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Hugo W. Koehler
Crimea, September–October 1920
rearguard action. He described the end of his campaign, "I gave the order in October 1920 for retreat. The troops fell back by forced marches on the seaports and embarked according to a plan previously arranged. The civil population, those who served in the rear, the sick, the wounded, women and children, were the first to be put on board. The evacuation took place in perfect order. I inspected personally on the Cruiser Kornilov the harbours used, and I was able to assure myself that all who wished to quit Russian soil found it possible to do so." At
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Hugo W. Koehler
Crimea, September–October 1920
the time of the collapse of the White army, "mustang" rear admiral and early naval aviator Jackson Tate was a "lowly ensign" attached to the USS Borie (DD-215) off Sebastopol. He recalled writing a set of orders for himself "to escort the Princess Olga Sargieff Rostigieff, Rear Admiral McCully's secretary, out of the Crimea," a well-laid plan, until Koehler got wind of it. "Hugo Koehler tore up the orders and said HE was escorting the princess and I was assigned to escort out three children on the [destroyer] USS Overton (DD-239). There were over three thousand people aboard, mostly standing on deck. The children
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Hugo W. Koehler
Crimea, September–October 1920 & Sebastopol, November 1920
were not at all popular with the C.O. of the destroyer. They- and most of the refugees- had "cooties", the nickname at that time for body lice... I saw little of Koehler. He was a very dapper and dashing individual and quite a lady's man. He spoke excellent Russian and was very highly thought of by Admiral McCully." Sebastopol, November 1920 His work on the Mission to South Russia completed, on November 1, 1920, Koehler sailed for Constantinople. After that, he made a yachting trip to Egypt. The destroyer Overton, was already at Sebastopol when the Bolsheviks defeated Baron
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
Wrangel's White Army in November 1920. Overton distributed relief supplies, provided transportation and communication services, and relocated refugees. A single ship could not cope with the massive influx of desperate people fleeing the fighting; however, and the Americans furthermore feared for the safety of their people trapped in the war. McCully cabled a request to the State Department, asking that the United States be allowed to assist in the Evacuation of the Crimea. Not waiting for a response, he ordered Cdr. Alexander "Sandy" Sharp of the destroyer USS John D. Edwards (DD-216) to load a group of refugees and stand out for
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
Constantinople with a letter request to Admiral Bristol for more ships. With 550 Cossacks, women and children gathered from the Sebastopol docks, Sharp's destroyer stood out for Turkey. During the voyage, the Russians were spread out on the ship and ravenously wolfed down everything the navy cooks served up. Upon receiving the letter, Bristol gave emergency orders for the destroyers USS Fox (DD-234), USS Humphreys (DD-236), and USS Whipple (DD-217) to cease various operations in the Black Sea and immediately stand out for the Crimea to assist in the evacuation. The Americans nonetheless required additional ships and cabled for reinforcements including USS St. Louis (C-20).
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
Standing up the Bosporus from Constantinople on November 13, 1920, St. Louis rendezvoused with destroyer USS Long (DD-209), and U.S. steamships Faraby and Navahoe, and the four vessels worked with other ships to rescue the Americans authorized by McCully to escape. Besides McCully's party, the ships pulled out U.S. consuls and their archives, representatives of the American Red Cross and Y.M.C.A., relief workers from other agencies, and approximately 1,400 Russian refugees from Sebastopol and Yalta in the Crimea, Novorossiysk, Russia, and Odessa. On the morning of November 14, the destroyers dispatched by Admiral Bristol from Constantinople arrived at Sebastopol to find
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
hundreds of mostly Russian and French boats in the harbor, many of which were crammed to the gunwales with fleeing White Russians. Whipple, Lt. Cdr. Richard F. Bernard, commanding, stood by to evacuate selected individuals bearing passes from McCully. Whipple's main battery was trained out and manned at all times. Armed boat crews carried evacuees out to the ship while her landing force stood in readiness. As her last boatload pushed off from shore, Bolshevik troops reached the main square and began firing on the fleeing White Russians. Whipple was the last American vessel out of Sebastopol, towing a barge
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
loaded with wounded White Russian troops. When she was beyond range of the Red guns, she turned the tow over to Humphreys. Passing Admiral McCully's destroyer, he bellowed from the bridge through a megaphone, to Bernard and his crew, "Well done Whipple." General Wrangel stayed on a quay until all who wanted to leave Russia had done so, before he embarked on the Russian cruiser Admiral Kornilov (1887) and sailed into exile, eventually settling in Belgium. It is estimated that between November 1920 and the end of 1921, the Reds executed between 50,000 and 150,000 Russians in the Crimea. St.
