Selects: The Time Nazis Invaded Florida

to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there. This is stuff you should no. Okay, ready for this. I'm ready. We're gonna channel our stuff you missed in history class. Yeah. I'm not sure if they've done this or not. Have you are you? I don't know, So, Chuck, I don't know if you know this one because it didn't come up in this article. But back in World War Two, did you know that the Japanese actually carried out bombing campaigns, two of them

in Oregon? I didn't know that, Oh you did. I'm a bit of a buff and that insane. Yeah. I mean there's a lot of forgotten history or a little known history that you read it in. Thank God for like the Internet, because someone will post an article and say, I bet you never knew this, yeah, and then you're like, what, Yeah, that's pretty much the function of the Internet what you

just describe, you know. Sure, So this one, I think I've learned about this from unsurprisingly Uncle John's Bathroom Reader years and years and years ago. Oh yeah, but definitely not in this kind of detail. It turns out that in World War Two, in nineteen forty two, I believe in Armagansett, New York, which is on Long Island, and ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, which is just south of Jacksonville. Yeah. Um, Nazi saboteurs landed, they invaded America. Yeah, pretty remarkable, it

really is. What's even more remarkable is how badly their operations went. Yeah. What's remarkable is well, not remarkable, what's uh. Thankfully they chose a bunch of dopes, um, half hearted dope, half hearted dopes who I don't know if they didn't do their research. We'll get into how they picked these these schmows. Yeah, but um, it didn't go so well, I really did. But if they had to pick them like the right guys, it might have been a whole

different story. Oh yeah, totally in this war and the FBI, especially Jager Hoover, really lucked out that these guys were half hearted dope. Well not if you ask him. No, it was just you might as well have worn a cape around the office. Yeah, you know, well he may have a little else. So back in World War two, even before World War Tour, before the US centered the Second World War, Hitler had this great fantasy of sending New York City up in flames, like he really wanted

to just destroy New York. And Werner von Braun, the guy who helped get America to the Moon, was working on a rocket program that could strike the United States from Europe. That was one thing never fully realized because the war came to an end before they could develop the right kind of missile. But they were working on it, yea. And they were also working on long range bombers they could fly out of Europe all the way to America's

east coast and bomb. Yeah. Apparently Hitler used to literally sit around and watch like film footage of cities burning and like fantasizes about New York City. Crazy. Yeah, well he was pretty crazy, sure, but he finally realized that, like, if he was going to get New York, the best, most efficient, most at hand way to do that was to send saboteurs into the United States to infiltrate and

do New York themselves. That's right, you know, terrorists essentially. Well, yeah, the only thing that kept him from being considered full fledge just straight up terrorists is because we were formally at war with this country. So yeah, they were. They were considered officially spies and unofficially saboteurs. Yes. Uh, should we shout out the articles here? Yes, let's right off the bat. I read, well, I read a few. I

read one on Damned Interesting, which was good. There was one you sent called World War two German saboteurs invade America in nineteen forty two. Yeah, that was on history Net. History Net, and I feel like there was one more. There was a Der Spiegel article. Oh yeah, that's one of um called Operation from Pastorious Hitler's unfulfilled dream of the New York in flames. Yeah, poor Hitler, I know his dreams failed. So uh, World War two hadn't been

raging for long for the US when this happened. It was right after Pearl Harbor was bombed, and Hitler said, you know what, they think they're over there, They're a long way from us, so they probably feel pretty pretty safe. So let me undermine that and let me devise this plan. And it was originally going to be a wave of

saboteurs like every you know, four to six weeks. They were going to be sending in small teams of terrorists slash spies to wreak havoc on the US, and thankfully it didn't work out that way, so it was kind of scrapped. Yeah, the the ob fair, I think that's how you pronounce it. You're the one who knows German up fair, Is that right? Yeah? So that was the UM the basically the sabotage unit of the German Military

Intelligence Corps. And these guys had kind of perfected their craft with explosives and terrorism and all that jazz, yeah, in European theaters already in the war. And so they set up a school, a terrorist school, which supposedly these guys were trained in like jiu jitsu as well as explosives, and stuff like that. Yeah, and I'll bet it looked a lot like um enter the dragon in there, but with Germans, you know. Yeah. I wonder if they were training kung fu school on an island somewhere, but this

is in the woods. I wonder if they in the Black forest perhaps, Yeah, I wonder if they were trained in pinuckle and movie watching and car buying. I think that just came naturally and rolling over and singing like a canary. So the ab there selected a man. His

name was Walter Kapp or is that Cappy? Walter Kopp what Walter Kapp, who was a pudgy, bull necked man has described in the history article and the reason that they selected him to head up this operation, which Cap came to nickname his Operation Pastorius, which is named after Francis Daniel Pastorius, one of the early German immigrants to the United States who arrived in Philadelphia in sixteen eighty three.

