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.

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.

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 Nazi 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’Brien.

This brings me to two of the leading Nazi 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-Nazi 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, dashing 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 Nazi agent:

In 1922, a Russian emigre, born in Petrograd and christened Peter Afanassieff or Aphanassieff, came to the United States seeking his fortune, preferably in the form of a wealthy heiress. As an ordinary run-of-the-mill Afanassieff, 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 titles. So overnight Peter Afanassieff 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.

Afanassieff 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 penmanship 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 Afanassieff and served his sentence under that name.

When he came out he alternated between being Prince Kushubue and an ordinary Afanassieff and then, because the 1930 crash had kicked the bottom out of the market for foreign titles, 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 Nazi agents.

Jung and the ex-convict hit it up. Before long Armstrong became Jung’s secret agent N (Jung is N 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 N’s reports to the N Guy appears on the opposite page.)

It was not long after Jung introduced Armstrong to Nazi agents that the White Russian decided that he could work the racket himself. He began to meet secretly with Nazi 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," were Armstrong, Captain Victor DeKayville, J.K. Leibl (who organized an underground Nazi 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 Nazi 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 Nazi 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 Nazis and the White Russians as a good sucker because he had contributed money to Jung.

The White Russians and the Nazi agents then decided to start a publishing business as the first step to attract followers. They issued a paper called the Gentile Front. They were extremely careful to keep the editorial and publication addresses secret. All mail was sent only to Post Office Box N in the old Chicago Post Office. The company was named the Patriotic Publishing Co. and with the utmost secrecy editorial offices were established at 5 S. Wabash in Chicago and the paper printed in the basement at 4233 N. Kildare where the Merrimac Press functioned.

Subsequently, to throw anyone who might be watching them off the trail, they changed the name of the publishing company to the Right Cause Publishing Co. and issued an avalanche of Nazi propaganda. It was through this secretly organized and secretly functioning propaganda center that Harry A. Jung, ultra-"patriot,” distributed printed attacks on Roosevelt just before the Presidential election.

The American Gentile, backed by Nazi money, published the most insane rantings imaginable. But when one is inclined to dismiss them as insanity, one remembers that it was the same sort of stuff Hitler used in winning millions of bewildered Germans to his banner. The pre-election issue (October, 1936) of the Gentile will serve as an illustration of what they published and distributed through the United States mails:

Former Congressman Louis T. McFadden died on October 1 from a stroke. He was sixty years old. The American Gentile, however, implied that he had been murdered by Jews; Senator Bronson Cutting (killed in an airplane crash) also was murdered by Jews. Huey Long was murdered by Jews. Walter A. Liggett, the newspaper editor, was murdered by Jews, and it was an international ring of Jewish bankers who hired Booth to murder Abraham Lincoln.

Of course it was crazy, but the coal digger in Kentucky or the bedeviled farmer in the Middle West who couldn’t pay his taxes or the unemployed worker in an industrial center who couldn’t find a job did not know history any too well nor understand the workings of the economic system; and when they were told by newspapers brought to them by the United States Government mails that their economic difficulties were due to a Jewish-Communist plot, that Roosevelt was a Jew and was controlled by Jews and Communists, some of them were prone to believe it. With this irresponsible propaganda anti-semitism grew. Men and women were attracted to the Nazi web without dreaming of the forces disseminating the propaganda of the motives behind them.

The most capable of those drawn into the Nazi propaganda machine were chosen for more serious work. Some were used for propaganda; others were given definite espionage assignments. The espionage and propaganda divisions of the Nazi machine in this country are separate bodies. They overlap only in serving as a recruiting ground.

The smuggling of anti-democratic propaganda off Nazi ships entering American ports was exposed by the McCormick Congressional Committee, but it stopped only for a brief period. The Nazi ships which bring in propaganda also bring secret instructions to agents here and take back their reports. To eliminate tell-tale evidence, Dr. George Gyssling, Nazi Consul in Los Angeles, has paid out cash to leaders of the German propaganda machine on the West Coast. Affidavits to this effect are in my possession.

The headquarters for the West Coast propaganda machine which dabbles a little in espionage, is the Deutsches Haus, 634 th Street, Los Angeles. The building is supposed to be merely a meeting place for German-Americans and sympathizers of the Hitler regime. Actually its functions are far more sinister.

