The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II (12 page)

Commercial Radio’s First War

T
HROUGHOUT HOME-FRONT AMERICA,
millions of citizens kept ears glued to one of the 836 broadcast outlets that reached into homes day after day, night after night. Commercial radio had taken its first wobbly steps only nineteen years before Pearl Harbor, so this was the medium’s first war.

In the early weeks of the global conflict, radio advertisers displayed an enormous appetite for bad taste when they tied their pitches to the war. Said one ad: “Use Gillette blades which will last longer, and thereby conserve steel for national defense.” The message was clear. Any man who didn’t buy Gillette products was unpatriotic, perhaps even unwittingly helping Adolf Hitler and Emperor Hirohito.

Another radio commercial tried to get listener’s ears by having an authoritative-sounding announcer suddenly shout: “Here is an important late news bulletin! Use Smith Brothers cough drops.”

One New York City station and its advertiser collaborated on an incredible stunt. After a newscaster launched a spiel about American casualties overseas, the advertiser (a funeral parlor and cemetery) had an announcer state: “You never know when to expect bad news so be prepared. Buy a family lot now.”

Aware of a backlash from an angry public, radio moguls began correcting the avalanche of bad taste spewing from advertisers. Commercials trying to capitalize on the war were refused in most instances. Announcements using gunfire, airplane engines, the revving of tank motors, and the blast of a destroyer’s horn to sell Pall Mall cigarettes or other goods were banned by the networks.

Radio commentators on home-front America enjoyed a freedom of speech that could not be found in any other nation. If so inclined, a commentator perched comfortably on his throne could, and did, lambast President Roosevelt, his administration chiefs, the armed forces high command, the conduct of the war, and the British, French, and Soviet allies.

These commentators made no pretense of objective or unbiased reporting. Most hammered at their favorite targets, often using as weapons gossip and unfounded rumor. This approach was puzzling to millions of Americans who tuned into programs listed in their newspapers as “news” and instead were assaulted by prejudiced commentaries.
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Two years after America went to war, German U-boats were still stalking the eastern seaboard. This oil tanker was torpedoed in sight of bathers on a Florida beach near Miami. (U.S. Navy)

U-Boats “Ruining” Tourist Season

A
LTHOUGH MEDIA
on home-front America were free to blast President Roosevelt and other leaders, newspapers and radio were forbidden to give even a hint about the bloody carnage being inflicted by German U-boats in sight of citizens along the east coast.

Aware that the U.S. coastal defenses were virtually nonexistent, the submarines became steadily more brazen. Almost within view of the mighty naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, on March 13, 1942, an Allied freighter was sunk and the U-boat remained on the surface for four hours, shining a yellow light in its conning tower.

Soon the bold U-boat captains became so smug that they began sinking ships in broad daylight. Thousands of bathers at Coney Island, New York; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Atlantic City, New Jersey; and Miami, Florida, watched in horror as oil tankers were torpedoed, causing the vessels to explode in balls of fire and thick black smoke. Surviving crewmen, most heavily burned, mutilated, and cover with oil, struggled ashore.

U-boat skippers began referring to their zones of operations as the American Front. The U.S. Navy concluded that German submarines were being guided by lights and electric signs in cities along the Atlantic coast. Howls of

Helping a German POW Escape
55

protest erupted from Atlantic City southward to the tip of Florida when Washington ruled that the illuminations would have to be extinguished.

“Such an extreme action would ruin the tourist season,” one large-hotel owner in Miami complained. It would be two more months before the last light blinked out.
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Helping a German POW Escape

A
TALL, RUGGEDLY HANDSOME,
blond man in civilian clothes walked up to the front door of a Detroit home occupied by Margaretta Johanna Bertlemann, a thirty-six-year-old housewife. Glancing quickly around, the man knocked on the door. It was March 12, 1942.

When Bertlemann, who lived alone, answered the summons, the man asked for a drink of water. Once inside, he identified himself as Lieutenant Hans Peter Krug, a bomber pilot in the Luftwaffe, who had not been at all happy with accommodations at his prisoner-of-war camp in Ontario, Canada. Comrades in the enclosure had found Bertlemann’s name and address written on a slip of paper and concealed in a pair of socks that had been sent in a gift package from the Third Reich.

A few weeks earlier, Krug had been chafing over the dreary humdrum of life behind barbed wire. His mind flashed back more than a year to the time another Luftwaffe pilot, Oberleutnant Franz von Werra, had gained world fame by escaping from Canada, sneaking into the United States, and eventually making his way back to Germany. Krug had been determined to follow in von Werra’s footsteps.

With the aid of fellow POWs, a dummy had been rigged from newspapers and straw and carried to the predawn roll call. The dummy was crude, but it had masked Krug’s absence long enough for him to get a good running start after slipping out of the camp. He made his way to Windsor, Ontario, and crossed the Detroit River into the United States.

Now in her home, Margaretta Bertlemann accepted his identification after the escapee displayed the epaulets he had cut from his Luftwaffe uniform. She provided breakfast for the famished German, and told him she knew a man who could assist him in his flight. He was Max Stephen, a naturalized U.S. citizen who owned a Detroit restaurant that was a gathering place for members of the German-American Bund, the Nazi organization of U.S. citizens.

