Grand Deceptions: The Plot to Kill Fdr

By A. L. Provost

In 1933, shortly after assuming the office of president, Franklin D. Roosevelt became convinced that, Adolf Hitler would have to be got rid of if there was to be any assured peace in Europe.
Upon being informed of Roosevelts veiled threat, on July 17, 1934 Hitler met with Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Together they hatched a bold plot to assassinate the American president.
The audacious venture would come to an end on the rain-swept deck of German Navy submarine U-575 off the coast of North Carolina shortly after midnight on November 13, 1935.
This is the story of the fearless Nazi assassin charged with leading this secret mission, and the brave German-American woman who stood in his way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 23, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465331144

A. L. Provost

The author, an attorney and optometrist, resides outside Atlanta with his wife Evelyn, an attorney, their four talented children having gone on to careers in Optometry, real estate and teaching. In May 1961 the author received an undergraduate degree in Physics-Mathematics from Berry College, and in July of that year enlisted in the U. S. Army. He served two tours of duty in South Korea, the last with U. S. Army Intelligence as a Korean linguist and prisoner interrogator. In 1972 Dr. Provost was awarded the degree of Doctor of Optometry from the University of Houston, and in 1980 earned a Juris Doctor degree from Nova Southeastern University College of Law. Dr. Provost is the author of the best-selling memoir, Reflections in an Orphan’s Eye, The Puppeteer, a mystery novel of the wartime South, and thirteen other mystery novels.

Book preview

Prologue

On March 16, 1935 Adolf Hitler boldly announced that Germany would no longer be bound by provisions of the Versailles Treaty that mandated German disarmament. The Fuhrer proclaimed a law that required universal military service, developed an air force and established an army numbering more than half a million men.

Three days later, on March 19, 1935, in response to Hitler’s bellicose threats a Senate committee met with President Roosevelt at the White House to review possible industrial mobilization plans in the event Hitler started a war in Europe.

Roosevelt was convinced that Hitler was pathologically and barbarously aggressive, and had been since his installation as German Chancellor. He (Roosevelt) was well in advance of any noteworthy European statesman, including Winston Churchill, in the conviction that Hitler would have to be got rid of if there was to be any assured peace in Europe.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom. By Conrad Black. p. 360.

Upon being informed of Roosevelt’s veiled threat, an incensed Adolf Hitler met with his closest advisor Reichsfuhrer SS Heinrich Himmler. Together they hatched a bold and insidious plot to remove FDR from the world stage. Permanently.

This is the story of the Nazi assassin charged with leading this secret mission, and the brave German-American woman who stood in his way.

Chapter 1

On a Collision Course

On June 28, 1919, five years after the Great War began, the belligerents signed an agreement to end hostilities, called the Treaty of Versailles after the French palace where the documents were signed. The treaty established a worldwide League of Nations, that specifically excluded Germany from membership. Despite President Woodrow Wilson’s efforts, he failed to convince Congress to accept the treaty.

Our world never would be the same.

The Great Depression in America and the devastating economic depression in Europe served to propel both Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler to power in the 1932 elections in America and Germany respectively.

In Germany the devastated economy destroyed the fragile coalition between socialists and middle-class parties in the Reichstag, and economic fears aligned businessmen behind the ostensible anti-capitalist Adolf Hitler.

Heavy-handed austerity measures caused Chancellor Heinrich Bruning’s popularity to plummet, and following the Reichstag elections in early 1932, Bruning resigned and his successor, Franz von Papen, called for new Reichstag elections in July.

These elections doubled the Nazi delegation, led by Adolf Hitler, to 230, making the Nazi Party the Reichstag’s biggest. Following a flurry of last-minute negotiations, on January 30, 1933 Hitler became chancellor by compromise.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the Great Depression had left the American government floundering in a morass of ineptitude, that enabled the aristocrat Franklin D. Roosevelt to run for president as the champion of the working class. (Could Roosevelt and Hitler have been comparing notes?)

In 1932, after three years under President Herbert Hoover, the impoverished masses felt that Hoover had betrayed them, and were eagerly searching for a savior who could make things right.

In 1932 Roosevelt won the nomination for president of the Democrat Party. He required the assistance of John Nance Garner of Texas, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, who on the third convention ballot released his delegates to back Roosevelt.

In the presidential election Roosevelt garnered 22,822,000 votes to incumbent Herbert Hoover’s 15,762,000. Roosevelt won the electoral vote 472 to 59. He assumed office on March 4, 1933.

For despite the ballyhoo of his detractors and second-guessers, in 1932 Depression-era America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, a cripple, indeed was the proverbial man of the hour, the only American of national prominence who could lead the nation out of this horrible calamity known to some historians as the Great Quagmire.

