[Editor’s Note: On the eve of Veterans Day, it is appropriate to recall one of the most unusual veterans of World War II.]
Moe Berg’s baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
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. Although he played with five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a mediocre ballplayer.
Moe also was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time. Casey Stengel once said of Mr. Berg: “That is the strangest man ever to play baseball.”
For those who wondered why he traveled with the much more talented players, the answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the CIA.
Moe spoke 15 languages — including Japanese. He had two loves: baseball and spying.
In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Mr. 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 ballplayer ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features, the harbor, military installations, railway yards and other markings.
Eight years later, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle studied Mr. Berg’s films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.
His father disapproved of his baseball-playing, and he never once watched his son play. At Barringer High School in New York, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers every day.
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, Moe 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. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic’s Serbians.
Mr. 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 that plant.
Mr. Berg’s report was distributed to Mr. Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the atomic bomb. Mr. Roosevelt responded: “Give my regards to the catcher.”
Most of Germany’s leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States.
How Close Were the Nazis?
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. Mr. 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, Mr. Berg was to shoot him and then swallow the cyanide pill. Sitting in the front row, he determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Mr. Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.
After the war, Mr. Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom, America ‘s highest honor for a civilian in wartime.
He refused to accept it because he couldn’t tell people about his exploits.
After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown, NY.
Mr. Fidanian may be contacted at www.fidanianinsurance.com