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
Louis returned her evacuees to Constantinople on November 16. The following day, her crew formed boat landing parties to distribute food among refugees quartered on board naval transports anchored in the Bosporus. General Wrangel moved nearly 150,000 Russian refugees and crewmen on board 80 former Imperial Russian Black Sea Fleet ships and merchantmen into exile, initially to the harbor at Constantinople. Lt. Hamilton V. Bryan supervised sailors and marines, including those from St. Louis, who helped care for these people, until many of the exiles sailed for Bizerte, Tunisia. During his ten months in Russia, Rear Admiral Newton McCully had
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
seen great suffering among the children in South Russia, particularly those that were orphans. He decided to adopt seven of them, and would have taken a dozen more if he could have. Navy Secretary Josephus Daniels referred to McCully's benevolence as "the big act of a big man with a big heart". McCully left Yalta on Overton, the last U.S. ship to leave the Crimea; his orphans had departed earlier on another destroyer. Over the next few weeks, McCully again tried to no avail to get the State Department to offer asylum to additional Russians. Travelling home with
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
his young charges and their 29-year old governess on the oiler USS Ramapo (AO-12), McCully wrote in his diary, "We are off on the biggest adventure I ever undertook- an old bachelor with seven children." The admiral was required to post a $5,000 bond for each child, while they were detained at Ellis Island. Ultimately, the admiral conquered the bureaucracy and as a solution to filling "the big job of supplying the necessary feminine influence in their lives", the admiral married their governess. In Constantinople, the city was deluged with the displaced Russians from the Crimea. Admiral Mark Bristol set up a disaster
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
relief committee to coordinate the various American relief efforts that continued for many months. Sailors from the admiral's flagship, St Louis, worked with his wife, Helen, and her committee of women and constructed a soup kitchen in the train station at Stamboul. They fed 4,000 refugees daily that were being brought in for housing in makeshift camps. Restroom facilities and a dressing area for the women refugees were set up. Doling out hot chocolate, tea and bread, Helen Bristol and her women, worked in rain and mud to keep their canteen open past midnight. Ultimately 22,000 Russians were
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
cared for by the Americans and housed in different parts of the city. Much larger contingents of British and French aid workers did similar good. Appropriately, Koehler returned to the United States from Europe aboard the RMS Aquitania, nicknamed "Ship Beautiful" for the society passengers she carried, sailing from Southampton and arriving at New York with 3,000 passengers on January 30, 1921, after a rough six-day, eleven-hour passage averaging 20 knots. Also making the crossing were Sir Ernest Shackleton, Antarctic explorer and author, Sir Philip Gibbs, British war correspondent, Vice Admiral Harry M. P. Huse, USN, Sir Major-General Sir Newton
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
James Moore KCMG and Clare Sheridan, sculptress and first cousin of Sir Winston Churchill, who had been in Russia sculpting busts of Lenin and Trotsky, The British Foreign Office had loudly opposed Sheridan's trip to Russia, denying her a British passport and almost forbidding the journey. Koehler met her on the ship as she was sailing to America to give lectures on her Russian experience. On the first day of her arrival in New York, Koehler took care of her young son, Dick, while she met with reporters, agents and others. In her diary, Mayfair to Moscow, published
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920
in 1921, Sheridan described Koehler as "heaven sent", writing that "Koehler promised to be at my side in case of need. He was amazingly kind and put up with infinite boredom and waiting on our account." In a letter Koehler wrote from Poland in 1922, he mentioned an incident that reminded him of the "famous Mrs. Sheridan at whom the Foreign Office thundered so loudly... and yet be it known (although this, of course, is closely guarded) that she was an agent for the British Intelligence Service." It was speculated, but later disproved, that Koehler may have been able to smuggle
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Hugo W. Koehler
Sebastopol, November 1920 & Naval Attaché to Poland
the Imperial family out of Russia. This was the subject of the book Rescue of the Romanovs by New York journalist Guy Richards, that was published in 1975. Beginning in July 1921, the monthly periodical The World's Work published a series of four articles by Hugo Koehler describing his observations during the Russian Civil War in 1920 and the defeat of the anti-Bolshevists. Koehler's belief that the Russian people would soon work through and cast off Bolshevism for a prosperous, free-market economy, while in line with the pro-business theme of the host publication, proved to be overly optimistic. Naval
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
Attaché to Poland Koehler was promoted to permanent lieutenant commander on June 3, 1921, and appointed naval attaché to the American Legation at Warsaw, Poland, in August of that year, to aid the State Department in monitoring the beginning of international relations between divided-Russia and Poland. Koehler described the practical aspect of his job, as spending a year "combing Europe from one end to the other with no purpose more definite than to see what's really happening on the theory that might give us some idea of what's going to happen." His passport, signed by Secretary of State Charles E.
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
Hughes contained over sixty visas stamped during his assignment. From 1795 to 1918 and the collapse of its neighboring nations, Poland had been variously controlled by Imperial Russia, Prussia and Austria-Hungary. The new republic of Poland that was outlined by President Wilson in the thirteenth of his Fourteen Points in January 1918, and agreed at Versailles the following year, included parts of the former Russia, the Congress Kingdom and Kresy. The diverse ethnic groups of White Russians, Lithuanians, Poles and Ukrainians, along with small concentrations of Jews made up the new country. The area of the new state
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
ceded from Germany included the agrarian regions of Pomerania and Posen, plus the industrial regions of Prussian Upper Silesia. From Austria-Hungary areas of West Galicia and Austrian Silesia were designated for the new Polish state. The goal of establishing a unified nation from these diverse regions, with differing taxes, varying public education (to the extent it existed) and transportation infrastructure, was compounded by the destruction of six years of war on both cities and farmlands. In a letter to Capt. William Galbraith of the Office of Naval Intelligence in early November, 1921, Koehler wrote of driving from Warsaw to
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
Danzig, where he "passed in and out of Germany and Poland so often that we soon lost count of the number of frontier stations." Motoring from battle-scarred, Brest-Litovsk he wrote that, "The most interesting thing there was the scrawl on the wall of the room where the Bolshevik treaty with Germany was signed. 'Neither Peace, nor War.' it reads, and is signed 'Leon Trotksy, December 1917, Brest'- certainly not a bad estimate of the situation, especially so, considering the date." Heading on towards Baranowicze, Koehler's party travelled through miles of burned land, for which he observed that,
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
"[I]n accordance with age-old Russian strategy the armies laid waste the countryside as they retreated... Wonderfully thorough they were, these poor Russians, in destroying their own houses and fields." Arriving at the border, they found "a long line of prairie schooners coming in. 'Is this Poland? Are we out of Russia? God be praised!' came again and again in the same jabbering Russian, Polish and German. It happened that in this crowd were German colonists from Russia. They had been in Russia for many generations, they had never mixed with the Russians but kept close together in their little
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
farm colonies along the Volga.... I talked to one peasant who was under twenty-seven although he looked over forty- and small wonder, for he had tramped over five thousand versts and during the last stretch had dragged the cart himself, as the Bolsheviks had taken away his horse. I examined the cart he had brought all this distance and with so tremendous an effort. An old bed, bits of sacking, an assortment of battered pots and pans, an old sheepskin, part of a wolfskin, rags, nine potatoes, a handful of radishes, some pieces of tallow- nothing else. The complete
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
inventory would not net a dollar; he explained that he had had a cow but the Bolsheviks had taken it away from him at the border. Yet he was much better off than thousands, for having been out in the open he was in comparatively good health although drawn and wasted, whereas the others who had come back by train were feeble and diseased and bleeding from bites. The children of course, were the most tragic sights. They are young only when they smile." In his travels through Germany, when Koehler met German women with babies, he would ask them
