Us Embassy Frankfurt: Fill & Download for Free

Check with the US Embassy in Germany in Berlin, or the Consulate General in Frankfurt,de.usembassy.govU.S. Consulate General Frankfurt | U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Germanyde.usembassy.gov/embassy-consulates/munich/or the Consulate General in Munich. Any of them should be able to help you.RegardsVolker

The US didn't close the US embassy in Berlin, Germany did, on December 14, 1941 to be precise.The US had recalled its ambassador, Hugh Wilson, after Kristallnacht, but the embassy remained open.On December 11, 1941, the Foreign Ministry ordered all embassy personnel to report to the embassy at 8:00 am on December 14 with no more than two pieces of luggage. When they arrived they found the embassy occupied by the Gestapo. Embassy personnel were sent to Bad Nauheim and interned in a hotel until May 1942.Perry Laukhuff, then third secretary at the embassy, described the closure and internment:I was there in December 1941, and, in fact, I was the duty officer at the Embassy on the night Pearl Harbor was attacked and we got the news. I remember telephoning various people, George Kennan and various people at the Embassy, at their homes, to tell them about it, so we knew that the axe would fall very, very shortly after that, or felt certain that it would, and indeed it did within a few days, on the 11th.. We saw Hitler go over to the Reichstag and that was -- the declaration of war came immediately, and we then were told to be ready to be taken away on a Saturday, I guess it was, Pearl Harbor was on a Sunday and the following Saturday we were able to assemble at the Embassy with our luggage, and nobody knew where we were going to go or what they were going to do with us.There was a good deal of anxiety, but we all assembled and were taken away, put in a train with our luggage -- we had mountains of luggage which the Germans hadn't somehow quite foreseen and they were terribly annoyed with it, because it was holding up the schedule of the train's departure, but they loaded it all on and off we went into the night not knowing where we were going.We ended up, of course, at Bad Nauheim, outside Frankfurt, and had to be kept on the train, living on the train for another three or four days, I don't remember exactly, because the hotel was not quite prepared for us. This all happened so suddenly that they weren't ready.And then we were held at this hotel in Bad Nauheim from December until May, when we were exchanged against the Germans held in this country, and it was a time of -- it was an interesting period. We were about a hundred people, a little more, because there were families, and there were some journalists, American journalists with us, interned with us, and we of course, had all sorts of problems with morale and misbehavior and one thing and another, and we set up a little office there, headed by George Kennan, and we exchanged notes in the best diplomatic fashion with the German Foreign Office about things, carrying on a little diplomatic mission right there. And we were not mistreated in any any way, but we were deprived of our freedom and the food was very, very poor. Well, it was poor in comparison with what we had been used to in Berlin where we could import things weekly from Denmark and that sort of thing. And some people suffered fairly severely, physically, from it.(From Perry Laukhuff Oral History Interview)

