Nazis of Copley Square by Charles Gallagher

Author:Charles Gallagher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

CHAPTER 9

Kissing Hitler

The Pauline Friederich had been tied up since September 2, 1939. The tanker, carrying a million dollars of lubricating oil, was stranded in Boston Harbor just as the war in Europe commenced. Rather than expose his ship to the perils of a naval battle in the Atlantic, Captain Ernst Heitzman decided to stay put. But the crew was restive, wishing to return home, and a mutiny broke out while the vessel sat in maritime limbo. To keep his sailors in line, Heitzman held their wages hostage: anyone who disagreed with his decision would be refused their pay. In January 1940 the leader of the insubordinate wing, Second Officer Wilhelm Harren, filed a claim in US court for $98.60 in unpaid wages. With federal action pending, US Marshals and Navy servicemen took possession of the ship. Life magazine called the impounding of the Pauline Friederich America’s “first win” and a “bloodless victory in the Battle of the Atlantic.”1

Berlin was not celebrating that victory. Scholz was expected to save the Pauline Friederich and save face for Hitler. Scholz and Heitzman were also adamant that neither the United States nor the Allies be able to use the ship and were concerned about the possible forfeiture of its precious cargo. Scholz secretly boarded the tanker seven times while it was docked in Boston Harbor, and it was probably under his direction—and at the very least with his approval—that the loyal Nazis of the crew carried out their next steps.2

On March 29, 1941, members of the US Coast Guard boarded the ship for routine inspection. They found holes drilled into the cylinder walls of the engine, pistons destroyed, the thrust bearing smashed, the auxiliary generator wrecked, and the bilge pump and steering engine demolished. These were serious crimes: tampering with the “motive power” of a commercial vessel “with the intent to injure or endanger the safety of the vessel,” within the jurisdiction of the United States, carried a potential sentence of twenty-five years in prison. US Marshals arrested Captain Heitzman and nine of his sailors. All pled not guilty; bail was set at the extraordinarily high number of $450,000 (more than $8 million in 2020 dollars). “Outside the courtroom,” one Massachusetts newspaper reported, “the crew members greeted Consul Herbert Scholz with hands upraised in the Nazi salute.” With Scholz and his compatriots in the midst of a serious legal, diplomatic, and public relations crisis, Moran tried to explain the “injustice” of the case to the people of Boston.3

His circular letter for the first week of April took aim at “the seizure of Axis ships by the United States, and the sabotage thereof.” There had been no other seizures, but pluralizing “ships” served Moran’s propaganda goals. Impoundment was said to exemplify “the corruption and the lack of neutrality in the New Deal administration.” Furthermore, the German saboteurs were guilty of nothing; their hands had been forced. “German sailors would never destroy their own ships without good reason,” Moran asserted, and the good reason was that the Americans and the British were trying to steal their vessel.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.