“Frank Collins, sir,” he lied again—now even more nervous after hearing the man say his name. Why is he telling me these things? he thought.
Cullen slowly took a step back. Then another. And another. After a few more paces the man had disappeared into the fog.
Cullen ran.
New York City
Saturday, June 13, 1942
7:30 P.M.
The Governor Clinton Hotel was among New York’s ritziest, and its restaurant, the Coral Room, among the city’s most elegant. As George sat down for dinner, he thought of all the other times he’d been in places like this, as a waiter, never as a customer. Now, far from his old life, and far from the scarcity of war-torn Germany, George sat in the Coral Room with a fine linen napkin across his lap and eighty thousand dollars in cash strapped around his waist. It was more money than the president of the United States made in a year.
After his encounter with the boy from the Coast Guard this morning, George and his three teammates—Peter Burger, Richard Quirin, and Henry Heinck—had found their way to the Amagansett train station. There they’d boarded an early morning Long Island Rail Road train headed for Queens. George and Peter had checked into the Governor Clinton while suggesting to the team’s other two members that it would be safer if they found a different hotel.
Across the table was Peter Burger, a toolmaker by trade. But neither Pete nor George looked liked a tradesman tonight. After treating themselves to a shave and a shopping spree in Queens, they’d made it to Manhattan and headed straight for Macy’s. There they bought more shirts, trousers, underwear, ties, handkerchiefs, and suits—plus new watches and three suitcases to carry it all in.
George was smart enough to know that shopping sprees and steak dinners were not exactly the best way to stay inconspicuous—but at that moment he didn’t really care. This was a celebration. After all, they’d somehow convinced their own government not only to let them leave the country, but to send them back on their own private U-boats.
“My sister’s father-in-law was seventy-three, a fine man,” George said to Peter once they’d finished talking about their early morning escape. “The Nazis threw him into a concentration camp. Nine months. Because he was too Catholic. While he was in there, his wife died.”
Pete, perhaps buoyed by the wine, perhaps emboldened by George’s criticism of the Nazis, talked about his own seventeen months in prison. How he’d written a paper critical of the Gestapo. How he’d been held with sixty other prisoners in a windowless cell. And how his pregnant wife had been harassed, pressured to divorce him, and shaken down by the Gestapo. When she miscarried, Pete knew whom to blame.
“I have a lot to talk to you about,” George said. It was, by any measure, an understatement.
“I know what you are going to tell me,” said Pete. “I am quite sure that our intentions are very similar.”
George looked around. He badly wanted to talk with Peter now—but there were too many people sitting around them, too many prying ears. George knew that he’d been sloppy up until this point—he was an untrained, unmotivated, unsympathetic German. His carelessness and erratic nature were among the reasons he’d failed in most of his professional pursuits, none of which—from waiting tables, to clerking at a soda fountain, to managing a brothel—had prepared him for international espionage.
But he would not be sloppy anymore. He didn’t care about his mission, but he had no idea if the Nazis had sent others to watch him and his team. Be patient, George told himself.
“In the morning,” he said.
New York City
Sunday, June 14, 1942
8:30 A.M.
“I want the truth, nothing else—regardless of what it is,” George said. Looking Pete in the eye, pointing to the window across the hotel room, he added, “If we can’t agree, either I go out the window or you do.”
“There is no need for that. I think we feel very much the same,” Pete replied. “Let’s get on with it.”
But George was in no hurry. Instead of getting right to the reason the two of them were there, he instead started telling Pete about his life.
He explained how he’d left Germany in 1922 at age nineteen for America. That another nineteen years later he’d retreated back to his home country, looking for a new start.
He knew almost instantly that it had been a mistake. It was 1941 and, as George explained, “There was too much terror and too much want, not enough food and not enough fun.”
His next stop was the Farm—and then right back here, to America.
Pete told a story not altogether different: a childhood in Germany, an emigration to America, and a return home that he quickly regretted. “I never intended to carry out the orders,” he said, beginning to cry. “And when I got to the beach yesterday, I started sabotaging the mission right away.”
“When you were talking with the Coast Guardsman, I dropped a pack of German cigarettes,” Pete continued, “and a vest. And some socks and swimming trunks. Then I dragged the crates of TNT along the beach. I could have carried them. They were light enough. But I knew dragging them would leave marks leading right to where we buried them. The fog obscured what I was doing from the others—they had no idea.”
Smiling, and sure he’d found an ally, George gripped Pete’s shoulder with his trembling hand. “Kid, I think God brought us together. We are going to make a great team.”
New York City
Sunday, June 14, 1942
7:51 P.M.
The FBI received a lot of phone calls. Some of them were taken seriously, and the rest were routed to an agent who sat at a “nutter’s desk.”
“Can you spell that, sir?” asked the agent who was, at the moment, listening to a caller who claimed to have arrived from Germany the prior morning.
“Franz. F-R-A-N-Z. Daniel. D-A-N-I-E-L. Pastorius. P-A-S-T-O-R-I-U-S.”
The agent wrote down “Postorius.”
“And what type of information do you want to give?”
