The Telephone Plot
p93
During the early days of 1942, Karl Lindemann, the Rockefeller-Standard
Oil representative in Berlin, held a series of urgent meetings
with two directors of the American International Telephone and
Telegraph Corporation: Walter Schellenberg, head of the Gestapo's
counterintelligence service (SD), and Baron Kurt von Schroder
of the BIS and the Stein Bank. The result of these meetings was
that Gerhardt Westrick, the crippled boss of ITT in Nazi Germany,
got aboard an ITT Focke-Wulf bomber and flew to Madrid for a meeting
in March with Sosthenes Behn, American ITT chief.
In the sumptuous Royal Suite of Madrid's Ritz Hotel, the tall, sharp-faced
Behn and the heavily limping Westrick sat down for
lunch to discuss how best they could improve ITT's links with
the Gestapo, and its improvement of the whole Nazi system of telephones,
teleprinters, aircraft intercoms, submarine and ship phones, electric
buoys, alarm systems, radio and radar parts, and fuses for artillery
shells, as well as the Focke-Wulf bombers that were taking thousands
of American lives.
Sosthenes Behn, whose first name was Greek for "life
strength," was born in St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, on
January 30, 1882. His father was Danish and his mother French-Italian.
He and his brother Hernand, later his partner, were schooled in
Corsica and Paris.
In 1906, Behn and his brother took over a sugar business in
Puerto Rico and snapped up a small and primitive local telephone
company by closing in on a mortgage. Realizing the potential of
the newfangled telephone, Behn began to buy up more companies
in the Caribbean. He became a U.S. citizen in 1913. In World War
I, Behn served in the Signal Corps as chief of staff for General
George Russell. He learned a great deal about military communications
systems, and his services to France earned him the Legion d'Honneur.
Back in the United States, Behn became associated with AT&T,
of which Winthrop Aldrich was later a director. In 1920, Behn's
work in the field of cables enabled him to set up the ITT with
$6 million paid in capital. Gradually, he spun out a web of communications
that ran worldwide. He soon became the telephone king of the world,
making deals with AT&T and J. P. Morgan that resulted in his
running the entire telephone system of Spain by 1923. His Spanish
chairman was the Duke of Alba, later a major supporter of Franco
and Hitler. In 1930 Behn obtained the Rumanian telephone industry,
to which he later added the Hungarian, German, and Swedish corporations.
By 1931 his empire was worth over $64 million despite the Wall
Street crash. He became a director of-inevitably-the National
City Bank, which financed him along with the Morgans.
Behn was aided by fascist governments, into which he rapidly interlocked
his system by assuring politicians promising places
on his boards. He ran his empire from 67 Broad Street, New York.

p95
When Hitler invaded Poland, Behn and Schroder conferred with the German
alien property custodian, H-J Caesar. The result was that
the ITT Polish companies were protected from seizure for the duration.
Another protector of Behn's in Germany was ITT's colorful
corporation chairman, Gerhardt Westrick. Westrick was a skilled
company lawyer, the German counterpart and associate of John Foster
Dulles. Westrick's partner until 1938, the equally brilliant Dr.
Heinrich Albert, was head of Ford in Germany until 1945. Both
were crucially important to The Fraternity.
At the beginning of 1940, Behn decided to have Westrick go
to the United States to link up the corporate strands that would
remain secure throughout World War II. German Foreign Minister
von Ribbentrop was equally concerned that Westrick undertake the
mission. Westrick represented in Germany not only Ford but General
Motors, Standard Oil, the Texas Company, Sterling Products, and
the Davis | Oil Company.

