Montreal Germans Honor FatherlandMontreal Daily Herald
Front page
Tuesday 2 May 1933
Local Germans observed the national May Day celebration of the Fatherland yesterday by attending a reception given by Dr. Kempff, consul-general in the German consulate. About 100 people attended the ceremony.
Stating that Germany had inaugurated a holiday for national labor when the workingman became the pivotal centre of the day as a member of the community with full civic rights. Dr. Kempff proposed a toast to the Fatherland.
"I hope this holiday will give the German workman the consciousness of solidarity and that this spirit will prove a blessing to the fatherland," he concluded.
(Current telephone listing.)
To be impartial in regard to Dr. Ludgwig Kempff, a Prussian career diplomat with an ability to weather political change, he was not popular with the Nazis, but did not denounce them either. That doesn't mean he didn't have nice things to say about his bosses when he was called to do so, as John Kalbfleisch pointed out in at least one of his history columns.
Dr. Kempff had been consul-general of Germany in Montreal since 1922. He hung on to his job until 1935. He died suddenly two years later.
Re: that May Day fest - do you suppose they allowed English-speaking bands, or not?
ReplyDeleteSome of my Peabody elders remember that dreaded flag flying from that consulate in the 30s. Those same flag-wavers were also trying to buy Anticosti Island at the time.
ReplyDeleteI shudder just thinking about it.
Mr. Peabody
More more more, Mr Peabody! jd@gravenor.com
ReplyDeleteThe Anticosti story has been in the Peabody family oral history for years. And this post-war Peabody has always been intrigued. Once the Internet and Google came into existence, a search for "Anticosti Island" + Germans led to this (cue Arte Johnson here) very interesting article.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.journal.dnd.ca/vo2/no1/doc/47-52-eng.pdf
I passed it on to Mr. Kalbfleisch of The Gazette after his article on submarine attacks in the Gulf of St. Lawrence (and further upriver too as I understand it). Mr. Kalbfleisch did a Gazette piece on this as well. (n.b. I don't think you and Chimples can be "scooped" by someone who's re-reporting an event that was headline news in the late 30s? I never went to J-school, but it's a valid statement/question, I think.)
No need for you to publish this post. It's just background flotsam and jetsam (or "fanmail from some flounder" as a certain moose I know would put it) to the real story above -- I'm sure the rest of the Coolopolitans would find this (or a Coolopolis staff rejigging thereof) to be great reading.
As always, thanks for your highly entertaining material. Keep up the great work you guys.
Mr. Peabody
FOUND IT!STOP WILL SEND IN SECTIONS STOP
ReplyDeletePEAB' STOP
Island of spies; [Final Edition]
John Kalbfleisch. The Gazette. Montreal, Que.: Dec 3, 2006. pg. A.20 Abstract (Summary)
Also staying at the Mount Royal was a mysterious character named William Glyn. He claimed to be an experienced international journalist who had overheard the Germans discussing their true plans. On Dec. 3, he wrote to the federal government, charging that the visitors were really military officers and fortifications experts. Several were intimates of Adolf Hitler himself. L.J. Belnap, Consolidated Paper's president, should be charged with treason, Glyn said.
By then the Germans - whatever their purpose - were on the last lap of their journey to Anticosti. They left behind a mounting furor. Glyn's allegations were soon in the hands of the defence minister, the parliamentary opposition and the RCMP. In The Gazette, Premier Maurice Duplessis said the island was "a strategic outpost, and it will not be alienated." Newspapers in Ottawa and Quebec City sounded alarms.
Pressed by The Gazette, he claimed to have severed his Nazi connections before becoming a Canadian, and added "he had absolutely no connection with Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler at any time (and) had no part in any negotiations for the purchase ... of Anticosti." No one since has been able to show otherwise. Nor, indeed, was the first [Karl Gerhardt], Emil Karl, ever on the island.
ReplyDelete» Jump to indexing (document details)
Full Text (761 words)
(Copyright Montreal Gazette 2006)
Did the Germans just want to build a paper mill on Anticosti, or did they have something more sinister in mind?
"Commanding as it does the entrance to the St. Lawrence river, Anticosti has frequently been alluded to as possessing considerable strategic importance."