The reason they selected Cap for this operation was because he had lived in America for twelve years already, so he was was he understood America, how it functioned, what targets should be struck, that kind of stuff, And they said, select your teams yeah, and so he put a donkey on the wall and got a tale with a little pin on it. Right. Now, what he did was he did some research and he went through the records of

something called the Auslin Institute. Yea, and they were big on getting Germans back to Germany, right, ones that had

emigrated to the United States work out. Yeah, okay, So specifically the ones who were looking he was looking for ones who had been in the United States, yeah, in this case, and a lot of these people had been in what was called the boond or is it the bund I would say, it's a booned, the American boond, which is like the basically the Nazi sympathizers in the United States, right, And they would set up little shops

all over the country. Yeah, and they would speak out against m. Franklin Roosevelt or speak in favor of fascism. And apparently they managed to get twenty thousand people at a rally at Madison Square Garden once by holding a Knicks game. Pretty much, I don't think the Knicks could even get twenty thousand people that come out in Madison Square. But they were so unpredictable and radical here in the United states that even the Nazi Party officially distanced itself

from these guys. Yeah, officially. Unofficially they recruited from their ranks specifically for Operation Pestorious. Yeah, so what he found some some blue collar dudes. All but two of them had been Nazi Party members, which was a good start. Ford dropped off right off the bat, and that left him with what would be eight dudes, which they divided up into two teams of four, one leader on each side and the three dopes below them, with Cap at

the head of the whole thing. Yeah, even though he didn't come over to the United States for the operation, he was just sort of running the training initially. Yeah, and he was watching him do jiu jitsu, I guess. So so here in the hilarious Germans doing jiu jitsu in that really I don't think so. It just seems a little like, you know, neighborhood ninja camp kind of stuff. You know, Well, they had to train in some sort of hand to hand combat. Now they're saboteurs. They're not.

They don't need to know that they're not. They're supposed to know how to blow up a bridge. Yeah, but what if like it caught in the middle, they got to like turn and run away jiu jitsu somebody down. Now, you just run if you're a saboteur. Well that's some foreshadowing right there. So I hear the players on one on Team one, we'll call it Team US. How about that? Is that one? Sure? Okay? On Team eints, you had the leader, George John Dash and he was thirty nine.

He was the oldest guy and he I know, thirty nine, and he was picked because he was he was a smooth talker, and he was apparently just seemed very American, which was if you're gonna stick some Germans over there to to be saboteurs, it's probably good if they can pass themselves off as just regular good German Americans. Right. Plus also you have the added benefit of not having to teach them to speak colloquial English. Sure, um, and they already know the terrain, they know the culture. Where's

Coney Island? Right? Ivanta hotdog? Exactly? Yeah? So they were all good, right? Yeah? Was that Count Dracula? Oh no, that was that was my German sabatur. So that's why they went with the guys who had already spent time in America. Plus they it also showed, um, a pretty significant loyalty to your homeland, the fatherland in this case. Yeah, where when war breaks out, you go back to where the war is being fought. Sure supported, Yeah, you know

what I mean. Yeah, so they're like selecting from the Ostlands Institute roles of emigrants who were also boond members. It seemed like a a just a knock it out of the park group of guys. Yeah. So, um, josh, he was. He actually did, like you said, served in the German Army in World War One, came to America, worked as a waiter, and then in nineteen thirty nine said, you know what duty calls, I'm going back home. The

second guy on the first team, Ernest peter Berger. He was supposedly a smart guy, and he had an interesting story because he was he had long been a Nazi, since they said, as you know, as long as Hitler himself had been a Nazi. Yeah, he was part of the beer hall push. Yeah, he was a what you call as early adopter. He was a Nazism. Yeah, he really was. And he actually had fled Germany for the United States because he was afraid he was gonna get

brought up on brawling charges. That's right. He liked to fight. Yeah, And he stayed there for about six years and then worked as a machinist in the Midwest, even joined the National Guard, the US National Guard, yeah, and became an American citizen yep. And then he went back after Hitler game power. Right. Well, he went back mainly because of the Great Depression, because oh is that right? Yeah, but

I mean it coincided. But he was like, yeah, this place stinks now, yeah, and Hitler's in power, I'm gonna go become a brown Shirt and rough up people on the street, which is what he did pretty much because he really did love to fight. And the brown Shirts were purged in the Night of the Long Knives by Hitler and his cronies. Yeah, and um Burger was it was Burger right. Yeah. He managed to not be killed during that purge. Yeah. So he was working with his

buddy um Ernst room of the Stormtroopers like serious business. Right. Rome was actually killed during the purge. Oh yeah, they put apparently they put a pistol in his cell with him and gave him ten minutes to kill himself. Yeah, and he said, if if you want me dead, Adolph's gonna have to do it himself. And they came back and he was staying there, right, and Hitler's like, what is going on here? Um? And the guy was standing there with the shirt off, with his chest beard to him.

