Secret Armies Part 8

At twenty minutes to ten on the evening of March 16, 1934, the North German Lloyd "Europa" was preparing to sail at midnight. The gaily illuminated boat was filled with men and women, many in evening dress, seeing friends off to Europe. German stewards, all of them members of the s.h.i.+p's n.a.z.i _Gruppe_, stood about smiling, bowing, but watching every pa.s.senger and visitor carefully.

People wandered all over the boat. Many visited the library on the main promenade deck, which has a German post office. There was a great deal of laughter and chatter. Orgell, dressed in an ordinary business suit and carrying a folded newspaper in his hands, wandered in.

Catching the post office steward's eye, he casually took four letters from his coat pocket and handed them to the steward who as casually slipped them into his pocket. There were no stamps on the letters, which, incidentally, const.i.tuted a federal offense.

Still so casual in manner that the average observer would not even have noticed the transfer of the letters, Orgell wandered over to a desk in the library and rapidly wrote another letter--so important, apparently, that he dared not carry it with him for fear of a mishap.

The letter was sealed and handed to the steward.

The library had a great many visitors. No one seemed to be paying any attention to this visitor or pa.s.senger talking to the steward. With a quick glance around him, Orgell took in everyone in the library and seemed satisfied. He caught the steward's eye again and nodded. The steward opened a closet in the library, the second one left of the main aisle on the port side toward the stern of the boat. A thin package was taken from its hiding place and quickly slipped to Orgell who covered it with his newspaper and promptly left the s.h.i.+p.

This was the manner in which n.a.z.i secret instructions and spy reports were sent and received--a procedure that kept up until the arrest of the n.a.z.i spies who were tried late in 1938.

When Orgell needed trusted men to deliver messages to and from the boats as well as to smuggle off material, he usually called upon the American branch of the _Stahlhelm_, or Steel Helmets, which used to drill secretly in antic.i.p.ation of _Der Tag_ in this country. Only when he felt that he was not being watched, or only in the event of the most important messages, did he go aboard the s.h.i.+ps personally.

Orgell's liaison man in the smuggling activities was Frank Mutschinski, a painting contractor who used to live at 116 Garland Court, Garritsen Beach, N.Y.

Mutschinski came to the United States from Germany on the S.S. "George Was.h.i.+ngton," June 16, 1920. He was commander of one of the American branches of the _Stahlhelm_ which had offices at 174 East 85th Street, New York. While he was in command, he received his orders direct from Franz Seldte, subsequently Minister of Labor under Hitler. Seldte at that time was in Magdeburg, Germany. Branches of the _Stahlhelm_ were established by him and Orgell in Rochester, Chicago, Philadelphia, Newark, Detroit, Los Angeles and Toronto (the first step in the Fifth Column's invasion of Canada).

To help Orgell in his smuggling activities, Mutschinski supplied him with a chief a.s.sistant, Carl Brunkhorst. It was Brunkhorst's job to deliver the secret letters. n.a.z.i uniforms for American Storm Troopers were smuggled into this country off German s.h.i.+ps by Paul Bante who lived at 186 East 93rd Street, New York City. Bante, at the time he was engaged in the smuggling activities, was a member of the 244th Coast Guard as well as the New York National Guard.

In the early days of organizing the n.a.z.i web over the United States, the German agents received cooperation from racketeering "patriots"

who saw possibilities of scaring the wits out of the American people by announcing that the "revolution" was just around the corner. The country was in an economic crisis, the American people were bewildered and didn't know which way to turn, there was considerable unrest in the land, and the n.a.z.i agents and their American counterparts visualized in Hitler's cry that "Communism and the Jews" were responsible, grand pickings from the scared suckers.

Since Communism, especially in those restless days in the depths of the depression, was the bugaboo of the rich, it was inevitable that some unscrupulous but shrewd observers of the American scene would take advantage of this fear and capitalize on it. One of the chief racketeers, a man who subsequently worked very closely with secret n.a.z.i agents in this country, was Harry A. Jung, Honorary General Manager of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, Post Office Box 144, Chicago. This organization was originally founded to spy on Communists and Socialists. For a while Jung collected from terrified employers by promising to inform them about the threat of revolution--what time it would occur and who would lead it. In return he collected plenty.

