fictitious checks. No. 35570.
Oct. 5, 1925: Los Angeles Police Department issued notice that Allen
was wanted for uttering fictitious checks. Bulletin No. 233.
Allen is apparently a prolific writer--of bad checks and of long
reports about his activities to his superiors.
Two of Allen's close friends are also native Americans: C.F. Ingalls
of 2702 Bush St., San Francisco and George Deatherage (the G.D.
mentioned earlier). Deatherage now lives and operates out of St.
Albans, W. Va. He organized the American Nationalist Confederation
which used to have its headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. Both these
gentlemen also work with Schwinn.
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 constitutional 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 "Nazi 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 Washington, 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 Nazi leader in this country, was
to contact the Italian Embassy, the Hungarian Legation, James True of
the James True Associates (distributors of "Industrial Control
Reports" from its headquarters in Washington, 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
Washington on January 24, 1938:
Upon calling at the Rumanian Embassy I found the Ambassador with
all his attaches are of the Carol-Tartarescu regime, and they
are sailing on Wednesday, January 26. The new Ambassador will
arrive with his staff on Saturday, 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 Embassy. At the Italian Embassy I
found the Ambassador 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 Embassy, 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 quantity 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 Nazi propagandist as one of its
chief investigators and refused to question three suspected Nazi 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 Nazi 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 Nazi 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 Nazi 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 Nazis, he got six months for a little stealing.)
Before going on with the Congressional Committee's strange attitude
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 Nazi
stronghold in Yorkville.
[Illustration: Reproduction of a document 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
Nazis and their friends attended a mass meeting of the Friends of the
New Germany at Turnhall, Lexington Ave. and 85th Street, New York
City. Sixty Nazi Storm Troopers--attired in uniforms with black
breeches and Sam Brown belts, smuggled off Nazi ships--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 Nazi fashion, changed guard in front
of the speakers' stand. The Hitler Youth organization was present. Men
and women Nazis sold the official Nazi 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 Nazis.
W.L. McLaughlin, then editor of the _Deutsche Zeitung_, spoke in
English. He was followed by H. Hempel, an officer of the Nazi
steamship "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 Nazis in Boston who had attacked and
beaten liberals and Communists at a meeting protesting the docking of
the Nazi cruiser "Karlsruhe," in an American port.
The audience cheered. Sullivan, again giving the Nazi salute, shouted:
"Throw the goddam lousy Jews--all of them--into the Atlantic Ocean.
We'll get rid of the stinking kikes! Heil Hitler!"
The three suspected Nazi 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 unobtrusively to work on
ships' 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 citizenship 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
Shipbuilding 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 ships' models, which he never made an attempt to sell.
Dieckhoff weighed his words carefully during our talk.
"Why did you apply for a transfer from Staten Island to the Brooklyn
Navy Yard?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said. "I guess there was more money in it."
"How much were you getting when you were working on the destroyers?"
"It was some time ago," he said slowly. "I do not remember very good."
"How much are you getting now at the Navy Yard?"
"Forty dollars and twenty-nine cents a week."
"You went to Germany last year for a couple of months and before that
you went to Germany for six months. Were you able to save enough for
these trips on your wages?"
"I do not spend very much," he said. "I live here all alone."
"How much do you save a week?"
"Oh, I don't know. Ten dollars a week."
"That would make five hundred dollars a year--if you worked steadily,
which you didn't. You traveled third class. A round trip would be
about two hundred dollars. That would leave you three hundred to spend
provided you did not buy clothes, etc., for these trips. How did you
manage to live in Germany for six months on three hundred dollars? Did
you work there?"
He hesitated and said, "No, I did not work there. I traveled around. I
was not in one place."
"How did you do it on three hundred dollars for six months?"
"My brother gave me money."
"What's your brother's business?"
"Oh, just general business in Bremerhafen. He's got a big business
there."
"Perhaps I can get a report from the American Consul--"
"Oh," he interrupted. "His business isn't that big."
"Have you a bank account?"
He hesitated again and then said, "No, I do not make enough money for
a bank account."
"Where do you keep your money for trips to Germany? In cash?"
"Yes, in cash."
