Normandy. Anzio. Guadalcanal. Okinawa. Those are some of the historic landing sites for World War II invasions, legendary names that should never be forgotten. But there were lesser landings, as well, such as at Amagansett, New York, and Ponte Verdra Beach, Florida. That’s right. There were at least two mini-landings in America, engineered by Germans, of course, not Allies.
In the midst of World War II, two German submarines actually put men ashore at both of those locations. The invaders did not arrive with the intent of seizing and occupying territory, however. Their mission was sabotage. Their targets were some of the crown jewels of America’s industrial might: major hydroelectric plants, important aluminum factories, critical railroad tracks, bridges and canals–and the water supply system of New York City.
Well-trained and well-supplied, the saboteurs had good reason to be confident, but in the end they failed utterly. How and why that happened is a fascinating tale, partly because of what it reveals about the character of the two warring nations.
The story begins shortly after Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States, just four days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Eager to prove to the United States that it was vulnerable despite its distance from Europe, Hitler ordered a sabotage operation to be mounted against targets inside America. The task fell to the Abwehr (defense) section of the German Military Intelligence Corps.
The job was right up the Abwehr’s alley. It already had conducted extensive sabotage operations against the Reich‘s European enemies, developing all the necessary tools and techniques and establishing an elaborate sabotage school in the wooded German countryside near Brandenburg.
Lieutenant Walter Kappe, 37, a pudgy, bull-necked man, was given command of the mission against America, which he dubbed Operation Pastorius, after an early German settler in America. Kappe was a longtime member of the Nazi party, and he also knew the United States very well, having lived there for 12 years.
To find men suitable for his enterprise, Lieutenant Kappe scoured the records of the Ausland Institute, which had financed thousands of German expatriates’ return from America. Kappe selected 12 whom he thought were energetic, capable and loyal to the German cause. Most were blue-collar workers, and all but two had long been members of the party. Four dropped out of the team almost immediately; the rest were organized into two teams of four.
George John Dasch, the eldest at 39, was chosen to lead the first team. He was a glib talker with what Kappe thought were American mannerisms. Dasch had served in the German army during World War I, then emigrated to America, where he had worked as a waiter. When war broke out in September 1939, he impulsively went home.
The second man in the first team was Ernest Peter Burger, a stocky, intelligent man with slick black hair. Burger had been a Nazi almost as long as Hitler himself, playing an active role in the 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch–Hitler’s abortive initial attempt to gain power. In 1927, Burger fled Germany for the United States to escape criminal charges for brawling. He stayed until 1933, working as a machinist in Detroit and Milwaukee, joining the National Guard, studying English and even becoming an American citizen.
When Hitler came to power, however, Burger headed home, rejoined the Nazi Party and became aide-de-camp to Ernst Röhm, chief of the Nazi storm troopers. He escaped Hitler’s bloody purge of that organization and went to college, but he soon got into trouble by writing a report critical of the Gestapo. He was arrested, jailed for 17 months, then released into the infantry.
Heinrich Heinck and Richard Quirin were the other members of Dasch’s team. Machinists by trade, they had gone to America in 1927, eventually joining different chapters of the German-American Bund. In 1939 both accepted Germany’s offer to pay return passage for emigrants.