Yeah supposedly, and they just shot him in the chess point blank. Yeah. And the head of the brown shoots went down. So that didn't work out for him, No, But Burger did survive this. Yeah, he did survive and went off to college. But then he wrote a a paper about the Gestapo that was not too favorable and he got sent to a concentration camp for his efforts for seventeen months. Right, And then when he was released, they said you can come out, but you have to

go off with the army. Yeah, they harassed his wife. It was I don't know that he was the best pick right now that I think we've antagonized, yea, put thrown in prison and then forced into the army. Sure

we also killed his boss, Yeah, harassed his wife. We'll trust him as a sabbitude as a team of one of eight, right, so Burger is the right hand man to dash his team on team team mites e I n z e I n z okay, and then there were other There were two other dudes, Heinrich heink right, it's a great name, and Richard queerin Yes, And they were a couple of machinists who, um, were a couple of machinists. They've been in America for a while, came

back and and we're selected for this team. Yeah. Basically they went back to Germany started working at Volkswagen and um, you know, I guess we're probably eager to leap on a top secret job like this. It's probably appealing to these guys, you know. So that was Team ICE. We'll talk about Team It's yeah, right after this, you know, so Chuck tell us about the smiling faces on TEAMSVI, well, Josh. Teams FY was led by a man named Edward Curling or Edward. I guess who is I take it as

the only competent person in this entire mission. Yeah, he seemed like it, right, kind of a little more than the rest. Yeah, comparatively speaking, he seemed like a criminal genius. Yeah, that's a good point. So he was also one of had gone to America in nineteen twenty nine to work, married a German woman there and then they worked together as butler butler and cook for a little while, and then he said, you know what, I don't like you anymore.

I think I wanted an American woman. So he did that, and then when the war broke out, he tried to sail to Germany. Right, So I'm not sure if he was a mastermind either, now that they think about it. Well, he showed a lot of initiative. Well, good point, and he was turned back by the coast Guard. But he finally made it to Germany in nineteen forty and he ended up working at the Ministry of Propaganda. Yeah, I

guess with Girdels huh. Yeah, sure. And when he tried to sail to Germany that one time, he actually had a guy with him named um, was it Hermbert new Bauer. I believe I was a new Bauer on his boat. Yeah, he was on that crew, and so he would have been turned back as well. So he was a natural fit, right, and he knew each other and Curling actually recommended Herman Neubauer to be part of the team. He's like, he can hoist a sail. Yeah, what else do you need

to know? He was in the boond who Cares that was the youngest member of his crew at twenty two was Herbert helped and he moved to the US when he was just five years old. And so I don't know that he was a great choice because he was practically American. Yeah, and you know he was also not so smart, or put it this way, experienced. He was not experienced, right, A little, a little green, a little

wept behind the ears. And then the last guy, Werner Thiele, he surprised surprise as a member of the boond and he was working in a war plant. So just this weird hodgepodge rag tag group of guys were selected. Only two people well out of the whole original twelve or had been in the military. Yeah, this sounds like a movie in the making. Oh yeah, but it just if it would have had a great third act, it probably would already be a movie. Oh yeah, you know what

I'm saying. Yeah, it is lacking a third act. I imagine like when if someone had tried to develop this or like, this sounds great so far, it's going great, and then oh that's how it ends. Yeah, shelf it. Yeah, so these guys are put together, they're sent to the obver school, Yeah, to learn jiu jitsu, and the oldest guy, George Dash is like low kick, low kick, oh my hip,

yeah you know. Yeah. They were also studying like explosive techniques and right wiring, not just explosive jiu jitsu technique, right, but real explosive right yeah, wiring, detonation timers, all of this stuff. They got to go on field trips to power plants and bridges and canals and see like where the weak points were. And all of this took place over an intensive eighteen days of training. That's it. They

got eighteen days of training. Yeah, and apparently Josh, the leader of Team EZ, wasn't even I read one account this said he basically kind of snoozed through most of it, which would go on to explain a few things later. It's hilarious. Yeah, eighteen days and you can't even stay awake to learn how to blow something up. Seriously, all right. On May twenty third, they were given their assignment and these were I mean, this was pretty smart. The assignments were.

They had a good they had a good plan in place, small teams of dudes. Josh's team was assigned to destroy quite a few things hydroelectric plants at Niagara Falls makes sense. The Aluminum Company of America, the factory in Illinois, Tennessee, New York. Yeah, three plants, and the Philadelphia Sault Company's crylite plant, which apparently supplies raw materials for aluminum. Right.

And the reason they wanted to go after aluminum was because aluminum production in the United States, that output was greater than all of Europe's both sides access hands or no, I'm sorry. All of the axis is aluminum production put together. And aluminium is a very very valuable thing. During war. You used to make aircraft frames. You use it to make the interiors of ships. Apparently you use it for everything from like MRIs like the field ration, tin hands

or well not tin cans, aluminum can. Yeah, but all of the stuff comes in handy and wheels. If you can sure pinwheels like the good ones. Yeah, if you put those, man, you can cut your finger off with one of those things. Yeah. If you can cripple aluminum production, you can put a serious thing in the wartime effort. Yeah, it was. It was a smart play. And then they are also told to bomb locks on the Ohio River between Louisville Kentucky and Pittsburgh. Yes, so disrupting transportation, sure,

that would have been a huge deal. They would just strap a bomb a pack mule that was supposed to be pulling a boat along the canal and kaboom. So that's team mines. Yeah, team spy curling steam. They said, all right, you guys, we want you to concentrate on railroads because we saw during the American Civil War destroying railroads is a great way to crippling army. Sure, they blew. And I don't think that's where they got the idea. You know, it's long been a wartime thing to destroy railroads.