"Where? Here? In this room?"
"No. Not in this room. I have it locked up."
"Where?"
"Oh, different places," he said vaguely.
"Where are those places?"
"I have my money with a friend."
"Who?"
"Nordenholz, Albert Nordenholz."
"You work in Brooklyn, live in Sheepshead Bay and save ten dollars a
week in Port Richmond with a friend? Isn't that a long distance to go
to save money?"
He shrugged his shoulders without answering.
"What's Nordenholz's business?"
"I think he's retired. I think he used to be a butcher."
"You don't know very much about a man's business and you travel all
this distance to give him money to save for you when there are banks
all around? Why do you do that?"
"Oh, I don't know. It seems to me that it is better that way."
Later when I asked Nordenholz, he denied that Dieckhoff had ever given
him any money to hold.
Dieckhoff had worked on turbines, gear reductions and other
complicated mechanical parts on the cruiser "Brooklyn." The moment I
asked him if he handled blueprints he answered in the affirmative, but
quickly added that the blueprints were returned every night and locked
up by the officers. A capable machinist could, he admitted, after
careful study remember the blueprints well enough to make a duplicate
copy.
"When you went to Germany after working on the destroyers did anyone
ever question you about them over there?"
"No," he said quickly. "Nobody."
"My information is that you did talk about structural matters."
He looked startled. "Well," he said, "my brother knew I worked in the
Brooklyn Navy Yard. We talked about it, naturally."
"My information is that you talked about it with other people, too."
He stared out of the window with a worried air. Finally he said,
"Well, my brother has a friend and I talked with him about it."
"A minute ago you said you had not talked about it with anyone."
"I had forgotten."
"This is the brother who gave you money to travel around in Germany?"
He didn't answer.
"I didn't hear you," I said.
"Yes," Dieckhoff said finally, "he gave me the money."
I called upon the second of the three suspected spies subpoenaed by
the Dies Committee. Alfred Boldt had done very responsible work on the
U.S. cruiser "Honolulu." Though he had not been in Germany for ten
years, he suddenly got enough money last year to go there and to send
his son to school at a Nazi academy. Boldt, too, has no bank account.
He needed a minimum of seven hundred dollars for his wife and himself
to cross third class, but the Dies Committee was not interested in
where the money for the trip had come from.
Boldt left for Germany on August 4, 1936, and returned September 12.
On the evening I dropped in to see him, he was tensely nervous. He had
heard that someone had been around to talk with Dieckhoff.
"I understand your only son, Helmuth, is going to school in Langin,
Germany?" I asked.
"Yes," he said, "I sent him there two years ago."
"No schools in the United States for a fifteen-year-old boy?"
"I wanted him to learn German."
"What do you pay for his schooling over there?"
He hesitated. His wife, who was sitting with us and occasionally
advising him in German, suddenly interrupted in German, "Don't tell
him. That's German business."
I assume they did not know that I understood, for Boldt passed off her
comment as if he had not heard it and said casually, "Oh, twenty-five
dollars a month."
"You earn forty dollars a week at the Navy Yard, pay for your son's
schooling in Germany, clothes, etc., and you and your wife took more
than a month's trip to Germany last year. How do you do it on forty a
week?"
His wife giggled a little in the adjoining room. Boldt shrugged his
shoulder without answering.
"The cheapest the two of you could do it, third class, would be about
seven hundred dollars. Where do you have your bank account?"
"No. No bank account," his wife interrupted sharply.
"All the money is kept here, right here in this house," he laughed.
"You saved all that money in cash?"
"Yes; in cash, right here."
"No banks?"
"We like it better like that--in cash."
Boldt, like Dieckhoff, had been a marine engineer on the North German
Lloyd. He went to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in 1931. When the
cruiser "Honolulu" made its trial run in the spring of 1938, Boldt was
on board.
Like Dieckhoff and Boldt, Harry Woulters, _alias_ Hugo Woulters, the
third of the three subpoenaed men, is a naturalized citizen of German
extraction. He went to work in the Navy Yard within one day of
Dieckhoff. Before that, both had worked on the same four American
destroyers at the Staten Island Shipbuilding Company.
