, At least the asking price for the couriers service 
would be something more than carfare. 
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what would be involved in a financial way and I told them 
‘nothing,’ they refused to take me seriously. They laughed and 
said it was a joke and not a very good one.” 
menace the world. But we are in the middle of a war and this 
is no time to bargain. Try to believe that 1 am a patriotic Ger- 
cians. This extraordinary stranger might be one of them, but te 
were, however, I would hardly have been so extravagant as tp 
He paused and cleared his throat. Dr. O. leaned forward it 
He said ‘it is not enough to clench one’s fist and hide it in one 
‘Dulles and Mayer, in spite of themselves, were becoming 
level, there had to be a catch. Perhaps a bargain for the release 
CPYRGHT | 
better acquainte egation, I am 
“What.-are the conditions?” Mayer asked. 
The courier turncd first to him and then to Dulles, “Gentle- 
en,” he said slowly, “I hate the Nazis. To me they are the 
enemy. I have a similar feeling about the Bolsheviks. They both 
an with a human conscience and that there are others, All 
e ask as payment for our services is help and encouragement 
and spport after the war.” 	; 
“We can hardly divine now what will happen after the war,” 
Dulles said. “It must be won first.” And he reached over and 
knocked on the table in front of him with his knuckles. 
It was past 3 am. The two Germans could safely stay no 
ain back to Berlin. | 
bered later just how the name Gcorge Wood was invented, 
Perhaps it came from Dulles’ symbolic drumming of the table 
top. Anyway, Wood it was; somehow it sounded like 9 good 
omen. This time the men shook hands, all around, and George 
Wood and Dr. O. went quictly down the stairs. 
q glanced across the balcony at Wood. He got up abruptly from 
his chair and started pacing up and down. “Yes,” he said, 
“yes, that is the way it began.” Now that the bottle of recallcc- 
ne had been uncorked, he scemed willing at last to let thent 
low. 
ar did you manage to get to Bern in the first place?” I 
asked, * 	. 
“From the first day 1 found myself in touch with Nazi secrets, 
1 knew I would have to find a way, somehow, to get them out,” 
he answered. “I tricd, before Pearl Harbor, to reach certain 
Amcricans in Berlin through church sources, but this failed. 
One had to move like a snail, Months went by without my 
being able to do a thing. It became obvious that the only way to 
make a satisfactory contact would be on neutral territory. 
Switzerland seemed the best place. I knew the country. I had 
friends there, foremost among them Dr, O. It would be a short 
trip. But I would have to furnish a valid reason for. an exit 
ermit.” 
r Wood decided to attempt the most innocent gesture first. 
Nazis not infrequently managed excursions to certain spots out- 
side the Reich for a rest. He was not a party member; but a 
jtired government official was entitled to a little relaxation. too. 
‘He applicd to his superiors for permission, explaining that he 
would like to take a brief vacation skiing in the Swiss Alps, or 
Italy, it didn’t really matter. He was refused. Nearly a year 
elapsed before he dared make another approach, (It wouldn't 
do to get some party underling curious about his anxicty to 
travel.) This time he explained it had become necessary for him 
to. divorce his second wife, who was Swiss, and he must go to. 
Zurich to engage an attorney for proceedings. That could wait, 
he was told. When eventually he volunteered as a special diplo- 
matic courier, he was informed there were others available. 
Months later, a solution materialized in the form of Fraulein 
Maria, a strong, acutely perceptive ao! woman who was 
assistant chief of the courier section of the Foreign: Office. Her 
father was a Prussian nobleman. One day Wood went to her 
and said quite openly, “I find I must go to Switzerland to check 
on certain business interests of some friends. Would it be pos- 
sible for me to take the next special courier’s assignment?” 
“There is a pouch to be ready for Bern in about a week's 
time,” she replicd quickly, “and I think it can be arranged to 
Yhave you carry it.” ‘That was the third week of August, 1943, 
“My God!” I said, breaking into the narrative, “how could 
vou bust right up to her like that? How could you know whom 
jo trust?” : eS 
"Once got so one could almost smell the difference between 
nemy and friend,” he said. “One’s instincts grew sharper undcr 
ne Gestapo, the way a blind man is supposed to develop a sixth 
sense. I had known who Maria was for a long time. We would 
see each other in the corridors, in a restaurant, on a subway 
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The exit visa came through and Wood made the trip te 
Switzerland without event. As a diplomat he was not searcncd 
__ he had strapped his secrets to his leg, under his trousers. But in 
a way, Bern was more dangcrous than Berlin. Dark, unholy 
realm that it was, he knew every side street in Berlin, He had 
not been in the Swiss capital for years. It seemed new and 
strange. He had to be careful not only of camouflaged Gestapo 
agents but of the Swiss secret police, constantly sniffing for the 
odors of espionage. His movements were inhibited. He should 
sta only. two days in Bern, three at the most. He could not 
seclude himself in a back street hotel. He was obliged to stay 
in the Terminus on the Bahnhofplatz, where the Foreign Office 
ran an account, where a room had already been booked for him. 
And where, certainly, his movements would be watched, the 
eople he spoke to checked, his phone calls recorded. It took 
ours before he was able to slip out to a public telephone, in 
one of those sidewalk booths that looks like a clothes Nasct with 
windows in it, and make the call to Dr. O. which led to the 
rendezvous in Mayer's flat. 
“That was a painful interview,” Wood recalled. For years he 
had disciplined himself never to waste talk, One unnecessary 
word dropped might spring a trap to catch somebody. But this 
was different. He had to convince the two Americans of his 
good faith or the whole gamble would be worthless. He had to 
identify himself completely. He gave them the name of his first 
wife and the date of her death. He told them the address of his 
son, whom he had left with friends in South Africa when he was 
repatriated to Berlin soon after the war started, and the name 
of his second wife, from Zurich, who had remained in Capetown. 
ulles and Mayer sat up till sunrise that morning poring over 
the data and sorting out the most urgent information. They 
decided to gamble and code this up fora wireless to Washington. 
{ They got this message off during the day, along with a lengthy 
dispatch to OSS headquarters reciting the details of personal 
history which Wood had given them, and asking for speedy 
checking. 
Wood himself, meanwhile, was on the train on his way back to 
Berlin. The ordeal of the rendezvous was over now and he settled 
back comfortably in a corner scat of his compartment. Although 
he had had only snatches of sleep since setting out from the 
German capital more than four days before—he'd scarcel 
rumpled the sheets of his bed in the Terminus—he was not tired. 
He felt the same exhilarating scnsation he remembered havin 
when he made his first successful ski jump after long and cavelul 
practice. To be sure, the Americans had given him no guarantee 
of their cooperation (actually, the OSS in Washington was to 
reply within a week confirming the salient facts of his history 
but he was not to know of this for months). And the risks ahead 
were even greater. But he had made the first fearsome leap after 
waiting for such an interminable time. 
Somchow all the reckless little deeds that _ 
he had done before this, the token gestures 
which had scemed so necessary but at the 
time so futile in themselves, fell into place 
now with a new and satisfactory signifi- 
cance. He had taken his stand, such as it 
was, from the first. There was the time in 
. Madrid in 1934 when as an embassy sec- 
retary he had helped and encouraged a 
German businessman to renounce his 
citizenship as a protest against the ugly 
_ portent of the new regime in Berlin. He 
had also made it a point to attend the 
wedding of the daughter of a friend of 
his; the friend's wife was Jewish. 