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
if they were raising them to be canonenfutter (cannon fodder). Invariably, they would respond, " 'No,' indignantly. But on further talking, they would just as invariably intimate that these boys would have to someday fight as their fathers did, because the French would not let them do otherwise.Frankreich muss noch weinen." ("The French will be made to weep again"), Koehler heard over, and over. He saw that Germany was selling its goods below the actual cost of production, and that while full employment might postpone the "crash", when it came it would be harder due to Germany's weak
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
financial condition. "To pull through, Germany will need statesmanship wiser than the greed of manufacturers that has been the directing force since the Armistice. As it is, the German people seem blighted with the curse of false leaders, for the interests now at the helm, though more greedy than the old, are less farsighted; and again the German people will suffer for their lack of ability in choosing leaders...." A French officer travelling with Koehler for part of his journey, expressed bitterness seeing "all the smiling fields, and all the beautiful villages, and all the sturdy Germans working so
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
industriously, all the busy factories at Düsseldorf and Essen and the Ruhr..." while "he thought of devastated northern France." The sight of the German resolve and energy "struck terror to the soul of my French friend," prompting Koehler's conclusion that, "The tragedy is not only that the French do not realize that by keeping an army beyond their means they are weakening themselves, but the fear and terror that they all feel makes it impossible for them even to understand it until that terror is removed." Journeying through Poland, Koehler engaged in discussions of the viability of the new
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
Polish republic. "And over and over again one hears it stated that if there had been any real vitality in the idea of a Polish nationality, the Poles would long ago have thrown off the yoke of the oppressors they hated so bitterly. But however sound these statements may be in themselves, I do not find they quite fit the Polish situation. It is all very well to say that a country should itself throw off the yoke if it aspires to nationhood, but when all is said and done, once Poland was partitioned, it was really impossible
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
for Poland to rise until at least one of the oppressors had fallen. It is true that a country must itself achieve its independence, since the fundamental character of independence is that it cannot be received as a gift.... Poland has been reborn and has a fine start in life, but whether or not Poland will ever arrive at manhood depends entirely on the Poles. There is no royal road to knowledge, we were told as children, nor is there any royal road to manhood or statehood." Koehler recalled the "feeling in General Wrangel's army when the Poles were
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
advancing to Kiev. Although Wrangel's men were fighting for existence against the Bolsheviks, in the hardest and bitterest kind of fight, still there was a time, at the height of the Polish advance, when the feeling in Wrangel's army was such that they would almost have made common cause with the Bolsheviks rather than see the Poles advance into Russia." In a letter to his mother, Mathilda, written in July 1922, Koehler recounted that, "In the forest region there are many Jews in the little villages that here consist usually of a single row of houses around a square instead
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
of the single, very broad street of the Russian style. I heard many complaints against the Jews: that they did no real work, no farming, no cutting of wood, yet they became rich on the labors of the peasants. 'If they do not farm and do not cut wood, then what do the Jews do?' I asked a peasant. 'Oh, they buy stolen logs and trade stolen horses and sell vodka,' was the answer. 'You wicked anti-Semitic propagandist!' I reproached him; but his only reply was that just nine days before, his brother's horse had been stolen and found
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
at a Jew's house seventeen versts away, and that currently everybody knew that Jews bought the stolen logs and cattle as well as the horses. 'But the peasants must steal the logs first in order to sell them to the Jews,' I answered. 'Yes,' he admitted, 'but if the Jews did not buy, the peasants would not steal.' I told him the parable about the pot and the kettle, but he was not impressed." Koehler recalled a particularly humorous encounter with frontier posts and visa stamps that again demonstrated his prodigious ability to persuade and manipulate. Motoring to Kovno,
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
about ninety minutes after crossing the Lithuanian frontier and a small army post where Koehler's retinue had asked directions, they came upon a line of soldiers with bayoneted rifles gesturing urgently. An officer approached and told them they would need to go back to the frontier outpost for Koehler to have his passport stamped. Not wanting to backtrack over "very bad roads" and delay the trip for this bureaucratic exercise, Koehler "refused point-blank to go back but added that I would be glad to go to any station in the direction of Kovno, my destination." Ultimately taking the
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
phone himself, he "talked to various regimental commanders, divisional commanders, and goodness knows what, all of whom repeated that the frontier was closed inasmuch as Poland and Lithuania were at war, and that I could therefore not have passed the frontier. In reply I suggested that the mere fact I was in the middle of Lithuania ought to be sufficient evidence that I had crossed the frontier. I replied that I would not go willingly and that under the circumstances I considered that the same international law that applied to blockades also applied to a frontier; that is,
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
that just as a blockade in order to be binding must be effective, so it was with a frontier." Standing his ground, Koehler's suggestion that he should be allowed to proceed to divisional headquarters (on the way to Kovno) was finally agreed to. Reaching divisional headquarters, "the first result was more discussions, telephoning, arguing, and beseeching. But the upshot of it all was that instead of proceeding to Kovno, I was told I should have to wait where I was until the Lithuanian Foreign Office had authorized the visa of my passport... However, as this process promised to
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
take a good many hours if not days and weeks, and as the discussion had already lasted some four and a half hours, I cast about for a happy idea." Koehler matter of factly suggested to the general's adjutant that he had only heard the Polish side of the controversy with Lithuania, and that it might be very interesting on the journey to Kovno to have "a really thorough explanation of the Lithuanian side of the case. The effect of this gentle hint was electric! The adjutant dashed off to his colonel, and within three minutes the answer came
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
back that I could proceed at once to Kovno, and that, if I wished it, an officer would accompany me and show me the way." Koehler arrived at Kovno without further incident. While he was in Poland, it is likely that Koehler coordinated with Polish General Jozef Pilsudski, the dominant leader in the newly independent Polish state, to support the White Army in Russia in its unsuccessful struggle against the Red Army. In this assignment he met the Papal Nuncios to Poland and Germany, Archbishops Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti and Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli. The unfounded speculation surrounding
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
these meetings, was that the Vatican and Koehler were discussing the potential for restoration of the Habsburg empire, relative to the rumor that Koehler was the "lost" crown prince. The following year, Ratti became Pope Pius XI, and on his death in 1939, Pacelli was elected to the papacy, taking the name Pope Pius XII. Years after Koehler's death, his widow Matilda told a confidante, "I think it was a shame how they got his hopes up." In February 1922, Koehler was witness for his friend Hugh S. Gibson, American minister to Poland, at Gibson's wedding to Ynès Reyntiens,
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
daughter of Belgian Major Robert Reyntiens, who had been Aide-de-camp to King Leopold II, in Bruxelles. During the week of October 15, 1922, American diplomatic representatives in Middle and Western Europe, including Koehler, met in Berlin at a conference called by the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, Alanson B. Houghton, to discuss the current state of affairs in their particular countries and work towards more cohesive cooperation in their missions. Two days before his assassination on December 16, 1922, Koehler's personal friend, the newly elected, first Polish president Gabriel Narutowicz had expressed great interest to him in the work done
