Spy ring that derailed Nazi plots against Hollywood
Tin Los Angeles HE plan was as simple as it was savage. A squad of Nazi stormtroopers armed with machine guns would kill 24 of Hollywood’s most famous names in a bloody night of bullets and bombs.
It was 1937 and Charlie Chaplin, James Cagney, Al Jolson, Fredric March, Jack Benny, and studio chiefs Sam Goldwyn and Louis B Mayer topped the death list.
All were Jews or Jewish supporters and the Nazi plotters hoped their assassinations would spark an anti-Semitic uprising across America to mirror that engulfing Europe under the Third Reich.
Amazingly this massacre, and numerous other deadly attacks, were uncovered and thwarted not by the FBI or police but by a small private group of spies funded by Hollywood’s film studio chiefs, reveals a dramatic new book, Hitler In Los Angeles, which was published in the US this week.
“If not for these spies, the Nazi plot and many others may have succeeded,” says the author, Hollywood historian Professor Steven J Ross. “Long before the Second World War Nazis were active in America trying to undermine democracy and attack Jews, who they viewed as responsible for their economic and social woes.
“Hitler hated Hollywood. Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels believed it was home to the world’s greatest propaganda machine, run by Jews to spread their influence worldwide. The Reich believed that if Hollywood turned its propaganda against Germany, it could undermine Hitler’s ambitions.”
While the world’s attention focused on a Europe in turmoil before the war began, the Nazis mounted a clandestine assault on California. Goebbels sent German consul Georg Gyssling to LA in 1933 to stop studios producing movies critical of Germany or Hitler. The Reich also secretly funded Nazi groups in Hollywood that targeted Jews, trained commandos and planned attacks on power stations and military installations.
While some groups drilled paramilitary troops and funded espionage, others plotted a range of more unorthodox attacks, including injecting poison gas into Jewish homes and temples, shooting Jews with poison darts from fountain pens, and blowing up petrol stations in Jewish districts. One group even planned a co-ordinated coup to overthrow the US government. Hollywood’s studio-financed spies foiled them all.
The Hollywood massacre was masterminded by British Great War veteran Leopold McLaglen, a former world champion martial artist who schemed with Nazi and fascist groups in Hollywood. He boasted that he “could get all the dynamite he needed through the police”, as law enforcement was rife with fascist sympathisers.
McLaglen and his confederates were unaware that a studio-funded spy was among them, pitting Nazi against Nazi. The mole convinced them that McLaglen planned a double-cross so rather than face jail the plotters testified against their ringleader in exchange for immunity and the plot collapsed.
Another attack, planned by leading west coast Nazi Herman Schwinn, aimed to kill a number of leading Hollywood stars, judges and businessmen. They intended to hang their victims from lampposts and riddle their bodies with bullets. “Busby Berkeley will look good dangling on a rope’s end,” said Ingram Hughes, founder of the fascist American National Party.
“This was no hasty killing fantasy but a carefully planned terrorist plot,” stresses Ross. But again the massacre was averted by the spy group.
“The plotters knew their group had been infiltrated but they didn’t know who the mole was. They didn’t want to go to jail, and postponed the attack indefinitely.”
The studios’ spymaster was an unassuming Jewish lawyer called Leon Lewis, the former executive director of the Anti-Defamation League. Concerned at mounting American anti-Semitism and fascism he had set up a private spying operation in LA in 1933, the year Hitler became German chancellor.
A year later his spy ring enjoyed a major boost when Lewis, aged 44, convened a secret meeting of Hollywood’s 40 most powerful studio chiefs, producers and directors. The movie moguls were horrified at what his spies had uncovered. “Nazis had infiltrated all the major studios,” says Ross. “And fascist foremen had systematically fired Jews from every ‘below-the-line’ production job: carpenters, electricians, designers, hair and make-up, drivers, catering.”
To stop the propaganda might of the movie industry being turned against him, Hitler planned to kill 24 of Tinseltown’s biggest stars, according to a thrilling new book
ROSS continues: “Paramount was almost 100 per cent Aryan, and MGM had purged most of its Jewish employees. They weren’t even hiring any Jewish extras. These fascists planned to disrupt any films considered anti-German.” Worse yet, the spies had uncovered plots to kill many of the Jewish movie moguls. The studio chiefs were shocked and agreed to secretly fund Lewis’s spy group.
His spy network included only one Jew; the rest were Christian, including several who had defected from the Nazis, Ku Klux Klan and other fascist groups. In the pre-war years Lewis’s spies rose to trusted leadership positions where they could report on Nazi schemes while sowing dissension among fifth columnists. Frustrated, Germany branded Lewis “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles”.
Meanwhile Gyssling pressured studio chiefs to kill films disparaging the rising Reich. “If any film was critical of Germany, he threatened that the studio’s every film would be banned in Germany, the biggest European market after Britain. He threatened German actors in those films that their relatives in Germany would face reprisals. The studios ran scared and capitulated.”
The tide turned when Warner Bros made 1940 drama Confessions Of A Nazi Spy. Though based on a true story, it was banned in Germany regardless. “It was filmed amid threats of violence,” says Ross. “Several German actors refused to take part and many didn’t use their real names in the credits. Suspicious accidents plagued the set: a heavy light fell, nearly killing Edward G Robinson, and a falling camera boom narrowly missed the director.”
The film opened the floodgates for films critical of the Third Reich, including Chaplin’s classic The Great Dictator and I Married A Nazi. Yet as Nazis worked to undermine Hollywood, a woefully understaffed FBI turned a blind eye, focusing instead on hunting communists. It was only in November 1941, two years into the Second World War in Europe, when the FBI finally sent agents to follow up on Lewis’s explosive findings.
Three weeks later the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, dragging America reluctantly into the war. But the war only intensified Nazis’ undercover operations. “Three of Lewis’s spies died under suspicious circumstances,” says Ross. “Neal Ness, who became the right-hand man of California’s Nazi leader Schwinn, fractured his skull while in a police cell in 1943. Police claimed he fell but they kept him in jail for 10 hours before taking him to hospital, where he died.
“Lewis’s original spy, John Schmidt, died in agony just three weeks before he was poised to testify in Washington, DC, and his wife believes he was poisoned. Julius Sicius, who infiltrated the Friends of New Germany, was caught noting car licence numbers and four months later mysteriously died of a fractured skull on Hollywood Boulevard. Supposedly he slipped.”
Lewis earned little recognition for his spy ring, which continued through the war and beyond. “His spy network helped put many dangerous enemies behind bars, and saved the lives of many Hollywood stars and studio heads,” says Ross. “He and his spies were war heroes who never sought glory. He died of a heart attack at the age of 65 in 1954, mostly unrecognised.”
To order Hitler In Los Angeles by Steven J Ross, published by Bloomsbury Press at £20 (free UK delivery) on December 28, call the Express Bookshop on 01872 562310. Or send a cheque to The Express Bookshop to: Steven Ross Offer, PO Box 200, Falmouth TR11 4WJ or visit expressbookshop.co.uk