July 16, 2015 • 56 mins
During World War II, Nazis invaded the United States with saboteurs bent on fomenting chaos. Three times.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there.
This is stuff you should know. So huge thanks right
(00:24):
off the bat to everyone who came out for our
Northeast plus one summer tour. Yes it was a pretty
big success. Yeah, big thanks Boston and New York in
Philadelphia and Durham in Washington, d c uh and look
for us this fall, like early October in the Midwest,
the Upper Midwest. Don't get excited yet. St. Louis not yet.
(00:48):
But hopefully we're targeting Detroit, because boy, we're long overdue
for Detroit. Yeah. I don't know how we're going to
be received in Detroit. You're gonna love us, I hope.
So I think we're looking at your cargo Detroit, maybe Cleveland, Minneapolisoliswaukee,
in Milwaukee or Madison, We're not quite sure yet, so
um maybe some advice wisconsinites. Yeah, and then everyone in
(01:12):
each city will just say come here because I don't
feel like driving a few hours. Uh So yeah, thanks
for the support and look for us this fall. And
did you thank squarespace. Yeah, did you think how stuff works? Yeah?
Did you thank Jerry for the moral support? Sure? I
think Jerry every day. It's part of my wake up routine. Yeah,
(01:33):
I'm looking forward to going back on tour. It's fun.
It is Okay, you read for this, I'm ready. We're
gonna channel our stuff you missed in history class. Yeah.
I'm not sure if they've done this or not. Have
you are you? I don't know? So, um, Chuck, I
don't know if you know this one because it didn't
(01:53):
come up in this article. But back in World War Two,
did you know that the Japanese actually carried out main campaigns,
two of them in Oregon? I didn't know that, Oh
you did. I'm a bit of a buff and then insane. Yeah.
I mean there's a lot of forgotten history or little
known history that you read it in. Uh. Thank god
(02:14):
for like the Internet, because someone will post an article
and say, I bet you never knew this, and then
you're like what, Yeah, that's pretty much the function of
the internet that what you just describe, you know, So
this one, I think I've learned about this from unsurprisingly
Uncle John's bathroom reader years and years and years ago.
But definitely not in this kind of detail. It turns out.
(02:37):
Then in World War Two, in I believe in Armagansett,
New York, which is on Long Island, and ponte Vedra Beach, Florida,
which is just south of Jacksonville. UM, Nazi saboteurs landed.
They invaded America. Pretty remarkable, it really is. What's even
(03:00):
remarkable is how badly their operations went. Yeah, what's remarkable
is well, not remarkable, what's uh. Thankfully they chose a
bunch of dopes, um, half hearted dope, half hearted dopes
who I don't know if they didn't do their research.
We'll get into how they picked these these shmos. But
(03:24):
it didn't go so well. But if they had to
pick them like the right guys, it might have been
a whole different story. Oh yeah, totally in this war
and and the FBI, especially Jager Hoover, really lucked out
that these guys were half hearted dope. Well not if
you ask him. No, it was just you might as
well have worn a cape around the office, you know,
(03:46):
well he may have. And little else. So um, back
in World War two, even before World War tour, before
the US centered the Second World War Hitler had this
great fantasy of sending New York City up in flames,
Like he really wanted to just destroy New York and
(04:07):
Verna von Broun, the guy who helped get America to
the Moon, was working on a rocket program that could
strike uh, the United States from Europe. That was one
thing never fully realized, um, because the war came to
an end before they could develop the right kind of missile.
But they were working on it, and they were also
(04:28):
working on long range bombers. They could fly out of
Europe all the way to america'ss coast and bomb. Apparently
hit they used to literally sit around and watch like
film footage of cities burning and like fantasizes about New
York City. Crazy. Yeah, well he was pretty crazy, um.
But he finally realized that, like, if he was going
(04:50):
to get New York, the best, most efficient, most at
hand way to do that was to send saboteurs into
the United States to infiltrate and do New York themselves.
That's right, you know, terrorists essentially. Well, yeah, the only
thing that kept him from being considered full fledged just
straight up terrorists is because we were formally at war
(05:12):
with this country. So they were they were considered officially
spies and unofficially saboteurs. Yes, Uh should we shout out
the articles here? Yes, let's right off the bat. I read, well,
I read a few. I read one on uh damned interesting,
which was good. Uh. There was one you sent called
(05:32):
world War two German saboteurs invade America in nineteen two. Yeah,
that was on history Net. History Net, and I feel
like there was one more. There was a Spiegel article.
Oh yeah, that's one o UM called Operation past Storious
Hitler's unfulfilled dream of the New York in flames poor.
I know his dreams failed. So, uh, World War two
(05:57):
hadn't been raging for long for the U S when
this happened. It was right after uh Paul Harbor was bombed,
and Hitler said, you know what, they think they're over there,
They're a long way from us, so they probably feel
pretty pretty safe. So let me undermine that and let
me devise this plan um. And it was originally going
(06:18):
to be a wave of saboteurs like every you know,
four to six weeks. They were going to be sending
in small teams of of terrorist slash spies to wreak
havoc on the US, and uh, thankfully it didn't work
out that way, so it was kind of scrapped. Yeah,
the the obver I think that's how you pronounce that
(06:39):
you're the one who knows German, Is that right? Yeah?
So that was the the basically the sabotage unit of
the German Military Intelligence Corps. And these guys had kind
of perfected their craft with explosives and terrorism and and
um all that jazz in your Pean theaters already in
(07:01):
the war. And so they set up a school, a
terrorist school, which supposedly these guys were trained in like
jiu jitsu as well as explosives and stuff like that.
And I'll bet it looked a lot like um, enter
the Dragon in there, but with Germans, you know. Yeah.
I wonder if they were training kung fu school on
(07:21):
an island somewhere, but this is in the woods. I
wonder if they in the Black forest perhaps. I wonder
if they were trained in pe knuckle and movie watching
and car buying I think that, and rolling over and
singing like a canary. So the the app there um
selected a man. His name was Walter Capp Or is
(07:42):
that Cappy Walter cop what Walter Capp, who was a pudgy,
bull necked man as described in the history article, and
the reason that they selected him to head up this operation,
which Cap came to um nickname is Operation Pastorious, which
was named after Francis Daniel past Story is one of
the early German immigrants to the United States who arrived
(08:04):
in Philadelphia in three The reason they selected Cap for
this operation was because he had lived in America for
twelve years already, so he was he was he understood America,
how it functioned, what targets should be struck, that kind
of stuff. And they said, select your teams, and so
(08:26):
he put a donkey on the wall and got a
tale with a little pin on it. Right now. What
he did was he did some research and he went
through the records of something called the Austlin Institute, and
they were big on getting Germans back to Germany ones
that had emigrated to the United States workout, yeah, okay,
(08:46):
So specifically the ones who were looking he was looking
for ones who had been in the United States in
this case, and a lot of these people have been
in what was called the Boon or is it the
bund uh I would say it's a booned, the American booned,
which was like the basically the Nazi sympathizers in the
United States, and they would set up little shops all
(09:08):
over the country. Yeah, and they would speak out against
UM Franklin Roosevelt or UM speak in favor of fascism.
And apparently they managed to get twenty thousand people at
a rally at Madison Square Garden once by holding a
Knicks game. Pretty much. I don't think the Knicks could
even get twenty people would come out to Madison Square. Um,
(09:29):
but they were so unpredictable and radical here in the
United States that even the Nazi Party officially distanced itself
from these guys officially. Unofficially they recruited from their ranks
specifically for Operation Pastorious. Yeah. So what he uh? He
found some some blue collar dudes, um. All but two
(09:51):
of them had been Nazi Party members, which was a
good start. Ford dropped off right off the bat, and
that left him with what would be U eight dudes,
which they divided up into two teams of four, one
leader on each side and three dopes below them, with
with cap at the head of the whole thing. Yeah.
Even though he didn't come over to the United States
(10:14):
for the operation. He was just sort of running the
training initially. Yeah, and he was watching him do jiu jitsu.
I guess so you're in the hilarious Germans. I don't
think so. It just seems a little like, you know,
neighborhood ninja camp kind of stuff. You know. Well, they
(10:35):
had to train in some sort of hand to hand combat. No,
they're saboteurs. They're not. They don't need to know that
they're not. They're supposed to know how to blow up
a bridge. Yeah, but what if they it caught in
the middle. I gotta like turn and run away jiu
jitsu somebody down. Now, you just run if you're a saboteur. Well,
that's some foreshadow right there. So I hear the players
on on one on Team one, we'll call it Team
(10:58):
um Nights. How about that? That one? Sure? On Team Minds,
you had the leader George John Dosh and he was
thirty nine. He was the oldest guy and uh thirty nine,
and he was picked because he was um. He was
a smooth talker, and he was apparently just seemed very American,
which was you're gonna stick some Germans over there to
(11:21):
to be saboteurs. It's probably good if they can pass
themselves off as just regular good German Americans. Right. Plus
also you have the added benefit of not having to
teach them to speak colloquial English. Sure. Um, and they
already know the terrain, they know the culture. Where's Coney Island?
