Histoire d'Henry Antheil

Pour en savoir un peu plus sur Henry, le frère de George Antheil :

Biography

Henry W. Antheil, Jr.’s career in the U.S. Foreign Service was cut short when the Finnish passenger plane Kaleva exploded at 14:05 on Friday, June 14, 1940 approximately ten minutes after taking off from Tallinn’s Ülemiste Airport. According to an Associated Press wire story that ran the following day, Henry was serving as a diplomatic courier when his plane exploded en route to Helsinki. Henry was carrying several diplomatic pouches from the U.S. legations in Tallinn and Riga on the very day that the Soviet blockade of Estonia went into effect. Soviet troops had already been based in Estonia since October 18, 1939 as a result of the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Some Estonian researchers believe that Henry’s diplomatic pouches included secret information detailing the Soviet Union’s future plans for the Baltic region that the Estonian General Staff had turned over to an unidentified U.S. Government official earlier that same day. Back in the United States, the news of the Soviet blockade and the loss of the Kaleva were overshadowed by a much bigger story that broke on the other side of Europe on June 14: the Nazi occupation of Paris.

Henry W. Antheil, Jr., was honored at the American Foreign Service Association’s (AFSA) Memorial Plaque Ceremony at the U.S. State Department’s Diplomatic Lobby on Friday, May 4. The event, part of the annual Foreign Affairs Day celebration, honors those U.S. Embassy employees who have lost their lives while serving their country overseas in the line of duty. U.S. Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns read a message from President Bush and paid his respects to the families of those employees who were added to the plaque. The employees who were honored in 2007 were:

Margaret Alexander, a Foreign Service Officer serving as Deputy Director with the USAID Mission in Nepal, killed on September 23, 2006 in a helicopter crash. Finnish Chargé d’Affaires Pauli Mustonen was among the 24 people killed in the same crash near Ghunsa in the Himalayan Mountains.

Doris Knittle, a Foreign Service nurse in Kabul, Afghanistan, found murdered in her home in August 1970.

Henry W. Antheil, Jr., a clerk at the U.S. Legation in Helsinki, killed on June 14, 1940 while serving as a diplomatic courier when the Finnish passenger plane Kaleva was shot down over the Gulf of Finland near Tallinn, Estonia. This solemn ceremony offers an opportunity each year to remember and honor fallen colleagues who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country and serves as a reminder of the dangerous and difficult conditions that U.S. Foreign Service personnel face around the world. The addition of these three names to AFSA’s Memorial Plaque brought the total number of Foreign Service employees who have died in the line of duty to 225.

The U.S. Embassy in Tallinn has been helping the Estonian film company Polarfilms document Henry W. Antheil, Jr.’s life and death. The initial results of this ongoing research will appear in the Foreign Service Journal (May 2007), Akadeemia (June 2007), and in the forthcoming documentary film The Story of the Kaleva.

http://thesop.org/index.php?article=12065  Audio by Kristin Marzec

The Cold War began not in 1945 but four years earlier. In a scarcely known episode, a plane carrying an American diplomat with top secret documents was shot down by two Soviet air fighters. Now, the mystery behind the so-called Kaleva Incident may finally be revealed.

The Baltic Sea, miniature as it is, hides many secrets. It is there that after the end of the Second World War, tons of German and Soviet chemical weapons were buried in the seabed never to be retrieved again. The Baltic Sea, which stretches from the coastline of Germany through Poland to the Baltic republics to Finland and Sweden, also remains a graveyard for numerous wrecks of ships and planes that prematurely ended their heroic service in the depths of the vicious waters.

One of them especially captures the imagination of historians and mystery lovers. For decades the Kaleva airplane had lain somewhere in the Baltic, jealously guarded by Russian frigates. Finally, on May 30, 2008, the USNS Pathfinder - a US Navy oceanographic survey ship - began an unusual mission that, if successful, might shed new light on the last flight of the Kaleva and the beginnings of the Cold War. "This is a unique mission," admitted one of the ship`s crewmen. "We`re not in the business of looking for aircrafts or sunken ships, so this is very exciting for my surveyors."