And therein lay Adolf Hitler’s dilemma, his nemesis who in the end would prove to be the ambitious Fuhrer’s unbeatable foe. The American president. The man who would destroy Hitler.

The Isolationists

In Roosevelt’s bid for the presidency in 1932, he campaigned heavily on his promise of a New Deal that would pull America out of a debilitating economic depression. A savvy political card player, FDR knew when to hold ’em and when to fold ’em. Thus he did his best to avoid ruffling the stiff, inflexible feathers of the class of cowards and closet Nazis known to the between-the-wars generation as isolationists.

From the Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, Second Edition:

isolationism. the policy or doctrine of isolating one’s country from the affairs of other nations by declining to enter into alliances, foreign economic commitments, international agreements, etc., seeking to devote the entire efforts of one’s country to its own advancements and remain at peace by avoiding foreign entanglements and responsibilities.

Almost immediately upon taking office on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt recognized that Adolf Hitler was following a path leading to European domination. Roosevelt believed Hitler to be an uneducated, aggressive barbarian, that he must be contained and dealt with if there was to be peace in Europe. However Roosevelt’s biggest concern in dealing with the threat of Nazism came not from Germany, but from the head-in-the-sand isolationist movement in America.

Isolationism took root in America between 1920-1925, in great part because Americans believed thousands had fought, and many had died, in a war that had nothing to do with America.

However to many other Americans, such insularity on a global scale ran counter to what America represents, and these forward-thinking patriots labeled the isolationists as narrow-minded, illiberal, cowardly and un-American.

Therefore Roosevelt did his utmost to shore up support for his internationalist, non-isolationist policy, while gradually painting the American pacifists into the corner of being naïve Hitler dupes or outright Nazi agents. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Champion of Freedom. By Conrad Black, p. 361.

Chapter 2

Hitler Makes a Decision

Any number of American dictionaries define edge as an advantage. These same lexicons further characterize advantage as a circumstance favorable to success.

In 1933 Heinrich Himmler, more than any other person in the Fuhrer’s inner circle, realized that if his bosom buddy Adolf were to achieve his life’s ambition of making German the predominate-no, the only language spoken throughout Europe and the British Isles, it was downright imperative that he possess the aforementioned edge.

Near the Bavarian town of Berchtesgaden, on the Obersalzberg 1,640 feet above the town, Adolf Hitler had built a chalet he called the Berghof, or Eagle’s Nest. Opulent in its furnishings, yet conservative in design, the Berghof was the Fuhrer’s hideaway, where the Great One entertained only his closest friends. Those invited to the Eagle’s Nest were in the best of company.

On July 17, 1934 Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels held a day-long conference at the Fuhrer’s mountaintop Bavarian chalet.

Also present at the Berghof, but not at the meeting itself, was Professor Karl Mittelmann, head of the political science department at prestigious Heidelburg University. The distinguished professor and lawyer knew more about the American political system than did his colleagues. He was available to provide input if needed.

Professor Mittelmann was not a member of the Nazi Party. However, Adolf Hitler and the professor got along quite well, and the Fuhrer called on Mittelmann for his advice concerning economic and political matters pertaining to America.

In 1933 Professor Mittelmann was granted a sabbatical year by Heidelburg University, having been invited to Harvard University as a distinguished visiting professor to teach a two-semester course in German postwar economics and politics. Postwar, as in post-the Great War.

The Professor Meets the President

While in America Professor Mittelmann had been present at a dinner at the university, in which the guest of honor was the new American president. Thrilled to be in the great man’s presence, the professor turned to the gentleman seated beside him at the table and introduced himself.

I am pleased to meet you, Professor Mittelmann, said Walter Cunningham, head of the newly-formed FBI counterintelligence unit. I am employed in the State Department, Cunningham lied. I am an admirer of your president, continued Karl Mittelmann, observing as newsmen popped flashbulbs at several guests posing for photographs with an always-smiling Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Sensing an opportunity when one presented itself, the ever-alert No. 2 man in the FBI spoke up.

Come with me professor, said Cunningham. The unknowing German rose and followed the FBI man.

That is, unknowing as far as Walter Cunningham knew. However, . . .

As the men approached the president’s table Walter Cunningham leaned his body toward the gentleman seated to Roosevelt’s right, and whispered cryptically.

Business before pleasure, sir. Find yourself another seat, please.

Without comment J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI and unquestionably the second most powerful man in America, rose from the table and found a seat at another table nearby.