Vant the hotdog exactly? Yeah, so they were all good, right. Yeah,
(11:45):
was that count Dracula? Uh No, that was that was
my German saboteur. So that's why they went with the
guys who had already spent time in America. Plus they
it also showed, um, a pretty significant loyalty to your homeland,
the fatherland in this case, where when war breaks out,
(12:05):
you go back to where the war is being fought supported. Yeah,
you know what I mean. So they're like selecting from
the Ostlands Institute roles of emigrants who were also boond members.
It seemed like a just to knock it out of
the park group of guys. Yeah, so um, uh josh,
he was. He actually did, like he said, served in
(12:27):
the German Army in World War One, came to America,
worked as a waiter, and then in nineteen thirty nine said,
you know what duty calls, I'm going back home. Um.
The second guy on the first team, Ernest Peter Berger.
He was supposedly a smart guy, and he had an
interesting story because he was he had long been a Nazi,
(12:48):
since they said, as you know, as long as Hitler
himself had been a Nazi. Yeah, he was part of
the beer hall push. Yeah, he was what you call
a what's the early adopter. He was Nazis, he really was.
And he he actually had fled Germany for the United
States because he was afraid he was going to get
brought up on brawling charges. That's right. He like to fight. Yeah,
(13:09):
And he stayed there for about six years and then
worked as a machinist in the Midwest, even joined the
National Guard, the U. S National Guard, and um became
an American citizen yep. And then he went back after
Hitler game power, right, Well, he went back mainly because
of the Great Depression, because the right yeah, but I
mean it coincided. But he was like, yeah, this place
(13:31):
stinks now yeah, and Hitler's in power, I'm gonna go
become a brown shirt and rough up people on the street,
which is what he did. Pretty much because he really
did love to fight. And um, the brown Shirts were
purged in the Night of the Long Knives by Hitler
and his cronies and um Burger was it was Burger right? Yeah.
(13:53):
He he managed to not be killed during that purge. Yeah,
so he was working with his buddy um Ernst Room
of the Stormtroopers like serious business, right, Rome was actually
killed during the perch Oh yeah, they put apparently they
put a pistol in his cell with him and gave
(14:14):
him ten minutes to kill himself. And he said, if
if you want me dead, Adolph's gonna have to do
it himself. And they came back and he was staying
there right, and Hitler is like, what is going on here? Um,
and the guy was standing there with the shirt off,
with his chest bear to him. Yeah, supposedly, and they
just shot him in the chess point blank and the
(14:35):
head of the Brown Shirts went down. So that didn't
work out for him, No, but Burger did survive this, Yeah,
he did survive and went off to college. But then
he wrote a a paper about the Gestapo that was
not too favorable and he got sent to a concentration
camp for his efforts for seventeen months, right, and then
when he was released, they said you can come out,
(14:58):
but you have to go off with the army. Yeah,
they harassed his wife. It was I don't know that
he was the best pick, right, think we've antagonized, thrown
in prison and then forced into the army. We also
killed his boss, harassed his wife. Will trust him as
a savage as a team of one of eight, So
(15:21):
Burger is the right hand man to Dash's team on
Team Team mites E I n Z E I n Z.
And then there were other There were two other dudes,
Heinrich Henk, right, it's a great name, and Richard queerin Yes,
And they were a couple of machinists who, um, we're
(15:42):
a couple of machinists. They've been in America for a
while back, and we're selected for this team. Yeah. Basically
they went back to Germany started working at Volkswagen and um,
you know, I guess we're probably eager to leap on
h top secret job like this. It's probably appealing to
these guys, you know. So that was Team Ice. We'll
(16:04):
talk about teams right after this. So Chuck tell us
(16:24):
about the smiling faces on Team survive well, Josh teams
FY was led by a man named Edward Curling or
Edward I guess who is I take it as the
only competent person in this entire mission. Yeah, he seemed
like it, right, kind of a little more than the rest.
Comparatively speaking, he seemed like a criminal genius. Yeah, that's
(16:47):
a good point. Um. So he was also one of
had gone to American to work, married a German woman
there and then they worked together as butler, butler and
cook for a little while, and then he said, you
know what, I don't like you anymore. I think I
want an American woman. So he did that and then, uh,
when the war broke out, he tried to sail to Germany. Right,
(17:10):
So I'm not sure if he was a mastermind either.
Another thing about it, well, he showed a lot of initiative. Well,
good point, and he was turned back by the um
the coast Guard. But he finally made it to Germany
UM in nineteen forty and he ended up working at
the Ministry of Propaganda. Yeah, I guess, huh yeah, sure.
And when he tried to um sail to Germany that
(17:34):
one time, he actually had a guy with him named Um,
was it Herbert new Bauer. I believe that was a
new Bauer on his boat. Yeah, he was on that crew,
and so he would have been turned back as well. So, um,
he was a natural fit, right, and each other and
Curling actually recommended Herman new Bauer uh to be part
(17:55):
of the team. He's like, he can hoist a sail. Yeah,
what else do you need? That he was in the
boone who cares that was the youngest member of his
crew at twenty two? Was Herbert helped? And um, he
moved to the U S when he was just five
years old. And so I don't know that he was
a great choice because he was practically American. Yeah, and
(18:16):
you know he was also not so smart, or put
it this way, experienced. He was not experienced, right, A
little a little green, a little wet behind the ears. Um.
And then the last guy, Werner Thiel, he surprised surprise
as a member of the boond and he was working
(18:37):
in a war plant. So just this weird hodgepodge rag
tag group of guys were selected. Only two people out
of the whole original twelve or had been in the military.
This sounds like a movie in the making, but it
just if it would have had a great third act,
it probably would already be a movie. Oh yeah, you
(18:58):
know what I'm saying. Yeah, it is lack a third act.
I imagine like when if someone had tried to develop this,
like this sounds great so far, it's going great, and
then that's how it ends. Yeah, shel fit. Yeah. Um.
So these guys are put together. They're sent to the
over school to learn jiu jitsu, and the old guy,
George Josh is like low kick low kick, Oh my hip,
(19:21):
yeah you know. Yeah. They were also studying like explosive
techniques and wiring, not just explosive jiu jitsu technique, but
real explosive wiring, detonation timers, all of this stuff. They
got to go on field trips to um power plants
and bridges and canals and see like where the weak
(19:42):
points were um and all of this took place over
an intensive eighteen days of training. That's it. They got
eighteen days of training. Yeah, and apparently Josh, the leader
of Team Inns, wasn't even I read one account this
said he basically kind of snoozed through most of it,
which would go on to explain a few things later
it's hilarious. Eighteen days and you can't even stay awake
(20:04):
to learn how to blow something up. Seriously. Um, all right, one,
they were given their assignment, um, and these were I
mean this was pretty smart. The assignments were. They had
a good they had a good plan in place. Small
teams of dudes. Uh Dash's team was assigned to destroy
quite a few things. Um, hydro electric plants at Niagara Falls,
(20:28):
the Aluminum Company of America factory in Illinois, Tennessee, New
York three plants, and the Philadelphia Sault Company's cryolite plant,
which apparently supplies raw materials for aluminum. Right. And the
reason they want wanted to go after aluminium was because
aluminum production in the United States the output was greater
than all of Europe's both sides access and or no,
(20:51):
I'm sorry. All of the access is aluminum production put together.
And aluminium is a very very valuable thing. During war
you used to make air craft frames. You use it
to make um, the interiors of ships. Apparently you use
it for everything from like m R. E's, like the
field ration tink hands or well not tin cans, aluminum
(21:13):
can but all of this stuff comes in handy. And
if you can sure pin wheels like the good ones,
if you um put those man, you can cut your
finger off with one of those things. Uh. If you
can cripple aluminum production, you can put a serious thing
in the wartime effort. Yeah, it was. It was a
smart play. Um. And then they are also told to
(21:34):
bomb um locks on the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky
and Pittsburgh. Yes, so disrupting transportation that would have been
a huge deal. They would just strap a bomb to
a pack mule that was supposed to be pulling a
boat along the canal and kaboom. So that's team mines. Yeah,
(21:54):
team spy curling steam. They said, all right, you guys,
we want you to concentrate on railroad because we saw
during the American Civil War destroying railroads is a great
way to cripple and army. Um they blew. And I
don't think that's where they got the idea. You know,
it's long been a wartime thing to destroy railroads. I
see Pennsylvania Railroad station at Newark. Uh, the Horseshoe Bend
(22:20):
section of railroad track near Altoona, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Ohio
railroad parts of it, the New York Central Railroads, Hell
Gate Bridge locks and canals in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Ohio,
and the water supply system of New York. Right. And
they were also told to carry out acts of general
terrorism to scare people in general, bombing Jewish own department stores, UM,
(22:46):
locker rooms at UM train stations, just basically just foment
like real fear and make Americans feel like, wow, America
is being struck. Yeah, we're vulnerable. Um. And so the
guy said, okay, let's do this, and they they they
shipped out on two different subs from Lorient, France. U
(23:08):
boats Baby, this is Germany, Yeah, okay, U boats. Um.