Once he had opined to an embassy 
stenographer that Mussolini was a pig, a 
_ view which the girl zealously reported to 
the ortsgruppenleiter, the German colony's 
party minion in Madrid. When the latter» 
. confronted him with the indiscretion, 
- Wood readily admitted it. Apparently 
_startied“*into admiration by his Aaa 
the ortsgruppenleiter appealed to him as . 
a “man of strong character" to join the 
oes Wood replied that since he had not . 
een a Nazi before Hitler rose to power, 
if he became one Sey hei ZERH-bA BBO V! 
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Again, Wood recall 0 Q58R0 99; Q0 QA 1Q4:4, 
moved away from her handsome flat in Lichterfelde to a dreary 
abode in the shabby northern sector of Berlin. Her apartment 
had overlooked an SS parade ground and she couldn't bear to 
watch the Elite Guard strut. The most passive kind of resistance, 
erhaps, but to him this silent defiance of an old lady had not 
een empty or lost. 
It occurred to him now, as the train crawled furtively north 
with its crew alerted against air attacks, that even his own fool- 
ish insistence on stalking through the strects of Berlin with an 
umbrella and galoshes had a certain positive meaning. Nazis 
glared at him as he passed; no virile Aryan would ever be caught 
in the company of such decadent English trappings. 
Wood closed his eyes and slipped off to sleep. When a shud- 
der of the train roused him hours later he saw they were pulling 
into Berlin. — 
Even though it was late afternoon, he went straight to his 
office in the Wilhelmstrasse. It had to be back to business as 
usual if he was going to get on with his own most unusual 
business. He would have to be more carcful than ever to protect 
himself now. He would have to buckle the armor of silence 
around him even more tightly and scem to lose himself“in the 
duties at his desk. That was one of the most maddening things 
about the whole opcration, to have to lock it all within himself 
and not be able to confide fully in anyone the details of his 
secret task. He had acquaintances and friends who, he knew, 
_ were resisting in their own way, but rarely did they dare invade 
one another's orbit to coagulate their conspiracies. Most of the 
time each remained a tiny scparate cell, suspended in the dark 
fluid of danger and uncertainty. 
{ While the bombings of Berlin had been getting sharper, the 
“city was still quite whole and full of people. Yet as he crossed 
{town this afternoon, Wood obscrved a spectral grayness about 
it he hadn’t noticed before. 
There waxa message on his desk, marked urgent. “Report to 
the security officer at once,” it said. Needles of appreneneen 
stabbed at the back of his neck. Discovered already 
The security officer was a large pallid-faced man with deep- 
set eyes which scemed always to smoulder with suspicion, a 
suspician which he could drill into a victim with a single look. 
When Wood entered his office, he was sitting stiffly at his desk, 
holding a telegram between his fingers as delicately as if it had 
been a tea water. 
“You have been to Bern on a courier's mission?” 
His voice was cavernous. 
“Jawohl!” ; 
“T¢ has come to our attention that you 
Terminus Hotel virtually the entire night, of August 23-24.” 
“That is quite correct,” Wood replied with a cold smile, “One 
needs a little relaxation at times. You know how often one drifts 
he asked. 
were absent from the

- 	_ CPYRGHT 	a 
THE SPS*iteS WEP WPS SER 
terror, 
came acquainted with a lively young 
medic from Strasbourg named Jung who had been unable to 
get back to France when the war began. As an Alsatian, the 
Germans insisted he was German, not French. They were about 
to force him into service as a doctor on the eastern front when 
ec-ecsteanip ’ mks at a bar, a young woman, ..."” []Gerda's chief succeeded in getting him assigned to the clinic “Most indiscreet,” the official cut in, “and not necessarily | |stafl as an “indispensable” assistant. “LE you ever need a doctor,” 
true.” 	Jung once told Wood with his eyes twinkling, “come to‘see me. 
“I confess I thought afterwards I had been a little c 
arcless,” | {Sometimes an overworked government employe needs an excuse 
Wood returned, calmly, “so I took precautions.” for being sick. A doctor can prescribe for that, too.” 
He extracted a slip of paper from his wallet and handed it Wood was an insatiable chess player and usually he convened 
across the desk. The security officer scanned it hastily. It was a 
\ 	with a group of friends every Wednesday night for a game. Now 
certificate from a doctor's office in Bern stating that Wood had [he had to be more careful to account for his time so when he 
cen given a prophylactic and a blood test on the morning of |f[had a spare hour he made it a poing, for apRenrances sake, to 
August 24, 	play chess with some guard at the Forcign Office. 
“Very well,” his inquisitor said grudgingly. “But take care Despite his painstaking precautions, there was the constant 
ow you waste your time in the future.” 	I 
anger of some unexpected event threatening to upsct his 
Hastening back to his office, Wood encountered Fraulcin hole plans. One night one of his schoolday chums, heir of a 
Maria in a corridor. They greeted cach other, She had known calthy family, and now a lieutenant in the Army, burst into 
about his summons. “They always make it a point to impress | [Wood's flat. Ele was in civilian clothes. 
a new courier with their vigilance,” she said. He breathed mare “Where is your uniform?” George asked him in alarm. 
easily. Nevertheless he knew he could have had a most uncom: “T left it in the barracks,” the officer replied. “T have deserted.” 
fortable time. He congratulated himself for having had the hen he broke down and wept and implored Wood to at i 
preset of mind to get that certificate a few hours after leaving ith him to Switzerland. “Look,” he continued pathetically, 
fayer’s apartment; he would certainly remember to do that ulling a gold watch from his pocket, “this will bring cnough 
again, All at once he felt the need of a drink and as soon as he |Moncy to get us there.” 
could dispose of the papers on his desk he hurried out to Kottler’s “You fool!” Wood exploded. “Don't you realize that guards 
restaurant and ordre a “two-story” cognac before his dinner. |fnd dogs patrol every foot of the fronticr? It would be suicide.” 
Kottler’s was in Motzstrasse near Kurfurstendamm, the Fifth He hustled the distraught lieutenant back to his quarters be- 
Avenue of Berlin, where Wood had a comfortable bachclor | fore he was missed, trying not to speculate on what would have 
apartment. It was one of his favorite spots. He knew the musician | happened if the police had pulled once of their frequent surprise 
there, a zither player. They had a little understanding. Each ouse checks for passes and identity cards while they were in: 
time Wood appeared the musician would strike up an old he apastment. 	ie ; 
German battle song and Wood and his companions would He spent long hours at the office. Surreptitiously while he 
boldly sing Schiller’s words to it, which began: 	orked he vos aoe aoa memo about a oe 
“ ; , ee 	focument and stuff it in his pocket. Occasionally it would be 
Auf oo Wels die Freiheit Verschwunden Ist, is responsibility to destroy ap sccrets; some of thie he kept 
‘Man aioe Tee nach Herren und Knechte, i pencil he could transcribe their contents. He never could risk 
(“Freedom has: vanished from the world, aving such evidence at home or secluded in his desk. He had 
“One sces only masters and slaves.””) 
O carry it with him; often he would be going about with dyna- 
The musician played it now and smiled. It fed Wood's cour. ‘mite on the papers in his pockets. 
age more strongly than the brandy, steadying him against the By late October he had learned of certain developments in 
dizzy lurch of a universe at war. As he ate, the air raid sirens k ain and Ireland which he thqughe made It imperative for 
screamed. It was a heavy raid tonight but he refused to budge. Hm to attempt another bli He was in luck. Another pouch 
; 	yas being readied and it would be for Bern again, not Stock- 
EF" several weeks, Wood worked furiously .at the Forcign olm. Maria put him down for it. . 
