The Secret Agent (7 page)

The oil war was over, and the Allies had won.

The best estimate we have for casualties resulting from World War II is that 35 million people died in the conflict. Without Erickson, that toll would have gone higher, perhaps much higher. “More fuel would have bought the Germans more time,” writes Daniel Yergin. If one considers the Battle of the Bulge alone, with sufficient supplies of gas the Wehrmacht would have sown chaos behind for days or weeks longer than the thirty-one days the battle lasted. They would have killed and wounded thousands more Allied soldiers. The Nazis wouldn't have won the war, but they would have exerted an even more brutal price in losing it.

Sir Arthur Harris, the head of the Allied Bomber Command, had at first resisted the Oil Campaign, as it came to be known. But he would later admit his mistake. He called the operation “a complete success … what the Allied strategists did was to bet on an outsider, and it happened to win the race.” The German war ace and commander of the Fighter Force, Adolf Galland, admitted that that the bombing raids were “the most important of the combined factors which brought about the collapse of Germany.” Speer seconded that analysis. Even Hermann Göring agreed: the campaign had proved “the utmost in deadliness.”

As the war in Europe ended, there was a curious footnote to the search for the synthetic plants. In 1945, twenty-three Americans who'd been anxiously waiting for the armistice flew in from London and began combing the ruined industrial sites of Germany. They were led by a strapping sailboat enthusiast named Dr. W.C. Schroeder, whose official job was as a researcher at the U.S. Bureau of Mines; in reality, he was America's leading expert on synthetic oil, with several patents to his name. The other men were scientists, chemists and executives from the major American oil companies: Standard Oil, Texas Oil, Gulf, the companies that had either been founded in Beaumont in 1901 or had grown into global companies as a result of the discoveries there. The team's secret mission had been authorized by the Joints Chiefs of Staff.

American scientists, despite years of effort, had been unable to develop a high-grade synthetic oil for use in vehicles; the stuff that lubricates your car engine today was unknown in the America of the ‘40s. Synthetics, because they potentially freed countries from foreign dependence on oil, were a top military and industrial objective for the U.S. and its competitors. The American team was in Germany to find out what the Nazis were working on before anyone else could. The men were thorough, close-mouthed about the mission, and well-funded. Two years before, Congress had authorized $30 million for a five-year synthetic development program.

The team spread out across Germany, fording rivers where the bridges had been blown out and traveling across a moonscape of craters and vanished cities, populated by hungry, embittered survivors. The Americans visited every oil plant and refinery they could find, interviewed the surviving workers and managers, retracing Eric Erickson's steps across the Reich. They believed that the Germans had failed to produce usable synthetic oil, but they had to be sure. The team found plans at many of the synthetic plants, most of them now in ruins, inspected what machinery had survived, collecting reams of information along the way. Eventually, several tips led them to a 13th century castle in Reelkirchen in northwestern Germany. Outside the castle walls, they found a group of urchins playing with rolled-up balls of paper, which turned out to be schematics for machines used in classified synthetic processes. And across a fetid moat and inside the castle itself, they stumbled on six rooms filled to the ceilings with memos and blueprints that told the tale of Germany's synthetic breakthroughs.

The Americans were dumbfounded. The Nazis, it turned out, had been years ahead of the Allies in their work, reliably producing lubricating oils and fuel for both automobiles and planes. It was something the rest of the industrialized world hadn't even dreamt was possible.

“Our discoveries in Germany were of immense value in terms of national security,” announced Edward B. Peck, a technical advisor to Standard Oil. “They eliminated … years of work.” The
Saturday Evening Post
quantified the discovery. “We added 25 years of experience to our own knowledge and have caught up in the keenly competitive world race for synthetic liquid fuel development. The government wants private industry to benefit immediately from information which could be of use in the prosecution of the war against Japan.”

No definitive link between the secretive mission and Eric Erickson has ever been found. But Erickson worked for both Standard Oil and Texas Oil in the ‘20s, and it's difficult to believe his detailed coordinates of the synthetic plants, which were available to the Joint Chiefs of Staff through the OSS, didn't help lead to the discoveries in Reelkirchen and elsewhere. Or that the stated aim of the mission – to beat Japan to the production of synthetic oils and safeguard American lives – wasn't combined with dreams of the immense post-war profits that could be gained from the German breakthroughs.

After the war, the Bureau of Mines converted a surplus Army ammonia plant in Louisiana, Missouri into a hydrogenation facility, using the information discovered in Germany. The plant, hard on the banks of the Mississippi River, was able to produce high-quality gasoline from coal at a competitive, but slightly higher, price than the domestic, drilled gas on the market. President Truman's energy advisers believed a fuel shortage was coming, and in 1948, James V. Forrestal, the Secretary of Defense, pushed an $8 billion synthetic fuel program that would vastly expand the Missouri experiment. But Big Petroleum – led by Standard Oil of Indiana – stepped in, realizing that they'd lost control of the “synfuel” mission to the government, thereby endangering their profits. They objected vociferously to the idea of expanding the synthetic fuel program. That resistance, along with cheap new imports from the Middle East and South America, effectively killed the project, and the Missouri plant closed in 1953. The dream of national energy independence, pursued by the Third Reich, uncovered by Erickson and imported to America, was over.