The story began in Tallinn, Estonia, on June 14, 1940. A handsome, 28-year-old American diplomat, recognized by the airport servicemen as Henry W. Antheil Jr., entered a small plane bound for Helsinki. He could not resist a smile as he sat comfortably in a seat, putting his black suitcase on a shelf above. In a few hours he would be in the Finnish capital where, apart from the US embassy officials, his beautiful fiancee would be waiting. Besides, there was a rumor that the Soviets were to impose a blockade on Estonia, officially still an independent country, and any further delaying of his return might become a grave error.

The Kaleva, belonging to the Finnish Aero O/Y airlines, took off as planned. Antheil was not the only diplomat on board; there were also two envoys from the French embassy in Estonia going en route to Paris that several hours earlier had fallen into German hands. Two German businessmen, an Estonian lady, a Swede, and two pilots comprised the rest of those on board. According to one Estonian fisherman, at 2:05 pm local time, two air fighters with visible red stars on their tails approached the plane and opened fire on it. Seconds later, a huge explosion tore the Kaleva into dozens of pieces that quickly fell into the impregnable depths of the Baltic Sea.

Why did the Soviets shoot down the passenger airplane? The Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland ended several months before the incident, in March 1940. The two countries realized that sooner or later new fights would break out, but according to the signed treaty, both pledged to refrain from any hostile activities. June 14, like most summer days in this part of Europe, was chilly but sunny and the Soviet pilots must have seen the blue Aero O/Y inscriptions on the Kaleva`s tail that clearly indicated the plane as belonging to Finland. Was the attack just a tragic mistake, a demonstration of military superiority, or a thoroughly designed operation?

Perhaps a glance at Henry W. Antheil Jr.`s life could answer this question. One of the two sons of Henry William Antheil, a shoe store owner and an immigrant from Germany, Henry Jr. spent much of his life in the shadow of his famous older brother, George. It was George, a cosmopolitan composer, who in 1934 introduced Henry to the political elite of Washington, DC. Among his new acquaintances was William C. Bullitt that only recently had agreed to stay at the helm of the American embassy in the Soviet Union. With several months still remaining until graduation from Rutgers University, Henry decided to give up his studies and go with Bullitt as an embassy staffer.

Like the rest of the employees of the embassy who paved the way for future diplomats, Henry`s ambitions surpassed his knowledge on the region. In his unpublished letters, George Antheil wrote that "Henry lived a lone [sic] and dangerous life, traveling from country to country, followed by foreign agents from border to border, never knowing what moment might be his last."  It was one of such errands that took Henry to Finland where he met and fell in love with a local beauty, Greta Lindberg. During the Winter War, the couple could see first-hand the strength of the Red Army and the determination of the Fins who, outnumbered by the Soviets by 4 to 1, managed to defend their country.

Henry`s diplomatic career was somewhat ambiguous. His superiors praised him for his strong character that enabled him to go to places which other "brilliant young men" hoped to avoid. But Henry had a serious vice that had killed many promising careers in the State Department: he loved to gossip. He could hardly be trusted with diplomatic secrets and any bit of information he managed to get he usually shared with his foreign fiancee or his brother, who at that time worked as a war correspondent for American newspapers. Henry`s long tongue made him one of the objects of the 1950s FBI investigation into Soviet agents in the US State Department. He was posthumously cleared of all accusations.

Would then Henry W. Antheil Jr. have been given some top secret materials to transport to Helsinki? Very doubtful, say some historians. But Estonian researchers, who have been working on the case, claim that Antheil`s suitcase contained blueprints for the Soviet occupation of the Baltic republics that the US embassy in Tallinn was to have obtained a day before. Less than 24 hours after the Kaleva incident, the Red Army rolled into Lithuania. On June 16, the Soviets were in the other Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia. If the United States had learned about these plans, would Washington have pressed its European allies to contain Stalin?

Perhaps it wasn`t the young American courier that the Soviets wanted to eliminate. Another theory concentrates on the two French diplomats who also boarded the Kaleva. They were heading for Paris with two pouches whose contents were no less mysterious than Antheil`s baggage. Some believe that the two carried transcripts of a meeting that several days earlier French Ambassador in Moscow Erik Labonne had with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov. Probably Molotov had lambasted Hitler - still Moscow`s official ally - and now, when the Germans were in Paris, the Soviet Union`s two-faced policies would have been uncovered.

