Do you know who Moe Berg was?

[StPaulHusker]

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 US 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 .

Catcher Moe Berg

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.

 

Tito's partisans

During World War II, he 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.

 

The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg.

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. 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.

 

Werner Heisenberg - he blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb.

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."

Most of Germany 's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States . 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 ,

March 2,1902-----May 29, 1972

[Ulty]

Wow that's an awesome story!

[BigRedBuster]

During World War II, he 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.

 

Wow...I love stories like this.

 

I find the part I quoted above very interesting. I just read a book about this called "The Forgotten 500".

 

This book portrayed our support of Tito instead of Mihajlavic as a HUGE mistake in the war. Tito was a supporter of communist Russia while Mihajlavic supported a free Yugoslavia. The spy network was heavily infiltrated by communists so all reports coming out of Yugoslavia were skewed so that the allies would support Tito.

 

In reality, Mihajlavic and his supporters in the mountains of Yugoslavia rescued over 500 airmen from being killed by the Germans because he supported our efforts to turn back both Hitler and Communism coming from Russia at the risk of being killed themselves. In the end, he was executed by Tito's forces and Yugoslavia fell to Russian communism while many civilians were slaughtered mainly due to the support the allies gave Tito instead of him.

 

I'm only telling this story because I find it interesting pertaining to Mr. Berg. He obviously was a very important member of our forces and should be commended. It is very possible that he did not support Tito as much as his reports sounded once they were influenced by the communist infiltrators into the spy network.

[NUance]

Do you know who Moe Berg was?

Yeah. I read a book about him a few years ago. "The Catcher was a Spy". Berg was a better spy than ballplayer.

[StPaulHusker]

Do you know who Moe Berg was?

Yeah. I read a book about him a few years ago. "The Catcher was a Spy". Berg was a better spy than ballplayer.

Was the book any good?

[walksalone]

Yea, his story is awesome...

 

There's a small blurb on him in one of the HBO specials "When it was a game" 1 or 2...

[NUance]

Do you know who Moe Berg was?

Yeah. I read a book about him a few years ago. "The Catcher was a Spy". Berg was a better spy than ballplayer.

Was the book any good?

Yeah, from what I remember it was decent.

[NUinID]

There is a documentary about this guy. I don't remember if it was on ESPN or History Channel, but I remember watching it a few years back. Very interesting guy. He basically was a genius that spied for the US and played pro baseball.