"The man with the dog"

LXXII

Austrian Nazis used a version of their national flag with a superimposed swastika upon it

Although the travel ban Dr. Eckener was under in 1937 forbade him from leaving “The Reich” he had had no trouble at all, a full year before the Anschluss, in traveling to Austria where he was giving a lecture tour. When he received a telephone call from an American reporter friend advising him that the Hindenburg had been destroyed, he was at first stunned: “That can’t be! It just cannot be!”

He immediately cancelled the remainder of his tour.  He was troubled by the atmosphere in Austria anyway. It seemed that too many Austrians were passively accepting the idea of ceding their independence and autonomy to Germany. Swastika flags were everywhere. He made sure that he removed the obligatory pennant from its mount on the bumper, dropped it in the road, and stepped on it before he got into the car that would take him back to Friederichshafen. He knew they’d see that small act of defiance. There was nothing he was doing that wasn’t watched, and Austrian Nazis were even more fanatical than their German counterparts. There was a perverse pride in them that Hitler had been born near Linz.  

Hermann Goering was a German flying ace in World War I. By World War II he was a gluttonous, obese, hateful heroin addict who was Hitler's right hand. He had no use for zeppelins at all, but he ordered the Hindenburg's sister ship completed and flown because he felt Germany's airship program shouldn't end in a flaming failure

Eckener was shocked to find Hermann Goering waiting for him back in Friederichshafen. “The airship program must go on,” said the bloated Air Marshal who hated dirigibles. “Especially after this.”   Eckener was immediately appointed to head DZR.  The Doctor wasn’t impressed by his promotion --- Ernst Lehmann was dead in the crash, and they’d found a use for him, that’s all.

“The ship was sabotaged,” Goering assured him, “and we already know who the saboteur is.”  After reading over the preliminary reports and looking at all the newsreel footage he could collect, Eckener was sure that Goering was wrong. He quickly put out a press release that the ship had crashed due to pilot error. 

From a burn unit in a New York hospital, the suffering Captain Pruss managed to rouse his own ire. There was no pilot error, he counterpunched. He had not, as Eckener had inferred, taken orders from any third parties. It was definitely sabotage. “It was that man with the dog.”  

Whether Captain Pruss invented the theory about the man with the dog or whether he was convinced of it by others, Captain Pruss never changed his mind on the subject. With the introduction of the man with the dog the Hindenburg disaster became a Conspiracy Theory. 

Captain Max Pruss was disfigured by fire in the crash, but lived to fly again. He never acknowledged his part in the disaster, claiming "the man with the dog" had sabotaged the Hindenburg. While nowhere as memorable as "the grassy knoll "  the Hindenburg's mysterious man with the dog created the momentum for a Conspiracy Theory

 

As a Conspiracy Theory, the Hindenburg crash does not have the complexity or the drama of Presidential assassination plots, a secret plan to bring a nation into war by engineering an enemy attack, or a complicated scheme to establish a Police State by destroying buildings and lives. Most of the details of the Hindenburg disaster have been forgotten in the last eighty years. But the idea of a Conspiracy has had enough life to inspire several bad movies (1975’s Hindenburg, with George C. Scott comes immediately to mind) or a worse miniseries (2015’s crash-and-burn miniseries Hindenburg: The Final Flight). Right after the crash, the United States and Nazi Germany cooperated in a joint investigation of the crash and its causes, and the man with the dog was interesting enough to draw the attention of the FBI. 

The Hindenburg would seem to be a natural subject for a film treatment but it hasn’t yet found itself. Several awful films have been made about the Hindenburg disaster, most focusing on the "sabotage" of the ship. They all bombed

Hindenburg: The Last Flight is barely watchable on its own terms. What's worse is its naked attempt to exploit James Cameron's Titanic

The man with the dog was named Joseph Spah. He was around thirty years old at the time of the crash. He had been born in the city of Strasbourg when it belonged to Germany, but had emigrated to the United States as a teenager and had become a naturalized citizen. He was an entertainer, a bit of a vaudevillian, stand-up comic, actor, trained circus acrobat, and a contortionist, who performed under the unforgivable but unforgettable name of Ben Dova (when he later appeared in several Hollywood films as a stuntman and a bit-part actor, notably as the taxi driver in Marathon Man, he used that name).  Spah had been on tour in Western and Central Europe since March of 1937, and was anxious to go home to his wife Evelyn and their children. During the latter part of his German tour he had purchased an expensive performing German Shepherd puppy named Ulla, who was a fan favorite. He planned to bring Ulla home to his family, who lived in Douglaston, a residential section of the Borough of Queens.  

