Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews foiled Nazi plots against Hollywood and America (2017) & Emily Hall Tremaine (previously Von Romberg - Spreckels)

R.J. Preece (ADP)
Art Design Publicity at ADC | Emily Hall Tremaine / Collection | 14 July 2023 | Updated 2 August 2026
For an overview and listing of articles related to Emily Hall - von Romberg - Spreckels - Tremaine before World War II, see section I. Mystery, danger & misunderstandings: Emily Hall Tremaine in the 1930s on the Emily Hall Tremaine - Tremaine Collection: Compilations and documentation webpage.
Emily Hall Tremaine

Top left: After a year-long second marriage, Emily Hall Tremaine (previously) Spreckels sues for divorce (7 Sept 1940; New York Daily News. Top right: Three months later, Adolph B. Spreckels declares "I’m not the Nazi, SHE is" (10 December 1940, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). Bottom right: Ellis M. Zacharias, head of SoCal area naval intelligence and main recipient of SoCal Nazi intelligence, who sent the information to J. Edgar Hoover in Washington, DC (left). Not known until January 2023, Emily’s family were close associates of Ellis Zacharias, both professionally and personally, and Emily may have been an occasional spy.


In Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews foiled Nazi plots against Hollywood and America, the German / US Nazi threat in Southern California and US Naval Intelligence is spotlighted. There are other interesting histories in this sphere.

Have you heard about the posh lady in Montecito with a swastika on her house?

See SUMMER READING: "Hitler in Los Angeles" (2017) with Capt Zacharias, friends of Emily Hall Tremaine, and more. (RE: Coronado, 1935-41, Can YOU Crack The Case?). (US Nazi History News / Armed Forces Press)

"Six figures in Hitler in Los Angeles cross over to Emily Hall Tremaine’s history, which I have been unearthing for five years...

To get to the definitive bottom of all of this though, after the eventual declassification of the Nazi files in San Francisco District Naval Intelligence, is an expensive and time-consuming undertaking. This involves pulling documents out of a small number of US intelligence archives, with paid researchers to assist in multiple locations. Then there is documentation in intelligence archives in Germany and Britain to get the full picture...

But while Gyssling’s history has come forward— his daughter helped correct his history, via Ross, and you can imagine the emotions of that for a devoted daughter— Emily Hall Tremaine must continue to wait...

Sadly." (Excerpts from above.)


See Emily Hall Tremaine & pals [including Philip Chancellor] vs. the British Nazi [Leopold McLaglen (allegedly plotting to "slaughter the Hollywood Jews") (1937-38) . (artdesigncafe)



Listen to a 28-minute book preview Nazis in California: Emily Hall Tremaine fights back (1933-45); was she pro-Nazi, a US patriot-spy, or both?


For more information, see Sections G. "Publications mentioning Emily Hall Tremaine" and I. "Mystery, danger & misunderstandings: Emily Hall Tremaine in the 1930s" on the Emily Hall Tremaine / Tremaine Collection compilations and documentation overview page.


Emily Hall Tremaine

Sample media coverage from divorce action in Santa Barbara, CA, (left) Daily News, (New York), p. 3; (right) Daily News, Los Angeles, December 20, 1940, p. 23.