Underground Armies in America

Early in 1938 native Americans, working with Nazi agents, completed plans to organize a secret army along the general lines of the Cagoulards in France. The decision was made after the liaison man between Nazi agents here and plotters for the secret army met with Fritz Kuhn and Signor Giuseppe Cosmelli, Counselor to the Italian Embassy in Washington.

The liaison man is Henry D. Allen, who moved from San Diego to 2860 Nina St., Pasadena, Calif. Allen, the reader may recollect, helped Schwinn organize the Mexican Gold Shirts which unsuccessfully attempted to seize the Mexican Government. Allen is still active in a plot to overthrow the Cardenas Government, working at the moment with Gen. Ramon F. Iturbe, a member of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, with Gen. Yocupicio who is smuggling arms as part of a plan to rebel, and with Pablo L. Delgado who took over the fascist Gold Shirt work under a different name after Rodriguez was exiled when his attempt to march on the Government failed.

To understand the feverish activities of foreign agents and native Americans working with foreign agents, one must remember that when the World War broke out in 1914, Germany was caught with only small espionage and sabotage organizations in the United States. It cost the German War Office large sums of money to build them under difficult and dangerous conditions. The Nazis do not intend to be caught the same way in the event a war finds the United States on the enemy side or, if neutral, supplying arms and materials to the enemy.

The first step to prevent such a development is to build an enormous propaganda machine and to draw into it as many native Americans as possible. Because of the future potentialities of natives as spies and saboteurs, the Nazi leaders take extraordinary precautions to safeguard their identities. Should the United States become involved in a war with fascist powers, especially Germany, the German members of the Bund can be watched and, if necessary, interned; but native Americans not known as Bund members can move about freely, hence the care to prevent their identities from becoming known. Schwinn, for instance, keeps a regular list of the German-American Bund members at the Deutsches Haus in Los Angeles. The native American members, however, are not listed. The names are kept in code and only Schwinn knows the code numbers.

Military considerations thus lead the Nazi General Staff to maintain this propaganda in the United States, despite the knowledge Nazi leaders in Germany have that its activities and distasteful propaganda here are seriously hampering German-American commercial relations.

The propaganda machine is already functioning as the German-American Volksbund. The second step, as was demonstrated in France with the Cagoulards and in Spain with Franco’s Fifth Column, is to organize secret armies capable of starting sporadic outbreaks tantamount to civil war a procedure which would naturally deflect the country’s energies in war time.

This second step was taken after careful study, and Henry D. Allen was chosen as the liaison man between those maneuvering the plot.

The private letters exchanged between Allen and his fellow conspirators are now in my possession. Some of the letters exchanged were signed with the writers’ real names and some with code names. Allen’s code name, for instance, is “Rosenthal.”

On April 13, 1938, he wrote to a “G.D.” (of whom more shortly) as follows:

Have just sent Delgado into Sonora incognito. This move has resulted from a four-party conference held in Yuma a few days ago. This party was composed of Urbalejo, chief of the Yaqui nation, Joe Mattus, his trusted lieutenant, Delgado and myself. Yocupicio has completely come over to our side, which you can perceive from the outcome of the little tryout in Aqua Prieta a few weeks ago. Delgado has arrived safely at Bocatete, and will get the boys in that part of the country pretty active.... Inasmuch as I am his legal and properly accredited representative in the United States, you may rest assured that there will be no doubt as to the objectives of this movement south of the Rio Grande.

I have received three letters from General Iturbe in which he tells me that they are taking the Spanish copies of the Protocols which K. sent me, and making 5,000 copies of same. In each letter he begs me to set a time and date for meeting him at Guadalajara for the purpose of effecting the necessary plans for active campaigning with Delgado. I will arrange all of this as soon as you consider it expedient....

ROSENTHAL.

Two days later (April 15, 1938) he wrote from Fresno, Calif. under his own name to F.W. Clark, 919-1/2 S. Yakima Ave., Tacoma, Wash. The letter reads in part:

Relative to the Gold Shirts of Mexico, please be advised that we found it necessary to reorganize this group in August, 1937. The activist elements have proceeded and are now carrying on under the name of the Mexican Nationalist Movement of which Pablo L. Delgado is the nominal head. I am the legal and personal representative of Delgado in the movement in the United States.

So much for his current activities to establish fascism to the south of us.

Most Americans who fall for Nazi propaganda do not suspect that they are being played for suckers by shrewd manipulators pulling the strings in Berlin, and probably not one of the many reputable and sincerely patriotic Americans who fell for Allen’s “patriotic” appeals suspects his activities against the country he so zealously wants to “save.”

Some shrewd observer once remarked that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” Whenever I come across an “ultra-patriot” with foam dripping from his mouth while he beats his chest with loud cries about his own honesty and the crookedness of those running the country, I suspect a phony. As a rule, I look for the criminal record of a man who’s yelling “Chase out the crooks” and “Let’s have honest government,” and all too often I find one. Henry D. Allen, alias H.O. Moffet, alias Howard Leighton Allen, alias Rosenthal, etc., ex-inmate of San Quentin and Folsom prisons, is no exception; his criminal record extends over a period of twenty-nine years.

Let me give the record before I start quoting from his letters, chiefly for the benefit of those sincere and loyal Americans who thought his Swastika-inspired activities represented honest convictions.

May 17, 1910: Arrested in Los Angeles charged with uttering fictitious checks. In simple language this means just a little bit of forgery. Los Angeles Police Department file, N.

June 10, 1910: Sentenced to three years imprisonment; sentence suspended upon tearful assurances of good behavior.

May 12, 1912: Picked up in Philadelphia charged with being a fugitive; brought back to Los Angeles.

July 1, 1912: Committed to San Quentin. Guest N.

April 21, 1915: Committed to Folsom from Santa Barbara on a forgery charge. Guest N.

Fe, 1919: Arrested in Los Angeles County charged with suspicion of a felony. Los Angeles County N.

June 31, 1924: Arrested in San Francisco, charged with uttering fictitious checks. N.

Oc, 1925: Los Angeles Police Department issued notice that Allen was wanted for uttering fictitious checks. Bulletin N.

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 th 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.