Please be seated professor, said Walter Cunningham. Then Cunningham introduced the German professor to the American president. The FBI counterintelligence chief gave the high sign to the UPI and AP photographers, and flashbulbs started popping.

Cunningham returned to his seat. For the next half hour the president gave his undivided attention to Professor Mittelmann. They discussed Germany’s postwar economic recovery and the debilitating effects of America’s Great Depression.

As the dinner came to a close, both men sensed that their conversation had just begun. Thus Karl Mittelmann was ecstatic when Roosevelt invited the professor to a quiet White House dinner a week from that date.

And if you like, we can invite the nice man who introduced us tonight, Mr. Cunningham, to join us, added the president smiling.

The following Saturday night the White House kitchen staff served a scrumptious German meal to President Roosevelt, Professor Mittelmann and Walter Cunningham. The previous Thursday morning Cunningham had spent two hours alone with President Roosevelt in a study in the West Wing of the White House. The purpose of this get-together had to do with national security. And J. Edgar Hoover was never one to pass up an opportunity to take a peek into the political mindset of Adolf Hitler’s closest political advisor.

Franklin D. Roosevelt had about himself a down-to-earth, unpretentious, somewhat disarming manner. People met the great man and instantly felt comfortable. He was in a word, likable.

Couple this trait with the fact that the esteemed professor appeared to Roosevelt awestruck just being in the presence of the president, and Walter Cunningham and J. Edgar Hoover believed Roosevelt could gain a tremendous insight into the thinking, and more important the intentions of Adolf Hitler.

And there was a second reason for inviting Hitler’s political advisor to this private dinner that, by the way, stretched into a mutually-agreeable four hours. This second reason was, in as subtle manner as possible, to inform the Fuhrer that Franklin D. Roosevelt was certainly not an isolationist, that America was made up of English and European ancestry and furthermore he, the president of the United States, would politically, and militarily if need be, stand in the way of any attempt by Adolf Hitler at European hegemony. Forewarned, etc. etc…

One of Roosevelt’s glowing attributes was that the great man chose not to pussyfoot around when dealing with isolationists, who throughout the 1930s had more than their fair share of influence in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives. Roosevelt had nothing but disdain for this group of cowards and shirkers, whose narrow-mindedness refused to recognize that America was an integral part of the world community, and that what happened in Europe during the ensuing decade would directly affect the lives of Americans for the next century.

The discussions among the three men were cordial and quite candid. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Karl Mittelmann were surprisingly open and honest with one another, and a genuine friendship was formed. Or so it appeared.

The second semester of Karl Mittelmann’s sabbatical ended in February 1934, and the professor returned to Germany. The U.S. State Department official Walter Cunningham saw the professor off in New York’s harbor, and on March 3, 1934 the ocean liner carrying the professor arrived in France.

Following a two-day train excursion through the scenic French and German countryside, the weary traveler arrived at his home in Heidelburg on March 6, 1934. He immediately telephoned Berlin and informed Adolf Hitler’s aide that he, Professor Karl Mittelmann, had returned to Germany.

Just as the professor had been instructed by the Fuhrer when Mittelmann left on his sabbatical nearly a year before. The Fuhrer’s aide made an appointment for the professor in Berlin on March 10, 1934.

Professor Mittelmann’s Report

At 9:00 a.m. on the appointed date a smiling Adolf Hitler welcomed his good friend the professor into his plush private study. Hitler instructed his aide to bring tasses of rich Bavarian coffee for the two friends. Afterwards, instructed the Fuhrer, he and the professor wished not to be disturbed.

During his year as a visiting professor at Harvard University, Professor Mittelmann, acting on the Fuhrer’s orders, had invited specific American politicians to lecture to his class.

There had been a method to the Fuhrer’s madness, though at the time Karl Mittelmann was not exactly certain what this could be. In short Adolf Hitler, for reasons that will become clear later on, had to test the waters, so to speak, in reference to the proponents and opponents of isolationism in America in the mid-1930s. Professor Mittelmann’s input was crucial to Hitler’s decision concerning the outspoken American president.

Therefore those selected (by Hitler) politicians invited to speak to Professor Mittelmann’s political science classes, and afterwards to enjoy a quiet dinner with the professor, were equally divided between pro and con of the isolationist argument. It was imperative, Adolf Hitler had told the professor, that the Fuhrer know the stand Americans would take in the event Nazi Germany were to once again attempt to assert military dominance over its neighbors. Even Hitler realized that another defeat by the Allies would result in the death knell for Nazism.

Advice From the Propaganda Minister

The meeting between Hitler and Professor Mittelmann ended at 1:00 p.m. on March 10, 1934. The Fuhrer scribbled a few lines on a sheet of stationery, then lifted the telephone receiver.

