Kurt Frederick Ludwig

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Kurt Ludwig during his arrest

Kurt Frederick Ludwig , also Kurt Friedrich Ludwig or Fritz Ludwig (* 1903 in Fremont , Ohio , USA ; † after 1953) was a German spy against the USA. He was the central figure in the Joe K spy ring in the history of agents in World War II . In his encrypted letters from the USA to Berlin, Ludwig often signed with "Joe K".

Life

Kurt Frederick Ludwig was born in Fremont, Ohio, and moved with his parents to Germany when he was two, where he grew up and married. He visited the United States several times in the 1920s and 30s. In February 1938 he was arrested in Austria for espionage for photographing bridges in the border area between Austria and Germany. He was released again, because a little later the German Empire annexed Austria. In March 1940 he was commissioned by the National Socialist government to set up a spy ring in the USA.

Joe K

With funds from the German consulate in New York and disguised as a leather goods dealer, Kurt Frederick Ludwig recruited six men and two women. Some of them belonged to the German-American youth movement, which became the Nazi-loyal German-American Association.

They observed the movement of ships and airplanes mainly in the New York City area and off the Atlantic coast of New Jersey . Ludwig often drove his car across the country and preferred to take hitchhiking soldiers with him. There was a shortwave receiver in his car through which he received orders in encrypted form.

Ludwig sent his reports via embassies (Spain, Portugal, China) to cover addresses in the respective countries, from where they then forwarded confidants to Berlin. Reports that seem particularly important, such as the US plans to defend Pearl Harbor , went directly to the greats of the Nazi regime: Heinrich Himmler alias "Manual Alonzo" and Reinhard Heydrich alias "Lothar Frederick". Most of the letters were signed with "Joe K", all of them were written in invisible ink ( secret ink ), and the string was encrypted. The typography included the abbreviations of the Gabelsberger shorthand system, which was hardly in use at the time . The spies used photography techniques, hidden codes in typewriter tapes , Ludwig's notebook was full of ciphers that contained the names of other group members or messages such as:

  • "Boeing flying fortress US Army B96 (Model 299T)."
  • "Gun turret in tail Sperry bombsight."
  • "April 15, 1941."

Exposure

The FBI intercepted letters as early as 1940, tried to decrypt them and then passed them on to the addressee without being noticed. The police got the decisive clue from an accident in Times Square . Two men quarreled on March 18, 1941 in the busy square, whereupon one ran over a red pedestrian light and was fatally injured by a car. It was a courier from the Spanish consulate named Don Julio Lopes Lido. His real name, however, was Ulrich von der Osten, a member of the German Abwehr and who came to the USA as the new head of the group. The other man was Kurt Frederick Ludwig. He fled from the scene of the accident, but was under surveillance from then on.

In August 1941, the authorities managed to expose the entire ring. According to the investigation, this included the people

  • Lucy Boehmler (Ludwig's assistant, 18 years old when he was arrested)
  • Paul Borchardt
  • Rene Charles Froehlich
  • Teodore Erdman Erich Lau (group paymaster)
  • Helen Pauline Mayer
  • Karl Victor Müller
  • Hans Helmut "Bubi" Pagel (photo expert, 20 years old when arrested)
  • Frederick Edward Schlosser (19 years old when arrested)

Arrest and trial

Kurt Frederick Ludwig got wind of the exposure and fled by car to the American Midwest, sent his belongings by post to relatives on the east coast and traveled by bus from Montana to Seattle , presumably to fly to Germany via Japan . The arrest took place on August 23, 1941. A little later, with the exception of Lau, who was able to hide until 1946, the whole group was arrested.

The New York Times wrote on August 27, 1941:

[Prosecutor Mathias F.] “Correa refused to testify other than that Ludwig was working for a country hostile to the United States. Ludwig, who is around 38 years old, [...] lived for a while on Fresh Pond Road in the Queens district of Ridgewood, where numerous German-Americans live. The crime he is accused of is not directly related to espionage, but rather the fact that Ludwig broke the law and consciously used the United States postal service to send information abroad that he had gathered for a foreign power and which should be used against the USA. "

Trial and detention

The trial took place in the Southern District of New York Court. Only Lucy Boehmler showed herself confessingly. She appeared as a key witness and weighed heavily on Ludwig in particular. Because the US had not yet officially entered World War II, the court did not pronounce the death penalty. The verdict was issued on March 13, 1942. The sentences ranged from five (for Boehmler) to twenty years. Kurt Frederick Ludwig served eleven of his twenty years on the prisoner island of Alcatraz and was deported from the USA in 1953. Then his tracks are lost.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A private source (Ludwig's nephew) speaks of December 4, 1904 as his birthday and puts the year of death around or shortly before 1987.
  2. ^ The New York Times of February 12, 1942 names Charles A. Appel as handwriting expert in the process; FBI Special Agent Paul A. Napier decoded most of the messages.
  3. ↑ Man Fleeing US Held as Army Spy. Much secrecy in case. New York Times, August 27, 1941. Translated from the American.
personal data
SURNAME Ludwig, Kurt Frederick
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ludwig, Kurt Friedrich; Ludwig, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German spy in the USA
DATE OF BIRTH 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Fremont , Ohio , USA
DATE OF DEATH after 1953