Hitler’s amazing map that turned America against the Nazis: A leading novelist’s brilliant account of how British spies in the US staged a coup that helped drag Roosevelt to war

Map divided South America into four states after German WWII victory

The map changed President Roosevelt's mind about U.S. fighting

It is thought the map may have been planted by UK spies



Was it real? The map of South America had been divided into four new enormous states to be administered by Germany

I have in my possession a secret map, made in Germany by Hitler’s government – by the planners of the New World Order. This map makes clear the Nazi design, not only against South America, but against the United States as well…’

It was October 27, 1941. The speaker was Franklin D. Roosevelt, 39th president of the United States, a country which was yet to join the war and whose citizens, to the mounting anxiety of Britain and its Allied friends, showed few signs of wishing to fight the Germans.

Many of America’s richest and most influential citizens were actively pro-Nazi.

The map was a hypothetical atlas of South America divided into four new enormous states – or ‘gaus’ – to be administered by Germany: Brasilien, Argentinien, Neuspanien and Chile.



The margins contained handwritten notes in German asking questions about fuel supplies for Lufthansa air routes between Africa and South America and, more importantly, airline networks that extended north to Panama and Mexico – right on the doorstep of the United States.

To Roosevelt, determined to end US isolationism, this was more than a coup. It was invaluable evidence of Nazi aggression across the Atlantic, touching his closest neighbours.

With Germany’s imperial ambitions exposed, the tide of opinion began to turn significantly towards Britain, easing the way for what would prove to be America’s decisive intervention.

Yet the origins of Roosevelt’s remarkable document remain thoroughly mysterious – as shadowy as the brave but mostly forgotten team of British agents who somehow first obtained it.

The men and woman of British Security Coordination (BSC) had been sent across the Atlantic by Winston Churchill himself, ordered to stop at almost nothing in their efforts to discredit the Nazi cause.

Forgery was well within their remit.

When it comes to writing a novel sometimes ‘luck’ is as valuable as inspiration. In 2005 I was inspired to write a spy novel set in the Second World War but I wanted to create something different and unfamiliar – no parachuting into occupied France, no code-cracking at Bletchley Park.

At the time I was intrigued by the relationship between Churchill and Roosevelt and had a hunch that it wasn’t as warm as it was generally perceived to be. Then, while reading around the subject, I had a stroke of luck. I came across a throwaway remark about ‘Churchill’s dirty tricks in the USA’.

What was all that about, I wondered? I soon realised I had struck narrative gold – at least as far as my novel was concerned. What I stumbled across was a book with the bland title of British Security Coordination.

It was the reprint of a lengthy anonymous document detailing the activities of the said group from 1940-45, some 500 pages long, crammed with precise detail. BSC was set up by Churchill in 1940, shortly after he became Prime Minister. It was an umbrella organisation that drew on the expertise of MI5, MI6 and the Special Operations Executive and was charged specifically with doing everything in its power to change American public opinion from its overwhelmingly isolationist, non-interventionist stance, and to somehow bring the USA into the war in Europe.

On taking office, Churchill declared this was his vital and overriding objective – without the USA on our side the war against Hitler could not be won.

Dealbreaker: To Roosevelt, Hitler's plan to invade South America was invaluable evidence of Nazi aggression across the Atlantic, touching his closest neighbours

We forget today – in this era of the so-called ‘special relationship’ – how predominantly Anglophobe the American population was in 1940. Powerful groups violently opposed any participation in the war in Europe. German and Italian immigrants and Irish Republican factions all had their grudges and own reasons for not wanting the USA to become Britain’s ally.

The virulently isolationist America First movement, fronted by the celebrated aviator Charles Lindberg, had close to a million members and hundreds of ‘chapters’ throughout the country. Polls indicated that some 80 per cent of the American population was against joining the war in Europe. In this fervid climate of negative opinion the challenge to BSC was enormous. The key weapon they employed was what was termed political warfare – the spreading of black propaganda against the Nazi/Axis countries’ threat and the urgent promotion of the interventionist, British case.

BSC was controlled and overseen by a wealthy Canadian called William Stephenson. He relocated its offices to the Rockefeller Centre in Manhattan where, at its moment of greatest power and influence, BSC filled three floors. It wore the thin disguise of a Passport Control Office (a section of the British Embassy), but in fact it soon became the nerve centre of a massive effort of media manipulation and covert operations that stretched from Chile to Bermuda and Vancouver.

BSC secretly operated its own powerful shortwave radio station, WRUL. It seemed a bona fide US station, but it disseminated a constant barrage of pro-British, anti-isolationist news items. A press agency was set up, the Overseas News Agency (ONA), that fed stories to American newspapers.

‘Cut-outs’, as American sympathisers and sub-agents were known, were used to hide the sources of this information. Nobody has ever fully quantified the number of people working for BSC during the war, but it ran into the hundreds, if not thousands.

All sorts of schemes were evolved by BSC to foment anti-Nazi feeling. Walter Winchell, whose newspaper column was read by 25 million Americans, was sent a forged letter, with documentary evidence – purportedly written by an American merchant seaman – about German propaganda efforts in the US. It duly appeared in his column.

A bogus Hungarian astrologer, Louis de Wohl, was despatched from Britain to the US on a lecture tour, telling audiences the stars predicted Hitler was to die. He claimed Hitler’s horoscope showed Neptune was in the house of death and, that very summer of 1941, Uranus and Neptune would coincide to bring about his demise.

BSC also had a statement released in Egypt by another astrologer, Sheikh Youssef Afifi, who independently corroborated de Wohl’s predictions, saying ‘a red planet will appear on the eastern horizon and will indicate that a dangerous evil-doer, who has drenched the world in blood, will pass away’.