They left on U five eighty four in U two
oh two and um they had each team had four boxes,
three of like dynamite and other explosives, and then a
fourth box of things like timers and UM detonators and
(23:32):
wiring and all that stuff. Sausages sure, just in case
they got a little hungry on the trip. Yeah it
was Germans after all. They also had a lot of
money and roughly about a million dollars today UM. At
the time each group had fifty grand and they needed
this to travel and to live and to bribe people
and pay folks off right in cash. So they had
(23:55):
and what's equal to about a million dollars today in
cash on them and nothing greater than a fifty bill.
That's a lot of money, like physically a lot of money.
Each member was given nine thousand five of which it
was his very funny like team leader is going to
hold onto this and you can keep for yourself and
your money belt and only carry like four fifty in
(24:16):
your pocket, and um, that should be enough dough to
carry out this plan was the idea, yep, and then
the uh. The team leaders also got handkerchiefs that had
um the names and addresses and things of contacts in
invisible ink written on them. Yeah. So this is like
a bona fide spy, yes, bionage terrorism operation. Again, great
(24:41):
movie in the making so far, so the m And
again I think you said before that like Hitler was
planning on sending several waves or wave after wave. Apparently
the schedule was every six weeks they were going to
send one, one or two teams to the United States. Yeah,
I got, I mean it was a really smart and
scary plan. Um, because catching you know, a tiny team
(25:05):
of four guys who can assimilate as Americans, um or
at least good German Americans. That's that's tough to catch.
So chuck you uh two O two, which actually left
two days after you. Eight four showed up off like
fifty yards off the shoreline of Long Island and just
(25:28):
frightening the thing about. Yeah, there was a German U
boat fifty yards off of the shore of Long Island.
UM on June twelve, showed up about eight in the
evening and it belches out its cargo of um box
of explosives and saboteurs, and the dudes um as they're
(25:49):
rowing to shore, they put they were wearing like German
military uniforms. Yeah. I didn't fully and this didn't make
a ton of sense to me. Oh well, if you
were caught in playing was behind enemy lines. The rules
of war state that you can be shot on site,
but if you're caught as a German marine prisoner of
war and you have to be, that was taking a chance.
(26:11):
I would addressed as an American. No, I mean, like
I think that was smart. Yeah, I don't know. I
would have addressed. I would have tried to assimilate, not
been like, I'm a German marine, You're you're supposed to
take me hostage, right, But I think it would be yeah,
come on, let's go, I'm taking you hostage, whereas if
(26:33):
the guy had been like, you're a spy, I am
allowed to kill you right here and now. Yeah, I
just I don't know. I don't agree with that one,
but hey, everyone has their own rules when it comes
to saboteuring. So sabotaging, right, yes, sabotaging. I was just
kidding anyway, And I've learned recently that that was of um,
that's that words of recent providence. Did you know that,
(26:55):
like it didn't come into use until the beginning of
the twentieth century. That makes sense. I would have thought
it was a fairly old word. Yeah, nope. Did we
just think of sabotage or do we just start calling
it that? Like? Did they not used to sabotage back
in the day. Yeah, I think they just started calling
it that. Okay, So, um, the so this is Dash's
(27:17):
team team since team mines, and they show up on
the shore and they're wearing again German military uniforms, which
they took off really quickly, very quickly. Yeah, once they
saw that. You know, Okay, we made it. Yeah, the
operation has begun. They changed, right, Yeah, they changed clothes
and they started uh I guess they put on there
(27:37):
I love New York shirts and they started digging big
holes in the beach to to bury these munitions so
they could come back as needed when they wanted to
blow something new up. Yes, they can't just carry that
stuff around, No, and they needed to just stash everything
and go and cool out and make sure that no
one was like onto him or anything like that, and
(27:58):
then come back and get it, like you said, as
they need. Yeah. The plan was to meet up for
the two teams to meet up in Cincinnati on July four,
UM for a baseball game. That is what I'm imagining. Yeah,
the Reds versus the Braves. I don't know where the
Braves were then, probably Milwaukee, sure, Okay, I don't think
(28:18):
they moved to Atlanta until the sixties. Yeah, but I
was trying to think of Boston, but they were that
was long before so um. The team in inst was
it was changing. They just landed. They were in the
midst of changing when they were discovered by coast guardsman. Yeah.
Well one of them was that Josh climbed over a
(28:39):
dune and while the other guys were still bearing and
changing uh their clothes, and he walked up and there
was a coast guard dude, John Cullen, standing right there,
and he was like, hey, what you're doing, basically, and
the guy was like, oh, nothing and uh he uh.
He apparently was kind of handling things when comes over
(29:01):
and Burger thought that so the team Inns had been
rowed to shore by two German sailors, and I guess
Burger lost track of the German sailors and assume that
they were still there and that for some reason it
was only Josh four guys plus the two right. And
then Josh had climbed over the dune to talk to
one of the sailors. So Burger comes up and asks
(29:22):
the question in German, and the coastguardsman, John Cullen, is like,
why are you speaking German? We're at war with Germany.
What's going on? And at that point Josh tells Burger
to get Yeah. He said, you fool, go back to
the others. And the guy was like, what others? Wait
(29:42):
a minute, And so Josh's story was that they were
um fisherman stranded Fisherman and before he got really suspicious, Cullen,
the guy from the Coastguard said, well, if you guys
are Shannon Fisherman's yeah, we have a Coastguard like house
party house up the beach. We just ordered some pizza.
Come with me. You guys can eat some pizza and
(30:04):
um chill out. And Josh is like, well, uh, we
don't have any idea on us. Yeah, we don't fishing
permits either. We don't want to get in trouble. And
I was like, well, you're telling a guy from the
coast guy that, so you're in trouble first of all,
but secondly that strikes me as weird. About that time,
Burger comes up asked his question in German, and Josh
(30:25):
sees the writing on the wall and tells Um tells Colin, well,
he says, do you have a mother and Colin says yes,
And he goes do you have a father? Says yes,
and Dash says, well, then I wouldn't want to kill you,
So how about I give you some money you can
forget that this ever happened. And he tries to give
him a hundred bucks and Colin says nope, yeah, he
(30:47):
says no, thank you, um, and he said He ends
up giving him two hundred and sixty dollars and Colin
basically realize that something was going down and I just
needed just take this money and act like I'm down
with the take and get out of here. So so
he does, so he does. He's scaddles and then oh
(31:08):
but not before this is very key piece. Actually, Josh
grabbed his flashlight before he left and shined it on
his own face and said, you will be meeting me
in East Hampton sometime soon. Do you know who I am?
And then guy was like, no, I don't know who
you are. And he said my name is George John Davis,
which was a lie. Uh well, it was his real
(31:29):
alias for the mission though, so like he actually gave
him his real alias, and he said what's your name?
And um, Colin said Frank Collins, which was a lie.
Which was a lie. Pretty quick thinking and um, basically
he scrambled back and Josh came back over and was like,
little seeing there, guys, I totally took care of it.
Should not be a big deal. Don't even worry about
(31:51):
paying the guy two sixty. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, So
everybody finished bearing these boxes, which they did, and um
Colin ran off and went and grabbed some of his
fellow Coast guardsmen. By the time they got back, Team
Science had left a train. But apparently, and this is
another thing, so the U boat that dropped off Team
(32:11):
Acience had grounded itself on a sandbar and was sitting
there like trying to get back out to sea because
Dawn was just rocked back and forth in your chair?
Was that that's what it looked, was that the method
in there? Yeah, it just moved right exactly. And finally
the tide came in just enough for them to dislodge
(32:32):
themselves and go back out of seat, just in time.
But apparently um Colon and the other Coast Guards wanh
it came back, caught sight of this U boat heading
back out to sea. Not good, right, No German U
boat off the coast of Long Island just ran into
some guys who are speaking German and tried to pay
you off. And then now all of a sudden, in
the moonlight, you can see the ghostly outlines of four
(32:55):
freshly dug holes in the sand. Let's see what's in there. Yeah,
I wonder if um i couldn't find. I saw that
about the boat being stuck, but I couldn't find if
that was like, if they could have gotten away, you know,
it could have all changed. They may not have been
that suspicious. I think that Collen was suspicious. Yeah, he
was definitely coming back, but seeing the U boat was
(33:17):
just icing on the cake exactly. Okay, so the other
dudes had hop date. Well, they dug up the holes
and they found the stuff and said, okay, um, this
is a huge deal. Yeah, we just found a trove
of explosives in German military uniforms buried on the beach,
like sixty miles from New York. Yeah, so Toots sweet.
