Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

One of Kappe’s goals in launching Operation Pastorius was to repair the damage caused by the traitor.

TWO COMPARTMENTS had been reserved for the saboteurs on the noon express from Berlin to Paris with a sign RESERVED FOR OKW, the German High Command. They were an incongruous sight: nine young men in an assortment of ill-fitting American clothes, led by a rotund, heavyset Wehrmacht lieutenant, accompanied by a pile of wooden boxes and seabags. Had a fellow passenger been able to look into their luggage, he would have discovered an array of sophisticated sabotage equipment, naval uniforms and shovels, and a small fortune in American dollars.

When the train pulled into the Gare de l’Est at eight o’clock the next morning, a representative of the Paris branch of German military intelligence was on the platform to meet them. He took the V-men to the Hotel des Deux Mondes, a fin de siècle establishment near the opera house, 9one of several hotels in Paris that had been commandeered by the German occupation authorities. After the men were assigned their rooms, Kappe handed them wads of francs and told them “to go out and have a good time.” 10

Compared to drab, oppressive Berlin, Paris was magical. Even under wartime occupation, the half-deserted city had a melancholy charm. The chestnut trees were in bloom along the Champs-Elysées and the banks of the Seine. There was still plenty of food around. The famous landmarks— the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Montmartre—were as beautiful as ever. Even the girls seemed prettier and better dressed than in Germany.

Armed with Kappe’s money, they raced around the city, seeing the sights and visiting nightclubs. Several of them got into trouble. Heinrich Heinck, the dour-looking Volkswagen worker assigned to Dasch’s group, got drunk at the Deux Mondes bar, and announced that he was “a secret agent.” 11There was a disturbance at the hotel late one night when Herbie Haupt, who never had any difficulty picking up girls, refused to pay a prostitute who had accompanied him back to his room. Either he had run out of money or he imagined she had fallen for his charms, like the girls back home in Chicago, and had no right asking for payment. After she began screaming at him in French, a language he did not understand, one of the other V-men settled his debt.

Some of the saboteurs found time to have serious conversations about their mission. Kerling and Burger were strolling past the navy ministry on the Place de la Concorde, watching the German guards march up and down, when Kerling suddenly blurted out, “What do you think of your group?” 12

“Not very much,” Burger replied cautiously. “Heinck is not what you would call a hundred percent saboteur, and Dasch is not the ideal leader for this kind of mission.”

Kerling, the most committed Nazi of them all, nodded his head, and said vaguely, “Well, perhaps there will be a way to get out of this.”

Burger did not ask what he had in mind.

Normally tolerant of loose behavior, Kappe tired of his subordinates’ antics after a weekend in Paris. When a naval intelligence officer came to his hotel and told him the U-boats were ready, Kappe breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank God! The men are running wild with booze and girls.” 13

KAPITÄNLEUTNANT Wilhelm Ahlrichs, of the Security and Intelligence Office of the German High Command, had top-secret orders from Berlin to put the saboteurs on board the U-boats that would take them across the Atlantic. He joined the V-men in Paris, and escorted them on the overnight train to Lorient. Prior to transferring to intelligence work after the outbreak of war, Ahlrichs had been a captain in the German merchant navy, and knew both America and England well. A pessimist by nature, he was unimpressed by the overall quality of the saboteurs.

There were some exceptions. Kerling was obviously an idealistic Nazi. Haupt—who was dressed in an open-neck silk shirt and flashy, light-green checkered coat—looked like a decent kid, a real American boy, Ahlrichs thought. Burger seemed depressed. The other men struck Ahlrichs as incompetent. The worst impression of all was made by their leader. When Ahlrichs asked Dasch what his men would be doing in America, he boasted, “Just look inside our boxes. We’re going to blow up factories.” 14

After their three-day break in Paris, the V-men were getting more tense. On the train to Lorient, the normally reticent Schmidt taunted Dasch and Burger, saying Dasch did not deserve to be in charge and Burger could not be trusted because he had been in a concentration camp. As he talked, Schmidt became flushed and angry, thrusting out his jaw. It seemed to Burger that he was attempting to foment an insurrection against Dasch and replace him as leader. 15

In Lorient, the men were taken to the Jour de Rêve hotel, which was reserved for U-boat crews. The leaders—Kappe, Ahlrichs, Dasch, and Kerling—met to go over final details of where the two groups would land in the United States. The plan was for Kerling’s group to leave for America that very evening; the others would follow two days later.

In the afternoon, Kappe assembled Kerling’s men to distribute the money they would take with them to America. As previously arranged, each received a wad of $50 bills in a specially designed money pouch to go around his waist, as well as $450 in smaller denominations. As Haupt was going through his pile of $50 bills, he noticed that some were not green-backs at all, but so-called yellowbacks, gold certificates withdrawn from circulation in 1934, after the United States went off the gold standard.

The men were furious with their Abwehr superiors, but particularly with Kappe. Such carelessness could cost them their lives. They imagined trying to use the yellowbacks in America to make purchases and immediately being turned over to the FBI as German spies. They clawed through the money belts, removing the incriminating bills. Kerling took Kappe into the next room and told him bluntly he did not feel like going ahead with the operation: it was too dangerous.

It was too late to back out now, Kappe insisted. “You have enough money anyway, even without the gold certificates. Just throw those bills out.” 16Kappe argued that it was a trivial matter, nothing to worry about. Ahlrichs wanted to phone Berlin for instructions. The men eventually calmed down, but their confidence in Kappe had been severely shaken.

Dasch, meanwhile, had gone missing. He had disappeared, without saying a word, on the way to a lunch hosted by Ahlrichs after suddenly remembering that he had left his identification papers on the train. His American Social Security card was in a notebook that also contained jottings from lessons at Quenz Lake, along with some snapshots of his mother and wife. He had taken the notebook out of his pocket during the night as he lay in his bunk on the train trying to get to sleep. In the rush to unload the boxes at Lorient, he had forgotten all about it.

As soon as Dasch could get away from his colleagues, he rushed back to the railroad station and asked to see the German official in charge. In his excitable fashion, he explained he had left some “hot papers” on the train, which must on no account fall into the hands of the enemy. 17The official told him to come back later that afternoon: the train was now at a depot further down the line. When Dasch returned, he found another official on duty who demanded his papers. Unimpressed with Dasch’s attempt at a Heil Hitler salute and his explanation that he was traveling incognito, the official reported him to the Gestapo.

Dasch realized that the only way out of the mess was to call Kappe at the hotel. Kappe arrived at the station at about the same time as a major from the Gestapo. After insisting that everybody else leave the room, Kappe gave the officer a rough outline of Operation Pastorius and let him inspect the orders issued by the High Command. The Gestapo major berated everybody for being so careless, but permitted Dasch to leave with Kappe. Dasch’s documents were never found.