Stephen was contacted, and he plunged enthusiastically into the task. He gave Krug shelter and money, coached him on how he should act to avoid suspicion, and bought him a bus ticket to Chicago. Then the restaurant operator, who had a framed picture of Adolf Hitler hanging on the wall in his home,
outlined a detailed escape plan. Krug, who spoke only sketchy English, was to proceed by stages toward the Rio Grande River in Texas, then slip over into Mexico and board a ship back to the Third Reich.

The escape plan unfolded as prescribed, and Krug reached San Antonio, Texas, in routine fashion. There he registered in a dingy hotel as Jean Ette, and went to his room. In the morning, he would catch a bus that would take him to the Mexican border.

That night Krug was deep in slumber when he awakened with a start. Three men had crashed through the locked door and pounced on the German. They flashed their badges and called out: “FBI!”

Krug gave up with a struggle. The hotel clerk had recognized the escapee from an FBI wanted notice.

In the days ahead, J. Edgar Hoover’s sleuths linked Max Stephen to the escape, and the Detroit man was taken into custody. He was convicted of treason—the first American to be found guilty and sentenced to death.

Later President Roosevelt commuted Max Stephen’s sentence to life imprisonment. Presumably the rich restaurant owner had squealed on other Nazi agents in the Detroit region to save his life.
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Strange Scenario in San Francisco

O
N MARCH 31, 1942,
three men in civilian clothes were conferring intensely in a secluded booth in a San Francisco restaurant. No one in the room paid attention to the men, so the other diners and waitresses were unaware that the occupants of the booth were plotting a military operation that would soon electrify the entire free world: bombing Tokyo.

Planning the mission was Vice Admiral William F. “Bull” Halsey, who had the good fortune of being at sea with a task force of aircraft carriers when the Japanese bombers hit Pearl Harbor; Commander Miles R. Browning, Halsey’s chief of staff; and Air Corps Lieutenant Colonel James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, who had gained peacetime fame as a stunt flyer.

The cloak-and-dagger touch (civilian clothes, rendezvousing in a public restaurant) resulted from the quite real possibility that Japanese spies might be lurking in San Francisco. Halsey and Doolittle were well known and might have been spotted by hostile eyes had they been in uniform and going into a Navy building. Should the Tokyo warlords learn that Halsey, who commanded a force of aircraft carriers, and Doolittle, leader of a group of two-engine B-25 bombers, were secretly conferring, the Japanese might have deduced the nature of the forthcoming operation and taken steps to smash it.

Halsey and Doolittle shook hands and left the restaurant separately. Their next meeting would be out in the Pacific Ocean.
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Nazi Agents in Key Industry Posts
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Silencing a Priest Rabble-Rouser

I
N APRIL 1942,
Attorney General Francis Biddle asked the postmaster general to cancel the second-class mailing privileges of Social Justice, claiming that it echoed the enemy’s propaganda line. That permit was the type that gave special low rates to media, without which most newspapers and magazines could not exist.

Father Charles E. Coughlin, a Detroit priest, was publisher of Social Justice, a monthly publication with a circulation in excess of 200,000. Coughlin charged that Jews and Communists had tricked the American people into supporting the war.

Coughlin, apparently, was delighted with the government action. Now he could gain enormous publicity for his views by testifying before a grand jury.

Biddle, for his part, had no intention of converting Coughlin into a martyr. So he quietly asked a prominent lay Catholic, Leo T. Crowley, to explain the situation to Archbishop Edward Mooney of Detroit. Within seventy-two hours, Mooney ordered Coughlin to be silent (or be defrocked). Social Justice went out of business.
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Nazi Agents in Key Industry Posts

F
OUR MONTHS AFTER
Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini declared war on the United States, members of the German-American Bund were holding key executive posts in American public utilities and manufacturing plants. In New Jersey in April 1942, Herman von Busch, state treasurer of the Bund, was in charge of the gas works of the Public Service Corporation, which was providing gas to a large section of New Jersey’s defense industries.

Composed mainly of U.S. citizens sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the German-American Bund received its directions and heavy secret financing from Berlin.

Busch had plenty of help at the gas works in Harrison. Chief operator at the facility was Wilhelm Koehne, also a staunch Bund member. General foreman at the gas works was Fritz Kunze, who had been fired from the same plant during World War I because of his pro-German sympathies. After that conflict he was rehired and eventually promoted to the top executive post.

John Wilkins, in charge of a blower room at the Harrison works, had a son in Adolf Hitler’s army. The chief purification operator, George Haag, openly kept a photo of the führer at his workstation.

Amazingly, neither New Jersey state officials nor the federal government had taken steps to remove this potentially dangerous powder keg. Only after a New York City newspaper published a blockbuster story that detailed how
these Bundists had been provoking disputes and absenteeism among the Harrison workers and that much equipment had been mysteriously damaged did the New Jersey governor order the Bundists to be fired.

This incredible situation was not unique to the Harrison gas works. In New York, armed guards were patrolling the outside of the Liquidometer plant, which produced crucial parts for airplanes. Inside, a clique of strident Bundists was doing all it could to slow production. Machinist Julius Weber, who had served in the German navy in World War I, strolled around the plant giving the Nazi salute.

John Blaeser, a department supervisor at Liquidometer, told his workers not to be too concerned about production, that there was no hurry. At the same time he was distributing pro-Hitler propaganda sheets to the employees.