Office. His secret cord strung so vulnerably to Bern was not Wood went to the clinic one afternoon and told Dr. Jung he 
a telephone line or a hidden radio set that he could plug in at yas fecling ragged, but not ragged cnough to excuse himself 
random. He dared not press his plot. Time after time he had to fom work. Jung gave him an injection and next morning he 
watch vital but perishable information rustle through his office ad a fine high fever, sufficient for sick leave, Gerda smuggled 
which he was helpless to divert to the Allics. An order for re. m some coffee from the hospital supplies and at home he set 
inforcements to Kesselring in Italy, for instance, would’ be | work assembling his notes, drinking cup after cup of coffce 
known to the Fifth Army front before he could arrange another keep him upright. 
journey and get the news into the hands of Dulles and Mayer. 
He was fortunate, especially in these long frustrating intervals, 
to be able to draw on the companionship of Gerda, a cool, com. 
passionate dark-haired woman who happened to be a trained 
nurse. They had met one day while he was buried in a routine 
ce in the visa section, long before he was transferred to Dr. 
itter’s department. His chicf, a Slowcring ex-furniture mover 
with the improbable name of Martin Luther, had just dressed 
him down for not displaying the prescribed unctuous courtesy 
to Storm Troopers when they called on business, Gerda ap- 
cared at his desk to apply for an exit permit for an important b or on a banana peel and suffer a broken back, and that's 
Berlin surgeon to visit Stockholm. She had made the a plica- fate too. 
tion form out all wrong and Wood patiently showed her how Yet in the man-made horror house of Rerlin, Wood could 
to do it correctly, 
ver depend on the dice. <P to a point he had to play the 
“And how must I sign it?” she asked. 	zis’ game. In his mind he burned them in the acid of hate 
He had assumed she was the doctor's wife and suggested she d contempt but from day to day he worked with them, drank 
sign it that way. ee 	th them, Beat them at chess. They were, in fact, a little in 
“No, no,” she replied, “I am the doctor's assistant. I meant, dye of him. He had impressed the party man in Madrid, the 
shall I write ‘Heil Hitler!’ at the bottom?” : ° tsgruppenleiter, with his “strength of character,” They had 
Wood looked straight at her and said evenly, “Madame, you dkertain respect for his outspoken attitude—so long as he did 
may write anything you like.” ; 	ft speak out too loud. Perhaps their calloused consciences drew 
From then on they were friends, Soon she was invitin him = shime kind of balm from their toleration of this nonconformist; 
around to the doctor's clinic where certain other people had ould rebut the enemy lics, could it not, that the Nazis stifled 
formed the habit of gathering to discuss, however cautiously, 	itj 
matters not limited ¢p-hadily aikpeng. wECbEe ; idole RO PEL BibeRogns QOOAD NO 4 ver. 
t is impossible to epain precisely why the Nazis did not 
put their finger on George Wood and rub him out. Provi- 
nce, fortune, whatever you want to call the thread of destiny 
at weaves the jerky pattern of men’s lives, provided part of 
¢ answer. A bomb hits one house and spares another. A mortar 
ell bursts in the middle of a combat patrol and tears away the 
bpdlics of all but one soldicr, who is left untouched. The greater 
[ He danger of death, sometimes, the more indestructible some 
en seem to become. Afterwards, of course, they slip in the bath- 
“102

» : 
_ paper between his hee 
‘ arced the wad neatly into a wastebasket in 
_ CRYRGHT 
. Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP70-00058R000100010104-4 
Le, -. ; p 	. 
"There was no question about that. Department heads outbid 
each other for his services. When Rudolf Leitner, former chargé 
@affaires of the German embassy in Washington, was named 
minister to South Africa in the late 30s, he had insisted on takin 
Wood to Capetown with him. He had to go to a great deal o 
trouble to get him because the post called for a party member. 
And now, of course, Dr. Ritter was most satisfied with him. 
As Wood and I talked through that sunny afternoon, the 
umes and the places of the story emerged, but the carlicr mold 
of emotions and instincts and secret reasons that Jay as a larger 
eared behind the events remained elusive. I remembered 
fayer’s remark that Wood was a man you couldn't quite cata- 
logue. “You must have had a constant struggle with yourself,” 
I blurted impulsively. “Apart from the danger, you must have 
been bedeviled all the time by the realization that a lot of 
people would brand you not only a traitor but a thief.” 
dati e drove a fist into his open palm with an angry thump. “How 
many times did I ask myself whether it wouldn't be better 
to break openly with the Nazis and try to escape?” he said. “I 
stayed on at first, thinking Hitler would never last. When I 
realized my mistake, it was too late, It became clear that the 
only way to get rid of the terror would be to lose the war. One 
must quicken the Nazis’ defeat. I remember a friend once told 
me that ‘high treason against the Hitler Reich has become a 
moral duty.’ To me the traitors were the Nazis. I resisted re- 
peated pressure to force me to join the party. They hobbled my 
career with sccondary assignments in reprisal. In spite of them, 
I worked my way inside. Still I was troubled. I knew a former 
member of the Reichstag, a Catholic prelate. I went to sce him. 
I asked him what to do. ‘God may have put you in that spot 
for a purpose,’ he told me.” 
Wood's father was a saddlemaker who taught him the virtues 
of industriousness and efficicncy so well 
that he becanie an official of the German 
State Railways in Berlin before -the age 
of 25. George thought the diplomatic serv- 
ice offered broader horizons and went to 
night school and then to the university 
where he passed his Foreign Office exams. 
He was determined, however, not to be- 
come a functionary fitting snugly into 
some bureaucratic pigeonhole. 
“My father had a fine sense of justice,” 
Wood said, “and he used to tell me that 
’ the slavish obeisance which so many Ger- 
mans gave to ‘authority’ was dangerous. 
The things I rebelled against as a boy may 
not scem so important now. I hated the 
hats and. the high celluloid collars that 
were the hallmarks of conformity and 
obedience in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm II. 
I joined an outing club where one didn’t 
have to wear them. It was called the Wan- 
dervogel. Roaming bird, the name means. 
We took long hikes and communed with 
nature and wondered deeply about the 
world. We loved Germany and were proud 
to be Germans but we felt, inarticulately 
perhaps, that it was just as important to be 
membcrs of the human race.’ 
The Nazis, he said, and a lot of other 
Germans who were fired with aggressive 
ambitions, could have learned much from 
his mother. “She once read me a_ verse 
from St. Matthew which I never forgot, 
‘For what is a man profited if he shall gain 
the whole world, and lose his own soul?’ " 
But probably no Nazi would understand 
that. ' 
Impulsively,; Wood strode over to the 
entrance of the pan caught a ball of 
8, jumped up and 
a corner of the bedroom. 
“I’ve always loved sports,” he said,,“box- 
ing, fencing, track, everything. I like to 
keep in trim. I can still run four hundred 
a 
« 
meters in less than i , 5 
are strong. Here, Pith azaaolentiat eva) ed For Relea 
“es 
his sleeve and flexed a bulging bicep. It was solid as an oak 
branch. 	8 
“I won a lot of trophies," he continucd, “but I never took 
once of them. I do things for the sake of doing them. That is 
enough. I don't like trophies or medals or uniforms.” 
