Some information I came across whilst looking for something else which suggests the United States were always an active party in the run to WW2 and long before.
Its not much on first blush but I felt it noteworthy.
From here Bermuda's History from 1939 World War 2 to 1951
Its not much on first blush but I felt it noteworthy.
From here Bermuda's History from 1939 World War 2 to 1951
1939. August 24. A formal State of Emergency was declared in Bermuda, a week before World War 2 began.
The State of Emergency also required all persons traveling to Bermuda to have a passport and if they were Americans or other non-British citizens, to have a visa issued by British Consular authorities in New York or elsewhere. (But see October 1939).
1939. With World War 2 imminent for Britain, a 99 year lease was granted by the UK to the USA for land bases at St David's Island and Morgan and Tucker's Islands.
1939. September 1. With World War II approaching, the United States and Great Britain curtailed or abandoned their submarine commerce raider programs, partly out of fear that Japan, the rising sea power in the Pacific, might emulate the weapon if it proved successful.
1939. September 2. Sinking by the German Navy of the British ship SS Athenia while en route from Glasgow to Canada, before WW2 started and what happened as a result in Washington DC and Glasgow because of a number of Americans on the ship, some of whom died.
1940. January. 112 bags of mail were taken by Bermuda-based censors sent out from England from a Pan American Airways flying boat. They included securities and large money transfers and even packages of diamonds.
1940. May. Newly installed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill personally dispatched Canadian-born William Stephenson, then working in London and by then a close confidante and one of his most reliable private sources of information on secret German rearmament programmes, to New York with the cover title of British passports control officer. Working out of offices in Rockefeller Centre, the original mandate of Sir William’s covert British Security Coordination organisation was to facilitate co-operation and the exchange of information between the various British intelligence agencies operating in the Western Hemisphere and authorities in the still-neutral United States. The role quickly expanded under the pressure of wartime conditions, with Sir William soon overseeing British efforts to blunt Nazi espionage, sabotage and propaganda activities in the United States during the early years of the conflict. One of his key weapons in this regard was to be the work of the Bermuda censorship station. This became hugely significant because since before the start of WW2 and also during it at that time and until the end of the war in 1945, Bermuda was a staging point for regular US-European flying boat services operated by Pan American World Airways and Britain’s Imperial Airways, with the bulk of transatlantic air mail passing through the island. Bermuda was a geographically convenient location for the scrutiny of mail exchanged between North America and Europe. All correspondence sent to or from Europe was destined to be examined by Imperial Censorship staff based at the Hamilton Princess Hotel, and suspect items were intercepted and photographed. This led to the identification of several important German spies and spy rings operating in North America. Ultimately, some 1,500 British intelligence officers and code breakers descended on Bermuda to staff the Imperial Censorship station, many of them women — and jokingly dubbed “Censorettes” after the high-kicking Radio City Music Hall precision dancers, the Rockettes. Sir William, knighted in 1946 by the British, in addition to investigating enemy activities and mobilizing pro-British opinion in the US, served as an unofficial liaison between Churchill and President Franklin D Roosevelt, supervised training of Americans for intelligence work, operated spy networks which uncovered Axis activities in South America and provided valuable information to Washington and London on the movements of pro-Nazi Vichy French operatives.
