by Jim Wilson
If these two countries should ever clash again, it would this time be a fight to the very end and to the last man. And this time every German conscious of the tremendous power of these 80 million people behind one man and of Germany’s powerful allies, is convinced that this war would end with a German victory.8
When war was declared the Daily Mail printed a powerful patriotic leader, but it had an ironic ring given the views its owner had been expounding in his private correspondence to Berlin. ‘No statesman, no man with any decency could think of sitting at the same table with Hitler or his henchman the trickster von Ribbentrop, or any other of the gang,’ the Daily Mail declared. ‘We fight against the blackest tyranny that has ever held men in bondage. We fight to defend and to restore freedom and justice on earth.’9
In New York, in late October 1939, Rothermere was having cash problems and said he needed to move to a sterling area. He travelled by liner from New York to Bermuda. Several days after his arrival there he became seriously ill and was taken to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital. He partially recovered, but during the following months his health gradually deteriorated again and he died on 27 November 1940. He was buried in the churchyard of St Paul’s in Paget, Bermuda, the following day. Meanwhile, in the United States, the FBI, alerted by their colleagues in British intelligence, were closely monitoring Princess Stephanie’s movements there, aware that had she not fled to seek asylum in America she would have undoubtedly been imprisoned in Britain.
16
TRAILED BY THE FBI
On 11 December 1939 Princess Stephanie, accompanied by her mother and both travelling under false names, boarded the Dutch liner SS Veendam at Southampton for the journey across the Atlantic to the safety of a country that was still neutral. She did not wait long enough to discover if the British government would imprison her for espionage, her close relationship with Hitler, her espousal of his Nazi policies and the persuasive way she had worked to influence people in Britain to support the Third Reich. Lady Snowden had arranged for an MP to put down a question in Parliament enquiring whether it was the government’s intention to expel her. In response, the Home Secretary made it clear that as the princess had already left of her own volition, no further action was necessary. But, he added, she had better not try to return to Britain, because he guaranteed that entry would be refused.
Stephanie arrived in New York, elegantly dressed and bedecked in her usual array of expensive jewellery. A report in the New York World Telegram described her as having her auburn hair combed straight back and wearing a silver-fox turban with a ‘provocative pink rose perched on it’. She wore a three-quarter-length silver-fox fur coat, a black silk jersey dress and black kid Perugia sandals with very high heels and sky-blue platform soles. Expensive diamond ear-clips and a scintillating diamond brooch gave the finishing touches to an outfit designed to make an impression.1 She possessed only a visitor’s visa, but the 106 pieces of luggage she brought with her, and the knowledge that she could never return to England, suggested that she thought she was in America to stay. MI5 had made sure the FBI were waiting for her. Ever since Fritz Wiedemann’s arrival to take up his diplomatic appointment in San Francisco, the FBI had been told to track her movements if she should ever try to join him in the United States.
Predictably, the first phone call Stephanie made was indeed to Wiedemann in San Francisco. She asked him not to travel to New York to meet her. She calculated that it would not be wise for her to be seen so soon in the company of probably the most notorious Nazi in the country. Instead, she stayed some time in New York, having well-publicised meetings with literary agents and publishers who wanted articles about her close relations and first-hand knowledge of Hitler, his intentions in starting a war in Europe and his character – although it appears from letters from some of these publishers, now among the princess’ papers, that Stephanie was loathe to tell her story as truthfully and openly as the press wanted, perhaps for fear of incriminating herself. She was more concerned with painting herself as innocent of the label of spy, confidante of Hitler and political intriguer, than telling the real story of her relationship with the Nazis. Her lover, Wiedemann, was also concerned about his own position. A letter from Hearst Magazines Inc. made the point:
She will have to go a little bit more into some of the legend in order to explain that it is not true. She must explain the true story of the activities that brought her so much uncalled for publicity. She says that up to 1932 she was a private citizen and cannot understand why she has become so celebrated and misunderstood.2
The journalists thought she was concealing the real story in order to protect herself. In March 1940 Wiedemann was writing to her about the possibility of her publishing her memoirs: ‘Certain information you have could only have been received from me and you must consider my position. Only something outstanding and sensational will interest the public – for that sort of thing your name is too good.’3 Wiedemann knew publicity would damage the covert work he was intent on pursuing in America.
In January 1940 an article appeared in the New York Times under a headline referring to the princess’ role in Nazi ‘diplomacy’. It said the princess was a star among a whole group of female members of the former German aristocracy who had been recruited by Hitler for a wide variety of operations, many of a secret nature. The newspaper described these people as ‘political spies, propaganda hostesses, social butterflies and ladies of mystery’. The publicity all this attracted probably persuaded her that she needed the support only her lover could give her, but it also enhanced her glamour and notoriety. The idea of a Nazi princess electrified some in society and she was invited to many social events which only enhanced the opportunities for her to spread a pro-Nazi message in America. Her loyalty to Nazism and Germany remained strong, despite Hitler’s suspicions of her.
