BC priests connected to Nazi and British espionage during WWII

Father Gallagher has been teaching in BC’s history department for five years. His research mainly centers on US diplomatic history, Vatican diplomacy, and American Catholic history. (And he’s currently my professor for the course “Spies, Spying, and the Presidency”).

While researching for his newest book, Father Gallagher uncovered startling information about a Nazis presence in Boston during World War II. And there are BC priests involved.

Those darn Jesuits.

The Tab sat down with Father Gallagher to discuss the latest developments of his research, including Nazis in Copley Square.

Where did this project begin?

My intention was first to write about the Christian Front New York group that had conspired to plan terrorist action in New York City against Jews and Communists, but their cell was infiltrated by the FBI and that group was rounded up in a raid on January 17, 1940 and put on trial. The legal action against the group effectively disbanded the organization in New York, but there was mention that there was a branch of this group in Boston.

I actually found out the name of the leader of the group in Boston and entered his name into Google Books and found a book published in 1961 in the BC library, which was a transcript of a Nazi war criminal from Nuremberg [Herbert Scholz] who started talking about his relationship with this man from Boston [ Francis P. Moran] and how they conducted spying operations in Boston. From 1939 to 1941, Scholz was the Nazi’s diplomatic consul in Boston. He was also an SS officer and a close personal friend of Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the Holocaust.

What kind of spying operations were the Nazis doing in Boston?

The Nazis would support Christian Front propaganda against Jews, Communists and the British. I figured that Francis Moran would have an FBI file, so I immediately filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get his file released. At the same time, as luck would have it, I read a footnote in a magazine article that a Boston journalist who had interviewed Moran in 1940 had donated his papers to the Armenian Studies and Research Center in Belmont, Massachusetts. These interviews were a bonanza because the journalist went “undercover” as a fascist sympathizer. Moran was very candid with him, indicating that he wanted to “kill all the Jews.”

Were the Nazis funding the Christian Front in Boston?

I have not been able to find precise financial documentation, but everything points to the fact that they had. The Nuremburg transcript shows that Moran met with the SS moneyman from New York. In his interviews, Moran admits to receiving direction from Scholz – he talks on record about how he is taking direction from Scholz. This is all up through 1941.

How does Copley Square play into this plot?

When Scholz [Nazi’s diplomatic consul in Boston] started presumably giving the Christian Front money, they were able to afford expensive offices and they moved their headquarters form a house on Beacon Street to the Copley Square Hotel.

Wasn’t there a BC priest involved?
Yea – well there were a couple BC priests involved. One was a guy named Father Michael J. Ahern, and he had a popular radio show in New England and over the radio made broadcasts, which supported the Christian Front.

Did Father Ahern know that the Christian Front was being supported by Nazis?

No – no one knew that until after the war.

Who was the other BC priest?

A guy named Father John Louis Bonn, after whom the Bonn Theatre is named, and well, the Nazi propaganda had worked so well that the British thought they had to step in. A British secret agent came to Boston and recruited a group of liberal Catholics to create a front organization to thwart the Christian Front.

The group that the British started was called the Irish American Defense Association. The leader of that group was a woman named Frances Sweeney, and it was Sweeney who tried to recruit Father Bonn to indicate publicly that it was not permissible for Catholics to join the Christian Front. But Bonn, when he received this invitation, refused to go on record saying anything against the Christian Front for two reasons. One was that he was suspicious that Sweeney was a spy for the British. So he was actually pretty smart about that. Secondly, he indicated in his letters that because the Christian Front were anti-communist, they were also doing good work because the Communists in Mexico and in Spain were persecuting Catholics. Interestingly, all of these letters between Fr. Bonn and Sweeney have been preserved in the Burns Library!

So the Christian Front was anti-Jew, anti-communist and anti-British?

Which is a trifecta if you’re a Nazi.

Have you received any negative pushback as a result of your research?

No, because nobody knows anything about it yet. I have received some nervousness from the archivist who was in London at the National Archives in London because it lays out that the British were acting illegally in the United States. They asked me to be in touch with them as I continue with this.

How many archives have you visited and how files have you declassified from the FBI?

So I’ve looked at 56 different archives in the US, London and Berlin. I’ve gotten three files declassified and I’m waiting on one more, but in all it’s about 3,500 pages in declassified material just from the FBI.