I see Pennsylvania Railroad station at Newark, right, the Horseshoe Bend section of railroad track near Altoona, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad parts of it, the New York Central Railroads, hell Gate Bridge locks and canals, and Saint Louis Cincinnati, Ohio, and the water supply system of New York right. And they were also told to carry out acts of general

terrorism to scare people in general. Yeah, bombing Jewish own department stores, UM locker rooms at um train stations, just basically just foment like real fear and make Americans feel like, wow, America is being struck. Yeah, we're vulnerable, right, um. And so the guy said, okay, let's do this, and they they they shipped out on two different subs from Lorient France.

U boats baby, this is Germany. Yeah, okayts U boats yeah. Um. They left on U five eighty four and U two O two and um they had each team had four boxes, three of like dynamite and other explosives, and then a fourth box of things like timers and um, detonators and wiring and all that stuff. Sausages sure, just in case they got a little hungry on the trail. Yeah, it was Germans after all. They also had a lot of money,

roughly about a million dollars today um. At the time, each group had fifty grand and they needed this to travel and to live and to bribe people and pay folks off, right in cash. So they had yeah, what's equal to about a million dollars today in cash on them in nothing greater than a fifty dollar bill. It's a lot of money, yeah, like physically a lot of money. Each member was given nine thousand and five of which

which is very funny. Like team leader is going to hold on to this and you can keep for yourself and your money belt and only carry like four hundred and fifty in your pocket, and that should be enough dough to carry out this plan, was the idea. Yep. And then the team leaders also got handkerchiefs. Yeah, that had the names and addresses and things of contacts invisible ink written on them. Yeah. So this is like a bona fide spy. Yespionage terrorism operation. Again, great movie in

the making so far. Yep. So the and again I think you said before that like Hitler was planning on sending several waves or wave after wave. Apparently the schedule was every six weeks they were going to send one, one or two teams to the United States. Yeah, I got. I mean it was a really smart and scary plane because catching, you know, a tiny team of four guys who can assimilate as Americans or at least good German Americans,

that's that's tough to catch. Yes, So Chuck, Yes, you two O two, which actually left two days after U five eighty four showed up off like fifty yards off the shoreline of Long Island and just frightening the thing about. Yeah, there was a German U boat fifty yards off of the shore of Long Island on June twelfth, nineteen forty two. It showed up about eight in the evening and it belches out its cargo of box of explode sieves and saboteurs, and the dudes um as they're rowing to shore, they

put they were wearing like German military uniforms. Yeah, I didn't fully and this didn't make a ton of sense to me. Oh well, if you were caught in playing clothes behind enemy lines, the rules of war state that you can be shot on site, but if you're caught as a German marine, you're a prisoner of war and you have to be That was taking a chance. I would addressed as an American. No, I mean, like, I think that was smart. Yeah, I don't know. I would

have addressed. I would have tried to assimilate, not been like, I'm a German marine. You're supposed to take me hostage, right, But I think, yeah, come on, let's go, I'm taking you hostage. Whereas if the guy had been like, you're a spy, I am allowed to kill you right here and now. Yeah, I just I don't know. I don't agree with that one, but hey, everyone has their own rules when it comes to saboteuring. Okay, so sabotaging, right, yes, sabotaging.

That was just kidding anyway, And I've learned recently that that was of m that's that words of recent providence. Did you know that, like it didn't come into use until the beginning of like the twentieth century. That makes sense. I would have thought it was a fairly old word. Yeah, nope. Did we just think of sabotage or did we just start calling it that? Like, did they not use to sabotage back in the day. Yeah, I think they just

started calling it that. Okay. So um, so this is Dash's team Teams Team mines and they show up on the shore and they're wearing again German military uniforms, which they took off really quickly, very quickly. Yeah. Once they saw that, you know, okay, we made it. Yeah, the

operation has begun. They changed right, Yeah, they changed clothes and they started, uh I guess they put on there I love New York shirts and they started digging big holes in the beach to bury these munitions so they could come back as needed when they wanted to blow something new up. Yes, they can't just carry that stuff around, no, and they needed to just stash everything and go and cool out and make sure that no one was like onto him or anything like that, and then come back

and get it, like you said, as they needed. Yeah. The plan was to meet up for the two teams to meet up in Cincinnati on July fourth for a baseball game, is what I'm imagining. Yeah, yeah, the Reds versus the Braves. I don't know where the Braves were then, probably Milwaukee, sure, Okay, I don't think they moved to Atlanta until the sixties. Yeah, but I was trying to think of Boston, but they were that was long before

so the team in inst was changing. They just landed. Yeah, they were in the midst of changing when they were

discovered by a coast guardsman. Yeah. Well one of them was that Josh climbed over a dune and while the other guys were still bearing and changing their clothes, and he walked up and there was a coast guard dude, John Cullen, standing right there, and he was like, hey, what you're doing right basically, and the guy was like, oh, nothing, yeah, and uh he apparently was kind of handling things when Burger comes over, and Burger thought that so the team

inz had been rowed to shore by two German sailors, and I guess Burger lost track of the German sailors and assume that they were still there, and that for some reason it was only Dash four guys plus the two right, and that Josh had climbed over the dune to talk to one of the sailors. Yeah. So Burger comes up and asks a question in Germany, and the coast guardsman, John Cullen, is like, why are you speaking German? We're at war with Germany. What's going on? Yeah, And

at that point Josh tells Burger to get out. Yeah, he said, you fool, go back to the others, right, And the guy was why, like what others? Wait a minute, And so Dash's story was that they were fisherman, stranded fisherman. Yeah, And before he got really suspicious clan, the guy from the coastguard said, well, if you guys are stranded fisherman, that's my job. We have a Coastguard like house, party house right up the beach. We just ordered some pizza.