1940. May 23. US Secretary of State Cordell Hull implored Canadian Prime Minister MacKenzie King to act as an intermediary on America’s behalf and persuade King George VI to evacuate from a beleaguered Britain — then vulnerable to a Nazi invasion — and relocate to Bermuda for the duration of World War Two. It was less than two weeks after Winston Churchill had succeeded Neville Chamberlain as Britain’s wartime leader. At that time, while Britain and her Commonwealth Allies were at war, Both President Roosevelt and Mr. Hull privately believed America could not maintain its neutrality indefinitely in the face of widespread Nazi aggression. Hull had stated in an address to Harvard University that there was no more dangerous folly than to think that America’s achievements can be preserved by isolation. But he and the President were then hesitant to openly side with Britain in the early years of World War Two given the strength of the isolationist lobby — born in the aftermath of the First World War (1914-1918) when the failure of Washington’s allies to pay their war debts resulted in many Americans turning their backs on the rest of the world. Hull made the plea when Franco-British forces were falling back on the French port city of Dunkirk in the face of the invading German army’s relentless Blitzkrieg strategy and had already started to plan to evacuate across the English Channel. Joseph Kennedy — the US Ambassador to Great Britain and father of future President John F. Kennedy – was reporting back to the State Department that the United Kingdom was unlikely to be able to continue the fight against Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s tyrannical regime for more than a few weeks once France fell. King was telephoned by Cordell Hull, who expressed concern at the gravity of the present situation and requested that someone be sent from Ottawa to Washington for a discussion with him and someone higher up. That person higher up was President Franklin Roosevelt. Hugh Keenleyside, of Canada's Department of External Affairs, was sent. He reported back on May 26. King recorded in his diary his abhorrence at the position put forward by the Americans. They had decided that the French would not be able to hold out, and that Britain would not be able to bear up against the stronger German air force. Their information was that Hitler might make an offer of settlement, which would be based on Britain turning over of the whole of its empire and fleet to the Germans. The Germany navy, combined with the British navy and the French fleet, would then be much superior to the US navy. The Americans requested that King line up the [British] Dominions [in 1940 they were Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland and South Africa] to bring concerted pressure to bear on Britain to not make a soft peace with Germany, even though it might mean destruction of the country. The American proposal, which they wished King to claim as coming from Canada, and not the United States, was that if it seemed likely that Britain was going to be defeated, then its fleet should retreat, so that it could still operate from a base away from Britain, and King George should go to Bermuda. The United States would open her ports to repairs for the British fleet, and in this way, a cordon, from Greenland to Africa, could be thrown around Germany. Though it might take a couple of years, Germany would be defeated in the end.
1940. July. Censors arrived from England and via them Bermuda played a unique role in World War 2. They came because Bermuda lay at the crossroads of the Atlantic. Flying boats or clippers flying back and forth across the Atlantic, had to stop in Bermuda to refuel or wait out the weather, particularly during the winter months when the gales blew across the ocean. Censors also helped plug a big hole in Bermuda’s tourism income when the British decided to upgrade the tiny mail censorship department in Bermuda consisting of a few local postmen, to a force to be reckoned with. Also, Bermuda was an important rendezvous for wartime convoys. Another important advantage was it was safe from the chaos and danger of air raids. For these reasons the hub of the British Censorship Department was moved from Liverpool to Bermuda. Hundreds of British censors and examiners began to move into the Princess Hotel (and the Bermudiana Hotel which was used purely for housing). At one point, there was talk of bringing as many as 3,000 censors to Bermuda. There was a protest from Bermuda, because that many censors would put a tremendous burden on the Island’s food and water supply, so the plan was abandoned and there were probably never more than 700 here at one time. At any rate, the Hamilton Princess became the HQ of British Atlantic and North American postal censorship activity, intense intelligence operations for the British Government in Bermuda, much to the annoyance of some anti-British, pro-German Americans whose ships and aircraft were subject to scrutiny. The censors used basement rooms in the hotel and depended greatly on British Intelligence reports. It led to the post-war publication of The Princess Spies by CIA Officer Thomas F. Troy who died in 2008. It was an article, not book. (It's possible, perhaps even likely, the Hamilton Princess Hotel has a copy, given its involvement. If so, it might be available there for inspection). The operation at the Princess Hotel, near Hamilton, Bermuda was essentially the filter through which all correspondence in the Western hemisphere was inspected. To the average person during World War Two, censorship during times of war was a routine activity. It didn't generate much interest. And that's exactly how British Intelligence authorities wanted it to look because behind the walls of 13 rooms within the hotel, top secret sleuthing, a la James Bond, was taking place. Even the majority of the "examiners" didn't know what went on behind closed doors.
Under the leadership of British Intelligence officer William Samuel Stephenson, (see photo right) a Canadian some say was one of the real-life inspirations for the literary and movie super-spy James Bond, the co-ordination of the secret "offensive" censorship took place. Senior Representative of British Intelligence, Sir William Stephenson, code name "Intrepid," also helped to trap German spies and agents in the US. Stephenson reported directly to Bletchley Park. The British-Canadian and his team thus helped uniquely to frustrate the operations of Hitler. Espionage experts used technologically-advanced techniques to break into letters and packages in order to produce and plant forgeries useful in propaganda and blackmail operations. The technique of prying open sealed envelopes without leaving a trace required a mastery of the process. The group of experts were then able to obtain the contents of any package leaving no trace of their tampering. Using innovative techniques for the time they could even extract a letter from an envelope without cutting, steaming or replacing it with a forged replica. "Duff" was the name used for enemy agents to use a microdot method of slipping information through the mail. It involved photographically shrinking a typed page to the size of an ordinary typewritten punctuation mark. A German Professor Zapp was the inventor of the simplified process of micro-photography, a process commandeered by the German government. Huge quantities of classified and/or highly secret both technical and militarily-sensitive information were sent by airmail. In Latin America alone, trade and technical journals were smuggled into Mexico and sent to European cover addresses in the form of dots. Diagrams and chemical formulas were changed to dots, twenty of more to each letter.
