If you haven't been able to guess it from my blog posts, I read a lot of military history. I like "connecting the dots" between various milestones in US history and I also like a good story. Such as this....
"Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America" tells the ill fated journey of two groups of German spies sent to wreak havoc on America's light metal industry. The year was 1942. Up to now, the Germans seemed unbeatable. They owned most of Europe and North Africa and Germans were rolling back the Red Army en route to Moscow, Stalingrad and Leningrad. As the year progressed the Wehrmacht got bogged down in the rains and snows of the Russian interior and soon the tide began to turn. To the west, after the dust had settled in Pearl Harbor, the American industrial might began to double down and crank out various stuffs needed to fight the bad guys. Hitler and the German leadership knew that America's strength was its capability to produce materiel en masse. The Abwehr, the clandestine German intelligence group (think CIA), decided to train German-Americans and American born Germans how to write in code, evade the enemy and construct bombs for use against the American industrial juggernaut; including railroad tracks, waterways and factories - all in an effort to curtail the production of light metal. After intense schooling and training, two U-Boats made the hair-raising journey across the Atlantic and dropped off their respective teams in Long Island and in Florida. Each group successfully made it to shore but soon thereafter the trouble began. Two of the Long Island conspirators never intended to carry out their plot. Instead they desired to turn themselves into American forces and help the red, white and blue defeat Naziism in Germany. One wanted to run the American propaganda campaign against the Germans, since he hadn't necessarily agreed with America's view of the German citizen (in short - the German people weren't bad, it was the government). In fact, with the exception of a few conspirators most of them were luke warm about carrying out their attacks. Many wanted to simply get away from war torn Europe, meet old flings, buy nice suits, eat big steaks (all with Nazi acquired US dollars) and forget about the war. The book outlines the rivalry and the bureaucratic infighting between Hoover and his FBI and the various armed services while painting a vivid picture of what life was like in America during the war. Although the book traces their route and the cloak and dagger skulduggery that followed, a main point in the book focused on how the conspirators should be treated. Instead of offering the two turncoats asylum, the US Government put them on trial alongside the other 6 co-conspirators, which is a shame since they were responsible for stopping a number of potentially deadly/devastating attacks here on the home front. The book raises several questions about how "civilian" (read - non-uniformed) invaders should be tried, which is also topical nowadays. The good news is that the two turncoat spies were eventually let go from prison (by Truman) whereas the other 6 spies were electrocuted quickly after their "trial". Their bodies were dumped in a graveyard for unclaimed corpses at the southern most edge of Washington DC.
More on the operation HERE
An update on running, the injury and a hike trek soonest...
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