A dozen seasons in Major League Baseball as a catcher, and two medals for valor for services rendered on the most delicate battlefield: that of espionage that revolved around information vital to the development of the deadliest weapon of all, the atomic bomb. This is the palmares of Morris Moe Berg. Perhaps one of the most controversial secret agents of the Second World War and history. More than Richard Sorge, more than George Blake. And not because he was a reckless double agent or an idealist, but because of his profile as a solitary and polyglot genius who knew how to play baseball and had worked for the OSS, the American secret service that was the progenitor of today’s Hi.
A secret service catcher
Born in New York, he graduated with honors from Princeton in 1923 and Columbia in 1928, and took a graduate course at the Sorbonne. For sportswriters it was nothing less than “the strangest man to ever play baseball“. In the role of catcher he played in category teams such as the Brooklyn Dodgers and the famous ones Boston Red Soxalso earning the reputation of the most intelligent in baseball, given his strong polyglot qualities that would not have been underestimated byOffice of Strategic Services when the United States of America decided to join, or to let yourself be carried away, in the Second World War.
Son of a Jewish pharmacist who firmly believed in “American dream“, and gave him no attention after choosing baseball as a way to make a living, Moe Berg was fluent in German, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, in addition to having superficial knowledge of a dozen other languages and dialects, including The Farsi. When he was recruited by the Secret Service at the suggestion of Nelson Rockefeller and Will Donovanwas sent abroad to spy on physicists and scientists who might be aware of the progress of the Nazis who, alongside the Allies, were trying to obtain the weapon of mass destruction that would have a decisive influence on the outcome of the conflict.
The gift of learning languages with ease and the wit that he had spontaneously demonstrated during a trip to Japan, which turned out to be a sort of trial spy experience, made Berg a perfect candidate for the job that he was as passionate about as baseball . Selected for a special, code-named mission Larson Projecttook part in the larger Alsos Mission, acquiring information from Italy’s top physicists to find out what they knew about a highly destructive bomb program that Nazi Germany was carrying out. In 1944, Berg traveled to Italy to meet physicists Edoardo Amaldi And Gian Carlo Wickwho declared that they had not carried out any atomic research for the Germans. They themselves would have admitted that, even if the Germans had been working on an atomic bomb, it would have taken “at least a decade to complete it“.
Discover, sabotage and if necessary “kill”
In December 1944 the OSS learned that the famous German physicist Werner Heisenberg he would leave Germany to give a conference in Zurich. Berg was ordered to attend the conference under a false name, posing as a Swiss student, with the aim of contacting Professor Heisenberg. Armed with one .45 caliber pistol and one cyanide capsulethe spy who knew how to play baseball left for Zurich with orders to eliminate what was still considered “the most dangerous German in the field of physics”, as director of the Nazi nuclear program.
On December 18, Berg attended the conference and sat calmly, with his gun in his pocket, before a small audience of professors and graduates. Heisenberg revealed nothing about a German nuclear program during the conference, but Berg managed to meet Paul Scherrera Swiss physicist who was Heisenberg’s guest and source for the OSS, and to secure an invitation to dinner with Heisenberg later that week. That evening Berg listened carefully to the conversation, and in his opinion there was no indication that the Germans were close to achieving a atomic bomb.
There are legitimate doubts about how it went with Heisenberg, however. The “traditional” narrative holds that Berg listened to Heisenberg’s speech on a totally unrelated physics topic, or that he didn’t really understand what the scientist was saying due to his lack of knowledge of physics. Although this would cast doubt on his previous missions in Italy. Others even assert that Berg did not know enough German and that for this reason he did not understand Heisenberg’s lecture in its entirety. In any case he understood, as history will show, that the scientist nurtured anti-Nazi ideals and that the Germans were incredibly behind in the race to obtain a nuclear-powered weapon. This was enough to leave Heisenberg alive and not make him a murderer or a suicide by means of cyanide which would have kept him safe from the torture of Gestapo. In fact, the possibility that Agent Berg would be able to eliminate the scientist without being arrested or captured was very remote.
The unfortunate end of a mysterious man
In the book The bastard brigadethe true story of the scientists and spies who sabotaged the Nazi atomic bomb, author Sam Kean traces the Alsos Mission, writes that the head of the operation Boris Pash was involved in intelligence while Berg “He was involved in espionage and all the romance that goes with it.” For some, Berg’s crucial contribution to the war was to “reassure” Robert Oppenheimer and the other scientists who were working on the Manhattan Project regarding the competition that the Nazis were at a disadvantage; as well as recruiting, well in advance of the Cold War, European scientists willing to move and put their knowledge at the service of the United States. Hence the play on words resulting from the role of “catcher” in baseball: Berg really kept “receive” good, like in the Red Sox days.
He returned to the United States in the spring of 1945 and resigned from the Strategic Services Unit what was happening at the Obs. For his services he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by the President of the United States of America Harry S. Trumanthe same man who ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The honor, awarded to those who have given “a special meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, to culture, or to other significant public or private endeavor” was rejected by Berg, and accepted by his sister when she was reassigned to him posthumously.
Moe Berg, the enigmatic genius who had courageously taken on the role of a spy, out of love for America but also out of fascination, died due to a banal domestic accident at the age of 70. It was later discovered that, after the war, he had attempted one last mission for the CIA in 1952. The mission, which ended unsuccessfully, aimed to obtain information on the progress of the Soviet nuclear program. This effectively marked the end of his career as a secret agent even though the US Secret Service had already formally dismissed him.
His remains were cremated and scattered on one of the mountains overlooking Jerusalem. It seems that in the last years of his life he was thinking of writing an autobiography in which he would perhaps reveal important details about his espionage activities and his mysterious life.
But such secrets died with him. On the contrary, his essay Pitchers and Catchersdating from 1941, was praised again in 2018 by the New York Times as “one of the most insightful works ever written on the game of baseball“.