To discover the message, which had punctuation dots scattered throughout the letter, a 200-power microscope was required. (The microdot was described later by Hoover and others as the enemy's masterpiece of espionage). From the efforts of those based in Bermuda, the Federal Bureau of Information (FBI) were informed of the hyper-micro-photographic dots and the method of their preparation by non-portable apparatus. The FBI, to protect their Bermuda resources, quoted false other sources of their information. The Bermuda "trappers" were not able to find microdots in pieces of mail by random searches. They needed a constant supply of information about possible or likely suspects, their letters that needed to be inspected, addresses that both the BSC and FBI felt uneasy about, and the types or categories of correspondence that appeared likely for destination to German Intelligence fronts or units. This was the function of the FBI. It produced startling results. From information that arrived at the FBI from Bermuda, the FBI were unable to discover clandestine German activities in many places including Latin America where British agents could then generate even more knowledge of German espionage activities and feed them back to both Bermuda and the FBI for special intelligence operations.
The most skillful trappers were women. It was said at the time that they also had the physical features that the men lacked, such as lovely legs, but they more than proved their worth in war-important ways. Women outnumbered the men. Most of the men were married, middle-aged or engrossed with their work. The women were mostly single, young and attractive. some of the women came from Britain's military intelligence operation, MI5. Their work proved to be so useful to the combined efforts of the war that Sir William called the censorship initiative "a political weapon of very special importance . . . credit to all concerned." The hotel has many other fascinating connections to the legacy of James Bond and to victory of the Allied Forces in World War two. It housed twelve hundred secret agents, experts, scientists and linguist in the former Adam Lounge, dubbed Room 99, from 1940 to 1945. It was chosen because of because of its strategic geographic location. Working out of a two-storey wooden building plus what became the Gazebo Lounge and the Adam Lounge, (the Gold Lounge today), the men intercepted all postal, telegraph and radio traffic between the Western Hemisphere and Europe. Flying boats to Darrell's island would drop off packages which were delivered by launch to the Princess dock. The mail was sorted in the present-day Gazebo Lounge area before being sent over to the Adam Lounge to check all the details. The parcels were then searched by the Imperial Censorship staff for microdot messages that could have been sent by German spies.
The men would decode the secret correspondence, extract the letters from the tightly sealed envelopes and put them back without anyone knowing. Sir William retired in 1964 and moved into a suite at The Princess with his wife. They eventually moved into a home in Paget were he lived until he died at the age of 93 in 1989. The department was actually used as a training ground with censors learning their craft and then being moved off to places like Trinidad or Jamaica. So in total, probably 1,100 censors worked here at different times. They were hugely beneficial to the Island, and helped to save its economy. Many censorship staff members rented houses, ate in local restaurants, and spent their money in shops. The censors were trained in every language imaginable. Head of uncommon languages Robert Bigwood spoke over 30 different languages. They worked at trestle tables in the wooden portion of the hotel which is no longer there. Former censor, the late Margaret Mair Cooper, remembered the hotel to be a bit shabby back then, and the wooden part hot and stuffy. There were some advantages to staying at the hotel though. In their leisure time censors could swim in the pool, and there were also endless and very intense games of tennis. One of the last remaining censors, Sheila Reddicliffe Lightbody, who in 2012 was in her 90s and living in the United Kingdom, described the Princess at that time as “a gaunt unattractive building but its rooms were spacious and well designed. There were good bathrooms and views over the fifth floor windows of gardens and cottages and a glimpse along the northern shore to the Dockyard. My roommate and I would often take a quick dip in the harbour during their coffee breaks. We got into the habit of lunching on fruit and Ryvita (crackers) to make the most of the sticky summer heat when the tide was in. Otherwise there was also a good swimming pool right there at the cliff top.” Another censor (or censorette) was Beryl Cozens-Hardy (later, the Hon) who was born in 1911 in Liverpool. She was 27-years-old when war was declared in 1939. During the early war years she worked for the BBC, the Civil Service and the Foreign Office, stating that her work included intercepting contraband and counter espionage. She eventually joined the British censorship department in Liverpool.