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Q28737277
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70
13,642
Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
in America to establish a national park system, and asked Koehler for information concerning policies and methods, with a view towards establishing a system in Poland patterned after the National Park Service in order to preserve Poland's extensive forests, and in particular, those in the Carpathian Mountains. Narutowicz asked Koehler to prepare articles for publication in Poland concerning the American national parks. Returning to the United States several days later, on leave before his next assignment, Koehler visited his mother, Mathilda, in Davenport, Iowa, during the Christmas holidays and gave an interview to the local paper. Titled "Worse Times Coming in
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
Germany", Koehler saw Germany at the beginning of a period of economic deflation following the hyperinflation that had existed since the Armistice. While the current economic situation made it doubtful there would be any significant rise in exports to Europe, Koehler believed there was great future trade expansion potential since the old and new European nations did not believe the U.S. was "animated by ulterior motives". He noted that America loans money to those nations, not "loans" in the form of imported goods made in Britain as the British did. He saw Germany paying the price of Anglo-French
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
political maneuvers in the Near East, where the English were defeated in their diplomatic backing of Greece, as the French were victors in their backing of Turkey. That victory gave the French the courage to insist on their strong army policy towards the Germans. The balance of trade that was formerly in favor of Germany, was now against it, which augured ill for German prosperity. He reaffirmed his belief that Russia "will eventually escape domination of the bolshevik" but saw no possibility of ever reverting to a monarchy, since the peasants, who had "appropriated many things in
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Q28737277
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15,484
Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
addition to land" would resist it. Koehler saw Poland as "economically wealthy" with its tremendous natural resources of timber, oil, coal and mining, but "financially poor" for supporting a very large standing army and a close alliance with France. Politically, he regarded the situation in Poland as "perplexing", with 17 political parties, and strong political minorities of Germans, Russians, Jews and Ukrainians. He noted that 90 percent of the emigration from Poland was Jewish. Koehler opined that while all European nations worried over the invasion threat of the Red army, they were "bluffed" since it was defensively, not offensively
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
strong. "The Russian army has no artillery, no aviation force, no means of supply and while it could defend Russia effectively it could not campaign efficiently in an aggressive way," he stated. Commenting about "The Terrible Turk", Koehler felt it wasn't so "terrible" after all. "There isn't any danger in the present alliance between the Turk and the Bolshevik as far as a permanent threat against the peace of Europe is concerned. Mohammedanism is fundamentally opposed to Communism and therefore these two countries cannot remain friendly," Koehler accurately predicted. "Communism is a good excuse for a row but a poor
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16,702
Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland
foundation for a stable government," he declared. The recent assassination of the Polish president, Narutowicz, a Lithuanian by birth who had been conciliatory in resolving the boundary dispute with Lithuania that followed the Poles taking of Vilna was a serious blow to the country's future, Koehler believed. "America has done an enormous amount of good for Poland and for other new countries of Europe in its relief work, work that will eventually react to the benefit of the United States. For two years we fed over a million children in Poland and they are tremendously grateful to us.
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Naval Attaché to Poland & Later Navy career
The American businessman doesn't pay much attention to his foreign trade. We are too indifferent to find out the real market conditions. But we have great latent possibilities there as a result of our national activities in the past few years, possibilities which we will eventually capitalize." Later Navy career Following his service in Russia and Poland, the remainder of Koehler's naval career was more typical. He left Davenport bound for Boston on December 29, 1922, with orders to the battleship USS Utah, flagship of Battleship Division Six, Scouting Fleet, based on the Atlantic Coast where his billet was first lieutenant.
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
He stopped in Washington at the offices of the Department of the Interior to convey the Pole's interest in conserving their public lands to officials there. On his way to the West Coast for his next naval assignment, Koehler made it a point to stop at several national parks to gain personal knowledge before writing the articles that his late friend, the assassinated Polish president Gabriel Narutowicz had asked him to write. In June 1923, he was appointed aide to Vice Admiral Henry A. Wiley, commander of the battleship divisions of the United States Battle Fleet with his flag on
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Q28737277
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
the Battleship Division Five flagship, USS New Mexico based at San Pedro, California. Ten years earlier, then Commander Wiley had been Koehler's commanding officer when he was an ensign aboard the Asiatic Fleet flagship, Saratoga. In November 1923, Wiley was president of the largest naval court martial to date, as eleven officers of Destroyer Division 11 were prosecuted in San Diego for their actions that resulted in the Honda Point disaster. Several months later, on June 12, 1924, disaster again struck the Battle Fleet when the forward Gun Turret No. 2 of the USS Mississippi exploded during gunnery practice
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74
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
off San Pedro, killing 48 sailors in the worst U.S. Navy peacetime disaster to date. The next evening, Koehler, as vice-secretary of the battleship divisions, made the announcement of the large funeral service to be held near the Los Angeles harbor and that the next of kin of all those killed had given permission for their remains to be held for the joint memorial service, with both Catholic and Protestant chaplains taking part. A week after the explosion, a board of inquiry conducted aboard New Mexico and presided over by her commanding officer, Captain Yates Stirling, Jr., delivered its
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
findings of "unavoidable accident" to Vice Admiral Wiley and made recommendations to avoid such future accidents, including greater precautions in handling the magazine powder and equipping gun turrets with escape hatches. On October 30, 1924, Wiley shifted his flag from New Mexico to the recently constructed battleship USS West Virginia. The following month, both Wiley and Koehler gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times for an article titled, Coast Defenses Planned to Make Southland Safe- War Dept. Expects to Have Los Angeles Invulnerable to Enemy Attack. "As long as the Battle Fleet is out here, Los Angeles is as safe
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
as Omaha. Take away the fleet and I wouldn't give a nickel for it," Wiley stated. Koehler, referred to in the article as Wiley's aide and "one of the Navy's best men on military strategy", expanded on the statement, "As long as this fleet is in being the Pacific Coast needs no coast defenses. The point of defending our country is not in waiting until the enemy crosses the sea, but to get out and whip the tar out of him before he gets here. No amount of coast defenses, however modern or of what immense range, would save
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
the Pacific Coast if the fleet were not in being. It was thought in 1914 that the defenses of Namur were absolutely invulnerable, that they were the most modern in the world, yet the Germans cracked them in forty-six hours. The same was true at Liege and Verdun. On the other hand, land fortifications are sometimes essential. They are essential at Hawaii because Hawaii is vital to the existence of the Battle Fleet and they are vital at Gibraltar because they can forbid the passage of the Mediterranean." During Koehler's time aboard West Virginia, the battleship made a cruise
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
to the South Pacific. He held that assignment until September 1925. Thereafter, he remained at Balboa, Panama, where he directed the Balboa Naval Transmitting Station, a VLF-transmitting station for relaying orders to submarines that had begun service around 1915. While in Panama, Koehler's mother, Mathilda, visited him. He was assigned as an instructor at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island on April 17, 1926, and remained there until October 1927. In this capacity he was able to share the lessons he learned from his experiences in Russia and Poland with future admirals in the U.S.