Come with me, you guys can eat some pizza and chill out, and Josh is like, well, uh, we don't have any idea on us. Yeah, we don't fishing permits either, right, we don't want to get in trouble. I was like, well, you're telling a guy from the Coastguard that, so you're in trouble first of all, but secondly that strikes me as weird. About that time, Burger comes up, asks his question in German, and Josh sees the riding on the wall and tells Um tells Collen, well, he says, do

you have a mother? And Colin says yes. He goes do you have a father? Says yes, and Dash says, well, then I wouldn't want to kill you. Yeah, so how about I give you some money you can forget that this ever happened. And he tries to give him a hundred bucks and Colin said nope. Yeah, he says no, thank you, and he said He ends up giving him two hundred and sixty dollars and Cullin basically realized that something was going down and I just need to just take this money and act like I'm down with the

take and get out of here. So he does. So he does. He scaddles and then oh, but not before this is very key piece. Actually, oh yeah, Josh grabbed his flashlight before he left and shined it on his own face and said, you will be meeting me in East Hampton sometime soon. Do you know who I am? And then guy was like, no, I don't know who you are. And he said my name is George John Davis, which was a lie. Well it was his real alias for the mission though, so like he actually gave him

his real alias, and he said what's your name? And Cullin said Frank Collins, which was a lie. Which was a lie. Pretty quick thinking and um, basically he scrambled back and Josh came back over and was like little seeing their guys, I totally took care of it, right, should not be a big deal. Don't even worry about pay the guy two hundred and sixty bucks. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, So everybody finished bearing these boxes, which they did, and um Colin ran off and went and grabbed some of

his fellow coastguardsmen. By the time they got back, Team Ice had left. Yeah, they wentn't caught a train, but apparently and this is another thing, so the U boat that dropped off. Team Ice had grounded itself on a sand bar and was sitting there like trying to get back out to sea because Dawn was just rocked back and forth in your chair? Was that that's what it looked, was that the method they had all the guys in there. Yeah,

it just moved to the right, right exactly. Yeah, And finally the tide came in just enough for them to dislodge themselves and go back out to sea, just in time. But apparently um Colon and the other coastguardsman who came back caught sight of this U boat heading back out to sea. Yeah not good, right, Yeah, No German U boat off the host to Long Island just ran into some guys who are speaking German and tried to pay

you off. And then now all of a sudden, in the moonlight, you can see the ghostly outlines of four freshly dug holes in the sand. Yeah, let's see what's in there. Yeah. I wonder if um I couldn't find I saw that about the boat being stuck, but I couldn't find if that was like, if they could have gotten away, you know, it could have all changed. They might not have been that suspicious I think that Cullen

was he was on it appropriately suspicious. Yeah, he was definitely coming back, but seeing the U boat was just icing on the cake exactly. Okay, so the other dudes had hopped date. Well, they dug up the holes and they found the stuff and said, okay, this is a huge deal. Yeah, we just found a trove of explosives in German military uniforms buried on the beach like sixty

miles from New York. Yeah, so toot sweet. By ten twenty three that morning, those boxes were in the office of New York City Police Captain John Bayliss, who then promptly got in touch with the FBI, and by noon that day, thirteen hours after they had arrived, the FBI had all that stuff in custody, and Jay Edgar Hoover said, there's a we need to get a blackout on the news so these guys don't get wise to this, and we need to get the largest man hunt in FBI

history underway. And they did, and we will explore that and all the ways the FBI got some lucky breaks on this. Right after these messages, you know, all right, so Team iience, let's recap here. They are in Manhattan. Yeah, they go shopping at Macy's. Of course. Yeah, we've got a lot of cash. All they had with them was the clothes the civilian, the clothes they brought and all that cash. Yeah, that was it. Everything else is buried back in the beach, but is now an FBI custody

unbeknownst to these guys. That's right. So they go shopping at Macy's. They split into They said, let's split up into pairs, because that makes sense. Kieran and Hank checked into the hotel Martinique Dash and Burger I went to the Governor Clinton hotel Governor Bill Clinton, and I don't think so. And unless he was named after the hotel, oh yeah, never know. That's why he always wanted to

be governor. So apparently, um Dosh and Burger met. He summoned Burger to his hotel room up on a tall floor and opened the window and said, I've got a plan and I'm going to tell you about it. And if you're on board, you're on board. But if you're not, then one of us is leaving through the door. One of us is leaving through the window. He basically threw down the gauntlet to Burger to Burger, I, oh wow,

I didn't realize that. Yeah, And so Burger he basically said, I would like to turn and sabboteur sabotage the sabotage right and go against Germany and because America is kind of great. So Dash was going to kill Burger if Burger didn't go along with it. That's what he said. And apparently Burger had the choice too, like or you can you can defeat you and throw you out the window, or you can triumph and be the living victor. Yeah.