Contact Mr. Goebbels. Have him here in my office at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. The Fuhrer spent the remainder of the day weighing his options, daydreaming scenarios and formulating plans, the object of these options, scenarios and plans being none other than the man who was rapidly becoming Hitler’s only nemesis, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. What to do, what to do, what to do. Ummm…

By 9:00 a.m. the following day Hitler had recovered from his fit of hysteria that Americans refer to as the screaming meemies, and was seated calmly at the desk in his study. Sometime during the sleepless night the Fuhrer had come to terms with Professor Mittelmann’s revealing disclosure regarding the American president.

Having spent his first four decades or more as a hapless schlimazel, the Fuhrer had undergone a self-transformation, and at this moment he knew exactly what he must do. For Germany. For himself.

The Fuhrer’s guest du jour was Joseph Paul Goebbels, the young man who within a brief span of two years had become one of Hitler’s closest political confidants. The thirty-eight-year-old propaganda minister was a master at his craft, using German radio, press and film to unleash his well-orchestrated attacks against Jews and other groups of undesirables.

At 9:00 a.m. Hitler warmly welcomed his young propaganda minister into his private study. The Fuhrer’s aide, a colonel in the SS, served the two friends coffee and generous portions of hot apfelstrudel, Goebbels’ favorite pastry, and they settled in for what proved to be an all-day rambling discussion centered around the American president.

Adolf Hitler had decided on his course of action. He knew what must be done, and he possessed the resolve to act. The advice the Fuhrer needed was in how to attain his goal and still retain a positive world opinion of himself.

It would be Goebbels’ responsibility to devise an insidious labyrinth of deceit that would result in a multi-layered plan of boldly and cold-heartedly eliminating any German who was part of the plot or who might inadvertently learn of the plot.

In this regard the Fuhrer had selected the right man for the job. To the stony-hearted propaganda minister, loyal Germans were as expendable as pawns on a chessboard. Together they planned the details of The Mission.

Which brings us back to the meeting of July 17, 1934 between Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, held at the Fuhrer’s Bavarian chalet, the Berghof. Professor Mittelmann had been invited as a guest of Hitler, but was not a part of the meeting and had no knowledge of The Mission. The professor would join the other three for lunch later in the day.

Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels spent all day of July 17, 1934 planning the Fuhrer’s bold and equally risky mission. Adolf Hitler was in constant communication with Hans Sieder, leader of the pro-Nazi Bund organization in New York City. In 1929 Adolf Hitler had appointed Heinrich Himmler Reichsfuhrer SS. That same year the Fuhrer had dispatched his close personal friend Hans Sieder, fervent Nazi and top-notch organizer, to New York with the mandate to organize pro-Nazi German-Americans to further overt and covert operations in America.

Forty-eight-year-old Hans Sieder ruled the well-organized Bund with an iron fist, often resorting to threats and coercion to swell the ranks of the pro-Nazi movement in America.

However, being a zealot in any cause has its ups and downs, and by the time of the aforementioned July 17, 1934 meeting in Berlin, the FBI field office in New York City had the Nazi Hans Sieder covered like a blanket. Every telephone known to be used by Sieder had been bugged twenty-four hours a day, and every friend and acquaintance investigated thoroughly.

Chapter 3

The FBI Infiltrates the Bund

Greta Holstein was a twenty-eight-year-old German-American who lived alone in an apartment on New York’s Lower East Side. Greta and her parents had emigrated to America in 1919 following the Great War. The nine-year-old entered public school in New York on September 7, 1919. The extent of her English was Allo. I Greta.

America had been good to Greta Holstein. In 1928 at the age of eighteen Greta graduated high school and that fall entered New York University as a freshman. Seven years later, in 1935 Greta graduated with top honors from Columbia University School of Law.

On June 3, 1935, three days before graduation from law school, the dean contacted Greta and informed her that a U.S. government official wished to speak with her concerning possible employment.

At 4:00 p.m. the following day, Greta opened the door to the dean’s conference room to see a smiling portly gentleman seated at one end of a long conference table. The man rose and motioned for Greta to join him at his end of the table.

The interview lasted longer than an hour. By the time all was said, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had personally hired the first ever German-American FBI agent, one Greta Holstein.

However the identity of Greta Holstein was known only to J. Edgar Hoover and Walter Cunningham, Assistant Director of the FBI, who served as the undercover agent’s controller. The new agent’s very first assignment was to seek employment in the New York Bund office, in an attempt to gain access to the financial records of Bund leader Hans Sieder.