In time employers got fed up when the rowboat loaded with bomb-throwing Bolsheviks failed to arrive from Moscow. Pickings became slim. Jung was badly in need of a new terror-inspiring "issue" with which to collect from the suckers. He found it at the time Emerson was sent here from Germany. Gulden, Pelley and their a.s.sociates were launching an anti-semitic campaign as the first step to attract people to the "Friends of Germany." Jung likewise discovered the "menace of the Jew" and peddled it for all it was worth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Showing the type of literature peddled by patrioteer Harry A. Jung.]

There was an air of secrecy about the whole outfit. Even the location of the office in the Chicago Tribune Tower was kept from the members.h.i.+p; all they were given was the post office box number. As soon as he collected enough material from the _Daily Worker_ and other Communist publications, he sent agents to call on the gullible businessmen with horrendous stories of the Muscovites now on the high seas on their way to capture the American Government. The salesmen collected and in turn got forty per cent of the pickings.

When Jung heard that William Dudley Pelley was making money on the Jew-and-Catholic scare and that others like Edward H. Hunter of the Industrial Defense a.s.sociation were talking with the German Consul General about getting money from Germany for propaganda, he got busy peddling "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," long discredited as forgeries. Armed with these, Jung's high pressure salesmen scoured the country, collecting shekels from Christian businessmen and getting their forty per cent commissions.

It was not long before Jung, Pelley and others were working in full swing with secret n.a.z.i agents sent into this country for propaganda and espionage purposes.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Subsequently changed to "Friends of the New Germany" and then to the current "German-American Bund."

[7] Still functioning on a minor scale. The Fifth Column has since these early beginnings established much more efficient groups.

[8] Following pa.s.sage of the new 1938 law requiring all foreign agents to register, Orgell registered with the State Department as a German agent.

[9] He now lives at Great Kills, Staten Island, N.Y.

VII

_n.a.z.i Spies and American "Patriots"_

Once the spadework was done by the early n.a.z.i agents sent into the United States, the web rapidly embraced native fascists, racketeering "patriots" and deluded Americans who swallowed their propaganda. When j.a.pan joined the Rome-Berlin axis, espionage directed against American naval and military forces became one of the major interests of the foreign agents, especially on the West Coast.

Some five years ago, after the McCormick Congressional Committee investigation into n.a.z.i activities turned up a number of propagandists, there was a lull in their activity until the nation-wide denunciations died out. In the meantime Goebbels again ordered the reorganization of the entire propaganda machine in this country.

It was during this period that the approaching Presidential elections presented an immediate task for the n.a.z.is to work on. The Roosevelt Administration was considered by the n.a.z.is both here and in Germany as none too friendly to Hitler, and before the election got well under way the n.a.z.is here, upon instructions from their local leaders who act only upon instructions from the German Propaganda Bureau, became active in the anti-Roosevelt campaign. Both n.a.z.i agents and "patriotic" American groups working with n.a.z.i agents (without much money after the Congressional Committee's exposes) suddenly found themselves possessed of more than enough capital with which to operate. Some of the money came from the n.a.z.is and some from anti-Roosevelt forces.

One of the most vicious of the anti-Roosevelt propaganda mediums was established by n.a.z.i agents in a carefully hidden printing plant.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Anti-Semitic anti-Roosevelt handbill issued by the American White Guard in California.]

No one who got off on the sixth floor at 325 W. Ohio St., Chicago, and entered the John Baumgarth's Specialty Company, would have suspected anything out of the ordinary about the place. It looked just like hundreds of other business firms where pale girls and anemic-looking men made calendars.

People came up on the ancient elevator, attended to their affairs at the desks in front of the door, and left. Very few of them ever went behind the enormous piles of cardboard and paper which almost obstructed the pa.s.sage to the right of the desks. But if you turned into this pa.s.sage and then turned to the left, you came upon a wooden part.i.tion. Unless you were watching for it you would think it a wall.

There was no indication of what was behind the part.i.tion. There was only a s.h.i.+ny Yale lock in a door carefully hidden from the eyes of casual visitors. If you knew nothing about it and tried to open the door, you would find it locked. If you knocked or banged on it, there would be no answering sign from the other side, and the young man operating the cutting machine alongside the part.i.tion would merely stare at you blankly.

But if you knocked three times quickly, paused for a split second and then knocked once more, the door would be opened immediately. Without the proper signal all the knocking in the world would not help, for this was the entrance to the carefully guarded publication rooms of the _American Gentile_ and the headquarters for n.a.z.i anti-democratic activities in the Middle West. But even more guarded than the location of the printing plant were the goings and comings of the paper's editor, Captain Victor DeKayville and his financial backer, Charles...o...b..ien.

