The Condition of Muzak (32 page)

1921

6 May

The Interior Department of the USA leases naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, to the Jeremiah Cornelius Company of Chicago. Various accusations in the Press (notably the
Philadelphia Enquirer
) concerning the allegations that the founder of this company is none other than ‘German Jerry’ Cornelius, a notorious racketeer often considered to be a more dangerous, though less notorious, character than Dion O’Banion, of whom he is a known associate. Thomas Redick of the
Enquirer
disappears, presumed killed. The Cornelius Company continues its activities, although it denies any connection with criminal elements and claims that its president is “travelling in Europe”. (
American Mercury
, 15 October, 1923, p. 38.)

1922

1 March

The Munich Riots of February/March. Arrested as a “socialist agitator” by the police, a J. Cornelius. Tried 3 March and imprisoned for thirty days before being expelled from Germany on his failure to produce papers proving his citizenship. (Munich Court Records.)

September

Rout of Greeks from Asia Minor by Kemal Pasha greatly facilitated by the tank company commanded by Major Cornelius, a South African soldier of fortune. (
Daily Mail
, 3 October,
The Sin of Pride
by Victor Manning.)

December

During the March on Rome a Geraldo Cornelius prominent in the Fascist takeover of power (for a short time he was editor of
Il Popolo d’Italia
) until assassinated “almost certainly on Mussolini’s orders” in December of the same year. (
Threatened Europe
, J.P.H. Priestley, Gollancz, 1936, p. 107/8.)

1923

July

Lithuanians capture Memel from the French garrison installed by League of Nations. “The plan was successful almost certainly because of the work of the Dutch adventurer Cornelius.” (French commander quoted in
Le Figaro
, 12 August.)

1924

21 January

Death of Lenin. A suspicion that he was assassinated on Stalin’s orders voiced in the English-language
Exile
(14 February), a White Russian newspaper published in London and aimed at arousing sympathy for the émigré cause. Count Birianof wrote: “Various Russian expatriates were approached by those who were plainly agents of the Bolsheviks and told that they would be given the opportunity to ‘eliminate’ the Red leader. It was so plainly the kind of trap we have become used to that all émigré organisations gave orders to their membership to pay no attention to the schemes. However we have reason to believe that a Levantine gentleman, originally of Kiev and familiar in the Whitechapel area as ‘Cornelius the Nihilist’, made it known that he would be willing to do the deed. Whether ‘Comrade’ Lenin died of natural causes (a guilty conscience, perhaps?) or whether he was killed, we shall probably never really know. However, if he was killed it was almost certainly by Cornelius acting on the orders of General Secretary Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili (who prefers to hide behind the name of ‘Stalin’)—a man with a greater lust for power than even his fanatical master knew! And what has happened to the nihilistic Jew? Dead, himself, by now, if we know anything at all of Bolshevik plots and counterplots.”

1926

27 February

Otto Klein shot on the steps of the Regensburg Opera House. After preliminary investigations, Regensburg police ordered the arrest of a tall, dark, slender man of about thirty going by the name of J. (possible Johannes) Cornelius, a known member of the NSDAP. (Mackleworth,
The Return to Barbarism
, Gollancz, 1938, p. 18.)

18 April

Ernst Auchinek tried for the murder of Klein; strongly denies that he has been known as Cornelius or that he has any connection with the NSDAP. He was hanged a month later. (Mackleworth, ibid., p. 22.)

1927

22 November

Leon Trotsky records a meeting with “the man generally known as ‘Cornelius’” in Siberia, where they were both exiled. “I was curious to meet this mysterious fellow, of whom I had heard much from Stankovich, in particular. He was undernourished and poorly dressed for the winter, but his eyes were hot enough to melt snow and he seemed singularly self-contained. I met him only for those few short moments before he was led away, but I had the impression that he was almost enjoying his imprisonment.” (Letter to Manfred Schneider, 5 June, 1930.)

1928

April

Mount Chingkangshan, between Hunan and Kianri. Mao Tse-tung has retired here after his recent defeat of September 1927. He is joined in the spring by Chu Teh, who brings with him an occidental sympathiser called Cornelius. Mao and Cornelius discuss tactics for several days and Mao is much impressed by the man’s knowledge of China, as well as his grasp of Communist theory and its application to the special problems of China. Mao offers Cornelius a position in the army he is planning to reform, but Cornelius disappears that night and there is some suspicion that he may, after all, have been a spy of the Kuomingtang. (H’ang Lean-li,
Two Paths to Freedom
, Routledge, Kegan Paul, London, 1940, p. 807.)

