“The officials of these nations could not object to the class of accommodations offered by these two hotels.”
By Harvey Solomon
WITH SWASTIKA PINS in their lapels, Nazi officials strut around a posh American resort, clicking their heels and exchanging “Heil Hitler” salutes. They dine on lavish free food, plotting America’s demise while their government wages bloody war in Europe.
Fiction? No, it’s a forgotten chapter of American history: the internment of more than a thousand Axis diplomats and their dependents immediately following the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In those early chaotic days after America’s entry into World War Two, President Franklin Roosevelt wanted enemy diplomats out of their embassies until they could be repatriated for U.S. envoys trapped in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo.
While memos outlining contingency plans for diplomatic detainment had been circulating within the U.S. State Department for several years, the events of Dec. 7, 1941 and the near instantaneous war footing that followed caught the government unawares.
It was a far different world than 25 years before when Special Agent Joseph Nye personally escorted Ambassador Johann von Bernstorff back to Germany in 1917.
State was tasked with finding suitable accommodations: large, secluded, well-appointed hotels, near rail lines and reasonably close to Washington, D.C. And oh yes, available immediately.
Special Agent Robert L. Bannerman quickly homed in the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia and the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia. Both were very familiar to D.C. society; Secretary of State Cordell Hull had even been vacationing at the Greenbrier when Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939.
“The officials of these nations,” wrote Bannerman to his boss, “could not object to the class of accommodations offered by these two hotels.”
Such luxury resorts were essential for the government’s number-one goal of reciprocity: the hope that U.S. embassy staff in enemy capitals would be treated as well as Washington looked after Axis diplomats in America. Bannerman phoned both hotels, which were virtually deserted in the winter off-season. Each agreed to house the detainees, although Homestead owner Fay Ingalls later recalled the request was more “in the nature of a command.”
On the crisp, cold morning of Dec. 19, 1941, a large crowd gathered in front of the dreary German embassy near Thomas Circle.
“Tear detectors failed to catch a single drop of brine among the well-dressed throng abounding in fur coats and smart hair-dos,” wrote The Washington Times-Herald, “with dozens and dozens of bags, boxes and bundles, piled picnic-style into their special buses.”
The event made the front page of The New York Times, with a photo of ambassador Hans Thomsen and his wife Bebe. Coincidentally that page also reported on the arraignment of aviatrix Laura Ingalls, a Nazi sympathizer charged with being an unregistered German agent in contravention of the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (the same law under which Michael Flynn, Rick Gates and Paul Manafort were charged in 2017).
Ten days later, the Japanese left for the Homestead, and outraged Americans bombarded officials and politicians with letters.
“As a patriotic American for many generations,” wrote a railroad executive to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, “[wouldn’t] any old wooden shack be good enough? Why coddle German and Jap prisoners who are all bitter enemies of our country, and who would ruin us if they had half a chance?”
Hate mail sent to the Axis embassies was confiscated by State, which decided there was no reason for the diplomats to see it, so they never did.
Fences and lighting went up around the resorts; border guards from the Immigration and Naturalization Service patrolled 24/7; state handled logistics; and the FBI ran surveillance and recruited informants among both detainees and hotel employees.
The hotels each provided opulent rooms, top-notch service, gourmet meals, shopping, indoor swimming pools, ping pong tables, movies (but no newsreels) and more. But with outdoor activities severely restricted, the detainees quickly grew unhappy, imprisoned with uncertain futures lying ahead for all in their war-torn countries. Diplomatic red tape kept them stateside until summer 1942, when ships finally returned them home.
Two final rounds of detainment followed: the Vichy French after Operation Torch that November, and a Japanese delegation, led by Ambassador Oshima, captured in summer 1945 as Germany crumbled. They were on American soil when the atomic bombs fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Harvey Solomon is the author of Such Splendid Prisons: Diplomatic Detainment in America during World War II, just published by Potomac Books, that uncovers “a hidden slice of wartime America, replete with behind-the-scenes machinations and political calculations.” (Winston Groom)
