While we’re awaiting publication of the Marlis book, I’m sort of treading water on the Warburg angle, but I did want to mention there were nice posts by Rab on this board about the postmark revealing the baby’s sleeping suit was mailed from Stamford, Conn. It’s been asked: why Stamford? Obviously, to mail the suit, you go someplace outside of your postal district. But if the sender is in NYC, I don’t see any reason to go up to Stamford. New York is a big city, and you could just mail it from a different borough. On the other hand, Stamford is the next town up from Warburg’s town, Greenwich. It’s more circumstantial evidence, but another slight hint in Warburg’s direction.
And then we have the chic Greenwich bakery lady fleeing into a green sedan. I realize we’ve been sort of overdosed on “green sedans” in this case, but I see the cops at the time really were trying to connect it to the green sedan seen near the Lindbergh estate before the kidnapping:
news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2202&dat=19320412&id=5MQlAAAAIBAJ&sjid=m_UFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3032,4102225
This newspaper article describes the car as a Packard. And we’ve had a post on this board that “Doc” Ashton thought he saw a car—very possibly a Packard--speeding from the direction of the Lindbergh home on the night of the kidnapping.
If the Warburg angle is correct, I’m getting a vibe—and I know how unscientific vibes are—but a vibe that maybe, just maybe, Warburg didn’t simply sit in a parlor and hire a gang—like I’ve seen in so many detective movie scenes, where a rich man hires bad guys. I’m thinking that, just maybe, he yearned to participate in the thrill of the crime itself—sort of comparable to the way the rich would occasionally go “slumming.” He was only 35—not exactly the banker Potter in
It’s a Wonderful Life. I know it may sound outlandish—then again, there was a theory that the Ripper killings were done by a member of the Royal Family leading a double life. In the LKC, there were a number of bill-passers, possible lookouts/gang members that were described but never located—and I wonder if Warburg sometimes matched up. Although he was rich, Warburg stayed out of the limelight, and I don’t think he was someone most of the public would have readily recognized.
Also in regard to James Warburg, I thought I’d mention another controversy he was involved in, around the same time as the LKC. In 1933 a 70-page booklet appeared in Europe entitled “Financial Origins of National Socialism.” Purporting to have been written by a New York banker named Sidney Warburg, it stated that “Sidney Warburg” had meetings with Hitler in Germany, beginning in 1929, and orchestrated financing for his party. There was no banker named Sidney Warburg, but it was deduced that it was a reference to James P. Warburg, who had indeed done some traveling, on banking business, between New York and Germany.
The booklet was attacked as a hoax and withdrawn from circulation. In 1949, James Warburg signed an affidavit stating the booklet was a forgery. Analysts have noted that the booklet, which can be found online at
www.naderlibrary.com/NAZIS.hitlersecretback.htm does indeed contain errors, but also seems to reveal quite a bit of valid knowledge about the finances of Hitler’s party. Critics have also claimed there are some weaknesses in Warburg’s affidavit. I have not studied this matter in any detail, and have formed no opinion about it.
At first glance, it would seem untenable that Warburg—a Jew—would help finance Hitler, or that Hitler would have entertained help from a Jewish banker. However, there are well-documented associations between Wall Street and the early Third Reich, and I believe the “Sidney Warburg” book alleged that Warburg used a pseudonym with Hitler, so that the latter would not know he was dealing with a Jew.
It is also WELL documented that James Warburg’s uncle by marriage, Jacob Schiff of the Kuhn Loeb bank, heavily financed the Bolshevik revolution of Lenin and Trotsky. It has been posited, however, that things temporarily cooled toward Russia after Stalin seized power from Trotsky, and that there was, briefly, an attempt to build up Hitler as a counter-balance to Stalin. Thus this flirtation with the Third Reich—but it certainly didn’t last.
What does the “Sidney Warburg” affair have to do with the LKC? Nothing directly. But it does show that James Warburg was no stranger to controversy, and—if the “Sidney Warburg” booklet was really based on fact—that he was no shrinking violet, but an individual capable of carrying out high-level intrigues.
Finally—just for laughs, here’s another coincidence—Walter Winchell’s column “On Broadway” discussing Charles Lindbergh in the first sentence… Kay Swift and James Warburg in the second sentence…
news.google.com/newspapers?nid=888&dat=19391024&id=9TNPAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Tk0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=6991,3458181 And Winchell is the screenwriter of
Broadway Through a Keyhole, the movie watched by the guy who passed a ransom bill to Cecile Barr on Richard Hauptmann’s birthday. Gardner said the case never dies—and neither do the coincidences!