Fritz Kolbe (operational alias George Wood) (born September 25, 1900 to February 16, 1971) was a German diplomat who served as a spy against the Nazi regime for the United States during World War II.

He refused to accept any payment for his activities because of his dislike for the Nazi regime. He was cold shouldered by successive post war German governments as someone who had betrayed Germany until publication of the original documents by the CIA in 2000 forced a review and his eventual official recognition. On September 9th, 2004 a conference room in the German foreign ministry was named after him by German foreign minister Joschka Fischer.

Career

Fritz Kolbe was employed as a junior diplomat by the German foreign ministry before World War II and had postings to Madrid and Cape Town but his refusal to join the Nazi party led him to be assigned lowly clerical work in Berlin from 1939. He was influenced by the anti Nazi surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch and around November 1941 became determined to do something practical to help defeat the Nazis.

It was not until 1943, however, that an opportunity arose when a fellow anti Nazi in the ministry re-assigned him to higher grade work as a diplomatic courier.

He was trusted to travel to Berne in Switzerland with the diplomatic bag and while there tried to offer mimeographed secret documents to the British embassy. They rebuffed his approach and so he went instead to the Americans who decided to trust him. By 1944 they realised they had an agent of the highest quality. He was given the code name George Wood. His US intelligence handler was Office of Strategic Services agent Allen Welsh Dulles. Altogether by the end of the war he passed 2,600 documents. He was later described by the CIA as the most important spy of the war.

Information he passed revealed details of:-

• German expectation of the site of the D-day landings,
• V1 and V2 rocket programmes,
• the Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighter.
• Japanese plans in South-east Asia,
• Exposure of a Nazi agent, Elyesa Bazna, working as a butler in the British embassy in Istanbul.

Reference

• A Spy at the Heart of the Third Reich: The Extraordinary Life of Fritz Kolbe, America's Most Important Spy in World War II ;Author Lucas Delattre; Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN 0871138794 (2005)