THE SPY THE NAZIS MISSED

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP70-00058R000100010104-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 17, 1998
• Sequence Number: 104
• Publication Date: July 1, 1950
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Sanitized Approved For ~eleae : CIA-RDP70-00058
the Nazis missed
CPYRGHT
In the last two years of World War II,
"George Wood" brought the Allies no
fewer than 2,600 secret documents
from Hitler's Foreign Office, some of
them of the highest importance.
Eisenhower called him one of the
most valuable agents we had during
the entire war. Here's how he did it
by Edward P. Morgan
CPYRGHT Illustrated by John Clymer
w r hen I first heard the story about George Wood,
I wouldn't believe it. I was having lunch in one
of those Paris sidewalk restaurants with a friend
of mine, an American who had been an intelli-
gence officer in Europe during the war.
"This guy was a German diplomat," he explained.
"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
of Strategic Services in Switzerland. He had a job in
the Auswaertige Amt-the Foreign Office-in Berlin. A
rgal 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 pipeline he managed to syphon out of the
Foreign Office files the contents of no less than 2,600
He.,,aiW>etAppwvedeFaESS Fleas
"tie t separate, hI$hly4eC ret ittmm.
 CPYRGHT
red - Approved' For Release ICIA-RDP70-00058R000100010104-4 4
classified documents, some of them secrets of the highest
importance. He even made five trips from 'Berlin to Bern.
himself, between 1943 and 1945, through air raids and all,
tarrying the stuff with him."
Some fantastic things had hap pened. it's true, but this
business about Wood was incredible, I knew there had
been a few defections in high places in Der Fuehrer's
sinister hierarchy. but almost invariably the miscreants had
been found out in time and swiftly purged. Your man
Wood couldn't have been an individual of any great shakes,"
I insisted. "or he would have been rooted out before he
ever got started."
My friend took my needling patiently.
"Actually." he went on. "I never laid eyes on this fellow
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 one
of the most valuable agents we had during the entire
war."
I said I suppose the Nazis got him, in the end.
"They never did. He's alive today. and all in one piece.
And, as a matter of fact, he's among the unemployed. Wood
never got a dime for his services. Wouldn't take it. Nobody
that I know of even offered him a medal, and anyhow I
suspect he would have refused that too.
"lie's an odd character. Sort of idealistic. A combination
of guts and shrewdness and a lot of luck, I guess. What
happened to Wood couldn't happen more than once in a
million times, but there was that once. He thumbed his
nose at the Nazis from the beginning, and got away 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-
quired.
"Well," my friend said, squinting his eyes, "I don't doubt
that somebody tried. But these spy jobs are tricky business,
you know. They seldom pay off with honors."
As we left the restaurant, I asked him if he had Wood's
address or knew how I could reach him.
"No." he said, "but there's a man right here in Paris who
will know, fellow named Mayer, Gerald M. Mayer. He's in
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471. 91
business here. Did intelligence and psychological warfare
work in Switzerland (luring the war. Go see him."
I found Mayer easily enough, in a handsome office near
the Champs-Elys&s. "1 was in on the launching of 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 conic in handy sometimes," I suggested.
Mayer shook his head. "He didn't run risks for the
excitement of it. Something more fundamental than that
was driving him. Nobodyy ever looked less like a knight
in shining armor. but there was something consecrated
about him. I know that sounds corny but I can't explain
it any other way."
lie lighted his pipe attd then went on. "Sec here, I can
give %(-u a lot of the facts but if you're really interested in
his story. you must see Wood himself."
I reminded him that I'd hoped Lie could help me find
NVcxnl.
"Well. Itnl ashamed to say that I've lost track of him. He
went to the States fora while after the war. Somehow things
didn't pan out for him there and he carne back to Europe.
We've got a mutual friend in Zurich. though-a doctor.
Let inc give you his triune."
In Zurich, the doctor had an address for him all right, in
Frankfurt-on-Main, Germany. "lie's having a bit of a hard
time," the doctor said, "and you may find him reluctant to
talk. Personally, I hope he does. It may make the Germans
realize what they owe to the few of their countrymen who
were brave enough to stand up against Hitler."
Three years had gone by since my last visit to Frankfurt
and the transformation OF the city astounded me. 'Fite
hideous piles of rubble had disappeared from 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 Fifth
Avenue. Intersections were choked with traflit-not jeeps
and six-by-sixes of the occupation force but passenger cars.
many of them American makes with German plates. Some
 ,, i-zejd''- Ap rc
T,SP4. THE ..r
f three separate families were nhi a to the gate . ,w
D s tting on the front steps and when I got out of the car he came
irectly to meet me.
id. "One room gets a little stuffy when you live in it all the
imc. And the sunshine is lovely today; I'll leave you to enjoy it."
encral. The Russians' behavior depressed and alarmed him and
e was convinced they were much farther along with atomic
ailed that on a_ trip to Zurich in 1948, he learned that Swiss
cismographs had registered an enormous explosion, supposedly
and bananas bumped throu5h the sidewalk crowds. In the
heavy-carpeted luxury of the Frankfurter Hof (iii the wing that
had been restored), you could dine on caviar, poached salmon
and Rhine wine, for a consideration.
Other embellishments had been added. Atmospheric embel?
lishments, if you like. Everybody and his brother, it seemed,
were writing their memoirs of the Hitler era. As fast as they
could stock them, the kiosks were selling periodicals featuring
the fateful saga of the German battleship Bismarck; a butler's
reminiscences of life with Der Fuehrer; 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
before the secret "V" weapons could be fully utilized. A man
named Wonnerow leaped up in righteous wrath in the provin.
cial legislature of Schleswig-Holstein to denounce the July 20,
1914, attempt on Hitler's life, and demand that those still alive
among the schweinhurtd conspirators be hanged. And a cabinet
minister at Bonn was eloquently justifying Germany's role in
World War 1I.
The man who answered the door a, the address the doctor
had given me wore a rumpled pair of trousers tied around the
middle with a length of rubber stripped from an old inner tube.