And yet, I reflected to myself, it was an invisible badge of 
courage which had helped him survive. His courage was not 
the flamboyant, storm-the-ramparts brand. The quality and 
strength of bravery cannot be weighed in bone or muscle: its 
measurements are hidden inside the human frame. Wood was 
a man a little smaller than his fellows and his battle against 
this discrepancy had toughened his spirit too. In World War I, 
he was the youngest and smallest of a burly company of sappers. 
IIe could find no boots to fit him properly and as a resiilt he 
contracted such a grave infection on one foot that the medics 
prepared to amputate it. He refused to let them and finally 
recovered, 	: 
Wood never seemed to be rattled. He was always one jump 
ahead of the enemy. ‘There were Nazis who were shrewd. with 
the craftiness of men gone mad, but the mass of them were dim- 
wits stunted by their own brutality. Wood knew, or sensed, when 
to aioe the cold-cyed, stcel-jawed attitude of official superiority 
and when it was smartest to look meck and stupid. 
The Gestapo had a neat trick of swooping down on an apart- 
ment house at night, throwing the master electric switch to 
plunge the building into darkness, and then banging on doors 
shouting “Open up! Police inspection!” As soon as locks were 
unbolted the current would be turned back on. Then, too late, 
a wayward tenant would realize that in his surprise and fear 
he had forgdtten to conceal a telltale note, a clipping or, more 
likely, tune the radio away from the forbidden band of the 
BBC, Wood never forgot, and he always kept a flashlight at hand. 
On occasion, however, he was capable of extravagant rashness. 
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THE SPY THE NAZIS MISSED 
The night belore he Ictt i 0 : 
was almost killed. He hated air raid shelters. Inside them he felt 
trapped. Asa ministry official he was able to get a pass permitting 
him to move about during alerts. This night he had gone to the 
clinic to tell Gerda good-by. Then the sirens raised their hellish 
wail and the thunder of a heavy RAF attack shook the city as it 
lay starkly under the white light of the magnesium flares. The 
all-clear had not yet sounded when Wood walked down Unter 
den Linden. 
He was just turning into Wilhelmstrasse when a warden 
ordered him to halt. “Get off the street,” he said curtly. Wood 
produced his pass. As the warden examined. it under his torch, 
a delayed-action bomb blew up directly in front of them, not 
fifty yards away, knocking them both violently to the ground. 
After some seconds they staggered to their feet, stunned, 
drenched with particles of debris, but unhurt. Wood politely 
expressed his gratitude to the warden for having OnDe! him, 
gave him one of the few Havana cigars he happened to have left 
from his previous trip to Switzerland, and walked on past the 
crater to the Forcign Office to finish some work. 
In his preparations for the journey, Wood had followed the 
same careful routine that he had worked out in August, adding 
one ingenious variation, He didn’t like the idea of strapping 
his own secrets to his leg. It was both dangerous and undignified, 
He knew that special courier pouches were not weighed. They 
were usually no more than a single large envelope with docu- 
ments sealed inside. The morning after the raid, when Maria 
handed him the envelope, he took it back to his office and placed 
it in a wide shallow drawer in his desk. Using the drawer as a 
shield he slipped the packet into a larger official envelope. Then 
he quickly drew from his pocket the secret material he had 
gathered for his mission and enclosed that with the legation 
packet in the larger cnvclope. Now he sealed it, in the same 
way the other had been sca ed, with wax and the oflicial stecl 
stamp bearing the swastika, Instead of a trunk with a false 
bottom, he had a pouch with a false top. 
He left Berlin from the Anhalter Bahnhof in the early eve- 
ning. Ordinarily the train trip to Bern took eighteen hours but 
now air raids sometimes made it a nightmare that dragged on 
for three days. As soon as he could. he drew the attendant of 
his car aside and, handing him a handsome tip, requested to be 
among the first warned if there was an alert. He was terrified 
of raids, he explained apologetically. and the attendant’s 
courtesy would reassure him, Actually, the warning would give 
him time to dispose of his incriminating enclosures if danger 
scemed critical. 
It must have been about four in the morning when the porter 
rapped sharply on the door of his compartment. “Blue alert, 
sir,” he said and hurried on. That meant an attack was imminent. 
The train had stopped. Wood had kept his clothes on; now he 
grabbed the pouch and his small handbag and darted out the 
vestibule door down to the graveled fairway edging the tracks. 
They were in a wooded scction, somewhere, he gucssed, between 
Frankfurt and Karlsruhe. A remnant chip of moon made the 
rails shine. Other passengers began scrambling out of the 
coaches. A baby cried. A man’s voice cursed harshly; he couldn't 
find his suitcase in the darkness. Wood slipped down into a 
ditch behind the train, beside the right-of-way. 
From far off he heard a rising hum. It blossomed into a roar 
of engines and abruptly the raider was upon the train, a 
maverick Mosquito bomber, swooping low and lacing tracer 
machinegun bullets at the locomotive. There was no answering 
ack-ack. (With rare exceptions, only the Sonderzug. Hitler's] 
express train, was equipped with anti-aircraft guns.) The planc 
sas gone. Suddenly around a curve of the track ahead there wa: 
a flash and the great enveloping thud of an explosion. Th 
nlane had planted a bomb on a trestle. It was not a square hit 
ut daylight revealed a twisted, impassable track. It was lat 
the next afternoon before another tain chuffed up to the 
ather side of the trestle and the stranded passengers could maka 
their way tog 	. Thera 
gujch to resume pheir } 
were no coc ART ee th fay pd Woh 
behind schedule. 
a 	- 	penmcemreeren ma ka on ne 2  e nc eernele NAS 
on schedule.” Wood_had, 
CPYRGHT, oe ee 
CIA _DND 
A-RDP70-00058R000100010 	« 
At Basel, both German and Swiss customs hitc 
ih the Badischer Bahnhof in the German enclave of the city. 
Ibespite his well-schooled courage, Wood invariably felt’ the 
dbid hands of fear clutching his bowels as he crossed a frontier. 
His heart pounded, sometimes so hard he thought it would 
iake his coat flutter. He felt the same flat panic today. A voice 
ept repeating inside him as he went through the barriers, “You 
dave something here which if found could hang you.” One 
ustoms man scemed to be regarding him oddly. Did he suspect? 
utwardly, Wood was steady, his gaze as cold as a mackerel’s. 
Te kept the pouch in plain sight. The official glared at him, 
odded and motioned him on, He was clear, 
He hurried into the men’s room of the station and locked him- 
elf in a toilet. He tore off the outer envelope-of the pouch and 
ucked his own documents in his coat. He burned the extra 
envelope and flushed the ashes down the bowl. Then he took a 
axi across the Rhine to the Schweizer Bundes Bahnhof where 
re caught the train to Bern, 
Wood delivered the legation envelope first and then tele- 
shoned Dr. O. that he had arrived. Over a beer two hours later 
he doctor informed him that the Americans had been anxiously 
waiting his return and wanted to sce him that night. Mayer 
ould pick him up on the Kirchenfeld bridge over the Aare at 
11:30 pam. in his car, a British Triumph. 
The signal arranged for identification in the blackout was 
the pair of bluc running lights on the ‘Triumph's fenders. When 
he reached the middle of the bridge, Mayer switched them on, 
Wood darted out of a shadow along the railing and hopped in, 
“It's mighty good to see that you've made it again,” Mayer 
said. “We are going to Dulles’ house but we must go sc raratecly.” 
He drove toa footpath along the river bank where he tee Wood 
out after directing him how to reach the house through the 
garden, ‘Then he drove off and returned to the house from an- 
other direction, A few minutes later in the seclusion of Dulles’ 
study, Wood was displaying the fruits of his second mission. 
