Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

Quirin, who had left a wife and twenty-month-old daughter behind in Germany, struck a note of resigned stoicism in a farewell letter to a German-American friend. “Just at the time when my life started to look bright for me with my little girl and all, I was approached by these men, and of course I couldn’t say no,” he wrote. “I think that fate meant this for me.” 8The former Volkswagen worker asked his friend to pass a message to his wife after the war was over. “The people who sent me here on this mission have promised to take care of her and the child and I hope they will live up to their promise. In the event that the worst should happen, which I hope against hope won’t, tell her good buy for me.”

Herbie Haupt wrote to his girlfriend, Gerda Stuckmann, mentioning the baby he never saw and relatives who “froze to death” on the Russian front. Just as Kerling had done with Marie, he told Gerda he had come back to America in order to make things up to her and his parents. “But I brought nothing with me but Horror for my Parents and trouble for you. I have managed to put my Mother, Father, and Uncle into jail, decent People who never have done a thing wrong in their life.” He had learned a bitter lesson from his time in Germany. “Dearest Gerda, it breaks my heart to write you this, but I will not be able to see you any more. You see, Gerda, this is war. You people in this country don’t realize that yet, but we who have been in Europe have felt it. You see Gerda those people face Death every day, they know it and finally they don’t fear it at all.”

Outside the jail, excitement was mounting. Newspapers and radio stations competed frantically for any scrap of news about the saboteurs. Neither the White House nor the War Department had provided any indication about the verdict from the military commission. It was generally agreed they would be found guilty, but opinions were divided over how they would be executed, and who might receive a pardon. The reporter with the best information about the case was Jack Vincent of the International News Service. Early on Thursday morning, Vincent reported that the military commission had sentenced all eight saboteurs to death, but had recommended clemency for two or three.

Reporters kept a vigil outside the jail all night, looking for telltale signs such as the appearance of lights in the corridor leading to the death chamber. On Friday morning, Vincent wrote that six saboteurs would die in the electric chair, but that the president had commuted the sentences of Dasch and Burger. The executions were to have taken place overnight on Thursday, but there was a twenty-four-hour postponement at the last moment.

Vincent’s information was substantially correct, although he did not know exactly when the executions would occur. As Cox later noted, it was “impossible” to keep news of an imminent electrocution from spreading around a prison. 9An early tip-off was a request to the prison kitchen for a large bag of salt. Longtime inmates knew that executioners use a salt solution to paint the legs and shaven heads of condemned men to ensure a proper electrical contact when the electrodes are attached. “Among old prison hands,” Cox wrote, “the secret spread, but not to our prisoners.”

IN BERLIN, Nazi leaders were scrambling to repair the damage caused by the saboteurs. The news from America could hardly have been worse. Colonel Lahousen noted in his war diary for August 4 that on the basis of American radio reports “it must be assumed that all participants in Operation Pastorius have been sentenced to death by a special court instituted by President Roosevelt. No news yet about the passing of the judgment.” 10He added that all Abwehr agents had been instructed to draw the necessary lessons from the “failure” of the sabotage plot. The Rankestrasse safe house would have to be given up.

In the meantime, belated efforts were under way to save the saboteurs from their seemingly inevitable fate. 11Legal experts for both the Abwehr and the Foreign Ministry did the best they could to make the case that the V-men should be treated as prisoners of war. A Foreign Ministry lawyer suggested informing the U.S. government that the V-men were regular soldiers who had somehow become detached from their units and landed on American soil by mistake.

According to reports filtering back to Berlin via the U-boats that transported the saboteurs to America, the eight men had all worn German military caps when they went ashore. In the opinion of the German legal experts, these caps should have been sufficient to identify them as soldiers if they got into trouble. They believed they could make an argument that all eight men were lawful combatants. Burger and Neubauer were German soldiers, while the other six V-men were acting under the orders of the German High Command, signed by Admiral Canaris.

Should these arguments fail to convince Washington, Berlin had another card to play. The High Command had been keeping a list of American citizens convicted in Germany on a variety of offenses. If the Americans refused to treat the V-men as prisoners of war, the Abwehr could use these American prisoners as bargaining chips for the saboteurs.

The Foreign Ministry lawyers drafted a diplomatic protest, accusing the United States of violating the 1929 Geneva Convention. The note would be dispatched to the Department of State via a Swiss diplomat in Washington responsible for looking after German interests in the United States. American legal experts had already anticipated such protests. Under the U.S. interpretation of the Geneva Convention, the saboteurs were “unlawful belligerents,” as they were caught behind the lines in civilian clothes. 12Furthermore, they had been given a “full and fair trial,” in contrast to the “arbitrary executions” that took place in Nazi Germany.

The German protests would prove to be academic. By the time they were delivered, it would be too late.

LATE ON Friday evening, Roosevelt’s naval aide, Captain John McCrea, phoned General Cox at his home to give him his orders. The executions would take place at noon the following day, Saturday, August 8. The president’s order specified that each of the six condemned saboteurs would “suffer death by electrocution by having a current of electricity of such intensity pass through his body to cause death, the application to be continued until he is dead.” 13

Cox arrived at the jail at dawn and assembled his team, which included six military chaplains, three Catholic, three Protestant. Beginning at 7:30, he visited the prisoners in their cells to inform them of their sentences. He started with Herbie Haupt. The youngest saboteur seemed to freeze as Cox read out the president’s order, but said nothing. One of the chaplains stayed with him in his cell. Cox repeated the same procedure with the other condemned men. The only one to display any emotion was Werner Thiel, who “looked as though an electric current went through him,” after which he dropped his head and closed his eyes. 14

Next, Cox visited Dasch and Burger, to tell them that their death sentences had been commuted to long prison terms. Dasch immediately began babbling incoherently about his family, until Cox silenced him and walked out of his cell. He then became “very morose.” His moroseness eventually turned to bitterness. He could not understand why the military commission had found him guilty at all.

Since the end of the trial, Burger had withdrawn almost completely to himself. He was lying on his bed reading the Saturday Evening Post when Cox entered his cell. He looked up from his magazine long enough to say “Yes, sir” as the provost marshal informed him that he had been sentenced to life in prison, and then resumed reading his magazine.

The men were given paper and pencil and a last chance to communicate with their loved ones. Instead of writing another letter, Haupt told the chaplain that he wanted to bequeath his diamond ring to Gerda Stuckmann, a wish that was later fulfilled by the FBI. Haupt also sent greetings to his mother and father. “I was with your son, Herbert Haupt, as spiritual adviser until the last moment,” the chaplain, Lieutenant William B. Adams, later wrote Hans Haupt. “Through me, he sends his love, requests that you not take it hard, and that his last thoughts were of his mother.” 15