Simultaneously, correspondents in Nigeria reported that a celebrated fetish priest, called Ulokoigbe, had a vision in which a Hitler figure – ‘Long Hair’ – slipped ‘from a high rock and fell shrieking like a madman’.

These stories were duly carried by the American press, making de Wohl’s prophecy seem uncanny. BSC’s grander plan was that it might reach the ears of Hitler, who was known to be a believer in astrology.

BSC evolved a prankish game called ‘Vik’ – a ‘fascinating new pastime for lovers of democracy’. Teams of Vik players across the USA scored points depending on the level of embarrassment and irritation they caused Nazi sympathisers. Players were urged to indulge in a series of petty persecutions – persistent ‘wrong number’ calls in the night; dead rats dropped in water tanks; ordering cumbersome gifts to be delivered, cash on delivery, to target addresses; deflating the tyres of cars; hiring street musicians to play ‘God Save the King’ outside Nazi sympathisers’ houses, and so on.

A special department was set up as a ‘rumour factory’. For example, a rumour was originated stating the British had developed a devastating depth charge with a new, incredibly powerful explosive. This was to demoralise German U-boat crews. ONA put out the story with a dateline of Ankara, Turkey, which was cabled to the Soviet Union’s Tass correspondent in Washington. This was broadcast from Moscow – in 1940 Russia was not yet at war with Germany – citing the neutral source.

This was picked up by the US press, where it then appeared as a bona fide story in American newspapers – thus items of war-related interest, fabricated in the Rockefeller Centre, travelled round the world to re-emerge in American media as genuine news.

However, when it came to undermining America First – which was highly suspicious of covert British activities – BSC had to be more shrewd.

At America First rallies, Churchill’s name would be greeted by boos while Hitler’s would receive a respectful silence. For one rally in Madison Square Garden, New York, BSC forged thousands of duplicate tickets, causing huge confusion as people found their seats were double-booked.

Accusations of fakery: Franklin D. Roosevelt, pictured with Winston Churchill At The Casablanca Conference In Morocco in January 1943, had made a throwaway remark about 'Churchill¿s dirty tricks in the USA'

At another in Milwaukee, a violently anti-British American congressman, Hamilton Fish, was handed a note on which was written in large letters, ‘Der Fuhrer thanks you for your loyalty’. This was snapped by a planted photographer and made excellent copy. At least something was being done to put the British case to the American people and the effect of BSC’s effort was impressive – but would it have really swayed American public opinion to the extent that intervention in the war would be welcomed?

BSC needed to come up with a more tangible threat and one of the most elaborate operations in its history was set in motion towards the end of 1941, originating in the neutral but significantly pro-Axis Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In October 1941 a German courier from the embassy was involved in a car accident in downtown Buenos Aires. He was being followed by BSC agents and in the confusion, his despatch case was purloined and rifled.

Inside it, supposedly, was a German map dividing South America into German fiefdoms. This was sent to New York and found its way to the FBI and then to Roosevelt himself – with satisfying results. Was this BSC’s greatest coup? Quite possibly, but there were, reputedly, only two copies of this map – one kept by Hitler and the other by the German Ambassador to Argentina.

Once Roosevelt’s speech had been made, the Germans investigated and it was discovered both maps were still with their owners – so the third map, the one Roosevelt cited, must have been a copy.

But who had copied it and why was such a secret, inflammatory document being carried in a despatch case by a humble embassy courier? The South American map was, I’m convinced, an elaborate fake, concocted by BSC’s expert department of forgery (known as Station M and based in Canada). It hoodwinked CIA chief J. Edgar Hoover and Roosevelt and, having seen a reproduction of it, I can testify to its authenticity – the scribbled marginalia of some anonymous German official, asking precise questions about fuel supplies and Mexican participation, being the masterstroke.

In the annals of covert operations this was one of the most significant and most successful ever. And yet we, the British, have kept extremely quiet about it. BSC’s conspicuous success has no place in our espionage history compared to, for example, Bletchley Park and the Enigma decryptions.

There has been no triumphalism, no plaudits delivered, no heroes honoured. It’s as if we’re somewhat ashamed at the guileful ingenuity we displayed in the way we managed to dupe our most powerful and necessary ally.

Might the South American map have been the catalyst for the USA finally abandoning its isolationism? We will never know because on Sunday, December 7, 1941, just 41 days after Roosevelt’s powerful denunciation of Nazi regional ambitions, the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by the Japanese. The US duly declared war on Japan and a day later Italy and Germany, Japan’s allies, declared war in turn on America. BSC’s main objective, Churchill’s crucial order, had been effectively achieved – thanks to the Japanese.

BSC remained in place in the Americas until 1945 when it was disbanded and its history was written up, one of the three authors being Roald Dahl, who was seconded to BSC in 1942.

And then everybody ‘forgot’ about it. The details of wartime British covert operations in the US were brushed as far under the historical carpet as possible – not surprisingly, when one considers the massive extent of BSC’s penetration of the American media and its brilliantly clever manipulation of the country’s news organisations.

One American commentator who read the BSC history remarked: ‘Like many intelligence operations, this one involved exquisite moral ambiguity. The British used ruthless methods to achieve their goals; by today’s peacetime standards some of the activities may seem outrageous.’

At the height and spread of its power, BSC was able to plant pro-British propaganda, and anti-Nazi black propaganda, in all of the significant outlets of American media from the largest circulation newspapers and press agencies to the most influential columnists and radio broadcasters. It was even able to reach the desk of the President himself.

Whatever the explanation of that map, the secret history of the BSC and the extraordinary achievement of its covert activities in the United States proved – 60 years on – vital and timely grist to my fictional mill. One British novelist was extremely grateful.