Saboteurs : The Nazi Raid on America

Rating:
Summary: A great yarn about wartime America
Review: There aren't many books describing what life was like on the home front in World War II. Saboteurs gives you a wonderful feeling for what America was like in the months after Pearl Harbor--and the false sense of security, similar in some ways to the months preceeding 9/11. In addition, this is an incredible story: Hogan's heroes crossing the Atlantic in a U-boat, landing in the Hamptons, and taking the morning rush hour train into Manhattan. A great yarn, very well-told.

Rating:
Summary: A great yarn about wartime America
Review: There aren't many books describing what life was like on the home front in World War II. Saboteurs gives you a wonderful feeling for what America was like in the months after Pearl Harbor--and the false sense of security, similar in some ways to the months preceeding 9/11. In addition, this is an incredible story: Hogan's heroes crossing the Atlantic in a U-boat, landing in the Hamptons, and taking the morning rush hour train into Manhattan. A great yarn, very well-told.

Rating:
Summary: Bungling On Both Sides
Review: We have, sadly, come to understand that foreigners will enter our nation with secret plans to make havoc and scare us. It has, of course, happened before. In World War II, people didn't call these agents "terrorists," but "saboteurs." Americans at that time were lucky: the eight saboteurs authorized by Adolph Hitler to come and blow up targets in the United States were bunglers. That does not keep _Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America_ (Knopf) by Michael Dobbs from being entertaining and even suspenseful. It certainly shows how the case was a sensation in its day, and how agencies such as the FBI operated at the time. Surprisingly, judgements made by the Supreme Court in the case of yesterday's saboteurs are being cited in the cases of today's terrorists.

Operation Pastorius was born out of the recognition that American industries were a threat to the fatherland. The saboteurs rounded up for the assignment all had histories qualifying them for it; they were all German-Americans, and one was even a U.S. citizen. They had all lived in the United States, and some had families there. They got sometimes farcical training in bomb-making, invisible inks, and so on, and were transported by U-boat to the U.S. A Coast Guardsman on foot patrol on the beach came across the four who landed at the Hamptons, but his fellow Guardsmen did not believe him. They eventually went to the scene, and even saw the U-boat, but there had been so many false alarms of U-boat sightings, there was little urgency to take them seriously when they reported it. Saboteurs George Dasch and Peter Burger revealed to each other that they were ready to go over to the U.S. side. Dasch called the New York FBI, but they thought it was a crank call. He eventually traveled to Washington, went to the FBI building, and started telling his story. J. Edgar Hoover bombastically grandstanded by claiming credit for the FBI's breaking the case, skipping over the fact that the FBI had come to dead ends until it reluctantly started interviewing Dasch.

It was not long before the eight were rounded up, never having accomplished much besides shopping sprees. President Roosevelt wanted quick trials and quick executions, and a secret military commission was hand-picked to hold the trial. To the dismay of the other officers, the defense counsel took his work seriously and appealed to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of such a secret military trial. The Court, in a decision known as _Ex Parte Quirin_, allowed the trial to stand, but the decision troubled the justices, who decided that they had to deny habeas corpus to the saboteurs (it was a war effort, after all) and then scurried to find legal pretext to do so. It is a troubling decision, which has become the precedent for the Bush administration to use military tribunals against the Guantanamo captives. The Supreme Court's decision meant for the saboteurs themselves that they were all sentenced to death. The sentences were all carried out, again in secret, except that Dasch and Burger were rewarded with a commutation to life imprisonment, and returned to Germany after the war. This story, grim at some times and at others like a comic opera (on both the Nazi and US sides), is a wonderfully researched exposition of a minor but fascinating incident in American history that is still having repercussions today.

Rating:
Summary: Bungling On Both Sides
Review: We have, sadly, come to understand that foreigners will enter our nation with secret plans to make havoc and scare us. It has, of course, happened before. In World War II, people didn't call these agents "terrorists," but "saboteurs." Americans at that time were lucky: the eight saboteurs authorized by Adolph Hitler to come and blow up targets in the United States were bunglers. That does not keep _Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America_ (Knopf) by Michael Dobbs from being entertaining and even suspenseful. It certainly shows how the case was a sensation in its day, and how agencies such as the FBI operated at the time. Surprisingly, judgements made by the Supreme Court in the case of yesterday's saboteurs are being cited in the cases of today's terrorists.

Operation Pastorius was born out of the recognition that American industries were a threat to the fatherland. The saboteurs rounded up for the assignment all had histories qualifying them for it; they were all German-Americans, and one was even a U.S. citizen. They had all lived in the United States, and some had families there. They got sometimes farcical training in bomb-making, invisible inks, and so on, and were transported by U-boat to the U.S. A Coast Guardsman on foot patrol on the beach came across the four who landed at the Hamptons, but his fellow Guardsmen did not believe him. They eventually went to the scene, and even saw the U-boat, but there had been so many false alarms of U-boat sightings, there was little urgency to take them seriously when they reported it. Saboteurs George Dasch and Peter Burger revealed to each other that they were ready to go over to the U.S. side. Dasch called the New York FBI, but they thought it was a crank call. He eventually traveled to Washington, went to the FBI building, and started telling his story. J. Edgar Hoover bombastically grandstanded by claiming credit for the FBI's breaking the case, skipping over the fact that the FBI had come to dead ends until it reluctantly started interviewing Dasch.

It was not long before the eight were rounded up, never having accomplished much besides shopping sprees. President Roosevelt wanted quick trials and quick executions, and a secret military commission was hand-picked to hold the trial. To the dismay of the other officers, the defense counsel took his work seriously and appealed to the Supreme Court about the constitutionality of such a secret military trial. The Court, in a decision known as _Ex Parte Quirin_, allowed the trial to stand, but the decision troubled the justices, who decided that they had to deny habeas corpus to the saboteurs (it was a war effort, after all) and then scurried to find legal pretext to do so. It is a troubling decision, which has become the precedent for the Bush administration to use military tribunals against the Guantanamo captives. The Supreme Court's decision meant for the saboteurs themselves that they were all sentenced to death. The sentences were all carried out, again in secret, except that Dasch and Burger were rewarded with a commutation to life imprisonment, and returned to Germany after the war. This story, grim at some times and at others like a comic opera (on both the Nazi and US sides), is a wonderfully researched exposition of a minor but fascinating incident in American history that is still having repercussions today.