Secret Armies Part 15

On January 7, 1938, Deatherage received from San Francisco a letter signed "C.F.I."--in a plain envelope without a return address. The letter is very long and detailed. I quote in part:

We must get busy organizing grid-lattice-work or skeleton for a military staff throughout the nation, and in this we need representatives of fascist groups, and we need Americans with whom these others may be incorporated.... All must believe in being ruthless in an emergency....

The political and the military organizations must not be unified. They have different aims. With one hand we offer the public a potential program. Whether they accept it or not and whether they wish to return to the ideals embodied in a representative form of a const.i.tutional federal republic or not, is of secondary importance. Of first importance is the need of the emergency military organization to function simultaneously should our enemies revolt if we should win politically or should we revolt if our enemies win politically.

On January 19, 1938, Deatherage received a letter signed with the code name "Laura and Clayton." "Laura" is Hermann Schwinn. This letter, too, is long and goes into details on how best to organize the secret military group and have it ready for instant action. The letter states at one point:

After we do all this, now then we shall have the national military framework all steamed up and oiled and coupled to the multiplicity of working parts ready to appear on all fronts....

After "C.F.I." and "Laura and Clayton" had decided on the details of the secret military body in which they needed the aid of "n.a.z.i and fascist" forces, they needed money and arms.

Early in January, Allen received from "Mrs. Fry and C. Chapman" four hundred and fifty dollars for a trip to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. "Mrs. Fry and C. Chapman" live in Santa Monica, but use Glendale, Calif, for a post office address. This money was spent between January 13 and February 10, 1938, according to the expense account Allen turned in to the Fry-Chapman combination.

Three days after Allen got the money (January 16, 1938), he received from Schwinn a letter of introduction to Fritz Kuhn, addressed to the _Amerikadeutscher Volksbund_, 178 E. 85th Street, New York City. The letter was written in German. Following is the translation:

My Bund Leader:

The bearer of this letter is my old friend and comrade-in-arms, Henry Allen, who is coming East on an important matter.

Mr. Allen knows the situation in Los Angeles and California very well and can give you important information. We can give Allen absolute confidence.

Hail and Victory, HERMANN SCHWINN.

The "important matter" on which Allen was going East and which he wanted to discuss with the national n.a.z.i leader in this country, was to contact the Italian Emba.s.sy, the Hungarian Legation, James True of the James True a.s.sociates (distributors of "Industrial Control Reports" from its headquarters in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C.), George Deatherage in St. Albans, W. Va., and several others.

Allen reported regularly to Chapman, signing his letters with the code name "Rosenthal." I quote in part from one letter written from Was.h.i.+ngton on January 24, 1938:

Upon calling at the Rumanian Emba.s.sy I found the Amba.s.sador with all his attaches are of the Carol-Tartarescu regime, and they are sailing on Wednesday, January 26. The new Amba.s.sador will arrive with his staff on Sat.u.r.day, I am told. The letter which you gave me I mailed to Budapest myself, not daring to entrust it to the present staff at the Emba.s.sy. At the Italian Emba.s.sy I found the Amba.s.sador away, but I had a very delightful and satisfactory conference with Signor G. Cosmelli, who is the Italian counselor....

Shortly after the conference at the Italian Emba.s.sy, True and Allen conferred. Subsequently, True wrote to Allen and added a postscript in long hand: "But be very careful about controlling the information and destroy this letter."

Allen did not destroy it immediately. The letter, dated February 23, 1938, reads in part:

The bunch of money promised off and on for three years may come through within the next week or two. We have had so many disappointments that I hardly dare hope but there seems a fair chance of results. If it comes through we will have you back here in a hurry. You, George, and I will get together and prepare for real action.

If your friends want some pea shooters, I have connections now for any quant.i.ty and at the right price. They are United States standard surplus. Let me know as soon as you can.

To these events must be added the peculiar and unexplained actions of the Dies Congressional Committee appointed to "investigate subversive activities." The Committee employed a n.a.z.i propagandist as one of its chief investigators and refused to question three suspected n.a.z.i spies working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Congressman Martin Dies of Texas, chairman of the Committee, gave two of the _National Republic's_ high-pressure men letters of introduction when they started out on a little milking party in the name of patriotism. He received the cooperation of Harry A. Jung, and he refused to examine the files of James A. True when the above letter was brought to his Committee's attention.

But these actions merit more detailed consideration.

XI

_The Dies Committee Suppresses Evidence_

Three Suspected n.a.z.i Spies were quietly taken out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the Dies Congressional Committee headquarters in New York in Room 1604, United States Court House Building. The three men were each questioned for about five minutes by Congressman J. Parnell Thomas[20]

of New Jersey and Joe Starnes of Alabama. The men were asked if they had heard of any un-American goings-on in the Navy Yard. Each of the three subpoenaed men said he had not, and the Congressmen sent them back to work in the Navy Yard after warning them not to say a word to anyone about having been called before the Committee.

When I learned of the Congressional Committee's refusal to question men they had subpoenaed, I wondered at the unusual procedure--especially since it promptly put n.a.z.i propagandists (such as Edwin P. Banta, a speaker for the German-American Bund) on the stand as authorities on "un-American" activities in the United States. A little inquiry turned up some interesting facts.

One of the Committee's chief investigators, Edward Francis Sullivan of Boston, had worked closely with n.a.z.i agents as far back as 1934.

