The Air-Raid Warden Was a Spy: And Other Tales From Home-Front America in World War II (8 page)

Between sessions, without telling her colleagues, the congresswoman slipped away to inspect the Norfolk jail. After her visit, she held a press conference and stated that she had seen ninety-one women and female teenagers at the Norfolk jail held in a crowded space meant for twenty-five. Filthy mattresses and blankets were on the dirty floor. There was one toilet.

Smith angrily told reporters that the females sometimes had to wait weeks or even months before being sentenced or released. Most of the younger girls had been picked up when they were alone on the street trying to find a brother or boyfriend, she said. A few married women told Smith that their Navy husbands had been sent overseas. Bored, lonely, worried, they went out unescorted and were arrested for being “promiscuous.”

Despite bold newspaper headlines across the nation resulting from the Norfolk hearings, the congressional subcommittee accomplished nothing. Although expressing concern for the increasing number of teenage “patriotic amateurs,” Navy and Norfolk authorities privately held to the belief that arresting and detaining “promiscuous women” was the only practical means for controlling venereal disease. Certainly the 80,000 Navy men in Norfolk on weekends couldn’t be put in jail.
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A Hollywood Victory Committee

W
HILE AMERICA WAS MOBILIZING
to confront the extreme dangers to her freedoms, requests for Hollywood stars to appear at bond rallies and other patriotic functions across the land began pouring in. Consequently, a Hollywood Victory Committee of leading lights in the movie industry was formed to coordinate these activities.

Appointed chairman of the Screen Actors Division of the organization was thirty-nine-year-old Clark Gable, one of Tinsel Town’s brightest stars, who had skyrocketed to global fame in his role as Rhett Butler in the classic Gone With the Wind. He was known as the King of Hollywood.

Hundreds of enthusiastic members turned up at the Hollywood-Roosevelt Hotel for the first meeting of the Victory Committee. All the big names were there: actors, actresses, producers, directors, and studio heads. Gable made a stirring speech, calling on each luminary to pledge his or her support to the war effort.

Earlier, a few hours after the Japanese sneak attack, Gable had fired off a letter to his friend at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., offering his services and those of his movie star wife, beautiful Carole Lombard, in “any capacity.”

In due time, President Roosevelt replied, expressing his gratitude for the offer, but reminding Clark and Carole that entertainment was a vital factor in wartime morale. They could serve the nation best by continuing what they were doing in Hollywood, Roosevelt stated.

With the arrival of the year 1942, Clark Gable was scheduled to begin shooting Somewhere I’ll Find You, with Lana Turner. Before reporting on the set, however, he flew to Washington and buttonholed another friend, the chief of the Army Air Corps, General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold.

Gable pleaded with Arnold to “get me off the sidelines,” and put his stardom to use in some productive endeavor. The general echoed what Roosevelt had written earlier.

Gable flew back home deeply disappointed. Carole thought he should promptly receive a commission. “She won’t settle for anything else than a colonel,” Clark quipped to friends.
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Actress Dies for Her Country

E
ARLY IN JANUARY 1942,
a request arrived at the Victory Committee in Hollywood asking that Carole Lombard, an Indiana native, be the featured attraction at the nation’s first War Bond rally. Sponsored by Governor Henry F. Schricker, the event would be held in Indianapolis on January 15.

Anxious to serve her country, Carole eagerly accepted the invitation. The thirty-one-year-old blond and glamorous actress had been born Jane Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and she had fought her way to superstar status from playing bit parts in Western movies at a salary of seventy-five dollars per week.

Carole’s journey was as carefully synchronized as a key military operation. She traveled on a special train, with brief stops at Salt Lake City, Chicago, and points in between. At each place she made platform talks and gave media interviews, plugging the need for Americans to buy War Bonds.

Actress Dies for Her Country
35

Carole Lombard and husband Clark Gable a short time before she died in an airplane crash while serving her country. (MGM)

During the rail safari of several days duration, Carole and Clark talked on the telephone numerous times at her various stops. He had always called her “Ma” and she referred to him as “Pa.”

On the appointed day, tens of thousands of people stood in the bitter cold in front of the state house in Indianapolis. A galaxy of political celebrities was on hand. Governor Schricker introduced Carole as the “little Hoosier girl who’s made it big in Hollywood.”

As the actress strolled to the podium, a thunderous cheer went up. In her short speech, she concluded by calling out, “Heads up, America! Let’s give a cheer that will be heard all the way to Tokyo and Berlin!”

Moving aside to a table in the crowded rotunda of the state house, Carole exclaimed in her pleasant voice, “Okay, let’s go.” The throng moved forward to buy War Bonds. Each purchaser received a certificate bearing the actress’s picture and a message from her: “Thank you for joining with me in the vital crusade to make America strong.”

Young, old, men, women, many holding infants, patiently awaited their turn. Carole had a friendly word for each one.

“Glad to see you. Thank you, I’m fine, and so is Clark. How many? Thanks. How nice of you.”