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, blue?"
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
meet Wood and that it was urgent that he get the message as soon
as possible. I went back to my hotel expecting a long wait, but
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
of a fortune i fros~tt,,~ e 1 r~gcg~
asE
ouse he had i t Afroalt' t lei ni'l+~s
h
ture with a steep roof and a tiny yard. Cards blaring the names
"So you've come," he said, giving me a strong handshake.
"But you hadn't been expecting me," I said, puzzled, "not
1 eforc you got my note?"
His bronzed face broke into a broad grin. "The doctor from
urich wrote that you were on the way."
I regarded him closely. He was a short, wiry man with a bald
cad rimmed with fine blond hair. His grey-green eyes were
eady, intense, almost cold, but his look was softened by friendly
I ttic wrinkles fanning out from under his eyebrows. He wore an
Id sAft shirt, open at the throat, revealing a navy blue crew-
eck sweater. I would have guessed his age at not more than 40 Ithough I knew already, from Mayer, that he was nearly. 50.
here was nothing of the stiff-necked German diplomat about
im. He reminded me at first of a retired prizefighter running
massage parlor. And yet easy access to him was blocked by a
anner at once intense and distant, mysterious.
"Come inside," he said, nimbly leading the way up a narrowe
aircase to a small but cheery bedroom. Two enormous feather
omforters seemed about to ascend like linen-covered balloons
m the twin beds. "This is home," he said, "and this is Gerda."
is wife, a handsome brunette, stepped in from a little railed
alcorty, beyond which in the warns afternoon sun I could see
e valley of the Main rolling away from the Taunus.
"You will be more comfortable out here on the balcony," she
in atomic blast in eastern Europe. This was_ more than a year
As for Germany? "This is my country," he said. "Theme is
"Perhaps they have to take the chance," I said, "like you did.'
f importance only to me. There were others who did as mucl
i
h -..L..
left
b
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m
n
-
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the
w
t
m you
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a
did
re
fete in Frankfurt, worked in the resistance too. He went to
oncentration camp. I did not."
said, finally, "I know more already about what you did tha
erhaps you think." Then, groping for his confidence, I bega
o relate the story of his first meeting with Mayer, as Mayer ha
old it to me. Wood made no move to interrupt but I had th
Puently, had been sent to Bern from Washington. in 1942 wit
V c was given two assignments. The first was to run a psycholog
al warfare branch of the Office of War Information, cookin
p such projects as leaflet raids on the German lines and advi
is other role, Mayer was a lieutenant of Allen W. Dulles, chi
f the Office of Strategic Services' operations in Switzerland.
On the morning of August 23, 1943, Mayer was riffling througl
nd the rest of the neutral capitals, was a nest of agents, counter-
gents, and operatives as phony as rubber checks, and one of
'ayer's jobs was to try to sort them out. Technically, in the
yes of the neutral Swiss, both he and Dulles were spies them-
elves, breaking the law twenty-four hours a day. Tacitly, the
wise turned their backs on a good deal of sleuthing by both
ides. But and indiscreet move and the offender was pitched out
n the car which he had been applying to more delicate opera-
ld7i~ltf]~~1~ff~Nd~ldcHetffAh$w him in.
' ? only a caw le of minutes " he added.
4
 Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP70-00058R000100010104-4
PYRGNT
Ile 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,
Dr. 0. 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 as.
ually some months before. "It is he who has sent me to you,"
he said, with an accent as thick as pumpernickel.
Then he launched into an involved explanation of his own
identity. He was a German but he had lone since broken with the
Hitler regime and now carried citizenship papers of a cPttain
? Latin nation. "For a long time," he said, "I have been cautiously
"reeking 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 ap-
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"-secret state document-addressed to
M gn Minister Ribbentrop, and signed von Papcn, Abetz and
ath, 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 reprisal for the murder of Reinhardt
Heidrich, the Nazi "hangman" of Prague, more than a year be-
fore, the Germans feared Czecirresistance 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.
If authentic, this information was obviously red hot. Trying
to keep his voice casual, Mayer asked Dr. O. where he had got it.
The 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 Auswaertige
Amt. This man is here now in Bern. He arrived yesterday as
a special diplomatic courier. That was, how does one say it, the
front which he used for travel. Actually he 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 peril. He wants to meet you, personally. As proof of his
good will he sends you this data. He has much more information
he wishes to give you."
Mayer asked Dr. 0. to wait in the anteroom, and excused him-
self. He bolted upstairs to Dulles' office. Quickly he told Dulles
what had happened 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 secrets, was too preposter-
ous. This must be a trap.
"There are three possibilities," Dulles said. "This could be an
nttPmnt to hr-n4 n>r r...l- Trhn Cnr"N'"d 6..,..r- -011 n...- ....t.-r
ing for t ese dispatches, in hope that a foreknowledge of the
this stuff and radio it to Washin ton. They monitor everything,
of the country. Still, there is just the glimmer of it chance that
him. Despite .his ove~'~r f- g iAl ~o e e t lgj
genuine. So Dulles agreed that they should pursue the game at
feast until thcyscould see the courier and siie hint-Sip firsthand.
Mayer hurried down and told Dr. 6. that he " z ?eady to melt
the courier that evening. "'rake it my house a midn *lrt," Mayer
found himself saying, as ,h ere arranging rs ddvous with
Dr. Fu Manchu. As it'iiap411, the cnuri vvA to dine that
evening with a colleagu?. '. th(,'Ocrman legatidn: He and Dr. O.
could meet afterwardds tliQjo to Mayer's apartment together.
Dulles was to join them, idtognito, at 12:50. Mayer lived in an
apartment house on the River Aare in the KirchenfeId district,
the middle 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.
A t that stage of the war, Switzerland was more than ever .an
isolated 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 bad gone
as long as seven 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-t% another
neutral or an Allied 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",it 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
need became more urgent. There were unceasing queries 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 reflected 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 attach.
He left the door of his flat ajar so his visitors would not have to
ring the bell. Then he mixed himself a highball and sat down
with a magazine to wait.