The German legation in Dublin had been operating a secret 
radio station, menacing Allied shipping. After sharp State De- 
partment protests the Irish government silenced it by taking 
custody of a vital picce of the equipment. Now Wood produced 
a cable showing the minister was attempting to smuggle in a 
duplicate part. 
In a new move to combat French resistance, Ambassador 
Abetz had forwarded a plan invented by Laval calling tor 
the atrest and possible execution of relatives of soldiers in the 
cGaulle forces. 
here was a cable from the German embassy in Madrid stating, 
in effect, that “shipments of oranges will continue to arrive 
ed that Franco was cunningly 
inf’ tungsten—for 
tMpering stecl—into Germany in orange crates, 
The most alarming item was a message from the German 
embassy in Buenos Aires which had arrived in Berlin just before 
Wood left. It reported the impending departure of a large con- 
voy from-a- ct i“ t. 
The German and the two Americans were not to know until 
long afterwards the cifect of the intelligence they had dealt 
with behind drawn blinds in Bern that night, but it was little 
short of profound. Among other things, a convoy's schedule was 
altered in time to miss a submarine rendezvous, and an Anglo- 
American ogee embargo was slapped on Spain as a re- 
prisal for the tungsten smuggling. 
Wood explained that to fill in the blank spaces between his 
visits he would occasionally try to get coded messages out via 
third partics who would deliver them as. innocent-looking 
family greetings to a brother-in-law of Dr. O. in Zurich. We 
showed Mayer the key to an intricate cipher he had devised one 
evening while listening to Furtwaengler conduct a symphony 
in Kerlin, “Sometimes I can think best when Tam listening to 
music,” he said. 
He had also figured out how they could signal him to confirm 
receipt of information by this third-party circuit. “Through 
contacts of his own,” he said, “Dr, O. can arrange to have food 
parcels sent me, sardines, butter, coffee and the like. Have these 
mailed at regular intervals, But only include the coffee when 
you have received something: then I will know my message 
got through.” 
Refore Wood departed he made two more requests: he wanted 
GMaR 	nia ycrafilm, and a 
gun. “P. wath aes ok seROv HOTe to time,” he

ire 
1 Se RARE ges CHA 
y 
caught. “Never mind.” Wood laughed as ey 
: explained. “Ian SAME ZAdinARRKOMAd komRaleaseri 
4 layer managed to get him the camera next day but he ob- 
jected that a gun would only compound his jeopardy if he were 
shook hands in 
farewell, “I will get one later in Germany. I won't shoot the 
Wehrmacht with it. I will use it only in an emergency—on 
myself.” 
As winter came. only a few of Dr. 0.'s food packages had to 
be dispatched without the confirming consignment of coffee. 
Wood discovered an old colleague who had worked with him 
in the service in Spain and was now a regular couricr. There 
were some people in the government whose sentiments were 
anti.Nazi but who were afraid to do anything: others dared 
articipate in nothing more than vicarious opposition, a sort of 
ceping the right hand from knowing what the left hand was 
doing, technique. Even they had their usefulness. The couricr 
was willing to carry an occasional note of grecting to the Zurich 
“brother-in-law.” Assistance also came from an eccentric in the 
Forcign Office named Werner, who after repeated difficulties 
with the Nazis managed through his seniority to get a semi- 
retirement status. He moved as far out of sight as possible, to a 
small mountain Hiitte in the Bavarian Alps near the Swiss 
border above Lake Constance. Werncr found a way to pass an 
occasional message along, taking care never to inquire about 
contents or destination. He was to provide a port in the storm 
for Wood, later on. 
n ohe occasion, Wood succeeded in spiriting out a roll of 
microfilm in a watch case. It had become next to impossible 
for civilians to get things like watches repaired in Germany 80 
there was nothing particularly bizarre in Wood's request to his 
courier friend to leave the watch with the in-law in Zurich 
to be fixed, 
The secret circuit from Berlin to Bern became heavily laden 
; with important news. Washington and London were burning to 
get German war plant production figures in order to gauge the 
effectiveness of the air war. Wood was able, not once but several 
times, to transmit to Bern condensations of the latest surveys 
on industry, together with soundings on public morale under 
the bombings. 
It was Wood who found out, through a dispatch from von 
Papen, in’ Ankara, that the butler in the houschold of Sir 
Hughie Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador to ‘Tur- 
key, was a Nazi spy. Unlike Wood, this man—Cicero Dicllo— 
made a fortune in espionage. Wood intercepted a memo in 
which the Foreign Office laid down sterner occupation measurcs 
for the Balkans. A warning from him made it possible for the 
Allies to ferret out agents that the Germans had tried to hide 
aboard a train repatriating wounded prisoncrs of war. 
One day Bern got an urgent message from Washington order- 
ing a concentration on intelligence about the Japancse. It was 
impossible to guess when Wood might 
show up again and it was folly to try to 
send him a coded message. Mayer hit upon 
an idea. He simply had a contact in Zurich 
mail Wood an open postal card. “Dear 
Friend,” it read, “perhaps you remember 
my little son. His birthday is coming soon 
and I wanted to get him some of those 
clever Le le toys with which the shops 
here used to be full, but I can find none. I 
wonder if there might be some left in 
Berlin?" . 
Wood himself arrived in Bern shortly 
after that, bringing extensive data on the 
Japanese, including the battle order of 
the Imperial fleet which, it turned out, the 
U. S. Navy was able to use in confirming 
that it had correctly broken the Jap code. 
Long before the spring of 1944, evidence 
began reaching Bern from various sources 
in Germany making it appear that a real 
conspiracy to do away with Hitler was 
building up in the shadowy pockets of the 
German underground. Wood was not di- 
rectly connected with the plot but a few of 
his friends were privy to some of the prep- 
arations and one day in the spring of 1944, 
Wood came into, possession one rmation 
of Ap giving a detaile hie proved 
GUARDR7G.00058R0001000'10404-4n the 
Eastern front, which he was able to relay S10+6 a en- 
livened but did not decide the debate among Allied strategists 
on the possibilities and the wisdom of dropping a block buster 
on the Fuchrer's ficld stronghold. 	. 
Then, finally, on July 20, 1944, a one-armed colonel named 
von Stanffenberg planted a time bomb, concealed in a bricf 
case, under the map table in a flimsy wooden barracks where 
Hitler was holding a staff conference at his East Prussia HQ. 
The bomb exploded but Hitler miraculously escaped wit 
minor wounds. The most important anti-Nazi conspiracy of the 
war was crushed. 
Wood had not been heard from, directly or indirectly, since 
early June, and as the frenzied arrests and “trials” followed in 
the wake of the tragic failure of the bomb plot, Mayer became 
convinced that Wood had been caught and killed. They had no 
news of him actually until late September, when they received 
second-hand word via a traveler that he was alive and well in 
Berlin. 
He might have been among the missing if it had not been 
for the womanly intuition of Gerda, Some weeks before the 
attempt, she took a message for him, from a friend, requesting . 
that he attend a meeting with some army officers on a certain 
night in Potsdam. She fele uncomfortable about it and she failed 
to give Wood the message until the meeting was over. Sub- 
sequently cvery man at the mecting was executed, except one— 
an informer. The group had been a splinter of the revolt. 
