Nazi Saboteurs #2

I am nearing the end of Saboteurs The Nazi Raid on America. So far, a lot has happened. Dasch has been feeding the FBI information about the tactics that the saboteurs learned in the Quenz lake farmhouse, and remembered the chemical needed to make the invisible ink on the napkin show up, letting the FBI learn about the whereabouts of most of the men on the mission. All but two of the men have been arrested, and the FBI knows where one of them is, but has not arrested him yet, believing that he will lead them to the other saboteur.

Dasch himself has been arrested, and I found that ironic. I mean, why turn yourself in? You have about 90,000 dollars in 1940's money (1.2 million dollars today), could live wherever you want in the United States, buy whatever car you want, and have a cover story and fake identity crafted for you.

In the middle of the book, it showed pictures of the Saboteurs in court, and an artists sketching of one of them being put in the electric chair. I am torn over if capital punishment was the right decision to make. They didn't carry out their mission, but they were here on the wrong pretense. If the government just wanted to set a point by killing them, in my opinion, it was the wrong decision. The way that the FBI found the men was because their leader had walked in on his own and spilled everything. The book even said that the FBI probably would not have found any of them if it hadn't been for Dasch. He believed that he would make it off with less of a punishment if he turned himself in. Now, future saboteurs would have to be stupid to turn themselves in.

Capital punishment was not the only mistake that I believe was made during the fiasco. Mr. Hoover, the director of the FBI, was eager to announce to the public that the FBI had cracked the case, before the credit went to another government agency, such as the Coast Guard. If the FBI wanted to achieve a real victory, they would have kept the whole incident very quiet, and started to feed fake information to the Nazis. That would really be a victory worthy of praise.