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
Navy, including Raymond Spruance. On April 29, 1927, he delivered a lecture, "Developments in Russia" to the graduating class at the Naval Academy. He gave lectures on the techniques in intelligence gathering under the new method of instruction that started with Rear Admiral William V. Pratt's tenure as president of the college. Pratt admired Koehler for his "great mental ability," remarking that the Commander was "different, a clash of wits and brains. To be with him, was always mental refreshment for me." Jackson Tate described Koehler as, "very much of a specialist... rather than... regular Navy". Koehler's exploits were
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74
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
widely known and his legend grew as his naval career diminished to the ordinary. Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley, who was a young officer in the Asiatic Fleet during the 1930s, recalled an anecdote of Koehler's time in South Russia, "[Admiral McCully] had notified one of the destroyers in his command (in the Black Sea) that he would be aboard shortly. So the OOD (officer of the deck) was of course alerted to watch out for any approaching boat. Naturally, he was much astonished to hear shouts in the water some time later- from McCully and Koehler. They had swum out
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74
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
in the buff." On June 2, 1927, Koehler married Matilda Bigelow Pell (1895–1972), the divorced wife of former New York Democratic Congressman Herbert C. Pell (1884–1961), whom he had met several years earlier. They were married at the Madison Ave. Baptist Church on East Thirty-First St. in New York, having obtained a marriage license only hours before. Other than the minister, Rev. George C. Moor, the only others present were the bride's brother, Anson Bigelow and his wife. The marriage came as a surprise to most of their society friends, since the previous week, Matilda Pell was adamantly
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
denying rumors of a pending marriage to a naval officer. She had obtained her divorce from Herbert Pell in Paris, the previous March. Pell remarried in Paris a couple weeks later. Coincidentally, on the day of his marriage, Koehler was promoted to commander. On September 3, 1929, their only child, Hugh Gladstone Koehler, was born. Named for Koehler's close friend, Herbert Gladstone, 1st Viscount Gladstone, Hugh Koehler became an investment banker and lived in Connecticut, before he died in 1990 shortly before his 60th birthday. Matilda's only child from her previous marriage, Claiborne Pell (1918–2009), later served
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74
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career
as a Democratic United States Senator from Rhode Island for 36 years (1961–1997). On November 3, 1927, Koehler was assigned as flag secretary to the staff of the commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet, Admiral Wiley, whom he had served under twice before and who was impressed with Koehler's character and code of conduct. Recalling the incident early in Koehler's career where he had personally funded the payroll for other officers in the Asiatic fleet, Wiley stated years later, "It was commonly understood that Koehler went deep into his own pocket to relieve these young people. They were not
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Hugo W. Koehler
Later Navy career & Post Navy life
particular friends of his. I know of no incident that could better illustrate the man's generous nature." This was Koehler's final duty station, since he announced his resignation at the end of December 1928, and requested a separation date of February 14, 1929. Post Navy life Ever the romantic, Koehler's explicit request that his retirement from the Navy take effect on Valentine's Day telegraphed at least one motive for resigning his naval commission. It was a gift to his wife, since Koehler realized that even if he landed his dream assignment, naval attaché to Moscow, the aristocratic Matilda,
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78
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
would not appreciate life in Russia or the long months when he would be assigned sea duty. After his resignation from the Navy, Koehler, assumed the life of a socialite. His friend, Lord Gladstone, had warned Koehler against retiring from the Navy without a challenging, second career alternative, adding, "If you were in our Navy, you would now be an admiral." The man who had been a driven professional became an avid dilettante. The Koehlers divided their time between an apartment at 510 Park Avenue in Manhattan and in Newport, where they spent most of the summer along
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78
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
with other members of New York society, and purchased an estate "cottage", "Wyndhurst", that they later sold in 1928. Koehler raised orchids and tried his hand at pineapples and bananas in a small greenhouse. He bought expensive antique furniture and gold snuff boxes. Unfortunately, Koehler's purported Austrian trust income had ceased once he married Matilda. In August the previous year, Koehler and his brother and four sisters each received an approximately $18,000 distribution following the termination of a trust fund that had been set up by their father. With the Wall Street Crash in 1929, money suddenly
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78
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
became tight. As one acquaintance said, "They both thought the other had money and both were fooled." The couple moved to England, where they spent most of the year, and Hugo fully embraced the lifestyle of the British gentry with his many society friends there. While living in England, Koehler travelled to Moscow and had multiple meetings with Joseph Stalin in 1933. The substance of these meetings, that were probably set up by British Intelligence is not known, but Koehler was impressed with Stalin from their conversations. Koehler had predicted the rise of Stalin in 1920,
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78
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
when he wrote, "All Russia is on the lookout for this dictator and every new leader that crops up is examined in the light of his aptitude for the job." Given Koehler's penchant for intrigue, he may have been asked to perform other intelligence assignments during his retirement. In 1934, Hugo, Matilda, his fifteen-year old stepson, Claiborne Pell and five-year-old son, Hugh, returned to America, in large part because Herbert Pell did not want his son raised as an Englishman. In 1936, the Koehlers purchased "Eastover", a thirty-acre estate off Wapping Road in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, with a 1,000 ft.