Sullivan's whole record was extremely unsavory. He had been a labor spy, had been active in promoting anti-democratic sentiments in cooperation with secret agents of the German Government and in addition was a convicted thief. (Shortly after Slap-Happy Eddie, as he was known around Boston because of his convictions on drunkenness, lined up with the n.a.z.is, he got six months for a little stealing.) Before going on with the Congressional Committee's strange att.i.tude toward suspected spies and known propagandists in constant communication with Germany, it might be well to review a meeting which the Congressional Committee's investigator addressed in the n.a.z.i stronghold in Yorkville.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Reproduction of a doc.u.ment showing that Edward Francis Sullivan, at one time chief investigator for the Dies Committee, was convicted of larceny and sentenced to prison.]

On the night of Tuesday, June 5, 1934, at eight o'clock, some 2,500 n.a.z.is and their friends attended a ma.s.s meeting of the Friends of the New Germany at Turnhall, Lexington Ave. and 85th Street, New York City. Sixty n.a.z.i Storm Troopers--attired in uniforms with black breeches and Sam Brown belts, smuggled off n.a.z.i s.h.i.+ps--were the guard of honor. Storm Troop officers had white and red arm bands with the swastika superimposed on them. Every twenty minutes the Troopers, clicking their heels in the best n.a.z.i fas.h.i.+on, changed guard in front of the speakers' stand. The Hitler Youth organization was present. Men and women n.a.z.is sold the official n.a.z.i publication, _Jung Sturm_, and everybody awaited the coming of one of the chief speakers of the evening who was to bring them a message from the Boston n.a.z.is.

W.L. McLaughlin, then editor of the _Deutsche Zeitung_, spoke in English. He was followed by H. Hempel, an officer of the n.a.z.i steams.h.i.+p "Stuttgart," who vigorously exhorted his audience to fight for Hitlerism and was rewarded by shouts of "Heil Hitler!" McLaughlin then introduced Edward Francis Sullivan of Boston as a "fighting Irishman." The gentleman whom the Congressional Committee chose as one of its investigators into subversive activities, gave the crowd the Hitler salute and launched into an attack upon the "dirty, lousy, stinking Jews." In the course of his talk he announced proudly that he had organized the group of n.a.z.is in Boston who had attacked and beaten liberals and Communists at a meeting protesting the docking of the n.a.z.i cruiser "Karlsruhe," in an American port.

The audience cheered. Sullivan, again giving the n.a.z.i salute, shouted: "Throw the G.o.ddam lousy Jews--all of them--into the Atlantic Ocean.

We'll get rid of the stinking kikes! Heil Hitler!"

The three suspected n.a.z.i spies were subpoenaed on August 23, 1938.

They were:

Walter Dieckhoff, Badge No. 38117, living at 2654 E. 19th Street, Sheepshead Bay.

Hugo Woulters, Badge No. 38166, living at 221 East 16th Street, Brooklyn.

Alfred Boldt, Badge No. 38069, living at 64-29 70th Street, Middle Village, L.I.

Boldt had worked in the Navy Yard since 1931. Dieckhoff and Woulters went to work there within one day of each other in June, 1936.

The three men were kept in the Committee's room from one o'clock on the day they were subpoenaed until five in the afternoon. When it became apparent that the Congressmen would not show up until the next day, the men were dismissed and told to come back the following morning.

Not a word was said to them as to why they had been subpoenaed.

Nevertheless Dieckhoff, who was with the German Air Corps during the World War, instead of going to his home in Sheepshead Bay, drove to the home of Albert Nordenholz at 1572 Castleton Ave., Port Richmond, S.I., where he kept two trunks. Nordenholz, a German-American naturalized citizen for many years, is highly respected by the people in his neighborhood. When Dieckhoff first came to the United States, the Nordenholzes accepted him with open arms. He was the son of an old friend back in Bremerhafen, Germany. Dieckhoff asked permission to keep two trunks in the Nordenholz garret; he stored them there when he went to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

During the two years he worked in the Yard, he would drop around every two weeks or so and go up to the garret to his trunks. Just what he did on those visits, Nordenholz does not know.

On the night Dieckhoff was subpoenaed he suddenly appeared to claim the trunks. He told Nordenholz that he planned to return to Germany.

Just what the trunks contained and what he did with them I do not know. They have vanished.

I called upon Dieckhoff in the two-story house in Sheepshead Bay where he lived. He had no intimate friends, didn't smoke, drink or run around. The life of the German war veteran seemed to be confined to working in the Navy Yard, returning home un.o.btrusively to work on s.h.i.+ps' models and making his occasional visits to Nordenholz's garret.

So far as I could learn, Dieckhoff became a marine engineer, working for the North German Lloyd after the World War. In 1923 he entered the United States illegally and remained for two years. Eventually he returned to Germany, but came back to the United States, this time legally, applied for citizens.h.i.+p papers and became a naturalized citizen five years later.

Before he went to work on American war vessels, he worked in various parts of the country--in automobile shops, in the General Electric Co.

in Schenectady and as an engineer on Sheepshead Bay boats. Even after Hitler came into power, he worked on Sheepshead Bay boats. After the Berlin-Tokyo axis was formed (1935), Germany became particularly interested in American naval affairs, for the axis, among other things, exchanged military secrets. Shortly before the agreement was made, Dieckhoff suddenly went to work for the Staten Island s.h.i.+pbuilding Co., Staten Island, which was building four United States destroyers, numbers 364, 365, 384 and 385. He worked on these destroyers during the day. Until late at night he pursued his hobby of building s.h.i.+ps' models, which he never made an attempt to sell.

Dieckhoff weighed his words carefully during our talk.