On the night of June 10, 1935, four days after Greta’s graduation from law school, she attended her first Bund rally, where she managed to sit in the first row of the theatre. And as Greta had intended, the strikingly beautiful Aryan woman captured the full attention of the flagrant womanizer Hans Sieder.

A week later, as a favor to J. Edgar Hoover, Greta Holstein was hired by the law firm of Bailey and Cooper, in the business law department. This position kept Greta out of court, allowing her ample time to devote to her quarry, the conceited Hans Sieder.

The Brilliant Marbles Code

Shortly after his arrival in New York City in December 1929, Adolf Hitler’s friend and confidant Hans Sieder rented an apartment on the fourth floor of a brownstone located near the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Tillery Street. This location afforded the Nazi spy easy access to the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens from his Brooklyn apartment near the famous nineteenth-century bridge that had been named in honor of the borough of Brooklyn. Americans are nothing if not original. Brooklyn. Brooklyn Bridge.

Brownstones are multi-story row houses that became popular as homes and apartments in New York and other large cities on the east coast of the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. These buildings were called brownstones because they were fronted with a reddish-brown sandstone, a durable yet aesthetic building material.

In the early 1930s cipher (code writing) experts at the German Foreign Office, spurred on by Adolf Hitler’s grandiose plan to dominate Europe and Russia, began research whose goal was to create an unbreakable code means of communication between Berlin and agents in foreign countries, including of course America. Especially America, Mein Fuhrer. Kraut ingenuity finally succeeded in creating the famous One-time pad.

This was all well and good when considering espionage on a global scale. However, as a means of communication among Nazi agents in America, Hans Sieder was pretty much, as the Americans would say, on his own.

Upon his arrival in New York City in December 1929, Hans Sieder rented his small fourth-floor apartment on Flatbush Avenue, and with the assistance of staunch Nazi supporters was given a job as a bookkeeper in a German-owned import-export business. This job was merely a front for Hans Sieder’s Bund activities. It provided him with a steady though modest income, and all the free time he needed to work his Nazi mischief in New York’s five administrative boroughs. Should anyone ask, Hans Sieder could offer proof of steady employment.

Sometime in early 1934 Hans Sieder began to realize he must devise a simple method of emergency communication between himself and his subordinate agents. One cold, brisk Saturday morning in March 1934, as Hans was crossing the street to take the trolley to his office, he heard the staccato sound of a small glass object hitting the concrete sidewalk, and looked down as a multicolored glass marble bounced in front of him and out onto the street.

Get my marble mister, cried a young boy of grammar school age, wearing a worker’s slouch hat and knickers. My old lady will whack me if she catches me in the street.

Not wanting to be the cause of the lad suffering an unwarranted whacking at the hands of his unforgiving mother, the Good (Nazi) Samaritan, an oxymoron if ever there was one, retrieved the errant multicolored glass sphere from the street and returned it to the boy, who was standing with several other youngsters around a circle that had been grooved into the dirt playground.

Within the circle Hans Sieder counted fourteen small glass marbles. Some were solid color, representing more than half the hues of the standard Roy-G-Biv rainbow color spectrum. Other marbles appeared clear, with feather-like colors suspended inside the marbles.

Staring down at the assortment, suddenly Hans Sieder realized he had just discovered his code.

Where did you purchase these spheres? Hans-the-cipher-expert asked the boy.

At that mom-and-pop store, responded the appreciative boy, pointing to the modest retail business situated on the corner, of the type prevalent in New York and other large cities along the east coast of America in that era.

The Nazi entered the store, greeted the proprietor, then began browsing the aisles.

May I help you sir? asked the owner cheerfully.

I am looking for some small glass spheres, of the kind those boys across the way seemingly have trapped inside a circle carved in the ground.

"Oh, you must mean marbles," responded the owner, an elderly Jew named Chaim Weizmann, who with his wife and daughter had emigrated from Germany to escape the very likes of the stern-faced German standing before him at that very moment. And, wondered the Jewish émigré, why would this man, this German, be interested in children’s toys?

Whatever the reason mused Chaim Weizmann to himself, the German’s actions seemed illogical. Could this man be a pedophile? wondered Chaim.

Yes, I believe the young boy called them marbles, said Hans Sieder. May I see some of them?

Why yes, they are on the next aisle over, Mr. Weizmann said over his shoulder as he led the way.

The multicolored marbles were displayed on the bottom shelf, stacked in empty cigar boxes. Each red or green mesh bag contained twenty marbles of assorted colors. Not every color was represented in each bag. A marketing ploy perhaps?

What is the cost of each bag? asked the Nazi.

Ten cents, responded the Jew.