After the aborted coup, Wood voluntcered to help one of the 
et i conspirators, Dr. Karl Goerdeler, former mayor of 
ipzig, escape to Switzerland. But Goerdeler had vanished and 
the only one af Wood's contacts who would know where he was 
hiding, a Berlin businessman named Bauer, had already been 
arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. Gocrdcler was 
later caught in the village of Konradswalde, on the western 
border of East Prussia, tortured and exccuted. 
Wy ot himsclf was investigated after July 20 but with an 
ineptitude which reflected plainly the edges of decay that 
were beginning to eat into the hard flesh of the regime. 
Wood's inquisitor was a Nazi block leader whose regular job 
was driving an omnibus. He called at the Forcign Oflice twice 
when Wood wasn’t there. The second time he left a note asking 
Wood to be at home at 8 p.m. and await him. 
The bus driver was officious and blustering at first. He de- . 
manded to know what Wood did with his spare time. Wood 
explained that as a government official he had few hours to 
himself but that occasionally he played chess—the Auswaertige 
Amt guards could verify that. Then, adopting a confidential 
tone, he spoke of the importance of his position. “You can 
readily sce,” he concluded, “that with such urgent matters to 
attend to I have no time for nonsense.” 
: ke 
220 oo ee

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This logic impressed the bus driver. Still he was uzzled. In 
view of the somewhat extraordinary fact that Wood had never 
become a party member, would he kindly make a declaration 
of his political convictions? 
“My political convictions?” Wood was pensive. “Ich bekenne 
mich positiv zum Endsieg—I confess to myself the positive be- 
licf in final victory.” 	: 
It did not occur to this poor lackey that they might not be 
thinking of the same victory, and he seized upon the remark 
with gusto. “Wunderbar!” he explained. “An admirable senti- 
ment. Allow me to write it down at once. I must tell my 
supcriors.” 	: 
evertheless, as the purges spread, burning through the 
autumn like a grass fire to consume hundreds of victims, Wood 
realized that he too might be trapped at any moment. He was 
forced to interrupt his activities and halt his sporadic traffic 
via: other messengers. Even the smallest gamble was too big 
to risk. 
aN the same time, the tide of Allied triumph was swelling. Se- 
cretly Wood could hope that the end would soon be in sight. 
Paris was liberated and then Brussels. Aachen became the first 
German city to fall and then the Sicgfricd Line was pierced. 
The Russians swept inexorably westward, The force of air at- 
tacks on Berlin increased steadily, ansforming the city into a 
crumbling inferno where people had to burrow underground 
like moles to work, and even to stay alive. 
In the midst of this tumult, a tiny corps of civilians early in 
1945 hatched a plan to stage an uprising in Berlin and seize the 
‘capital with the support, they hoped, of a force of American 
aratroopers. The core of the resistance would lic in thé Reichs- 
anner, an association of World War’ I veterans who were 
largely of Social Democratic—liberal—sympathies and who had 
been supporters of the Weimar republic. Wood was in on the 
idea from the start and became convinced that there was a 
good chance it could be made to succeed. 
Wood canvassed his friends to select men to act as guides 
and scouts for the invaders. A census of bicycles and motorbikes 
was taken. It was decided that the Americans could best land 
around the Wannscee and Schlachtensee, two lakes lying between 
Potsdam and Berlin. From there they could infiltrate into the 
heart of the city. A GHQ was even designated for them, in an 
office at 28 Unter den Linden, near the site of the U. S. Embassy, 
the Adlon hotel and the Brandenburg Gate. The office belonged 
to Bauer, a businessman who was Wood's friend. 
Wood now succeeded in getting out to Bern again. He dis- 
‘ cussed the operation with Dulles and Mayer, who relayed the 
\idea to higher headquarters. Apart from its strictly military 
ramifications, the plan involved a thinly disguised attempt to 
get the capital into western hands before the Red Army en- 
gulfed it. Many Allicd strategists believed it should be tried. 
Subsequent developments were to make the operation look 
more alluring than foolhardy but top level decisions reserved 
Berlin for Gl Ivan instead of GI Joe. 
- Despite the danger that he might not be able to come back 
out again, Wood elected to return to Berlin. If the decision 
against the paratroop opcration were unexpectedly reversed, he 
wanted to be on hand. He was going to arrange to have Gerda 
evacuated from the city if he could, And there was still vital 
intelligence work to be done, particularly in trying to keep track 
‘of key Nazis and determine if possible what resistance they 
might be proposing from the so-called redoubt of Bavaria and 
other potential hideaways. 	; 
If the eity he had left was a tumult, what he came back to 
was a cataclysm of disorder. Twelve hundred American planes 
bombed Berlin one morning in plain daylight. In March the 
RAF hammered the city with gigantic raids for seventeen con- 
secutive nights. The western armies vaulted the Rhine at 
Remagen and the Russians drove to Stettin. The land sicge of 
the capital itself was about to begin. 
st,” she Gerda wag unable gclon the clinic, “This is m He produced his Foreign Office pass but the men were surly. 
tol hin, Bantzecbn Approvedyhonk oteabes Clie PFO GB9ssR0001000 10 wled. “These 
We shan’t be separated for long.” 
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP7,0;00058R00010001010414... F Saag 
THE SPY THE NAZIS MISSED 
seemingly nitern 
not be able to leave Berlin any way except on foot as a refugee, 
which woukd be futile. Courier service was disrupted. Exit visas 
were not being issued: too many messengers hal landed in 
neutral spots and neglected to return home. Railway travel from 
Berlin was out of the question. There was no scheduled traffic. 
What trains were moving were filled with troops, and officials 
of the highest ies lronically, it was Dr, Ritter himself, 
Wood's boss, who unexpectedly Tarnished him clearance and 
means for the trip. 
Ritter, a bachelor whose somewhat dashing manner belied his 
60 years, had a friend, a concert singer, whom he was anxious 
to get out ‘of the city to relative safety. He asked Wood to drive 
her and her 2-year-old daughter to Bavaria in Ritter’s per- 
sonal diplomatic car, a huge, black Mercedes. George asked one 
of the staff doctors at the clinic to do his best to look after 
Gerda, and in return agreed to take the doctor's wife, whose 
name was Dorchen, along in the Mercedes. 
One momentous morning shortly before the first of April, 
Wood left Berlin with the’ two women and the child, for the 
wildest ride of his life, They had planned to depart right after 
an early breakfast but an air raid delayed them until nearly 
noon. The weather was gray and bitter cold and the roads were 
icy. George had not driven a car of any kind in years. The 
brakes did not hold and his rear vision was completely blocked 
by the cnormous load of belongings which the singer had hysteri- 
cally insisted on bringing along, and which somchow they had 
managed to pile into the back seat. This obliged all four of them 
to jam themselves together in front, so tightly that before 
George could shift gears the women had to hoist their knees 
to one side. : 
Their destination was a village called Ottobeyren, southeast 
of Stuttgart. Normally, over the autobahn past Leipzig, 
Nuremberg and Munich, the trip was a matter of a few hours. 
It took them nearly three days. They had to dodge on and off 
the autobahn to avoid troop convoys, or bypass bridges which 
sappers had blasted to cover the Wehrmacht's retreat. Soldiers 
and wandering civilians glared: at them. “hey were delayed at 
improvised checkpoints where nervous sentries inspected their 
papers and waved them dubiously on. : 
Late the first evening the engine died and Wood could not 
revive it. After an hour they were able to flag down a charcoal- 
burning truck which took them in tow. Dazed with fatigue, 
choking from the truck's dense exhaust fumes, Wood stuck to 
the wheel all night while they were drawn jerkily southward, 
Next morning a mechanic found and repaired their trouble—a 
clogged carburetor. They ran out of gas five times and had to 
barter and scrounge for it at farmhouses and fucl dumps. ‘The 
diplomatic plates only helped a little. They reached Ottobeyren, 
‘in a state of virtual collapse, late the third afternoon and found 
beds in a monastery. 
