by Jim Wilson
At the Wiseman meeting, Princess Stephanie had put forward an audacious plan. She said she was prepared to travel to Berlin via Switzerland to intercede directly with Hitler. She was sure the Führer would meet her given the affection in which he had held for her in the past. If she failed to see Hitler, she would negotiate with Himmler. Stephanie believed that if her talks in Berlin were successful it would be possible for a Nazi emissary to see Lord Halifax, in London or in a neutral city, to confirm arrangements for a ceasefire and an alliance between Britain and Germany. The princess had not changed her allegiance. It was her firm conviction that a pact between Britain and Germany against communism and the Soviet menace was in the best interests of Germany and the surest way of furthering Hitler’s objectives. Among comments overheard by the FBI were those of Sir William Wiseman saying Hitler needed to know that the amount of damage the Nazis could do to America was nothing compared to the damage the Americans would inflict on Germany if they were provoked to enter the war. Following this meeting, Hoover ensured the FBI kept tight surveillance on all three participants and he sent a summary of what had occurred at the Mark Hopkins Hotel to President Franklin D. Roosevelt.12
The FBI informed the President that during the meeting the princess had done most of the talking. She said Hitler was genuinely fond of her and would listen to her. She thought she could impress on the Reich Chancellor that at the opportune time, if he aligned himself with Britain, such an alliance would bring lasting peace. She considered there were several powerful arguments that would convince the Führer: that Hitler had not been able to defeat Britain in the air (the Luftwaffe had failed to destroy the RAF in the Battle of Britain) and the planned invasion of Britain had been postponed; the alliance with Russia and Italy could deliver little in comparison to an alliance with Britain; and finally, the overwhelming military and economic strength of America should stand as a warning to the Third Reich, if it too was drawn into the war. Anyone who supposed the German Reich was stronger than the United States was fooling themselves. She pointed out that America had already technically breached its neutrality by providing Britain with fifty destroyers, and Churchill was pressing the American President for further financial and material assistance.
The discussions between Stephanie, Wiedemann and the former British intelligence chief came to nothing. In any case, their proposals were never likely to gain the support of Churchill and the majority of the British Cabinet. Following that meeting, when the princess phoned Wiseman to elicit further help, in particular to get him to provide an affidavit to support her bid to have her American visa renewed, Wiseman was very keen to sever the relationship.13
After the Wiseman talks the FBI stepped up their monitoring of the princess’ movements and her attempts at further intrigues. A remarkable memorandum compiled by the FBI, and sent to the President’s office at the end of October 1941, said Princess Stephanie had been suspected by the French, British and American authorities of being a spy for the Nazis. She was known to have very close connections with high officials of the Third Reich, and it described her as ‘extremely intelligent, dangerous and clever’. As an espionage agent, the memorandum concluded, she was ‘worse than ten thousand men’. The FBI said she was reputedly immoral and capable of resorting to any means, including seduction and bribery, to achieve her ends. That opinion was absolutely accurate, as was soon to be proved.14
When the princess’ temporary visa expired in November 1940, an extension was blocked by Hoover and she was told she had to leave the US within four days. FBI agents listening in to her phone calls heard her begging Wiseman to assist her in getting an extension to her visa. There was nothing he could or would do to help. The authorities would not have listened to a British resident, however distinguished, particularly when he was under suspicion for the discussions over a deal with Hitler. But the Hungarian Embassy did take up her case – legally she was a Hungarian citizen and still possessed a Hungarian passport – and she won a temporary postponement for a maximum of twenty days until 11 January 1941. When that expired she was told she would have to sail from New York to Lisbon, but the princess was still refusing to give up. She wrote a remarkable personal letter to President Roosevelt, pleading to be allowed to stay. With her tongue firmly in her cheek, she asked for the same privileges that ‘this land of freedom’ would grant to anyone who was not guilty of an unjust or disloyal act. ‘Please spare me the humiliation of having to leave this country under such oppressive circumstances as though I were a criminal,’ she wrote.15