The Deutsches Haus, before it was turned into a center of Nazi activity, had been a typical Los Angeles home. When the Nazis took it over, they ripped out several of the front rooms and turned it into a barn-like affair with a skylight overhead and a raised platform from which speakers sing the praises of Hitler and fascism. In the rear part of the hall is a combined bar and restaurant where the German-Americans drink their beer and whiskies and plot the smuggling of propaganda from Nazi ships and the carrying on of espionage against American military and naval forces.

I use the word “plot” for precisely what it means. From this house, naturalized American citizens and native Americans direct espionage and propaganda activities paid for by a foreign government and designed against the peace and security of the United States.

The leader of this group, Hermann Schwinn, was appointed by Minister of Propaganda Goebbels in Germany and is the recipient of personal letters of praise from Adolf Hitler for his work. Schwinn is a naturalized citizen, a comparatively young man in his early thirties, ruddy-faced and with a thin, quivering mustache on his upper lip. This little Fuehrer’s office is just off the meeting hall and adjoins the small bookstore where the purchaser can get pamphlets, books, and newspapers attacking democracy.

When I called upon Schwinn at the Nazi headquarters and introduced myself, he smiled amiably and granted my request for an interview. The German-American Bund, he explained immediately (the reorganized Friends of the New Germany), is now a patriotic organization, consisting only of American citizens.

The German-American Bund, Schwinn continued as we seated ourselves in his office, was now a “patriotic organization striving to create among Americans a better understanding of Nazi Germany, to combat anti-Nazi propaganda and the boycott against Germany, and to fight Communism.” He took about ten minutes to explain their peaceful objectives and their great love for the United States.

“Everything is America for the Americans and to fight all alien theories and interests?” I asked, summing up his explanation.

“That’s right,” he beamed.

“Does any propaganda come from Germany to help save America for the Americans?”

“No, sir!” he said. “We have nothing to do with Germany; we are Americans first. Mr. Dickstein says that there is propaganda coming, but he was never able to prove any of his statements.”

“Then how does propaganda like World Service from Erfurt, Germany, get into this country?”

“Oh, I get it,” he said casually. “Anyone can subscribe to it for a dollar and a half a year. We get two or three copies around here by subscription, of course.”

“There must be a lot of subscribers in the United States for I’ve seen a great many copies. I thought that perhaps it comes in batches from Germany for distribution here so members of the Nazi groups in the United States could use it to help save America for the Americans.”

“No,” he smiled. “It’s all a subscription matter.”

“I see. Do you know Captain George Trauernicht?”

Schwinn shot a startled glance at me and nodded slowly. “Yes,” he said, “he’s Captain of the Hapag Line ship ‘Oakland.’”

“Do you ever visit him?”

“Yes; he was here last week.”

“Doesn’t he bring batches of World Service and other propaganda for you every time he comes into port?”

“No,” Schwinn said sharply. “The visits I pay him are purely social. Just to drink a glass of good German beer.”

“Do you usually pay social visits carrying a brief case?”

“Now, wait a minute,” he protested. “Don’t write down the answer until I think.”

I stopped typing on his office machine which he had permitted me to use to take verbatim notes of the interview and waited while he thought. After a lengthy silence I added:

“You had a brief case on Thursday when you visited him.”

He continued thinking for a little longer and then said that he thought he had had a brief case on that trip.

“But why do you ask me that?” he demanded. “There was nothing in that brief case.”

“Sure there was. The brief case always contains reports you send back to Germany and instructions from Germany are brought to you by Captain Trauernicht as well as other captains of German ships docking here and in San Diego.”

“I have never taken off propaganda nor given nor received reports,” Schwinn insisted. “Somebody told you something and you’ve got it all wrong.”

“Suppose I mention a few instances. At four o’clock on Monday afternoon, March 9, 1936, your beer-drinking friend, Captain Trauernicht, waited for you at the gangplank of his boat for your ‘social’ visit. What he wanted was the package of sealed reports from Nazi agents throughout the United States which you were bringing in your brief case. In due time you arrived and gave him the reports. Then you started on a drinking spree ”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Schwinn interrupted.

“Maybe I can refresh your memory. That was the evening the Captain took a lady from Beverly Hills, to the first mate’s cabin remember? You know, the lady who lives on North Crescent Drive shall I mention her name?”

Schwinn’s face turned an apoplectic red and he became quiet.

