The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II (27 page)

The crowd around the two women melted away. Everyone in the Nazi hierarchy knew that Eva Braun was the führer’s long-time romantic interest.

The blue blood among the indicted six was Douglas A. Chandler, who was born in Chicago and made a stab at being a freelance newspaper columnist after World War I. A few years later, he hit it big, being married to a Pittsburgh heiress, Laura Jay Wurtz. She was the great granddaughter of John Jay, the first chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the daughter of a wealthy inventor, Alexander Jay Wurtz.

In the early 1930s, Chandler, mainly through his prestige connections, got a job as assistant city editor of the Baltimore Sunday American. In the months ahead, Chandler became convinced that a “Jewish conspiracy” was trying to take over the United States. So he and Laura moved to Europe, living like nomads (rich ones) in several countries before settling down in a small town in the Black Forest of Germany.

After roving Europe for several years as a stringer (freelance operator) for a popular American magazine, National Geographic, Chandler was in Berlin when he met an executive of the German radio propaganda broadcasting organization, who signed him on as a commentator for the North American zone.

In January 1942, a month after Hitler declared war on the United States, Chandler began making fifteen-minute broadcasts several times a week. He was the highest paid commentator in the North American zone stable. His shrill commentaries followed the customary Nazi clichés, his prime target being President Roosevelt and his administration.

In one broadcast, Chandler nominated Roosevelt for the “Meddle Medal,” for implementing “Jewish plans for world domination.” Another: “By all means, let Pearl Harbor be avenged, but not upon the Japanese, who have been forced into this struggle, but upon the real author of this war, the Jews.”

Robert Best may have been the professional journalist of those indicted by the Washington grand jury. Born in Sumter, South Carolina, the son of a Methodist preacher, he graduated from the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism in New York City. Soon he obtained a job with the Berlin Bureau of United Press, but only as a stringer.

During the years leading up to World War II, Best became more bitter as his colleagues were promoted and he remained a stringer. He decided that he had become a victim of “Jewish interests.”

After Pearl Harbor, when American correspondents were being ejected from the Third Reich, Best wrote Berlin and asked to stay so he could play a role in the “construction of a new [Nazi] federation in Europe.” He not only gained approval to remain, but he was hired as a radio commentator for the North American zone.

On April 10, 1942, Best went on the air as “Mr. Guess Who,” and six weeks later, when he felt he had grabbed an audience in the United States, he disclosed his true identity. This new voice was the most shrill and emotionally fierce of any of the American propagandists, and he fired an ongoing babble denouncing “Jews and Jewed-up gentiles” in the United States.

Best also commented on current topics on the far-flung battlefields. When Allied forces invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, he cautioned listeners in America that “now will begin a flow of death for the USA. . . .”

No doubt the American traitors broadcasting Nazi propaganda to the United States must have been convinced that Germany would win the war. They had to be aware that every word they spoke on the radio was being recorded by monitoring stations on the eastern seaboard of the United States and in England, and that, if Hitler lost, they would be held accountable for their actions.

After the war ended in Europe, a roundup of the American Nazi propagandists was launched:

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Edward Delaney was brought to the United States in 1947 and told a jury that he was being prosecuted for speaking out against the Soviets. The jury agreed, and the indictment was dismissed.

Constance Drexel faced a U.S. federal court in 1948, and the judge dismissed the indictment on the grounds her remarks were only “cultural.” Fred Kaltenbach never was brought to trial. He had been captured by the Soviets and died suddenly—and mysteriously—in late 1945.

Douglas Chandler was found guilty of treason in 1948 and sentenced to life in prison. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy commuted the remainder of his sentence.

Jane Anderson was arrested in Austria in 1947. In view of her Spanish citizenship, the United States declined to prosecute her. Robert Best, in a trial in Boston in 1947, was given a life term in prison.
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A Picture Stuns the Nation

A
LL AROUND THE WORLD
in 1943, momentous events were unfolding as the tide of war began to inexorably tilt toward the Allies. After the Italians suffered a major disaster in losing the Mediterranean island of Sicily, mild-mannered King Victor Emmanuel III summarily fired Benito Mussolini, who had been a virtual dictator for twenty-one years. On September 8, Italy surrendered and joined the Allies in the war against Germany.

Countless newspapers on home-front America trumpeted the identical theme: one down (Italy) and two to go (Germany and Japan).

At the same time, the mighty German army had suffered devastating defeats at Stalingrad and elsewhere to the Soviets. In the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur’s forces in the Southwest Pacific and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s largely Marine Corps outfits in the Central Pacific were leapfrogging toward Tokyo.

In Washington, Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War Information (OWI), took note of accumulated evidence that the people of America were starting to believe that the war was about over and growing complacent and overconfident. Absenteeism in war plants had accelerated in recent weeks.

