Martin James Monti

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Monti was one of seven children of prosperous parents. His father, Martin Monti Jr., was an investment broker who had also been born in St. Louis.[1] Martin Monti Jr.'s father had immigrated to the United States from the Italian Graubünden, the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, while his mother was a native of Italy.[2] Martin James Monti's mother, Marie Antoinette Wiethaupt, was born in Missouri to German-American parents.[3][4] Monti's four brothers all served honorably in the United States Navy during World War II.

In the 1930s, Monti was a staunch anti-communist and an enthusiastic admirer of Charles "Father" Coughlin,[5] a Roman Catholic priest who made weekly radio broadcasts. Coughlin was known for his sentiments towards anti-communism, anti-semitism, and admiration of the fascist governments of Germany and Italy; his broadcasts attracted millions of listeners before eventually being stopped in 1939 on the outbreak of World War II.[6] Prior to enlisting in the U.S. Army, Monti worked as an aircraft assembler.[7]

In October 1942, Monti traveled to Detroit, Michigan to meet and converse with Coughlin. On December 19, 1942, he enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces as an aviation cadet.[8] In 1943 and early 1944, he completed flight training and was commissioned as a flight officer. He qualified in the P-39 Airacobra and the P-38 Lightning, and was promoted to Second Lieutenant.[4]

In August 1944, he was sent to Karachi, India. While attached to the 126th Replacement Depot, he hitched a ride aboard a C-46 transport aircraft to Cairo, Egypt, and from there he traveled to Italy, via Tripoli, Libya. At Foggia, he visited the 82nd Fighter Group, and made his way to Pomigliano Airfield, north of Naples, where the 354th Air Service Squadron prepared aircraft for assignment to line squadrons. He noticed that an F-5E Lightning aircraft,[9] a photographic reconnaissance version of the P-38, needed work and required a test flight after repairs. He stole the aircraft and flew to Milan on 13 October 1944.[9] He then landed and surrendered the plane to German forces. Monti was initially treated as an ordinary prisoner of war, until he was able to convince his captors that he had defected out of genuine conviction.[4] His aircraft was handed over to the Zirkus Rosarius, the Luftwaffe unit that tested Allied aircraft that were captured in flying condition.

In late 1944, Monti made a microphone test at the recording studio of SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers, a propaganda unit of the Waffen-SS, under the direction of Gunter d'Alquen, in Berlin, Germany. In the middle of 1945, Monti had recorded a radio program under the name of "The Round Table Conference" at a SS-Standarte Kurt Eggers recording studio. The radio program consisted of political propaganda in the form of discussion and commentary on political issues. This program was broadcast by the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft, the German state radio organization.[10] While in Germany, Monti went under the alias of "Martin Wiethaupt". The Germans told him that he must assume a different name to preserve anonymity, so he was initially given the alias of "Martin Roberts". However, he did not like this name and instead opted to use his mothers maiden name so that if he were even killed or captured he could potentially be traced and identified.[11] Eventually, while working in radio broadcasting, he came into contact with Mildred Gillars, the American broadcaster widely known as "Axis Sally", who took an immediate dislike to Monti and threatened to resign from her position rather than work with him. Gillars testified at her treason trial that Monti came into the Berlin radio studio one day and simply said "hello" to her. "I just looked at him, turned around and walked out without speaking." Gillars said. Her next action was speaking to Adelburt Houben, a supervising radio official, she told him: "That man (Monti) is a spy or a traitor, either he must go or I will." Houben denied her request that Monti be removed whereupon she said "Then I've made my last broadcast." However, Monti's lack of ability and experience as a radio commentator ensured that he made only a few broadcasts and upon his reposition Gillars immediately went back to broadcasting.[12]

Next, Monti joined the Waffen-SS and was given the rank of SS-Untersturmführer, a rank equivalent to his rank in the U.S. Army. While in the SS, he participated in creation of a propaganda leaflet to be distributed by the Wehrmacht and among Allied prisoners of war. At the war's end, Monti proceeded to the vicinity of Milan, Italy from Berlin by railroad and by use of German military trucks.[13] While in Milan, Monti approached the first U.S. Army unit he saw and "joined up" with them while still wearing his SS uniform, which at this point had all insignias and identifying marks removed.[4] He was eventually interrogated by U.S. Army officers who questioned him about his time as a German prisoner of war, however; he did not reveal his personal association with the SS or that he had stolen the F-5E aircraft to defect to the Germans, only that he had stolen the aircraft because "he was bored" and so that he could "personally fight the Germans himself."[14]

During his post-war trials, Monti claimed that he stole the plane to fight the Germans, and that he was shot down, and that he had been working with partisans, who gave him the SS uniform. His claims were believed, so in 1946, he was only court-martialed for stealing the plane and for desertion. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison which was quickly suspended by U.S. President Harry S. Truman and was allowed to reenlist in the Army Air Forces as a Private on February 11, 1947. He had advanced to Sergeant by the time he was honorably discharged on January 26, 1948. Only minutes later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested him at Mitchel Field, New York, and charged him with treason for the propaganda activities performed by "Martin Wiethaupt", whom the FBI had identified as Monti.[15] On October 14, a federal grand jury in Brooklyn indicted him for 21 acts of treason committed between October 13, 1944, and May 8, 1945, the day hostilities in Europe ended.[6]

On January 17, 1949, he pleaded guilty, surprising the prosecutors and the court, which had prepared for a lengthy trial. Because of the seriousness of the charges, the court required testimony despite his guilty plea, and, according to The New York Times, "Without hesitation, Monti took the witness chair" where he admitted all the charges. Asked by the judge if he had acted "voluntarily", he answered "Yes". His attorney then asked for leniency, citing his upbringing in an extremist and isolationist environment that "fanatically imbued" him to identify Soviet Russia and Communism as the nation's principal enemy. Nevertheless, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of $10,000.[16]

Monti served his sentence in Leavenworth Penitentiary, Kansas. In 1951, he unsuccessfully tried to withdraw his guilty plea, insisting he had "no treasonable intent" when he flew into enemy territory and claimed that he had been pressured by his attorneys into pleading guilty.[17] He was paroled in 1960[18] and later in 1963 tried to get his charges of treason reversed in a Brooklyn Federal Court claiming he "only went to Germany to assassinate Adolf Hitler and end the war" however, the reversal attempt was denied. At that time in 1963, he was working as a factory supervisor making $1.50-an-hour.[19] He lived in Fort Lauderdale, Florida under relative obscurity until the time of his death on September 11, 2000.[20] He was buried at Sacred Heart Cemetery in Florissant, Missouri alongside his parents and two of his brothers.[21]

• Transcript of Court Record
• Martin James Monti at Find a Grave
• American SS Renegades (YouTube). Mark Felton Productions. From 2:02 to 6:31. Retrieved June 26, 2020.