MC 167
About Franklin Norvish
Prior to and after the Second World War, Franklin Norvish, of Needham, Massachusetts, taught English at Northeastern University in Boston, and was a professor there for forty years. Between 1943-46 he served in the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Corps (C.I.C.). Housed in a nondescript building in Brookline, Massachusetts, the C.I.C. conducted background checks on Army employees, kept logs of suspected Communists, and tracked down and arrested suspected spies. The Brookline building once hosted special agent training for espionage and undercover work for some one hundred and twenty agents. Because he spoke some French and German as well as his family’s native Lithuanian, Norvish was given a counter-intelligence assignment in 1943. One of his assignments, six months before the D-Day invasion, was to sneak into France with the French Underground to investigate those who allegedly collaborated with the Germans. When American troops met the Russians at the Elbe in 1944, Mr. Norvish and his colleagues were able to interview German POWs who later became valuable in the development of the atomic bomb. Franklin Norvish received the Bronze Star for his service.
Franklin Norvish was a member of the Military Intelligence Association of New England (MIANE), which recently unveiled a 50th anniversary commemorative plaque at the Brookline location. He died on January 3, 2010 at the age of 98 (Read obituary).
About the Franklin Norvish collection
The Franklin Norvish collection is primarily dominated by Nazi documents, from postcards to propaganda, history books to art. Their value lies in the glimpses they offer into the hearts and minds of the men and women who joined Hitler’s movement. Postcards of German warplanes—called “junkers‗ reveal the pride that Nazis took in their war effort, and many should also be considered Nazi propaganda. Among the other items designed to instill a proud sense of German national identity is a viewbook that lays idyllic rural scenes of the German countryside side by side with images of Nazi rallies and romantic portraits of historic German buildings. Also of note in this series is a nationalist history of the German people from prehistory to the rise of Hitler entitled, “The Path to the Reich,†a book detailing new German paintings (“Die neue deutsche Malereiâ€), a certificate of gratitude for a woman who provided winter clothing to German soldiers on the front, and an invitation in French to a funeral service for Adolf Hitler at the Arc de Triomphe.
In addition to pro-German propaganda, Norvish also managed to collect anti-American and anti-Semitic materials that railed against Americans and Jews. Included is a print of an American dollar bill that opens to declare that its symbols are of Hebrew origin and that it’s paying for the “Jewish war,†as well as a book critical of the capitalist United States and sarcastically titled “In God’s Own Land,†and an anti-Semitic pamphlet published in New York entitled, “Why are Jews Persecuted for Their Religion?â€
Alongside Norvish’s German materials, the “American Documents†series is notable for its “black lists,†or profiles of Nazi espionage agents in occupied France. Such documents offer insight not only into the characters who worked with the Nazi occupation in France, but also into the inner workings of the U.S. Army’s Counter-Intelligence Corps in which Norvish played a part. Also within this series is a ten-page press release from the War Department that details new policies for African-Americans in the postwar army, a document that may be of interest to anyone researching diversity or civil rights in the armed forces of the period. The collection also includes, in the last two series, six maps and a fairly notable inventory of Stars and Stripes newspapers from July 1944 until June 1945.
Folder Listing
- Photographs and Postcards
- American Documents
- Nazi Documents and Propaganda
- Miscellaneous
- Newspapers and Periodicals
I. Photographs and Postcards
| f.1 | Small Nazi Photographs
e.1 Parade ground, officers giving Nazi salute (3.5 x 4.5″) |
| f.2 | Postcards (color and b&w, 4×6″)
e.11 Junkers Ju-87 Stuka in snow |
| f.3 | Large Nazi Photographs e.25 Flamenlehrgang Vereidigung, (“Swearing-in of flame-training courseâ€), June 7, 1943 |
II. American Documents
| f.4 | Espionage Documents, CIC VII Corps
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| f.5 | Other American Documents (located in Oversize Box 1)
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III. Nazi Documents and Propaganda
| f.6 | Der Weg Zum Reich (located in Oversize Box 1)
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| f.7 | Nationalist Viewbook and Map of the Rhine
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| f.8 | German Orders and Correspondence
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| f.9 | Nazi Party Documents
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| f.10 | Nazi Military Propaganda
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| f.11 | Anti-American and Jewish Propaganda
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| f.12 | “Soldatenâ€
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| f.1 | German Literature
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| f.2 | German Artists
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IV. Miscellaneous
| f.3 | Franklin Norvish Newspaper Clippings
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| f.4 | Maps #1-5 located in map drawer A7, #6 in Archives map drawer D4, room 114
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IV. Newspapers and Periodicals
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