Andrew Nagorski - Hitlerland

When everyone dutifully showed up on Sunday morning, they found the embassy surrounded by troops and occupied by the Gestapo. The Americans were then bussed to the Potsdamer train station, where they boarded a special train. Their destination: Bad Nauheim, a spa town near Frankfurt. They were told they would be held there until an exchange could be arranged for the German diplomats and journalists who were being held in the United States. So began the last act for the Americans in Germany, which, in keeping with many of their earlier experiences, demonstrated that they still maintained a privileged status.

The detained Germans in the United States fared very well. They did their time, as it were, at the Greenbrier, the plush spa hotel in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, which had no problem accommodating them. By contrast, Jeschke’s Grand Hotel in Bad Nauheim, which eventually accommodated a total of 132 Americans after a few more were added from occupied Europe, was hardly prepared for the sudden influx of boarders. It had been closed at the start of the war in September 1939, and basic services like heat, water and electricity had been cut off. In the interim, heating pipes had burst during the winter months. In January and February 1942, as temperatures dropped, the Americans would keep their overcoats on when they went to the dining room and then rush back to their beds to keep warm. Of course, these were hardly hardships compared to what was happening elsewhere in occupied Europe. Nonetheless, the Americans had been promised special treatment, and they were quick to complain whenever they felt it came up short.

The most constant complaints were about food. German officials maintained that the detainees were receiving 150 percent of the normal German civilian rations, and the Americans didn’t doubt it. But even that preferential diet was a far cry from what most of the detainees had been used to in Berlin. “This showed us how tightly the Germans had pulled in their belts,” Lochner wrote in an AP dispatch after he returned home. He added that, during the five months they ended up spending in Bad Nauheim, American men on average lost 10 pounds and women 6.7 pounds; in extreme cases, he added, there were losses of 35 pounds. All of which hardly constituted evidence of genuine hardship.

After they returned home, many of the Americans were reluctant to talk too much about their complaints at the time, recognizing how petty they sounded—particularly as they learned more about how Germans were treating most of their captives. SS Captain Valentin Patzak, who was in charge from the German side, worked closely with Kennan, who became the real leader of the Americans on a day-to-day basis, while Morris took a more passive role. To deal with the constant problems in the accommodations, the Germans simply went out and arrested whoever they needed—an electrician or plumber—assigning them to make repairs at the hotel before releasing them. Occasionally, food supplies from the abandoned U.S. Embassy in Berlin were delivered to the hotel.

Patzak also allowed the Americans to write letters, although they were subject to censorship. The detainees could not send telegrams, but they could receive them. Kennan and Morris were allowed to call the Swiss officials who represented U.S. interests in Berlin, which was the only permitted use of the phone. Much of the day-to-day handling of the Americans and their complaints was left to the two senior Americans, which minimized direct interactions between the Germans and most of their detainees. Kennan promptly organized a secretariat, which issued a variety of regulations. Morris insisted, for instance, that men had to wear coats and ties in the public rooms of the hotel, and that everyone had to assume responsibility for keeping their rooms clean. Another order read: “It is in the general interest not to listen to or pass on rumors.”

Rumors flew all the time, of course, especially about how long the detention would drag on. As weeks turned into months, the real challenge was in dealing with what Lochner called “a rather unique American experience in the art of fighting boredom.” But the detainees did pretty well in that department. The AP’s Ed Shanke had smuggled in a small RCA battery-operated shortwave radio, and he invited his friends to “choir practice” in his room at nine in the evenings to listen to the BBC news from London.

Alvin Steinkopf, another AP reporter, was a source of entertainment one day when he received a surprise visit from Otty Wendell, a waitress at Die Taverne, the journalists’ popular Berlin hangout. She had arranged for her family in Frankfurt to send her a telegram asking her to visit because someone was ill, and she went from there to Bad Nauheim, where she joined the Americans as they were taking a walk around the grounds. She brought liquor that Steinkopf shared with his colleagues, and then spent the night with him. The next morning as she tried to leave, the Gestapo arrested her. But, incredibly, Steinkopf managed to convince them to let her go and to cover up the incident, since the ease with which she had slipped into the hotel would reflect badly upon their guard duties.

But what really kept morale up was an expanding program of activities that the Americans organized. Two of the military attachés started a gymnastics class, and soon this was followed by the founding of “Badheim University,” with the motto “Education of the ignorant, for the ignorant, by the ignorant, shall not perish from the face of the earth.” For all the self-mockery, many of the classes were quite serious. Kennan taught a Russian history course that attracted a record 60 students, while other detainees taught classes in foreign languages, civics, philosophy and “Plains Indian Dancing.” A chorus attracted 24 members, and the internees also staged occasionally raucous skits, including some in drag.

The journalists put out several issues of the Bad Nauheim Pudding , which qualified as the only American newspaper left in occupied Europe. But they promptly got into arguments with Kennan about what could or couldn’t be published. The diplomat was intent on not doing anything to offend the German authorities, and he viewed the reporters as the rowdiest and least controllable members of the group.

The Americans were always looking for new physical activities as well. As the weather improved, they were allowed to take walks along a stream called the Usa—whose name provided fodder for endless jokes. But the real breakthrough came when Kennan won permission for the group to use a municipal athletic field for baseball games. One of the military attachés had brought some basic equipment, but most of the gear was homemade.

Wrapping champagne corks or golf balls with socks, cotton and other makeshift fillers, the medical staffers used adhesive tape and stitched together balls. Thuermer picked up a bough during one of the walks along the Usa, bringing it back to the hotel. There, United Press correspondent Glen Stadler used his sharp Finnish knife to carve it into a 33-inch bat, complete with a grip. Thuermer insisted on penciling in a “trademark” as well. (After leaving the bat for many years in his garage in Middleburg, Virginia, after the war, Thuermer donated it to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown.) Otherwise useless diplomatic pouches served as bases.

The games became very popular. About 50 men played on four teams—two for the diplomats, one for the military attachés and one for the journalists—and some of the women came to watch and cheer. Kennan, who played catcher for the Embassy Reds, was especially pleased that this activity provided a distraction from the daily carping about conditions in Bad Nauheim. The diplomat wrote later that he had responsibility “for disciplinary control of this motley group of hungry, cold, and worried prisoners” and “their cares, their quarrels, their jealousies, their complaints filled every moment of my waking day.”