So I think Burger was just on board. And they said that in this article that um Dash probably was telling the truth that he was. He was really this was his idea from the beginning. So here's the here's the question. Like, historically speaking, Dash has been seen as

a genuine betrayer of this mission. Sure, but when he became a genuine betrayer of the mission is issues still according to this history and that article, either he knew it before they even landed, yeah, and that that is why he showed his face and gave his real alias to right John Colin on the beach, which makes sense, or his encounter with John Cullin on the beach rattled him enough that he was like, this is never gonna work. We're already We're already dead in the water. That's a

quick turn. So now I'm going to go ahead and betray it. Yeah, I say that he was in on it from the beginning. That's what that's my feeling, because he was snoozing in spy school. Just I don't know, it seems like a really quick like they just land on the beach. Five minutes later he meets a guy and he's like, wait a minute, it's off. I'm gonna betray Germany. Right, it just seemed I don't know, a little too hasty. Well, maybe he had nerves of spaghetti. Yeah,

cooked spaghetti. Even so, he says, here's the plan. On Monday, dash to burger Yeah, he said, on Monday, I'm gonna go to the head. They closed the window by now, yeah, I think. So they went to dinner and everything was good, and he said, I'm gonna go to Uh, I'm gonna go to Washington meet with j Edgar Hoover. That should be pretty easy to get that meeting the man himself. Yeah,

I hear. He wears nothing about a caper on the office and he said, you go back to the other two guys and just sort of occupy them for a little while while I'm going to DC and requesting a meeting with the FBI, the head of the FBI. Right, So Burger says, let's do this. Josh says, okay, it's Sunday, and Josh doesn't make his way to DC until Thursday morning. Yes, instead he goes So remember he was a waiter in America. Well,

he called. He called the FBI first, at least, right, And the reason why he called firsts he was a little worried because apparently back in a training camp in the woods, cop Falter Cop had said, you guys don't need to worry, we have a man on the inside

of the FBI. So Josh was worried that if he called, or if he just showed up at FBI headquarters he talked to that one guy right out of all the FBI guys, he would have that level of bad luck, which, from what I understand, that was something that was a

good concern for her to have. So he called the New York Bureau first and said, I'm a German dude, I've got information for Jake Er Hoover tell him I'm coming, and then he hung up and he went to a club four waiters and then played pinuckle for like two straight days. Yeah, I get I think he was probably gambling. That's what I think too, because if I'm not mistaken with the math, he ended up with more money than he came with. Really, yeah, so he went and gambled

with sabotage money. I think so, man, that guy is some serious colonies. He's pretty awesome. So eventually he said, all right, I gotta go to Washington. This peinuckle game has dried up. So he hopped on the Acela Express for Washington, Sure, which I highly recommend. By the way, man, train travel is awesome. Regional train travel is a delight, such a delight, And especially from Boston to New York. You just ride along the coastline there and it's just lovely.

It is lovely. Sailboats and cape cold houses right on points, lobster rolls. Yeah, it's nice, good stuff. All right. So Josh has arrived by train. Finally by this point, Team Spy has landed, right. Yeah. They show up in Florida and they're like, let's do this for real. And I imagine ponto Vedra Beach in nineteen forty three. It was a pretty low key scenario for sure, you know, yeah, I would think so. So they are twenty five miles south of Jacksonville. They bury their crates, no sweat, hop

on a bus, go to Jacksonville. They split up from that point too, went to Cincinnati. Two went to Chicago. Yeah, and like I mean, they were no must There wasn't like any no one was calling the FBI like they were in it to win it basically. Yeah, why they should have done Team Ice should have done their recon beforehand. The U boat should have not pulled up next to a Coastguard station first of all. That would have been one thing. Yeah, because that Coastguard station was like half

a mile away. Yeah it was there, all right, maybe that bad intel. So Josh gets to d C, checks into the Mayflower Hotel. Yeah, this is the same day that Caroling's group lands in Pontevedra. It's a big day, huge day, okay. And he in DC said all right, I'm gonna call the FBI again because you gotta meet with Hoover. And he reached out to a Dwayne Trainer, and of course Trainer says, you know, this is probably

not a legitimate call. We get these kind of weird calls all the time, but just in case, let's go pick him up. Yeah, let's let's see what's going on.

It's a slow day at headquarters. Yeah exactly. So they go and pick up the German and they bring him to the Justice Department, and Dash said that he was basically bounced from agent to agent, every who's kind of a hot potato, nobody wanting to deal with him, And finally he convinced these guys enough to end up in the office of Mickey Ladd, who was running the man hunt for the spies, and the head of the Spies was now sitting in his office, Yeah, telling him he's

the head of the spies, and he still didn't quite believe him until Dash said, oh yeah, well here, let me show you this and dumped out eighty four thousand dollars on Lad's desk, and Lad said, I'm so pleased you came in today, right, come with me? Yeah, So, Josh, here's here's his idea. Is I want to talk to Hoover himself because I'm going to be a hero and I might even get like a Medal of Honor out of this, right, Like, maybe Jager will have me over