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
waterfront on the Sakonnet River, where Hugo planted raspberries, built a sea wall, tended a flock of sheep and made a rose garden for Matilda. His son, Hugh, had chickens, a dog and a pony named "Broadway Bill". Known as "Commander Koehler", he and Matilda Koehler were frequently mentioned in the society pages of the New York Times and they continued to maintain their apartment on Park Avenue in New York city. While the Koehler's and their sons were part of the wealthy Newport social circuit, attending dinner parties and giving them at "Eastover", Matilda was bored by Hugo's
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life
navy friends, and her Newport crowd was unnerved by the mysterious and overly exotic Commander. While Koehler's eccentricities probably delighted Stalin, Kutepov and scores of long-forgotten cossacks, the Newport set was not enchanted by them. During one party at "Eastover", Koehler bit the rung of a chair in two, to demonstrate to Matilda that it was "weak" and of "inferior construction". He would consume entire lamb chops, bone and all, to the disgust of his fellow diners. As Koehler's historiographer wrote, "He could easily have done the Greek waiter's trick of picking up a small, dinner table in
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Hugo W. Koehler
Post Navy life & Public speaking
his teeth, and dancing with it, without spilling the wine from the brimming carafe." Public speaking Koehler was a popular, local speaker in Portsmouth and Newport Rhode, Island during the late 1930s and up until his death, sounding the warning against the rise of fascism in Europe and Asia and the danger of isolationism. In an address titled, "Soviet Union- For What?", in January 1938, Koehler spoke to the "Monday Night Club" in Newport about his personal experiences and observations in Russia during 1920-21 and his meeting with Stalin in 1933. Stalin predicted to Koehler that America would achieve
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82
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
socialism more quickly and directly than the Soviet Union. Koehler recalled Russia in the years after World War I, when the White Russians and Bolsheviks battled for control of armies driven into the sea as they tried to reach the Crimea, and of the great famine and atrocities that were "unhappily too true." He opined that the Bolsheviks were spurred on by an idealism of liberty that they had never enjoyed, put their hearts into the fight, and won. Sent by the State Department to Russia, Koehler described his trip disguised as a Jewish peddler, on foot across
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82
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
Russia to Poland, and his studies of the masses. Among the good points of the Bolshevik program, he pointed to the work-to-eat edict, education of the masses, and hospitalization for the children. But he condemned the segregation and disruption of families, organization of an industrial production program and abolition of the labor unions. Koehler said that the Bolsheviks considered unions and family life as a "menace" to communism. "There is more inequality in Russia today than under the old regime," he declared. Recalling his interview of Stalin, who asked questions about America, and warned Koehler to
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82
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
"Read Marx", he told of the Soviet leader predicting the U.S. would become a socialist state in the near future. In September 1938, Koehler addressed the Newport Art Association on the subject "Is Europe Headed for War; Are We?" and made the initial point that "Japan will probably continue to have victories of the kind that lead to defeat." His second point was that in a year Japan had "succeeded in giving China a unity that not all the centuries gave her." Koehler asserted that the Chinese with a bayonet is superior man to man to the Japanese. The
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82
2,877
Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
Japanese have agreed with the Fascist powers and the German advisor to Chiang Kaishek, General Von Falkenhayn, who had been forced to withdraw from China because of pressures from Japan, told Hitler that Germany "has been backing the wrong horse" in Asia. Koehler observed that a militant Italy was a lesser threat than Germany with its greater population and resources. He considered life under bolshevism to be worse than life under fascism. Concerning the immediate problem of Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland, Koehler reasoned that Czechoslovakia would get little support from the other nations of the Little
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
Entente for fear of exposing themselves to attack from Germany. Britain, however, would not fail to be on the side of France if war broke out. He believed that under advisement of his high command, Hitler would "continue to capitalize on the fear of war and keep Europe in turmoil for some time to come and up to this day he has gained as much by bluff as he could get by war and without the disastrous cost of war." Koehler's closing remark was half-accurate as history has bore out, "He will not resort to war. War
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
would be the end of Hitler." Speaking before the Fleet Reserve Association in February 1939, Koehler claimed that following the Munich Pact, Britain was actually in a better position since Neville Chamberlain had succeeded in garnering the support of the British people, including the Labourites. He stated that Adolf Hitler was "bluffing" in September 1938, and would not have forced a war without Italy's support. Overly optimistic, Koehler believed that France had the "strongest army" in Europe and was allied with Britain, but did not want to provoke a war. In an April, 1939 address to the Men's Club of
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82
4,620
Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
the United Congregational Church (Newport, Rhode Island), Koehler predicted that if war were to break out, the United States would be drawn into it. "Mussolini is afraid of war and Hitler doesn't want it," he said. Taking questions from the audience, Koehler at that time believed that the dictator nations would achieve their goals without engaging other nations in war. Koehler delivered an address to the Newport Electric Corporation's Men's Club on October 14, 1939, and warned that if the current arms embargo by the United States were not lifted, the war in Europe would be over within a
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Q28737277
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4,620
82
5,201
Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
month. Great Britain and France could not continue without U.S. assistance in munitions and supplies. On the other hand, Koehler observed, Hitler "is in a jam" since Germany has to conserve her supplies for a possible later fight with Russia. Hitler's alliance with Russia came at a "stiff price" by alienating Spain entirely and weakening Germany's support in Italy. Had Spain gone along with Germany, Franco could have mobilized an army on the border and forced France to do likewise, drawing men from the German front. "Great Britain", he pointed out, "made a smart move in
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its trade pact with Russia, in that it can take what it needs, at the same time, keeping these imports and supplies from Germany. "Stalin," he said, "is only interested in Russia, and will be with any country that can put gold into Moscow." Koehler offered that the present British government was "in poor hands" with Chamberlain as prime minister and Sir John Simon as head of the treasury, since both men believed in keeping arms spending low. Aside from Britain "blundering" in its negotiations with Germany preceding the war, Koehler observed that Britain made a strategic error
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in "building battleships, which are only good to fight other battleships. A blockade could be effected as well with destroyers." He reasoned that Germany had not used its air force to break the embargo due to the high cost of ammunition, as it would require many planes dropping hundreds of bombs to sink a warship. Koehler considered Mussolini "wise" to stay out of the conflict because Italy's "army is not strong enough to make a good showing." As to Gibraltar and Malta, they are no longer the "towers of strength" due to airplanes which could launch bombing
