Fear and Loathing in St. Petersburg Part I"Vonsiatsky (1898-1965) was of White Russian ancestry, born in Warsaw, whose family had a distinguished pedigree in the Czar's army, and who identified with the White Russian struggle against Communism. In the United States, he was an openly-avowed fascist who colluded with Nazi agents in the United States, and was a colleague of Father Coughlin, William Pelley, and the other American Nazis. His background was colorful and exotic, and he attracted a lot of interest from both the Nazi underground as well as from the US government. His estate in northeastern Connecticut was elaborate, filled with Russian and Nazi memorabilia, and served as the headquarters of his own political party organized for the liberation of Russia from Communism.
"Vonsiatsky had married well. After making his way from Crimea in 1920 to Constantinople to recover from war wounds (he had been shot in his back, his arm, and his stomach), he later made his way to Paris where he met the American woman who would become his wife. She was an heiress to the Nabisco fortune and his wealth came largely through her. He sailed to America in the summer of 1921, and by the following year he was married to the heiress, becoming a naturalized American citizen in 1927.
"After a period of relative political inactivity, Vonsiatsky decided that it was time to form a party that would prepare for the day when the Soviet Union would fall and Russia would be free of Bolshevism. He admired the political philosophy represented by Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler, and in May 1933 (four months after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany) Vonsiatsky formed the Russian National Revolutionary Labor and Workers Peasants Party of Fascist. The aim seemed to be to gather together all the Russian émigré groups that were proliferating throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe under one umbrella with Vonsiatsky as its leader. The headquarters of the All Russian National Revolutionary Party, as it was not for short (!), was called the Center and was located at Vonsiatsky's estate.
"The Count's involvement with other fascist organizations is well-known and documented..."
(The Hitler Legacy, Peter Levenda, pgs. 98-99)
Marion Ream, Vonsiatsky's heiress wife, is the woman in the center
Indeed. What's more, it has long been alleged that Vonsiatsky was knee deep in espionage in the years leading up to the Second World War. The chief source for a lot of the accusations against Vonsiatsky was a Ukrainian priest named Alexei Pelypenko. Initially Father Pelypenko had been a dedicated fascist and had collaborated with the Gestapo in South America during the 1930s. But after the Hitler-Stalin pact he became disillusioned with Nazism and was recruited as an informant by the FBI. His infiltration of Vonsiatsky's circle is his most noted act of espionage."Vonsiatsky himself welcomed the Ukrainian Father Pelypenko to The Center and they talked for hours concerning the state of the world and the threat of world communism. Pelypenko's bona fides were established early on: he knew what names to drop and what references to make, as he had been, after all, a devoted Nazi for years until the demoralizing Hitler-Stalin pact. He had worked in South America for the Gestapo, and was considered loyal to the cause. Only the FBI knew otherwise.
"The Count felt comfortable enough to reveal some sensitive information to the priest, including his connection with Dr. Wolfgang Ebell. Ebell was a German national (b. 1899) who served in the German army during World War One and who went to medical school in Freiburg. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1939 after first working for a while in Mexico (1927-1930). He was then based in El Paso, Texas and while there was discovered to be running Nazi agent south of the border. Also involved in the Mexican operation was Gerhardt Wilhelm Kunze, who had taken over control of the German-American Bund. Kunze was in fact working for Nazi intelligence at the same time he was the Bund's figurehead. In that capacity he was in contact with Japanese agents in Mexico on behalf of the Reich, and to Pelypenko's surprise he was informed the Kunze was shortly to go to the Pacific coast of Mexico to make contact with Japanese submarines.
"Vonsiatsky bragged that he was also in radio contact with the Nazi consul in San Francisco – Fritz Weidemann – who passed his messages on to Japan and for there to Germany in an effort to avoid the American censors.
"The importance of this information cannot be overstated and, indeed, it formed an essential part of the US government's case against the espionage ring. In one conversation, the German-American Bund and Vonsiatsky's Russian Fascists were all revealed to be working together with the Third Reich and the Empire of Japan in the months and years leading up to America's entry into the war. A spy ring in Mexico being run out of El Paso, Texas was connected with the Nazi consul in San Francisco and Japanese submarines, White Russian émigrés, and American Nazis...
"As it would later transpire, this group of conspirators would also extend to include Father Coughlin himself, as well as the Lutheran minister Kurt Molzahn of Philadelphia, and the head of the Chicago chapter of the Bund, Otto Willumeit. Pelypenko was urged to attend a clandestine meeting of the leading Nazis in Chicago at the Bismarck Hotel (where else?) in June, 1941. The meeting was bugged by the FBI.
"At the meeting – attended by Vonsiatsky, Kunze, Ebell, Willumeit and Molzahn in addition to Pelypenko – it was learned that Kunze was to quit the leadership of the Bund so that he could disappear into Mexico and rendezvous with the Japanese...
"In November, 1941 – only weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor – Kunze was waiting in Texas for the false documents he would need to cross the border into Mexico. The man arranging for the fraudulent paperwork was the Lutheran minister, Molzahn, who use the Lutheran Church's pruning office for this effort...
"Kunze had spent the previous few weeks touring America's west coast, identifying vulnerabilities in her defenses, and liaising with White Russians along the way. Once in Texas, he received the phony documentation and made it across the border into Mexico. He was on his way to be picked up by a German U-boat when FBI agents, posing as Mexican fisherman, arrested him just as the periscope breached the surface.
"Kunze's arrest – coming as it did only months after the attack on Pearl Harbor – was part of a broader sweep of Nazi agents. Molzahn, Willumeit of the Chicago Bund, Wolfgang Ebell of El Paso, and Vonsiatsky himself were all arrested and charged with espionage."
(The Hitler Legacy, Peter Levenda, pgs. 100-104)
More at: http://visupview.blogspot.com/2015/03/f ... -part.html