This is a true story from back in the early 1980s. Please be patient while I introduce the relevant characters. There is a payoff in the end, I promise.I was bartending at a resort that had been closed due to the economy for the past several years. It was located in the Texas Hill Country near Wimberley, about 20 miles from San Marcos and about 44 miles from Austin. The area had residents living in homes and condos. The resort restaurant and bar had been closed during the downturn and had very recently reopened. The bar area itself was pretty small space since most of the drink traffic was via the restaurant. We had the bar and a few stools and 5 small tables.One of the site security officers was a retired military and law enforcement officer who we shall call “Bill”. He was a nice guy and a real people person, but if you were paying attention you could quickly figure out that if there was any hint of a problem, he would know just how to handle it. Quickly, quietly and efficiently. He would often come in during the night just to have a cup of coffee, chat and see how things were going in the newly reopened bar.“Jerry” was a resident who lived in a nearby condo. He was a quiet, very bright guy who was in his early 40s and married to a wonderful and beautiful French woman. He would sit at the bar, never over-imbibing but just wanting to chat. I asked him how he met his wife and he said he met her while he was working in Europe.The third player was a guy I’ll call “Hank.” Hank was a welder who spent most of his time installing gates and cattle guards on nearby ranches. He would often come in after a hard, hot day on the job wearing his jeans, sleeveless work shirt and faded cowboy hat. Always ordered bottled beer. Sometimes sat at the bar and sometimes at one of the tables.So, here we go. One evening, “Hank” came in and got his usual, a Lone Star longneck bottled beer. He then sat at one of the tables, going over some work related paperwork. About 10 minutes later, “Jerry” walked in and sat at the bar. I got him his usual drink and we began to chat. We somehow got on the subject of computers which were just becoming a topic in the general public back in 1982. Jerry said the place he had worked in Europe had access to a couple of CRAY supercomputers and that one of his coworkers had been using the power of a couple of Cray computers to try to calculate the winners of the Euro Football matches based on their season record. And betting accordingly. I asked him where in the world he workrd that had access not one but TWO Cray super computers? “I was working at an NSA listening post in Gibraltar” he whispered.The only other person in the bar was “Hank”. He had been sitting quietly at his table but I glanced over and he was suddenly sitting very still, staring at Jerry and me. After a few seconds, Hank came over to the bar. He and Jerry chatted very quietly while I filled in some drink orders for the restaurant. I wandered back over to them and rejoined the conversation.It turns out that “Hank” had also been NSA. He spoke fluent Russian and had been in a listening post in Tehran back in the 1970s. Tehran was in an ideal location since, due to its altitude it would intercept signals from the Baikonur Cosmodrome among other locations in the lower USSR. He was alone and on duty on the night when three Soviet cosmonauts died during reentry. He listened as he heard their screams and comments as they died. It chilled him to the bone as he realized what was going on. He immediately called his watch commander who put him on hold for about 2 minutes. When his watch commander returned, he had patched in higher ups in Frankfurt, Germany who listened to his briefing. Again he was put on hold. A few minutes later, he was talking with Richard Nixon. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to stand at attention while speaking with POTUS, but again he repeated his briefing on what he heard. Nixon thanked him and Hank was instructed to keep quiet about the incident.Later during his tour in Tehran, Hank was working as the Shah fell and the Revolutionary Guard took over. Their location was not in the Embassy but in a building several blocks away in Tehran. As the Revolutionary Guard assembled for their assault on the US Embassy, the word was sent to bug out. They frantically destroyed equipment and documents and were finally ordered out by their section chief. One of their staff was an Iranian resident who served as a driver and interpreter and he set up the evacuation route to the airport. The driver insisted that they travel down little used side streets and to avoid the major thoroughfares that normally would be used to travel to the airport. “Hank” was suspicious but in no position to argue so off the team went in several cars. As they traveled as quickly as possible to the airport, Hank looked to his right and saw a crowd of hundreds of thousands marching down the main thoroughfares on their way to the US Embassy. Hank said they got to the airport, crashed through the fences and proceeded directly to a waiting US 707 parked on the runway with its engines running. They scrambled onto the plane which immediately began its takeoff. As the plane taxied for takeoff, the mob broke through the fences at the end of the runway and began running toward the plane. Hank said he thinks that they ran over several of the protesters as they rotated to takeoff. He said that his sphincters did not relax until they reached Turkish airspace over the Black Sea.Anyway, “Jerry’ and “Hank” retired to a table to quietly huddle and carry on their conversation. They had known each other since the resort had reopened several months earlier but had no idea that they shared this bond. They were the only two people in the bar except for the occasional wait person who would breeze in and out for a drink order.As they quietly spoke, “Bill” came in to check on things and have his normal cup of coffee. “Boy, those two are having a serious discussion”, Bill said. He knew both of them casually but had never seen them so deeply engrossed in conversation.“Its really weird” I said. “They just found out that both of them had been in the NSA at the same time, Jerry in Gibraltar and Hank in Tehran”, I told him. Bill suddenly got a serious look on his face. He didn’t say a word to me, but he took his coffee, wandered over to the table and sat down with Jerry and Hank. They looked up at him as he approached. He whispered to them and they then sat together, huddled around the table for the next hour or so quietly talking. I would occasionally go over to the table to refresh their drinks (on the house) as they continued to talk. I would overhear snippets of their conversation. One of them would start a sentence and another would cut him off with a word or phrase that would elicit nods around the table. Like doctors do when discussing a case.They eventually broke up and that was that. Bill went back to work and Hank left for home. Jerry returned to the bar and I asked him about Bill. Turns out Bill had started out with the NSA in Viet Nam and later moved up the chain of command until his retirement when he went to work with a Sheriff’s department in rural Texas. Apparently tales were shared that night at that table that I didn’t and shouldn’t ever hear.Jerry finished his drink and went home. I numbly finished my shift. None of them would ever discuss it again with me. I never heard them discuss the events among themselves again, but whenever one would meet another, they would smile and exchange a knowing nod.