Punctually at midnight the door opened softly. Dr. 0. 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
light 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
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 German
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
A True Book-Length Feature
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 P".
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` THEE THE NAZIS MISSED
.~
sC
Ribbentrop. Some of the papers were verbatim copies of original
documents; some contained paraphrases of cables or dispatches
scrawled shorthand notes. Each fragment of information woulc
fit neatly somewhere in the vast, never-finished mosaic of~stra
if As Mayer was scanning this material, Dulles came in, and wa
highballs for the four of them. But nobody relaxed. The 'sus
picion which had invaded the room seemed to emit waves o
conversation with rigid formality . the two Germans endeavor
thentic and if so how 1 was able to get them," the courier said
"Thcf came from material which crossed my own desk in th
Foreign Office."
He explained that he worked as an assistant to a Dr. Kar
Ritter, who was the Auswaertige Amt liaison officer with al
documents arriving by pouch from German missions abroad
Army, including military government in occupied territories
And the activities of Goering's Luftwaffe.
"My job," the courier went on, "is to sift this information
desk for action."
Mayer and Dulles exchanged glances. Ritter was well know
to them. As German ambassador in Rio de Janeiro he ha
once been one of the most active and dangerous principals i
shrewd and ruthless operator. His own defection or the spectacl
d
of his having anybo
y but the most loyal Nazi fanatic as a
aide seemed equally unthinkable.
"How long have you had this position?" Mayer asked.
"Three years," carne 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 voic
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 leaders and gut
cians. This extraordinary stranger might be one of them, but t
"We have no way of knowing," Dulles put in, "that you are n
an agent provocateur."
"You would be naive," the courier confessed, "it you did n
suspect that. I cannot prove at this moment that I am not. If
were, however, I would hardly have been so extravagant as t
bring you the contents of so many documents. Two or thre
would have sufficed."
1Ie paused and cleared his throat. Dr. O. leaned forward i
his chair. "If my friend will permit me," he said, "I should lik
pocket. The fist must be used to strike: We drank a toast to that.
Dulles and Mayer, in spite of themselves, were becomin
genuinely impressed. Still.... Damn it, even if he were on th
the conspiracy. At least the asking price for the courier's servic
would be something more than carfare.
cc~11~~
Dr. ~ con g ~ >fafdu' t7twe jtwi'r~att~~~Mlsis~ 0. C
~r~Iip
m
CPYRGHT
egation. I am better acquautte t ere, u n t ey asked
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."
"What.are the conditions?" Mayer asked.
The courier turned first to him and then to Dulles, "Gentle-
en," lie said slowly, "I hate the Nazis. To me they are the
ncmy. I have a similar feeling about the Bolsheviks. They loth
enace the world. But we are in the middle of a war and this
s no time to bargain. Try to believe that I am a patriotic Ger-
an with a human conscience and that there are others. All
e ask as payment for our services is help and encouragement
nd sf?pport 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 a.m. The two Germans could safely stay no
longer. The courier had to catch the next train back to Berlin.
He explained that his second trip might have to be to Sweden.
They would want time, of course, to check on his story, but then
if they desired him to get in touch with the legation in Stock-
holm he would need an alias for identification. Nobody remem-
bered later just how the name George Wood was invented.
Perhaps it came from Dulles' symbolic drumming of the table
top. Anyway, Wood it was; somehow it sounded like a good
omen. This time the men shook hands, all around, and George
Wood and Dr. O. went quietly down the stairs.
I 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 recollec-
tions had been uncorked, lie seemed' willing at last to let them
flow.
"How did you manage to get to Bern in the first place?" I
asked.'
"From the first day I found myself in touch with Nazi secrets,
I knew I would have to find a way, somehow, to get them out,"
he answered. "I tried, before Pearl Harbor, to reach certain
Americans 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
permit."
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
;tired government official was entitled to a little relaxation too.
He applied 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 anxiety 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 young woman who was
assistant chief of the courier section of the Foreign-Office. Her
father was it 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 replied quickly, "and I think it can be arranged to
ave you carry it." That was the third week of August, 1943.
"My Godl" I said, breaking into the narrative, "how could
ou bust right up to her like that? How could you know whom
o trust?"
"One got so one could almost smell the difference between
nemy and friend," he said. "One's instincts grew sharper under
ie 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
sec each other in the corridors, in arestaurant, on a subway
between weather
l IMtslii~li'v~~7t r about
 CPYRQHT
Sanitized ,.Approved-For Release,: CIA-RDP70 POO58ROOO nna s n
recalled fi ,h ~i' 2S S y
he had strapped his secrets to his 1eg. under his trousers. But in
a way, Bern was more dangerous 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
?stay 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 Forei n Office
ran an account, where a room had already been bookedor him.
And where, certainly, his movements would be watched, the
people he spoke to checked, his phone calls recorded. It took
hours before he was able to slip out to a public telephone, in
one of those sidewalk booths that looks like a clothes closet 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
1 the data and sorting out the most urgent information. They
decided to gamble and code this up for a 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.
k
rnUVCU Awdy ".,,,,, ,".........
~.,..---- ----- --- abode in the shabby northern sector of Berlin. Her apartment
hail overlooked an SS parade ground and she couldn t bear to
watch the Elite Guard strut. The most passive kind of resistance,
perhaps, but to him this silent defiance of an old lady had not
been 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 streets 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 sleepp. 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 careful than ever to protect
himself now. He would have to buckle the armor of silence
around him even more tightly ,and seem to lose hie iself in the
duties at his desk. That was one of the most maddening things
about the whole operation, 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
f the
M
ost o
one another's orbit to coagulate their conspiracies.
time each remained a tiny separate cell, suspended in the dark
fluid of danger and uncertainty.
While the bombings of Berlin had been getting sharper, the
i city was still quite whole and full of people. Yet as he crossed
town this afternoon, Wood observed a spectral grayness about
it he hadn't noticed before.
