Adolf Hitler’s plot to blow up America

DAWN was breaking over Long Island and the U-Boat commander knew he was a matter of minutes from disaster. A mere 400 yards from the American shoreline his submarine was stranded on a sandbank like a beached whale and would soon be exposed as the tide gently ebbed. Frantically, with sweat pouring down his face, he screamed for full power and to his relief felt a judder as the U-Boat scraped free. How tempting it must have been to simply abort the mission and sneak away to the relative safety of the vast Atlantic Ocean but Captain Hans-Heinz Lindner held his nerve. For a while longer the submarine lingered on the surface as an inflatable dinghy was lowered and hastily paddled towards the blinking lights of the United States.

In this chaotic manner, on June 13 1942, began one of Hitler’s most audacious plans of the Second World War. The Nazi leader plotted to send teams of saboteurs into the heart of America, tasked with spreading terror throughout the nation. Hitler’s dream for Operation Pastorius was to take the fight to the American home front and see the US “burning in flames”. On the dinghy bobbing towards the beach near the village of Amagansett was a team of four men, each clutching a list of targets including Pennsylvania station in New York, the city’s water supply, dams, power plants and bridges.

They also planned to bomb Jewish-owned department stores. A few days later another submarine delivered a second squad of secret agents to the coast of Florida. Yet the bumbling tone had been set by the near discovery of the U-Boat in the infancy of the mission. Operation Pastorius was a complete failure, mired in farce at almost every step, and the agents later became ridiculed as “the Keystone Kommandos”. Now full details of the mission have been revealed in files declassified by MI5, which show that despite the fiasco the British government feared we could be targeted in the same way from within.

The operation, organised by the Nazi’s defence intelligence unit the Abwehr, was named after Francis Pastorius who in the 17th century led the first German settlement in the USA. Its leader was George Dasch, 39, an unlikely agent who worked in the US as a waiter and dishwasher before the war. An aspiring writer and lover of classical music his colourful past had included being arrested for operating a brothel and violating prohibition laws. He returned to Germany in 1941 where he was recruited by German secret services. Joining him were Richard Quirin, a German who lived in the US for 12 years before the war. Ernest Burger had also lived in America, serving in the National Guard.

The fourth man was Heinrich Heinck. Given his lack of practical knowledge Dasch and the other recruits were sent to “sabotage school” near Brandenburg for 18 days, where they learned the rudiments of terrorism and practised martial arts. At night they read American magazines, practised slang and sang the Star Spangled Banner. The would-be terrorists were instructed in making bombs, secret ink from laxatives and delay mechanisms from dried peas, lumps of sugar and razors. They were ordered to lie low in the US for months then begin operations aimed at disrupting the American war machine.

The cover stories for these agents included buying a farm and working as a violin teacher, while it’s also revealed how German agents carried exploding pens and instructions written in invisible ink on handkerchiefs. Clearly however they were still illprepared when they slipped over the side of the U-Boat that summer morning in 1942. It went from bad to worse as the men made their way up the beach and Dasch stumbled into lone US coastguard John Cullen.

Thinking on his feet Dasch claimed to be a fisherman and might have got away with the deception had one of his colleagues not shouted out in German from behind the dunes, where they were burying boxes of explosives. Urging Cullen to keep quiet Dasch pressed $250 into the hand of the startled coastguard and the young man, realising he was outnumbered and armed with only a flashlight, waved them on their way. The agents hurried off but the alarm was quickly raised as Dasch and his hapless and dishevelled team headed for New York by train.

Arriving in Manhattan they bought new suits and had a shave. The MI5 documents are critical of the Americans for doing too little to catch the Germans. They also reveal that the operation had already been undermined when one of the German agents got outrageously drunk at a farewell dinner in Paris and announced to all within earshot that he was a spy. When the second team landed in Florida the men wore only bathing trunks and German military caps, thinking this bizarre uniform would be enough to have them treated as prisoners-of-war if they were captured, rather than shot as spies.

The leader of this team had worked as a meat packer in Brooklyn before the war. In New York, despite the half-hearted efforts by the US Coastguard to intercept the saboteurs, it appears Dasch now had little appetite for his mission. A week after landing Dasch, by then staying at the Mayfl ower Hotel in Washington DC, rang the FBI and said he wished to tell his story. Even then he was not taken seriously by sceptical US officials, who dismissed him as a crank. One investigator noted that he was “neurotic” and it was only when Dasch produced a briefcase and thumped a wedge of $84,000 on to the table that the Americans began listening intently. Today the same amount would be worth $1million.

Quickly the remaining agents were rounded up and put on trial. Awash with money and not knowing what to do next the Germans had taken full advantage of their situation by shopping, carousing in clubs and seeking out prostitutes. In the aftermath of their capture British intelligence official Victor Rothschild was dispatched from London to interrogate Dasch and his colleagues. Dasch’s counsel argued that he had been planning to betray the mission from the start. Not only had he disobeyed orders by sparing coastguardsman Cullen he had also deliberately revealed his face and given the false name he had been planning to use, George Davis.

It was also claimed that a German cigarette packet was deliberately left on the beach. However all eight men were found guilty and sentenced to death. Six went to the electric chair but Dasch was spared because he had come forward, along with Burger who also backed out. After the war both were deported to Germany. At his trial Dasch described how even the short journey from the U-Boat to shore had descended into farce as a mist descended and the men paddled in circles. The failure infuriated Hitler who refused to risk another submarine for further missions.

Had the agents successfully infiltrated American society he had planned to send a U-Boat full of new agents every six weeks but instead Hitler turned his attention to developing long-range weapons. Dasch, seen as a traitor in Germany, spent the rest of his days as a travel agent and tour guide trying vainly to clear his name. He went to his grave in 1992 insisting he was a hero who defied Hitler and deliberately sabotaged Operation Pastorius

 aving many American lives.

Intriguingly the MI5 documents suggest a third group of Germans was never caught. Although there’s no evidence they were able to wreak any of the havoc inside the US Hitler intended, perhaps they were not quite so hapless as Dasch and his fellow saboteurs.