A Sergeant Named Batista

Chapter 22

When Fulgencio Batista took the oath of office as President of Cuba on October 10, 1940, the world was on the verge of the greatest of all wars. Germany had launched its war for world conquest and Belgium and France had already fallen. It was fortunate for the cause of democracy that Cuba, a vital factor in the defense of the Western Hemisphere, was in the bands of a friendly government. Not only was Cuba strategically important to the defense of the hemisphere but her raw materials and her manpower would be needed in the great war effort.

Batista, who for years bad watched and studied world affairs with an interest akin to passion, believed that trouble was ahead for the democracies of the world, and be thought war was inevitable. The political prescience of this boy from cane fields of Cuba could not be better illustrated than by the accuracy with which Batista was able to predict when the United States and its ally, the Republic of Cuba, would be drawn into world conflict. just bow close to the course of events Batista's keen perception was steering him was shown by the fact that on December 2, 1941, five days before Pearl Harbor, be persuaded the Cuban Congress to declare a state of national emergency and to grant him special powers for the defense of the island. This was a repetition of a demand he had been making for several months, but previously opposition groups bad refused to give him the far-reaching authority, which, they declared, would make him a virtual dictator.

In normal times Batista had no desire to be a dictator. Nor was there any need for extraordinary powers in normal times. He knew, however, that no nation has ever been able successfully to defend itself or wage war without temporarily sacrificing some of the principal civil rights of the people of a democracy. Both in the United States and Great Britain, where the existence of democratic government had never been challenged, the outbreak of war always bad brought conscription, censorship, and various other rigid controls affecting the private lives and liberty of all citizens.

Long before Pearl Harbor, the Batista government had signed a lend-lease agreement with the United States for the purpose of providing military equipment for Cuba's Army, Air Force, and Navy, all of which were handicapped through lack of adequate materiel. In his message on December 2, 1941, Batista told the Cuban Congress that preparations for defense had to be undertaken immediately, both in the military and economic fields. He emphasized the need for air bases, coastal defenses, and a larger Army, Navy, and Air Force. Cuba, he said, had to be prepared to fulfill her commitments to the United States, with which the island's policy was inseparably linked both by tradition and by treaty agreements. Cuba also had to be ready to make her proper contribution to the defense of democracy throughout the entire world, then menaced by the might of the Axis powers.

This ability of Batista to anticipate proved invaluable both to the United States and to Cuba. When war came, Batista made it clear that this was not going to be a case of technically declaring war and then remaining aloof to the tragedies being inflicted on the world by the Axis aggressors. Cuba, Batista told the people, would be a practical participant. She would be a playing member of the Allied team, carrying out whatever assignment might be given her as her contribution in achieving the victory.

Far from Batista's mind was the idea that Cuba could be an interested but inactive observer in the great war. He well knew that whether his country were required to send armed forces overseas or not, the war would be brought to her. And so it proved, for it developed that almost five hundred Allied ships were sunk by U-boats in Cuban waters or their immediate vicinity.

There is no doubt that this tremendous loss would have been far greater bad it not been for Fulgencio Batista. Enemy submarines, be knew, were receiving a steady flow of information regarding ship sailings and courses, supplied by Axis agents operating on land. That was why the campaign against Allied shipping had been so successful. Batista was worried. He invited the cooperation of the United States intelligence services in developing a counterespionage system in Cuba to cope with this menace. Agents of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and United States Military and Naval Intelligence came to Cuba to carry out their own independent investigations and to assist and instruct intelligence operatives of the Cuban investigative services. Many Cubans were sent to the United States to be trained in the latest counterespionage methods, and the result was an effective, coordinated system which made operation by the Axis spies an extremely hazardous undertaking.