January–December

All Cornelius properties sold up in US and Britain.

1929

November

Wall Street Crash. “Situation not improved by the sudden pulling out of Cornelius interests from many major companies.” (
Wall Street Journal
, 26 November.)

1931

December

Japanese invasion of Manchuria. British minister in Tokyo telegraphs London: “Would suggest preparedness re rumours Japanese aided by English fascist associated with Russian émigrés here. Could prove embarrassing for us as basis for potential propaganda. The Englishman is said to be called Gerry Cornelius. Suggest you ascertain origins, etc., and speedily cable any information to here.” (6 December.) The telegram was acknowledged but its contents ignored. (
Imperial Policy in the Far East
, 1909–1939, C.W. Nolan, Samson and Hall, 1950, p. 506.)

1932

12 April

Body of a young man about thirty found in Thames near Hammersmith Bridge. Several stab wounds in the throat. A gold and ormolu striking watch marked
Thos. Tompion, London, 1685
on its inside case and on the inside of its outer case
Jerry Cornelius from his dear friend Southey, Keswick 08
, the only object discovered on the body. The engraving is of little help in identifying the body since it evidently cannot be addressed to so young a man. Records show that no such watch has been reported stolen. No further evidence comes to light and the case is closed for the moment. (‘London Keeps Her Mysteries’,
Union Jack
magazine, August 1934.)

1934

1 July

Secret message from Himmler to Hitler on morning after extermination of Röhm and SA supporters:
All cleansing operations successful. Only the Jew-lover Cornelius remains to be tidied away
. (
Night of Terror
, Barry Hughes, Scion Books, 1951, p. 64.)

1935

March

One of the ‘freelances’ used by Mussolini in the Abyssinian campaigns of March is listed as Cornelius, a Dane. (
The Times
, 29 March.)

10 August

Arab Nationalists meet in Cairo for the third Secret Congress at which Comintern representative is present. Representative used name ‘Cornelius’. (Adad,
Arabia Reborn
, Daker, 1962, p. 76.)

1937

18 December

Palestine. Jews and Arabs clash outside Qasr-el-Azak. British special patrol discovers corpses morning of 18 December. Among the bodies are those of two Europeans. One carries a revolver of unusual design and with no maker’s name or registration marks. An inscription on the barrel reads “From Catherine to Jerry”. The other corpse is that of a woman, very like the man in features and colouring. She has a similar gun with the inscription “From Jerry to Cathy” on the barrel. “The odd thing was that they seemed to be fighting on opposite sides.” (Report of Lieutenant Robert Gavin, Special Police, Palestine, quoted in Fennel and Harvey’s
British Political Policy in the Middle East 1900–1950
, Benson and Bingley, 1958, p. 569.)

1938

14 September

Madrid. “An offer was made through a Dutchman called Cornelius to supply us with 5,000 Mauser rifles and about a million rounds of ammunition. The Dutchman also offered tanks, planes and so on. We believed that he must be representing a foreign government but he insisted that he was an independent dealer. He demanded 50,000 dollars (US) for his ‘wares’ which, of course, at this stage we were unable to raise. We learned later that he had sold the guns to the Falangists and that they had proved to be in a dangerous state of disrepair and caused a number of casualties before being abandoned. We concluded that the Dutchman had unconsciously done us a favour in preferring to deal with our enemies and we drank his health!” (Palero,
The Betrayal of Spain
, Independent Publishing Association pamphlet, 1948, p. 12.)

1939

5 January

Czech Ambassador in Copenhagen writes to his government in a dispatch: “I strongly recommend that you accept Herr Cornelius’s terms and ensure speedy delivery of the arms he mentions.” (A.P. Peters,
The Day Before Doomsday
, Viking, NY, 1960, p. 56.)

3 March

Ivan Jeczakowski, the Polish industrialist, acting as agent for his government, pays two million American dollars to the Brazilian arms dealer Geraldo Corneille on delivery of fifty British Mk 1 infantry tanks, in Warsaw. (A.P. Peters, ibid., p. 72.)