(33:39):
By ten twenty three that morning, those boxes were in
the office of New York City Police Captain John Bayliss,
who then promptly got in touch with the FBI, and
by noon that day, thirteen hours after they had arrived,
the FBI had all that stuff in custody, and j
Edgar Hoover said, there's a to get a blackout on
(34:00):
the news, so these guys don't get wise to this,
and we need to get the largest man hunting FBI
history underway. And they did, and we will explore that
and all the ways the FBI got some lucky breaks
on this right after these messages. All right, so Team Science,
(34:31):
let's recap here. They are in Manhattan. They go shopping
at Macy's. Of course. Yeah, we got a lot of cash.
All they had with them was the clothes the civilian,
the clothes they brought and all that cash. Yeah, that
was it. Everything else is buried back to the beach,
but is now an FBI custody unbeknownst to these guys.
That's right. So they go shopping at Macy's. They split
into they said, let's split up into pairs, because that
(34:53):
makes sense. Uh, Kieran and uh he checked into the
hotel Martinique ssh and Burger I went to the Governor
Clinton hotel Governor Bill Clinton, and uh, I don't think so.
And um, unless he was named after the hotel, Oh yeah,
I never know. That's why he always wanted to be governor.
And so apparently, um, Josh and Burger met. He summoned
(35:18):
Burger to his hotel room up on a tall floor
and opened the window and said, I've got a plan
and I'm gonna tell you about it, and if you're
on board, you're on board. But if you're not, then
one of us is leaving through the door. One of
us is leaving through the window. He basically threw down
the gauntlet Burg to Burger, I wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah,
(35:40):
And so Burger he basically said, I would like to
turn and sabbothe tour, sabotage the sabotage, and go against Germany.
And because America is kind of great. So Josh was
going to kill Burger if Burger can go along with it.
(36:00):
That's what he said. And apparently Burger had the choice
to like, or you can you can defeat you and
throw you out the window where you can triumph and
be the living victor. Yeah. So I think Burger was
just on board. And they said that in this article
that um Josh probably was telling the truth that he was.
He was really this was his idea from the beginning.
(36:22):
So here's the here's the question. Like, historically speaking, Josh
has been uh seen as a genuine betrayer of this mission. Sure,
but when he became a genuine betrayer of the mission
is is issue? Still? According to this history and that article,
either he he knew it before they even landed, and
(36:46):
that that is why he showed his face and gave
his real alias to John Colin on the beach, which
makes sense, or his encounter with John Colin on the
beach rattled him enough that he was like, this is
never gonna work. We're already we're already dead in the water.
That's a quick turn. So now I'm going to go
ahead and betray it. Yeah. I say that he was
in on it from the beginning. That's what that's my feeling,
(37:08):
because he was in sicycle. Just I don't know, it
seems like a really quick like they just land on
the beach. Five minutes later he meets a guy and
he's like, wait a minute, it's off. I'm gonna betray Germany.
It just seemed I don't know, a little too hasty.
Well maybe he had nerves of spaghetti. Yeah, cook spaghetti.
Even so, uh, he says, here's the plan, the on
(37:29):
Monday burger. Yeah, he said, on Monday, I'm gonna go
to the head. They closed the window by now I
think said they went to dinner and everything was good,
and he said, I'm gonna go to Uh, I'm gonna
go to Washington meet with j Edgar Hoover. That should
be pretty easy to get that meeting. The man himself, Yeah,
here he wears nothing but a caper on the office,
and he said, you go back to the other two
guys and just sort of occupied them for a little
(37:50):
while while I'm going to d C and requesting a
meeting with the FBI. The head of the FBI, um
so Burger, says do this. Josh says, okay. It's Sunday,
and Josh doesn't make his way to d C until
Thursday morning. Instead, he goes so remember he was a
(38:10):
waiter in America. Well, he called. He called the FBI first,
at least right and the reason why he called first
he was a little worried because apparently back in UM
in a training camp in the woods, cop Falter Cop
had said, you guys don't need to worry, we have
a man on the inside of the FBI. So Um,
Josh was worried that if he called, or if he
(38:32):
just showed up at FBI headquarters he talked to that
one guy right out of all the FBI guys, he
would have that that level of bad luck, which, from
what I understand, that was something that was a good
concern for her to have um. So he called the
New York Bureau first and said, I'm a German dude,
I've got information for Jacker Hoover. Tell him I'm coming.
(38:52):
And then he hung up, and he went to a
club for waiters and then played pinuckle for like two
straight days. Yeah, I get I think he was probably gambling.
That's what I think too, because if I'm not mistaken
with the math, he ended up with more money than
he came with. Yeah, so he wentn't gambled with sabotage money.
I think. So, Man, that guy is some serious. He's
(39:16):
pretty awesome. Uh So, eventually he said, all right, I
gotta go to Washington. This peanuckle game has dried up.
So he hopped on the Sella Express for Washington, which
I highly recommend. By the way, man, train travel is awesome.
Regional train travel is a delight, such a delight, And
(39:36):
especially from Boston to New York. You just right along
the coastline there and it's just lovely. It is lovely.
Sailboats and cape cod houses on points, lobster rolls. Yeah,
it's nice, good stuff. All right. So Josh has arrived
by train finally. By this point, team spy has landed. Yeah,
(40:00):
show up in Florida and they're like, let's do this
for real. And I imagine Pontevedra Beach in three It
was a pretty low key scenario for sure, you know, yeah,
I would think so. So they are twenty five miles
south of Jacksonville. They bury their crates, no sweat, hop
on a bus, go to Jacksonville. Um. They split up
from that point to went to Cincinnati too, went to Chicago. Yeah,
(40:22):
and like I mean, there was no must There wasn't
like any no one was calling the FBI like they
were in it to win it basically. Yeah, why they
should have done Team I should have done their recond beforehand.
The U boat should have not pulled up next to
a Coastguard station first of all. That would have been
one thing. Yeah, because that Coastguard station was like half
a mile away. Yeah, it was there. All right, maybe
(40:44):
they're bad until so, uh Josh gets to d C,
checks into the Mayflower Hotel. Yeah, this is the same
day that Caroling's group lands in Pontevedra. It's a big day,
huge day. Uh, And he in d C said all right,
I'm gonna call the FBI again because you gotta meet
with Hoover, and he reached out to a Dwayne Trainer,
(41:05):
and of course, Trainer says, you know, this is probably
not a legitimate call. We get these kind of weird
calls all the time, but just in case, um, let's
go pick him up. Yeah, let's let's see what's going on.
It's a slow day at headquarters. Yeah exactly. So they
go and pick up the German and they bring him
to the Justice Department, and Dash said that he was
(41:25):
basically bounced from agent to agent every He's kind of
a hot potato on nobody wanted to deal with him,
And finally he convinced these guys enough to end up
in the office of Mickey Ladd, who was running the
man hunt for the spies, and the head of the
Spies was now sitting in his office, Yeah, telling him
(41:49):
he's the head of the spies, and he still didn't
quite believe him until Dash said, oh, yeah, well here,
let me show you this and dumped out dollars on
Lad's desk and Lads said, I'm so pleased you came
in today. Come with me. Yeah, so, Josh, here's here's
his idea. Is I want to talk to Hoover himself,
(42:12):
because I'm gonna be a hero and I might even
get like a medal of honor out of this, right,
Like maybe Jagger will have me over to his house
for dinner. Who knows what could come of this. Take
your tape parade, They threw those all the time back then.
Um so they the FBI gets them talking. He does
get to meet Hoover briefly, but um, a couple of
(42:34):
other agents take his deposition, which lasts for thirteen hours.
Before he finished, he had told them about Burger and
where Burger was, and they went and picked up Burger. Yeah,
he like, while he was still telling him the story,
they were already on Burger's hotel staking him out. Yep,
so they before they picked up Burger, they were staking
him out, like you said. And they watched Burger go
(42:54):
meet Karen and Hink and so they just arrested all
three of them, and all all of a sudden, they
had team in custody within like a day of um
dash walking in the FBI headquarters. It didn't go so
well for team I No, so when when the team
leader betrays you, like, yeah, you're you're in trouble. Your
toast so on June twenty two, Hoover wrote to f
(43:18):
d R and said, you know what, sir, we've we've
caught all the members of this group that landed on
Long Island. Pretty great, huh and we are awesome. Um.