He told the agent that he would be traveling to Washington to report something “big.” Once there, he wanted to speak directly to J. Edgar Hoover. “He is the person who should hear it first.”
“Mr. Hoover is a busy man—”
“Take down this message,” the caller demanded. “I, Franz Daniel Pastorius, shall try to get in touch with your Washington office this coming week, either Thursday or Friday, and you should notify the Washington office of this fact.”
Before hanging up, George added, “Tell them I am about forty years old, and have a streak of silver in my hair.”
From the nutter’s desk, the FBI agent typed a memo for the file. Neither it, nor George’s message, ever left New York.
Washington, D.C.
Friday, June 19, to Wednesday, June 24, 1942
It was Friday morning when George dialed the operator at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C. His message to the FBI may not have made it to the capital, but he had. “Room service, please.”
Peter Burger knew that George was in D.C. to turn himself in to the FBI and expose the entire operation, but the other two team members had no idea. Peter had told them that George was leaving New York for a few days to get in touch with some Nazi sympathizers living in America, hopeful that they could help with logistics.
George was finally beginning to feel like himself again. It had been a long time. But now, between the great food, seeing old friends, and playing marathon games of pinochle, he was starting to realize that his future was bright. His next step, which would be to explain the entire German plot to the American government, would finally set him free.
George had spent a lot of time over the past few days thinking about what he’d do with his life once the Americans had labeled him a hero. Maybe he could help the U.S. war effort by improving their propaganda. Or maybe the government would have its own ideas. Whatever the case, as long as he was helping to bring down the Nazis, he’d be happy.
Picking up the phone to call the F
BI, George had a moment of doubt—not about whether to call, but about whom to call. It suddenly occurred to him that maybe the Secret Service was the proper agency. Unsure, he dialed the U.S. Government Information Service and told the woman who answered that he had “a statement of military as well as political value.” She suggested trying the colonel in charge of Military Intelligence at the War Department. George hung up, called the colonel, and left a message.
Undeterred, and in something of a hurry for a change, George reverted to his original plan: He called the FBI and asked to speak to J. Edgar Hoover.
The operator transferred him to a second office; which sent him to a third office. That office connected him to Duane Traynor, the agent in charge of the FBI’s anti-sabotage unit.
If George couldn’t talk directly to Hoover, he figured Traynor would have to do. “Did New York tell you I was on my way?”
Of course, New York had not told him anything. But, intrigued, Traynor sent a car to the Mayflower to pick George up and bring him in. While he waited, George wrote a letter to Pete:
Got safely into town last night and contacted the responsible parties. At present I’m waiting to be brought over to the right man by one of his agents. I had a good night’s rest, feel fine physically as well as mentally and believe that I will accomplish the part of our participation. It will take lots of time and talking but please don’t worry, have faith and courage. I try hard to do the right thing.
After arriving at the Justice Department, George sat down with Agent Traynor. “I have a long story to tell,” he said, “but I want to tell it my own way.”
For twelve hours, George told Traynor about the Farm and the U-boats, about the second team sent to Florida and about the targets they were ordered to hit. Of course, he also treated Traynor to a healthy dose of his life story as a team of six stenographers worked in one-hour shifts to record every word that came out of his mouth. Finally, perhaps for the first time in his life, George had a receptive audience willing to sit and listen to anything that popped into his head.
As midnight approached, George was beginning to lose his voice. Accompanied by Traynor, he returned to the Mayflower, where the FBI agent slept in a spare bed. It was all going according to plan, George thought. It was exciting. And even though it was exhausting, and a little scary, he was having fun. It felt good to be a hero.
On Saturday, Traynor asked, “Is there any way you can get in touch with the leader of the other group?”
“Well, yes,” George said. “I had him write the name of somebody on a handkerchief.” If they found that man whose name was on the handkerchief—a friend of the other group’s leader, Edward Kerling—they would probably find Edward himself.
George reached into his pocket and took out the handkerchief. It was blank. “Well, how do you develop it?” asked Traynor.
“I can’t remember.” George paused, squeezed his eyes, and put his index finger to the top of nose, thinking hard. “You use some kind of smelly stuff.”
A day later, the name of the “smelly stuff” finally came to George. “Ammonia!” he exclaimed. “I passed the handkerchief over a bottle of ammonia. It shows red until it dries. You read it slowly and then it goes away again.”
• • •
Four days later George signed each of the 254 single-spaced typewritten pages that made up his statement. “My mind is all upside down,” he told Traynor, but George expected the next steps to be much easier: a prominent government job helping in the fight against Hitler. At the very least he’d keep the eighty thousand dollars and start a new life.
But after six days of talking and thinking about all of the places where this new life might lead him, George had never stopped to consider the one place that it actually would: prison.
Washington, D.C.
Monday, June 22, 1942
“Take this down,” J. Edgar Hoover told his secretary. “To President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Regarding Nazi spies. The FBI has apprehended all members of the group which landed on Long Island. They are being held secretly and incommunicado. I have taken detailed statements from each of the persons arrested and the story is a startling and shocking one. Long and extensive training is being given by the German authorities to specially selected men who in turn are being placed on board German submarines to be landed on the shores of the United States. I expect to be able to have in custody all members of the second group.”