May I purchase all six of the bags you have remaining? asked the Nazi.

Why certainly you may, replied the Jew. I will reorder today, to stock my shelf.

Following the exchange of six shiny American dimes for six chock-full mesh bags of marbles, the excited Nazi agent decided not to continue on his path to his token job at the import-export business, but returned straightaway to his fourth-floor walkup.

The route took Hans Sieder past the group of preteens and teenagers who were engrossed in their game of marbles. Only one of the youngsters, Joey McConnell, for whom Hans had retrieved the errant marble, looked up as the Nazi passed the group.

Joey McConnell was the Mick Jock McConnell’s twelve-year-old son. Mick was the derogatory name given to Irish immigrants in the 1870s by the real Americans, themselves of course immigrants. Mick was the offshoot of Mich, the hypocoristic form of the common Irish name Michael. But Mick was a fighting word, and any heine, jig, kike or dago would be in for a fight if he used the slur around Jock McConnell or his kid Joey.

During the years of the Great Depression, that is, the decade 1930-1940, it was pretty much a given that every teenage boy, regardless of ancestry and who lived in the borough of Brooklyn, New York City, was a thief. No doubt about that fact. And as the Nazi spy Hans Sieder walked past the band of thieves, uh, er, group of boys, on the way back to his small apartment that chilly morning in March, 1934, Jock McConnell’s boy heard the clatter of marbles emanating from what to the perceptive lad’s keen hearing could only have been about, let’s venture a wild guess if we must, six mesh bags of multicolored glass marbles.

Adding together in his sharp mind two events, that is, the German stranger exiting the small store with six bags full of marbles, and the man’s questions concerning same prior to entering the store, the young thief just had to see where the man was taking all those precious marbles. He would wait a day or two. Then one morning when the German left his apartment, Joey McConnell would find out what was going on.

Hans Sieder bounded up the four flights to his apartment, eager to see what he could make of the 120 (six bags times twenty per bag) marbles. He sat at his small round red-checkered oilcloth-covered supper table and dumped out the six mesh bags from the brown paper lunch sack. Using a six-inch-long switchblade he carried for protection, Hans deftly cut a hole in the top of each bag, then carefully poured the marbles out onto the table. Next he separated the ten dozen spheres by color, then gazed down at the results of his purchase.

Out of the total of 120 marbles there were fifteen distinctly different colors, seven of which were solid colors and eight comprised of clear glass with a feather-shaped color suspended in the center. He selected one marble from each of the fifteen piles and lined them up in a row, each separated from its neighbors by a distance of approximately two inches. Smiling, the Bund leader took out a sheet of a schoolchild’s blue-lined paper and a chewed-ended No. 1 yellow pencil. The Kraut apparently had yet to figure out why they made the blade of the switchblade as sharp as they did.

Hans Sieder assigned a capital letter to each solid color, for example R for red, G for green, and so forth. To the suspended colored feathers he assigned a lower case letter, for example r for red, g for green, and so forth.

In addition, color combinations carried different meaning. One solid red marble might direct the agent to meet Hans Sieder at a certain predetermined rendezvous point, whereas two solid red marbles might direct the agent to pick up a package from Hans Sieder and deliver the package to a certain location.

Even though there was a finite number of combinations in the marbles code, this number was great. If agents were properly taught these combinations, emergency instructions could be given simply by sending an agent a box or bag containing the appropriate colored marbles. The code was not intended to be instructional but rather simply directional or procedural. Pick up a package from X and deliver it to Y; wait at a certain rendezvous point, etc. Any detailed messages in writing were to be found at the locations directed by the marbles.

Hans Sieder spent the entire day devising a workable code. By 4:00 o’clock the following morning he was confident he had created an unbreakable cryptogram. His agents could obtain an ample supply of marbles at any drugstore or five-and-dime. And because espionage cells were kept small (two or three persons) for reasons of security, an agent of average intelligence could be taught the code in a reasonable amount of time. The goal would be to practice the code before it was put into use, in order to avoid confusion when the mission was on the line.

However the codes were complicated enough that each agent would be given the written key to the marbles code, with the understanding that the agent would burn the explanation key as soon as he (or she) was confident he (or she) could remember the code.

By noon the following day Hans Sieder had made five handwritten copies of his marbles code. He placed three of the code sheets in his desk drawer and the remaining two sheets at the rear of the top shelf in his small coat closet located just inside the front door to his apartment.