to his house for dinner. Yeah, who knows what could come of this? Take your tape parade, They threw those all the time back then. Yeah, so they the FBI gets him talking. He does get to meet Hoover briefly, sure, but a couple of other agents take his deposition, which lasts for thirteen hours. Yeah, before he finished, he had told them about Burger and where Burger was, and they went and picked up Burger. Yeah, he like, while he was still telling him the story, they were already on

at Burger's hotel staking him out. Yep. So they before they picked up Burger, they were staking him out, like you said. And they watched Burger go meet Kieran and Hink and so they just arrested all three of them in all all of a sudden, they had team in custody within like a day of um dash walking into FBI headquarters. It didn't go so well for Team Ice. No, no, so when the team leader betrays you, yeah, like yeah,

you're you're in trouble, your toast. So on June twenty second, Hoover wrote to FDR and said you know what's her. We've we've caught all the members of this group that landed on Long Island. Pretty great, huh, and we are awesome. Um. He didn't mention that the guy turned himself in and told him where everyone was, right, and so FDR was just thought that Hoover had done like a bang up job. Basically, he's like, wait, way to go, way to do your job exactly. He'd lied pretty much. So um, Dash had

no real leads or anything about teams. Yeah, but he did have a handkerchief that had contacts on invisible ink, and surprisingly he hadn't blown his nose in it right at this point, but he couldn't remember how you were supposed to get the invisible ink to become visible. No. Luckily, the FBI had a crack team of lab techs on this thing, and they figured it out. And now all of a sudden they had the names and addresses of all of the German contacts for these teams right there

in their hands, thanks to Dash. Yeah. Right, so they were all obviously staked out just waiting on Team HENS or I'm sorry, Teams VY to meet up with these people, right, which they did. But first teams FI did some other weird stuff like Herbert hopped. He was in Chicago, where again he'd lived since he was five, and Holpe decided that he would buy a Pontiac car. Yeah. Yeah, he went to his parents' house, right, I told his dad everything. Yeah, had his dad buy him the car? Yep. And he

proposed to his girlfriend. He remember he had left during the war and he was an able bodied man over age eighteen. Yeah, And so the local draft board wanted to know where he was. So he drops by FBI headquarters to clear up his draft problem. Says, I'm back. Sorry, I've already registered with my local draft board. No need to track me anymore. I'm just an all American boy. Yeah, And the FBI was like, yeah, sure, thank you for coming by, right, and then tailed them on the way out. Yeah.

And then he led them to at least one other team member, right. Yeah. And while this was going on, Curling and Werner Thiel went to New York and met up with a friend named Helmet Lena because they wanted to have sex with a lady. And so Lina hooked him up with his mistress, said here, have sex with her, and he said great, thanks, and he ended up traveling with that woman. Curling did, and within a couple of

days after Dash surrendered. Um, they spotted Curling because they were trailing him at a bar where he met with Thel and they rested both of those guys. Right, So two down on team spy her about helped. I'm sorry, three down at this point, right, Holped was taken down in Chicago. Yeah, the only one left at this point was Herman neubaua right, And Neubauer spent his time in was it in New York? I think he was in Chicaga. Okay, you're probably right. Um, he just went to the movies

over and over again. Yep, that's what he did. He was apparently lonely, so he sought out some friends of his wife, whom he hadn't really met before. Yea, he told them everything, told him everything. He gave him his money for safe keeping, unbelievable, but kept enough to go to the movies a bunch. So basically he kept a dollar right and dollar fifty. Yeah, and then he was I think he'd just come back from the movies when

the FBI picked him up. Right, yep, So Dash, remember is sure that like he's going to be feted as a hero that Jay ger Hoover is probably like thinking about him right then. Yeah, he's just like basically like Ralphie in a Christmas story, just daydreaming about like how he's going to be carried around on everyone's shoulders. He probably should have been so, I mean, he's the reason why this went south, because he said, you know what I'm trying, I'm siding with America. Sure, the thing is Hoover.

He didn't care Jay ger Hoover. Not only did he not care, Hoover was taking the credit for all of this unraveled. See to bury this right, he couldn't let Josh be known as this guy who would come and given him this whole thing on a platter, or else Hoover would look like an idiot, and Josh might very well have been hailed as at least a slimy collaborate rather than a criminal. Yeah, after everybody was rounded up, the FBI arrested Josh, and Josh must have been quite

surprised by this. Well, yeah, they arrested him, but they said, hey, just go along with us. You'll get a full presidential pardon after six months. Just sort of play along with the arrest and he was like, oh, okay, I see, so put me in the jail with the other guys so they don't know, yeah exactly. And it was like, yeah, sure, Well because that jibe with Hoover's plan to keep it all quiet. Still exact I was working out great for Hoover. It didn't work out great for Josh or the others.