The house where Woulters lives has a great many Jews in it, judging
from the names on the letterboxes, and since Hugo sounded too German,
he listed his first name as "Harry."
"You and Dieckhoff worked on the same destroyers on Staten Island and
you say you never met him there?" I asked.
"No, I never met him until the second day after I went to work in the
Navy Yard."
"How many people work on a destroyer--a thousand?"
"Oh, no. Not that many."
"About one hundred?"
"About that," he said uncertainly.
"And you worked with Dieckhoff for six months on the same warships and
never met him?"
"Yes," he insisted.
"How come that if you never met him both of you applied for jobs at
the Brooklyn Navy Yard at about the same time?"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I don't know. It's funny. Sounds funny,
anyway."
"When you worked on the cruiser 'Honolulu' you handled blueprints?"
"Yes, of course, but they were never left in my possession overnight,"
he added quickly. I couldn't help but think that Dieckhoff, too, had
been very quick in protesting that the blueprints had never been left
in his possession overnight. They seemed worried about that even
though I had not said anything about it.
"Were they _ever_ left in your possession overnight?"
"No. They guarded the blueprints--"
"My information is that they were left in your possession."
"Wells, sometimes--blueprints--you know, when you work from blueprints
sometimes, yes, sometimes blueprints were left in my possession
overnight. I was working on reduction gears on the cruiser 'Brooklyn'
and I kept the blueprints overnight."
"How often?"
"I can't remember how often. Sometimes the blueprints were kept
overnight in my tool box."
"You also worked on turbines and other complicated and confidential
structural problems on the warship?"
"Yes."
"And you kept those blueprints overnight, too?"
"Sometimes--not often. Sometimes I left them in my tool box
overnight."
Woulters, during the latter period of construction on the "Brooklyn"
and the "Honolulu" had got two jobs which most workers do not like. He
had the four to midnight and the midnight to eight A.M. watches.
Normally Woulters likes to stay at home with his wife.
"While you had these watch duties you had pretty much the run of the
ship?"
He hesitated and weighed his words carefully before answering. Finally
he nodded and added hastily, "But no one can get on board."
"I didn't ask that. Did you have the run of the ship while everybody
else was asleep when you were on watch?"
"Yes," he said in a low voice.
"How did you happen to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard?"
"Oh, I don't know. I like to work for the Government."
"Have you a bank account?"
"Yes."
"What bank?"
"Oh, I don't know, it's some place on Church Avenue."
"You have about 2,400 dollars in the bank, a nice apartment, and you
and your wife went on a trip to Germany last year. Did you save all
that money in so short a time on wages of forty dollars a week?"
He shrugged his shoulders.
"Your bank account does not show withdrawals sufficient to cover the
trip to Germany--"
"Say," he interrupted excitedly as soon as he saw where the question
was leading, "when I was called before the Dies Committee, the
Congressman there shook hands with me and asked me if I knew anything
about un-American activities in the Navy Yard. I told him I didn't and
he told me to go back to work and not to say anything about having
been called before them. Now I do not understand why you ask me all
these questions. The Congressman told me not to talk and I am saying
nothing more. Nothing."
The Dies Congressional Committee was not interested in these three men
whom they had subpoenaed and then, oddly enough, refused to question.
Besides this very strange procedure by a Committee empowered by the
Congress to investigate subversive activities, the Dies Committee
withheld for months documentary evidence of Nazi activities in this
country directed from Germany. The Committee obtained letters to
Guenther Orgell and Peter Gissibl, but quietly placed them in their
files without telling anyone about the existence of these documents.
They did not subpoena or question the men involved.
The letters the Committee treated so cavalierly are from E.A.
Vennekohl in charge of the foreign division of the _Volksbund fuer das
Deutschtum im Ausland_ with headquarters in Berlin, letters from the
foreign division headquarters in Stuttgart, and from Orgell to
Gissibl.
Gissibl was in constant touch with Nazi propaganda headquarters in
Germany, receiving instructions and reporting not only on general
activities, but especially upon the opening by the Nazis here of
schools for children in which Nazi propaganda would be disseminated.