As Hans Sieder had several errands to run that same afternoon, he left the 120 marbles, that were still separated into fifteen small piles, on his desk. He would continue his research into his ingenious marbles code upon his return. As Sieder passed by the boys at play on the vacant lot, who in the interim had abandoned the games of marbles for stickball, the always alert Joey McConnell’s gaze followed the Nazi until the trolley onto which he had stepped had disappeared around the corner of Tillery Street on its way downtown.

As Hans Sieder was to discover at a much later date, ingenuity is nothing if not accompanied by a wealth of caution, as it relates to secret agents and their secret codes. Informing his stickball teammates he had to return home, Joey separated from the group. He located the brownstone apartment of Hans Sieder, and within a few minutes had lowered his slim body over the transom above the door. Soon the boy was standing in the kitchen staring down at 120 multicolored marbles that had been separated by color into fifteen small groups. What have we here? mused Joey.

Of course ’twasn’t long before the enterprising youngster had rummaged through the absent Nazi’s belongings and located the three copies of the marbles code in the desk drawer. Puzzled by his discovery, Joey returned to the kitchen table and placed the sheet of notebook paper beside the assortment of marbles. Flicking his gaze back and forth between the marbles and the writing on the paper, the boy smiled, clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The Hun is making himself some kind of code, he said aloud.

Joey determined that the three copies were identical, and figuring the German might not miss one out of three, folded one of the sheets twice and stuffed it in the front pocket of his brown woolen knickers. Then he stood on the door handle, hefted his slim body up and slithered down through the open, slanted glass transom, landing softly on the wooden floor of the hallway. He exited the brownstone by the way of the rear entrance and soon was in his own room in the apartment he shared with his parents.

Realizing there must be some really important significance to the German’s marbles code, yet at a loss to venture a guess of what it could be, Joey hid the folded sheet of paper in the rear of his bottom dresser drawer and forgot about it. For the time being at least.

Pressing Bund concerns occupied the next two days of Hans Sieder’s time. On the evening of the third day, after the Nazi had finished eating super and clearing the dishes, he again sat at the table. He opened the single center drawer and lifted out the sheets of code paper.

However lying on the table before him were only two sheets of paper. But Hans was certain he had made five copies of the code. He had placed three copies in the table drawer, and the other two copies at the rear of the top shelf in his small coat closet.

Or, thought the Nazi spy, had he placed only two copies in the table drawer, and three copies on the top shelf of his coat closet? Probably the latter, decided Hans Sieder, the thought never once entering his mind that anyone would have had any reason to burgle his apartment.

And as they say, so it went. Because it was convenient for Hans Sieder to purchase marbles at the small Jewish-owned corner store, the Nazi spy did so. Within two months five trusted members of the Bund, diehard Nazis all, had become proficient in the use of Hans Sieder’s marbles code. It was like learning a new language, and these six Nazis understood that someday their very lives may depend on knowledge of this means of communication.

Over the next few months Hans Sieder perfected his code. Periodically young Joey McConnell crept into the German agent’s small apartment and made a handwritten copy of the latest updated marbles code. Truth be told, the lad couldn’t put his finger on his reason for copying the cipher, but some pretty well known New York City landmarks were mentioned as part of the written instructions. But Joey reasoned the code meant the German was up to no good, and Joey, being an American because he had been born in Brooklyn, was determined to keep an eye on the foreigner.

And young Joey McConnell was not the only person keeping a watchful eye on the comings and goings of the quiet German. Chaim Weizmann and the New York City Jewish community were well aware of the Nazi-controlled Bund movement. Even as early a 1933 the Nazis were rounding up Jews by the thousands and deporting them to the death camps in eastern Germany. And nearly every Jewish immigrant in America had relatives living in Germany. Chaim Weizmann just knew this quiet Nazi was up to no good. The Jew would watch the Nazi.

What had further whetted the interest of the old Jew Chaim Weizmann was that young neighborhood Irish boy, Joey McConnell. The boy’s parents purchased some of their household goods and medicines at Mr. Weizmann’s store, and they were nice people, which was about the best compliment one New Yorker could pay another, given the ethnic diversity of the largest city in America in the mid-1930s.

Mr. Weizmann observed that Joey McConnell seemed to take an interest in the fact that occasionally the German stopped by Chaim’s small corner store to purchase several mesh bags of marbles. He never bought anything else. Usually within a day or so of the German’s purchase, Chaim could look out the front window of his store to observe Joey McConnell disappear through the front door of the brownstone in which the German lived.

Except that Joey McConnell and his family did not live in that brownstone.

The Well-ensconced Undercover Agent

Greta Holstein was a patriotic American. She well understood the threat Nazis posed to her adopted country, and resolved to undermine Hans Sieder and the powerful Bund in any way possible.