Hoover hadn’t risen to the top of the FBI—and stayed there—by sharing credit. Almost every sentence in his memo included the word I. Not once did it mention that George Dasch had turned himself in or that his initial call to the New York field office had been referred to the “nutter’s desk.”
Washington, D.C.
Thursday, June 25, 1942
A few minutes past noon on June 25, Duane Traynor explained to George Dasch that he was under arrest and that he would be stripped of his personal belongings, from his gold watch to his eighty thousand dollars. And that he would be spending the night in jail.
Recording the saboteurs’ every move, a jailer noted in an official logbook: “G. Dasch. Urinated at 11:40 p.m. Appears a little depressed.”
New York City
Saturday, June 27, to Sunday, June 28, 1942
“I have a very important statement to make,” Director Hoover told the reporters he’d assembled in the FBI’s New York office. “I want you to listen carefully; this is a serious business.”
The next morning, Hoover picked up the Sunday edition of the New York Times and cracked a rare smile. The headline was huge; it was as big as the headline that had announced the attack on Pearl Harbor: “FBI SEIZES 8 SABOTEURS LANDED BY U-BOATS.”
“Before the men could begin carrying out their orders,” reported the Times, “the FBI was on their trail and the round-up began. One after another, they fell into the special agents’ nets.”
The story was perfect. Hoover only needed to make sure the public never heard the truth from George John Dasch.
Hyde Park, Washington, D.C.
Saturday, June 27, to Tuesday, June 30, 1942
Smiles were rare for J. Edgar Hoover. But not for Franklin Roosevelt. Along with his cigarette holder and fireside chats, his smile was something of a trademark. And for one of the first times since the war began, the president had a lot to smile about.
“Eight spies and one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars in cash,” Attorney General Francis Biddle called Hyde Park to report.
The president loved a good spy story. And a good joke.
“Not enough, Francis,” he said. “Let’s make real money out of them. Sell the rights to Barnum and Bailey for a million and a half—the rights to take them around the country in lion cages at so much a head.”
Biddle was sure he was kidding, but the memo FDR dictated to him three days later was no joke. “The two American citizens,” said Roosevelt—referring to Herbie Haupt, who was a naturalized citizen, and to Burger, whose American citizenship was questionable—“are guilty of high treason. This being wartime, it is my inclination to try them by court martial.” Not that a trial, in Roosevelt’s mind, was necessary to determine their guilt.
“I do not see how they can offer any adequate defense. Surely they are just as guilty as it is possible to be and it seems to me that the death penalty is almost obligatory.”
In that regard, the American people, regardless of their politics, were in complete agreement. An editorial by the Detroit Free Press read, “Realism calls for a stone wall and a firing squad, and not a holier-than-thou eyewash about extending the protection of civil rights to a group that came among us to blast, burn, and kill.”
Others were more succinct. “Shoot them,” said the New Orleans State. “Give them death,” demanded the El Paso Times. The New York Times reported that “Americans want to hear the roar of rifles in the hands of a firing squad.” And LIFE magazine’s headline bluntly declared, “The Eight Nazi Spies Should Die.”
Moving on to the ??
?six who I take it are German citizens,” Roosevelt said, “They were apprehended in civilian clothes. This is an absolute parallel of the case of Major Andre in the Revolution and of Nathan Hale. Both of them were hanged.”
The president, impatient with civil liberties even in peacetime, was not about to deny America “the roar of rifles in the hands of a firing squad” that so many demanded. Americans were sacrificing their lives and loved ones in a war for the nation’s survival—a war that was not going well. The navy was waging a war on two oceans with just half the fleet that had been sailing on December 6, 1941. General MacArthur, the country’s most beloved general, was trapped in the Philippines, his invincibility shattered, his army starving. Americans deserve a victory, Roosevelt thought.
And he was going to give it to them.
“Here again it is my inclination that they be tried by court martial as were Andre and Hale. Without splitting hairs, I can see no difference.”
Of course, Roosevelt knew that the Supreme Court might try to interfere and decide the case belonged in a civil court. What would he do if the men in black robes said the Constitution required a trial by jury, guilt beyond reasonable doubt, individual counsel for every defendant, the right to exclude coerced confessions, and a sentence in accord with civil laws? After all, under civil law, their sentences would likely not exceed two years in prison.
Roosevelt wouldn’t hear of it. “I want one thing clearly understood, Francis,” he told Biddle. “I won’t give them up. I won’t hand them over to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus. Understand?”
Biddle nodded, thinking that the president, though never boring, could be a bit boorish.
United States Department of Justice
Washington, D.C.
Wednesday, July 8, 1942
Unsure how his plan had gone so wrong, and unclear about why he was even under arrest, George was once again on his way to the Justice Department. But this time, his ride to the corner of Ninth and Constitution did not begin at the Mayflower, and what awaited him was not a tribe of stenographers hanging on his every word but a military commission—a tribunal of seven officers who would decide whether he lived or died.