During the Second World War there were multiple people from Allied countries that deserted
to the Axis powers. Actually, there are too many to name them all. Some of them ended
up working propaganda jobs, and the ‘American-Germans that travelled to Germany to defend the Reich’
was of course immortalised by the (fictional) scene in Band of Brothers. But all these people
generally deserted before there was a full-fledged war between the United States and Germany.
Let alone when it became obvious that Germany was going to lose the war. Well, not Martin
James Monti. This United States pilot stationed in Karachi, India, deserted several weeks
before his 23rd birthday. Playing a bit of bluff he ended up in German-held territory
in Europe, joined the SS propaganda unit and even fought on the German side. But what makes
the case perhaps even more strange is that all this happened in late October 1944, when
it was evident to nearly everyone that Germany would lose the war. Nevertheless, the story
of Martin James Monti is a very curious one, and certainly one worth telling.
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Martin James Monti
Martin James Monti was born in St. Louis in 1921. He was one of seven children of a Swiss-Italian
father and German mother that migrated to the United States. The family was staunchly
Catholic, and during his teens, Monti became a firm anti-communist believer. One of the
reasons, if not the reason for him developing anti-communist beliefs was the radio priest,
Father Charles Coughlin. Charles Coughlin, also known as the “Radio
Priest”, reached about thirty million listeners every week during his broadcasts. He raged
against the US bankers and although initially supportive of president Roosevelt, over time
felt he didn’t take on the bankers enough. His broadcasts became a mixture of anti-communist,
anti-semitic and fascist propaganda. Coughlin supported several developments in Italy, Germany
and Japan. His radio broadcasts became fanatic to the degree that in 1936 US Catholics tried
to silence him, among whom Joseph Kennedy, with the help of the Vatican cardinal Eugenio
Pacelli, the future Pope Pius the 12th. These Catholics weren’t necessarily known for
their leftist convictions, which says something about the content of Coughlin’s broadcasts.
Either way, it seemed that Coughlin managed to radicalise young Monti. Following the attack
on Pearl Harbor, the United States officially entered the Second World War and in 1942 at
the age of 21 Monti too registered for the draft. Before he was sent off to war he travelled
to Detroit that same year, to meet with Father Coughlin. Nobody knows what happened during
that meeting, but what is known is that following it Monti tried to enlist in the Navy. That
could just have been because his four brothers served honourably in it. Eventually, in November
that year, Monti enlisted in the US Air Force as an aviation cadet.
Throughout 1943 he received his training as a pilot, and it was only in March 1944 that
he was commissioned as a Flight Officer. The aircraft he was allowed to fly was the P-39
Aircobra and the P-38 Lightning, and he was promoted to the rank of Second Lieutenant.
The fresh 2nd lieutenant was sent to India to await further orders and placement in a
combat squadron. And while Monti waited in Karachi, it was there he pulled his… stunt.
A week after his arrival Monti dressed up in his uniform and managed to talk himself
onto a C-46 transport aircraft flight that was bound for Cairo, Egypt. Once he arrived
there, he convinced another pilot that he had to go to Tripoli, and once there, he got
on an Allied aircraft that was bound for Naples. In the aftermath of this weird several-day
long endeavour, it took 8 days in total, it may seem like a weird thing that he was allowed
to get on those planes. But after all, he was a commissioned flight officer, a 2nd lieutenant
and there wasn’t much reason to doubt his intentions. Let alone think that he was about
to desert to the Axis powers, because, well… they were losing… hard. By this point in
1944, the second world war only lasted a little over 6 more months, with an Axis defeat imminent.
So yeah, there was no logic in desertion by this point, and certainly, nobody would expect
anyone in their right mind to do so. Right, so once Monti arrived in Italy he made
his way to the allied air base east of Naples. He tried to join a combat squadron but because
he had no adequate paperwork he could not be placed anywhere. Following his rejection,
he travelled to another airbase where he pretended to be part of the 82nd Fighter Group, the
ones that had just rejected him and managed to be allowed to perform a test flight in
a PF-5E Lightning aircraft, the photographic reconnaissance version of the P-38 Lightning
aircraft. Monti took off, flew for two hours, and landed safely again. But not at the airbase,
no, he landed at an airstrip near Milan, a city that was still occupied by the Germans.