p97
On June 26, 1940, his Fraternity associates gave a party for Westrick
at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to celebrate the Nazi victory in
France. This was, of course, only appropriate. Fraternity guests
at this scorpions' feast included Dietrich, brother of Hermann
Schmitz of General Aniline and Film; James D. Mooney of General
Motors; Edsel Ford of the Ford Motor Company; William Weiss of
Sterling Products; and Torkild Rieber of the Texas Company. These
leaders of The Fraternity agreed to help in the free-trade agreements
that would follow a negotiated peace with Germany.
Westrick leased a large house in Scarsdale, New York, from
one of Rieber's Texas Company lawyers. He was seen entering and
leaving the house in the company of prominent figures of the Nazi
government and American industry. The New York Daily News sent
reporter George Dickson to investigate the meaning of a big white
placard with a large G on it in a window of a front second-floor
bedroom. The press generally was suggesting this formed some kind
of code for use by Nazi agents. Dickson wrote in his column: ''Phantom-like
men in white have been responding by day and night to mysterious
signaling from a secluded Westchester mansion-now disclosed as
the secret quarters of Dr. Gerhardt A. Westrick-invariably they
carry carefully wrapped packages . . . they salute with all the
precision of Storm Troopers, deliver the packages, salute again-
and silently depart . . . super-sleuthing finally solved the mystery
just before last midnight.'' Then Dickson delivered his death
blow to the story: The G sign was an invitation to the Good Humor
man to deliver his famous ice cream on a stick!
J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI determined that Westrick had illegally
obtained his driver's license by lying that he had no infirmities.
The purpose was achieved: Walter Winchell, Drew Pearson, and other
patriotic columnists blew up Westrick's Nazi connections out of
all proportion, and Westrick was asked by German Charge d'Affaires
Hans Thomsen to return to Germany at once.
But before he was ordered home, Westrick had been extremely
busy. He had gone to see Edsel and Henry Ford at Dearborn on July
11 at the Fords' urgent invitation, conferring with the Grand
Old Man and his son on the matter of restricting shipment of important
Rolls-Royce motors to a beleaguered Britain that urgently needed
them. He also visited with Will Clayton, Jesse Jones's associate
in the Department of Commerce, who went with Westrick to see Cordell
Hull to plead for the protection of German-American trade agreements
on behalf of his friends in the Texas cotton industry.
Clayton was the chairman of the U.S. Commercial Company, and
he helped protect Fraternity interests during World War II. Others
of Westrick's circle included, interestingly enough, William Donovan,
who became head of the OSS (precursor of the CIA) on its formation
in 1942. Westrick also made significant contacts with good and
true friends at Eastman Kodak and Underwood before returning home
via Japan and Russia.
After Pearl Harbor, at meetings with Kurt von Schroder and
Behn in Switzerland, Westrick nervously admitted he had run into
a problem. Wilhelm Ohnesorge, the elderly minister in charge of
post offices, who was one of the first fifty Nazi party members,
was strongly opposed to ITT's German companies continuing to function
under New York management in time of war. Behn told Westrick to
use Schroder and the protection of the Gestapo against Ohnesorge.
In return, Behn guaranteed that ITT would substantially increase
its payments to the Gestapo through the Circle of Friends.
A special board of trustees was set up by the German government
to cooperate with Behn and his thirty thousand staff in Occupied
Europe. Ohnesorge savagely fought these arrangements and tried
to obtain the support of Himmler. However, Schroder had Himmler's
ear, and so, of course, did his close friend and associate Walter
Schellenberg. Ohnesorge appealed directly to Hitler and condemned
Westrick as an American sympathizer. However, Hitler realized
the importance of ITT to the German economy and proved supportive
of Behn.
The final arrangement was that the Nazi government would not
acquire the shares of ITT but would confine itself to the administration
of the shares. Westrick would be chairman of the managing directors.
Thus, an American corporation literally entered into partnership
with the Nazi government in time of war.

p101
Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt had asked Nelson Rockefeller
to prepare a study of the communications systems of South America.
On May 4, 1942, the President had sent a memorandum to Henry
Wallace in his role as chairman of the Board of Economic Warfare, ordering
him to insure disconnection of all enemy nationals in the radio,
telephone, and telegraph fields. He had urged Wallace to eliminate
all Axis control and influence in telecommunications in Latin
America, acquire hemisphere interests of all Axis companies, insure
loyalty in employees, and disrupt direct lines to the enemy. He
had asked for a corporation to be set up to handle the financial
aspects of the program with the assistance and advice of an advisory
committee.
Wallace approached Secretary of Commerce Jesse H. Jones to
make the necessary arrangements. Jones set up the U.S. Commercial
Company to take charge of the matter. It was a characteristic
choice. The company's second-in-command was none other than Robert
A. Gantt, vice-president of ITT itself. Gantt continued to receive
salary from ITT while holding his position with the U.S. Commercial
Company. The rest of the board was largely composed of directors
of ITT or RCA (also a wartime partner in Nazi-American communications
companies).
The Hemisphere Communications Committee sat with a mixed Treasury,
State, Army, Navy, and U.S. Commercial Company board throughout
World War II, doing little more than discussing possible actions
against Axis-connected companies. A pressing issue from Pearl Harbor on
was the matter of ITT amalgamating the telephone companies of Mexico.
One of these, Mexican Telephone and Telegraph, was owned by Behn outright.
The other was owned by the Ericsson Company, of which Behn had a 35
percent share in Sweden. The Ericsson Company was partly owned by Nazi
collaborator Axel Wenner-Gren and by Jacob Wallenberg, Swedish millionaire
head of the ball bearings firm, which played both sides of the war.

part 4