Germans often give people a sense of seriousness and seriousness, and the Nazi secret police in World War II revealed a dark, brutal, and depressing feeling.
So, what was a German spy like during World War II? Cold version of Warrior State, or Kill Intention version of Tom Cruise?
In fact, it is not, during World War II, German spies did not behave reliably, chain drops and defectors abounded, often making ridiculous trouble.
Here's a real story of a German spy infiltrating the United States.
The dignity of the Eight Great Kongs
When the Attack of Pearl Harbor broke out on December 7, 1941, Japan completely dragged the United States into the war, not only launched the Pacific War, but also gave great assistance to Europe, vowing to overthrow Nazi rule.
Adolf Hitler was not afraid, and on December 11, 1941, they declared war on the United States.
However, Hitler was a little dissatisfied, because he found that the German army seemed to have no way to take the United States, and the new world hanging overseas made the Germans sigh, they could not even fight the English Channel, how to make the United States look good?
Eager to prove that the United States was still vulnerable despite its distance from Europe, Hitler demanded that Nazi intelligence officials immediately launch a plan of sabotage against the United States.
Germany's intelligence services are also eager to prove their capabilities. In late 1941, the United States destroyed a German spy network, and one of the double agents sold part of the Nazi spy network in the United States, resulting in the arrest of 33 German spies in September 1941, which made German military intelligence officers angry.
So, despite knowing the risks, the Germans prepared a "Operation Pastorius" aimed at destroying the United States.
The name may have an implicit meaning, perhaps from the Germans who established the first settlement in the United States in 1683, when the Frankfurt Land Company and a group of German merchants jointly commissioned the German scholar Francis Daniel Pastorius to purchase 15,000 acres of land, which became the beginning of the Germanic community in the United States.
Sending people to the U202 boat in New York
At midnight on June 13, 1942, a German U-boat quietly dropped six people near Long Island in New York, USA, wearing German combat uniforms and paddling a rubber boat.
The weather was very bad, the waves almost overturned the boat, and several people desperately protected 4 boxes of explosives to prevent them from falling into the sea.
After some effort, the agents finally landed on American soil, they took a deep breath, and then quickly hid their uniforms, buried explosives, and then disguised themselves as Americans, and soon disappeared into the night.
Four days later, the same group of people came up near Jacksonville, Florida, a group of 4 people. They buried the explosives near the beach and walked along the coastline for hours, finding a bus bound for Jacksonville, coin-operating, getting in the car, looking for a seat, a set of clouds.
In fact, these agents are very familiar with the United States, because they were originally German expatriates or immigrants living in the United States, but they only accepted Hitler's call before the war and ran back to their homeland.
George Dash who sold everyone
The Germans secretly screened out 10 big men who were proficient in English, physically strong, and had fighting ability, and their common characteristic was that they had been in the United States and were very familiar with the United States.
After some tumultuous operations, 8 people officially joined Operation Pastorius and received military training.
Agents are between the ages of 22 and 39 and are George Dash, Ernest Berg, Heinrich Heinke, Richard Quaring, Edward Kling, Herbert Hopter, Hermann Newbauer and Werner Till.
The 8 have a specially set up secret training camp disguised as a farm in Brandenburg. It actually contains the main building, gymnasium, sun room, garage, laboratory and two shooting ranges.
Every day, the preparatory agents need to get up early and then start doing aerobics to increase joint flexibility and warm-up, and after the physical training, they will continue with a 3-hour explosive design course, which mainly teaches how to design a time bomb timer.
The FBI wants a poster of "Nazi saboteur" Walter Karp, who is the head coach of the training camp
In the afternoon, the preparatory agents would intensively learn English, and although some had been making home in the United States for many years, the "teachers" would still harshly correct mistakes in their accents and make them "more like an American."
In the following time, they also have to take military mapping lessons to ensure that they can draw and use military-sized maps to match each other's tasks.
Then there was military training, shooting, dropping bombs, climbing over obstacles, dragging small kayaks through the water.
For the rest of the day, they listened to expert lectures and figured out, with the help of slides and projectors, what america's targets were worth destroying, what their structure and shape were, and how they should be blown up.
It is said that the Ambitions of the German intelligence services are very large, and the most they broadcast is the impact of various American dams, as if to tell the agents, go and blow it up for me, blow it up, blow it up!
……
Each agent chooses a suitable false identity for himself, and the German intelligence service will create a virtual personal history based on this identity, and then the agents need to memorize it and perform to ensure that the new identity has penetrated into the bone marrow, and then all the relevant information is destroyed.
To take care of the agents' emotions and "ensure loyalty," the Nazis occasionally let them play soccer, and even arranged a pure play tour to Berlin, where they "drank like Americans" in Berlin's pubs and then hummed American pop music on Berlin's boulevards.
The agents' favorite hum is Stephen Foster's 1847 country ballad "Oh, Suzanne."
