Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Dasch and Kerling agreed to meet at the grill of the Hotel Gibson in Cincinnati at lunchtime or, as a backup, dinner. 37If the first rendezvous failed, they would return to the hotel on subsequent Sundays until they either met up or decided their partner was in trouble. The instructions were to sit in different parts of the restaurant, giving no sign that they recognized each other. Once they were sure nobody was watching them, one of them would leave, and the other would follow.

During their last two days in Berlin, Dasch and Kerling returned to the Abwehr laboratory for a final round of instructions in secret writing. A female technician presented the two men with a packet of three matches impregnated with invisible ink, and watched them practice writing. “You pressed too hard,” she scolded Dasch. “Do it again.” 38

After showing the two men how to apply just a light amount of pressure with the matchstick, she took them next door to a dark room, and placed the paper under a machine that produced ultraviolet light. Within about ten seconds, the secret writing appeared.

The two group leaders also used secret ink to exchange addresses of friends and trusted family members to contact in an emergency. Dipping a toothpick in a solution made out of pyrimidine—the basic ingredient for laxatives—Dasch copied names and addresses provided by Kerling and Kappe onto a white handkerchief: 39

Maria Da Conceicao Lopez, Lisboa, Rua Ecorias 52. Father Krepper, c/o Gene Frey, R.F.D. 2, Box 40, Rahway. Bingo: Walter Froehling, 3643 Whipple, Chi. Helmut Leiner, 2158 39th Street, Astoria. FRANZ DANIEL PASTORIUS.

Lopez was the cutout in Portugal, to be used for communications with Kappe. Father Krepper was a pro-Nazi Lutheran priest in New Jersey, who could help out with false birth certificates and identification papers. Bingo was Haupt’s Abwehr code name; Froehling, the name of his uncle in Chicago, who might be able to help Dasch’s group find a farm to use as a hideout for their sabotage materials. Leiner was Kerling’s best friend in New York, a thoroughly reliable Nazi. Pastorius was the name of the mission, and also the code word by which the saboteurs would announce themselves to other V-men. In order to make a connection, both parts of the name had to click.

They had practiced the drill many times, both at Quenz Lake and in Berlin:

“Greetings from Franz Daniel.”

“Pastorius.” 40

BERLIN IN the spring of 1942 was a depressing city, relieved only by a grim determination to enjoy life’s few remaining pleasures. Hopes of a quick victory over the Red Army had faded and rumors were beginning to circulate of huge numbers of casualties on the eastern front. The Wehrmacht no longer seemed invincible, despite Hitler’s pledge on the nation’s Memorial Day to destroy “the Bolshevist hordes” by the end of the summer. 41The city itself was now almost completely “Aryanized,” most of the Jews having been deported to the East. The few that remained had to wear a yellow star on the outside of their clothes to distinguish them from Aryans. Their ration cards were stamped with purple Js, a sign for shopkeepers to serve them last.

On the surface, life seemed normal enough. Despite some bombing by the Royal Air Force the previous year, the city was reasonably intact, with little obvious damage. Some monuments, including the Victory Column in the Tiergarten, were disguised by camouflage netting. Newspaper kiosks trumpeted the latest successes of German U-boats in the Atlantic and “enormous losses” inflicted on the Soviets in Russia. There were fewer people in the streets, and not nearly as much traffic as before the war, but the zoo was crowded with families and off-duty soldiers. As in prewar years, Berliners indulged their love for asparagus, a springtime delicacy, with daily newspaper reports on the market price.

It was, however, a distinctly threadbare normality. The shop windows along the Kurfürstendamm were still full of shoes, dresses, and suits, suggesting at least a hint of prewar plenty, but when a customer tried to buy what was advertised in the window, the items were usually unavailable. 42When goods did appear, long lines formed immediately.

The one exception to this economy of scarcity was the entertainment business. In the absence of any other outlet for spending their reichsmarks, off-duty soldiers and Nazi officials alike flocked to the city’s concert halls, nightclubs, beer halls, movie houses, and prostitution dens, most of which had remained open. In mid-May, Berlin newspapers listed twenty-six functioning theaters, four cabarets, and sixty-eight movie houses, most of them showing escapist romances like Dance with the Kaiser, starring Marika Rokk, the sweetheart of the Third Reich.

There seemed little point in saving money. Even if one stayed alive, the marks would probably soon be worthless. During their last week in Berlin, the saboteurs became avid connoisseurs of the city’s nightlife, quickly using up the spending money distributed by Kappe. To Dasch, who had worked half his life in American restaurants, the food he ate in Berlin “filled you up for a moment but in an hour or so you were hungry like a dog.” 43The beer had “lost all its strength” and tasted as if there were “hardly any malts or hops in it.” But the restaurants and clip joints were still “jammed to the gills.”

The nightclubs offered a window into the political structure of the Third Reich. Rivalry between the army and the S.S. was so intense that soldiers and S.S. men usually patronized different clubs. When they mixed, there was often trouble. One evening, Burger wandered into a club frequented by Luftwaffe officers, several of whom wore the Knights Cross around their collars, indicating that they had shot down at least forty enemy planes. One of the officers asked the bandleader to play an American tango. 44As the band struck up the music, a man in civilian clothes jumped up from his seat near the back of the club, walked over to the conductor, and flashed a Gestapo badge. American songs were verboten. The conductor pointed in the direction of the war hero, who got up to talk to the Gestapo man. Within a few seconds, the Gestapo man was escorted to the door by the Luftwaffe officers, who announced they had evicted “a Gestapo rat.” The officers received a standing ovation, and the band played on.

On their next-to-last night in Berlin, the V-men were invited to a farewell dinner at the city’s celebrated Zoo restaurant. Kappe told them that “the big chief” himself would be present, leading to some speculation that the Führer might put in an appearance. The banquet took place in a private dining room. The “big chief” turned out to be a tall man in a well-cut civilian suit who was greeted with a flurry of Heil Hitler salutes when he walked into the room. He was introduced only as “Dr. Schmidt,” but some of the Abwehr officers addressed him as “Herr Oberst,” Herr Colonel. 45The V-men eventually figured out that “Dr. Schmidt” was in reality Colonel Erwin von Lahousen.

Hitler failed to show up, but everyone had a good time nevertheless. Most of the guests—including “Dr. Schmidt” and Lieutenant Kappe—got quite drunk from repeated toasts to the success of Operation Pastorius. The speeches went on until well after midnight. If they were successful, the colonel told the men in his soft Viennese accent, they could do more damage to the enemy than several divisions of fighting men. They might even decide the outcome of the war.

As leader of the V-men, Dasch thanked the Abwehr officers for their confidence and promised that he and his men would prove themselves worthy of the Fatherland. In between speeches, he asked Lahousen to settle an argument he had been having with Kappe, who had encouraged the saboteurs to try to recruit former German-American Bund members in the United States to assist in their mission. “Promise them heaven on earth if you like,” Kappe had urged. 46“Work on their nationalistic sentiments, their homesickness.”