Cuba during World War II

Batista's support for the Allied cause was confirmed in February 1941, when he ordered all German and Italian consular officials to leave his country.

[2] According to Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison, Cuba's military was the "most cooperative and helpful of all the Caribbean states" during the war and its navy was "small but efficient" in its fight against German U-boats.

However, even though the Cuban military was praised for its conduct, rumors persisted throughout the war that the Germans were operating small bases hidden in coves along Cuba's coast, which were used to resupply the U-boats.

[13] However, General Manuel Benitez Valdés, the Cuban national chief of police, said that the cause of the explosion was "an accumulation of gasoline," indicating that this was an accident, but investigations were carried out.

[6] After dropping the float, the Cuban squadron chief ordered the commander of CS-13, Ensign Mario Ramirez Delgado, to explore the area pointed out by the plane.

At the time, the hydrophones reported a sound that was similar to a liquid bubbling when it comes from a submerged container that is suddenly opened and so indicated that the U-boat had been hit.

Upon arriving in Havana and after he had personally informed the Head of the Navy, Delgado spoke on the phone with President Batista, who ordered him to keep absolute silence about what had happened.

[6] Samuel E. Morison wrote the following about the engagement: ...The CS-13 patrol boat, commanded by ... Mario Ramirez Delgado, turned toward the gas, made good contact through the sonar and launched two perfect attacks with deep charges which annihilated U-176.

This was the only successful attack against a submarine done by a surface unit smaller than a PCE of 180 feet, thus, the sinking is properly considered with great pride by the small but efficient Cuban Navy.

Shortly after the war started, the Germans began operating a clandestine communications network in South America to collect secret information and to smuggle it safely out of the region to German-occupied Europe.

For Cuba, the Abwehr sent a man, Heinz Lüning, to Havana with orders to establish a secret radio station and then to transmit the information collected to agents in South America, from where it would then be sent directly to Germany.

[16][17] According to author Thomas Schoonover, the plan could have worked, but Lüning was an incompetent spy who failed to master the very basics of espionage.

However, after his premature arrest in August 1942, Allied officials, including President Batista, General Manuel Benítez, J. Edgar Hoover, and Nelson Rockefeller, attempted to fabricate a link between Lüning and the German submarines operating in the Caribbean by claiming that he was in contact with them via radio, to provide the public with an explanation for their failures in the early U-boat campaign.

Lüning was found guilty of espionage and executed in Cuba in November 1942, the only German spy put to death in Latin America during the war.

His first contribution to the Allied war effort without leaving the island was to organize his own counter intelligence force to root out any Axis spies operating in Havana.

Surprisingly, Braden gave permission to Hemingway, who proceeded to arm the Pilar and its crew with machine guns, bazookas, and hand grenades.

As the months passed, and as no U-boat appeared, the patrols of the Pilar turned into fishing trips, and the grenades were thrown into the sea as "drunken sport."

After adding his sons Patrick and Gregory to the crew, Hemingway acknowledged that his U-boat hunting venture had "turned into a charade," but he never admitted it straightforwardly.

Reassigned to the SS Victoria of the US Navy after the end of the conflict, he was a member of the American troops that were in the Bikini Atoll during the nuclear tests of 1946.

Self-taught and possessing a vast culture, he met Pablo Ruiz Picasso in France, to whom he was introduced by a mutual friend of both and also a Cuban painter, Wilfredo Lam Castilla, who at that time resided in the French capital and visited him frequently.

Once back in Cuba, Sainz maintained friendly relations with the cultural world of Havana, especially with the painter and poet Andrés Herrera Hernández, who frequently visited him at his residence in the peripheral district of Habana Nueva, Guanabacoa.

[1] Sainz insisted that his original surname was Sáenz, but that his military documentation, including his identification, were mistyped when legalizing his immigration status in the United States of America and he did not pay much attention to the matter.