There was"a message on his desk, marked urgent. "Report to
the security officer at once," it said. Needles of apprehension
stabbed at the back of his neck. Discovered already?
The security officer was a large pallid-faced man with deep-
set eyes which seemed always to smoulder with suspicion, a
suspicion 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 wafer.
"You have been to Bern on a courier's mission?" he asked.
His voice was cavernous.
"Jawohfl"
"It has come to our attention that you were absent from the
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
to
Wood himself, meanwhile, was on the train on his way bac
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 scarcely
rumpled the sheets of his bed in the Terminus-he was not tired.
He felt the same exhilarating sensation he remembered having
when he made his first successful ski Jump after long and careful
practice. To be sure, the Americans had given him no guarantee
eration (actually, the OSS in Washington was to
f their coo
p
o
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.
Somehow all the reckless little deeds that
he had done before this, the token gestures
which had seeined 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 1994, 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
startlcd'into admiration by his frankness,
the ortsgruppenleiter appealed to him as
a "man of strong character" to join the
party. Wood replied that since he had not
,been a Nazi before Hitler rose to power,
if he became one,%0/llt-ftV
n for an opportunist.
"It es: tfA?VD u-b6O58Rff00100010104-4 1
~ d For Releas
 . CPYRGHT
T N E S Pja"I`WT, f12,FgecWF? JT1a
CPYRGHT
-I. rew s at a bar, a young woman...."
"Most" indiscreet," the official cut in, "and not necessarily
true.
"I confess I thought afterwards I had been a little careless,"
Wood returned, calmly, "so I took precautions."
He extracted a slip of paper from his wallet and handed it
across the desk. The security officer scanned it hastily. It was a
certificate from a doctor's office in Bern stating that Wood had
been given a prophylactic and a blood test on the morning of
August 24.
' Very well," his inquisitor said grudgingly. "But take care
how you waste your time in the future."
Hastening back to his office, Wood encountered Fraulein
Maria in a corridor. They greeted each other. She had known
about his summons. "They always make it a point to impress
a new courier with their vigilance," she said. He breathed more
easily. Nevertheless he knew he could have had a most uncom-
fortable time. He congratulated himself for having had the
presence of mind to get that certificate a few hours after leaving
Mayer's apartment; he would certainly remember to do that
again. All at once he felt the need of a drink and as soon as he
could dispose of the papers on his desk he hurried out to Kottler's
restaurant and ordered a "two-story" cognac before his dinner.
Kottler's was in Motzstrasse near Kurfurstendamm, the Fifth
Avenue of Berlin, where Wood had a comfortable bachelor
apartment. It was one of his favorites pots. He knew the musician
there, a zither player. They had a little understanding. Each
time Wood appeared the musician would strike up an old
German battle song and Wood and his companions would
boldly sing Schiller's words to it, which began:
"Auf der Welt die Freiheit Verschwunden Ist,
"Man sieht nur noch Herren and Knechte."
"
(
Freedom has ? van isitcd from . the world,
"One sees only masters and slaves.")
The musician played it now and smiled. It fed Wood's cour.
age more strongly than the brandy, steadying him against the
dizzy lurch of a universe at war. As he ate, the air raid sirens
screamed. It was a heavy raid tonight but he refused to budge.
or several weeks, Wood worked furiously at the Foreign
Office. His secret cord strung so vulnerably to Bern was not
a telephone line or a hidden radio set that he could plug in at
random. He dared not press his plot. Time after time he had to
watch vital but perishable information rustle through his office
which he was helpless to divert to the Allies. An order for re-
inforcements to Kesselring in Italy, for instance, would be
known to the Fifth Army front before he could arrange another
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-haircd woman who happened to be a trained
nurse. They had met one day while lie was buried in a routine
Job in the visa section, long before he was transferred to Dr.
Ritter's department. His chief, a glowering 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 whhen they called on business. Gerda ap.
geared at his desk to apply for an exit permit for an important
Berlin surgeon to visit Stockholm. She had made the applica-
tion form out all wrong and Wood patiently showed her how
to do it correctly.
"And how must I sign it?" she asked.
He had assumed she was the doctor's wife and suggested she
sign it that way.
"No, no," she replied, "I am the doctor's assistant. I meant,
shall I write 'Heil Hitler!' at the bottom?"
Wood looked straight at her and said evenly, "Madame, you
may write anything you like."
From then on they were friends. Soon she was inviting him
around to the doctor's clinic where certain other people had
formed the habit of gathering to discuss, however cautiouslyy,?
matters not limited )+ cna~ dDftp4 tEa
1011
medic from Strasbourg named Jung who had been?ursablKlui
e Ito
get back to France when the war began. As an Alsatian, the
Germans insisted lie was German, not French. They were about
to force him into service as a doctor on the eastern front when
Gerda's chief succeeded in getting him assigned to the clinic
staff as an "indispensable" assistant. "If you ever need a doctor,"
Jung once told Wood with his eyes twinkling, "come to'see me.
Sometimes an overworked government employe needs an excuse
for being sick. A doctor can prescribe for that, too."
With a group of friends every Wednesday night for a~g1me. Now
he had to be more careful to account for his tim
o
h
I
e s
w
en
re
had a spare hour he made it a point, for appearance's sake, to
play chess with some guard at the Foreign Office.
linger of some unexpected event threatening to upset his
burst
n
-- at in th
..,...J,
into
Vood's flat, lie was in civilian cloth
es.
"Where is your uniform?" George asked him in alarm.
"I left it in the barracks," the officer replied. 111 have des
rt
d "
e
e
ulling a gold watch from his pocket, "this will bring enough
aid
,---- ---.....,...,... r
s
nd dogs patrol every foot of the frontier? It would be suicide."
tappened if the police had pulled one of their frequent surprise
misc checks f^..._??
-?-' '-'--- ,
ses
------- ----?- .....I .,..,....
he apattntent.
Diked he would clash off a shorthand memo about a certain
ocunient and stuff it in his pocket. Occasionally it would be
ntil lie could transcribe their contents. He never could risk
ite on the papers in his pockets.
in
--r..--.....