The censorship department was responsible for checking the mail to make sure letter writers weren’t inadvertently revealing some crucial bit of war information to people in other parts of the world. They also tried to stop goods and commodities, such as diamonds and money, from getting to the enemy and they also gathered information on enemy spies. When war started, censorship departments were set up all across the British Empire from Britain to the Caribbean to the Middle East but early on in the war, the main headquarters was in Liverpool. This was partly because of Liverpool’s importance as a convoy port, and partly because it was thought that any bombing would probably be on London. Unfortunately, this later proved to be grossly untrue. Liverpool was very badly blitzed during the war. When she was asked if she would like to move to Bermuda it was an invitation she readily accepted. Two shiploads of personnel traveled to Bermuda where their role was to intercept mail from the United States and bound for Germany. Liverpool was still in good shape at that time. Later, it was bombed severely. Miss Cozens-Hardy arrived before the Duke and Duchess of Windsor did on their way to the Bahamas, where the Duke of Windsor took up a position as Governor. She recalled the Duke of Windsor coming to visit and going for a swim. He put his signet ring in a nook and it nearly got left behind. She appeared to have a role in looking after it. In Bermuda, Miss Cozens-Hardy became personal assistant to controller Charles Watkins-Mence. Nobody got to see him without going through her first. Her office in the Hamilton Princess was on the first floor. It had a lovely view and was next to Mr Watkins-Mence’s office. Before September 1940, the censorship staff in Bermuda was fairly small and mostly billeted at the Inverurie Hotel. After September, it was decided to ramp the department up. Waves of censors were moved from Liverpool. Air raids there became very disruptive and there were fears that Britain was about to be invaded by Germany. The Bermuda department eventually became one of the main departments, essentially the headquarters.
It made an excellent listening post because all mail flown on flying boats between North America and Europe stopped in Bermuda. Liners also stopped off in Bermuda. To accommodate the larger numbers, the censorship department took over not only the Hamilton Princess Hotel but also the Bermudiana Hotel. The Bermudiana was mainly used for residential quarters; the Hamilton Princess provided work space and residential accommodation. The workforce included sorters, who fed the censors mail for the correct departments, and mail from addressees on blacklists. It was the censors’ job to work out who was collaborating with the Nazis. There were dozens of censors seated at tables and reading the mail. There were two very good cryptographers. One special examiner was Nadya Gardner. Miss Gardner was part of a small team of examiners who secretly went through mail that came in diplomatic pouches. The team were experts at what they termed ‘chamfering’. They could steam open letters, usually with a little kettle, and reseal them. They could also unwrap packages encased in a web of twine, examine the contents, and then put everything back as though the contents were never disturbed. Miss Gardner, who was reputed to have been a ballet dancer, was instrumental in bringing down the Joe K spy ring in New York in 1941. She liked to dance in her bare feet, which shocked everyone, for some reason. Bermuda developed the top scientific testing laboratory out of all British censorship departments. It was headed by Charles Dent, an up-and-coming young doctor. Letters were tested here for secret inks. Dr Dent and his future wife Margaret Coed, a censor, bought a sail boat together. For the censors, in Bermuda, life was idyllic. There were no air raids.
Food was more plentiful than in England, although there were some concerns that the 800 or so extra censorship staff members would deplete the food resources. Days could be quite busy with flying boats sometimes coming in from Lisbon and New York early in the morning and late at night. Thousands of pounds of mail had to be removed from them, sorted, read, in some cases tested for secret writing and returned for the next flight. Only on Saturday afternoons was there any appreciable spare time. But there was plenty to do when the censors had the time. They swam in the hotel pool during their time off. There were endless, furiously competitive, games of tennis, and there were also theatrical and singing groups to take part in. There were several semi-well known artists, actors, magicians and opera singers within the censorship staff and they sometimes gave performances for the general public. When the United States came into the war after Pearl Harbor, censorship of the mail passing through Bermuda was eventually taken over by them.
