Posted on 04/23/2025 11:43:12 AM PDT by Red Badger
During World War II, six German saboteurs who secretly entered the United States on a mission to attack its civil infrastructure are executed by the United States for spying. Two other saboteurs who disclosed the plot to the FBI and aided U.S. authorities in their manhunt for their collaborators were imprisoned.
In 1942, under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s orders, the defense branch of the German Military Intelligence Corps initiated a program to infiltrate the United States and destroy industrial plants, bridges, railroads, waterworks, and Jewish-owned department stores. The Nazis hoped that sabotage teams would be able to slip into America at the rate of one or two every six weeks. The first two teams, made up of eight Germans who had all lived in the United States before the war, departed the German submarine base at Lorient, France, in late May.
Just before midnight on June 12, in a heavy fog, a German submarine reached the American coast off Amagansett, Long Island, and deployed a team who rowed ashore in an inflatable boat. Just as the Germans finished burying their explosives in the sand, John C. Cullen, a young U.S. Coast Guardsman, came upon them during his regular patrol of the beach. The leader of the team, George Dasch, bribed the suspicious Cullen, and he accepted the money, promising to keep quiet. However, as soon as he passed safely back into the fog, he sprinted the two miles back to the Coast Guard station and informed his superiors of his discovery. After retrieving the German supplies from the beach, the Coast Guard called the FBI, which launched a massive manhunt for the saboteurs, who had fled to New York City.
Although unaware that the FBI was looking for them, Dasch and another saboteur, Ernest Burger, decided to turn themselves in and betray their colleagues, perhaps because they feared capture was inevitable after the botched landing. On July 15, Dasch called the FBI in New York, but they failed to take his claims seriously, so he decided to travel to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. On July 18, the same day that a second four-man team successfully landed at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, Dasch turned himself in. He agreed to help the FBI capture the rest of the saboteurs.
Burger and the rest of the Long Island team were picked up by July 22, and by July 27 the whole of the Florida team was arrested. To preserve wartime secrecy, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a special military tribunal consisting of seven generals to try the saboteurs. At the end of July, Dasch was sentenced to 30 years in prison, Burger was sentenced to hard labor for life, and the other six Germans were sentenced to die. The six condemned saboteurs were executed by electric chair in Washington, D.C., on August 8. In 1944, two other German spies were caught after a landing in Maine. No other instances of German sabotage within wartime America have come to light.
In 1948, Dasch and Burger were freed by order of President Harry S. Truman, and they both returned to Germany.
The Nazi saboteurs were naive and stupid.
The obvious choices were surrender immediately or kill the Coastie.
All hope of successful mission ended when they were discovered.
Best option would have been immediately surrendering.
I wonder if those men had any choice about going..
There was a time when the nations dealt severely when either ONE of the FOUR criterion of the Law of War was broken. Shedding the uniform violates this.
Because we have become so soft, we’ve opened Pandora’s box, and now have little moral authority to reel it back in. I speak in general terms that includes Western governments, starting with the Boer Wars.
So yes, they deserved to be killed. If members of a state or non-state actor breaks the rules, they should be hanged. Period.
Otherwise, war gets really nasty. 9/11 was never properly dealt with.
Who doesn’t deserve to be killed?
“Who doesn’t deserve to be killed?”
Capital punishment is reserved for the most heinous of crimes. Cold blooded murder is one where it’s completely Biblical. I’d be okay with bringing it back for forcible rape.
L
“On July 15, Dasch called the FBI in New York but they failed to take his claims seriously, so he decided to travel to FBI headquarters in Washington DC .”
Some things never change......................
The Spies Who Came In From the Sea
One of the really disappointing things about the AH Archive, useful as it is, is that it does not include the copious full color illustrations of the original.
I learned to read from the old hard back American Heritage magazines. Still have an (almost) complete set.
Unlawful combatants, on a mission of sabotage and terrorism.
If they had not been taken prisoner, how then could they have been executed?
Running a gauntlet, perhaps?
If they’re KIA, so be it. But don’t execute prisoners.
They were probably avid NAZIs, more than anxious to serve. They would have been chosen based upon their loyalty and fanaticism. It would be foolish to send unwilling spies.
Irrational emotionalism.
“Yes it does. Spies are not uniformed under the color of law. They should be shot on site.”
Spies are for trading in secret exchanges to save your own people who get caught. Saboteurs while spies by definition are something different and should be shot on site if actively committing sabotage,if they surrender they should be vigorously interrogated then military tribunal, if are need to trade for valuable captives we tradem if not firing squad.
Spies are a special sort of enemy. They don't fight the war solder-to-soldier. They lie, cheat, and steal. They pretend to be your friend and countryman, and then brutally betray the very people with whom they break bread. They deserve death.
Who doesn't?
And who cares to follow the "NAZI model"?
Nope, just cold hard fact of unjust double jeopardy.
...and it doesn't hurt to be merciful as well...
You never know - you might need it sometime...
We didn’t, so everything is fine.
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