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attacks in the darkness. Koehler saw the war on the Western Front as being a "perfect stalemate" due to the Maginot and Siegfried lines, overestimating in particular the false impregnability of the Maginot line. As to the German U-boat and aerial offensive, he thought it "possible but not probable" that Britain's blockade would be broken. In a talk before the Newport Art Association in September 1940, Koehler announced, "We are already in the war, even though we are not technically at war, in fact we've been in the war ever since that last November when Congress modified the Neutrality Laws
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in favor of the Allies. We are in as bad a state today as the French were before their collapse, the basic cause of which was the easy indifference of the masses of the people, their shortsighted unwillingness to get down to hard work and to make the sacrifices that an intellectually honest analysis indicated as indispensable. Do we find within ourselves any evidence of a real willingness to work and to make real sacrifices?" Koehler questioned his audience. "The American Youth Congress inculcates an underlying mood of sullen rebellion in youth against their elders for failure to
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
see to it, that the pleasant and easy-going conditions of these years are continued indefinitely. It would be to rely on the mood of a lot of spoiled children to rely on the youth of today even in part, for the defense of the country. No amount of external armaments can give us safety until first we are strong internally. We need sufficient force to ensure that our help will enable the British fleet completely to control the Atlantic Ocean. Until our planned two-sea navy is ready we should accept the idea that our front lines should not
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
be on our own doorsteps, but close enough to those of the enemy to make the blockade really effective, and now." Addressing a musician's union local in January 1941, Koehler urged, "We've got to get in, the sooner the better for our defense." He warned that if Britain where defeated, the "problem" would be left with the United States. Calling Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor "one of the greatest leaders of this country", Koehler spoke of the importance of music in life. In one of his last public addresses on the "International Situation", given at Newport before
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a group of 250 at the "Monday Night Club" in April 1941, Koehler encouraged his audience that, "We as individuals will pour out our treasures until it more than hurts, but it will be worth it." He warned that America must make its stand clear on the lend-lease program, referring to it as a "magnificent gesture", and saying that in the First World War, the "altruism" of the United States was "not appreciated" and was overridden by the national and economic policies and the political expedients of Europe and the East. He called for a "definite policy this
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
time, when the U.S. has the power to demand guarantees of future world stability." He noted that at the end of this war, (World War II) the world will either be totalitarian under Hitler or democratic under Britain. "It is time for clear, hard, Yankee thinking," he said. Concerning the Balkan situation, then the key point of the conflict, Koehler concluded that the various groups were unified for mutual protection: "the Serbs are soldiers (as good as the French in World War I, since they "fight best in a forlorn cause"), the Croats businessmen and the Slovenes are
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Hugo W. Koehler
Public speaking
the workers in the Balkans," he observed. Koehler accurately prophesied the Russians as "a tremendous problem because of their cross and double-cross trickery; their fear that a German invasion would conquer them; and their threat from Japan in the east." "Russia", Koehler continued, "is terrified and subservient to Germany and professes a benevolent neutrality for Japan and Turkey. As to Turkey as a nation, and not the Levantines in Constantinople, Koehler praised their "honesty and determination of purpose". Italy, he said, "is no longer worthy of discussion" and the countries that Germany had overran, "may be noisy but they cannot
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Public speaking & Death and burial
and will not revolt". Death and burial With Koehler's hereditary kidney condition rapidly deteriorating, on May 1, 1941, he and Matilda leased "Eastover" to Ralph Stonor and Mildred Sherman, better known as Lord and Lady Camoys and occupied the guesthouse nearby. Hugo Koehler died of Bright's Disease (kidney failure) at the age of 54 on June 17, 1941, at his home on 510 Park Avenue in New York City. He did not live to see America enter the Second World War. Koehler's father, Oscar, had died of the same congenital condition at the age of 45, diminishing
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the possibility that Hugo was other than his natural-born son. Shortly before his death, Koehler asked Claiborne Pell and Maggie Potter to attend to his desk and spare that sad task from Matilda. All they found was a drawer of unpaid bills, the envelopes unopened, and a packet of sonnets that Potter had written for him years earlier. Hearing of his death, his old paramour, Dolly Gladstone, remarked, "[I]t is impossible to realize that I shall never see him again. It is as if the sun had ceased to shine." Before he died, Koehler confided to a friend,
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that he had "missed the boat" and should have gone to Moscow instead of settling for retirement in Newport. But he knew that continuing his naval career would "crucify" Matilda and he simply could not hurt her. "I made a terrible blunder, all the things I should have been but wasn't". Although she loved him, Matilda was a private woman and after Hugo's death she burned the extensive letters that he had written her. In January 1942, Matilda sold their estate, "Eastover", to Captain and Mrs. Marion Eppley. Koehler is buried with his wife and son in the Berkeley Memorial
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Cemetery by St. Columba's Chapel in Middletown, Rhode Island. In November 1942, 25-year old Lt.(j.g) John F. Kennedy, then attached to the Motor Torpedo Boat Squadrons Training Center at Melville, Rhode Island, was mourning the death of his close, childhood friend, Marine Second Lieutenant George Houk Mead, Jr., who had been killed in action at Guadalcanal that August and posthumously awarded the Navy Cross. Accompanied by a female acquaintance from a wealthy Newport family, the couple had stopped in Middletown at the cemetery where Hugo Koehler had been buried the year before. Ambling around the plots near the tiny
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Death and burial & Personality
St. Columba's chapel, Kennedy paused at Koehler's granite cross grave marker and pondered his own mortality, hoping out loud that when his time came, he would not have to die without religion. "But these things can't be faked," he added. "There's no bluffing." Two decades later, President Kennedy and Koehler's stepson, U.S. Senator Claiborne Pell had become good friends and political allies, although they had been acquaintances since the mid-1930s during their "salad days" on the same Newport debutante party "circuit" and when Pell had dated JFK's sister, Kathleen ("Kick") Kennedy. Personality Hugo Koehler, by all accounts, had a
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highly engaging and charismatic personality. Claiborne Pell wrote of his stepfather, "From the time I was nine years old, I lived most of the time, for ten months of each year, in the same house as my stepfather, Commander Koehler. I loved the man. He was a very gifted, very unusual person. On many occasions, I have met people who knew something about his exploits and from them, as well as from my mother and from what I could note myself, I have been convinced that a fine book could be- and should be – written about him.
