Herbert Hans Haupt

Herbert Hans Haupt (December 21, 1919 – August 8, 1942) was an American spy and saboteur for Nazi Germany during World War II under Operation Pastorius. Haupt would become the only American to be executed by the United States for collaborating with the Axis powers.

Early life
Born in Stettin, Germany, Haupt was the son of Hans Max and Erna (Froehling) Haupt. Hans Haupt was a World War I Imperial German Army veteran who came to Chicago in 1923 to find work. His wife and son followed in 1925. Herbert Haupt became a United States citizen in 1930, at the age of 10, when his parents were naturalized. He attended Lane Tech High School and later worked at the Simpson Optical Company as an apprentice optician. As a youth, Haupt was a member of the German American Bund's Junior League.

In the years prior to the war, Haupt expressed pro-Nazi sentiments, saying that Germany was better than the United States. At one point, an acquaintance, Lawrence J. Jordan, punched Haupt in the face after he showed at a party dressing in a storm trooper's uniform and speaking in favor of Nazism.

World War II
In 1941, Haupt, with two friends, Wolfgang Wergin and Hugo Troesken, set off on a world trek. Troesken was turned back at the Mexican border for lack of proper identification, but Haupt and Wergin continued. Neither Haupt nor Wergin had been able to secure American passports before the trip. As they were German born (and thus still considered by Germany to be its citizens), they secured German passports from the Embassy in Mexico City.

They sailed to Japan, where they found work on a German merchant ship bound for France. Haupt and Wergin arrived in France at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, following which Adolf Hitler had declared war against the United States. Now stranded in Europe, Haupt went to stay at his grandmother's home in Stettin. Wergin enlisted in the Wehrmacht.

As a civilian coast watcher, Haupt was awarded an Iron Cross 2nd Class, as well as the Blockade Runner Badge, for having helped his passenger ship run the British blockade when he served as a lookout on the way to France. This drew the attention of the Abwehr (Secret Service), which recruited him to return to America as a saboteur. Haupt later insisted that he accepted the job only as a way to return home.

Operation Pastorius
Operation Pastorius consisted of 12 English-speaking Germans who were trained as secret agents at the Brandenburg Sabotage School. Eight eventually graduated and were sent to the United States via U-boat to try to damage the U.S. war industries. Haupt and three others landed on Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida on June 17, 1942. The remaining group landed on Long Island.

Haupt promptly took a train from Jacksonville to Chicago, where he stayed with his parents and visited his girlfriend. Haupt may well have intended to remain inactive until the end of the war. However, two members of the Long Island group, George John Dasch and Ernst Peter Burger, had almost immediately turned themselves in to American authorities, naming the other members of their teams. Haupt and his parents were arrested in Chicago on June 27.

Trial and death
Herbert Haupt and the other seven "U-boat Raiders" were sent to Washington, D.C., where they faced a military tribunal. All were found guilty of being spies, and even though they had not carried out any sabotage, six – including Haupt – were sentenced to death. Dasch and Burger received long prison sentences, which were commuted to deportation after the war.

Haupt, Edward Kerling, Hermann Neubauer, Werner Thiel, Heinrich Heinck, and Richard Quirin were all executed on August 8, 1942, in the District of Columbia's electric chair. It was the largest mass execution by electrocution ever conducted at the D.C. Jail. Haupt's last undelivered letter to his father read, "Try not to take this too hard. I have brought nothing but grief to all of my friends and relatives who did nothing wrong, my last thoughts will be of Mother."

Haupt was buried with the five others in the Potter's Field in Blue Plains, D.C. The graves were originally marked by wooden boards with numbers, but eventually a small monument was placed by the American Nazi Party over the graves in 1982. The marker went largely unnoticed until it was removed by the National Park Service in 2010.

