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.

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.ToList

[140]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 [141]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!"

Walter Dieckhoff, Badge No. 38117, living at 2654 E. 19th Street, Sheepshead Bay.

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; [142]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 [143]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.

"Why did you apply for a transfer from Staten Island to the Brooklyn Navy Yard?" I asked.

"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?"

"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."

He hesitated again and then said, "No, I do not make enough money for a bank account."

"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?"

"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?"

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.

[145]"When you went to Germany after working on the destroyers did anyone ever question you about them over there?"

He looked startled. "Well," he said, "my brother knew I worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We talked about it, naturally."

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."

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.

[146]"I understand your only son, Helmuth, is going to school in Langin, Germany?" I asked.

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?"

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.

[147]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."

"And you worked with Dieckhoff for six months on the same warships and never met him?"

"How come that if you never met him both of you applied for jobs at the Brooklyn Navy Yard at about the same time?"

"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.

"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."

"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?"

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.

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?"

"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?"

"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 fьr das Deutschtum im Ausland with headquarters in Berlin, letters [150]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.

The letters, freely translated, follow. The first is dated October 29, 1937, and was sent by Orgell from his home at Great Kills, S.I.:

Many thanks for your prompt reply. My complaint that one cannot get an answer from Chicago refers to the time prior to May, 1937.

I assume from your writing that it is not opportune any more to deliver further books to the Arbeitsgemeinschaft, etc.

The material which Mr. Balderman received came from the V.D.A.[21] It has been sent to our Central Book distributing place (Mirbt). If he wishes he can get more any time; that is, if you recommend it.

The thirty books for your Theodore Koerner School, which arrived this summer (via the German Consulate General in Chicago), also came from the V.D.A. If you need more first readers or study books, please write directly to me. Your request then goes immediately—without the official way via the Consulate and Foreign Office—to our Central Book distributing place. Please say how many you need and what else beside the first readers and primers[22] you need. I will take care that it will be promptly attended to. Fritz Kuhn, of course, has to be informed of your request and has to give his okay....

[151]Five days earlier Orgell had written to Gissibl: "You may perhaps remember that I am in charge of the work for the Volkbund fьr das Deutschtum im Ausland [23] for the U.S.A."

A letter the Dies Committee shelved—Carl G. Orgell identifying himself to Peter Gissibl as a representative of the People's Bund for Germans Living Abroad.ToList

On March 18, 1938, Gissibl, who had been taking instructions from Orgell, received the following letter from Stuttgart:

From your office manager. Comrade Mцller, I received a letter dated February 15. He informed me among other things that an exchange of youth is out of the question for this year. I regret this very much. I would like to see, in the interests of our common efforts, if we would have had youth all ready this year, especially also from your district. Perhaps it is [152]still possible with your support. The time, of course, which is still at our disposal, is very limited. This I can see clearly.

I will write to you again in greater detail soon. In the meantime you can perhaps send me more detailed information about the development of your school during the past weeks; I recommend again the fulfillment of your justified wishes wholeheartedly. Let us hope that the result might be achieved very soon towards which we in common strive.

On May 20, 1938, E.A. Vennekohl, of the People's Bund for Germans Living Abroad, wrote to Gissibl as follows:

We wrote you yesterday that the 3,000 badges for the singing festival would be sent to you via Orgell; for various reasons we have now divided the badges in ten single packages of which two each went to the following addresses: Friedrich Schlenz, Karl Moeller, Karl Kraenzle, Orgell and two to you.

Please inform your co-workers respectively and take care that in case duties have to be paid they should be laid out; please see to it that Orgell refunds the money to you later; this was the simplest and the only way by which the badges could be sent in order to arrive on time.

These documents in the hands of the Dies Committee show definite tie-ups between German propaganda divisions and agents in the United States (some of them came through the Nazi diplomatic corps), yet these documents were put aside. The letters from True, Allen, and others quoted in the previous chapter were also placed before the Congressional Committee. It refused to call the men involved.

Another letter connecting Gissibl with a German propaganda agency. This letter, translated in the text, was hardly noticed by the Dies Committee.ToList

Further evidence of Gissibl's tie-up with the People's Bund for Germans Living Abroad. This letter, a translation of which appears in the text, was also long withheld by the Dies Committee.ToList

[20] Formerly known as J. Parnell Feeney. He changed his name because he thought he could get along better in the business world with a name like Thomas than with a name as potently Irish as Feeney.