Miss Cozens-Hardy, along with the majority of censors in Bermuda, returned to England on May 1, 1944. She was put forward for the Foreign Office, passed a board exam and was given a job which included ongoing responsibility for censorship matters. Her main job was the restoration of British postal services throughout the world in the post war era. London was never her cup of tea but when she left the Foreign Office, she still returned to her place of work in the capital every three weeks to tie up any unresolved issues. She said that restoring the post after the war was not difficult. She was associated with the Girl Guides Association for 85 years, attaining the top ranking position in the world as Chairman of the World Committee between 1972 and 1975. Between 1961 and 1970 she was Chief Commissioner of the Girl Guides in England and in 1971 she was awarded an OBE for her services to the Girl Guides’ Association in the Queen’s New Year Honours. She also received a silver fish award from the Girl Guides, one of their highest honours. Miss Cozens-Hardy also held many public offices, as a Justice of the Peace, a rural district councillor and as a co-opted member of Norfolk’s Education Committee. She was admired and respected in Norfolk and much loved in the village of Letheringsett which was her home for the last 50 years of her life. She died at Letheringsett Hall, formerly the seat of the Cozens-Hardy family her brother Peter was the fourth and last Baron Cozens-Hardy. It is now a care home.
1940. August 8. A shipment of some 500 “Old Masters” was discovered on the SS Excalibur of the American Export Line which had docked in Bermuda. The items seized by British censors resident in Bermuda at the Princess Hotel Pembroke and elsewhere were priceless artwork by Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Picasso, etc. These significant artworks had been confiscated by the Gestapo and other German authorities from Jewish individuals and families. Instead of remaining in Bermuda they were conveyed by air to Montreal, to avoid problems with Bermuda’s humidity.
1940. October 10. Arrival in Bermuda via the American Export Line ship Excambion (later to bring another famous visitor to Bermuda) from Lisbon of Dr. Otto Strasser who had fled Germany, traveling under a false last name and under a Swedish passport. He had left his wife and two children behind in Lisbon. He spent a total of six months in Bermuda, under some surveillance but also with some patronage and freedom, not interned like other German nationals. Later, he lived in Canada where he achieved a claim to fame. He was the brother of Gregor Strasser, also a left winger believer in socialism, shot by the Nazis as a traitor. Some sources say that while in Bermuda, Otto Strasser wrote and published the book "Hitler and I."
1940. October 14. This letter was sent by the British Ambassador in Washington DC to Colonel Knox, British Army in Bermuda. " Dear Colonel Knox, You will remember that lust week I told you that His Majesty's Government had received from a committee of the Legislature of Bermuda a statement setting forth with great force the serious damage which in their opinion would be done to the life and prospect of Bermuda if the scheme suggested by Admiral Greenslade was carried out in its original form. I attach a memorandum based on material derived from Bermuda which sets out in detail the objections of the Bermudians to the present scheme and an alternative suggestion which they believe will meet the needs of the United states equally as well if not better. My Government has considered this memorandum and thinks its fundamental case is well taken, and has directed me to ask whether you would agree to Admiral Greenslade going back to Bermuda after his return to Washington and investigating the alternative plan. I understood you to say at our brief meeting last week that you would arrange for this. As you will see from the attached paper the head and front of the Bermudian objection is to the proposed position of the military aerodrome and, in a minor degree, to the islands selected for the magazines as they adjoin the very narrow entrance into Hamilton Harbour. The alternative scheme provides for a military aerodrome and possibly a seaplane base to be concentrated at the Eastern end of the island which would make it easier for the United States to keep control over its own activities there and would avoid the disturbance to the island which is involved in the present plan. It is estimated that the construction of an aerodrome on and around Long Bird Island would neither take longer nor be more expensive than that now proposed and would give longer run-ways in both directions. The Governor assures me that the people of Bermuda are most anxious to cooperate in providing the facilities needed by the United States and I am sure you will agree with me In thinking that if the proposed naval and air bases can be carried out with the good will of the people of Bermuda it will make the practical working of Anglo-American cooperation in Bermuda much easier in the future. If Admiral Greenslade wishes to have more details of the new proposal, my Naval Attache, Admiral Pott, will do his best to supply him with them."
1940. November. Arrival in Bermuda of a "Donald Williams" - in fact William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan - special advisor to President Roosevelt and soon to be appointed the first director of the Office of Strategic Services, later the Central Intelligence Agency. The USA was not yet at war but he was sent to Bermuda to see and cooperate with William Stevenson of the UK's wartime censors based in Bermuda since July 1940. Among other things, he colluded with Stevenson in the opening up and censorship of mail bound to and from Europe and the USA.
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