Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Up until this point, Dasch felt he had the trust of Kappe, who had always defended him against the complaints of others. In some ways, the two men were rather alike: loud-mouthed, ingratiating, quick-witted, always coming up with grandiose ideas, but also careless, even clueless about certain things. But now Kappe’s confidence seemed to be waning rapidly.

As they drove back to the hotel, Kappe said it would be very dangerous for Dasch to travel around America as George John Davis, the name on his mislaid Social Security card. Not to worry, Dasch replied cheerfully, he would use the name of George John Day.

Kappe was exasperated, but too exhausted to argue.

THE U-584—with Kerling, Haupt, Neubauer, and Thiel aboard—left Lorient harbor late that evening in the pouring rain. Ahlrichs made sure that the crew was confined to barracks while the V-men boarded the boat with their equipment. Once Kerling’s men were safely below deck, the crew returned to the U-boat. From that point onward, nobody was allowed to leave the submarine until it sailed.

That left Dasch, Burger, Quirin, Heinck, and Schmidt. The next day, Schmidt complained to Ahlrichs that he had caught some kind of sexual disease, probably from a prostitute in Paris. The intelligence officer had Schmidt lie down on a bed and pull out his penis, which was covered with a nasty brown foam. Ahlrichs took one look at the foam, decided that Schmidt was suffering from gonorrhea, and ordered him to report to Berlin immediately for treatment.

When Ahlrichs told Kappe of his diagnosis, the Abwehr officer was beside himself. Schmidt was the toughest member of the group and, with the possible exception of Burger, the most resourceful. A burly outdoorsman with years of experience farming and trapping in Canada, he was the obvious choice to run the farm that they planned to use as the hiding place for their explosives. Without him, the whole mission might be at risk.

Ahlrichs refused to back down. As the representative of the German navy, he would not permit a man with a venereal disease to board the U-boat. If Schmidt was so essential to the mission, it would be necessary to cancel the departure of the second party altogether. “I take full responsibility for my decision,” Ahlrichs said firmly. 18

Kappe relented. They would leave Schmidt behind.

THE DAY scheduled for the departure of Dasch’s group was Thursday, May 28. That morning, Dasch had another heated argument with Kappe over how the group should operate in America. Kappe wanted the men to begin sabotage work almost immediately, even if in a small way. Dasch insisted they lie low for three or four months to develop good cover stories. He referred to his conversation with Colonel Lahousen at the farewell banquet in the Zoo restaurant: the “big chief” had counseled caution.

They then quarreled over whether the saboteurs should contact former comrades from the German-American Bund. Heinck, who had been an active member of the Bund when he lived in the United States, wanted to look up a friend in Long Island whom he thought he could recruit. Dasch said that any such meeting would “take place over my dead body.” 19He accused Kappe of failing to follow instructions, reminding him that Lahousen had been opposed to contacting former Bundists on the grounds it was impossible to be sure whether they were still loyal to the Fatherland.

The conversation quickly degenerated into an argument over political loyalties. With the departure of Schmidt, Dasch was the only member of the group who had never been active in Nazi politics. Kappe complained that Dasch had “no confidence in our people in America who have been in the Bund.”

“You dirty bastard, we Bund members had to fight people like you in America,” Heinck chimed in.

Now it was Dasch’s turn to get angry. Privately, he felt only contempt for the swarthy Heinck, whom he considered a “typical German spy, dumb and big mouthed when he is safe, yellow as a coward when in danger.” 20But he kept these thoughts to himself, and instead yelled, “I’ll kill you if you call me a bad German again.” 21

They then began arguing over who would team up with whom in America. Kappe wanted Dasch to pair with Quirin, and Burger with Heinck. Burger would be leader of the second team, ready to replace Dasch if anything happened to him. Dasch said he did not fully trust Burger because of his old troubles with the Gestapo. He preferred to keep an eye on Burger, and let Quirin be responsible for Heinck. Quirin and Heinck knew each other well, having worked together at Volkswagen. Kappe eventually let Dasch have his way. 22

There was one final dispute that afternoon, as they were preparing to board the submarine. Dasch, who had not been too worried about the gold certificates, now discovered that some of his dollar bills had small Japanese characters scrawled on them. This suggested that they had been acquired through Japan, which was allied with Nazi Germany. “This money I don’t want,” Dasch told Kappe, throwing the bills out. “You should be ashamed, supplying us with money like that.” 23

By the time Kappe escorted the men to the submarine that evening in a navy car, he was glad to be rid of them. The U-boat could not be seen from the shore as it was anchored behind a freighter. Dressed in navy fatigues and hauling their bags, the V-men boarded the freighter by a gangplank, crossed over to the other side, and then climbed down a ladder onto the deck of the submarine. The captain invited them all for a drink in his cramped quarters, but Kappe only stayed long enough to wish everybody “good luck.” 24

ALTHOUGH DASCH and his men had never been on a U-boat before, they felt at home. German newspapers carried frequent reports about life on board submarines, hailing the achievements of the U-boat fleet, particularly in the North Atlantic. 25“Our submarines are endangering U.S. oil supplies,” boasted the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger as the saboteurs were preparing to leave Berlin. “Liquid gold is flowing into the ocean.” A cartoon depicted Churchill telling Roosevelt, “You can find our ships all over the ocean,” as the two leaders used telescopes to spot a graveyard of Allied ships at the bottom of the sea.

At a time when German armies were beginning to falter on other fronts, Dönitz’s U-boats provided a steady stream of propaganda triumphs. The Nazi press painted a picture of gallant U-boat captains stalking their prey, and American seamen quaking in fear at the thought of running into a German submarine. “Deadly eye on the Atlantic,” said the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung above a picture of a periscope peeking through the waves. 26“Meeting it means certain destruction. Millions of tons of enemy ships have fallen victim to this magic eye that can observe the sea and the sky at the same time.”

The same newspapers gave the saboteurs a skewed picture of life in America. To the extent that the Nazi press covered daily life in America at all, it was to mock American popular culture, and the country’s lack of preparedness for war. There were many jokes about the profits made by Wrigley’s chewing gum now that it was being issued to U.S. soldiers along with their rations. Another favorite technique was to run pictures of big-breasted American girls in uniform, under headlines like “Roosevelt’s Freedom Fighters.” It was the Nazi equivalent of soft pornography, making fun of the enemy and selling newspapers at the same time.

“Into battle with girls in shorts” ran the headline in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, beneath a picture of drum majorettes. “Hundreds of actresses trained in seducing screen heroes have become soldiers and are now supposed to seduce American men into going to war.”

SOON AFTER U-202 departed from Lorient harbor, Kapitänleutnant Ahlrichs was surprised to run into Schmidt in the dining car of the Paris–Berlin train. Both men were on their way back to Germany, Ahlrichs to report to naval intelligence, Schmidt to get medical treatment. Far from being despondent about being left behind, the ninth saboteur seemed exceptionally cheerful. He told Ahlrichs that the V-men, particularly those belonging to Dasch’s group, had quarreled with one another constantly. Dasch was very mistrustful of Burger, threatening to kill him or betray him to the FBI.