Pain and Ireland which he thought made it imperative for
of i. Maria put him down for it. ?
as feeling ragged, but not ragged enough to excuse !himself
om work. .'ung gave him an injection and next morning he
in some coffee from the hospital supplies and at home he set
work assembling his notes, drinking cup after cup of coffee
keep him upright.
t is impossible to explain precisely why the Nazis did not
e answer. A bomb hits one house and spares another. A mortar
ell bursts in the middle of a combat patrol and tears away the
en seem to become. Afterwards, of course, they-slip in the hath-
Yet in the man-made horror house of Berlin, Wood could
ver depend on thefi
ddice. Up to a, point he had to play the
win
ame In his .. t._
n
g
I
ke
........
.....
..,
,
th them, beat them at chess.
L I They were, in fact, a little in
.-
t-:--
of
He
tsgruppenleiter, with his "strength of character." They Irad
t speak out too loud. Perhaps their calloused consciences threw
ould rebut the enemy lies, could it not, that the Nazis stifled
na~ W QQQa199PAPA9e w rker.
 CPYRGHT
A
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP70-000588000100010104-4
Tiere was no question about that. Department heads outbid
each other for his services. When Rudolf Leitner, former charge
d'affaires of the German embassy in Washington, was named
minister to South Africa in the late 30s, he had insisted on taking
Wood to Capetown with hint. He had to go to a great deal of
trouble to get him because the post called for a party member.
And now, of course, Dr. Ritter was most satisfied with him.
Ai Wood and I talked through that sunny afternoon, the
rim s and the places of the story emerged, but the earlier mold
of a notions and instincts and secret reasons that lay as a larger
pattern behind the events remained elusive. I remembered
layer'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."
I N c drove a fist into his open palm with an angry thump. "How
ninny 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
the 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 secondary 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 see 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 efficiency so well
that he became 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 seem 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
members 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 balcony, caught a ball of
paper between his heels, jumped up and
arced the wad neatly into a wastebasket in
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
are str less thans, fee ~~y~
are O
strong. Here, , Eee t ts. a rol p
his sleeve and flexed a bulging bicep. It was solid as an oak
branch.
"I won a lot of trophies," he continued, "but I never took
one 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 he 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.
Tie could find no boots to fit him properly and as a result 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 adopt the cold-eyed, steel-jawed attitude of official superiority
and when it was smartest to look meek 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 upl Police inspectionl" 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 forgotten 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.
 lie tore off the outer envelope-of the pouch and
a toilet
lf i
oite
nvc
axi across the Rhine to the Schwciwer Bustles Ifalunhof where
other direction.A few minutes later in the seclusion of Dulles'
partmcnt protests the Irish government sliencca it by taring
iece of the equipment. Now Wood produced
of a vital
d
CPYRGHT
THE S'PY THE NAZIS MISSED
4 Lill. ll,ll?JL.a,
espite his well-scluxded courage. Wood invariably felt the
--.
l
l
d a frontier..
s
e
ie cros
s as
e
The night before he left Berlin on tl
was almost killed. Ile hated air raid shelters. Inside them he felt
trapped. As a 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 Lomb blew up directly in front of them, not
fifty yards away, knocking them loth 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 stopped 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 Foreign 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. Tie 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 scaled 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 envelope. Now he scaled it. in the same
way the other had been sealed, with wax and the official steel
stamp hearing the swastika. Instead of a trunk with a false
bottom, he had a pouch with a false top.
He left Berlin from the Anhalter Rahnhof 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
seemed critical.
It must have been about four in the morning when the porter
rapped sharply on the door of his compartment. "Blue alert,
T r, he said and hurried on. That meant an attack was imminent.
he 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 section, somewhere, he guessed, 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 hunt. 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 Sondeixug. Hitler's
express train, was equipped with anti-aircraft guns.) The plane
was gone. Suddenly around a curve of the track ahead there was
a flash and the great enveloping thud of an explosion. The
plane had planted a bomb on a trestle. It was not a square hi
but daylight revealed a twisted. impassable track. It was pat
the next afternoon before another train chuffed up to the
other side of the trestle and the stranded passengers could mak
' ticahcr
their way tct@t??to resume Owir
e+ere no ma ~`~q+~
behind schedule..
It Gaulle forces.
embassy in Buenos Aires which had arrived in Berlin just before
Wood left. It reported the impending departure of a large col
short of profound. Among other things, a convoys schedule was
1 . Xn?lo.
,American petroleum embargo was slapped on Spain as a re.
C~~4aR DPe7Oa V1 tm, and he
'Io jt time," Die
vun. " I' totoRral) ng c oculuents .111 01
third parties who would deliver than as innocent-1ookilig
O ' 7 '-h Ile
ru
.
family greetings to a brother-in-law of Dr. . m u
showed Mayer the key to all intricate cipher he had devised one
.,...,,..,,. while listeni11e to Furtwacngler conduct a symphony
receipt of information by this third-party Mcircuit. I nrougu
_ !\ , i,nl,n fond
parcels sent me, sardines, butter. coltee and the lire. crave u-csc
nailed at regular intervals. But only include the coffee when
-le kept the touch in plain sight. 'f'ile official glared at hit",
.
n
e
ticked his own documents in his coat. lie burned the extra
and Hushed the ashes down the bowl. Then he took a
l
1.., horror inGirmed him that the Americans had been anxiously
ouhl pick him up on the K ;rchenfeld bridge over the :\arc at
? ----'-
You have received something then I will know my message
p
y
custo
a cable showing the minister was attempting to smuggle ill a
on schedule." Wcod had discovered that Franco was cunnuig y
 ex lamed. "I can#'6didgi191dWaRalf?8St@iri GbAi,Rt1~Qt?8R?Q0WM * the
bl cla to seen his en
r
t
h
o
y
e was a e
'laser man aged to get him the camera next any but he oly- Eastern trout, which
if he were livened but did not decide the debate among Allied strategists
ard
ound his jeo
m
l
ld
?
y
p
p
y co
on
ou
jerttxl that a gun rt
_h .y,. a mind" Wend laughed as they shook hands in on the ; ossibilities and the wisdom of dropping a block buster
farewell, ?I will get one later in Germany. I won't shoot the on the rueurer s nein stronghold.
