The Catcher Was a Spy: Moe Berg’s Classified 1945 Travel Orders to Geneva With Physicist Paul Scherrer

Moe Berg was a big league catcher, a Princeton graduate who spoke several languages, and, by 1944, an American spy. He hit .243 over his career, but his most important at-bat came in a Zurich lecture hall. On December 18, 1944, the OSS sent him to hear German physicist Werner Heisenberg speak, with orders to shoot him if there was any sign the Germans were close to an atomic bomb. Berg was carrying a pistol and a cyanide tablet. The man who made the evening possible was Swiss physicist Paul Scherrer. Scherrer was Heisenberg’s host and an OSS source, and he got Berg an invitation to dinner with Heisenberg later that week. Scherrer headed the physics department at ETH Zurich and built the school’s first cyclotron.

These classified travel orders, dated September 17, 1945, authorize Berg to travel from Paris to Geneva with Scherrer, issued by command of General Eisenhower just weeks after Japan’s surrender. The orders don’t say why, but the pairing is telling. Berg and Scherrer were the two men at the center of the Zurich operation, and the Allies were still piecing together how far Germany’s atomic program had really gotten. Berg’s work continued after the war ended. His Medal of Freedom citation covers his service from April 1944 to January 1946, and he ultimately declined the medal when told he couldn’t talk about his secret missions. A document showing a former ballplayer traveling at the Supreme Commander’s direction with one of the physicists at the center of the story is a rare, tangible piece of one of the strangest careers in American history.