Spah was an iconoclast, which is what made him suspicious to others. During his tour of Germany, he appeared in numerous small venues. He was popular, but not star material by any means. He had cracked a few jokes from onstage regarding the Nazis, and this (shades of Cabaret ?)  put him under the eye of the Gestapo.

He had originally planned to go home by sea, but had missed his connections. Whatever the reasons, they were authentic enough for Hamburg-Amerika Lines to bump him to the Hindenburg. He arrived at the Aerodrome late as well. He was the last passenger to board.

He was badly flustered by nearly missing two Atlantic passages, sweating and short-tempered. Before boarding he had to struggle through an episode with the German Customs Officers, who seemed more than usually officious. They pawed through his bags, studied Ulla in her cage like an alien life form, made him unwrap a carefully-wrapped present for his daughter (a large baby doll in a box), and then inspected the doll to a nicety. When one of the Customs men lifted the doll’s dress to peek underneath, Spah couldn’t take anymore:  “It’s a girl, you dummkopf!”

The ground crew, the other Customs men, and the waiting passengers who had gathered at the Promenade Deck windows for diversion, all burst into laughter. The humorless Customs Agent turned red, but retaliated by demanding all of Ulla’s paperwork.  Finally, after an hour of untangling red tape, Spah was allowed to board. Due to the fussiness of the Customs men, the Hindenburg was already two hours behind schedule. 

Spah's abilities as an acrobat and a contortionist made him a prime sabotage suspect in the eyes of the Nazis

As soon as Spah boarded he found he had another problem. Despite the fact that Hamburg-Amerika had assured him that Ulla could ride out the passage in his cabin, he was now informed that the dog had to be stowed with the luggage and cargo. 

Spah was unhappy about this and complained to Heinrich Kubis, the Chief Steward. Kubis was firm: 

“No animals are allowed on the passenger decks.” 

“But Hamburg-Amerika told me --- ”

“That is on a steamship perhaps. But this is an airship. And this is DZR, not Hamburg-Amerika.”

“This is not just a dog. This is an expensively-trained stage animal. She is part of my work, part of my livelihood. I would feel much better if ---”

“No.”  

       

Kubis was not just being firm. He was being peremptory, and Spah didn’t like it, and he didn’t like Kubis.  Kubis didn’t like Spah either. The two men just seemed bound to irritate one another. 

Joseph Spah (credited as Ben Dova) in Marathon Man

Spah was even more upset when he saw the noisy and unheated surroundings Ulla would be caged up in. He complained again to Kubis, who again was dismissive. So Spah took matters into his own hands. Every day he absented himself from the passenger decks to go into the keel unescorted  and sit with Ulla in her unpleasant surroundings. He would stay there for hours. The crew brought Spah’s behavior to the attention of Kubis, who confronted Spah. The two men had a very public argument. 

Kubis, who had been flying as a Steward since 1912, and who would not have become both Chief Steward and Chief of Passenger Relations for the airline if he had not had a way with all kinds of people in all kinds of situations, seemed not to be able to summon up his usual courtesy with Joseph Spah. He outright ordered Spah to stay out of the hull unless he was given permission to go and was accompanied by a crewman. Spah knew from frustrating experience that the crew hated to babysit him and always rushed him away from Ulla. So Spah ignored Kubis' orders. 

Heinrich Kubis in 1947

Kubis was upset enough to bring the man with the dog to the attention of Captain Pruss. Pruss, Kubis, Ernst Lehmann, and likely the covert government watchers on board, all held a meeting in the Utility Room of the gondola, away from the passengers. It was decided that since Spah was an American citizen they would not risk an international incident over a hundt, but the crew was ordered to keep a particular eye on Spah and his comings and goings. Berlin was also advised of Spah’s behavior by radio.  

The crew watched Spah, and reported that he did nothing much in the hull except sit with the dog, play with her, and talk to her. He simply seemed to be one of those people who enjoyed the company of his pet more than he enjoyed the company of humans (pet owners will understand this), and as the flight melted away, Spah’s spending time with the dog seemed like less and less of an issue. 

Until they got to Lakehurst.