Five days later, on November 20, 1937, his father-in-law, who, besides
being Nazi Consul, owns in partnership with Fritz Kohpcke, one of the
largest hardware stores in Panama, told his clerks that he and his
partner would work a little late that night. Neither partner went out
to eat and the corrugated sliding door of the store, at Norte No. 54
in the heart of the Panamanian commercial district, was left open
about three feet from the ground so that passers-by could not see
inside unless they stooped deliberately.
At eight o'clock a car drew up at the corner of the darkened street in
front of Neumann & Kohpcke, Ltd. Two unidentified men, Heildelk and
Walter Scharpp, former Nazi Consul at Colon who had also just returned
from Germany, stepped out, and stooping under the partly open door,
entered the store. Once inside Scharpp quietly assumed command. To all
practical purposes they were on German territory, for the Nazi
consulate office was in the store.
Scharpp announced that the group had been very carefully chosen
because of their known loyalty to Nazi Germany and because of their
desire to promote friendship for Germany in Latin American countries
and to cooperate with the Japanese, who had their own organization
functioning efficiently in Central and South America.
"Some of these countries are already friendly," said Scharpp, "and we
can work undisturbed provided we do not interfere in the Panama Canal
Zone. It is North American territory, and you will have trouble from
their officials and intelligence officers as well as political
pressure from the States. You understand?"
"Panama is friendly to North America," said Kohpcke.
"Precisely. At the present time it is not wise to do much more than
broadcast, but at a propitious time we shall be able to explain
National Socialism to the Panamanians."
He looked at Kohpcke, whose left eyelid droops more than his right,
giving him the appearance of being perpetually sleepy. Kohpcke looked
at Neumann.
"Tonight we want to organize a Bund in Panama. In a few days I am
going to Costa Rica to organize another and then leave for
Valparaiso."
The others nodded. They had been informed that Scharpp was to have
complete charge of Nazi activities from Valparaiso to Panama. That
night they established _Der Deutsch-Auslaendische Nazi Genossenschafts
Bund_, with the understanding that it function secretly. The list of
members was to be controlled by Neumann.
Scharpp explained that secrecy was advisable to avoid antagonizing the
Panamanian Government, "which is friendly to Italy and we can
cooperate with the Italian Legation here."
"The Japanese are more important that the Italians," Kohpcke pointed
out.
"The Japanese will work with us," Heildelk assured him.
"But we can't be seen with them--"
"Fritz [Kohpcke] will call a meeting in Jacobs' house," said Scharpp.
"Jacobs!" exclaimed one of the unidentified men. "You don't mean the
Austrian Consul!"
Scharpp nodded slowly. "He is generally believed to be anti-Nazi. His
partner spent twelve years in Japan and speaks Japanese perfectly. The
Japanese Consul knows and trusts both. We cannot find a better place."
On the night of December 13, 1937, forty carefully selected Germans
who, during the intervening month had become members of the Bund in
Panama, arrived singly and in small groups at the home of August
Jacobs-Kantstein, Panamanian merchant and Austrian Honorary Consul.
Five Japanese, headed by Tetsuo Umimoto, also came. One, K. Ishibashi,
formerly captain of the "Hokkai Maru" and a reserve officer in the
Japanese Navy; K. Ohihara, a Japanese agent staying with the Japanese
Consul but having no visible reason to be in Panama; two captains of
Japanese fishing boats and A. Sonada, the barber who organized the
labor union and in whose presence the Consul does not sit until the
barber is seated.
Throughout the meeting, presided over by the elderly but tall and
soldierly Austrian Consul, the Japanese said little. It was primarily
the first get-together for Nazi-Japanese cooperation in the Canal Zone
area.
"Mr. Umimoto has not said much," remarked Jacobs.
"There is so little to say when there are so many present," said the
little Consul apologetically.
The others understood. The Japanese were too shrewd to discuss
detailed plans with so many present.
A few days later Umimoto called upon Heildelk and was closeted with
him for three hours. Shortly after that Sonada made a hurried trip to
Japan.
VI
_Secret Agents Arrive in America_
Germany's interest in the Panama Canal became acute only after Japan
joined the Rome-Berlin axis "to exchange information about
Communism"--an exchange which appears to be more concerned with
military secrets than with Communism.
The activities of Japanese and Nazi agents in Latin American countries
and especially around the Canal, the organizing of a fascist rebellion
in Mexico to the south of us and intensive propaganda carried on in
Canada to the north, are but part of the broad invasion of the Western
Hemisphere by the Fifth Column--an invasion which began almost
immediately after Hitler got into power. Since the United States is
the most important country in the Americas, it was and is subject to
special concentration by secret Nazi agents.