“On Monday, February 10, 1936,” I continued. “Reinhold Kusche, leader of the O.D. unit in your organization and a ‘patriotic’ naturalized American citizen, was on board the steamer ‘Elbe’ docked in Los Angeles harbor. He telephoned to one of your Nazi agents, Albert Voigt, that the Captain was sailing at five o’clock for Antwerp and was furious because the agents’ reports had not yet been delivered to him. Kusche told Voigt to bring the reports in a hurry which Voigt promptly did.

“On Tuesday evening, May 12, 1936, the Captain of the Nazi ship ‘Schwaben’, which had just arrived from Antwerp, Belgium, came to your office and handed you a sealed package of orders and propaganda. He laid it on your desk in this room. The package contained copies of World Service which is obtainable, you remember, only by subscription at a dollar and a half a year.”

“It is not true ” Schwinn interrupted excitedly.

“I have a copy from the batch he brought to you. But let’s continue. On Monday, June 8, 1936, you yourself went to the Nazi ship ‘Weser’ and gave the captain secret reports to take back to Germany and left with secret orders he had brought over orders sealed in brown, manila paper and a large package of Fichte-Bund propaganda. I have a copy from that batch, too.”

Schwinn stared at me and then smiled. “You can’t prove anything,” he said with assurance.

“I have affidavits about all these items and more affidavits from men on board the Nazi ships.”

“It’s impossible!” he exclaimed. “No German on the ship would dare to sign an affidavit!”

“But I have them,” I repeated.

“You intend to publish them?” he asked, a cunning look appearing in his eyes.

His eagerness to discover who had given me affidavits was funny and I laughed. “I’ll publish the information contained in them,” I explained. “The names of the signers will be given only to an American governmental or judicial body which may look into your ‘patriotic’ activities. But let’s get on. Do you know the Nazi Consul in Los Angeles Dr. George Gyssling?”

He sat silently for a moment as if hesitating whether to speak.

“Don’t be afraid to talk,” I said. “The Consul isn’t. You know, of course, that he does not like you?”

A deep red flush suffused his face. “It’s mutual!” he said. “I know he talks ”

Throughout the interview Schwinn tried almost pathetically, despite his obvious dislike of Gyssling, to cover up the Consul’s interference in American affairs. When I told Schwinn I had affidavits showing that Rafael Demmler, President of the Steuben Society of Los Angeles, got two hundred dollars in April, 1936, from the Nazi Consul to help maintain the Deutsches Haus as a center of Nazi propaganda, he shook his head bewilderedly; and when I pointed out that he himself got one hundred and forty-five dollars in cash from the Nazi Consul on Tuesday, April 28, 1936, to cover expenses incurred by Schwinn in the effort to bring the German-American groups together for the better dissemination of Nazi propaganda, his face turned alternately white and red and finally he exploded:

“Did Gyssling tell you that?”

“I’m not saying who told it to me. But let’s get on with some of your other ‘patriotic’ activities. On Thursday, June 18, 1936, you visited Captain Trauernicht in company with Count von Buelow ”

For the first time since the interview began Schwinn sat upright in his chair as if I had struck him. All the other subjects had left him slightly disturbed but still with an obvious sense that he was not on particularly dangerous ground. But at the mention of Von Buelow’s name a look of actual fear spread over his face.

“On that day,” I continued, “you and the Count went directly to the Captain’s cabin where you handed over your reports ”

“What are you getting at?” Schwinn demanded sharply.

“I’m getting at the Count. What do you know about him?”

“Nothing. I know nothing about him. I’ve met him, that’s all.”

“Have you ever visited his home at Point Loma, San Diego?”

Schwinn stared at me without answering.

“Have you ever been there?” I repeated.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“Did you ever observe how, through his study windows, you could see almost everything going on at the American naval base ”

“I have nothing to say,” Schwinn interrupted excitedly.

Among the men sent here directly by Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s right-hand man, is a former German-American businessman named Meyerhofer. This Nazi came here with special instructions from Hess, a personal friend of his, to reorganize the Nazi machine in the United States. He arrived early in 1935 posing as a businessman. After consultations with Nazi leaders in New York, including the Nazi Consul General, he went to Detroit to confer with Fritz Kuhn, national head of the German-American Bund. From Detroit he went to Chicago where he held more conferences with Nazi agents and then went directly to Los Angeles for conferences with Schwinn, Von Buelow and other secret agents operating in the United States. Meyerhofer’s mission was not only to reorganize the propaganda machine but to try to place it on a self-supporting basis so that in the event of war when funds from Germany would be cut off, an efficient Nazi machine could continue functioning.