Wehrmacht with it. I will use it only in an emergency-on Then, finally, on July 20, 1994, done-armed colonel named
myself." von Stauffenberg planted a time bomb, concealed in a brief
As winter came. only a few of Dr. O. 's food packages had to case, under the map table in a flimsy wooden barracks where
be dispatched without the confirming consignment of coffee. Hitler was holding a staff conference at his East Prussia HQ
ith him The bomb exploded but Hitler miraculously escaped with
k
d
d
w
wor
e
Wood discovered an old colleague who ha
in the scivice in Spain and was now a regular courier. There minor wounds. The most important anti-Nazi conspiracy of the
were some people in the government whose sentiments were war was crushed.
anti-Nazi but who were afraid to do anything: others dared Wood had not been heard from, directly or indirectly, since
participate in nothing more than vicarious opposition, a sort of early June, and as the frenzied arrests and "trials" followed in
keeping the right hand from knowing what the left hand was the wake of the tragic failure of the bomb plot, Mayer became
doing. technique. Even they had their usefulness. The courier convinced that Wood had been caught and killed. They had no
was willing to carry an occasional note of greeting to the Zurich news of him actually until late September, when they received
"brother-in-law." Assistance also came from an eccentric in the second-hand word via a traveler that he was alive and well in
Foreign Office named Werner, who after repeated difficulties Berlin.
with the Nazis managed through his seniority to get a semi- He might have been among the missing if it had not been
retirement status. He moved as far out of sight as possible. to a for the womanly intuition of Gerda. Some weeks before the
small mountain Ifilite in the Bavarian Alps near the Swiss attempt, she took a message for him, from a friend, requesting
border above Like Constance. Werner found a way to pass an that he attend a meeting with some army officers on a certain
occasional message along, taking care never to inquire about night in Potsdam. She felt uncomfortable about it and she failed
contents or destination. He was to provide a port in the storm to give Wood the message until the meeting was over. Sub.
for Wood, later on. sequently every man at the meeting was executed, except one-
linter of the revolt.
d been a s
h
1 h
p
a
e group
an informer.
n ohe occasion, Wood succeeded in spiriting out a roll of After the aborted coup, Wood volunteered to help one of the
t ' ossible rincipaI conspirators, Dr. Karl Goerdeler, former mayor of
ec
I he secret circuit from Ber to to ern
F with important news. Washington and London were burning to border of East Prussia, tortured and executed.
W
there was nothing articularly bizarre in oo s requcs
courier friend to leave the watch with the in-law in Zurich hiding, a Berlin businessman named Bauer, had already been
to be fixed. arrested and thrown into a concentration camp. Gocrdcler was
lme hewil laden later caught in the village of Konradswalde, on the western
1' B h
- microfilm in a watch case. It hacl become next o imp ..
for civilians to get things like watches repaired in Germany so ipzig, escape to Switzerland. But Gocrdcler had vanished and
d' t to his the only one of Wood's contacts who would know where he was
d
1 I t was Wood who found out, through a ispatc nom von g
Papen, in Ankara, that the butler in the household of Sir when Wood wasn't there. The second time he left a note asking
Hughie Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British ambassador to Tur- Wood to be at home at 8 p.m. and await him.
d 1: 0:-_ Diello- The his driver was officious and blustering at first. He de.
-
get German war plant prouua.i,Uu 11r,"- .......+.. ~.. 6- ----
cffectivcnCss of the air war. Wood was able, not once but sevgral Jogd himself was investigated after July 20 but with an
times, to transmit to Bern condensations of the latest surveys ineptitude which reflected plainly the edges of decay that
on industry, together with soundings on public morale under were beginning to cat into the hard flesh of the regime.
the bombings. Wood's inquisitor was a Nazi block leader whose regular job
' h f was drivin an omnibus. lie called at the Foreign Office twice
key, was a Nazi spy. Unlike Way , t Is man
made a fortune in espionage. Wood intercepted a memo in manded to know what Wood (lid with his spare time. Wood
which the Foreign Office laid down sterner occupation measures explained that as a government official he had few hours to
for the Balkans. A warning from him made it possible for the himself but that occasionally he played chess-the Auswaertige
Allies to ferret out agents that the Germans had tried to Bide Anit guards could verify that. 'I hen, adopting a confidential
aboard a train repatriating wounded prisoners of war. tone, he spoke of the importance of his position. "You can
"that with such urgent matters to
oncluded
" h
dil
,
e c
y see,
One day Bern got an urgent message from Washington order- rea
ing a concentration on intelligence about the Japanese. It was attend to I have no time for nonsense."
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 Japanese 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?"
J1 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~ossegsion o#inf rmation
giving a detaile [ ofV
 / Sanitized - Approved For Release :
'THE SPY THE NAZIS ffIISSED
This logic impressed the bus driver. Still he was pun.led. 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 zuni Endsieg-I confess to myself the positive be-
lie[ 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. "Iv'underbar! he explained. "An admirable senti-
ment. Allow me to write it down at once. I must tell my
suNevert pcriors."
heless, as the purges spread, burning through the
autumn like a grass fire to consume hundreds of victims, Wood
realized thmt 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.
Cj.Ar RDP710~O00,t$rcQ~laQs~iQ~,Q,k~t ~4tx:d would
not be able to leave Berlin any way except on foot is a refugee.
which would be futile. Courier service was disru ptcd. Exit visas
were not being issued: too many messengers had landed in
neutral spots and neglected to return home. Railway travel front
Berlin was out of the question. There was no scheduled traffic.
What trains were moving were filled with troops. alid officials
Of the highest 11rriority. Ironically, it was Dr. Ritter himself.