Her pleas to the President fell on deaf ears. Roosevelt had been made amply aware by FBI reports of her background and of the dangers she posed. She was informed by her lawyer that she would be forcibly deported. Her reaction was to make a dramatic threat of suicide. When the hearing for the enforcement of the deportation order was held, she made a show of being too ill to face the court and insisted on arriving in an ambulance on a stretcher. It was all to no avail. On 7 March 1941 the President himself gave a direct order to the US Attorney General: ‘That Hohenlohe woman ought to be got out of the country as a matter of good discipline,’ his direction read. ‘Have her put on a boat to Japan or Vladivostok. She is a Hungarian and I do not think the British would take her.’ It was signed, ‘FDR’.16
The following day Stephanie was arrested on the orders of Major Lemuel Schofield, head of the United States Immigration and Naturalisation Service. A few days later Schofield, who was obviously intrigued by her, visited the princess at the detention centre. As she had done so successfully so often before, she switched on her undoubted sexual charms and flirted with her captor. Schofield was hardly a handsome ‘catch’. He was obese with large, ugly features, but he had authority and influence. Despite his senior position of trust in the American immigration service, Schofield succumbed willingly to the princess’ seductive wiles. In the way so many influential men had done before him, he found he could not resist her. On 19 May, in a move which directly contradicted the President’s specific order, Schofield released her on $25,000 bail on condition she informed the immigration service of where she was living; made no contact whatsoever with Wiedemann in San Francisco; or had any contact with any other foreign government; and gave no interviews nor made any public declarations.17 Dropping the deportation proceedings, Schofield explained to a journalist that while in custody the princess had co-operated with the Department of Justice and given information of national interest. Her release would not pose a threat to the interests of the United States and she had promised her continued co-operation. Newspapermen saw Major Schofield personally escort her to a luxury apartment in Palo Alto. She was elegantly dressed in chic black crêpe with a stylish white collar, white gloves and a black-and-white hat. Schofield was quizzed on the information the princess had provided. To all questions he refused to give any detailed answer beyond that it was ‘interesting information for the authorities’, though it is clear from FBI records that the authorities had no knowledge of what Schofield claimed she had revealed to him. Her release from detention, surprisingly, did not provoke much of a public outcry – but the New York Sun expressed a view many others might have echoed: ‘If 130 million people cannot exclude one person with no legal right to remain here, something seems wrong.’18
Meanwhile, the princess and her mother had moved into the Raleigh Hotel in Washington DC where, conveniently, Schofield was also staying. Stephanie was frequently seen visiting ‘Lemmy’ Schofield in his room and on most occasions staying there all night – she was clearly resorting to sex to ensure her protection, but she was in serious financial difficulties.19 Her next ploy to try to secure permission to remain in the United States was to offer, via Schofield, to work for the American authorities; putting to use her intimate knowledge of Hitler and his policies. In late July 1941 Schofield wrote to the newly appointed US Attorney General Francis Biddle, saying the princess had personal experience, extending over six years, of the way Hitler operated:
She can describe his treac
hery, his deceit, and his cunning … She can portray him not as a daring conqueror but a sly and cunning trickster who doesn’t shun to use the lowest methods to accomplish his aims and who only strikes when he is assured of an absolute superiority when he has check-mated his opponent morally and physically.20
Stephanie had put forward a number of ideas on how her first-hand knowledge could be put to use in America’s interests. She had suggested, for instance, that she could participate in short-wave radio propaganda broadcasts transmitted to Germany and the countries under Nazi occupation, using her fluent language skills – a kind of ‘Lord Haw-Haw’ in reverse.