Based on the students' ratings for their studies at the Secret Service School, the 8-player squad was divided into 2 4-person groups, led by George Dash and Edward Kling.
George Dash was a World War I veteran who took part in the Beer Hall Riots in his early years, immigrated to the United States after the war, and returned to Germany in 1939. He lived in the United States for 17 years, working as a frying chef, waiter and salesman, and even spent 1 year with the Hawaiian Air Force and joining the Wisconsin National Guard.
His group's mission was to destroy aluminum plants in the United States, such as those in Tennessee, East St. Louis and Massina, New York, the cryolite plant in Philadelphia, and many more.
Detonator fuses and explosives seized by the Americans
Edward Kling's mission was to railroads and transportation, and they would mainly sabotage New York State, destroy station facilities, subvert trains, and blow up New York's Brooklyn Bridge.
Eventually, the agents returned home, wrote a farewell letter, and were again taken on a field trip to the aluminium factory, railway station, and dam to learn about their operation and how to wreak havoc. The "teachers" spent their last hours tirelessly imparting experiential skills, such as how to use circuits to destroy high-voltage lines and how to leave the scene as quickly as possible.
Then, "Operation Pastorius" was officially launched.
John Cullen was later rewarded by the general
The team members were secretly sent to Paris, France, where they received a sum of money (forged), a farewell feast, and then boarded a submarine off the coast of France and were sent all the way to the United States.
In fact, George Dash's group of 6 had a problem just climbing onto the beach and they didn't get away with it so easily.
A Coast Guard soldier named John Cullen spotted the man on the shore and walked over to ask what they were doing.
At that time, 2 people were not present to hide the rubber boat, and there were only 4 people at the scene.
Frightened by the heavy fog, the Germans, who had just hidden something good, quickly calmed down and said to Karen, "We are lost fishermen."
Amargansett's Coast Guard
Karen didn't think much about it, after all, who would have thought that the Germans would cross the Atlantic and run to the east coast? He just continued to ask what the other person was doing and whether he needed help.
The Germans wanted to kill the coast guard, but several people ended up with no one, telling Karen, "We'll be fine." ”
Karen said: "You are now immediately following me back to the Coast Guard station in Amargansett, you don't have a fishing license, don't get yourself into trouble!" ”
The crowd followed the Coast Guard to the monitoring station, and when they saw that there was no one else, the Germans showed their ferocity, they took control of Karen, and then threatened him: "We don't want to kill you, but you have to forget everything you see!" ”
A $260 sealing fee was also stuffed.
George Dash emphasizes to Karen that his name is "George John Davis" to make Karen known.
"You'll soon hear about us from Washington!" George Dash said so.
Karen assured the crowd that he would forget everything and that he would not recognize them when he met them again.
So the German agents gave up on their plans to kill, and when Ernest Borg and others buried their marks on the beach, they walked along the railroad line to Amarganset Station and bought tickets to Manhattan, New York.
At this point George Dash deliberately showed some complaining emotions, and he scolded and grinned and said, "We're going home." After arriving in New York, the group split into two teams and stayed at the Gornnor Clinton and Martinique Hotels.
The German military caps that are missing on the beach
George Dash and Ernest Borg opened a standard room and began to talk. Because there was no sensitive environment under the supervision of the Nazi Party, they began to talk about everything, about what they had seen, about the troubles in the training camp, about what had once been life in the United States.
Then the conversation turned to the complaints about the Nazis, and the more the two talked, the more excited they became, with some saying that "I didn't want to come at all, but I couldn't refuse, and I would be shot", and another said that "to carry out this damn plan is simply to die".
The two men's channels quickly posted together, and they found that neither of them wanted to fight for the Nazis, and they were forced.
George Dash was so excited that he had just returned to Germany after obtaining immigration status, only to find a mess, believing that "America is my country" and did not want to give his life to the Nazis.
Ernest Borg was also indignant, claiming to "hate the Gestapo more than anything else on earth."
Ernest Pitt Borg
He was an old Nazi who even participated in the Beer Hall Riots of 1923 as a stormtrooper, and after arriving in the United States in 1927, he worked as a mechanic at a factory in Detroit, then became a toolmaker, joined the Wisconsin National Guard, and became a U.S. citizen for 33 years.
Soon after, he returned to Germany, where the SS checked old accounts, ignored his American identity, forged evidence and threw him in jail for 17 months. He thought he hated the Nazi Party, whose coercion had caused his wife's miscarriage and ruined his life.
So the two decided to throw themselves away, no longer talking about how to sabotage and complete the task, but to plan how to get out. In the end, they came to a conclusion - if they wanted to live, they turned themselves in! Seek leniency from the government.
Dash also said that he was clear about it, don't look for the police in the United States, that would make things complicated, and if you want to find it, you should go directly to the FBI FBI.
FBI agents dig up evidence in Florida
Three days later, a second group of German agents also arrived in the United States, where they landed in Florida, and 4 men paddled a dinghy in bathing suits and climbed onto the beach in Jacksonville. They split into two groups, traveling to Chicago and New York in Cincinnati, Ohio.