Wood's boss, who unexpectedly furnished him clearance and
means for the tripp.
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. Ile 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 time'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 enormous load of belongings which the singer had hysteri-
the same time, the tide of Allied triumplh was swelling. Se- (ally insisted on bringing along, and which somehow they had
At
cretly Wood could hope that the end would soon be in sight. maaged to pile into the back scat. This obliged all [our of them
Paris was liberated and then Brussels. Aachen became the first to Jain themselves together in front, so tightly that before
German city to fall and then the Siegfried Line was pierced. George could shift gears the women had to hoist their knees
The Russians swept inexorably westward. The force of air at- to one side.
tacks on Berlin increased steadily, transforming the city into a Their destination was a village called Ottobeyren, southeast
crumbling inferno where people had to burrow underground of Stuttgart. Normally, over the autohaln past Leipzig,
like moles to work, and even to stay alive. Nuremberg and Munich, the trip was a matter o[ a few hours.
In the midst of this tumult, a tiny corps of civilians early in It took them nearly three clays. They had to (lodge on and off
1945 hatched a plan to stage an uprising in Berlin and seize the the autobahn to avoid troop convoys. or bypass bridges which
capital with the support, they hoped, of a force of American sappers had blasted to cover the Wchrmacht's retreat. Soldiers
paratroopers. The core of the resistance 'would lie in the Reichs- and wandering civilians glared at them. They were delayed at
banner, an association of World War I veteram who were improvised checkpoints where nervous sentries inspected their
I largely of Social Democratic-liberal-sympathies and who had papers and waved them dubiously on.
been supporters of the Weimar republic. Wood was in on the Late the first evening the engine (lied and Wood could not
idea from the start and became convinced that there was a revive it. After an hour they were able to flag down a charcoal-
good chance it could be made to succeed. burning truck which took them in tow. Dazed with fatigue,
Wood canvassed his friends to select men to act as guides choking from the truck's dense exhaust [times, Wood stuck to
and scouts for the invaders. A census of bicycles and motorbikes the wheel all night while they were drawn jerkily southward.
was taken. It was decided that the Americans could best land Next morning a mechanic found and repaired their trouble-a s around the Wannsce and Schlachtensce, two lakes lying between clogged etca buret scrounge for yi tran out of gaouses ave Imes and had'ho
Potsdam and Berlin. From there they could infiltrate into the gc fuel duips.
heart of the city. A GHQ was even designated for them, in all diplomatic plates only helpeda little. They reached Ottobeyren,
office at 28 Unter den Linden, near the site of the U. S. Embassy, 'in a state of virtual collapse, late the third afternoon and found
beds in a monastery.
l
d
onge
the Adlon hotel and the Brandenburg Gate. The office be
to Bauer, a businessman who was Wood's friend.
Wood now succeeded in getting out to Bern again. He dis- caving the singer, her daughter and the Mercedes with the
cussed the operation with Dulles and Mayer, who relayed the L monks, George and Dorchen set out on foot next morning for
idea to higher headquarters. Apart from its strictly military the neighboring town of \femmingen, where they hoped to be
ramifications, the plan involved a thinly disguised attempt to - able to catch a train for Weiler, about seventy kilometers south,
get the capital into western hands before the Red Army en- just above the Lake of Constance. Werner, the eccentric ex-
gulfed it. Many Allied strategists believed it should be tried. diplomat, had a cabin in the Bayerischewald back of Weiler,
Subsequent developments were to make the operation look and Wood hoped to be able to deposit Dorchen there while he
more alluring than foolhardy but top lcvtl decisions reserved went on to Switzerland.
Berlin for GI Ivan instead of GI foe. Though the night's rest had only partially refreshed .them, it
Despite the danger that he might not be able to come back was a relief to be rid of the concert artist, who had screamed and
out again, Wood elected to return to Berlin. If the decision wept through most of the journey from Berlin. The pair of
against the paratroop operation were unexpectedly reversed, he them made good time over the snow-covered road. Dorchen was
wanted to be on hand. He was going to arrange to have Gerda a facile, bouyant companion and she refused to let George carry
evacuated from the city if he could. And there was still vital her suitcase. He had a heavy knapsack, the standard equipment
intelligence work to be clone, particularly in trying to keep track of German wartime travelers, strapped to his back over his
of key Nazis and determine if possible what resistance they leather coat. This time he carried no diplomatic pouch or secret
might be proposing from the so-called redoubt of Bavaria and envelope of his own; what data he had was filed in his head.
other potential hideaways. In the pack, however, were concealed the gun which he had
If the city he had left was a tumult, what he came back to told Mayer lie would finally get, and a small portable radio
was a cataclysm of disorder. Twelve hundred American planes set. He carried the latter to intercept air raid alerts.
bombed Berlin one morning in plain daylight. In March the After being informed at the.Memmingen station that a train
RAF hammered the city with gigantic raids for seventeen con- was due "sometime this morning," they had just put down
secutive nights. The western armies vaulted the Rhine at their luggage on the platform to wait when two SS non-coins
Remagen and the Russians drove to Stettin. The land siege of accosted Wood..
the capital itself was about to begin. "Show your papers," they commanded.
Gerda wig-unil~ le to eavgg the clinic. "This is m stn" she He roduced his Foreign Office pass but the men were surly.
told him. " in,lTikZ rim ,IOlipipl~oiv~edylnal i~.a $? C li~tu RRfl4" R# OGON 4 4wled. "These
We shan't be separated for long." are probably forge u are under arrest, ou will come with
 CPYFZGJIT
tis tot is Gcstali Pr s e c oca
l 11- c. c quarters Ixtth o yrtu. '~ he train t tat w teczed in fifty minutes later was a freight
he whispered. snowin. The
I - - . . - . . - 9 re was nothing to do but walk. Well after mid-
tempt for the pathetic "people's army" dragooned in a final an attractive Peruvian senora, a young Persian engineering
down on the desk. - - - Dorchcn was given Werner's bedroom and George collapsed
;`he captain eyed them disdainfully. "You
Where is your diplomatic pouch?"
are a courier.