As for the spy himself, only a few people on the Allied side knew about his role in the Oil Campaign, but they were unequivocal in their praise. “There is little doubt that Erickson achieved one of the truly great espionage coups of the war,” said the OSS's Wilho Tikander. Erickson himself didn't talk about what he'd done. When writing about the mission in the post-war years, he would typically say something like, “It was my privilege to serve the Allies in a small way.” He collected his $1 in salary from the Allies and that was that. While other heroes were being lionized in the American press and writing their memoirs, Erickson, like most spies after their work has been completed, stepped back into the shadows.

After the armistice with Germany, the United States embassy in Stockholm announced that it was having a celebratory luncheon at the five-star Grand Hotel. The guest list included prominent Swedes, diplomats and expats: the people who'd been rooting, secretly or not, for the Allies to win. The Jewish construction magnate Max Gumpel was among the invited guests. When all the attendees were seated, they noticed there were two chairs still sitting empty. A few moments later, the U.S. Minister to Sweden stood up and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to introduce out honored guests.” From a side room, side by side, Prince Carl and Eric Erickson emerged. There was an audible gasp.

Erickson, too, was unprepared for what he saw. “I was taken aback,” he remembered. “At the tables around us were all the people who hated and despised me because I was a Nazi.” But he simply nodded to his former friends and sat down. There were no speeches or awards given; it was a very Swedish affair, and the Swedes prize understatement. The Minister did, however, let it be known that Eric Erickson had been working with the Allies throughout the war, and that not only the Germans, but Stockholm society at large, had been the victim of a very long con.

In Erickson's archives, there is only one official piece of recognition from the United States of America, but it's a significant one. The Medal of Freedom (the predecessor to the Presidential Medal of Freedom) was created by Harry Truman to honor the work of those who helped America and its allies in times of war. It was then and remains now the highest civilian medal that the U.S. government awards to men and women who serve it honorably. Dr. John von Neumann, the great mathematician whose work led to the atomic bomb, received one in 1956. John Foster Dulles got his in 1959.

The citation for Erickson's Medal of Freedom with Bronze Palm reads, in part: “Eric Erickson assisted in the creation and personally carried out one of the most elaborate and successful intelligence schemes of this war. … The cleverness and ingenuity displayed by Mr. Erickson … his complete disregard for his personal safety … and his accurate and detailed reports which furnished the Allies with innumerable targets for bombing clearly demonstrate the most unselfish interest in the Allied cause.” Flying over to the U.S. to receive the medal, Erickson met with Harry Truman at the White House.

But very few people knew his name. It took until the late 1950s for Eric Erickson to be discovered. His story appeared in
Reader's Digest
, was turned into a book,
The Counterfeit Traitor
(1958), and a film of the same name starring William Holden (1962). Holden was so dazzled by meeting Erickson on the set that he remarked, “Maybe
he
should play my life.” The ex-spy appeared on an earlier incarnation of “Nightline,” did a publicity tour, and was invited to dinner with Lyndon B. Johnson. He received fan letters from people he didn't know, flirted with women he wanted to get to know, spoke to the Cornell alumni (“Last luncheon of the season – and a thriller!”) and even advised Upton Sinclair, who was writing about the war for his Lanny Budd series of books. He took time out from traveling the world with his friend, Max Gumpel, and gambling in Monte Carlo alongside the likes of Winston Churchill and Daryl Zanuck, to tell his story. The legendary Mike Wallace, later of
60 Minutes,
interviewed him (Wallace: “Weren't you afraid?” Erickson: “I'm not afraid - of anything”) and journalists wrote long features about his life, describing the secret agent as “one of those fabulous international figures who knows almost everyone worth knowing … His horizons are limitless, his knowledge boundless and his manner so genial that after five minutes with him you are sure you have made a friend for life.” Erickson had become the most famous living spy in the world.

But the attention evaporated quickly. By 2011, Erickson had been almost completely forgotten. Most World War II buffs hadn't heard of him; most World War II
espionage
buffs hadn't heard of him. Those that recognized his name only knew the movie version of his life, which turns out to be largely faked. Among other things, the filmmakers had added the killing of Gestapo agent in a phone booth and a daring escape through Denmark, neither of which had happened. There remained only a flickering memory of the life of America's most essential World War II spy, and even that was blurred and warped by time.