He didn't mention that the guy turned himself in and
told him where everyone was, and uh so FDR was
just thought that Hoover had done like a bang up
job basically, and he's like, wait, way to go, way
(43:38):
to do your job exactly. He lied pretty much, so
um Dash had no real leads or anything about team,
but he did have a handkerchief that had contacts on
invisible inc. And surprisingly he hadn't blown his nose in
it at this point, but he and remember how you
(44:00):
were supposed to get the invisible ink to become visible. Luckily,
the FBI had a crack team of lab Tex on
this thing and they figured it out. And now all
of a sudden they had the names and addresses of
all of the German contexts for these teams right there
in their hands, thanks to Josh Right. So they were
all obviously staked out, just waiting on Team Heights or
(44:23):
I'm sorry, Team Spy to meet up with these people, right,
which they did. But first teams FI did some other
weird stuff like Herbert hopped. He was in Chicago, where
again he had lived since he was five, and Holpe
decided that he would buy a Pontiac car. Yea, yeah.
He went to his parents house, told his dad everything. Yeah,
(44:45):
I had his dad buy in the car. Yep, and um,
he proposed to his girlfriend. He remember he had left
during the war and he was an able bodied man
over age eighteen, and so the local draft board um
wanted to know where he was. So he dropped by
FBI headquarters to clear up his draft problem. Says I'm back. Sorry,
I've already registered with my local draft board. No need
(45:08):
to track me anymore. I'm just an all American boy.
And um the FBI was like, yeah, sure, thank you
for coming by, and then tailed them on the way out,
and then he led them to at least one other
team member, right yeah. And while this was going on,
Curling and verner Thiel went to New York UM and
(45:31):
met up with a friend named Helmet Lena because they
wanted to have sex with a lady, and so Lena
hooked him up with the mis his mistress said here,
have sex with her, and he said great, thanks, and
he ended up traveling with that woman. Curling did and
within a couple of days after Dash surrendered. Um, they
(45:52):
spotted Curling because they were trailing him at a bar
where he met with Deal, and they arrested both of
those guys. Right, So two down on team Spy about help,
I'm sorry, three down at this point. Right, Hope was
taken down in Chicago. The only one left at this
point was Herman new Bauer. Right, and new Bauer spent
(46:13):
his time in was it in New York? Uh? I
think he was in chick Okay, you're probably right. Um,
he just went to the movies over and over again.
That's what he did. He was apparently lonely, so he
sought out some friends of his wife, whom he hadn't
really met before. Umthing told him everything. He gave him
(46:36):
his money for safekeeping, but kept enough to go to
the movies a bunch. So basically he kept a dollar right,
and um, okay, dollar fifty and h then he um
was I think he just come back from the movies
when the FBI picked him up. Right, So Dash remember
is sure that like he's going to be feted as
(46:59):
a herero that Jaker Hoover is probably like thinking about
him right then, he's just like basically like Ralphie in
a Christmas story, just daydreaming about like how he's going
to be carried around on everyone's shoulders. He probably should
have been so, I mean, he's the reason why this
went south because he said, you know what, I'm siding
with America. The thing is Hoover. He didn't care Jager Hoover.
(47:24):
Not only did he not care, Hoover was taking the
credit for all of this unraveled, right. He couldn't let
Josh be known as this guy who had come and
um given him this whole thing on a platter, or
else Hoover would look like an idiot, and Josh might
very well have been hailed as at least a slimy
(47:44):
collaborators rather than a criminal. After everybody was rounded up,
the FBI arrested Josh, and Josh must have been quite
surprised by this. Well, yeah, they arrested him, but they said, hey,
just go along with this. You'll get a full presidential
pardon after six months. Sort of play along with the arrest,
and he was like, Okay, I see so put me
in the jail with the other guys so they don't
(48:07):
know yeah exactly. It was like, yeah, sure, well, because
that job with Hooper's planned to keep it all quiet
still exactly was working out great for Hoover, it didn't
work out great for Josh or the others. Chuck No.
So um FDR wanted to make sure that he could
get the death penalty and that this could be kept quiet.
(48:27):
So he as he formed a military tribunal to try
these guys, and it was the first one since um
Lincoln had been assassinated. It was a big deal. So
the prosecutor was Attorney General Francis Biddle, chief defense was
Colonel Kenneth Royal Um. They defense argued initially for a
civilian trial that was quickly scrapped and they said, no,
(48:50):
we're going to move forward with the tribunal and held
the trial out the Justice Department in Washington during the
month of July nine and basically said, we know the
whole there's not going to be much of a trial, fellas,
we know everything because you told us everything. You are
coming here to sabotage and blow up our junk and
(49:11):
you're in big trouble. Right, And the prosecutors sought the
death penalty as expected. Um, but it was up to
FDR to decide when and where, and to do that
he had to have a transcript of the trial. And
when he got this transcript of the trial, he it
became obvious that Hoover hadn't really done anything. Yeah. Appinently
(49:31):
FDR never called him out on it in public, No,
which was a nice thing to do, I guess, because
that would have just been further embarrassment for like the
whole country, you know. So they kept that quiet, but
at this point it was news all over the country.
They weren't keeping it quiet with a press, uh. And
the American public was way in favor of the death penalty.
In fact, there was an open letter published in one
(49:54):
newspaper calling for them to be fed to Gargantua, the
guerrilla at the Wringling Brothers circuit, because that's fair to
Gargantua too, Yeah, eat those Germans. Well. Instead, they electrocuted
six of them on August eight of the District jail
in Washington, d C. That's right, um, including Herbert Hout
(50:14):
who was just like, I just wanted up Pontiac, Yeah,
I just wanted to see my parents. Right, Burger and
Uh and Josh were spared the death penalty because they
basically had a hard time proving in court that they
didn't you know, fully intend to betray the operation. Yeah, exactly,
So they did not get electrocuted. Um. They were sentenced
(50:38):
Burger too hard labor for the rest of his life,
and Josh was given thirty years. But President Truman commuted
their sentences, released them and deported them, had them shipped
to UM West Germany. West Berlin said don't come back, Nope,
get out, and the other guys were buried in a
potter's field by the way and outside Washington, Yes, which
(51:00):
is now UM the d C Municipal Water treatment plant
where they were buried. Yeah, just right now. They're part
of the system, I guess Um. And so Josh and
Burger go back to Germany and Burger starts like feeding
the media Um the story basically five years later and
(51:23):
blames Right and blames Josh for the deaths of these
other six German patriots who were saboteurs. Right and Josh
Um tried to publicly clear himself through he first saw
to pardon in America so that he could come back.
He really wanted to get that Germany, Yeah, I can imagine, um,
and Uh America said, no, we're not going to do that.
(51:45):
We're not going to pardon you. We're still mad at you.
Germany said, we're mad at you too, and so he
just kind of faded out of the public spotlight. Ye.
He he ended up dying in nineteen at the age
of eighty nine, and I didn't see any follow up
or Burger for Burger. I think he wasn't quite as
vilified as Doosh was, right for sure. But that was
(52:09):
not the last time the Germans sent saboteurs ashore. There
was at least one other ill fated attempt in another
German submarine. These are expensive boats. Many, they are really
taking a massive risk to drop off a couple of saboteurs.
But they did it again off off of Maine in
(52:31):
a snowstorm, and two uh former American residents German Americans, um,
we're we're sent off under the main coast in a snowstorm.
They were seen by a local boy scout using a
compass during the snowstorm on the side of the road,
and the boy scout was suspicious, so he traced their
(52:52):
tracks all the way back to the shoreline when they
come out of nowhere and he's like, I'm going to
call the police. So the scouts actually called these guy. Yeah,
that's pretty cool. What's ironic is one of these German
American saboteurs was a boy scout himself, so it's like
boy scout on boy scout tattling um. And they got
picked up immediately, and as far as everybody knows, that's
(53:14):
the last time Germany ever tried that. Yeah. I think
the idea was that hitler Um. It's like this, this
is embarrassing. Yeah, let's just focus on the rocket program. Yeah,
we can't keep sending guys to the United States who
immediately get there and start doing stupid things giving themselves up.
Go and see mom and Dad seeing the movies playing
(53:37):
p knockle. So that's it. That's the story of the
time the Nazis invaded Florida and New York and Maine. Uh.
If you want to know more about that, check out
history Net, check out damn interesting, check out all sorts
of stuff. Yes, just search it. You'll find all sorts
of cool things on it. I would not look for
the movie coming soon into a theater near you know,
(53:57):
the third act non existent? Not really, No, it's just
kind of a let down. Yeah, that end with a
bang hands with Germany being mad at them in America too.
Uh let's see. I think I said Germany's mad, which
means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this
a cute our cutest youngest fan and it includes an
(54:21):
audio clip. Hey, guys, did you hear this? Yes, it's
pretty great. My son, Archer is two and a half
years old, Just two and a half. We listened to
podcasts together while I rock him to sleep at naptime
and bedtime. Anytime he's tired, he says, Mommy, let's go
Archer's room and listen to podcast. I usually rotate between
(54:41):
Stuff you Should Know and other house stuff works podcasts.
