Schuster Frank01

Waupaca County Post

October 26, 2006

Waupaca Man Recalls Encounter With Nazi Spy

By Angie Landsverk, Post Staff Writer

Photo Caption: Frank Schuster, of Waupaca, holds up newspapers reporting the arrest and execution of Nazi spies during World War II. One of the spies worked beside Schuster at a plant that made optical equipment for the American war effort.

Sixty-six years ago, Frank Schuster was just about to start a new job at the Simpson optical Manufacturing Co., in Chicago.

There, all kinds of scopes were made for such things as binoculars, artillery sights and anything that could be used in the war effort.

Little did Schuster know that the young man who would be working right next to him was planning an act of sabotage on behalf of the Nazis.

The FBI thwarted what he and others planned, and Schuster never forgot that time.

“I kept the newspapers and ran across them recently,” said the 85-year-old Schuster, who has lived in the Waupaca area with his wife, Martha, for 20 years. “It dawned on me that I must have saved it for some reason.”

And so, he shares the story to show how spies, which Schuster equates with the terrorists of today were handled then.

Schuster was 2 years old when he came to the U.S. with his parents, emigrating from Vienna, Austria. They arrived here on July 3, 1923, and settled in Chicago with an aunt and uncle who had sponsored them.

They moved to a German neighborhood, and when Schuster was about 17 years old, he began working at a place where lenses were ground and polished for eyeglasses.

After Hitler took over Austria in 1938 and then Poland in 1939, young men were told to either get a job related to defense or enlist, he said.

“Most of the places were looking for help,” Schuster recalled, “I had a friend who told me about Simpson Optical Co.”

On Nov. 11, 1940, he started that new job.

“That is when I met Herbie Haupt. In those days, when you were young, you had a different perspective on life – no fears. I worked with the guy, grinding lenses right next to him for about eight months. He was a braggart – he bragged about what German was going to do,” Schuster recalled.

Haupt was one of eight spies who would be caught and sentenced to death.

Schuster remembers how Haupt talked about the meetings of the German-American Bund that he attended.

“He went to all those meetings, and then came to work the next day and bragged,” said Schuster.

The German-American Bund – of German-American Federation – was a fraternal organization that was established in the 1930s as a merger of two older organizations.

Schuster said that in June 1941, Haupt and two other men decided to go to Germany.

“He told us. We all knew about it,” Schuster said.

The men drove a cheap car to Mexico and then took a South American freighter to Japan. From there, the men went to Germany, he said.

“They were given a short, fast training in espionage – spy school – and learned about how to make a bomb,” Schuster said.

It was a year later that he again saw Haupt.

On June 25, 1942, Haupt walked back into Simpson Optical manufacturing Co., planning to work there again.

“It was a Friday,” Schuster said, “Old Herbie comes walking in the plant. We knew he had been in Germany, because he had been sending postcards to friends.”

Schuster said, “As soon as Herbie walked in, he waved at all of us. On Sunday, the FBI picked up all eight of the guys. They had watched them from the day they landed.”

The men arrived back in the states on June 13, 1942. Haupt had returned on a Nai submarine after the United States had entered World War II.

“they had all their bomb-making material,” Schuster said. “One group was interrupted by a Coast Guard man. They had a few words and he let them go. Supposedly, he must have reported that they were suspicious to the FBI. From that time on, the FBI kept tabs on all eight of them. They didn’t let them get too far.”

The eight men had been instructed to return to where they had had jobs that were related to the war.

“In our case,” Schuster said, “the first instrument that allowed bombers to spot their target easily – Simpson had the optics for it. So, Herbie was well-placed to come back and work for us.”

Their assignments had been to damage the light metals industry in this country. Haupt was to obtain his old position at Simpson and then report any details of war production in the plant.

Schuster says that at the time, he and the others who worked there did not think much about what had happened or what could have happened if the eight men had been able to carry out their orders.

“We had about 400 employees there and worked pretty long hours,” he said. “I worry more now.”

The FBI questioned the bosses at the company but not the employees, who had just always thought that Haupt was bragging.

The trial was a fast one, and all the men were convicted. On Aug. 8 of that year, as six of the men, including Haupt, were executed. The two men who had turned in evidence were given a life sentence and 30 years, respectively.

Family members and friends also became involved.

Schuster said Haupt had been told in Germany not to return to his parents’ home when he arrived back in Chicago.

Haupt did, and that is where he was caught.

His father, an uncle and a neighbor were sentenced to death in early 1943 for aiding him.

The wives of the three men each received a sentence of 25 years and a fine of $10,000, Schuster said.

He worked at Simpson for 22 years before working another 10 years in an industry that made surgical instruments. He said the trial of the eight men was a secret one and that he has never seen anything from it.

Today, Schuster feels that the government is dragging things out too much when it comes to terrorism. And he calls this a frightening time in which to be living.

Schuster said he received a “free trip to his birthplace” when he joined the 10^th Armored Tank Division in 1944 – a division that he said helped save Bastogne in Belgium during the war.

“We proved that Herbie and his group of seven were on the wrong side of the war,” he said.