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Whoever wrote it, however, would have to dig into areas that are not easy to come by." Although the theory that Koehler was the illegitimate son of a Habsburg prince, separated at birth, is dubious speculation; he was undeniably a dashing, swashbuckling figure enveloped in mystery. In October 1925, while Koehler was commanding the Balboa Naval Transmitting Station at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal Zone, rumor about his engagement to a particularly colorful, San Francisco socialite and divorcée made national news. Koehler, reported to be "the wealthiest officer" in the Navy, was romantically linked to Milo Abercrombie (1895–1977),
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Hugo W. Koehler
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niece of John W. Abercrombie, U.S. Congressman from Alabama. Milo was the former wife of the convicted World War One German spy and later, prolific Hollywood movie actor Wilhelm von Brincken. Abercrombie, acclaimed by noted portraitist Harrison Fisher as "California's greatest beauty", had married von Brincken in 1915 when he was a German military attaché in San Francisco. She divorced him in 1919 while he was imprisoned at McNeil Island Federal Penitentiary on Puget Sound. Von Brincken was sentenced to serve two years in the Hindu–German Conspiracy Trial for plotting to foment an insurrection against British colonial
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rule in India, this sentence to run concurrently with a similar conviction for his alleged participation in bombing and dynamiting plots against the government of Canada. Following her divorce from von Brincken, Milo changed her and their two children's last names back to her maiden name so they would not be "ashamed". In 1920, Abercrombie married a U.S. naval officer, Lieutenant Lyman K. Swenson, at St Mary's Cathedral in San Francisco. Swenson introduced Milo to Koehler in Honolulu when both men's ships were stationed there. In May 1925, Milo obtained an interlocutory decree of divorce from Swenson,
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Hugo W. Koehler
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to become final in May 1926. In Panama, Koehler read the news stories claiming that he was engaged to marry Milo Abercrombie the following year, in June 1926. Brushing it off, Koehler tersely told the press, "Some error," while Abercrombie did not take it so lightly. "I have been deeply humiliated", she told reporters, her eyes "wet with tears". "This is a most unkind blow of fate. I cannot possibly understand how this false rumor got about." Later, in a bitter child visitation rights battle in 1927 that went all the way to
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the California Court of Appeals, Abercrombie lost custody of their children, Lyman, Jr. ("Robert") and Cecelia, after making baseless accusations that Swenson had molested their four-year-old daughter. The appellate court excoriated Abercrombie, "[I]n furtherance of a manifest determination to prevent him from ever seeing the children again, under any circumstances, she was instrumental in inspiring and promoting a scheme directly involving one of the children which had for its obvious purpose the ruination of respondent's character as a man, the bringing about of his complete disgrace as a naval officer, and the destruction of the love and affection which
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his children had theretofore manifested toward him." Swenson v. Swenson (1929) 101 Cal.App. 440. Lyman Swenson remarried in 1929 and in November 1942, Captain Swenson was killed in action when his cruiser, USS Juneau was sunk during the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal with the loss of all but 10 of its crew of 673, including the five Sullivan Brothers. Von Brincken died suddenly in January 1946, after appearing in nearly 75 movies following his release from prison in 1921, often cast as a German heavy or spy. Margaretta "Maggie" Wood (Potter) (1899–1985), daughter of Rear Admiral Spencer S. Wood (1861–1940), was
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one of the many attractive and socially prominent women that had romantic trysts with Hugo Koehler. It would not be inaccurate to say that Koehler loved women. Maggie Potter met him in 1921 at a Washington dinner hosted by her father, the same year that Koehler met then-married Matilda and Herbert Pell. Wood was twenty-one and Koehler a confident, worldly man of thirty-five. "I fell madly in love with him and I think that he loved me as much as I loved him," she was quoted in Rescue of the Romanovs. They had a three-month affair before Koehler
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was detached to Warsaw as U.S. naval attache and were engaged to be married on his return; however, Koehler broke off the engagement telling her that she must "forget him". Despite this, Potter remained friends of both Koehler and his wife, and maintained correspondence with him as a confidante until his death. Near the end of his life, Koehler had reaffirmed his Roman Catholic faith and received the Last rites. Maggie Potter gave Matilda her High Renaissance crucifix that was placed in Koehler's hands before he was buried. "I think I knew him better and saw
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him more truly than did most of his other friends. He was a puzzle for two reasons: his brain was vastly superior to our brains, and he simply did not fit into the American scene. Physically he was tall, but squarely built and very strong. When he walked, with rather short steps, he carried his head high, slightly thrown back, and he never watched his feet, as Americans invariably do. He was strikingly handsome, even in his last years, when he was not well and his hair had turned white and his waist had thickened. He spoke
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English in his deeply pitched voice with a faint German accent. He was one of the best raconteurs and conversationalists I have ever listened to, although this excellence led him to the sin of pontificating, and when there was no one well-informed enough for him to sharpen his wits against, he could be really insufferable." Shortly before her death in 1985, Maggie Potter recorded her thoughts about Koehler, "As I look back, it is evident that after Hugo's resignation from the Navy, I was his confidante; he would talk and I would listen.... In his apartment in Washington, when I
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first knew him, there was a bookcase and its three or four shelves were filled, not with books, but with photographs of women. I do not think they were trophies; he genuinely liked and appreciated women and never denigrated ability in a female as many men of that period did.... He said it was stupid for us in Washington to associate with only our friends, who think as we do. One should seek out the obscure midwestern congressman and find out what he thinks, what his motives are. Of course, Hugo was right.... I think I
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Personality & For further reading
saw him truly. I saw him as he appeared to most people: worldly, flamboyant, out of scale with Matilda's New York and Newport milieu; but also I saw what was behind his protective exterior, a deeply loving man, full of compassion and insight, always ready to help someone else...." For further reading In 1992 a collection of Koehler's letters and dispatches to the State Department and the Office of Naval Intelligence, painstakingly researched, compiled and edited by P. J. Capelotti was published as Our Man in the Crimea: Commander Hugo Koehler and the Russian Civil War. The book expands