This brings me to two of the leading n.a.z.i agents in the United States, one of whom originally started the newspaper. Certainly none of the American suckers who gave them money to spread pro-n.a.z.i propaganda knew that both were masquerading under false names and that one of them is an ex-convict.

Those social leaders in Chicago and San Francisco, whose doors were always open to the handsome, das.h.i.+ng Prince Peter Kushubue with his sad eyes and his talk of how the Bolsheviki had confiscated his vast estates and family jewels in Old Russia, may be interested to learn that his Highness, the Prince, is really--well, let me give a brief sketch of his activities before he became a n.a.z.i agent:

In 1922, a Russian emigre, born in Petrograd and christened Peter Afana.s.sieff or Aphana.s.sieff, came to the United States seeking his fortune, preferably in the form of a wealthy heiress. As an ordinary run-of-the-mill Afana.s.sieff, he was just an unemployed White Russian looking for a job and it didn't take him long to discover that in this democratic country heiresses and their doting papas go nuts over t.i.tles. So overnight Peter Afana.s.sieff blossomed out into Prince Peter Kushubue; and as a Prince whose wealth had been confiscated by the Bolsheviki, the doors of San Francisco society opened to him.

Afana.s.sieff just barely missed marrying a wealthy heiress on the West Coast, and in his despondence he tried his hand at a little forgery.

But he picked the wrong outfit to practice penmans.h.i.+p on. He forged a United States Treasury check and when the federal men got after him he fled to Chicago. He was picked up and on November 29, 1929, he found himself before a U.S. Commissioner who ordered his return to San Francisco. On December 19 of the same year he pleaded guilty before Federal Judge F.J. Kerrigan and was given a year and a half. At the trial he admitted to being just an ordinary Afana.s.sieff and served his sentence under that name.

When he came out he alternated between being Prince Kushubue and an ordinary Afana.s.sieff and then, because the 1930 crash had kicked the bottom out of the market for foreign t.i.tles, he picked himself a good solid American name: Armstrong. He said it was his mother's maiden name. For convenience we'll call him Armstrong from now on.

When he arrived in Chicago in 1933, he met some White Russians who were working with Harry A. Jung on an altogether new translation of the "Protocols." Jung planned to publish and distribute the forgeries in order to scare the wits out of his Christian suckers, but changed his mind when he discovered he could buy them cheaper and resell at a higher price. Jung, in turn, introduced Armstrong to n.a.z.i agents.

Jung and the ex-convict hit it up. Before long Armstrong became Jung's secret agent No. 31 (Jung is No. 1 and always signs his letters to agents with that number. His agents, too, sign only their numbers.

They are not supposed even to write the number but every once in a while an agent slips up and scribbles a postscript in his own handwriting. A reproduction of one of No. 31's reports to the No. 1 Guy appears on the opposite page.)

It was not long after Jung introduced Armstrong to n.a.z.i agents that the White Russian decided that he could work the racket himself. He began to meet secretly with n.a.z.i agents without telling Jung about it.

Their favorite meeting place was at Von Thenen's Tavern, 2357 Roscoe St., Chicago. Present at these meetings, usually called by Fritz Gissibl, head of the "Friends of the New Germany,"[10] were Armstrong, Captain Victor DeKayville, J.K. Leibl (who organized an underground n.a.z.i clique in South Bend, Ind.), Oscar Pfaus, Nick Mueller, Toni Mueller, Jose Martini, Franz Schaeffer and Gregor Buss. When Gissibl couldn't attend, his right-hand man Leibl acted for him.

In March, 1936, Armstrong and the others decided to establish a "National Alliance" to aid in n.a.z.i work. They decided to use the utmost secrecy lest what they were doing and who were behind it, leak out. They met only in private homes and so careful were they that the host of one meeting would not be told where the next meeting was to be held. Only a picked handful of the most trusted n.a.z.i agents were invited.

The first meeting was held at Bockhold's home, 1235 Wave-land Ave., Chicago; the second at the home of Mrs. Emma Schmid, 4710 Winthrop Ave., Chicago. To the second meeting they invited C.O. Anderson of 601 Diversey Parkway, Chicago. He was listed by the n.a.z.is and the White Russians as a good sucker because he had contributed money to Jung.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Letter written by secret agent No. 31 (Peter Afana.s.sieff, _alias_ Prince Kushubue, _alias_ Peter V. Armstrong) to No. 1 (Harry A. Jung).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Letter showing contact between Peter V. Armstrong (the White Russian ex-convict Peter Afana.s.sieff) and German publishers of anti-Semitic literature.]