"I ant going to Bern to pick up a pouch." Wood lied.
"She happens to be a relative of 1)r. Ritter of the Auswacr-
tige Aint whom I am escorting to Fricdrichshaven." lie 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 eye he glimpsed one of the SS men
staring first at l)orchen and then at the knapsack on the chair.
Suddenly it seemed 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.
"All the same." lie 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. lie sprang forward, thrusting his chin out to within a
foot of the offi(er's face.
"What kind of an insult to Der Fuehrer'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 clays, to establish contact
with Berlin. This is no affair of yours. I demand that we be
released immediately!"
The outburst seemed to cow the captain.
"If you insist on checking with some-
body," Wood swept on, "check with your
headquarters in Munich They will have a
record of my travel orders."
This gave the officer an out and he took
it. As lie picked ill) 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. "I'his 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
you're 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 v9whMinclow'
'
coat"
was a dependable friend. They explained, somewhat uneasily.
he staff files included some of the most complete intelligence
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. Thcy had a motive of their own: they
Wood persuaded the officers to give him a description and
d*FrrY ft' 9?6`" `IA- F 9' '(T-M6MR( "1 o W td4-4
 -San itized - Anar,~ved FAIAR,e1ea n' 0, 1-- 4. A~,
location of the Cache. Then, after leaving his gun and radio
with Werner and borrowing a bicydc from the Persian student,
he said gis 1-by to I)orchen and the others and pedaled to
llregeiiz 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. Margareten 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 seemed consumed with excitement, like a
crowd flocking to the rail to witch 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.
Somehow, Wood felt strangely left out of. it. Dulles and
Mayer had already received a tip about the convoy of intelli-
gence files. They were 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
little use. Everything not directly fastened to the great single
fact of military victory in Euro pe seemed inconsequential.
Dulles became involved in delicate negotiations in highest
secrecy which were to lead in a few short weeks to the surrender
of the entire German force in Italy: 600,000 men. Every (lay
brought some new exciting development. On April 11, von
Papen, who had long 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 Wood
had passed so recently on his last exit from Berlin.
lCt.. t t i w. 5 ,
n 'the Russians. They went to Frankfurt. lie'.. :'i e ~lc to
them in the house of a friend in the `Taunus, where I ,'= en-
big to the story that afternoon.
"We're lucky to have this one room," Wood s:,`4 to .c, nos}.
"There are two other families here besides c ursd' e . `f'cc- tiic i y
we're breaking the law because as Berliners, or n< a.-resie'.a,ts, WC
are supposed to rcgis.+- : with the burgotnehtcr but that. involves
a lot of red tape. That s one reason, tlaoai;b, ray I get niy mail
in Frankfurt, as a precaution. Pity we weren't Nazis."
liuc:kling, he pointed to an impressive schlo:. set in a growth
-' of fir trees on a knoll a quarter of a mile av.-ay. "The gentle-
man who owns that was a party member," he said. It made
things much less complicated and couch more .roiitablc at his
factory. Military government kept him out of c ,'' :on for a
while but now he's back in business, a ~roses s :stantial
member of the community, too busy to be boti; course,
with taking in roomers to ease the housing {ir~;-
"Can't you go ctown to Bonn and raise hell about something
like that?" I demanded. "Do you have to be unhoused and un-
employed too?"
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 hopes something would turn tap at Bonn
eventually. Perhaps, lie reflected, he shouldn't have made that
demarche to Koecher, the minister in Bern. Koecher was dead
now. After the surrender he had been expelled from SwiVer-
land and turned over to the Allies. In a fit of dejection he com-
mitted suicide ill a French army detention cams, but not before
he had uttered to fellow prisoners.a vituperative denunciation
of Wood as a traitor who had sold out to the enemy for a fortune,
Some of those prisoners were free men now, and talking.
"May.:r told me you made a trip to the States," I 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. I went
into Macy's once and saw so ninny things I 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. lie
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 aribassador there."
"Look, George," I put in impatiently, "if I were in your shoes
I'd be breathing fire at this point. Was what you did worth it?"
Ile laid a hand on my arm. "If I had it to do over again I
would have to do the same thing." he replied.
As I got 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 soul: reason, been too reticent to discuss. It was
an article entitled "High Treason and Resistance," written by a
well-known German intellectual named Rudolf 1'cclicl who had
spent three years in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp for
his role in the underground. There wa's a passage near the end
which had been underlined in pencil. 'This is what it said:
"It 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-lonsumed with frustration, Wood decided to try a daring
maneuver of his own in Bern. He went to tlic. Germa n
minister, a tall, austere and aging man named Koeclier, and at-
tens Pted to persuade him to surrender the legation to the Allies.
"'The Nazis have lost the war," he argued. "Further resistance
is criminal. You will soon see Germans emerging who have
[ought the regime underground. It is their turn to take over.
Some of these men and women have been working in the Foreign
Office. I am one of them. If you give up the legation now it may
encourage other mission chiefs to folow suit. Anything that
will hasten the inevitable collapse, even if it shortens the war by
merely a day, is an act of assistance to the German people."
To Kocclier. lain}self an ardent Nati who had consistently
helped move Nazi spies through Switzerland, this was heresy.
'I am loyal to Hitler," 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.
t 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 lie
finally got back. This time he made the trip in the bucket scat
f a U.S. Army C-47. He found Gerda sale but on the point of
exhaustion from 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 seemed to have bequeathed
George Wood a charmed life through unbelievable years of
bloody tyranny and war appeared to abandon hint all at once.
A GI corporal was speeding huts to OSS headquarters, a house
in the I)ahleni sector of Berlin, one morning when they ran
Lad-on into a truck. The impact pitched Wood onto a pile of
rocks fifteen yards away, breaking his jaw, three ribs, his right
A True
o0-Length
9* C e , Ul r B
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
married, he didqMit12t'bdir1vA ' pat Wif'te : CIA-RDP70-00058R000100010104-4
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.