He's never seemed to have a preference until about two
weeks ago when I put another podcast on. He said, no, Mommy,
not that podcast, just stuff you know, the red one. Uh.
You guys are his favorite, which is fine with me.
And I've even to attach the voice recording of him
requesting your podcast. It was not rehearsed, find you, It's
(55:05):
just me asking him before his naptime today. That is
from Shawna and Shawna it was permission to hear from Archer.
So let's go ahead and play that clip right now. Okay,
are you ready to take a nap? Yeah? Do you
want to listen to a podcast? Okay? Which podcast? Stuff
(55:26):
Stuff you should Know? Okay, ah, wow, pretty cute, Holy cow,
kid knows his stuff. Unbelievable, So Archer, if you can
understand what's going on here, a boy, the sound coming
out of the speakers. We know you don't have four memories,
but hopefully this episode will be a documentation. That's right, Archer,
(55:48):
So good luck in life. You're off to a great start,
and now take your nap a little buddy nice. Well,
if you want to share with us how you're cute
kid loves stuff you should know? We love hearing that, right,
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(56:08):
email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
dot com,
Welcome to you Stuff you should Know from house Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark, There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry's over there.
This is stuff you should know. So huge thanks right
(00:24):
off the bat to everyone who came out for our
Northeast plus one summer tour. Yes it was a pretty
big success. Yeah, big thanks Boston and New York in
Philadelphia and Durham in Washington, d c uh and look
for us this fall, like early October in the Midwest,
the Upper Midwest. Don't get excited yet. St. Louis not yet.
(00:48):
But hopefully we're targeting Detroit, because boy, we're long overdue
for Detroit. Yeah. I don't know how we're going to
be received in Detroit. You're gonna love us, I hope.
So I think we're looking at your cargo Detroit, maybe Cleveland, Minneapolisoliswaukee,
in Milwaukee or Madison, We're not quite sure yet, so
um maybe some advice wisconsinites. Yeah, and then everyone in
(01:12):
each city will just say come here because I don't
feel like driving a few hours. Uh So yeah, thanks
for the support and look for us this fall. And
did you thank squarespace. Yeah, did you think how stuff works? Yeah?
Did you thank Jerry for the moral support? Sure? I
think Jerry every day. It's part of my wake up routine. Yeah,
(01:33):
I'm looking forward to going back on tour. It's fun.
It is Okay, you read for this, I'm ready. We're
gonna channel our stuff you missed in history class. Yeah.
I'm not sure if they've done this or not. Have
you are you? I don't know? So, um, Chuck, I
don't know if you know this one because it didn't
(01:53):
come up in this article. But back in World War Two,
did you know that the Japanese actually carried out main campaigns,
two of them in Oregon? I didn't know that, Oh
you did. I'm a bit of a buff and then insane. Yeah.
I mean there's a lot of forgotten history or little
known history that you read it in. Uh. Thank god
(02:14):
for like the Internet, because someone will post an article
and say, I bet you never knew this, and then
you're like what, Yeah, that's pretty much the function of
the internet that what you just describe, you know, So
this one, I think I've learned about this from unsurprisingly
Uncle John's bathroom reader years and years and years ago.
But definitely not in this kind of detail. It turns out.
(02:37):
Then in World War Two, in I believe in Armagansett,
New York, which is on Long Island, and ponte Vedra Beach, Florida,
which is just south of Jacksonville. UM, Nazi saboteurs landed.
They invaded America. Pretty remarkable, it really is. What's even
(03:00):
remarkable is how badly their operations went. Yeah, what's remarkable
is well, not remarkable, what's uh. Thankfully they chose a
bunch of dopes, um, half hearted dope, half hearted dopes
who I don't know if they didn't do their research.
We'll get into how they picked these these shmos. But
(03:24):
it didn't go so well. But if they had to
pick them like the right guys, it might have been
a whole different story. Oh yeah, totally in this war
and and the FBI, especially Jager Hoover, really lucked out
that these guys were half hearted dope. Well not if
you ask him. No, it was just you might as
well have worn a cape around the office, you know,
(03:46):
well he may have. And little else. So um, back
in World War two, even before World War tour, before
the US centered the Second World War Hitler had this
great fantasy of sending New York City up in flames,
Like he really wanted to just destroy New York and
(04:07):
Verna von Broun, the guy who helped get America to
the Moon, was working on a rocket program that could
strike uh, the United States from Europe. That was one
thing never fully realized, um, because the war came to
an end before they could develop the right kind of missile.
But they were working on it, and they were also
(04:28):
working on long range bombers. They could fly out of
Europe all the way to america'ss coast and bomb. Apparently
hit they used to literally sit around and watch like
film footage of cities burning and like fantasizes about New
York City. Crazy. Yeah, well he was pretty crazy, um.
But he finally realized that, like, if he was going
(04:50):
to get New York, the best, most efficient, most at
hand way to do that was to send saboteurs into
the United States to infiltrate and do New York themselves.
That's right, you know, terrorists essentially. Well, yeah, the only
thing that kept him from being considered full fledged just
straight up terrorists is because we were formally at war
(05:12):
with this country. So they were they were considered officially
spies and unofficially saboteurs. Yes, Uh should we shout out
the articles here? Yes, let's right off the bat. I read, well,
I read a few. I read one on uh damned interesting,
which was good. Uh. There was one you sent called
(05:32):
world War two German saboteurs invade America in nineteen two. Yeah,
that was on history Net. History Net, and I feel
like there was one more. There was a Spiegel article.
Oh yeah, that's one o UM called Operation past Storious
Hitler's unfulfilled dream of the New York in flames poor.
I know his dreams failed. So, uh, World War two
(05:57):
hadn't been raging for long for the U S when
this happened. It was right after uh Paul Harbor was bombed,
and Hitler said, you know what, they think they're over there,
They're a long way from us, so they probably feel
pretty pretty safe. So let me undermine that and let
me devise this plan um. And it was originally going
(06:18):
to be a wave of saboteurs like every you know,
four to six weeks. They were going to be sending
in small teams of of terrorist slash spies to wreak
havoc on the US, and uh, thankfully it didn't work
out that way, so it was kind of scrapped. Yeah,
the the obver I think that's how you pronounce that
(06:39):
you're the one who knows German, Is that right? Yeah?
So that was the the basically the sabotage unit of
the German Military Intelligence Corps. And these guys had kind
of perfected their craft with explosives and terrorism and and
um all that jazz in your Pean theaters already in
(07:01):
the war. And so they set up a school, a
terrorist school, which supposedly these guys were trained in like
jiu jitsu as well as explosives and stuff like that.
And I'll bet it looked a lot like um, enter
the Dragon in there, but with Germans, you know. Yeah.
I wonder if they were training kung fu school on
(07:21):
an island somewhere, but this is in the woods. I
wonder if they in the Black forest perhaps. I wonder
if they were trained in pe knuckle and movie watching
and car buying I think that, and rolling over and
singing like a canary. So the the app there um
selected a man. His name was Walter Capp Or is
(07:42):
that Cappy Walter cop what Walter Capp, who was a pudgy,
bull necked man as described in the history article, and
the reason that they selected him to head up this operation,
which Cap came to um nickname is Operation Pastorious, which
was named after Francis Daniel past Story is one of
the early German immigrants to the United States who arrived
(08:04):
in Philadelphia in three The reason they selected Cap for
this operation was because he had lived in America for
twelve years already, so he was he was he understood America,
how it functioned, what targets should be struck, that kind
of stuff. And they said, select your teams, and so
(08:26):
he put a donkey on the wall and got a
tale with a little pin on it. Right now. What
he did was he did some research and he went
through the records of something called the Austlin Institute, and
they were big on getting Germans back to Germany ones
that had emigrated to the United States workout, yeah, okay,
(08:46):
So specifically the ones who were looking he was looking
for ones who had been in the United States in
this case, and a lot of these people have been
in what was called the Boon or is it the
bund uh I would say it's a booned, the American booned,
which was like the basically the Nazi sympathizers in the
United States, and they would set up little shops all
(09:08):
over the country. Yeah, and they would speak out against
UM Franklin Roosevelt or UM speak in favor of fascism.
And apparently they managed to get twenty thousand people at
a rally at Madison Square Garden once by holding a
Knicks game. Pretty much. I don't think the Knicks could
even get twenty people would come out to Madison Square. Um,
(09:29):
but they were so unpredictable and radical here in the
United States that even the Nazi Party officially distanced itself
from these guys officially. Unofficially they recruited from their ranks
specifically for Operation Pastorious. Yeah. So what he uh? He
found some some blue collar dudes, um. All but two
(09:51):
of them had been Nazi Party members, which was a
good start. Ford dropped off right off the bat, and
that left him with what would be U eight dudes,
which they divided up into two teams of four, one
leader on each side and three dopes below them, with
with cap at the head of the whole thing. Yeah.