[22] The notorious Nazi Primer teaching children songs of hate against Jews and Catholics.

The activities of the few agents and propagandists described in the foregoing chapters do not, as I said in the preface, even scratch the surface of what seem to be widespread efforts to interfere in the internal affairs of the American people and their Government; but a few basic conclusions can reasonably be drawn from what little is known of the Fifth Column's operations.

Berlin-directed agents in foreign countries sometimes combine propaganda and espionage, frequently using the propaganda organizations as the bases for espionage. In the United States, so far as I have been able to ascertain, agents of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis are just beginning to cooperate. In the Central and South American countries, however, the axis has apparently agreed to a division of labor, each of the fascist powers assuming a specific field of activity.

Germany, Italy and Japan have already shown the extent to which they will go in their drive for raw materials vital to their industries and war machines. In Spain, the German and Italian Fifth Column organized and fomented a bloody civil war in order to establish a wide fascist area to the south of France, for Germany and Italy, of course, consider France a potential enemy in the next war. In France itself, German and Italian agents, aided by their Governments, built an amazing network of steel and concrete fortifications manned by at least 100,000 [156]heavily armed men—all this before France awoke to the treason within her own borders.

The strategy pursued by the Fifth Column in different countries falls into like patterns. In Austria, before it was swallowed, Nazi agents first established propaganda organizations as the bases from which to work. When, after the abortive attempt to seize the Austrian Government, the Nazis were made illegal, they went underground but continued to get aid from Germany. Eventually Berlin ordered Standarte II organized as a specific body prepared to provoke disturbances. When the Austrian police quelled them, the provocations enabled Germany to protest that German citizens were being attacked and mistreated. The activities of Standarte II, directed by the Gestapo, continued with increasing intensity until the unfortunate country was absorbed.

In Czechoslovakia the same strategy was followed: first the establishment of propaganda centers to which Nazis and Nazi sympathizers could gravitate—under the cloak of bodies seeking to improve relations between the Sudeten Germans and the Czech Government; then the utilization of propaganda headquarters and branches as centers for espionage. Shortly before the Munich Pact, Standarte II again came into being, creating disorders which, when Czech police tried to suppress them, enabled Germany to raise the cry that Czech subjects of German blood were being cruelly mistreated.

Invariably the aggressor nation raises a moral issue to cover up proposed acts of aggression. Italy wanted to "civilize the Ethiopians" by dropping bombs on defenseless women and children. Germany and Italy openly sent aid to Franco "to keep Spain from being Bolshevized." And so on. The broad "moral issue" on the international field to cover up aggressions by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis is "Communism." The axis, announced as having been formed "to exchange information about Communism," is really a military alliance now generally [157]recognized. With the same issue, the axis is now boring into the Western Hemisphere. Actually the reasons seem to be military and not missionary.

Germany, especially, has sent and is sending agents not only to carry on espionage but to organize groups for political pressure upon the American republics. I very much doubt, from all I have been able to learn, if the motive is primarily to win the Americas over to the joys of totalitarian government or to the theory of Aryan supremacy. The money and the effort seem to be expended for more practical reasons. The Bunds can exert not only political pressure, but can develop natives with fascist leanings into the spies and saboteurs so badly needed in war time; for this reason it is worth the enormous effort and money it is costing the aggressor nations.

When the long expected war breaks, neither Europe nor the Far East will be in a condition to supply war materials and foodstuffs to the warring countries. The chief sources of raw materials will be the Western Hemisphere. A strong foothold in the Americas means a tremendous advantage in the coming struggle, since materials are as important to an army as is man power. And, should the fascist powers be unable to get these raw materials for themselves, secret agents can at least sabotage shipments to enemy countries—as did German agents in the United States during the first years of the World War, while we were still neutral.

Mexico, because of its enormous oil supplies, plays an important part in fascist military strategy. Consequently, we find intensive efforts by the axis, and especially Germany, to overthrow the Cбrdenas Government because it is avowedly anti-fascist. A fascist government, helped into power by the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis, could be depended upon to supply much needed oil in war time.