Carole never stopped to eat. Just past noon she asked an official: “How are we doing?” “Past the million-dollar mark!” “Great! Let’s go for two!”

That night a crush of more than ten thousand people gathered in Cadle Tabernacle to hear Carole introduced as “Indiana’s number one saleslady” who had sold more than two million dollars in bonds that day.

“Are you tired?” one official asked the nearly exhausted actress.

“Oh, no,” she replied. “It’s all been great fun!”

At midnight, the hoopla and festivities concluded. Carole had been scheduled to return to Hollywood on the train, but she told a companion she wanted to get back to Pa, so she would fly home. She reached the Indianapolis airport at four o’clock in the morning, and her plane took off for Albuquerque, New Mexico. There fifteen Army pilots got aboard to fly to a base on the West Coast, and the plane lifted off for Las Vegas, Nevada. Then it was on to Los Angeles.

That night, Gable got a telephone call at home. He was shocked. Carole’s plane was down, its location unknown. Clark and four friends chartered an aircraft and they arrived at the sheriff’s office in Las Vegas. Soon a radio report came in from a pilot of a commercial airline: “Plane crash on a mountain.”

Clark’s face whitened. He knew immediately what that meant.

A rescue party with a pack train of mules and horses started up the barren, snow-covered mountain. After a tortuous seven-mile climb, the group reached the crash site and radioed back a terse message: No survivors.

A friend approached the distraught Gable. “Ma’s gone,” Clark said simply. Grief-stricken, Gable returned to the couple’s ranch. Telephone calls and telegrams poured in. President Roosevelt wired:

Carole brought great joy to all who knew her and to millions who

knew her as an artist. She gave unselfishly of her time and talent to

serve our country in peace and in war.

Newspapers throughout the nation carried glowing editorial tributes to Carole. The New York Times stated: “Like the Army pilots who fell in the burning plane with her, she too died in the service of her country.”

Later a Liberty ship that hauled weapons and supplies to fighting men around the globe was named the Carole Lombard. Noted Hollywood actress Irene Dunne christened the vessel.
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Dismantling a Nazi Spy Network

H
OME-FRONT AMERICA,
still reeling from the catastrophe at Pearl Harbor, was astonished once again to read and hear that nine men and women, some of them U.S. citizens, would stand trial on espionage charges in a federal court in New York City. Proceedings began on February 3, 1942.

The media labeled the defendants the Ludwig Gang, after the network’s leader, Kurt Frederick Ludwig. An insignificant looking man of small physical stature with a nervous manner, he had been born in Fremont, Ohio, but had

Dismantling a Nazi Spy Network
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Leader of a widespread Nazi spy ring in New York City area was Kurt Ludwig. His principal associate was nineteen-year-old Lucy Boehmler. (FBI)

been taken to Germany as a child. His wife and three children were still living in Munich.

A successful businessman in Germany, Ludwig knew many figures high on the Nazi totem pole, including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. In 1939, shortly after Adolf Hitler had triggered war in Europe by sending his panzers plunging into neighboring Poland, Ludwig told Himmler that even though he was still an American citizen, he was eager to contribute to Germany’s war effort. Himmler replied that Ludwig could best serve the Third Reich by spying in the United States.

So after learning secret codes, invisible inks, radio communication, and other espionage techniques at what was called The Academy in Hamburg, Germany, Ludwig, in the guise of a leather goods salesman, arrived in New York City in March 1940. His orders from the Gestapo were to organize his own spy network and report to Germany details on America’s armed forces, aircraft production, and the routing of convoys between the United States and England.

Ludwig took to spying as a duck takes to water. He rapidly created a smoothly functioning ring consisting of eight high-grade agents in the New York–New Jersey area, along with a swarm of scouts, couriers, informants, and straphangers. Shrewd, industrious, and innovative, Ludwig, who went by the alias Joe Kessler, was soon flooding intelligence agencies in Germany with much top-secret information.

Ludwig had a powerful automobile—courtesy of Adolf Hitler’s billfold— and he loved to race along the highways at the breathtaking speed (for the era) of eighty miles per hour. Hidden in his car was a portable shortwave radio set over which he sent coded signals to clandestine Nazi stations in Brazil or to U-boats off the eastern seaboard of the United States for relay to Germany.

Like any “corporation,” Ludwig’s organization had a high overhead and required regular infusions of funds. Ludwig seldom knew the source of the money, some of which came from wealthy American citizens. He would receive a message to be at a certain place at a specific time and meet a stranger, whose appearance would be described. On one occasion Ludwig was told to go to Child’s Restaurant on 34th Street in Manhattan and watch for a man carrying a New York Times in his left hand.

Ludwig took up position near the door and soon spotted the Nazi bagman, who slid into a booth and began reading the New York Times. The master spy joined him, the two men exchanged passwords, and the stranger gave Ludwig an envelope containing five hundred dollars (a sizeable sum at the time).

Ludwig casually finished drinking a coffee, then sauntered leisurely out into the crowded sidewalk. Neither man would see the other again.