Along the line some unimportant enemy agents were picked up, but these were not dealt with very harshly because of lack of sufficient direct evidence connecting them with espionage activities. Then on September 1, 1942, announcement was made of the arrest of August Luning. This was an event which vitally interested intelligence headquarters in London, Washington, and Berlin, but for different reasons. The British bad long been preoccupied with mysterious letters picked up by their censors in the West Indies, particularly in the Bahamas. Some of these letters revealed messages in secret ink. There was no question that they were communications related to a system of espionage dealing principally in ship movements in the Caribbean area. Suspicion fell on Luning, a German traveling on a Honduran passport, who had been in Cuba for about a year. When the Cuban police went to make the arrest, they were surprised at the large number of canaries in cages, singing lustily in Luning's two-room apartment in Old Havana. The reason for this tendency to aviculture soon became evident. Hitler's spy was using the songs of the birds to cover up the sound of his clandestine short wave radio transmitter and receiver.

Lunning made various trips around the Caribbean and to New York, ostensibly in connection with commercial activities. But Luning was an important Axis agent and it was established beyond any doubt that much of the information being supplied Axis submarines in the Caribbean was provided by the "Canary Man." At first Luning told an incredible story about having met two men who persuaded him to accept a radio transmitter so he could send them information to be used in stock market transactions. Finally, he told the whole story-how he had been recruited and trained in Germany for espionage, had been given five thousand dollars in cash, and sent to Havana.

On September 19, 1942, Luning was found guilty of espionage by the Urgency Court of Havana and sentenced to death. The Court in its sentence, reviewed the case and said it had been established that Luning furnished information on shipping movements at Cuban ports to the German government, besides data of military value about the construction and location of airfields. The Supreme Court confirmed the death sentence on October 30. Luning's last hope of saving his life was that his sentence would be commuted by President Batista. On the morning of November 8, however, Batista signed a decree approving the death sentence, and the thirty-one-year-old spy died before a firing squad on the morning of November 10, 1942. Considerable secrecy surrounded the actual execution, and a bit of mystery was added by the frequent visits of a beautiful woman to the condemned man in his death cell. There has been much speculation as to her identity, but it has never been revealed, and interest in her died with surprising rapidity after Luning was buried. The Cubans were, in the large majority almost in their totality-anti-Axis, but there were many who felt that the death penalty was too severe. Batista, however, knew that it was necessary to set an example of severity as a warning to other spies who were operating on the island. Shipping losses bad been heavy and much of this destruction was attributable to the accurate intelligence the Germans were receiving on ship movements at Cuban ports.

With the appending of his almost cryptographic signature to one of the sheets of paper before him, Batista could have saved Luning's life, if not his liberty. In the days prior to the time be was finally called upon to make a decision, Batista admitted that it was a difficult one to make. He disliked the idea of taking the life of this young German, but the menace of the Nazi submarines had to be removed if the Allied cause were to survive. The lives of hundreds of Allied merchant seamen bad been taken in these sinkings and Luning was the individual most responsible for these deaths. When he had given the case the consideration which he believed it deserved, Batista signed the death decree.

Luning was the only spy executed in Latin America throughout doubt that the entire period of World War 11. There is no Luning had provided a very important amount of information to the Nazis on the movement of ships, precise data of great value to the U-boat commanders in making rapid kills which were tremendously costly to the Allies, particularly the United States; and it is more than a coincidence that after the removal of this top German agent, sinkings dropped off sharply.

While Batista's concern for the problem of the Allies was intense, he had special preoccupation related to the particular interests of Cuba. This is best illustrated by a remark be made in a conversation with an American during the first week of January, 1942. "We grow the most intelligent sugar in the world in Cuba," said Batista, "but we never have been able to teach it to swim." Again Batista was ahead of events. For the first time in many years Cuba was about to grind all of the available cane on the island, which, it was estimated, would produce 3,500,000 tons. As a matter of fact, the total crop was 3,950,000 tons, but Batista knew that delivery would be the big problem. The entire crop, less two hundred thousand tons reserved for local consumption, was sold to the United States at two dollars and sixty-five cents a hundred pounds for sugar and two dollars and fifty cents for molasses.