On June 15, 1940, the talk of the day was the German occupation of Paris. The crash of the Kaleva was hardly mentioned in American newspapers; and when it did appear, it was usually on the last page. Time magazine reported the following on June 24, 1940: "Died. Henry W. Antheil Jr., 27, attache of the U.S. Legation at Helsinki, younger brother of noted Composer George Antheil; when the Finnish airliner in which he was flying from Tallinn, Estonia, to Helsinki mysteriously exploded in mid-air and plunged into the Gulf of Finland." Other titles were similarly imprecise.

For half a century, it was impossible to investigate the Kaleva incident. The Soviet Army that had invaded Estonia and the other Baltic republics in 1940 would stay there until the early 1990s, when all three countries regained independence. Now, 67 years after Henry W. Antheil Jr. and the other seven passengers of the Kaleva airplane died in unexplained circumstances, the mystery of the fateful flight is on the verge of being unraveled. "There was plenty of talk about it in Finland," remembered one Finnish senior diplomat in his interview for the Associated Press. "Hopefully, the Americans will help solve this case."

If the findings prove that the plane with Henry W. Antheil Jr. on board was shot down by Soviet air fighters, the history of the Cold War will have to be written again.

Krzys Wasilewski

The Times of Trenton_Decoding mystery of clerk's death (June 14)

14.06.2008

BY ROBERT STERN, Saturday, June 14, 2008 Navy investigates W.W. II-era plane crash  

The courier assignment that turned out to be Henry W. Antheil Jr.'s last was supposed to be a simple one in the early stages of World War II.

He was to bring diplomatic pouches full of sensitive material from the U.S. legations in the capitals of Estonia and Latvia to the U.S. legation in Helsinki, where the 27-year-old Trenton native worked as a code clerk.

Instead, his mission became entangled in tragedy and mystery -- part of which the U.S. Navy had hoped to solve with a high-tech underwater search earlier this month.

Antheil died 68 years ago today along with the eight other people aboard the Finnish airliner carrying them on the last flight out of Tallinn, Estonia, prior to its occupation and annexation by the Soviet Union.

His death may have placed him among the first American officials to be killed in World War II.

The airliner on which Antheil was flying, called the Kaleva, exploded over the Gulf of Finland en route to Helsinki from Tallinn 50 miles away. The disaster occurred at about 2:05 p.m. local time on June 14, 1940, the same day the Nazi occupation of Paris began.

Although a conclusive determination to the cause of the explosion and crash has never been made, suspicion as early as July 1940 was that Soviet bomber pilots shot down the passenger plane, according to a May 2007 article in Foreign Service Journal.

Antheil "was sent to secure all the military codebooks and all the codebooks," said his nephew, Arthur McTighe of East Windsor.

Once he returned to Finland, Antheil planned to see his Finnish fiancee who was the love of his life. "And then the plane was shot down," McTighe said.

Some Estonian researchers believe that Antheil's diplomatic pouches included secret information detailing the Soviet Union's future plans for the Baltic region that the Estonian general staff had turned over to an unidentified U.S. official earlier on that ill-fated day, according to the U.S. Embassy in Finland.

The Soviet Union and Russia have not acknowledged shooting down the Kaleva, according to The Associated Press.

Neither the Kaleva's wreckage nor the bodies of the nine people aboard have been found -- not even after a six-day search this year in late May and early June of the area where Estonian and Finnish researchers believed the Kaleva might be.

That search, conducted by the U.S. Navy's oceanographic survey vessel Pathfinder, came up empty despite the use of three small unmanned submarines in the expedition.

"There is no indication of a large human-made object in this area," Martin Ammond, senior surveyor aboard the Pathfinder, said in a statement posted on the website of the U.S. Embassy to Estonia.

Even so, embassy spokesman Eric A. Johnson, who has taken a keen interest in Antheil's case and the Kaleva over the years, said in the statement that officials are confident the plane's wreckage will turn up and hopeful that other ships will continue the search this summer in new locations.

The Pathfinder search, conducted during a training mission in the Baltic Sea, was done in response to a request by Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo to U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in January.

The search centered near the tiny island of Keri about 20 miles northwest of Tallinn, where the wreckage reportedly was believed to lie 300 feet underwater.

McTighe said it's unfortunate the Navy searchers didn't find the Kaleva, not only because of the personal connection he and his family have to its tragedy but because of its historic significance to Estonians.

"I know that in Estonia ... the Kaleva symbolizes their loss of liberty because it was the last plane out before they were invaded by the Soviets," he said.