It was with this knowledge in mind that I asked Schwinn what he knew about Meyerhofer. At the mention of his name the Nazi leader for the West Coast again showed a flash of fear. He hesitated a little longer than usual and then said in a low voice, “He is a member of our organization. He came from Germany about thirty or forty years ago.” Suddenly he added, “He’s an American citizen.”

“I know he’s an American citizen. But are you sure he didn’t come from Germany on his latest trip in January of last year?”

Schwinn smiled a little wryly. “He might have,” he said in the same low tone.

“He’s a personal friend of Rudolf Hess ”

“Listen!” Schwinn exclaimed. “You’re on the wrong track!”

“Maybe; but what’s his business here?”

“He’s a businessman!”

“What’s his business?”

Schwinn shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said and then with growing excitement, “I tell you you’re on the wrong track!”

“Then what are you so excited about?”

“Because you’re on the wrong track ”

“Okay. I’m on the wrong track and you know nothing about Nazi spies. Do you know of the visits paid by the Japanese Consul in Los Angeles to Nazi ships when they come into port and of his conferences with Nazi captains ”

“The Japanese! We have nothing to do with the Japanese. We are a patriotic group ”

“Yes, I know. What do you know about Schneeberger?”

Schwinn answered with an “M-m-m-m.” His jaw bones showed against the ruddy flesh of his cheeks. He stared up at the ceiling. “He was a Tyrolian peasant boy,” he said without looking at me. “A boy traveling around the world; you know, just chiseling his way around ”

“Just a bum, eh?”

“That’s it,” he agreed quickly. “Just a bum.”

“What would your connections be with bums? Do you usually associate with Tyrolian bums who are chiseling their way around the world?”

“Oh, he just came here like so many other people. He wanted money; so I gave him a little help and he went to San Francisco and Oakland. He vanished. I haven’t any idea where he might be now. Maybe he’s in Chicago now.”

“He couldn’t possibly be in Japan now, could he?”

“He spoke of going to Japan,” Schwinn admitted.

“You saw him off on a Japanese training ship which the Japanese Government sent here from the Canal Zone, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know,” he said defiantly. “I know nothing about him.”

“The treaty between Japan and Germany providing for exchange of information about Communists was signed November 25, 1936. But in September, 1936, Schneeberger told you he was leaving on a Japanese training ship for Japan. No training ship was expected on the West Coast at that time by the United States port authorities, and yet a Japanese training ship appeared ordered here from the Canal Zone. It was on this ship that Schneeberger left. Apparently, then, the Nazis and the Japanese had already been working together and you were cooperating because you took Schneeberger around. You took him to Count von Buelow’s home at Point Loma, overlooking the American naval base. You know that Schneeberger was not broke because he was spending money freely ”

“He was broke,” Schwinn interrupted weakly.

“If he was so broke, how do you account for his carrying around an expensive camera and always having plenty of film with which to photograph American naval and military spots?”

“I don’t know. Maybe he carried the camera around to hock in case he went broke.”

The absurdity of the excuse was so patent that I laughed. Schwinn smiled a little.

“All right. What do you know about a man named Maeder?”

Again that long, drawn-out “M-m-m-m.” A long pause and Schwinn said, “Maeder is an American citizen, I believe.”

“Yes; you are, too. But what’s his business in this country?”

“I don’t know,” Schwinn said helplessly. “I really don’t know.”

“You know nothing about his activities or observations of American naval and military bases? Do you usually take in members without knowing anything about them?”

“Sometimes we do and sometimes we do not ”

“But orders were sent from Germany to make this an American organization ”

Schwinn nodded without admitting it verbally.

“And since you throw out all Germans who are not American citizens, you check with the Consul General in New York as to whether they are fit ”

“We have nothing to do with the Consul General ”

“What happened to Willi Sachse who used to be a member here?”

“He is supposed to have gone back to Germany.”

“Have you heard from him from Germany?”

“No; I haven’t heard since he left.”

“You received a letter recently from him from San Francisco where he is watching foreign vessels ”

“Oh,” said Schwinn, raising his hands in a helpless gesture, “I know you have spies in my organization.”

We talked a little longer of visits he made to Nazi agents in the Middle West and in New York, of secret conferences with propagandists and spies. But he refused to do any more than shrug his shoulders at all new questions.

“I have said too much already,” he said.