Haupt's parents, Hans and Erna, were both convicted of treason and stripped of their citizenship for not informing on their son. Four others were convicted in the same trial as Haupt's parents: Haupt's uncle, Walter Wilhelm Froehling, his aunt, Lucille Froehling, and the parents of Wolfgang Wergin, Otto Richard Wergin and Kate Martha Wergin. U.S. District Judge William Joseph Campbell sentenced Hans Haupt, Walter, and Otto to death, and Erna, Lucille, and Kate to 25 years in prison each. Prior to sentencing, Campbell gave a long speech. The defendants in this case stand convicted of the crime of treason and it now becomes the solemn duty of the Court to fix punishment and impose sentence.

Where offenders stand convicted of serious crimes against the United States, it is customary for the Court, in pronouncing sentence, to recapitulate rather fully the testimony offered during the trial. This Court will depart from that procedure for the  reason that the testimony is still fresh in the minds of all participants in the trial. These defendants had a fair trial, a thing of the past in the country they sought to befriend. How different this trial was from the treatment given in Germany to persons accused of similar offenses against the German Reich. Here, an able, considerate and patient jury of men and women from every walk of life, representative of the finest ideals of our American commonwealth was carefully chosen by both sides. This jury heard the evidence and rendered a verdict after listening to lengthy summations and arguments ably presented by counsel.

As was indicated at the time of the argument on the motion for a new trial, the Court made its own abstract of the testimony in this case day by day as the trial progressed. The five days preceding the argument on the motion for a new trial were devoted exclusively by the Court to a careful and exhaustive review of this abstract and of the transcript of the testimony herein. The Court feels that the verdict of the jury is well founded in the evidence. In pronouncing sentence upon these six men and women, this Court is constrained to give full consideration to the fact that our nation, and every man, woman and child in it, are engaged in a global death struggle against forces of tyranny and evil unprecedented in the history of mankind.

Our enemies seek to destroy us both by force of arms on our far-flung battle fronts and through disaffection and treacherous sabotage within our own borders.

The home front in our titanic struggle against the enemy is equally important and certainly more vulnerable than our battle lines. This is a war of people against people, as well as cannon against cannon.

To endanger this home front, therefore, is as treasonable as the act of spiking our guns in the face of the foe.

Deliberately and in secret, under the cloak of American citizenship, the agents and helpers of the saboteur scheme and connive to destroy their neighbors and this nation.

Here then is the most iniquitous offense on the unholy list of crimes, an offense which imperils at one and the same time the structure of our government, the production of the tools for victory, the lives of our production workers and citizens, and the very ideals of free humanity.

It is the Court's duty in sentencing these defendants to make sure that the punishment meted out to them will act as a timely and solemn warning to all who would attempt to commit the smallest act of sabotage, as well as to those who would treasonably traffic with the enemies of the United States. Likewise the sentence must serve notice upon the enemy that the cunningly devised scheme for the use of American citizens of German birth as pawns in the game of sabotage and espionage in this Country is doomed to failure. Citizens threatened with the torture of their relatives in Germany for failure to assist German agents in this Country must be impressed with the personal danger involved in yielding to such contemptible coercion.

A jury of their peers has held these three men and their respective wives guilty, and justice must be done them. Thus also will justice be done to the thousands of loyal German-Americans whose patriotism and devotion to the United States are beyond question. This Court does not for a moment believe the prisoners to be representative in the slightest degree of the mass of our German-born citizens. These citizens should not in any way be subjected to harassment, unfairness or prejudice as a consequence of the acts of the defendants in this case.

Counsel has urged mercy for the prisoners before the bar, particularly in the cases of the three women as mothers. There are no priorities on mercy. Like justice, it is the common hope of all. In weighing the mercy pleas for the women here involved, it also has been encumbent on the Court to consider the millions of suffering mothers of boys who are fighting this war for us, and the mothers who toil in aluminum and powder plants or on production lines in constant danger from saboteurs — mothers who have equal rights to consideration with the prisoners here. These defendants by their acts have thus forfeited any right to consideration as mothers.

