Double Agent (41 page)

October 17, 1934.)

“You do know of instances, however, where they have taken it out on relatives in Germany of people here who have not obeyed orders?” asked Thomas Hardwick, the committee’s counsel and a former governor of Georgia.

“Of course, it is an official order,” the witness responded.

“What do they do to these relatives?”

“They are immediately put in a concentration camp, if there are no reasons to be found, and they are investigated.”

“They are put on suspicion and sometimes put in a concentration camp?” Mr. Hardwick asked.

“Yes.”

“You know that to be true?”

“Absolutely.”

When the Dies Committee was created as an explicit extension of McCormack-Dickstein in 1938, Congressman Dickstein wasn’t appointed as a member, which had the effect of neutering his career as a Hitler scourge and ending the secret payments he had just started receiving from the Soviet Union: the opening of the KGB archives in the 1990s revealed that he had been in the employ of the Soviet Secret Service. His code name was Crook for his incessant demands for money. John Earl Haynes and Alexander Vassiliev,

(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 285–87.

:

, vol. 11 (New York: DaCapo Press, 1972), 488–90.

: Ernst Hanfstaengl,

(New York: Arcade, 1994), 222.

: Thomas Jefferson,

(New York: J. C. Riker, 1853–55), 7:84.

: All the Sebold quotations from this chapter are from the trial transcript.

: Jeffrey Fear,

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 396–411.

: Personal Employment Record, W. G. Sebold, property of Sebold family.

: The editors of

magazine,

(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947), 21.

: Winston S. Churchill,

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1948), 269.

: Michael Burleigh,

(New York: Harper, 2011), 37.

: Max Wallace,

(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003), 174.

: Corum,

, 256–57.

: Wesley K. Wark,

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 245.

: Irving,

64.

: Ibid., 67.

: The two planes were the Heinkel He 177 and the Junkers Ju 88 “wonder bomber.”

: Irving,

, 65.

: McFarland,

, 82.

: “Norden Aide Says Nazi Bombsight Is ‘Cumbersome,’ ”

April 13, 1943.

:

12:145–47.

: Homer S. Cummings to President Roosevelt, Memorandum, October 20, 1938, Box 100, Attorney General Personal File, Homer S. Cummings Papers, Alderman Library, University of Virginia.

: “An Analysis of FBI Domestic Security Intelligence Investigations: Authority, Official Attitudes, and Activities in Historical Perspective,” October 26, 1975, an FBI-prepared report submitted to the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (known as the Church Committee), 563–66; and Batvinis,

, 56–57.

: “Analysis of FBI Domestic Security Intelligence Investigations,” 566–67.

:

, US District Court for the Southern District of New York, Record Group 21, National Archives at New York City.

: Saul Friedlander,

(New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 1:298–99.

: Maria Mazzenga, ed.,

(New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 2.

: John Buckley,

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), 122.

: H. H. Arnold,

(New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 177.

:

, 12:288–90.

: Personal Employment Record, W. G. Sebold.

:

series D, 4:651–52.

: Keith D. McFarland,

(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1975), 189.

: Michael E. Birdwell,

(New York and London: New York University Press, 1999), 70.

: Izzy Greenbaum’s beating at the hands of Bundist thugs was the highlight of newsreel footage, which was pulled from movie theaters after two days because of the commotion it caused. “You say many women and children might have been killed or injured,” Greenbaum told a city magistrate who gave him the choice of spending ten days in jail or paying a $25 fine for disorderly conduct. “Your honor, do you know how many children and innocent persons will be killed if the persecution they were speaking of last night were kept up?” He was freed after a Yiddish-language newspaper,

, offered to pay his penalty. “With him in court were his baby son and wife, Gertrude, who said her husband is ‘kind and gentle’ and ‘no troublemaker’ for all his clambering on to the speaker’s platform in the middle of the tense rally,” the

wrote of the hometown hero. “He is all a person could wish to find in another,” young Mrs. Greenbaum told the paper. “He is strong-willed, determined, proud. Didn’t he work days as a plumber and nights waiting tables when the baby was born so that I could have everything?”

During an interview in 2011, one of Greenbaum’s children, Bobbi Ott, said her father attended the rally with no intention of causing trouble. “He never planned anything in his life,” she explained. Overcome by the moment, he rushed the stage not to injure Fritz Kuhn but to snatch his microphone, she said.

“He told me he actually got more hurt from the German doctor in the emergency room who, my grandpa told me, intentionally poked a needle in his back when he heard what my grandfather did,” said Mr. Greenbaum’s grandson, Brett Siciliano. “The needle incident hurt him for many years after.”

Greenbaum moved to California in 1970 and became a fixture at the Newport Beach Pier, where he was known as “Pops.” His fishing spot was called “Pops’ Corner.” According to the

obituary published upon his death in 1997, “Along with his bait and tackle, Greenbaum decorated his corner every day with an American flag and photos of himself with people he met on the pier.” Said another obit: “Near his displays he kept fishing poles with fish on them—if passersby picked them up, he’d take their photo and send it to them in the mail.” The articles made no mention of his flamboyant act of anti-Nazi resistance.

“They show the clip on the History Channel,” said Ms. Ott of the Madison Square Garden moment. “My mother would call me and say, ‘Your crazy father is on TV again.’ ”

Musical America

:

May 22, 1915.

: Thomas Parke Hughes,

(Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971).

: “Wiley Post Tells of Faith in Robot,”

, July 16, 1933.

: “Sperry: The Corporation,”

, May 1940.

: David A. Mindell,

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 88.

: These details are gleaned from the voluminous FBI file on the Duquesne case, or, as it was known to the Bureau, the Ducase. The file is 65-1819. Hereafter cited as Duquesne case FBI file. In his 1953 interview with the German newsweekly

Nikolaus Ritter says that during his 1937 visit to the United States he met with Everett Roeder. At that point, Roeder had been supplying materials to “Sanders” at Ast Hamburg for more than a year. In his memoir, Ritter doesn’t mention Roeder but tells a fanciful tale about meeting with a Sperry employee he calls Burger, who was married to a “hotblooded and domineering” Puerto Rican intent on having Ritter arrested. (“ ‘You damned German,’ she hissed at me and did not even try to get herself under control,” Ritter wrote. “ ‘I hate you. I hate you all. My husband told me everything, and he was stupid enough to think that I would help. Anybody else, yes—but never a German! You—

!’ ”) In fact, Ed Roeder was married to a Sullinger from the Bronx who never made an attempt to inform on him. Following Ritter’s visit, Roeder began sending intelligence to “Dr. Leonhardt,” one of Ritter’s aliases, at Rothenbaumchaussee 135, Nikolaus Ritter’s new address in Hamburg.

: The diary of Special Agent James C. Ellsworth, courtesy of the Ellsworth family.

: Marvin D. Miller,

(Smithtown, NY: Malamud-Rose, 1983), 134.

: Churchill,

307.

: David Zimmerman,

(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996), 36–38.

:

, March 24, 1939.

: Bernard F. Dick,

(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1985), 51.

:” “Analysis of FBI Domestic Security Intelligence Investigations,” 568–69.

: Also: “1,000 Spy Cases Under FBI Scrutiny,”

, June 16, 1939.