Milan would not be liberated until April 25th, and as such Monti was taken into custody by
the German soldiers that had a firm defensive base around the city.
When he was arrested Monti tried to convince the Germans that he wanted to be a part of
the Third Reich. Nevertheless, the Germans were sceptical, and who could blame them,
they were losing and suddenly an American supposedly voluntarily wanted to join the
losing side? So Monti was deemed an ordinary prisoner of war and sent to Luftstalag, a
prisoner of war camp for Allied airmen. But within several weeks the Germans realised
Monti actually wanted to join their side. The fact an arrest was sent out by the US
air force on the day of Monti’s desertion probably helped convince them.
Monti during and after the Reich
As such Monti was assigned a propaganda role in the Nazi German Reich. He resided in Berlin,
wrote pamphlets for Allied soldiers and made radio broadcasts. Monti worked together with
Mildred Gillars, named ‘Axis Sally’ by the Allies. She was another defector that
had been broadcasting propaganda to Allied soldiers for a long time. Yet she could not
stand Monti, and even threatened to quit her broadcasts if he wasn’t pulled off the air.
And he was, the Germans reassigned Monti to creating propaganda writings and pamphlets
meant of American POWs. Now, Monti took the nom-de-guerre Captain
Martin Weithaupt, after his mother’s maiden name. So why did Monti decide to desert? Well,
according to him the war was a global Communist plot to enslave everyone. In his propaganda
pamphlets, it became evident he thought the US should have allied with Nazi Germany against
the Soviet Union. During his stay in Berlin, he joined the Waffen-SS as Untersturmführer
and was assigned to the SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers. The unit was named after Kurt Eggers,
a German writer, poet, and playwright that was part of the propaganda company and died
on the Eastern Front during the war. The subsequently established unit named after him was a propaganda
formation of the SS and tracked the actions of Waffen-SS units and publicised them to
the German public. But the unit was also a deadly one: if need be they were able to fight
and wage war just as well as any other SS unit.
And as the war prospects rapidly deteriorated even further for the Germans, by early 1945
Monti’s SS unit, including Monti, was sent to the front. All that is known is that they
fought in Northern Italy, until on the 10th of May after Germany’s unconditional surrender,
Monti surrendered to US forces in Italy, still wearing his SS uniform. Initially, he said
he had been given the uniform by Italian partisans that helped him escape capture, and the US
officers on his case believed him. As such, instead of being sentenced for desertion,
he was convicted of misappropriating government property, namely the plane he stole, and for
being absent without leave. About the plane: he claimed he wanted to fight the Germans
but his aircraft was shot down. As such, he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, still
a pretty hefty punishment but not nearly as bad as the punishment for desertion. Nearly
a year later in February 1946 his sentence was commuted to time served in the US army.
So yeah, Monti, the deserter, reenlisted in the US Air Force as a private.
So it seems that initially, Monti got away with his antics. It wasn’t until November
1947 an army criminal investigation officer tipped off the media about Monti’s case.
The Washington Post broke the story of Monti supposedly deserting, and it led to the army
redirecting much more manpower to an initially innocuous case. Thanks to a more thorough
investigation authorities linked Monti to the propaganda broadcasts made by ‘Martin
Wiethaupt’. As such, in January 1948 Monti was re-arrested by the FBI, and although he
had worked his way up to sergeant again, he was discharged.
After his arrest, a thorough psychological evaluation was conducted. Monti turned out
to be highly intelligent with an IQ over 130, but he had several personality traits such
as paranoid tendencies and obsessive compulsivity. These were deemed potential explanations for
his erratic action. Then again, he certainly wasn’t rational in deserting from the US
army when it was sure the Axis powers had lost the war. Either way, he was sentenced
to 25 years in jail for treason in January 1949. He ended up having to pay a 10.000 dollar
fine as well and was only released on parole in 1968. He lived for another 32 years in
obscurity, passing away in 2000 at the age of 78.
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