*Editor’s Note: This is part III in a series from Dr. Grobman. You can read Part II , here
Aside from refugees who were ideologically motivated subversives, a number of others were forced to be spy for Germany, lest their relatives still in the country, be murdered. At a news conference held on June 5, 1940, historian Richard Breitman said that Roosevelt addressed the profound concern he felt about those forced to spy on the US
“It is a rather horrible story,” Roosevelt said, “but in some of the…countries that refugees from German have gone to, especially Jewish refugees, they have found a number of definitely proven spies…. But in most cases, the reason for this is…that the refugee…has been told by the German Government: ‘You have got to conduct this particular spy work and if you don’t make your reports regularly back to some definite agent in the country,- you are going to—we are frightfully sorry, but your old father and mother will be taken out and shot.’” Roosevelt admitted “spying under compulsion” applied “to a very small percentage of refugees coming out of Germany, but it does apply, and therefore, it is something that we have to watch.”
Roosevelt’s concern about Jewish spies apparently intrigued Henry Morgenthau Jr., US Secretary of the Treasury, as well. Max Nussbaum, a Reform rabbi and Zionist leader, arrived in the US with his wife Ruth in August 1940, at the invitation of Stephen S. Wise. In Buried by The Times, journalism professor Laurel Leff recounts how Nussbaum met with Morgenthau in September, at the request of Arthur Sulzberger, to inform him about the Nazi decision to resettle Jews in Madagascar.
Nussbaum remembered how apathetic Morgenthau appeared to be. “I had the feeling that the great political questions of the Jewish people all over the world interested Mr. Morgenthau only marginally, and that Jewry –outside of the American sector–represented to him a world in which he does not identify and of which he prefers to speak in the third person.” The “burning question” for Morgenthau, was if Jews were spies for Germany.
Breitman quoted an oral history interview in which Nussbaum recalled, “People in the United States believed that any Jews the Gestapo let out of Germany were working as spies. The first question Morgenthau asked Nussbaum was how many Jews did he know who were working for the Gestapo. Nussbaum conceded that in Paris the Germans did put pressure on Jews who had relatives remaining in Germany—mostly to carry out small task, such as reporting on conversations of emigrants in cafes. In Germany their target was Polish Jews who needed official permission to stay, but some of those reported Gestapo pressure to the Jewish leadership, and they were helped to escape to Lithuania. The Gestapo had other (and better) ways of sending spies abroad—such as giving Gestapo agents the names of Jews who had died in concentration camps and equipping them with false passports stamped J.”
Historian Ted Morgan wrote that the daily FBI reports Roosevelt received about Nazis and Communists efforts to subvert the US, “some of which were farfetched” still “influenced his thinking.” FBI director J. Herbert Hoover claimed that the National Maritime Union had a Communist on every board.
Roosevelt’s Concern about a Trojan Horse
This apprehension is not surprising. Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman recounted how in 1917, while serving as assistant secretary of the navy, the 35-year-old Roosevelt began carrying a revolver, after learning of a possible German plot against him. His fear of a “Trojan Horse” in the US developed as a result of his experience during World War I.
In 1938, the FBI informed Roosevelt of a Nazi ring in the US that included German military agents, German American volunteers and a German American Army veteran, who intended to steal Army mobilization plans for the East Coast. The arrest and trial of the Nazi spies became one of the most highlighted news reports of 1938. The case inspired the Warner Brothers 1939 thriller Confessions of a Nazi Spy, the first openly anti-Nazi film to reach American theaters, and that also exposed Hitler’s plans for world conquest.
After the war in Europe began in September 1939, Roosevelt placed the FBI, which had been strengthened with 150 new agents, in charge of investigating all attempts at sabotage, espionage, subversion, and violations of the Neutrality Acts according to historian Francis MacDonnell. US Attorney General Frank Murphy promised that the FBI would ensure that the US would no longer be “a happy hunting ground” for enemy agents.
Breitman and Lichtman added that in late January 1940, Roosevelt asked Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins to speak to the attorney general and secretary of state about issuing an executive order for the fingerprinting of immigrants, since a number could be spies, criminal or saboteurs. Political prisoners might also be marked for assassination by agents of their home countries, he declared. Having identification readily available would shield the country and allow the refugees to remain safe.
Latin American countries, annoyed with tenacious requests by Washington to resettle Jews in their lands, used security concerns to resist the demands historian Henry Feingold noted. They inundated the State Department with reports about refugee spies. Cuba sent reports that the German-Jewish refugees remained steadfastly loyal to their homeland, which the State Department sent to Under Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long. By June 1940, the Latin-American Division began dissuading Caribbean and Central American countries from allowing refugees to enter their countries, since spies were already known to have infiltrated groups seeking refuge.
Immigration and Natural Services Transferred to Justice Department
In keeping with the decision to achieve greater control over the immigration process, Roosevelt transferred Immigration and Natural Services from the Labor Department to the Justice Department in in June 1940. Attorney General Robert Jackson, whom Roosevelt had appointed earlier that year, avowed that the move would accomplish “a more strict control of the privilege of entering this country.” He affirmed that no one “shall be admitted unless it affirmatively appears to be for the American interest.” Given that he and previous Roosevelt’s attorney generals, Homer S. Cummings and Frank Murphy were loyal to the president, Breitman Lichtman maintained Jackson would not have issued such a declaration without the “president’s tacit approval.”
On June 28, 1940, Roosevelt signed a bill requiring aliens to complete registration forms De Jong noted. At that point, there were approximately five million individuals residing in the U.S. who were not American citizens. In October 1941, they were compelled to report their incomes. The Department of Justice maintained a card index system of all Germans in the country.
On June 28, 1941, the FBI announced the arrest of 49 people involved in two sizable German spy rings, which made the FBI quite concerned. In September 1941, the FBI revealed that “Axis spies and saboteurs were still working in America in key positions, that they collected a large amount of military data, and the German government had drawn up plans for the launching of a sabotage campaign against ‘American defense industries, transport and shipping