The message from Schofield was sent in secret to the Attorney General, but the chief of the FBI, Hoover, was tipped off about it and was predictably furious. He again demanded to know, in the national interest, exactly what information on Nazi espionage in the US the princess claimed she was in a position to provide. The princess and her mother moved to a house in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, but it did not take long for the FBI to track them down. All they needed to do was follow Major Schofield, who by this time was totally smitten with Stephanie and called on her frequently for sexual encounters in her room. The princess regarded him as an insurance policy for her continued stay in the United States. He had fallen hopelessly for her charms, as is clear from one of the letters he sent her. In it he wrote:
Everything about you is new and different and gets me excited. You are the most interesting person I have ever met. You dress better than anyone else, and every time you come into a room everyone else fades out of the picture … Because of you I do so many crazy things, because I am mad about you.21
In mid-June 1941 Roosevelt ordered that all Nazi consulates in America must be closed. Wiedemann was told to leave the country by 10 July 1941. The night after that order was given, neighbours of the consulate in San Francisco noticed smoke pouring from the chimneys of the building and flakes of burned papers blowing around the area. It was clear incriminating papers were being hastily burned. Other documents were taken out of the country aboard German ships. Having been ordered out of the States, Wiedemann travelled to Berlin via Lisbon where he reported to Himmler and Ribbentrop on his espionage and his pro-Nazi activities in the States. In September he was en route to Argentina where the Nazis also had extensive links. From there he went on to Rio de Janeiro to confer with the Gestapo leader in South America, Gottfried Sandstede. A Brazilian newspaper, O Globo, put a photograph of him on its front page with the headline, ‘Number One Nazi of the Americas’. Brazilian police secretly searched Wiedemann’s hotel room in Rio and discovered in his luggage a list of Nazi agents based in California.22 On 8 September 1941 he was in Chile making arrangements to sail for the Japanese port of Kobe. A significant stop-off perhaps, in view of what was soon to happen. From Japan, Wiedemann travelled on to China to take up the new post he had been assigned as German Consul General in Tientsin.
On 8 December 1941, the day after Japan carried out its devastating surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Stephanie and her mother, who were staying with friends in Philadelphia, made a visit to the cinema. As they were leaving at around 10.20 p.m. they were surrounded by FBI agents and the princess was arrested. She was bundled into a car, while her 89-year-old mother was left on the pavement screaming abuse at the agents. At a police station the princess was fingerprinted and photographed. She endeavoured to call Schofield, but failed. She was taken to the Gloucester Immigration Centre in New Jersey and placed in solitary confinement. Elsewhere across the country, German, Japanese and Italian nationals were also being arrested. America was at war.
The New York Journal, reporting on the round-up of enemy aliens, said federal agents had confiscated many samples of Nazi literature, records and other data, which indicated a far-reaching underground network of German propaganda and espionage. Among these items were powerful short-wave radios and expensive cameras – both items were forbidden to enemy aliens under federal order. The radios led officials to believe that agents of the Gestapo were, until the recent raids, in close co-operation with persons in America. The report added that other Nazi paraphernalia included huge photo-enlargements of Hitler, swastika armbands and German victory banners. German uniforms, flags, guns, badges and identification cards were also seized.23
Within weeks the Attorney General had signed an order citing that Princess von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst was a potential danger to public security and peace. Meanwhile, Hoover ordered the search of her home. In the house they found the Gold Medal of the Nazi Party Hitler had conferred upon her.
17
THE PRESIDENT’S ANGER
Wiedemann fulfilled his duties in Kobe, Japan, Germany’s Pacific ally, before the Japanese launched their infamous attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941. By the time of the attack he had moved on to China where he joined another German agent, Klaus Mehnert, who, significantly, had been Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawaii in Honolulu until shortly before they met up in China. Mehnert had undertaken extensive studies of the US Navy’s weaknesses in their Pacific bases and had concluded that if the Japanese could exploit these vulnerabilities they could wage a successful campaign in the Pacific. From his base in San Francisco, Wiedemann had been responsible for German intelligence and espionage activity on America’s west coast. That included the Hawaiian Islands, so he would have been aware of the undercover work in which Mehnert was involved and he may well have known that as a result of Mehnert’s intelligence reports, Japan was about to launch its unheralded attack. Perhaps the reason Wiedemann stopped off in Japan on his way to his posting in China was to discuss Japan’s military intentions and her imminent entry into world war.1
Hitler now had other work for Wiedemann. As Consul General he ran Nazi intelligence in occupied China for the rest of the war years, and remained there until September 1945 when, some weeks after the Japanese surrender, he was taken prisoner by the US Army. He tried to claim diplomatic immunity, but the Americans knew his background and eventually he was taken back to Washington. Time Magazine reported his return to the States in 1945:
Captain Fritz Wiedemann, Hitler’s company commander in World War 1, German consul general in San Francisco for two stormy years and spy extraordinary for the Third Reich, was back in the US for a brief stay. Newsmen who remembered Wiedemann as a tall, black-haired fashion plate scarcely recognised the baggy-suited, greying, unshaven man who de-planed from an Army transport at California’s Hamilton Field. Hitler’s onetime personal adjutant was to be a star witness at war crimes trials of top Nazis.2
Under interrogation about his time as German Consul General in San Francisco, Wiedemann admitted his espionage role in the US on behalf of the Nazis, and that he had received a great deal of secret information and help during that time from his friend and lover Princess Stephanie.
