Long Lines
There have been several references in US and
Russian sources....that Germans used spies
pretending to be.... MPs and commissars who
spoke (the) local language...to mislead and
misdirect allied troops.
any such person caught....would be immediately
shot as a spy ....saboteurs are usually executed
summarily as well.
True. A somewhat similar incident occurred in the
U.S. in 1942. The activities of spies and saboteurs
often overlapped. Some such persons could be
both.
In June of 1942, eight German spy/saboteurs
in two groups of four each were put ashore by two
submarines, one in New York and one in Florida,
The twin landings were part of a single German effort
known as "Operation Pastorious"
One group of four landed from submarine
U-202 in a small rubber raft off Amagansett, Long I
Island, N.Y, on the night of June 13, 1942. Four
nights later, the other group were similarly off-loaded
from submarine U-584 at Ponta Vedra, Florida, a small
vacation resort south of Jacksonville.
One man in each group was a U.S. citizen by
naturalization. All had spent some time as residents in
the U.S. and were chosen for their familiarity with the
U.S. language, culture, and geographic layout. All had
been members of or were sympathetic with the objectives
of the German American Bund, loyal to the Fatherland,
and had returned to Germany before the war. They were
thus ideal for German Intelligence which recruited and
trained them at the Quentz Lake sabotage school outside
of Berlin.
The two groups had been furnished with a list
of resident German-American agents of the Nazis in the
U.S. They had also been given a list of numerous target
facilities in the U.S. which, if destroyed or damaged could
have harmed the American war effort,
Both groups landed successfully and managed
to elude detection. They were both able to work their way
inland toward their objectives when one of the group got
cold feet and alerted the FBI. He also helped the FBI to
locate and round up the others. All were in custody within
two weeks of the landings.
There is much more interesting detail about
"Operation Pastorious" but to sum up, FDR issued an
Executive Order authorizing their trial by military court.
The Executive Order was challenged before the Supreme
Court as "unconsitutional" by defense lawyers but in a
unanimous decision the High Court ruled that the military
court was legal, the decision, delivered by Chief Justice
Harlan Stone saying in part that ""....such enemies became
unlawful belligerents..."
The military court started on July 8, 1942 only 11
days after all of the "Pastorious Eight" had been rounded
up by the FBI. The trial took only 27 days and ended on
August 4, 1942. All 8 saboteurs were found guilty. Six
were executed by electric chair, one received life
imprisonment and one received a 30 year sentence.
Three years after the war was over, the two who
were not executed were both deported to Germany.
WJH.