However, the Court in fixing punishment does take into consideration the different degrees of guilt of the defendants as appears from the evidence. It was apparent on the trial of this cause that each of the woman defendants, though knowing  the seriousness and evil nature of her actions, undoubtedly followed the leadership of her husband. This being true, the Court recognizes a distinction between the husbands' and wives' degree of guilt, although clearly no such distinction exists between the degree of guilt of the respective woman defendants. This is reflected in the sentences to follow.

In the case of the husbands, the evidence shows deliberate adhering and giving aid and comfort to an enemy in time of war. To countenance such conduct by leniency while our nation fights for its very existence would be such dereliction of duty as would be second only to the treason thus condoned.

It is, therefore, the judgment of this Court upon the verdict of the jury heretofore returned that the defendants Hans Max Haupt, Erna Emma Haupt, Walter Otto Froehling, Lucille Froehling, Otto Richard Wergin and Kate Martha Wergin, and each of them, are guilty of the crime of treason as charged in the indictment in this cause.

The defendants Erna Emma Haupt, Lucille Froehling and Kate Martha Wergin, and each of them, are sentenced to the custody of the Attorney General to be imprisoned in a penitentiary for a term of twenty-five years and each of them to pay a fine of ten thousand dollars.

The defendants Hans Max Haupt, Walter Otto Froehling and Otto Richard Wergin, and each of them, are sentenced to death. Said defendants, and each of them, shall be taken from the bar of this court by the Marshal of the United States for the Northern District of Illinois and be confined by said Marshal in safe and secure custody until the twenty-second day of January, 1943; and on that day said defendants and each of them shall be by said Marshal, according to law, at some convenient place, within the Northern District of Illinois, there put to death by electrocution, that is, by causing to pass through the bodies of each of said defendants a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death and the application and continuance of such current through the bodies of each of said defendants until each of said defendants be dead. Campbell won praise around the country for the severity of the sentences. However, on appeal, the entire group had their convictions reversed due to technical errors. Walter and Otto later pleaded guilty to misprision of treason and each received 5-year sentences. Hans Haupt was retried, found guilty of treason once more, but received a life sentence. Charges were dropped against Lucille and Kate, albeit Erna Haupt was held until the war ended and deported in 1948. In 1957, Hans Haupt was granted clemency by President Dwight D. Eisenhower and deported to Germany on the condition that he would never return to the United States.

Also prosecuted, but not directly implicated in the plot, was William Wernecke, a close friend of Haupt. Wernecke had given Haupt advice on dodging the draft, and allowed him to practice to become a stormtrooper on his farm. Haupt had contacted Wernecke after his return, albeit he did not mention the plot. At the time of Wernecke's arrest, his farm was found to have a large amount of weapons and ammunition. In June 1943, Wernecke was found guilty of two counts of violating the Selective Training and Service Act. He was sentenced to five years in prison and was fined $10,000. Wernecke was paroled in August 1944, after agreeing to serve in the U.S. Army. He served at various military bases in the continental United States, before being discharged in September 1945.

Following the war, Wernecke continued his involvement with the far-right. In 1954, he formed the Nationalist Conservative Party, and associated with Matthias Koehl, who'd later become a prominent figure in the American Nazi Party. Wernecke believed that Jews were un-American, and that blacks should not be citizens, and not allowed to vote or associate with white people. In July 1958, his wife left him, citing physical abuse. She also claimed that he'd bragged about bombing a Chicago department store and Jewish tombstones before the war. In 1959, Wernecke was sentenced to 1 to 5 years in prison for hiring two individuals to bomb the home of his former business partner, albeit this conviction was overturned in 1960. Wernecke died of a heart ailment on March 29, 1965.

Modern relevance
In 2001, Herbert Haupt was in the news again as President Bush attempted to use military tribunals to try American citizens after the September 11, 2001, attacks. The Supreme Court ruling regarding Haupt, the only U.S. citizen executed in the affair, was cited again (Ex parte Quirin).