- Gazette, Thursday, Dec. 2, 1937
In ordinary times, the news should have been greeted with enthusiasm: Big-time capitalists were planning to build a sulphite pulp mill on Anticosti Island, creating up to 2,000 jobs.
But the times were not ordinary. War with an increasingly muscular Germany was a very real possibility, and the capitalists in question were German. Was the pulp mill merely camouflage for building something more sinister, say a secret base for Nazi
U-boats or the Luftwaffe?
A variety of potential buyers, including some Canadians, had been talking to Consolidated Paper Corp., the island's owner, about taking over the vast and lonely place. But the Germans showed the most interest, and late in November 1937 a "group of technicians" checked into the Mount Royal Hotel on Peel St., bound for Anticosti to survey its potential. They were "outstanding German engineers, forestry experts and accountants," The Gazette reported.
ReplyDeleteAlso staying at the Mount Royal was a mysterious character named William Glyn. He claimed to be an experienced international journalist who had overheard the Germans discussing their true plans. On Dec. 3, he wrote to the federal government, charging that the visitors were really military officers and fortifications experts. Several were intimates of Adolf Hitler himself. L.J. Belnap, Consolidated Paper's president, should be charged with treason, Glyn said.
By then the Germans - whatever their purpose - were on the last lap of their journey to Anticosti. They left behind a mounting furor. Glyn's allegations were soon in the hands of the defence minister, the parliamentary opposition and the RCMP. In The Gazette, Premier Maurice Duplessis said the island was "a strategic outpost, and it will not be alienated." Newspapers in Ottawa and Quebec City sounded alarms.
Once on Anticosti, the Germans acted innocently enough. They charmed the locals. They took several flights in a bush plane. They went winter-camping, tried snowshoeing and managed to set fire to one of their tents. By the end of the month, they were on their way home.
ReplyDeleteThat December and in subsequent months, several federal departments examined the sale's implications. They were hard pressed to find any military reason why it should not go through. Nevertheless, the newspaper agitation and the questions in Parliament wouldn't die.
Late in April, at Consolidated Paper's annual meeting in Montreal, Belnap said negotiations were continuing. This seemed to reawaken Glyn, who repeated the claim that December's survey party had been secret agents. He even suggested that Belnap supported the sale because he had "a couple of German sons-in-law."
Enter a Dr. Emil Karl Gerhardt. According to the Toronto Star, not only was Gerhardt now known to have been on the December mission as well but - this was the point - he was a personal emissary of Hitler. It was left to The Gazette, two weeks later, to identify the man as Karl Rudolf Gerhard, German by birth but a Canadian citizen since the previous November.
This Gerhard doesn't sound especially savoury. He had been the director of the Montreal-based Deutscher Bund Canada, an organ of the Nazi government dedicated to painting it in attractive colours in this country, as well as a Nazi party member.
ReplyDeleteBut pressed by The Gazette, he claimed to have severed his Nazi connections before becoming a Canadian, and added "he had absolutely no connection with Reichsfuehrer Adolf Hitler at any time (and) had no part in any negotiations for the purchase ... of Anticosti." No one since has been able to show otherwise. Nor, indeed, was the first Gerhardt, Emil Karl, ever on the island.
Ottawa was relieved when the option to purchase finally expired in September 1938. Fears of a secret military presence faded. But was the idea that far-fetched?
During the war that soon broke out, German U-boats did probe into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. In the gulf and in the river itself, they did sink 27 ships. They did succeed in landing at least two spies.
ReplyDeleteIn 1943, the Germans also erected a weather station on these shores, not on Anticosti, to be sure, but far up the Labrador coast. It was small, battery-run and fully automated, and successfully transmitted useful data - so far as is known - for the rest of the war.
Secret? Its remains were not discovered until 1981.
Just clarifying that all those previous posts are the work of John Kalbfleisch (The Gazette, Dec. 3, 2006). Sent as info to you.
ReplyDeletePeab'
Thanks for posting that as fair usage for discussion purposes. It looks like the tip of an iceberg; something Len Deighton could have written about.
ReplyDeleteThe Deutscher Bund gets mentioned in this book, Brothers Beyond the Sea LINK.