The first threads spun spread out in many directions, with propaganda
as the base from which to broaden espionage activities. One of the
earliest of the secret agents sent to this country was an American,
Colonel Edwin Emerson, soldier of fortune, mediocre author and fairly
competent war correspondent. Emerson lived at 215 East 15th Street,
New York City and had an office in Room 1923 at 17 Battery Place, the
address of the German Consulate General. Room 1923 was rented by a
representative of the German Consul General. The rent paid was nominal
and in at least one instance, to avoid its being traced, it was paid
in cash by Hitler's diplomatic representative. Prior to the renting of
this room, Emerson had desk space with the German Consulate General
for six weeks.
The May 15, 1933, issue of the _Amerika Deutsche Post_, a Nazi
propaganda organ published in New York, carried an advertisement
stating that the editor of this paper made his headquarters in
Emerson's room. This was the first indication that Emerson had arrived
in this country to handle Nazi propaganda.
For many years Emerson had wandered about the globe covering
assignments for newspapers and magazines and always bragging about his
Americanism and his "patriotism." One of his great boasts was that he
was with Roosevelt's Rough Riders during the Spanish-American war;
what he never told was that Roosevelt brought him back from Cuba in
irons.
From his room paid for by the German Consul General, Emerson launched
the "Friends of Germany."[6] This organization was the chief
disseminator of pro-Hitler and anti-democratic propaganda in the
United States, but the Colonel directed the propaganda somewhat
stupidly. The "Friends of Germany" held meetings with "storm troops"
in full uniform; bitter attacks were made against Jews and Catholics
at large mass meetings. Visiting officers and sailors, from German
ships docked in New York, appeared at these meetings to preach fascism
and Nazism, until a wave of resentment swept the country. One of the
keynotes of these talks was sounded by Edward F. Sullivan of Boston at
a meeting held at Turnhalle, Lexington Avenue and 85th Street, on June
5th, 1934, when he repeatedly referred to Jews as "dirty, stinking
kikes" and announced that he proposed to organize a strong Nazi group
in Boston.
Propaganda Minister Goebbels in Berlin became annoyed at the public
reaction, and the entire Nazi foreign propaganda service was
reorganized. Emerson was ordered back to Germany for explicit
instructions on how to carry on propaganda without antagonizing the
entire country.
In October, 1933, Royal Scott Gulden (who has no connection with the
mustard business, but is a distant relative of the head of it), who
had been cooperating with Emerson, tried to organize an espionage
system to watch Communists. In this effort Gulden enlisted the aid of
Fred R. Marvin, a professional patriot. At three o'clock on the
afternoon of March 10, 1934, a very secret meeting was called by
Gulden at 139 East 57th Street. Present were Gulden, J. Schmidt and
William Dudley Pelley, head of the Silver Shirts.
The meeting decided to adopt anti-semitic propaganda--to play on
latent anti-semitism--as part of the first campaign to attract
followers. The country was in a serious economic crisis with
considerable unrest throughout the land. Both Hitler and Mussolini got
into power in periods of great unrest by promising peace and security
to the bewildered people. Men of means were terrified by fears of
"revolution" and this group, directed by Emerson, began to preach that
the revolution might come any minute and that the Jews were
responsible for Moscow, the Third International, the Mississippi flood
and anything else that troubled the people. When the meeting ended the
"Order of '76"[7] had been born and Royal Scott Gulden appointed
Secretary to direct espionage and propaganda.
From the very beginning Emerson tried to get people into places which
would provide access to important information. On February 22, 1934, a
merger of the Republican Senatorial and Congressional Campaign
Committees to conduct the Party's Congressional campaign independent
of the Republican National Committee was announced in a joint
statement by Senator Daniel O. Hastings of Delaware and
Representative Chester C. Bolton of Ohio, chairmen, respectively, of
the two committees.
Several weeks before this announcement, the two committees had
employed Sidney Brooks, for years head of the research bureau of the
International Telephone and Telegraph Company. Brooks, because of his
position, was close in the confidences of Republican Senators and
Congressmen. He heard state secrets and had his fingers on the
political pulse of the country.
Shortly after he took charge of the joint committee for the Senators
and Congressmen, Brooks made a hurried visit to New York. On March 4,
1934, he drove to the Hotel Edison and went directly to Room 830 where
a man registered as "William D. Goodales--Los Angeles," was awaiting
him. Mr. "Goodales" was William Dudley Pelley, head of the Silver
Shirts, who had come to New York to confer with Brooks and Gulden.