Chuck No. So Fdr wanted to make sure that he could get the death penalty and that this could be kept quiet. So he formed a military tribunal to try these guys. And it was the first one since Lincoln had been assassinated. Yeah, it was a big deal. So the prosecutor was Attorney General Francis Biddle, chief defense was

Colonel Kenneth Royal. They defense argued initially for a civilian trial that was quickly scrapped and they said, no, we're going to move forward with a tribunal and held the trial out the Justice Department in Washington during the month of July nineteen forty two and basically said, we know the whole there's not going to be much of a trial, Fellas,

we know everything because you told us everything exactly. You are coming here to sabotage and blow up our junk and you're in big trouble, right, And the prosecutors sought the death penalty, as expected, but it was up to FDR to decide when and where, and to do that, he had to have a transcript of the trial. And when he got this transcript of the trial, it became

obvious that Hoover hadn't really done anything. Yeah. Appinently FDR never called him out on it in public, No, which was a nice thing to do, I guess, I guess, because that would have just been further embarrassment for like the whole country, you know. Yeah, So they kept that quiet, but at this point it was news all over the country. They weren't keeping a quiet with a press, and the American public was way in favor of the death penalty.

In fact, there was an open letter published in one newspaper calling for them to be fed to Gargantua, the guerrilla at the Ringling Brothers circus, because that's fair to Gargantua too, Yeah, eat those Germans. Well. Instead, they electrocuted six of them on August eighth of the District Jail in Washington, DC. That's right, including Kurbert Hout, who was just like, I just wanted Upontiac. Yeah, I just wanted

to see my parents. Right. Burger and Dash were spared the death penalty because they basically had a hard time proving in court that they didn't you know, fully intend to betray the operation. Yeah, exactly right. So they did not get electrocuted. They were sentenced Burger to hard labor for the rest of his life and Dash was given thirty years. But President Truman commuted their sentence, released them and deported them, had them shipped to um West, Germany. Yeah,

West Berlin said, don't come back, Nope, get out. And the other guys were buried in a potter's field by the way and outside Washington, Yes, which is now the DC Municipal Water Treatment plant. Oh really yeah where they were buried. Yeah, just right now. They're part of the system, I guess. And so Dash and Burger go back to Germany and Burger starts like feeding the media the story is basically five years later and blame right and blames Josh for the deaths of these other six German patriots

or who were saboteurs. Right, and dash Um tried to publicly clear himself. He first sawt to pardon in America so that he could come back. Yeah, he really wanted to get out of Germany. Yeah, I can imagine. And America said, no, we're not going to do that. We're not going to pardon you. We're still mad at you. Germany said we're mad at you too, and so he just kind of faded out of the public spotlight. Yep. He ended up dying in nineteen ninety two at the

age of eighty nine. And I didn't see any follow up for Burger. For Burger, I think he wasn't quite as vilified as Josh was, right for sure. But that was not the last time the Germans sent saboteurs ashore. There was at least one other ill fated attempt in nineteen forty four, another German submarine. These are expensive boats, man, Yeah, they are really taking a massive risk to drop off

a couple of saboteurs. But they did it again off of Maine, YEP in a snowstorm, and two former American residents German Americans were sent off under the main coast in a snowstorm. They were seen by a local boy scout using a compass during the snowstorm on the side of the road, and the boy scout was suspicious, so he traced their tracks all the way back to the shoreline when they come out of nowhere, and he's like, I'm going to call the police. So they scouts actually

call these guys. Yeah, that's pretty cool. What's ironic is one of these German American saboteurs was a boy scout himself, so it was like boy scout on boy scout tattling wow um, and they got picked up immediately, and as far as everybody knows, that's the last time Germany ever tried that. Yeah. I think the idea was that Hitler Um. It was like this, this is embarrassing. Yeah, let's just

focus on the rocket program. Yeah, we can't keep sending guys to the United States who immediately get there and start doing stupid things, right, giving themselves up, Yeah, going to see mom and dad, seeing him movies, Yeah, Yeah, playing p knuckle. So that's it. That's the story of the time the Nazis invaded Florida and New York and Maine. If you want to know more about that, check out history Net, check out damn Interesting, check out all sorts

of stuff. Yes, just search it. You'll find all sorts of cool things on it. I would not look for the movie coming soon to a theater near you. No, the third act non existent? No, not really, No, it's just kind of a letdown. Yeah that an end with a bang. No ends with Germany being mad at them in America too. Let's see. I think I said Germany's mad. It just means it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this a cute our cutest youngest fan and it

includes an audio clip. Yeah, hey guys, did you hear this? Yes, it's pretty great. Yea. My son, Archer is two and a half years old, just two and a half. We listen to podcasts together while I rock him to sleep at naptime and bedtime. Anytime he's tired, he says, Mommy, let's go Archer's room and listen to podcast. I usually rotate between Stuff you Should Know and other house stuff works a podcast. He's never seemed to have a prefer until about two weeks ago when I put another podcast on.

He said, no, Mommy, not that podcast, just stuff you know, the red one. You guys are his favorite, which is fine with me, and I have even attached the voice recording of him requesting your podcast. It was not rehearsed, find you, It's just me asking him before his nap time today. That is from Shauna, and Shauna gave us permission to hear from Archer. So let's go ahead and play that clip right now. Okay, are you ready to take a nap? Yeah? I want? Do you want to

listen to a podcast? Law? Okay? Which podcast? Stuff? Yeah? Okay? Ah wow, pretty cute, holy cow kid knows his stuff unbelievable, So Archer, if you can understand what's going on here about the sound coming out of the speakers. We know you don't have four memories, but hopefully this EPISOD so we'll be a documentation with it. That's right, Archer, So good luck in life. You are off to a great start.

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