George Dash took the opportunity five days later to shake off the crowd who were looking for a "mission," and he ran to a pennsylvania train station and boarded a train bound for Washington.
He planned to meet FBI director Edgar Hoover directly, a prominent figure. But the FBI's first director was so comfortable, and this agent who had been trained in the German intelligence service system was at a loss.
So he called the federal government's telephone counseling office and asked "who should I call if I report espionage?"
The operator, who was also a Mond, opened his mouth and told him that he "can go to the office of the militia commander of the National Guard."
Dash believed, really found the number and called it. The commander's secretary answered the phone, who heard the report that "I landed in the United States with a group of Germans..."
So the secretary immediately hung up the phone with the FBI, and an agent named Duane Trana answered the phone, and he quickly contacted George Dash from that end, agreeing to send someone to protect him and escort him to the Justice Department at the Capitol to tell him about the situation in a safe place.
At first Agent Duane Trana didn't quite believe Dash," he thought it was a story, and the other party was an American at all, and he was just playing with it.
But George Dash immediately showed the evidence, pulling $82,550 out of his briefcase. Duane Trana began to believe.
FBI agents investigate on the beach
In fact, the Coast Guard has also found it, remember the Coast Guard soldier named John Cullen who was threatened and stuffed with more than 200 dollars? This baby was not stupid, and he reported the case as soon as the Germans left. But at that time, no one thought that it was a German, only that it was some vicious smuggling gang.
The Coast Guard searched the beach that day, and several seasoned veterans found a package of German cigarettes (thrown by Ernest Borg when cleaning the beach) and found a box buried in the sand.
Veterans said: "Stepping on a horse is too simple, it is not worth mentioning compared to the drugs and alcohol of the gangsters." ”
The boxes were taken to the Coast Guard station, and they carefully opened a few boxes and were stunned—they were full of detonators, bombs, timers, and Nazi eagle insignia, hats, uniforms.
Equipment kits obtained on site
The FBI, which confirmed the German landing, soon began to act, and George Dash was re-interrogated, knowing that the FBI agent had everything he wanted from his mouth.
Dash first gave the FBI his and Ernest Borg's hotel numbers, and the Borg was arrested (he insisted he had turned himself in).
Ernest Borg then led agents to capture Heinrich Heinke and Richard Quering.
The FBI then made a phone bait and caught Edward Kling and Werner Thiel in Cincinnati through Quering.
Soon after, Herman Newbauer and Herbert Hopter were also arrested in Chicago.
At this point, all eight German agents were arrested.
Because of the espionage and military attacks involved, the Americans held a trial in the form of a military tribunal in July 1942. Because Americans don't want to divulge secrets too soon, Hoover and the FBI are working around the clock trying to pull out more.
In addition, the military did not want this matter to be widely reported, after all, German submarines broke through the national defense to send agents to the United States mainland, which is a very humiliating thing in itself, and they would rather cut the mess quickly.
George Dash and Ernest were successful in leading the way, and they were considered tainted personnel, but the 6 teammates who were pit by them were miserable, and the military court decided that they should all be executed.
Edward Kling and George Dash
The 6 people, who are also familiar with the United States, have defended themselves, saying that "there is no fact of any sabotage against the United States, and they have not carried out any action planning, so they are not guilty." ”
Some people also denounced Nazism in court, saying that they were also victims, that they were forced, and that they did not want to do damage at all. Many of the defendants testified that they "sabotaged the training camp" only to shield family and friends from reprisals from the Nazi authorities, who would retaliate against them if they refused.
Edward Kling and Werner Thiel also charged in court, saying FBI agents had tortured him, including slapping him and pulling his hair.
But the FBI only sneered, admitting it was "rough", but denying the allegations.
Scene of a military courtroom
In the end, these German agents, known as the "saboteurs", were personally approved by Roosevelt, and the final review was only granted to the president himself, and they were dead.
Interestingly, the U.S. District Court in Washington attempted to challenge the military courts for the right to try, but gave up because "the president ordered to prevent" the U.S. court from "taking any rescue measures against the defendants," and they went on to express support for the court-martial trial.
As a result, the 6 people were quickly sentenced to death by the court and quickly killed. It took the Americans three hours to kill them one by one in electric chairs.
Ernest and Dash were not sentenced to capital punishment, but they were severely punished. Dash was sentenced to 30 years in prison, while Ernest was simply sentenced to life in prison.
However, the United States did not really put these two goods in the United States for a lifetime, and after the war, they were released in 1948 and sent back to Germany in the form of "deportation", but the Americans did not call them spies, but called them "German soldiers during World War II".
George Dash later couldn't stay in Germany any longer and tried to return to the United States again, but never succeeded, and after taking advantage of the lace news, he completely disappeared from the public eye, and he lived until 1992.