Operation Pastorius ~ Nazi Saboteurs in USA

By Johnnie Alexander

 

Before the sun rose on the morning of June 13, 1942, a rubber boat carrying four men and various supplies landed on what is now known as Atlantic Avenue Beach on the Long Island shore. The men had traveled across the Atlantic Ocean from Europe.

 

Not exactly across the Atlantic. More accurately, they crossed beneath the ocean’s surface in a German U-boat.

 

They wore German naval uniforms in case they were caught when they landed. But no one else was around on the lonely beach so they hurriedly changed into civilian clothes.

 

George Dasch's Mugshot

The leader of the group, George Dasch, had lived most of his adult life in the U.S. He’d even served in the U.S. Army Air Corps. Yet here he was, at the age of 39, participating in a mission to identify and destroy various targets, such as aluminum plants and railway lines, that were vital to the U.S. war effort. 

 

Unfortunately for the group, a young seaman with the U.S. Coast Guard patrolled the shore. After a brief conversation, the seaman accepted a bribe from Dasch and walked away. But as soon as he was out of sight of the Germans, he raced to the nearby station and announced that there were Germans on the beach.

 

By the time the Coast Guard arrived at the beach, Dasch and his men were gone. But they’d left behind “buried treasure.” The search team found money, German uniforms, and even dynamite.

 

Four days later, on June 17^th, another team of four Germans landed on a beach south of Jacksonville, Florida. They also buried explosives in the sand before taking a train to Cincinnati. From there, they split up with two of the potential saboteurs heading for Chicago and the other two to New York City.

 

But unbeknownst to this second team, George Dasch planned to betray the entire operation. In fact, he’d already called the FBI office in New York. Apparently the agent he spoke with didn’t believe his claim that he was part of a German espionage operation.

 

But Dasch didn’t give up. He traveled to Washington, DC and called that FBI office. After he told them where he was staying, agents arrived at his hotel, interrogated him, and took him into custody. By June 27^th, all the other saboteurs had been arrested—even those who’d landed in Florida.

 

The author of Operation Pastorius writes: “It was clear that Operation Pastorius was not just a complete failure, but a very public fiasco.”

 

The unnamed author is correct about the operation being “very public.” 

 

J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, delighted in touting the agency’s success in quickly apprehending German saboteurs before they caused any damage. He didn’t tell the press that Dasch had surrendered and betrayed the others.

 

The Germans, including Dasch, were charged with espionage and tried by a military commission instead of in a civilian court. According to the same source as above, President Theodore Roosevelt “was concerned that action in a civil court would take too long and might not lead to the death penalty.”

His Presidential Proclamation 2561 says that enemies who enter the U.S. “to commit sabotage, espionage, or other hostile or warlike acts should be promptly tried in accordance with the laws of war.”

Nazi Saboteur Trial ~ Washington, DC

 

All eight Germans were found guilty and sentenced to death. However, Roosevelt commuted Dasch’s sentence to thirty years imprisonment. Ernest Burger, who knew of Dasch’s plan to betray the teams and assisted the prosecution, had his death sentence commuted to a life sentence.

 

The other six Germans were executed by electrocution on August 8, 1942 and buried in a potter's field.

 

Dasch may have thought his betrayal would make him an American hero. Hoover had promised that both Dasch and Burger would receive pardons for their testimony, but that never happened. Instead, President Truman deported both men back to Germany in 1948. Needless to say, their countrymen considered them traitors.

 

Phillip Clayton is an FBI agent and the hero of my latest novel, The Cryptographer’s Dilemma. Before beginning his new assignment with my cryptographer heroine, Phillip was involved in capturing the Operation Pastorius spies. His reaction to the trial is a subplot of the story.

 

I shared other topics I researched for the novel in previous HHH posts. Here are the links:

 

The Doll Woman ~ A World War II Traitor

 

World War II's "Number One Woman Spy”

 

FBI Field Offices ~ A Brief History of a Select Few

 

America’s First Female Cryptanalyst

 

Johnnie Alexander imagines stories you won’t forget in multiple genres. A fan of classic movies, stacks of books, and road trips, she shares a life of quiet adventure with Griff, her happy-go-lucky collie, and Rugby, her raccoon-treeing papillon. 

Purchase The Cryptographer's Dilemma at http://bit.ly/ja-TCD.