Even though he didn't come over to the United States
(10:14):
for the operation. He was just sort of running the
training initially. Yeah, and he was watching him do jiu jitsu.
I guess so you're in the hilarious Germans. I don't
think so. It just seems a little like, you know,
neighborhood ninja camp kind of stuff. You know. Well, they
(10:35):
had to train in some sort of hand to hand combat. No,
they're saboteurs. They're not. They don't need to know that
they're not. They're supposed to know how to blow up
a bridge. Yeah, but what if they it caught in
the middle. I gotta like turn and run away jiu
jitsu somebody down. Now, you just run if you're a saboteur. Well,
that's some foreshadow right there. So I hear the players
on on one on Team one, we'll call it Team
(10:58):
um Nights. How about that? That one? Sure? On Team Minds,
you had the leader George John Dosh and he was
thirty nine. He was the oldest guy and uh thirty nine,
and he was picked because he was um. He was
a smooth talker, and he was apparently just seemed very American,
which was you're gonna stick some Germans over there to
(11:21):
to be saboteurs. It's probably good if they can pass
themselves off as just regular good German Americans. Right. Plus
also you have the added benefit of not having to
teach them to speak colloquial English. Sure. Um, and they
already know the terrain, they know the culture. Where's Coney Island?
Vant the hotdog exactly? Yeah, so they were all good, right. Yeah,
(11:45):
was that count Dracula? Uh No, that was that was
my German saboteur. So that's why they went with the
guys who had already spent time in America. Plus they
it also showed, um, a pretty significant loyalty to your homeland,
the fatherland in this case, where when war breaks out,
(12:05):
you go back to where the war is being fought supported. Yeah,
you know what I mean. So they're like selecting from
the Ostlands Institute roles of emigrants who were also boond members.
It seemed like a just to knock it out of
the park group of guys. Yeah, so um, uh josh,
he was. He actually did, like he said, served in
(12:27):
the German Army in World War One, came to America,
worked as a waiter, and then in nineteen thirty nine said,
you know what duty calls, I'm going back home. Um.
The second guy on the first team, Ernest Peter Berger.
He was supposedly a smart guy, and he had an
interesting story because he was he had long been a Nazi,
(12:48):
since they said, as you know, as long as Hitler
himself had been a Nazi. Yeah, he was part of
the beer hall push. Yeah, he was what you call
a what's the early adopter. He was Nazis, he really was.
And he he actually had fled Germany for the United
States because he was afraid he was going to get
brought up on brawling charges. That's right. He like to fight. Yeah,
(13:09):
And he stayed there for about six years and then
worked as a machinist in the Midwest, even joined the
National Guard, the U. S National Guard, and um became
an American citizen yep. And then he went back after
Hitler game power, right, Well, he went back mainly because
of the Great Depression, because the right yeah, but I
mean it coincided. But he was like, yeah, this place
(13:31):
stinks now yeah, and Hitler's in power, I'm gonna go
become a brown shirt and rough up people on the street,
which is what he did. Pretty much because he really
did love to fight. And um, the brown Shirts were
purged in the Night of the Long Knives by Hitler
and his cronies and um Burger was it was Burger right? Yeah.
(13:53):
He he managed to not be killed during that purge. Yeah,
so he was working with his buddy um Ernst Room
of the Stormtroopers like serious business, right, Rome was actually
killed during the perch Oh yeah, they put apparently they
put a pistol in his cell with him and gave
(14:14):
him ten minutes to kill himself. And he said, if
if you want me dead, Adolph's gonna have to do
it himself. And they came back and he was staying
there right, and Hitler is like, what is going on here? Um,
and the guy was standing there with the shirt off,
with his chest bear to him. Yeah, supposedly, and they
just shot him in the chess point blank and the
(14:35):
head of the Brown Shirts went down. So that didn't
work out for him, No, but Burger did survive this, Yeah,
he did survive and went off to college. But then
he wrote a a paper about the Gestapo that was
not too favorable and he got sent to a concentration
camp for his efforts for seventeen months, right, and then
when he was released, they said you can come out,
(14:58):
but you have to go off with the army. Yeah,
they harassed his wife. It was I don't know that
he was the best pick, right, think we've antagonized, thrown
in prison and then forced into the army. We also
killed his boss, harassed his wife. Will trust him as
a savage as a team of one of eight, So
(15:21):
Burger is the right hand man to Dash's team on
Team Team mites E I n Z E I n Z.
And then there were other There were two other dudes,
Heinrich Henk, right, it's a great name, and Richard queerin Yes,
And they were a couple of machinists who, um, we're
(15:42):
a couple of machinists. They've been in America for a
while back, and we're selected for this team. Yeah. Basically
they went back to Germany started working at Volkswagen and um,
you know, I guess we're probably eager to leap on
h top secret job like this. It's probably appealing to
these guys, you know. So that was Team Ice. We'll
(16:04):
talk about teams right after this. So Chuck tell us
(16:24):
about the smiling faces on Team survive well, Josh teams
FY was led by a man named Edward Curling or
Edward I guess who is I take it as the
only competent person in this entire mission. Yeah, he seemed
like it, right, kind of a little more than the rest.
Comparatively speaking, he seemed like a criminal genius. Yeah, that's
(16:47):
a good point. Um. So he was also one of
had gone to American to work, married a German woman
there and then they worked together as butler, butler and
cook for a little while, and then he said, you
know what, I don't like you anymore. I think I
want an American woman. So he did that and then, uh,
when the war broke out, he tried to sail to Germany. Right,
(17:10):
So I'm not sure if he was a mastermind either.
Another thing about it, well, he showed a lot of initiative. Well,
good point, and he was turned back by the um
the coast Guard. But he finally made it to Germany
UM in nineteen forty and he ended up working at
the Ministry of Propaganda. Yeah, I guess, huh yeah, sure.
And when he tried to um sail to Germany that
(17:34):
one time, he actually had a guy with him named Um,
was it Herbert new Bauer. I believe that was a
new Bauer on his boat. Yeah, he was on that crew,
and so he would have been turned back as well. So, um,
he was a natural fit, right, and each other and
Curling actually recommended Herman new Bauer uh to be part
(17:55):
of the team. He's like, he can hoist a sail. Yeah,
what else do you need? That he was in the
boone who cares that was the youngest member of his
crew at twenty two? Was Herbert helped? And um, he
moved to the U S when he was just five
years old. And so I don't know that he was
a great choice because he was practically American. Yeah, and
(18:16):
you know he was also not so smart, or put
it this way, experienced. He was not experienced, right, A
little a little green, a little wet behind the ears. Um.
And then the last guy, Werner Thiel, he surprised surprise
as a member of the boond and he was working
(18:37):
in a war plant. So just this weird hodgepodge rag
tag group of guys were selected. Only two people out
of the whole original twelve or had been in the military.
This sounds like a movie in the making, but it
just if it would have had a great third act,
it probably would already be a movie. Oh yeah, you
(18:58):
know what I'm saying. Yeah, it is lack a third act.
I imagine like when if someone had tried to develop this,
like this sounds great so far, it's going great, and
then that's how it ends. Yeah, shel fit. Yeah. Um.
So these guys are put together. They're sent to the
over school to learn jiu jitsu, and the old guy,
George Josh is like low kick low kick, Oh my hip,
(19:21):
yeah you know. Yeah. They were also studying like explosive
techniques and wiring, not just explosive jiu jitsu technique, but
real explosive wiring, detonation timers, all of this stuff. They
got to go on field trips to um power plants
and bridges and canals and see like where the weak
(19:42):
points were um and all of this took place over
an intensive eighteen days of training. That's it. They got
eighteen days of training. Yeah, and apparently Josh, the leader
of Team Inns, wasn't even I read one account this
said he basically kind of snoozed through most of it,
which would go on to explain a few things later
it's hilarious. Eighteen days and you can't even stay awake
(20:04):
to learn how to blow something up. Seriously. Um, all right, one,
they were given their assignment, um, and these were I
mean this was pretty smart. The assignments were. They had
a good they had a good plan in place. Small
teams of dudes. Uh Dash's team was assigned to destroy
quite a few things. Um, hydro electric plants at Niagara Falls,
(20:28):
the Aluminum Company of America factory in Illinois, Tennessee, New
York three plants, and the Philadelphia Sault Company's cryolite plant,
which apparently supplies raw materials for aluminum. Right. And the
reason they want wanted to go after aluminium was because
aluminum production in the United States the output was greater
than all of Europe's both sides access and or no,
(20:51):
I'm sorry. All of the access is aluminum production put together.
