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To: wotan; oceanview

What would have happened to a German-American who sided with the Nazis during WWII, went to Germany to fight against our troops, entered into a plot to return to the US to kill a massive number of civilians in America, was captured while entering the country, and was carrying proof in his possession of his contacts with top Nazi leaders?

I think he would have been (should have been) executed as an enemy spy by a military tribunal, and that his capture would have been part of the war effort and not a civil matter.


110 posted on 01/01/2006 4:48:13 AM PST by xzins (Retired Army Chaplain and Proud of It!)
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To: xzins
What would have happened to a German-American who sided with the Nazis during WWII, went to Germany to fight against our troops, entered into a plot to return to the US to kill a massive number of civilians in America, was captured while entering the country, and was carrying proof in his possession of his contacts with top Nazi leaders? I think he would have been (should have been) executed as an enemy spy by a military tribunal, and that his capture would have been part of the war effort and not a civil matter.

No doubt you are thinking of Burger, et. al., but what does that have to do with Padilla?

112 posted on 01/01/2006 6:55:16 AM PST by wotan
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To: xzins
What would have happened to a German-American who sided with the Nazis during WWII, went to Germany to fight against our troops, entered into a plot to return to the US to kill a massive number of civilians in America, was captured while entering the country, and was carrying proof in his possession of his contacts with top Nazi leaders?

As defense council for Richard Quirin and seven other prisoners, Col. Kenneth C. Royall and Col. Cassius M. Dowell decided that to obey one order of their commander-in-Chief they had to defy another. Their clients, all German-born, had lived in America but returned before Pearl Harbor to study sabotage techniques at a school near Berlin.

In dense midnight fog on June 12, 1942, a German submarine edged toward Amagansett Beach, Long Island, to land Quirin and three comrades, in German uniform, in a rubber boat. On the beach they met an unarmed Coast Guardsman who pretended to believe their story about fishing, then went off to get help. Armed, his patrol hurried back--to hear U-boat diesels offshore, to dig up cases of TNT and bombs disguised as pen-and-pencil sets, to notify the police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Five nights later, Herbert Haupt, Werner Thiel, Edward Kerling, and Hermann Neubauer landed safely at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, from another U-boat. None of the saboteurs was successful. On June 27, the FBI announced the arrest of all eight.

President Roosevelt appointed a military commission to try them as spies under the Articles of War; and Colonels Royall and Dowell to defend them. He issued a proclamation closing all civilian courts to such enemies, but the defense decided, in duty to their clients, to disobey this. Challenging the commission's legal authority, they sought writs of habeas corpus from the Court.

After two days of hearing and questioning lawyers for both sides, the Court said that Congress, in the Articles of War, had provided for commissions to try such cases; that the President had lawfully appointed one; that the writs would not issue.

But in finding for the President, the Supreme Court set another precedent--a proclamation from the White House could not close the doors of the Court. An executive order would not annul its power to review government actions under law.

The President announced on August 8 that all the saboteurs had been convicted, six executed. Two who had cooperated with the FBI went to prison at hard labor.

http://www.supremecourthistory.org/02_history/subs_history/02_c12.html

See also the case: Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1 (1942)

These were German citizens, but the Supreme Court noted ...

Citizenship in the United States of an enemy belligerent does not relieve him from the consequences of a belligerency which is unlawful because in violation of the law of war. Citizens who associate themselves with the military arm of the enemy government, and with its aid, [317 U.S. 1, 38] guidance and direction enter this country bent on hostile acts are enemy belligerents within the meaning of the Hague Convention and the law of war. Cf. Gates v. Goodloe, 101 U.S. 612, 615 , 617 S., 618. It is as an enemy belligerent that petitioner Haupt is charged with entering the United States, and unlawful belligerency is the gravamen of the offense of which he is accused.

151 posted on 01/03/2006 11:26:38 AM PST by Cboldt
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