To return to 1941, the princess was finding the conditions in the internment centre where she was held far from the lifestyle she had been used to. In letters to her mother she described conditions as appallingly unhygienic. There were, she said, twenty women living in the filthy room in which she was held, and the prisoners she was interned with included prostitutes and ‘sluts with venereal disease’.3
In February 1942 Princess Stephanie’s son, Prince Franz Hohenlohe, was also arrested and interned. Initially he was held at Ellis Island. Subsequently, he was taken to internment centres in Oklahoma and Texas. He was finally released on parole in February 1944 and finished the war in the US Army as a member of the American occupation force in Japan.
Despite the orders he had received from the highest authorities, Major Lemuel Schofield refused to break off contact with the princess. When President Roosevelt heard about this gross insubordination, he dispatched a furious letter to the head of the FBI, Hoover: ‘Once more I have to bother you about that Hohenlohe woman. This affair verges not merely on the ridiculous, but on the disgraceful.’4 The President followed this up wit
h a letter to the Attorney General demonstrating his growing anger and frustration:
If the immigration authorities do not stop once and for all showing favour to Hohenlohe, I will be forced to order an inquiry. The facts will not be very palatable and will go right back to her first arrest and her intimacy with Schofield. I am aware that she is interned in the Gloucester centre, but by all accounts she enjoys special privileges there. To be honest, this is all turning into a scandal that requires extremely drastic and immediate action.
It was signed personally by ‘FDR’.5
The Attorney General took immediate action. He transferred the princess to a more remote internment centre, Camp Seagoville, near Dallas in Texas. The authorities had underestimated Stephanie’s extraordinary hold over her lover Schofield, however. Amazingly, still in an authoritative position in the immigration service, he gave the governor of Camp Seagoville instructions that the princess was to receive special privileges, including the use of a telephone outside the camp and permission for her mother to visit outside official visiting hours. Not surprisingly, the pressures on Major Schofield from his superiors became so great that he was forced to resign his post, and he returned to his former career as a lawyer in a successful New York practice. An FBI agent reporting in November 1943 said he had found the princess distraught and emotional. But he felt she was ‘a consummate actress’ and her emotions were ‘artificial and designed to win my sympathy’.6
In March 1944 a review hearing took place to consider the princess’ continued detention. The outcome was a recommendation that she should be paroled. Stephanie conducted her own defence and it appears, against the odds and in defiance of the records secretly held by the FBI, she successfully argued her innocence and that she had renounced all her Nazi sympathies. That outcome beggars belief and raises the question of whether the three-man tribunal was in possession of any papers recording the facts of her background in either the States or in Europe. The hearing ended in a statement which said: ‘We are convinced that her position is one of determined and unqualified opposition to Hitler, and that she earnestly supports the Allied cause. It is our view that, once she is at liberty again, she will do everything in her power to further our war effort.’7 But wiser councils prevailed. Hoover held up her release for several weeks and finally President Roosevelt overruled the board. He ordered she should not be released for the duration of the war. When VE Day came, on 9 May 1945, she was the last detainee to leave the Seagoville Camp. Major Schofield welcomed her back with open arms.