After this conference the two went to Gulden's office where they had a
confidential talk that lasted over an hour during which an agreement
was made to merge the Order of '76 with the Silver Shirts so as to
carry on their propaganda more effectively.
Brooks himself, on his mysterious visits to New York, went to 17
Battery Place, which houses the German Consulate General. At that
address he visited one John E. Kelly. In a letter to Kelly dated as
far back as December 27, 1933, he wrote: "I will be in New York Friday
to Monday and can be reached in the usual manner--Gramercy 5-9193
(care Emerson)."
Sidney Brooks also was a member of the secret Order of '76. Before
anyone could join he had to give, in his own handwriting and sealed
with his own fingerprints, certain details of his life. Brooks'
application for membership in this espionage group organized with the
help of a Nazi sent to this country, revealed that he was the son of
the Nazi agent, Colonel Edwin Emerson, and that he was using his
mother's maiden name so that connection could not be traced too
easily.
[Illustration: Application by Sidney Brooks for membership in the
secret Order of '76, showing him to be a son of the Nazi agent,
Colonel Edwin Emerson.]
One of the other early propagandists who is still active as a
"patriot" was Edward H. Hunter, Executive Secretary of the Industrial
Defense Association, Inc., 7 Water Street, Boston. Early in 1934,
while the negotiations for the merging of the espionage order and the
Silver Shirts were going on, this rooter for American liberty heard
Germany was spending money in this country and on March 3, he wrote to
the "Friends of Germany":
"Under separate cover we are sending you twenty-five copies of our
_Swan Song of Hate_ as requested and you may have as many as you wish.
"Several times I have conferred with Dr. Tippelskirch and at one time
suggested that if he could secure the financial backing from Germany,
I could start a real campaign along lines that would be very
effective.
"All that is necessary to return America to Americans is to organize
the many thousands of persons who are victims of Judaism and I am
ready to do that at any time."
Dr. Tippelskirch, with whom Hunter discussed getting money from
Germany for anti-semitic work, was the German Consul in Boston.
The activities of the early agents ranged from propaganda to smuggling
and espionage, though at the beginning the espionage was on a minor
scale. It took several years of organizing pro-German groups in this
country before they could pick the most reliable for the more
dangerous spy work. Much of the propaganda was sent in openly through
the mails, but some of it was of so vicious and anti-democratic
character that the Propaganda Ministry in Germany decided it was wiser
to smuggle it in from Nazi ships.
One of the chief smugglers was Guenther Orgell,[8] at that time head
of the "Friends of Germany," through whom the propaganda was
distributed to various branches of the organization throughout the
country. In those days Orgell lived at 606 West 115th Street, New York
City,[9] and was ostensibly employed as an electrical engineer by the
Raymond Roth Co., 25 West 45th Street. Let me illustrate how he
worked:
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 ship's Nazi _Gruppe_, stood about smiling, bowing, but watching
every passenger 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, constituted 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 passenger 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 ship.
This was the manner in which Nazi secret instructions and spy reports
were sent and received--a procedure that kept up until the arrest of
the Nazi 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 anticipation 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 ships 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
Washington," 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 assistant, Carl Brunkhorst. It was Brunkhorst's job to
deliver the secret letters. Nazi uniforms for American Storm Troopers
were smuggled into this country off German ships 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 Nazi 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 Nazi 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
Nazi 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 associates 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.
[Illustration: 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
membership; 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 Association 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 Nazi 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 passage 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
_Nazi Spies and American "Patriots"_
Once the spadework was done by the early Nazi agents sent into the
United States, the web rapidly embraced native fascists, racketeering
"patriots" and deluded Americans who swallowed their propaganda. When
Japan 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 Nazi 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 Nazis to work on. The Roosevelt
Administration was considered by the Nazis both here and in Germany as
none too friendly to Hitler, and before the election got well under
way the Nazis 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 Nazi agents and
"patriotic" American groups working with Nazi 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 Nazis and some from
anti-Roosevelt forces.
One of the most vicious of the anti-Roosevelt propaganda mediums was
established by Nazi agents in a carefully hidden printing plant.
[Illustration: 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 passage to the right of the desks. But if you turned
into this passage and then turned to the left, you came upon a wooden
partition. Unless you were watching for it you would think it a wall.
There was no indication of what was behind the partition. There was
only a shiny 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 partition would merely
stare at you blankly.