6 July

Passenger list for the SS
Kao An
, a Panamanian passenger steamer, leaving Southampton, includes a Mr and Mrs J. Cornelius, a Miss Christine Brunner, a Mr S.M. Collier and a Mr Gordon Ogg, all bound for Macao.

22 September

The British tanks sold by Corneille to Poland develop technical faults and are abandoned after one engagement with the German Army near Lodz. “We placed too much reliance on them. They seemed to fall apart around us,” reports the colonel in command of the regiment. (A.P. Peters, ibid., p. 106.)

1940

20 August

Assassination of Trotsky, Mexico City, by a Russian using the name of Jacques van den Dreschd of whom Trotsky had written just before his death: “He claims to be a friend of Cornelius, whom I met briefly in Siberia. At certain times I felt they could almost have been brothers—particularly about the eyes.” (Letter to Maria Reine, August 1940.)

1946

Summer

Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. During their trials von Ribbentrop, Göring and Streicher speak repeatedly of a witness who will come forward in their defence. He is referred to sometimes as ‘Herr Mann’ and sometimes as ‘Cornelius’. After being sentenced to death, they claim that Cornelius has betrayed them. Unsuccessful attempts are made to trace ‘Cornelius’ but the only person of that name seems to be one of Himmler’s astrologers believed to have committed suicide soon after the Fall of Berlin. (
The War Crimes Trials, Nuremberg and Tokyo
by Walter P. Emshwiller, Reilly & Knap, NY, 1949, p. 1003.)

1948

11 February

Assassination of Gandhi. Police seek “a one-armed man called Cornelius” in connection with the crime. Cornelius believed to be an Eurasian living in Delhi. There is some information suggesting that he was a collaborator with the Japanese in Burma and that he has an Indian wife. All investigations prove fruitless. (Mehda,
What Killed Gandhi?
, Indian Publishing Company, Bombay, 1954, p. 40.)

1949

14 March

Jerusalem. Israeli commanders interview a captured Egyptian spy Cornelius. He dies during questioning. (Uncorroborated report in
Freedom
, 12 October:
The Needless Agony
by Sandra McPhail.)

1953

May

Kenya. “One of the captured Mau Mau who had almost certainly been involved in the massacre of the Gordon family claimed that they had been led by a white man who had dyed his skin and posed as one of them. This man, said our prisoner, had been directly responsible for the rape of the two younger girls and their subsequent dismemberment. Several stories of this kind were circulating at the time but no evidence ever came to light to confirm or, for that matter, deny the rumours, though one of the Mau Mau leaders came up with the name of Jerome Cornelius, a businessman of Afrikander extraction, who had been lost in an aircrash the year previously. If a white man was directing Mau Mau operations in the Muranga district—which seemed to us highly unlikely, to say the least!—he must have made himself scarce soon after our big operation of June and July when the Mau Mau were virtually wiped out for the time being.” (James B. Bayley,
The Darkening Continent
, Union Movement pamphlet, 1956, p. 7.)

1954

3 June

Angkor Wat, Cambodia. The bodies of five French soldiers discovered in a temple. They had been tortured. The sixth soldier was still barely alive. The torture was evidently the work of Cambodian terrorists calling themselves the Cambodian Liberation Army. Before he died, the sixth man claimed that the terrorists had been led by a European whom they called Cornelius (Campaignes en Cambodie, Versins and Henneberg, Gallimard, Paris, 1963, p. 98.)

1955

18 July

Algeria. French intelligence contacts FLN officer who uses the pseudonym ‘Cornelius’ and gives information which leads to the death and capture of nearly twenty important members of the FLN. (Peter B. Saxton,
The Sun is Setting
, Howard Baker, 1969, p. 103.)

30 July

Nicosia, Cyprus. Eight Cypriot terrorists are captured by British troops in the Hotel Athena. Before the captives can be transported to prison a counter-attack takes place and they are rescued. The only survivor of the raid is Corporal John Taylor who says that the raid was led by a masked man whom one of the captives addressed as Cornelius. (
Daily Sketch
, 1 August.)

1956

October

Suez Crisis. “It was rumoured that Eden had received a report from a Foreign Office man in Cairo called Cornelius. The report advised immediate occupation of the Canal Zone. This report, so it was said, was what finally decided Eden to give the necessary orders.” (Sir Hugh Platt,
The Defence of Suez
, Collins, 1960, p. 17.)