Sugar is the lifeblood of Cuba's economy, and Batista knew the complications and headaches which could develop if enemy submarines sent the greater part of it to the bottom of the sea. Batista, meanwhile, had used his special war powers to negotiate a sugar agreement which was highly favorable to the United States and her Allies. No doubt there were a number of persons on the island who would have preferred to take advantage of the war situation to force higher prices for sugar. But Batista stood firm and the Allies bought Cuban sugar at peacetime prices, as part of the Cuban contribution to the war effort.

In the early months of 1942, ships were loaded with sugar at the various ports around the entire coastline of the island, but the shipping losses were so heavy that it became necessary to bring all of the sugar to Havana and ship it in vessels which traveled in convoy. As Batista had said, Cuban sugar, intelligent as it might be, still had not learned to swim. Even with the extraordinary powers which had been granted him by Congress, it was no easy task for Batista to give the United States the unqualified support be wished to lend in the war effort against the Axis. Many of the war measures imposed in Cuba were unpopular-censorship, blackouts, and similar restrictions, including compulsory military training. The Cubans were as patriotic as any people, but they had not been through a Pearl Harbor or a Battle of Britain. While the great majority of them was definitely on the side of the Allies, a few were not prepared for the same type of sacrifices which were being endured with only a minimum of grumbling by the Americans and British.

It is difficult for a president to maintain any kind of popular support if he adopts the attitude that "this is the law and it must be observed without respect to persons." The people first have to be won over to the basic idea, and even then the unrestricted imposition of an unpopular measure can be tantamount to political suicide. President Roosevelt was expert at "selling" the people a distasteful restriction.

With the special adroitness for by-passing trouble or outflanking it which has characterized Batista's career, he never allowed complaints about wartime restrictions to mushroom into major proportions, which they could easily have done if he had decided to meet them head-on. Instead, be talked quietly and convincingly to certain leaders and wherever possible enlisted their assistance in solving the problems. When Cuban sugar producers in June, 1942, protested to the United States Ambassador against attempts to popularize sugar rationing in the United States, Batista let them go ahead and protest. He realized that it was much better for the protest to be made than for his regime to be exposed to the charge that it had stifled the voice of the sugar people on an issue affecting the permanent future of the industry. After the protest, a course of action was decided upon which was in the best interests of all concerned but with the interests of the war effort always paramount.

When Batista learned that the United States needed air bases in Cuba to combat the submarine menace, he knew that to operate those bases effectively the United States would have to have control of the bases. For all the patriotic fervor which could be aroused, for all the submarine menace which was preventing delivery of the sugar crop, he knew that unscrupulous political adversaries would refer to this as the "Third United States Intervention," and he decided to take personal responsibility for making the bases available to the United States. He proceeded under his special wartime powers, and all of his acts were approved by the Congress.

Among the bases of which the United States acquired use for the period of the war was the landing field at San Julián in Pinar del Río Province, which was used in antisubmarine work, Batista Field, just outside Havana, and Camagüey Air Field, which was a stopping point for planes of the United States Ferry Command flying the South Atlantic route. There was a submarine base and a lighter-than-air base on the Isle of Pines, and in addition, United States planes and ships could use any of Cuba's airport and harbor facilities whenever they were needed in an emergency.

Cuba did not send any contingents overseas under its own flag but thousands of Cubans fought in the Armed Forces of the United States throughout the war, with the permission and encouragement of their government. The one piece of action in which an all-Cuban force was engaged under its own flag resulted happily for the home team when a Cuban patrol vessel, attacked by a submarine, promptly destroyed the U-boat. The Cuban crew received a "well done" from the Americans and returned to their home port to receive the applause of the Cuban people.

One of the principles of combat which has stood the test of time without any variation is that a contestant should never let his adversary know when he has been hurt. The Nazis in Berlin were furious over the cooperation being given by Cuba to the Allied cause, and when their best efforts to sway Cuba from its loyalty to the Allies failed, they resorted to threats.

The Berlin radio one night threatened Havana with a bombardment from the sea and the speaker added: "Friend Batista, remember that you live only a few meters from the waterfront!" Throughout the years Batista has continued to regard this as the highest honor rendered him for his war service. It is a testimonial to the fact that the Cuban David really hurt the German Goliath-and that pleased Batista mightily.