I haven't finished reading this book yet, but so far this is what happened:
A group of about 10 German men that immigrated back to Germany from America when the Nazis came to power are hand picked by the Nazi officials to take part in a sabotage mission against The United States. The men all go to a small lakeside home in the countryside of Germany. Two of the most important men are George John Davis and Ernest Peter Burger.
During about two months of training on various tactics of sabotage, such as writing in code, creating homemade bombs, and creating alias for themselves, the men gradually become masters of all of the characteristics required. The Nazi government creates fake birth certificates and gives each of the men about $90,000. From the small cottage in Germany, they are taken to Paris, and from there split into two groups. One group will take a German U-boat to Long Island to sabotage in the northeastern part of the country and the other group will take a different U-boat down the Florida, to sabotage things in the southern part of the country until the two groups of men meet up in Chicago, where there is a large population of German immigrants and strong support for the Nazi cause.
The book so far has largely focused on the group that went to Long Island.
When the group that was supposed to land on Long Island landed at about 1 am, the men quickly rowed to shore on a rubber dinghy. When they landed, they were dressed in German military uniforms, to avoid being tried as spies, which, if convicted, could get them executed.
The men quickly changed into civilian clothes, and to their dismay, found that there was a man holding a flashlight walking towards them. The leader of the group, Dasch, bribes the man with 260 dollars, and they get on their way to a train station. The men hide in bushes and change into civilian clothes.
The men get on a train that takes them to Queens, where they change out of their old clothes into more American clothes, and agree to meet up in Macys basement by 3 o'clock that afternoon, when most of the people in the city would be at a large military parade.
Many of the men go on a wild spending spree with the 90,000 dollars that the Nazi's supplied to them, buying things that where hard to come by in Germany, but easily accessible in America.
Skipping ahead, the two group leaders, Dasch and Burger become unsatisfied with their assignment to blow up factories in America. Dasch calls the FBI and tries to arrange an appointment with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in Washington to discuss the Nazi sabotage operation. He heads off to Washington, fearing that if he went to the FBI headquarters in New York, the Gestapo would be waiting for him, as rumors were circulating that it was under observation by the German secret police. Burger was instructed to keep the other saboteurs busy while Dasch was gone.
When Dasch arrives in Washington, he does not get to speak with Mr. Hoover, but was directed to the head of the Anti- Sabotage unit.
After days of talking, and over 250 pages of single spaced records of what each of them had said, the two men were on very good terms with eachother. The FBI Anti- Sabotage director was almost sure that this man was the man that a Coast Guards Men had reported seeing on a beach in the early hours of the morning a few days ago, and had tried to bribe him. The FBI director was trying to keep Dasch talking until he could confirm that this was his man.
Reading this, it made me realize that we really haven't learned from our mistakes in the past. The problem in this book that allowed the saboteurs to enter the country was that too many government agencies were involved in keeping the country safe, and communication between them was not the best. The Navy combatted the enemy at sea, the Coast Guard controlled the beaches, the Air Force combatted the enemy in the air, and the FBI was in charge of protecting the country's interior.
In a similar case today, two different government agencies are in control of regulating your meal. Eggs that are taken from a farm are controlled by one government agency, and cooked and prepared eggs are controlled by another agency. The different agencies normally have tensions that run high, and causes one not to report problems to the other.
No comments:
Post a Comment