The Foreign Service Journal, May 2007

During George’s occasional visits to the family home in Trenton and through their frequent exchanges of letters, Henry pressed him for information about life in Europe. He even asked if he could accompany him as his personal secretary. George turned down that request, instead sug- gesting that Henry join the U.S. Foreign Service. In the fall of 1933, George put Henry in touch with William C. Bullitt, the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union, who was a friend of George’s. During a meeting in Washington, the photogenic Henry talked Bullitt into taking him along to Moscow to help open the new U.S. embassy. He left for the Soviet Union in February 1934 to pursue his European dream without finishing his education at Rutgers. (At the height of the Great Depression, an excit- ing job probably seemed more attractive than a college degree.) Because he was not a Foreign Service officer, Henry’s role at the embassy was largely clerical — although seldom routine. As George F. Kennan recalled in the Pulitzer prize- winning first volume of his Memoirs (1967): “We were in many respects a pioneer enter- prise — a wholly new type of American diplomatic mission — the model and precursor of a great many missions of the latter day. We were the first to cope seriously, for example, with the problems of security — of pro- tection of codes and files and the privacy of intra-office discussion — in a hostile environment. For this purpose, Bullitt brought in a detachment of Marine sergeants in civilian clothes” — the first-ever Marine security guards at a U.S. embassy. Antheil ended up in charge of the embassy code room, transmitting telegrams written by George F. Kennan, Loy W. Henderson, Charles E. Bohlen, John C. Wiley and other key U.S. diplomats. After Bullitt’s 1936 departure, he served under two other ambassadors in Moscow, Joseph Davies and Laurence Steinhardt. While it appears that Antheil studied some Russian (Amb. Bullitt encouraged everyone on his staff to do so), he would still have lived a rather insulated existence. But he enjoyed being part of the diplomatic life that revolved around the ambassador’s residence — experiences vividly captured in Charles W. Thayer’s Bears in the Caviar (1951) and Irena Wiley’s Around the Globe in 20 Years (1962). Embassy life suited Antheil, as his brother George recounts in his 1945 autobiography The Bad Boy of Music : “Henry was in Moscow now, a young attaché of the U.S. embassy and, in reality, one of our foremost war experts. He was then the ‘brilliant young man’ of the State Department; he had a sort of roving commission. His quest for more knowledge took him all over Europe.” In an unpublished letter dated Aug. 25, 1940, George wrote: “Henry lived a lone [sic] and dangerous life, travel- ing from country to country, followed by foreign agents from border to border, never knowing what moment might be his last.” But even though he was blessed with matinee-idol good looks, Henry never seems to have spent any time in the diplomatic spotlight. Instead, it was assignments as a diplo- matic courier that took him across Europe. Motives for Murder? In November 1939, Antheil got himself transferred from Moscow to the U.S. legation in Helsinki, where he was offi- cially posted as a code clerk. Describing his character, H.F. Arthur Schoenfeld, the minister in charge of the legation, empha- sized his “sunny disposition, industry, enthusiasm for his work and high ability.” As luck would have it, he arrived in Finland right before the start of the Winter War and the Soviet bombing of Helsinki on Nov. 30, 1939. In search of safety, the U.S. legation evacuat- ed to temporary quarters in the resort hotel of Bad Grankulla (also known as Kauniainen) out- side of Helsinki. It was at this spa, where Alexander Kerensky gathered strength before leading the Russian Revolution, that Antheil met and fell in love with Greta Lindberg in December 1939. Not long after- ward, the couple were engaged. Born in 1915, Greta was also working out of temporary quarters at the Bad Grankulla Hotel along with her fellow employees from the Sport Articles Company (the ski com- pany and the spa shared a common owner). She was an active member of the patriotic Lotta Svärd (a Finnish women’s auxiliary organization) and distinguished herself while helping at the front during the Winter War. But even out at Bad Grankulla the war was never far away: while cross-country skiing with Major Frank B. Hayne (the lega- tion’s military attaché) on Sunday, Jan. 14, 1940, Henry wit- nessed the Soviet bombing of Schoenfeld’s villa in nearby Koklax and rushed over with his colleagues to help put out the flames. Only seven months into his posting to Helsinki, Antheil M A Y 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 47 The news of the Soviet blockade of Estonia and the downing of Antheil’s plane were both overshadowed by reports of the Nazi occupation of Paris.