Michael Dobbs - Saboteurs

One of the joys of writing narrative history is the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of your characters. In researching this book, I was able to reconstruct the extraordinary wartime journey taken by the eight Nazi saboteurs by visiting places they visited while reading extensive archival material about their adventures. My travels took me from the grounds of a former Nazi sabotage school in Brandenburg, Germany, to a windswept beach in Amagansett, Long Island; from Hitler’s bunker in the lake district of northeastern Poland to the streets of downtown Chicago, where the saboteurs played cat-and-mouse games with their FBI pursuers.

Everywhere I went, I benefited immeasurably from extraordinary acts of assistance and hospitality. Some of the people who helped me were friends, others complete strangers. Some knew nothing about the strange story of the Nazi saboteurs; others had been researching the case for much longer than I. But all were generous with their time, and to all of them I want to say thank you.

Pride of place in these acknowledgments must go to those who had direct, firsthand knowledge of the saboteur case, and are either characters in this book or participated in the events described here. Given the fact that these events took place more than six decades ago, I count myself fortunate to have been able to conduct as many interviews as I did. In particular, I want to thank John Cullen, the coastguardsman who ran into the saboteurs on Amagansett Beach the night they came ashore, and Duane Traynor, the lead FBI investigator in the case. Both men sat with me patiently through hours of interviews, providing valuable insights and anecdotes, which I have incorporated into the narrative. My gratitude also goes to Lloyd Cutler, the sole surviving member of the prosecution team at the military tribunal; Wolfgang Wergin, who shared many of the adventures of saboteur Herbert Haupt; Bennett Boskey, law clerk to Supreme Court Chief Justice Harlan Stone; and Heinrich Fischer, a crew member of U-584, one of the submarines that transported the saboteurs to America.

One circle further out, I owe a debt to relatives and acquaintances of the characters in this book, including Gerhard Kappe, son of Walter Kappe, and Christel Engemann, daughter of Hedy Engemann. My understanding of George Dasch was enriched by my conversations with researcher Jonathan Mann, who traveled to Germany to meet with the last surviving saboteur before his death. Other people who have fallen under the spell of the Nazi saboteur story include Richard Cahan, who wrote a splendid article on the subject for Chicago magazine and gave me a tour of saboteur sites in the Windy City, including the street corner where Herbert Haupt proposed to Gerda Stuckmann. Peter Hansen, a writer for Classic Trains, helped me locate the photograph of U-584 that I have used in this book.

In Amagansett, I was able to soak up the atmosphere of the now-defunct lifeboat station thanks to a kind invitation from Isabel Carmichael, whose parents bought the old house many years ago and moved it to its present site on Bluff Road. Tony Prohaska of The History Project allowed me to look at interviews he had made with retired coastguardsmen. My friend Celestine Bohlen gave me a place to stay in New York a couple of blocks from Grant’s Tomb, one of the secret meeting places of the saboteurs. In Washington, NBC reporter Jim Popkin helped me locate the final resting place of six of the saboteurs, on a wooded hill that overlooks the Potomac River and a city sewage plant.

It would have been impossible to write this book without access to extensive records on the saboteur case, the most important of which are housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. At the Archives, I would particularly like to thank Greg Bradsher, who whetted my interest in the case by giving me a tour of the stacks where the Dasch records are held; Amy Schmidt, for guiding me through the intricacies of captured German records; John Taylor, an inexhaustible fount of information on World War II; David Van Tassel, for opening up thousands of previously secret FBI records on Walter Kappe; and Timothy Mulligan, for helping me understand the operations of a German U-boat. In Berlin, I owe a special debt of gratitude to a very capable researcher, Shannon Smiley, who tracked down numerous records on my behalf, including letters from U-boat survivors and Dasch’s old East German Stasi file, and introduced me to the incredibly helpful Hans-Georg Kohnke, director of museums for the city of Brandenburg.

Once again, I have benefited from the indulgence and encouragement of my longtime employers, the Washington Post. I want to thank the editors, Len Downie and Steve Coll, for allowing me to take a nine-month book leave and teach a course on media and politics at Princeton University. In addition to introducing me to some wonderful teachers and students, Princeton was also an ideal place to carry out much of the research for this book.

My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, was a pillar of support from beginning to end, along with my editor, Ash Green, who jumped on the idea of writing a book about the Nazi saboteurs when I first proposed it in the summer of 1991. At Knopf, I would also like to thank Luba Ostashevsky and Kevin Bourke for shepherding this book to publication so professionally.

Most of all, as with my previous books, I am grateful to my family for sharing my enthusiasms, pointing out my failings, and forgiving my frequent absences. For these reasons, and so many others, I dedicate this book to my oldest daughter, Alex, a never-ending source of pride, joy, and inspiration.

Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at the University of York, with fellowships at Princeton and Harvard. He is a reporter for The Washington Post , where he spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent covering the collapse of communism. His Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire was a runner-up for the 1997 PEN award for nonfiction. Mr. Dobbs lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

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“ Saboteurs is a riveting detective story within an engrossing war story. Meticulously researched and elegantly written, this book is that wonderfully rare thing: a first-rate work of history that is impossible to put down.”

“Their story has been told before, but never so fascinatingly as by Dobbs.”

“Revealing…. Dobbs delves, incisively, into the mindset of the different participants, from the saboteurs, with their conflicting back stories, agendas and loyalties, to midlevel FBI operatives, to the legal minds summoned to work the cases…. Dobbs fully evokes the relentless pace familiar to readers of traditional thrillers.”

“Fascinating…. Must-reading for true crime and World War II enthusiasts. [H]ighly recommended.”

“Dobbs expertly deploys the wealth of detail he has unearthed to bring this crew to life…. [He] has a knack for historical detective work…. Dobbs is the first to tell the full story of a riveting episode that casts some interesting shadows on our current moment.”

FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 2005