The Secret Agent by Stephan Talty Read Free Book Online Page A

heating oil and gasoline. On July 23, 1942, Göring wrote Hans Frank, the Governor-General of Poland, ordering him to slash supplies to the civilian population so that the Wehrmacht’s needs could be met.
    The third part of the strategy, which involved finding new ways to produce gas domestically, was left to Germany’s scientists and petrochemical industry. Hitler had met with the executives at one chemical conglomerate, I.G. Farben (which later produced Zyklon-B, the lethal gas used in the extermination camps) as early as 1932, and demanded they increase the amount of synthetic oil the country produced. As coal and petroleum are both composed of hydrocarbons, the Germans had developed four different methods for extracting fuel from coal, which they had in abundance. The most promising, hydrogenation, produced gasoline with a high octane rating of up to 72, essential for delivering power to the internal combustion engine. The technique was first perfected by the German chemist Friedrich Bergius in 1913. In the Bergius process, bituminous coal is ground down and dried before a catalyst – tungsten, nickel oleate or other substances – is mixed in. The substance is then pumped into a reactor and subjected to hydrogen and extreme heat, eventually producing a mixture of heavy oils, medium-weight oils and gasoline. Once the scientists had perfected the Bergius process, industrialists built synthetic plants in the Ruhr, central Germany and Silesia, which began producing thousands of gallons of fuel a week. No country, even today, has been able to match Germany’s wartime production of synthetic fuel.
    The Bergius process offered the Third Reich the promise of a permanent supply of oil and gas. Hitler and his lieutenants believed that, if they could protect the synthetic plants, they would be able to wage war on the Allies for as long as they chose. But the opposite was also true: if the synthetic plants were put out of commission, Germany would quickly run out of fuel, a fact well known to Albert Speer, the Minister of War Production. “Speer lived in mortal fear that the Allied air chiefs would target Germany’s perilously grouped synthetic plants,” writes aviation historian Donald Miller. Speer later confirmed this. “The planned assault …,” he wrote, “caused the greatest anxieties about the future conduct of the war.”
    If Speer had known about Eric Erickson, his anxiety would have increased considerably.
    Shortly after the Himmler meeting, Erickson received some good news. The incident at the airport had given the American an edge on his competition. The Germans were offering him a contract for 500 tons of oil. He accepted immediately.
    Erickson began working Berlin as a second-story-man would work a posh Monaco hotel. He got in touch with his contacts in the oil business and toured their facilities, noting every new compressor and extra storage tank. He endeavored to be seen at all the right places in the capital, in the company of the right people. Evenings found him at parties or lavish dinners, his eyes twinkling, hoisting champagne flutes with the German elite. He danced with the wives of Nazis, swinging through dance floors crowded with officers in crisply tailored uniforms and women wearing their best pre-war French frocks, along with gems from the boutique of Emil Lettre, famous Berlin goldsmith and jeweler. During the parties, silk stockings and bottles of gin emerged from Erickson’s bags and were handed to the doyennes of Berlin society with a sly quip.
    The OSS had other agents, German ones, inside enemy lines passing information to their handlers. Erickson encountered one fellow spy at a high-society party where he fished for new contacts among the black-clad Gestapo and the brown-shirts of the SD. The elegantly-dressed woman was accompanied by none other than Lenshoek, the Dane who’d infuriated Erickson’s friend Max Gumpel months earlier.