In late March 1940 Stephanie decided to travel to California to meet Wiedemann. The reunion took place in the holiday resort of Carmel, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Both of them must have been aware they were likely to be watched by the FBI, but they probably had no idea that they would be under the intense 24-hour observation the FBI had put them under. The pair clearly realised they needed to be discreet, because their next meeting took place in an obscure hotel in Fresno, where Princess Stephanie booked in under the name of Mrs Moll. She received a telephone call in her room and the agents listening in picked up the arrangement for Wiedemann and the princess to meet and dine at a nearby restaurant. As they dined the princess’ hotel room and her possessions were searched. Agents then watched them as they later drove to the General Grant National Park, and from there to the Sequoia National Park, where they rented a chalet under the name of Mr and Mrs Fred Winter from San Francisco. Finally, they drove on to the San Francisco suburb of Hillsboro, where the German Consul General’s residence was located. Wiedemann and the princess had clearly agreed any further efforts to cover their tracks and to escape surveillance would be futile. The princess and her mother moved into 1808 Floribunda Avenue, the German Consul General’s official residence, where they stayed, perhaps rather surprisingly, with the approval of Wiedemann’s wife, whose forbearing in the face of her husband’s passionate romantic attachment to the princess must have sorely strained her Nazi loyalty.
It may have seemed to some in Berlin that Hitler had completely fallen out with, downgraded and sidelined his old friend and personal adjutant by dispatching him to the relatively obscure post of Consul General in San Francisco, California. But the truth appears to be very different. Wiedemann’s mission was of the greatest importance to the Nazi high command. His role, as the American Time Magazine reported in January 1939, was to calm US-German relations and to sell the Nazi regime to an unsympathetic America. Time Magazine had described him as Hitler’s ‘Man Friday’; burly and competent, with black wavy hair and chiselled, handsome features. He is shrewd, the report said, intelligent and seemingly popular in society.4 The US Treasury secretary, Henry Morgenthau Jnr, received
a report on 2 January 1940 that said the German Consul General in New York had intimated that Wiedemann had indeed been given the job of keeping America out of the war, and that his posting to San Francisco should not be taken that he was persona non grata with Hitler, as had been suggested.5
A significant percentage of Americans wanted nothing to do with a new European war. In their view, America’s entry into the First World War had been a costly mistake, and neutrality and isolationism was a more sensible position for America to take. Any threat lay 3,000 miles away. Wiedemann, the Nazi hierarchy calculated, had fertile ground on which to work. Goebbels had noted in his diary that public opinion in the US was in a state of ferment and the isolationists were very active.6 It was not difficult in the circumstances for Wiedemann to encourage the spread of anti-war feeling, and, where there were pro-German activists, to go even further by cultivating positive support for the Third Reich.
He achieved it partly through the Auslands-Organisation, which was referred to cryptically by its adherents as AO; this was the foreign arm of the Nazi Party which embraced all Germans and pro-German supporters abroad. Although this was kept carefully concealed, the organisation was under the direct control in Germany of Walter Schellenberg, the Nazi Gestapo counter-intelligence boss, and Ernst Bohle, a Secretary of State at the Nazi Foreign Ministry, who had been born in Bradford. In England, MI5 concluded that AO was a ‘ready-made instrument for intelligence, espionage and ultimately for sabotage purposes’. The leading agents for AO in the States were Wiedemann and now Princess Stephanie.7 With the support of Himmler and backed by money from I.G. Farben, the huge Nazi industrial trust, Wiedemann and Stephanie were the key figures helping to knit the organisation together in the States, travelling across the country to build and widen support.
As Consul General in San Francisco, Wiedemann was head of a network that covered not just the US but the whole Pacific basin and included countries in South America. Between them the couple’s social position enabled them to exercise influence on prominent figures, and with their support persuade others to sympathise with the Nazi cause. With war now raging in Europe, the most important task of AO was to keep America out of the conflict and unite German-American businesses and industrial companies to the Fatherland. To do this Wiedemann established the German-American Business League. Among its rules were that member companies would purchase only from Germany, they would strictly boycott Jewish firms and employ only Aryans. The organisation spread to enrol the owners of over 1,000 small companies. The network stirred up anti-Jewish feeling, paid for radio airtime supporting German propaganda and publicised German goods. Just after the outbreak of war in Europe, Wiedemann gave a speech to the League in which he told members:
You are citizens of the United States, which has allied itself with an enemy of the German nation. The time will come when you may have to decide which side to take. I would caution that I cannot advise you what to do, but you should be governed by your conscience. One duty lies with the Mother country, the other with the adopted country. Blood is thicker than ink … Germany is the land of your fathers and regardless of the consequences, you should not disregard the traditional heritage which is yours.8
There were other damaging allegations circulating. A woman employed by Wiedemann, Alice Crockett, the divorced wife of an American general, accused him of being head of the Nazi espionage network in the USA. Wiedemann, trusting in her friendship and loyalty, had arranged for her to undertake an official trip to Berlin on his behalf in May 1939 to meet Hitler and Himmler. It was on her return that she made the sensational allegations, reporting Wiedemann’s secret activities to the FBI.9 Crockett alleged that the Nazi regime had transferred a massive sum of over $5 million to fund espionage and set up a spy ring across the United States. She further claimed that among those employed in this intrigue was Princess Stephanie and that Nazi networks existed on the east coast controlled by an office in New York. The FBI may well have been aware of some of these allegations, but Alice Crockett’s visit to Berlin opened their eyes to the extent of German influence that Wiedemann and his colleagues were masterminding, and some of the details she brought back were a shock to Edgar Hoover, the FBI boss.