Loins the singer, her daughter and the Mercedes with the 
monks, George and Dorchen set out on foot next morning for 
the neighboring town of Memmingen, where they hoped to be 
“able to catch a train for Weiler, about seventy kilometers south, 
just above the Lake of Constance. Werner, the eccentric ex: 
diplomat, had a cabin in the Bayerischewald back of Weiler, 
and Wood hoped to be able to deposit Dorchen there while he 
went on to Switzerland. 
Though the night's rest had only partially refreshed them, it 
was a relief to be rid of the concert artist, who had screamed and 
wept through most of the journey from Berlin. The pair of 
them made good time over the snow-covered road. Dorchen was 
a facile, bouyant companion and she refused to let George carry 
her suitcase. He had a heavy knapsack, the standard equipment 
of German wartime travelers, strapped to his back over his 
leather coat. This time he carried no diplomatic pouch or secret 
envelope of his own; what data he had was filed in his head. 
In the pack, however, were concealed the gun which he had 
told Mayer he would finally get, and a small portable radio 
set. He carried the latter to intercept air raid alerts. 
After being informed at the. Memmingen station that a train 
was due “sometime this morning,” they had just put down 
their luggage on the platform to wait when two SS non-coms 
accosted Wood.. 
“Show your papers,” they commanded. 
are probably forged. You are under arrest. You will come with 
Peel 
a EET 
4 
1

pee ATE rere em ot aa AT FE GR Re ean ee rah a a 
CPYRGHT | 
ar i or 
us to the Gestap 
With your baggage.” 
When Wood started to protest they shoved him roughly ahead 
of them. “Aber schnell!—But quickly!" 
As they entered the Leitstelle, George leaned toward Dorchen. 
“Try to keep your suitcase behind you, so they won't notice it,” 
he whispered. 
There was a Gestapo captain on duty. Wood placed his knap- 
sack on a chair directly in front of his desk. The captain glowered 
at Wood, “Why are you not in the Volkssturm?” he demanded. 
There was a sneer in his voice, betraying the professional’s con- 
tempt for the pathetic “people's army” dragooncd in a final 
effort to stave off collapse. 
“Tam a member of the Foreign Office on an official mission,” 
Wood retorted hotly. “Here are my papers.” He slapped them 
down on the desk. 
"he captain eyed them disdainfully. “You are a courier. 
“ Where is your diplomatic pouch?” vi 
“Lam going to Bern to pick up a pouch,” Wood lied. 
“And the woman?” 	. 
“She happens to be a relative of Dr. Ritter of the Auswacr- 
tige Amt whom I am escorting to Friedrichshaven.” He was 
gambling that the substitution of identities would not be 
checked and that they could bluster their way to freedom. 
Out of the corner of his cye he glimpsed one of the SS men 
staring first at Dorchen and then at the knapsack on the chair. 
Suddenly it scemed to Wood as if the gun and the radio were 
about to burst through the canvas. A sickening feeling of despair 
seized him and it occurred to him in a swift vivid summation 
of all the risks he’d run that this time the candle of his hick 
had burned out. 
“AM the same,” he heard the captain saying, in a taunting 
tone, “you will have to wait until we get a signal through to 
Berlin to clear you.” 
A quick gorge of anger swelled in Wood’s chest, stifling his 
‘panic. He sprang forward, thrusting his chin out to within a 
foot of the officer's face. 
“What kind of an insult to Der Fuchrer's foreign service is 
this?” he shouted, pounding on the desk with his fist. “Subject- 
ing an official emissary to an inquisition not worthy of a common 
criminal! It will take hours, perhaps days, to establish contact 
with Berlin. This is no affair of yours. 1 demand that we be 
released immediately!” 
The outburst seemed to cow the captain. 
headquarters in Munich They will have a 
record of my travel orders.” 
This gave the officer an out and he took 
it. As he picked up the phone, the SS guard 
who had been eyeing the knapsack, stepped 
toward Dorchen. She was sitting on her 
suitcase, her skirt spread over it. “Mad- 
ame,” he said curtly, “have you something 
in that case you are trying to conceal?” She 
rose and opened it. There was nothing in- 
side but her toilet articles and clothing. 
Now the captain had Munich on the line. 
Yes, they knew of Wood's trip and the fact 
that somebody connected with another 
Foreign Office official was supposed to be 
traveling with him. No reason why they 
should be held. 
“This is not regular procedure,” the 
captain said to Wood. “This should be 
referred to Berlin, But under the circum- 
stances I will release you.” 
“You will have nothing to worry about,” 
Wood said, shouldering his pack. 
On the way to the station, George 
squeezed Dorchen’s arm. “You did beauti- 
fully with the suitcase,” he said. “When 
youre carrying contraband, put it out in 
plain sight and pretend to be worried 
about something else. It usually works.” 
She laughed, but her face was pale. “I 
guess I didn’t tell you,” she said, “that I 
was carrying a pOwhPtizec nip pnoved 
coat.” 
than crawl Aften ten hours it stopped dead. They were still 
twelve kilometers from Weiler, it was 10 pan., pitch dark and 
snowing. ‘There was nothing to do but walk. Well after mid- 
night they stumbled up to Werner’s blacked-out cabin and 
knocked on the door. 
“Full house already,” Werner said as he greeted them, “but 
we can certainly find you a place to sleep.” His visitors included 
an attractive Peruvian sefora, a young Persian engineering 
student who had been caught in Germany at the outbreak of 
the war, and two men in staff officers’ uniforms of the Wehr- 
macht. 	a 
Dorchen was given Werner's bedroom and George collapsed 
on a couch in an alcove off the living room. He was so tired that 
sleep hit him like a blow, knocking him instantly into uncon- 
sciousness. 	: 
Over a black, bitter brew of malt coffee the next morning. 
Wood chatted with uie two officers. Werner had told them he 
was a dependable friend. They explained, somewhat uneasily. 
that they had brought a convoy of some five trucks out of Berlin 
loaded with “important material” from the German general 
staff offices. 
“Oh yes, of course, I know,” Wood said casually, “the intelli- 
gence files on Russia.” : 
They stared at him, startled. “Yes, but how did you know?" 
“TL was told about it before I left Berlin.” As a matter of 
fact, he had heard only vague talk about the move. His answer 
to the officers was a smart guess, 
"A be staff files included some of the most complete intelligence 
in existence on Russia and the Red Army. Headed by a 
colonel, a group of eleven officers, including these two at break- 
fast, had decided to try to get the files out of Berlin before the 
city fell to the Russians. ‘They had a motive of their own: they 
intended to offer the material to the western Allies in return 
for their own freedom. The convoy had met with a string of 
misfortunes and become scattered. Some of the trucks were 
destroyed in an air attack. One or two others were hidden not 
far away in the woods. 	; 
Wood persuaded the officers to give him a description and 
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TRUE MAGAZINE 
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location of the tache. Then, after leaving his gun and radio 
with Werner and borrowing a bieyele from the Persian student, 
he said gevid-by to Dorchen and the others and pedaled to 
Rregenz where he had to get a visa for Switzerland. His diplo- 
matic passport won him priority at the consulate and he was able 
to cross to St. Margarcten in time to catch a train for Bern via 
Zurich. After his harrowing trek from Berlin, it was deliciously 
relaxing to stretch out in the swift, tidy comfort of the train, 
In Bern, people scemed consumed with excitement, like a 
crowd flocking to the rail to watch the finish of a horse race, No 
particular event stood out, it was the spectacle of a legion of 
events sweeping to a climax, the approaching end of the war, 
which gripped them. 
