Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Anyone who expressed the slightest sympathy for Germany or the saboteurs was marked down as a possible subversive. A Los Angeles woman named Alice Haskell wrote a letter urging the president “to show that we have not lost all sense of justice and decency in our treatment of the fine German people who have not harmed us in any way, but who on the contrary have helped this nation mightily since revolutionary days.” Hoover instructed his agents to investigate the woman for security violations and report back “in the immediate future.”

Opinion polls showed the American public turning even more strongly against ethnic Germans. Fifty-one percent of those questioned in a government survey in July described German-Americans as the “most dangerous” ethnic group in the country, up from 46 percent in April. 27By contrast, 26 percent of those questioned were most concerned by Japanese-Americans, and only 1 percent by Italian-Americans.

First to feel the brunt of public outrage were the family members and friends of the saboteurs. Anyone who had dealt with the V-men during their two weeks of freedom was called in for questioning. On July 13, Biddle announced the arrest of “fourteen individuals” who “provided shelter” to the saboteurs or served as their “immediate contacts.” 28Those arrested included Kerling’s wife, Marie; his mistress, Hedy Engemann; his Bund friend, Helmut Leiner; most of Haupt’s relatives in Chicago; and the Jaques couple, who had agreed to look after Neubauer’s money belt. Dozens of Bundists and suspected Nazi sympathizers were rounded up for questioning.

Haupt’s parents took their disgrace particularly badly. A tearful Hans Haupt told reporters that it never entered his head that Herbie was a spy. “We cannot believe that our boy would turn against the country we taught him to love,” he pleaded. 29After his own arrest, he broke down completely, suffering hallucinations, refusing to eat, and slashing his wrists in a suicide attempt. One of the main accusations against the elder Haupt was that he purchased an automobile for his son, to be used for “sabotage activities,” including the recovery of the Florida arms cache.

The paranoid public mood affected ethnic Germans who had nothing at all to do with the saboteurs. Soon after the trial began, the Justice Department issued an order for the dismissal of German, Italian, and Japanese waiters, barbers, and busboys in the Washington area for fear they might overhear gossip from their well-connected clientele. The Washington Post reported that high officials were “deeply concerned about the amount of loose talk in Washington.” 30The front-page story noted that Germans were likely to be particularly hard hit by the dismissal order, as they were considered the “best waiters and are to be found in all firstclass hotels.”

Roosevelt shared the nation’s concerns about the dangers of subversion, and understood the thirst for retribution. The maneuverings of Royall and the other defense lawyers did not matter very much to him. If necessary, he told Biddle, he was prepared to follow the example of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War, and simply refuse to recognize the authority of the civilian courts. 31The fact that the president was meant to review any sentences issued by the military tribunal did not prevent him from discussing the verdict with members of his inner circle while the trial was still in progress.

“What should be done with them?” he asked his aide, William Hassett, when they got back to Hyde Park. “Should they be shot or hanged?” 32“Hanged by all means,” replied Hassett, who knew that George Washington had turned down a request by the British spy Major John André to be shot by firing squad because it was “too honorable” a death.

“What about pictures?” the president asked.

“By all means,” said Hassett enthusiastically, recalling the photographs of Mrs. Surratt and the other Lincoln conspirators swinging from the gallows in the hot summer sun. A good picture was worth “a million words.”

“Hope the findings will be unanimous,” FDR concluded. Hassett did not doubt he meant “unanimously guilty.”

FOR THE first two weeks of the military tribunal, the eight saboteurs had sat quietly along the corridor wall of room 5235, barely reacting to the arguments between Biddle and Royall. Now, for the first time, it was their turn to speak.

Royall decided to put Herbie Haupt on the witness stand first, depicting him as a naïve American boy who got dragged into the sabotage plot through a series of chance occurrences. Prodded by his attorney, Haupt described how he had run away from home to avoid getting married and wound up in the bureaucratic nightmare of Nazi Germany. He recalled the seemingly insane questions of the police and Gestapo—“how many fillings did I have in my teeth, where did I get them”—the impossibility of finding work, and finally the seemingly providential chance of returning to America on a secret mission.

He never intended to go through with the sabotage plan, Haupt insisted. Instead he planned to turn the other saboteurs over to the FBI on July 6, when Dasch and Kerling were due to arrive in Chicago following their meeting in Cincinnati. As for his purchase of a car, it had nothing to do with traveling back to Florida to pick up the sabotage gear, as the prosecution alleged. He wanted it for pleasure and to take his girlfriend Gerda on a honeymoon, after they got married. He had missed having an automobile in Germany.

Why wait until July 6 before going to the FBI, Biddle wanted to know when the time came for cross-examination. It was the obvious question, and Haupt’s answer was complex. In part, he said, he was “nervous” and did not want to be bothered. He also wanted to talk the matter over with the others when they came to Chicago. He did not believe that any of them—at least the members of the Florida group—intended to blow anything up. “After what Neubauer told me in Chicago, I knew he was not going through with it. I knew how nervous Kerling and Thiel were, and knew they would not go through with it. I would be a lovely fellow to go to the FBI and save my neck, and have these men shot.”

“Were you going to have your honeymoon after July 6 or before?” Biddle asked incredulously.

“After.”

“You thought, of course, that the FBI, after you had given the confession, would say, ‘Go off on your honeymoon.’ ”

Why not? If he told the FBI everything, Haupt said, “there would be no reason to be guilty of anything.”

Gerda Stuckmann was one of several witnesses called by the defense to support Haupt’s claim that he did nothing to implement the sabotage plot while in Chicago. She described how he had asked her to marry him, and had given her $10 for a blood test. She had been playing for time, she told the judges. “I wanted to talk to him a little more about where he had been.” 33At Haupt’s insistence, Royall also called his mother to the witness stand. Speaking in a voice so soft that the judges could scarcely hear, Erna Haupt said she knew nothing about her son’s activities in Chicago, except that he had registered for the draft and tried to get his old job back at the Simpson Optical Company.

Haupt was followed to the stand by Neubauer, who depicted himself as a victim of circumstance. “As a soldier, you are not supposed to think,” he told Royall. “I just got the order. I didn’t know what for.” When he learned that he was being sent to the United States as a saboteur, he didn’t like it. “In the first place, my wife was born here in the States, and the family of my wife is here in the States. And another thing, if you have been a soldier or are a soldier, you don’t think much of an agent or saboteur.” When Biddle asked Neubauer why he didn’t immediately go to the FBI, he said he feared that word would get back to Germany and his family would suffer reprisals.