Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Next was Thiel, who also insisted he was “just following orders.” His mind had been very muddled when he accepted Kappe’s invitation to go on a mission to America. One of his brothers had lost an eye fighting the Germans and another had been killed in the Ukraine. At first, he thought Kappe planned to use him as a propaganda agent. It was only after he got to the school in Brandenburg that he realized he was to be trained as a saboteur. By then it was too late to back out.

Kerling, the leader of the Florida group, was the most forthright and unrepentant. He described how he joined the Nazi Party in 1928, with a membership number of around 70,000, making him part of the Old Guard. But even Kerling had his doubts and hesitations. He had privately told his defense lawyers that the sabotage plot was doomed to failure as long as “a crackpot” and “egomaniac” like Dasch was in charge. 34His plan had been to stay in the United States long enough to convince his superiors in Germany that he had made an attempt at sabotage and failed, and then escape to a country like Argentina, where the Nazis were “running the show.” He repeated much the same story to the tribunal, without the explicit criticism of Dasch.

When Biddle asked Kerling to say whether or not he was “a loyal Nazi,” he squirmed. “I would say I am a loyal German.” He did not like the way old party members had been pushed aside by newcomers and careerists, and he also felt let down by the slipshod preparations for Operation Pastorius. “I can say that I have tried to be a loyal party member until I got into this thing, but when they used me, used the power they held over me, I doubt my loyalty.”

The tribunal tried to untangle the story of Kerling’s complicated love life by listening to testimony from both his wife and his mistress. Marie Kerling had little to add as she had not even seen Eddie since his return from Germany: he was arrested while on his way to a meeting with her. Hedy Engemann confirmed that Kerling had asked her to go to Florida with him, a potentially damaging admission since the prosecution contended that the purpose of the trip was to retrieve the explosives from Ponte Vedra Beach. Kerling was able to meet briefly with both women after they testified. “There was so much to say, and no chance to let you know how I felt,” he wrote Hedy later. “But it was good to hold your hand, trembling as it was.” 35

Neither Heinck nor Quirin added very much to their previous statements to the FBI; each was on the stand for only about an hour. Heinck said that the day before his arrest, he had dreamed of “Dasch standing in the FBI office” and revealing everything. Quirin acknowledged he was a loyal Nazi, but claimed he had no intention of blowing anything up. This provoked a series of questions from McCoy, as president of the commission, about the Nazi chain of command.

“George Dasch was your leader, I take it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And you obeyed all his orders?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Would you have obeyed his orders to spy in this country?”

“No, sir.”

“He was your führer, was he not?”

“Yes.”

“You would have obeyed all his orders to commit sabotage?”

“I am not sure about that.”

Biddle wanted to know what Quirin would have done if Hitler personally had ordered him to blow up American factories.

“I don’t know. I never met the Führer. I don’t know what kind of man he is. How can I answer that?”

THE LAST defendants to testify were Dasch and Burger, the two turncoats. Royall had saved Burger for last, as he was the most impressive witness, both factual and concise. Dasch, by contrast, was verbose and had trouble answering questions without making long speeches. “We will be here for a week if this kind of thing goes on,” Biddle complained. “I have never heard any evidence like this in my life.”

The prosecution could hardly deny an obvious fact: Dasch had reported voluntarily to the FBI and blown the whistle on Operation Pastorius. The question was, what had led him to betray the others? Biddle argued that his decision was essentially opportunistic, made on the spur of the moment, after running into the Coast Guard on Amagansett Beach and realizing that the sabotage plan would not work. He pointed to Dasch’s intimate involvement in the planning stages of the operation back in Berlin, when he worked closely with Kappe in selecting the saboteur teams. Dasch maintained that he had intended to betray Operation Pastorius right from the start, in order to fight Nazism, and had only pretended to cooperate with Kappe to protect himself and ensure he became part of the mission.

Without knowing Dasch’s state of mind while he was still in Germany, it was impossible for even the most fair-minded judge to fully resolve this dispute. Ristine emphasized that his client had never been a member of the Bund and had phoned the FBI office in New York the day after his arrival on Long Island. In his concluding arguments, Ristine also mentioned an important detail that seemed to support Dasch’s claim that he decided to betray the sabotage operation long before landing on Amagansett Beach. Back in Berlin in mid-May, Kappe had asked Dasch to give Kerling an address through which he could be contacted in the United States. In response, Dasch provided a fictitious address for his younger brother Ernst in New London, Connecticut, rather than Astoria, New York, where he actually lived. Kerling had written the false address for Ernst Dasch in secret ink on his pocket handkerchief. 36It is difficult to explain why, if Dasch was really committed to Operation Pastorius, he would make it impossible for the other group leader to reach him in an emergency.

In his cross-examination, Biddle zeroed in on the weakest point in Dasch’s defense: the delay of six days before he finally turned himself in. Why, Biddle wanted to know, didn’t he go to the FBI “right away”?

“I had three reasons, sir. May I explain all three reasons?” 37

“Surely, do them quickly—all three.”

First, said Dasch, he was “a mental and nervous wreck.” Second, he wanted to be “human” toward members of the Kerling group, particularly “this little kid Haupt” who had family in the United States. He could not just run to the police and deprive Haupt of the chance to demonstrate his innocence. “That would have been merely for the sake of my own self-protection. That would have been the rottenest thing in the world. To be a real decent person I had to wait.”

Dasch never got to explain his third reason, as Biddle returned to his favorite line of questioning. “Are you a loyal German or a loyal American?”

“I am loyal to the people of Germany.”

“How about the people of America? Are you loyal to them, too?”

“Yes.”

“You are loyal to everyone, aren’t you?”

Dasch’s version of events was supported by Burger, who testified that Dasch was a most unlikely leader of a sabotage mission. He would routinely do the opposite of whatever he was asked to do by his superiors. He was both contrary and incompetent. He had even lost his papers on the train from Paris to Lorient. Put simply, Dasch was no soldier and no saboteur. The other V-men were all suspicious of Dasch because he acted so “queerly.”

Royall succeeded in showing that Burger had plenty of reason to hate the Nazis. Asked how he was treated by the Gestapo, Burger choked up, and was unable to answer. He finally replied that it was not the way he was treated that hurt him, but the way his wife was treated.

“They knew my wife expected a baby. They had her come down to [Gestapo headquarters] several times and told her that I had stolen money; that I [could get] eight years on a chain gang, that she should get a divorce.” He went on to describe how his wife had had a miscarriage, but still refused to get a divorce. “They told her she should bring my uniform down to Gestapo headquarters so I could wear it and they could rip off my epaulets. She refused that also. After that, they made me write a farewell letter to my wife, telling her I would never come back.” At that moment, Burger told the judges, he had decided to find some way out of Nazi Germany.