"I would have loved it if they found the plane, but hey, it's 68 years. It's a long time," McTighe said.

Although McTighe was born eight years after the Kaleva went down and never got to meet his uncle, he learned a lot about him from his mother, who was Henry Antheil Jr.'s younger sister.

"My mother absolutely worshipped Uncle Henry," McTighe said.

Henry Antheil's brother, the late composer George Antheil, in his 1945 autobiography "The Bad Boy of Music," wrote admiringly of Henry, calling him "one of our foremost war experts," according to the May 2007 Foreign Service Journal piece about the diplomat.

His life seemed worthy of a blockbuster espionage thriller, the way George Antheil described it in an unpublished letter from Aug. 25, 1940, according to the Foreign Service Journal:

"Henry lived a lone (sic) and dangerous life, traveling from country to country, followed by foreign agents from border to border, never knowing what moment might be his last."

The two brothers shared a fascination with codes, which they would discuss at length from time to time, McTighe said.

Those discussions helped inspire some of George Antheil's work in music and other areas, McTighe said.

Incidentally, an off-Broadway play called "Frequency Hopping" based on a real-life collaboration between George Antheil and the actress Hedy Lamarr (the two invented a torpedo-control system called frequency hopping) premiered May 29 with performances at the 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich St., in Manhattan. The play runs through June 29.

U.S. Navy to help Estonia solve WWII mystery of Finnish airliner, missing American courier

The Associated Press
Published: May 29, 2008

U.S. naval experts will begin searching Friday for the wreckage of a Finnish airliner that crashed into the Baltic Sea in June 1940, just days before the Soviet Union annexed Estonia.
Nine people were on board the aircraft when it disappeared, including a U.S. diplomatic courier now regarded as one of the first American casualties of World War II.
Most Estonian and Finnish experts agree the small plane — named Kaleva — was shot down by two Soviet fighter bombers on June 14, 1940, a mere 10 minutes after taking off from Tallinn en route to Helsinki, Finland.
The wreckage is believed to lie 300 feet (90 meters) underwater near the tiny island of Keri, some 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Tallinn.
"If the aircraft is in the area where we're searching, I'm highly confident we'll find it," said Martin Ammond, senior surveyor aboard the USNS Pathfinder, one of the U.S. Navy's oceanographic survey vessels.
The vessel was sent to Tallinn following a request by Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo to his U.S. colleague, Robert Gates, in January. The Estonians hope to learn the fate of Kaleva, a German-made Junkers Ju-52 that was operated by Finland's Aero, later renamed Finnair.
"This is a unique mission," Ammond said Thursday. "We're not in the business of looking for aircraft or sunken ships, so this is very exciting for my surveyors."
One of Kaleva's passengers was Henry Antheil, a 27-year-old U.S. diplomatic courier at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki.
Antheil, based in Moscow 1933-39, had been rushed to Tallinn once it had become evident that the Soviet Union was preparing to swallow up Estonia and its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Lithuania.
"Henry came here to help evacuate materials from U.S. Legation in Tallinn," said U.S. Embassy spokesman Eric A. Johnson, who has done research and written articles on Antheil and the Kaleva case.
"It was feared that Soviets would come anytime, so all the sensitive materials had to be removed. He was doing a job for his country," he said.
Carrying several diplomatic pouches, including material from the U.S. Embassy in Riga, the capital of Latvia, Antheil boarded Kaleva along with six other passengers. They never reached their destination.
Estonia was annexed to the Soviet Union three days later.
Neither the Soviet Union, nor Russia, acknowledged shooting down Kaleva.
Kaleva's mystery remained unsolved, and the wreckage was not found despite intense efforts after Estonia regained independence in 1991.
If the plane is found, it will be up to the Estonian and Finnish governments whether to organize a salvage mission, Johnson said.
Finnish authorities kept silent about Kaleva for decades, saying only the plane crashed due to technical failure. In March 1940 the country had just signed a peace treaty with the Soviet Union after a costly war and did not want to provoke Moscow.
Max Jakobson, a veteran Finnish diplomat, says he recalls Kaleva's case "vividly."
"It was a dramatic situation when this plane went missing," Jakobson, a former envoy to the United Nations, told The Associated Press. "There was plenty of talk about it in Finland. Hopefully the Americans will help solve this case."