Somchow, Wood felt strangely left out of. it. Dulles and 
Mayer had already received a tip about the convoy of intelli- 
gence files. They werc grateful for the additional details Wood 
gave them; the information would be dispatched to Army G-2s 
at the front for action. The general situation was so fluid that 
“most of the other data Wood had gathered in Berlin proved of 
litde use. Everything not directly fastened to the great single 
fact of military victory in Fore scemed inconsequential, 
Dulles became involved in delicate negotiations in highest 
secrecy which were to Icad in a few short wecks to the surrender 
of the entire German force in Italy: 600,000 men. Every day 
brought some new exciting development. On April 14, von 
Papen, who had Iong since returned from abroad, was captured 
in Hamm, in the Ruhr pocket, with his son. On the 18th, the 
U. S. First Army took Leipzig and Halle, through which Wooc 
had passed so recently on his last exit from Berlin. 
onsumed with frustration, Wood decided to try a daring 
mancwver of his own in Bern, He went to the, German 
- minister, a tall, austere and aging man named-Koecher, and at- 
f 
tempted to persuade him to sarrender the Iegation to the Allics. 
“The Nazis have lost the war,” he argued, “Further resistance 
is criminal. You will soon see Germans emerging who have 
fought the regime underground, It is their turn to take over. 
Some of these men and women have been working in the Foreign 
Office. 1 am one of them. If you give up the legation now it may 
encourage other mission chiefs to follow suit. Anything that 
will hasten the inevitable collapse, even if it shortens the war by 
mercly a day, is an act of assistance to the German people.” 
To Koecher, himself an ardent Nazi who had consistendy 
4 helped move Nazi spics through Switverland, this was heresy. 
‘I am loyal to Hider,” he stormed, “Get out!” 
Shortly after this encounter, by inexplicable coincidence, 
Wood was arrested by Swiss military police on the suspicion that 
he was a Nazi spy. When he told them of his meeting with the 
minister, they freed him, 	‘ 
- With the surrender signed and the fighting stopped, Wood 
could scarcely realize that his perilous messenger run was over. 
He went to Zurich and initiated the long-delayed divorce pro- 
ceedings against his Swiss wife. He wanted to return to Berlin 
at once but the Russians were stalling the establishment of the 
Allied Control Commission and it was not until June that he 
finally got back. This time he made the trip in the buckct seat 
ola Us, Army G47. He found Gerda safe but on the point of 
exhaustion Trom overwork. A typhoid epidemic had broken out 
in the fetid ruins of the city and the hospitals were jammed. 
And now the kindly gods who scemed to have bequeathed 
George Wood a gharmed life through unbelievable years of 
bloody tyranny and war appeared to abandon him all at once. 
A GI corporal was speeding him to OSS headquarters, a house 
in the Dahlem sector of Berlin, one morning when they ran 
kead-on into a truck. The impact pitched Wood onto a pile of 
rocks fifteen yards away, breaking his jaw, three ribs, his right 
ankle and fracturing his skull, An emergency operation saved 
him from death but he was trussed to a hospital cot for more 
than five weeks, ; 
When he recovered he found that his* divorce had been 
snagged in a thorny patch of legal technicalities. It took months 
to straighten it out and get the decree. After he and Gerda were 
108 	ns 
niarried, he didn dizeaiayaioprenvert For Reledse : CIA-RD 
nips hi rene i set 4x0 46 aly 
Fiesta ¢ RAP THO 5 quiet) ! At, t 
py the Russians. They went to Frankfurt, He wv 
a job. While he continued to look, Gerda found & 
them in the house of a friend in the Taunus, where f 
ing to the story that afternoon. 
“We're lucky to have this one room,” Wood gridin me now. 
“There are two other familics here besides oursclves. Technically 
we're breaking the law because as Berliners, or non-residents, we 
are supposed to regist’> with the burgomeister, but thatinvealves 
a lot of red tape. “Chats one reason, though, why Uget my mail 
in Frankfurt, as a precaution, Pity we weren't Nazis.” 
huckling, he pointed to an impressive schiess set in a growth 
of fir trees ona knoll a quarter of a mile away. “The gentle- 
man who owns that was a party member,” he said. “ft made 
things much less complicated and wich more profitable at his 
factory. Military government kept him out of ¢ ion fora 
while but new he’s back in business, a prosper." hstantial 
member of the community, too busy to be both : course, 
with taking in roomers to ease the housing pres... 62.” 
“Can't you go down to Bonn and raise hell about something 
like that?" I demanded, “Do you have to be unhoused and un- 
employed toor” 	. 
Housing was a colossal task, he said: the government was 
getting around to it gradually. As for a job, he couldn't count 
on it but he had hepes something would turn up at Bonn 
eventually. Perhaps, he reflected, he shouldn't have made that 
‘demarche to Koccher, the minister in Bern. Koecher was dead 
now. Alter the surrender he had been expelled trom Switer- 
land and turned over to the Allies. In a fit of dejection he com- 
mitted suicide in a French army detention camp, but not before 
he had uttered to fellow prisoners .a vituperative denunciation 
of Wood asa traitor who had sold out to the enemy for a fortune, 
Some of those prisoners were free men now, and talking. 
“Mayer told me you made a trip to the States,” [ said. “Didn't 
anything attractive turn up there?” 
“It was a honeymoon for Gerda and me,” he said. “New York 
is a wonderful place. America is so big and so abundant, T went 
into Macy's once and saw so many things 1 found it difficult to, 
to respire, People were very nice to us, I would have liked to 
have stayed but we must have arrived at the wrong time. Most 
of the officials I wanted to see seemed to be away on business. 
We never did get to Washington.” . 
“By the way,” I said, “whatever happened to Dr. Ritter?” 
“He was captured and convicted as a minor war criminal, He 
served a term in prison. He’s out now and I learned just the 
other day he is going to Rio de Janeiro to marry a matron of 
Brazilian society he met when he was antbassador there.” 
“Look, George,” I put in impatiently, “if E were in your shoes 
I'd be breathing fire at this point. Was what you did worth it?” 
He laid a hand on my arm. “If I had it to do over again 1] 
would have to do the same thing.” he replied. 
As L pot up to go he handed me a manuscript. “Read this 
when you get time.” he said, “you might find it interesting.” 
When I got back to the hotel in Frankfurt I opened the manu- 
script, thinking it would be some autobiographical notes which 
Wood had, for some reason, been too reticent to discuss, It was 
an article entitled “High Treason and Resistance,” written by a 
well-known German intelectual named Rudolf Pechel who had 
spent three years in the Sachscnhausen concentration camp for 
his role in the underground, There was a passage near the end 
which had been underlined in pencil. This is what it said: 
“Ie remains unimportant that the resistance failed to reach 
its goal and that the surviving members of the resistance 
are today as lonely as they were under Hitler. Each great 
idea and each courageous deed bears the fruit in itself, We 
didn’t expect.any thanks.”—Edward P. Morgan 
A True Book-Length Featare 
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