Connect with Johnnie at johnnie-alexander.com.

Note: The quotes in this post, including from the Presidential Proclamation, are from Operation Pastorius: The History of the Nazi Intelligence Operation to Commit Sabotage in the United States during World War II by Charles River Editors, Columbia, SC, July 2020. Pages are not numbered.

 

Photo Credits:

George Dasch's Mugshot ~ Public Domain

Nazi Saboteur Trial ~ Public Domain

America’s First Female Cryptanalyst

By Johnnie Alexander

 

A few weeks ago, I got a fun tweet from a gal whose Twitter name is MelissasLibraryLife. She was reading a pre-pub copy of The Cryptographer’s Dilemma and asked me this question:

 

“Only a few pages in and I wonder if it was based on Elizebeth Friedman’s doll collection case? Her collection is here at the #MarshallFoundationLibrary.”

My heroine’s backstory resembles that of many of the young women who were recruited by either the Navy or the Army to break codes. My main source for their stories was Code Girls: The True Story of the American Women Who Secretly Broke Codes in World War II by Liza Mundy.

These women often attended college on scholarships because their families were financially ruined during the Great Crash of 1929. They majored in such fields as astronomy, music, mathematics, and languages, and they often became teachers. As the young men went off to war, however, more job opportunities opened up for these talented and intelligent women.

 

I also read about Elizebeth Smith Friedman, first in Velvalee Dickinson: The “Doll Woman” Spy by Barbara Casey and in an until-then-unread book I found on my own WWII bookshelf, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America's Enemies by Jason Fagone.

Melissa, who is the director of library and archives at the George C. Marshall Foundation, told me that Elizebeth and her husband had donated more than 800 photos, their personal papers and library, and even their desk to the Marshall Foundation located in Lexington, Virginia. She even “had the privilege of supplying information” for an episode of PBS’s American Experience called “The Codebreaker” (Season 33, Episode 1). I purchased the episode on Amazon Prime (only $4.99!) and highly recommend it. 

Elizebeth was the youngest of ten children born to John and Sopha Smith, Quakers who lived on an Indiana farm. She graduated from Hillsdale College (Michigan) in 1915. Though she majored in English literature, she also studied Latin, German, and Greek.

In a strange turn of events, Elizebeth was hired by George Fabyan, a wealthy textile merchant, to search for enciphered messages he believed were hidden in Shakespeare’s works. Though she never found these messages, her work led her to decode messages for the government during World War I, during Prohibition, and during World War II. 

 

After Velvalee’s arrest for sending coded messages to the Japanese, J. Edgar Hoover asked Elizebeth to review the letters to help the FBI build their case. Though she wasn’t the first to break Velvalee’s jargon code, she did perform [check this].

Unfortunately, Hoover made sure the FBI was credited with much of Elizebeth’s work—particularly for the codes she broke during WWII. Her contributions were mostly lost to history until documents from the era were eventually declassified.

This photo of Elizebeth and her husband, William, on their wedding day in May 1917. William was also a cryptographer with the U.S. Army. In the 1930s, he ran the Army's Signal Intelligence Service research division. [Photo Credit: George C. Marshall Foundation, Lexington, VA. (Thanks, Melissa!)]

Elizebeth died on October 31, 1980 at the age of 88. After her death, she received the following honors:

• The NSA inducted her into the NSA Hall of Honor in 1999.
• The NSA dedicated their OPS1 building as the William and Elizebeth Friedman Building in 2002.
• The U.S. Senate passed a resolution honoring Elizebeth's "life and legacy" in 2019.
• The U.S. Coast Guard named a Legend-Class National Security Cutter the USCGC Friedman in Elizebeth's honor in 2020.

Here are the links to my previous posts about "The Doll Woman" investigation:  

 

The Doll Woman ~ A World War II Traitor

 

World War II's "Number One Woman Spy”

 

FBI Field Offices ~ A Brief History of a Select Few

Johnnie Alexander imagines stories you won’t forget in multiple genres. A fan of classic movies, stacks of books, and road trips, she shares a life of quiet adventure with Griff, her happy-go-lucky collie, and Rugby, her raccoon-treeing papillon. 

Purchase The Cryptographer's Dilemma at http://bit.ly/ja-TCD.

Connect with Johnnie at johnnie-alexander.com.