Some of the lies were clearly Hollywood's, but other's came from Erickson himself. For an article in
Life m
agazine from April 27, 1962, a reporter went to the set of the William Holden movie. The story was supposed to be a puff piece about this new American hero, but it began with a puzzled note. “When he discusses himself and his remarkable works,” the reporter found, “Erickson assumes the old wary habits of a secret agent and become contradictory, evasive, deceptive … When pressed for the correct facts,” the reporter wrote, “he flails his arms and goes into a fidgety dance until, yielding at the end, he remarks quietly, ‘It's nothing. Either way will do.'” The popular account of certain events in Erickson's life seemed suspicious, especially with regards to his motivations. In the book, he's recruited into espionage by the American ambassador to Sweden. In the movie, it's a case of OSS blackmail.

I'd come across Erickson's name while researching my book,
Agent Garbo
, which told the story of another master spy, Juan Pujol. I grew increasingly fascinated by “Red:” here was a World War II agent who possessed a unique trio of qualities: he was important, dashing and, rarest of all, American. But there was no definitive account of his mission to Germany or why he'd volunteered for it.

I contacted spy historians, hired a genealogist, tried to locate Erickson's family (a rumored stepson turned out to have never existed) and combed the records for any mention of his mission in Germany. But it was one dry hole after another. CIA files yielded a single page on the agent: his New York
Times
obituary. The OSS archives contain a personnel folder under Erickson's name. The folder is empty except for a Post-It sized note that reads “Blue File” and “Swedish Mission.” The archivists at NARA, the National Archives and Record Administration in College Park, MD, have been unable to locate the Blue File.

Finally, in early 2013, I discovered a cache of the secret agent's papers locked away in the
Riksarkivet Marieberg
, the national archives of Sweden, in the capital, Stockholm. It proved to be the Erickson motherlode: boxes and boxes of personal letters, documents, account books, postcards, photographs, business ledgers and certificates dating back to the early 1900′s. They'd lain undisturbed for decades, sitting on a shelf in a modern brick building near the shore of Lake Mälaren, the collected papers of a world-historical enigma.

Perhaps the most revealing document in the archives, aside from the letters from Anne-Maria, is a note he wrote to a fellow American over a small matter. Before a trip back to New York in 1962, Erickson called the owner of the building he'd grown up in as a child, 1253 Sterling Place in Brooklyn, now owned by a man named Barnes, a Jamaican immigrant. Erickson wanted to see the place again, to relive the memories of his years as a boy there. The borough was undergoing a wrenching change that saw the old European stock give way to a largely Caribbean population, a change that had brought bitter feelings and even violence. Mr. Barnes made sure that Erickson knew his race, so that there wouldn't be any unpleasantness when he showed up on Sterling Place.

Erickson wrote him a letter before coming to Brooklyn:

My dear Mr. Barnes:

The reason I am writing this letter is that I want to go on record to thank you not only for your unusually courteous letter giving me permission to call on you and see the back yard and the home I was born in, but also the manner in which you have spoken to me on the phone. It is strange that one of the most inexpensive and greatest things a man is born with is courtesy and unfortunately, much too few people use it.

When you mentioned that you were from Jamaica, I told you it made no difference to me whatsoever. A man's race, his religion or his color has in my life made no difference to me at all. All that I judge people by is their decency.

Best regards, Eric Erickson

“Decency” is a very old-fashioned world that conjures up Frank Capra movies and a standard of behavior that has largely disappeared from the world. But it accurately sums up Erickson's conduct during the war, along with an offhand, masculine grace and ice-cold nerves at the right moments.

He paid a price for that conduct. The last photo of Anne-Maria to be found in the Stockholm archives is a glamorous studio portrait, showing her in a dark dress, a black Turkish-style hat and a string of pearls. She looks regal and serene, with only a touch of vulnerability—or perhaps its apprehension—in the dark eyes. “I must confess that if she was alive today,” Erickson said after the war, “she'd undoubtedly be my wife.” On the back of the photo, someone has written in longhand Anne-Maria's full name, along with the words, “Executed by the Gestapo, Moabit prison.”

Erickson carried the picture around with him until his own death, forty years later.

When he toured America for the release of the film, the question that Erickson got most was the one about motivation. Aside from the Hollywood bullshit, why had he really done it, taken all those risks, losing two women he loved in the process? A childhood friend once asked him about it. The spy mulled the question over, his mind eventually returning to the days the two of them had shared in Brooklyn, with the kids of refugees and strivers who'd arrived on Sterling Place from some of the more prominent hellholes of the world. “In my particular case, it was based on the way we were all brought up,” he said. “We were raised to resist tyrants and dictators—and against any and all that used brutality and force to gain their goals.”

This was the public answer. There was more to his decision, of course. White-hot shame, ego, a sense of duty, a desire for one last adventure perhaps, something that had the wildness of Beaumont to it. But if not for that letter from his brother, Henry, Erickson's mission to Germany and all the rest would never have happened. Those words had shocked the comfortable Erickson into things he'd never imagined himself capable of. They had reminded him of who he'd always been: a beloved brother, an American, a decent man.