Moe Berg Research Paper

“Moe” Berg was a man of mystery. He played in Major League Baseball(MLB) for fifteen seasons and never started; he was good, just not good enough. Moe Berg had a strong arm, nimble reflexes and soft hands, but most importantly he had the brains. Franklin Delano Roosevelt once said to the head of the spy agency, “Give my regards to the catcher”(Buchard et. al.). He most likely said that because Moe Berg was about to go on a mission. An average MLB catcher, Moe Berg, greatly informed the US military during World War Two(WWII) by creating a film of the Tokyo Skyline, and by identifying the lack of progress the Germans had made in developing the Atomic bomb by 1944.

Moe Berg was born on March 2, 1902 in a tenement in Manhattan. He started playing

Berg was assigned to find out if the Germans were close to having an atomic bomb. He was also a part of a potential mission to assassinate Werner Heisenberg, a German physicist. Because Berg was fluent in German, he was sent to Zurich, Switzerland to attend a lecture by Werner Heisenberg(“Moe” PBS Charlotte). On December 18, 1944, there were around twenty men in a room waiting for Werner Heisenberg to give them a lecture at the University of Zurich. Moe was one of the twenty men. He had a pistol hidden in his pocket ready to shoot Heisenberg. Miraculously, Berg had been able to pass as a Swiss graduate student to get into the lecture. If Berg heard anything about an atomic bomb being developed, he was to shoot Heisenberg right then and there. If Berg were to shoot Heisenberg, then he would get shot instantly by one of the guards posted around the room(“Moe” Dead Ballplayers Society). Berg needed two things to carry out this mission. He needs a pistol to shoot Heisenberg and a potassium cyanide capsule. That pill would cause his instant death(Foulkesz). If Berg shot Heisenberg, he would have faced a decision. Either kill himself and protect his country or get captured and be tortured until he gave them information and endangered the people of the