After law school in Chicago he accepted a position as National Secretary of the Anti-Defamation Leauge working on Midwest discrimination cases. In 1917, he enlisted in the military, working in Army Intelligence during World War I. In the kate1920’s Lewis moved to Los Angelas, California. There, in the uneasy years before America entered the Second World War, he recognized a chilling threat: Nazi sympathizers and fascist agitators taking root on American soil.
Lewis’s response was bold. He quietly built a spy ring of his own. Many of his undercover operatives were non-Jewish World War I veterans who slipped into the German American Bund meetings, a pro-Nazi organization active in the United States during the 1930s and early 1940s,as well as Aryan clubs, and paramilitary camps. They returned with intelligence that read like the plot of a Hollywood thriller.
In fact, Hollywood itself became part of the operation. In 1934, Lewis summoned movie moguls Louis B. Mayer and Irving Thalberg of MGM, and Jack Warner of Warner Brothers to a secret meeting. Behind closed doors, he laid out the Nazi threat in their backyard. The men agreed to bankroll his espionage network, financing agents who would infiltrate and report on Nazi activities in the US.
What they uncovered was staggering. Nazi groups had blueprints of U.S. armories along the West Coast, planning to seize weapons in a coup they called Der Tag, “The Day.” They plotted assassinations of Jewish leaders, and Hollywood actors, and whispered of violent uprisings.
Some officials turned a blind eye, more concerned with Communists than Nazis. But Lewis pressed on. His spies exposed conspiracies, gathered documents, and turned them into courtroom evidence. When Pearl Harbor was attacked and the FBI scrambled to arrest domestic fascists, many of the names on their lists came straight from Leon Lewis’s files.
Despite these achievements, Lewis never sought the spotlight. He died in 1954 in LA, his story fading into obscurity, until this past summer. On August 20th, 2025, the Wisconsin Historical Society unveiled a marker in Hurley, outside the old Iron County Courthouse, now the Iron County Historical Museum. The project spearheaded by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation.
The inscription tells the tale of a Northwoods boy from an immigrant family, who became a lawyer, soldier, activist, and spymaster, whose secret war kept America safe at its most vulnerable moment. Locals gathered at the historic red brick Iron County courthouse, remembering a man whose courage was carried out not on the battlefield, but in the shadows.
From Hurley’s boomtown streets to the secret backrooms of Hollywood, Leon Lawrence Lewis lived a life steeped in intrigue and danger. His story now stands etched in the history books, reminding us that even in the quiet Northwoods, heroes can rise to defend a nation.
*Special Thanks to Jerry Klinger, who’s happen chance visit to Pioneer Park Historical Complex this summer, shared this amazing story with me.
Sources: Wikipedia (2025), Wisconsin Public Radio (2025), Times of Israel Blogs (2025), University of Chicago Law School (2023), Smithsonian Magazine (2017), Aish.com (2023), Felivelife.org (2025), Iron County Historical Society Facebook (2025), Jerry Klinger (2025)
