**
Dr. Eowyn posted: "From an email sent to me by John Molloy, Chairman of
the National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition. He asks: "Wonder why
Hollywood never touched this story?" Moe Berg A second-rate baseball player
but a firs" Respond to this post by replying above this line
New post on *Fellowship of the Minds*
<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/eowyn2/> The baseball catcher who
was a
spy<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2013/09/21/the-baseball-catcher-who-was-a-spy/>
by
Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/eowyn2/>
>From an email sent to me by John Molloy, Chairman of the National Vietnam &
Gulf War Veterans Coalition.
He asks: "Wonder why Hollywood never touched this story?"
[image: moe
berg]<http://fellowshipofminds.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/moe-berg.gif>Moe
Berg
A second-rate baseball player but a first-rate spy.
When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in
baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher
named Moe Berg was included.
The answer was simple: Berg was a U.S. spy. *Speaking 15 languages*—including
Japanese—Moe Berg had two loves: baseball and spying.
In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an
American diplomat being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital--the tallest
building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers.
The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the
harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc.
Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s films in planning
his spectacular raid on Tokyo.
Berg’s father, Bernard Berg, a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, taught his
son Hebrew and Yiddish. Moe, against his wishes, began playing baseball on
the street aged four. His father disapproved and never once watched his son
play.
In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. He graduated
*magna cum laude* from Princeton—having added Spanish, Italian, German and
Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne,
in Paris, and Columbia Law School he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean,
Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian—15 languages in all, plus some
regional dialects. While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe
Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.
During World War II, Berg was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the
value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported
back that Marshall Tito’s forces were widely supported by the people and
Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground
fighter, rather than Mihajlovic’s Serbians.
The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was
more to come in that same year.
Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and
located a secret heavy water plant—part of the Nazis’ effort to build an
atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid
to destroy the plant.
There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in
the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they
would win the war. (Most of Germany’s leading physicists had been Jewish
and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States.)
Berg (under the code name “Remus”) was sent to Switzerland to hear leading
German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine
if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the
SS guards at the auditorium., posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy
carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill. If the German indicated
the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him—and then
swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that
the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on
his speech and walked him back to his hotel.
Moe Berg’s report was distributed to Britain’s prime minister, Winston
Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team
developing the Atomic Bomb.
Roosevelt responded: “Give my regards to the catcher.”
After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Merit—America’s highest
honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept, as he couldn’t
tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the
Medal and it hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, N.Y.
When the war ended, Moe Berg found himself unemployed. He did receive
occasional intelligence assignments, including a visit to the Soviet Union,
where his ability to speak Russia was valuable. Traveling with other
agents, when asked for credentials, by a Soviet border guard in
Russian-dominated Czechoslovakia, he showed the soldier a letter from the
Texaco Oil company, with its big red star. The illiterate soldier was
satisfied.
Roosevelt once described Moe Berg as a “most unusual fellow.” Berg would
often drop in, unannounced, at friends’ homes—expecting to be fed. He
always wore a black suit (he had eight), a white shirt and a black tie.
Berg lived with his brother Samuel for seventeen years and, when evicted,
spent his last final years with his sister, Ethel. A lifelong bachelor, he
never owned a home or even rented an apartment. He never learned how to
drive.
When someone criticized him for wasting his talent, Berg responded: “I’d
rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.”
His interest in baseball continued throughout his life. Moments before he
died (aged 70), Berg asked his nurse: “How are the Mets doing today?”
For more details on this extraordinary man, see Wikipedia's entry on Moe
Berg <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg>.
*~Eowyn*
*Dr. Eowyn <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/author/eowyn2/>* |
September 21, 2013 at 9:28 am | Tags: General Jimmy
Doolittle<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=general-jimmy-doolittle>,
Marshall Tito <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=marshall-tito>, Medal
of Merit <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=medal-of-merit>, Moe
Berg<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=moe-berg>,
President Roosevelt<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=president-roosevelt>,
Werner Heisenberg
<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=werner-heisenberg>, World
War II <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?tag=world-war-ii> | Categories:
Inspirational <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?cat=35484417>,
Military<http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?cat=33806753>,
US Presidents <http://fellowshipoftheminds.com/?cat=51656283> | URL:
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