On the night of June 28, 1935 Greta attended her fourth Bund rally, that was held in a warehouse that had been converted by the Nazis into a hall for Bund meetings. As the Nazi supporters filed into the meeting, each was given an armband on which had been printed a large red swastika. More than six hundred Nazi supporters attended the rally.

As she had done at the previous three Bund meetings, as soon as Greta took her seat in the first row of supporters, directly in front of the wide wooden podium whose face had been plastered with a huge red swastika, she edged her conservative brown skirt up until its hem rose, for 1935 at least, provocatively above her very well-formed knees.

Throughout the Nazi leader Hans Sieder’s two-hour harangue, his gaze shifted from the written material placed in front of him on the podium to the crowd of more than six hundred assembled, each time pausing on the beautiful gams in the first row.

Indeed there was a method to Greta Holstein’s madness. The young lawyer well understood the insidious threat the Nazis posed to America. In taking on this job as an undercover FBI agent, the German-American patriot resolved to herself to do whatever it took to thwart the goals of Hans Sieder’s gang of Nazi thugs. If the job required her to get close to the Bund leader, then so be it. And, mused Greta as she sat on the very front row, with the hem of her dress hiked up above her knees, she might just have to begin an amorous relationship with the pompous Bund leader.

Two hours later Hans Sieder had the six hundred Nazi supporters pumped up and champing at the bit, eager to get out and spread Hitler’s venom to the masses of oppressed New Yorkers who were just waiting to hear the truth. And as the arrogant Bund leader ranted on, the female FBI undercover agent seated in the first row of supporters mentally counted at least six references made by Hans Sieder concerning communications he had had recently with Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, whom the Fuhrer in 1929 had appointed Reichsfuhrer SS.

The Bund rally ended at 11:00 p.m. on the night of June 28, 1935. As several of Hans Sieder’s underlings hung about the podium, Greta Holstein stood, slowly gathered up her purse and writing material and made her way to the large exit doors at the rear of the warehouse. Suddenly Hans Sieder excused himself and quickly caught up with the German-American blond beauty. Touching Greta lightly on her arm, Hans Sieder said with a pleasant smile, using thickly-accented English, Oh Miss? Pardon me, but I have seen you at our meetings before. I would like to introduce myself. I am Hans Sieder.

Then, in perfectly unaccented German, the FBI undercover agent responded.

I am pleased to make your acquaintance. You are a very persuasive speaker. My name is Greta Holstein.

Astute Kraut that he was, Hans Sieder quickly glanced at the beautiful woman’s left hand. No rings. Not on any of her slim fingers.

Might I be persuasive enough to invite you for a late-night cup of coffee? There is an all-night German diner located on the corner two blocks south of here, called the Pumpernickel Café.

And so over a midnight cup of strong German coffee and a dish of apple strudel, a friendship was formed between Hitler and Himmler’s man in America, fifty-year-old Hans Sieder, and twenty-eight-year-old lawyer and FBI agent Greta Holstein. A match made, if not in heaven, at least in the New York City FBI field office.

Two months later, on August 20, 1935, Greta began spending her evening hours in the company of Hans Sieder at Bund headquarters in New York City. On several occasions in the early fall of 1935 Greta accompanied Sieder to Bund rallies in Philadelphia, Boston and Washington, D.C.

Convinced of Greta Holstein’s pro-Nazi leanings, and eager to gain the support of German-American women, Hans Sieder asked his protégé if she would speak at a special Bund rally for women in Baltimore on September 1, 1935.

Greta indicated she would be honored to speak to more than two hundred pro-Nazi female supporters. That night she telephoned her FBI contact Walter Cunningham, and the following day Cunningham came by Greta’s law firm posing as a client. Inside Greta’s private office the two FBI agents planned their strategy.

I realize just how dangerous the Bund movement is to America, began Greta Holstein. I am in an excellent position to get close to the leader.

We need to know the extent of the Bund movement in the United States, said Walter Cunningham. We also must learn the origin of their financing, and the method used to transfer the money from Germany to New York City.

I will do whatever it takes to learn the details of the Bund’s financing, responded Greta.

We also believe Hans Sieder may be the recipient of the funds earmarked for Nazi espionage cells in America, said Walter Cunningham. He did not explain how he had learned this sensitive information.

Following my September 1 speech at the Bund rally in Baltimore, I will express to Hans Sieder my desire to become more involved in the Bund movement. We’ll see how he responds.

The Bund rally in Baltimore ended at midnight on September 1, 1935. Because of the length of time it took to drive from Baltimore to New York, Hans Sieder suggested they spend the night in a downtown hotel and drive back to New York City the