In early 1942, shortly after declaring was on the US and the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler ordered the defense branch of the German Military Intelligence Corps to create a program to infiltrate the US with groups of saboteurs armed with explosives to destroy industrial plants, bridges, railroads, waterworks and Jewish-owned department stores in order to cripple the industrial power behind the allied forces. The program was called Operation Pastorius and entailed waves of small groups of saboteurs slipping into the US every six weeks.
The defense branch of the German Military Intelligence Corps had perfected their work with explosives and spying as the Nazis overtook Europe and worked on taking on Britain, so they set up a school to train the people who would be sabotaging the US. They hand picked men who had lived in the US before the war started so that they would look inconspicuous because of their understanding of the culture and knew the colloquial English. These men were trained in explosives handling and usage, hand to hand combat, and jui jitsu for 18 days.
The first launch of Operation Pastorius was made up of two teams of four men who departed from the German submarine base at Lorient, France in late May and were supposed to meet up in Cincinnati on July 4 when their mission had been completed. The teams left on two different U-boats, U-584 and U-202, loaded with three boxes of dynamite and other explosives and one box with timers and detonators. Each group was given 50,000 dollars for traveling, bribing and living expenses, and each member was given 9,000 more dollars for expenses in case the groups got separated. The leaders of the groups were also given handkerchiefs with names of Nazi-friendly contacts they might need written in invisible ink.
U-202 dropped the first group, led by George Dasch, at Amagansett, Long Island on June 12, 1942. The group rowed to shore wearing German military clothes instead of plainclothes so that if they were caught, they would be prisoners of war instead of being shot on sight for being behind enemy lines. Once they landed on the beach, they immediately changed their clothes and started digging large holes in the sand to bury their uniforms and explosives so they could come back and get them when needed. In the middle of their digging, Dasch went over a dune to make sure no one saw them and ran into a coast guard, John Cullen, who questioned him about why he was there. Dasch was handling everything smoothly until another member of his team, Ernest Burger, came over and asked Dasch a question in German which made the Cullen very suspicious. Dasch bribed Cullen with 260 dollars to keep quiet about any suspicions he had and the team finished burying the boxes and left while Cullen ran back to the coast guard office to get a group to check out the situation.
The coast guards saw the U-boat that dropped the team off and dug up the holes the saboteurs had made and found their explosives and military uniforms and they quickly informed the FBI. When hearing about this invasion, J. Edgar Hoover called for a media blackout so the saboteurs wouldn't know that they had been found out and he started one of the largest manhunts in US history. Luckily for the FBI, on June 15, Dasch and Burger decided to turn themselves in and Dasch traveled to the FBI headquarters in Washington DC and turned himself in on June 18, the same day U-584 landed at Ponte Verda Beach, Florida.
Dasch agreed to help the FBI find the rest of the saboteurs and gave them the handkerchief of Nazi-friendly contacts to help them in their search. On June 22 Burger and the rest of the Long Island team were arrested and by June 27 the Florida team was taken in as well. Roosevelt ordered a military tribunal of seven generals to try the saboteurs to preserve wartime secrecy. Dasch was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Burger was sentenced to hard labor for life, and the other six were sentenced to death by electric chair and were executed on August 8. Dasch and Burger's sentences were cut short when in 1948 they were freed by order of President Harry Truman and were sent back to Germany.
sources:
Stuff You Should Know Podcast: The Time Nazis Invaded Florida
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/operation-pastorius-hitler-s-unfulfilled-dream-of-a-new-york-in-flames-a-716753.html
This was a great post! I found the detail such as the training and preparation very interesting. It gave me insight on one of the less commonly talked about details of the war, which was spies. They were an important part of the war effort and this post helped me understand that.
ReplyDeleteYou did a good job explaining and illustrating this story. It seems that the consequences for their actions were excessively harsh. The reason for this was the war going on, and as we have seen in the past, civil liberties are restricted during times of war. One only needs to look back on World War I to remember the Espionage and Sedition Acts.
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