The United States, as one of the world's greatest sources of raw materials and foodstuffs, is an even more important factor. [158]Germany has not forgotten that its armies had the Allies on their knees when American supplies and American man power turned their imminent victory into defeat; should America be on the side of the democracies as against the fascist powers, sabotaging shipments of supplies and men will be as important as crushing an enemy line.

The tactics utilized in the Western Hemisphere by the Fifth Column are similar to those used in Europe. Propaganda machines, masquerading as organizations designed to promote better relationships between a fascist and an American nation, are set up. Fascist movements are organized, usually from across national boundaries. In Mexico, Nazi agents operating out of the United States organized the Gold Shirts; subsequently, as in Austria, a Putsch was attempted (in 1935 and again in 1938). The storing of arms in Sonora by General Yocupicio, who is working with Nazi agents, promises another rebellion when the time seems ripe.

In Central America, the axis is presenting small republics with gifts of arms in efforts to win their friendship. Agents sent from Germany are establishing Nazi centers and the home Government is supplying them with propaganda. In Panama the situation is somewhat more sharp. There Japan has always had an intense interest in the Canal. In the axis, Germany has become a co-worker since she has large colonies in Brazil and Colombia, next door to the Panama Canal. These colonies are now being organized at a feverish pace while the countries themselves are deluged with propaganda over special short-wave beams. In Brazil, a Nazi-directed abortive Putsch took place in 1938.

These activities point to an objective which certainly is not calculated to be in the interest of the United States and our Monroe Doctrine. From all indications the efforts appear directed toward ringing the United States with fascist countries, or at least countries with fascist bodies capable of giving the [159]United States a headache should she ever be involved in a war with one or all of the axis powers.

In the United States itself we find that the strategy is the same as that followed in Austria, Czechoslovakia and in countries of the Western World. The German-American Bund functions "to promote better relations between the United States and Germany," but the efforts consist of persistent anti-American and anti-democratic propaganda and, within the past year or two, of serving as a base for military and naval spies.

With Germany directing the strategy, her agents in all countries raise the issue of the "menace of the Jew and the Catholic," with especial emphasis upon the Jew; the Catholics are still too strong for the Nazis to come to grips with at this time.

The Federal Government, of course, has ample legal machinery for prosecuting spies, but espionage is only part of the broad Nazi campaign against this democratic Government. So far as the Western World is concerned, the Federal Government has already taken steps to try to counteract the short-wave broadcasts by German and Italian government-controlled stations. Counter broadcasts are being employed as a defensive measure, and though of value, will probably not completely counteract fascist "news" agencies supplying propaganda in the guise of news, free of charge, to the Central and South American newspapers as well as printed propaganda sent from Germany and distributed by the bunds. Outside of military action, economic pressure seems to be the only language the fascist governments understand, and a little of that pressure by the American Government would probably make them understand our resentment at their invasion far more than broadcasts and general talk about a family of nations in the Western Hemisphere.

Our laws and courts provide a machinery which can be used to prevent any infringement upon the democratically constituted rights of the people. It is of vital importance, however, that preparations for fascist lawlessness be vigilantly uprooted. The [160]Italian and German people made just this fatal mistake of tolerating the activities of Mussolini's and Hitler's gangs until they grew strong enough to seize power and crush every sign of democracy.

There is no reason why a great people, attacked by a pernicious ideology, cannot counteract such propaganda with greater and more intelligent propaganda to educate our people to the advantages of democracy—to what fascism really means to everyone, including the big industrialists and financiers, some of whom have been flirting with fascism. The Government, however, can and should be instructed by the representatives of the people, to take proper steps to stop the infiltration of Nazi agents and propagandists into this country.

There are various other and perhaps more practical and useful steps which can be taken, but those can be worked out once the people awake to the danger of permitting fascist propaganda to go on, and sentiment becomes strong enough to put an end to foreign-directed activities here.

This book has been produced wholly under union conditions. The paper was made, the type set, the plates electrotyped, and the printing and binding done in union shops affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. All employees of Modern Age Books, Inc., are members of the Book and Magazine Guild, Local No. 18 of the United Office and Professional Workers of America, affiliated with the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

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