Secret Armies Part 18

"I didn't ask that. Did you have the run of the ship while everybody else was asleep when you were on watch?"

"Yes," he said in a low voice.

"How did you happen to work in the Brooklyn Navy Yard?"

"Oh, I don't know. I like to work for the Government."

"Have you a bank account?"

"Yes."

"What bank?"

"Oh, I don't know, it's some place on Church Avenue."

"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?"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"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 doc.u.mentary evidence of n.a.z.i 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 doc.u.ments.

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 fur das Deutschtum im Ausland_ with headquarters in Berlin, letters from the foreign division headquarters in Stuttgart, and from Orgell to Gissibl.

Gissibl was in constant touch with n.a.z.i propaganda headquarters in Germany, receiving instructions and reporting not only on general activities, but especially upon the opening by the n.a.z.is here of schools for children in which n.a.z.i 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.:

Dear Mr. Gissibl:

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 a.s.sume 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....

With German greetings, CARL G. ORGELL.

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

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

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

Dear Peter:

From your office manager. Comrade Moller, 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 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.

Hearty greetings from house to house.

In loyal comradeship, Yours, G. MOSHACK.

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

Dear Comrade Gissibl:

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.

With the German people's greetings, E.A. VENNEKOHL.

These doc.u.ments 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 n.a.z.i diplomatic corps), yet these doc.u.ments 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Another letter connecting Gissibl with a German propaganda agency. This letter, translated in the text, was hardly noticed by the Dies Committee.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.]

FOOTNOTES:

[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.

[21] n.a.z.i propaganda center for foreign countries with headquarters in Germany.

[22] The notorious n.a.z.i Primer teaching children songs of hate against Jews and Catholics.

[23] People's Bund for Germans Living Abroad.

_Conclusion_

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 a.s.suming a specific field of activity.