An OWI-sponsored poll gave warning to President Roosevelt that the public had gained the impression that “soldiers fight, that some of them get hurt but they ride away smiling in ambulances, and that none of them get badly wounded or spill any blood.”

Since America’s entry into the global conflict, it had been the policy of the Roosevelt administration to shield the home front from gruesome photographs taken in battle. Combat cameramen could and did take pictures they chose, but censors confiscated any that showed dead or severely wounded GIs.

Not until America had been in the war for two years would Washington permit the release of pictures of dead Americans. (Author’s collection)

Thousands of these forbidden photos were locked up in a War Department vault known to insiders as the Chamber of Horrors.

Now Roosevelt gave the green light to the OWI to release harsher photographs for publication. The idea was to prepare home-front America for the huge GI casualties yet to come, provide a powerful antidote to rising war-plant absenteeism, and curb excessive grumbling by citizens over minor inconveniences.

Consequently, in September 1943, shockwaves struck home-front America when Life magazine published a picture of three GIs sprawled in death on a beach in New Guinea. These images had been carefully selected so as not to disclose any blood or mutilations.

An OWI analysis disclosed that the released photograph produced the desired effect, “bringing the realities of war closer to home.” Absenteeism was greatly reduced, War Bond sales soared, and scrap drives took on a new vigor.
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A Tragedy in St. Louis

T
HOUSANDS OF EXCITED ONLOOKERS
packed sun-drenched Lambert Field, the busy airport in St. Louis, Missouri, to watch a demonstration of a CG-4A glider,

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Glider loaded with political and civic leaders plunges earthward before thousands of onlookers at Lambert Field. (St. Louis Globe-Democrat)

the sixty-fifth one built by the local Robertson Aircraft Company. It was August 1, 1943.

Also present was an array of dignitaries who had been invited to take a ride as a means of expressing St. Louis’s support for the four regional firms building gliders.

Called by admirers the “most ugly beast that ever flew,” the CG-4A would be the workhorse of glider forces during the conflict. It was 48 feet long and had a wing span of 83.6 feet. So unique was its design that it could carry a payload of 4,060 pounds—620 more pounds than the glider’s empty weight.

Among eight guest passengers waiting to board the glider was St. Louis Mayor William Dee Becker, who, typically, was chomping on a cigar. He had arranged for a large banner that read “Buy War Bonds” to be attached to the tail of the craft. Now Becker was furious. The car that was to have brought the banner was nowhere to be seen (it had gotten stuck in heavy traffic).

Louise Becker, the mayor’s vivacious wife, was also angry. Unbeknownst to her husband, she had received an invitation from the president of Robertson Aircraft a few days earlier, inviting her to go along on the flight. Arriving at Lambert Field, she was politely informed by an Air Corps officer that the regulations forbid civilian women from flying in military aircraft.

Among the others following Mayor Becker into the glider were Henry L. Muller, presiding judge of the St. Louis County Court (the governing body of the jurisdiction); Thomas N. Dysart, president of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce; and William B. Robertson, head of Robertson Aircraft.

As the pilot and copilot prepared to begin the flight, Becker glanced outside to see wife Louise. He shrugged, meaning there was nothing he could do about leaving her on the ground.

There was a roar of engines as a C-47 transport plane ran down the runway with the glider in tow and lifted off. At three thousand feet, the C-47 circled back over the airport, where onlookers were squinting into the bright sunlight. Then the pilot of the plane hit the release lever, the cable between the two aircraft fell away routinely, and the glider soared gracefully for a short distance.

Suddenly, a sharp noise—many on the ground thought it was a clap of thunder. Then the right wing ripped away and shot upward. The glider began to plunge downward. A voice among the multitude shouted: “My God, they’ll all be killed!”

Seconds later with a mighty thud the CG-4A smashed into the ground. Everyone on board died instantly. A hush fell over the stupefied spectators.

News of the disaster left St. Louis in shock. Almost to a person, the citizens were convinced that the crash had been the dirty work of German and Japanese agents. But FBI investigators ruled that the disaster had been caused by a wing lift strut-to-fuselage fitting. That piece had been manufactured by the Gardner Metal Products Company of St. Louis, a subcontractor for Robertson. Ironically, in peacetime, Gardner built coffins.
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“Legal Kidnapping” by Soviet Thugs

A
T DAWN ON SEPTEMBER 5, 1943,
two policemen were walking their beat along the San Francisco docks when they spotted five men beating a struggling captive, who was then hauled aboard the Russian freighter Leonid Krasin. Because the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States, the policemen could only watch helplessly.

Soviet diplomats had total freedom of movement throughout the nation, a privilege not granted American diplomats in the Soviet Union. Although the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew that Soviet diplomats were linked to espionage operations in the United States, little could be done to thwart what had often been an arrogant disregard for the nation’s laws.