From his residence in California, Wiedemann made many trips to Mexico. It was suspected one of his tasks was to discover ways of gaining the support of Central American states to block the Panama Canal to American shipping in the event of America being drawn into the war. The Germans were not alone in establishing an espionage network in the United States, however. With Britain standing alone and vulnerable, Churchill was desperate to involve American strength and arms in the war. Britain set up a rival network to the Nazis with a view to engineering a situation where America would be drawn into the conflict. Covert initiatives such as false rumours and the creation of false documents were employed. A document emerged purporting to show secret Nazi plans to invade South America and therefore pose an immediate threat to the United States.
Foremost among those working on behalf of British intelligence was a Canadian citizen called William Stephenson, known by the codename ‘Intrepid’. A personal friend of Churchill, he had been mentored by Sir William Wiseman who had led British intelligence in the US during the First World War. He operated his secret network, known as BSC (British Security Co-ordination), from offices in New York’s Rockefeller Centre.10 A prime aim was to organise American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain, and ultimately to get the United States into the war so Britain was no longer alone in facing Nazism. One of his fellow agents was none other than Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond, who we have already met in connection with Jack Kruse and his ‘Stately Super-car’. The trigger, which some commentators have suggested persuaded Hitler to declare war on the United States on 11 December 1941, was a forged document which ‘Intrepid’ is credited with planting into Hitler’s hands; it purported to show that Roosevelt was planning a pre-emptive strike against Germany without a formal declaration of war by the US Congress.11 In 1945 Stephenson was knighted at the request of Churchill for his secret work in both North and South America. He also received the highest US civilian award, the Presidential Medal for Merit, having been credited with a key role in the creation of the CIA.
Princess Stephanie, it will be recalled, in London in 1938 had tried, with Wiedemann’s help, to arrange a peace mission direct with the then British Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax. Now, two years later, another meeting was being set up to trigger new negotiations and Lord Halifax was again a key player. Despite Churchill’s determination as Prime Minister that Britain would never surrender, there remained an element inside the British Cabinet that were prepared, even now, to attempt to negotiate for peace if the time and terms seemed right. Among them was Foreign Secretary Halifax. Lothian, the British ambassador in Washington, was also one of the peace plotters and had opened up a dialogue with Hans Thomson, the German charge d’affaires in Washington. On 6 June 1940 Sir William Wiseman, a former Cambridge boxing blue, lunched with Halifax in London. Wiseman had been sent by the first director of the Secret Intelligence Service, Mansfield Cumming, to establish the agency’s office in New York during the First World War. He had acted as a liaison link between President Woodrow Wilson and the British government, and was referred to by those ‘in the know’ as the President’s ‘confidential Englishman’. He was a man who always seemed to move mysteriously in international circles and was widely credited with playing a major role in getting the US into the First World War. Wiseman remained living in the States after the Armistice and had joined Kuhn, Loeb & Co., the second greatest US private banking house, but he retained his British passport, his family titles and his connections to British intelligence.
Halifax briefed Wiseman to assist Lothian and help him to find some way of starting peace negotiations that would be effective. Before the outbreak of war a substantial number of the British Establishment (prime movers in political, aristocratic and financial circles), many egged on by the princess’ acti
vities, were totally opposed to the coming conflict. When, despite their efforts, war broke out, these people continued to believe that it should be resolved as quickly as possible through a negotiated peace. This belief did not necessarily make them pro-Nazi, although some certainly were. In November, as the Blitz was hitting Britain hard and the Battle of Britain had just been won, Wiseman, now back in the States, was contacted by Princess Stephanie. They had two meetings. The second and most important took place in Wiseman’s suite at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco on 27 November 1940, at which Wiedemann was also present. The three had a lengthy conversation which lasted from 7.30 p.m. until the early hours of the following morning. The FBI was suspicious of Wiseman’s activities and had him under surveillance. Edgar Hoover, the FBI boss, had received a note from Brigadier General Sherman Miles which inferred Wiseman was a member of the same group of Englishmen in America who had attempted to negotiate with the Nazis in the past.
Unknown to Wiseman and the princess, the FBI had bugged Wiseman’s apartment and recorded the entire conversation, which amounted to a detailed discussion of possible peace negotiations. Stephanie promised she could get any proposals direct to Hitler, and Wiseman made it clear he represented a group of Englishmen who believed a satisfactory peace arrangement could still be concluded between Britain and Germany. The next day Wiseman met Wiedemann and disclosed that Halifax, the British Foreign Secretary, represented a group which had members in both Houses of the British Parliament and felt strongly that a negotiated peace was both possible and desirable. The FBI leaked the contents of these undercover meetings to British intelligence. The result was that Wiseman lost the backing he had originally had from influential sources in London.