And aluminium is a very very valuable thing. During war
you used to make air craft frames. You use it
to make um, the interiors of ships. Apparently you use
it for everything from like m R. E's, like the
field ration tink hands or well not tin cans, aluminum
(21:13):
can but all of this stuff comes in handy. And
if you can sure pin wheels like the good ones,
if you um put those man, you can cut your
finger off with one of those things. Uh. If you
can cripple aluminum production, you can put a serious thing
in the wartime effort. Yeah, it was. It was a
smart play. Um. And then they are also told to
(21:34):
bomb um locks on the Ohio River between Louisville, Kentucky
and Pittsburgh. Yes, so disrupting transportation that would have been
a huge deal. They would just strap a bomb to
a pack mule that was supposed to be pulling a
boat along the canal and kaboom. So that's team mines. Yeah,
(21:54):
team spy curling steam. They said, all right, you guys,
we want you to concentrate on railroad because we saw
during the American Civil War destroying railroads is a great
way to cripple and army. Um they blew. And I
don't think that's where they got the idea. You know,
it's long been a wartime thing to destroy railroads. I
see Pennsylvania Railroad station at Newark. Uh, the Horseshoe Bend
(22:20):
section of railroad track near Altoona, Pennsylvania, Chesapeake and Ohio
railroad parts of it, the New York Central Railroads, Hell
Gate Bridge locks and canals in St. Louis, Cincinnati, Ohio,
and the water supply system of New York. Right. And
they were also told to carry out acts of general
terrorism to scare people in general, bombing Jewish own department stores, UM,
(22:46):
locker rooms at UM train stations, just basically just foment
like real fear and make Americans feel like, wow, America
is being struck. Yeah, we're vulnerable. Um. And so the
guy said, okay, let's do this, and they they they
shipped out on two different subs from Lorient, France. U
(23:08):
boats Baby, this is Germany, Yeah, okay, U boats. Um.
They left on U five eighty four in U two
oh two and um they had each team had four boxes,
three of like dynamite and other explosives, and then a
fourth box of things like timers and UM detonators and
(23:32):
wiring and all that stuff. Sausages sure, just in case
they got a little hungry on the trip. Yeah it
was Germans after all. They also had a lot of
money and roughly about a million dollars today UM. At
the time each group had fifty grand and they needed
this to travel and to live and to bribe people
and pay folks off right in cash. So they had
(23:55):
and what's equal to about a million dollars today in
cash on them and nothing greater than a fifty bill.
That's a lot of money, like physically a lot of money.
Each member was given nine thousand five of which it
was his very funny like team leader is going to
hold onto this and you can keep for yourself and
your money belt and only carry like four fifty in
(24:16):
your pocket, and um, that should be enough dough to
carry out this plan was the idea, yep, and then
the uh. The team leaders also got handkerchiefs that had
um the names and addresses and things of contacts in
invisible ink written on them. Yeah. So this is like
a bona fide spy, yes, bionage terrorism operation. Again, great
(24:41):
movie in the making so far, so the m And
again I think you said before that like Hitler was
planning on sending several waves or wave after wave. Apparently
the schedule was every six weeks they were going to
send one, one or two teams to the United States. Yeah,
I got, I mean it was a really smart and
scary plan. Um, because catching you know, a tiny team
(25:05):
of four guys who can assimilate as Americans, um or
at least good German Americans. That's that's tough to catch.
So chuck you uh two O two, which actually left
two days after you. Eight four showed up off like
fifty yards off the shoreline of Long Island and just
(25:28):
frightening the thing about. Yeah, there was a German U
boat fifty yards off of the shore of Long Island.
UM on June twelve, showed up about eight in the
evening and it belches out its cargo of um box
of explosives and saboteurs, and the dudes um as they're
(25:49):
rowing to shore, they put they were wearing like German
military uniforms. Yeah. I didn't fully and this didn't make
a ton of sense to me. Oh well, if you
were caught in playing was behind enemy lines. The rules
of war state that you can be shot on site,
but if you're caught as a German marine prisoner of
war and you have to be, that was taking a chance.
(26:11):
I would addressed as an American. No, I mean, like
I think that was smart. Yeah, I don't know. I
would have addressed. I would have tried to assimilate, not
been like, I'm a German marine, You're you're supposed to
take me hostage, right, But I think it would be yeah,
come on, let's go, I'm taking you hostage, whereas if
(26:33):
the guy had been like, you're a spy, I am
allowed to kill you right here and now. Yeah, I
just I don't know. I don't agree with that one,
but hey, everyone has their own rules when it comes
to saboteuring. So sabotaging, right, yes, sabotaging. I was just
kidding anyway, And I've learned recently that that was of um,
that's that words of recent providence. Did you know that,
(26:55):
like it didn't come into use until the beginning of
the twentieth century. That makes sense. I would have thought
it was a fairly old word. Yeah, nope. Did we
just think of sabotage or do we just start calling
it that? Like? Did they not used to sabotage back
in the day. Yeah, I think they just started calling
it that. Okay, So, um, the so this is Dash's
(27:17):
team team since team mines, and they show up on
the shore and they're wearing again German military uniforms, which
they took off really quickly, very quickly. Yeah, once they
saw that. You know, Okay, we made it. Yeah, the
operation has begun. They changed, right, Yeah, they changed clothes
and they started uh I guess they put on there
(27:37):
I love New York shirts and they started digging big
holes in the beach to to bury these munitions so
they could come back as needed when they wanted to
blow something new up. Yes, they can't just carry that
stuff around, No, and they needed to just stash everything
and go and cool out and make sure that no
one was like onto him or anything like that, and
(27:58):
then come back and get it, like you said, as
they need. Yeah. The plan was to meet up for
the two teams to meet up in Cincinnati on July four,
UM for a baseball game. That is what I'm imagining. Yeah,
the Reds versus the Braves. I don't know where the
Braves were then, probably Milwaukee, sure, Okay, I don't think
(28:18):
they moved to Atlanta until the sixties. Yeah, but I
was trying to think of Boston, but they were that
was long before so um. The team in inst was
it was changing. They just landed. They were in the
midst of changing when they were discovered by coast guardsman. Yeah.
Well one of them was that Josh climbed over a
(28:39):
dune and while the other guys were still bearing and
changing uh their clothes, and he walked up and there
was a coast guard dude, John Cullen, standing right there,
and he was like, hey, what you're doing, basically, and
the guy was like, oh, nothing and uh he uh.
He apparently was kind of handling things when comes over
(29:01):
and Burger thought that so the team Inns had been
rowed to shore by two German sailors, and I guess
Burger lost track of the German sailors and assume that
they were still there and that for some reason it
was only Josh four guys plus the two right. And
then Josh had climbed over the dune to talk to
one of the sailors. So Burger comes up and asks
(29:22):
the question in German, and the coastguardsman, John Cullen, is like,
why are you speaking German? We're at war with Germany.
What's going on? And at that point Josh tells Burger
to get Yeah. He said, you fool, go back to
the others. And the guy was like, what others? Wait
(29:42):
a minute, And so Josh's story was that they were
um fisherman stranded Fisherman and before he got really suspicious, Cullen,
the guy from the Coastguard said, well, if you guys
are Shannon Fisherman's yeah, we have a Coastguard like house
party house up the beach. We just ordered some pizza.
Come with me. You guys can eat some pizza and
(30:04):
um chill out. And Josh is like, well, uh, we
don't have any idea on us. Yeah, we don't fishing
permits either. We don't want to get in trouble. And
I was like, well, you're telling a guy from the
coast guy that, so you're in trouble first of all,
but secondly that strikes me as weird. About that time,
Burger comes up asked his question in German, and Josh
(30:25):
sees the writing on the wall and tells Um tells Colin, well,
he says, do you have a mother and Colin says yes,
And he goes do you have a father? Says yes,
and Dash says, well, then I wouldn't want to kill you,
So how about I give you some money you can
forget that this ever happened. And he tries to give
him a hundred bucks and Colin says nope, yeah, he
(30:47):
says no, thank you, um, and he said He ends
up giving him two hundred and sixty dollars and Colin
basically realize that something was going down and I just
needed just take this money and act like I'm down
with the take and get out of here. So so
he does, so he does. He's scaddles and then oh
(31:08):
but not before this is very key piece. Actually, Josh
grabbed his flashlight before he left and shined it on
his own face and said, you will be meeting me
in East Hampton sometime soon. Do you know who I am?
And then guy was like, no, I don't know who
you are. And he said my name is George John Davis,
which was a lie. Uh well, it was his real
(31:29):
alias for the mission though, so like he actually gave
him his real alias, and he said what's your name?
And um, Colin said Frank Collins, which was a lie.
Which was a lie. Pretty quick thinking and um, basically
he scrambled back and Josh came back over and was like,
little seeing there, guys, I totally took care of it.
Should not be a big deal. Don't even worry about
(31:51):
paying the guy two sixty. Yeah, we're good. Yeah, So
everybody finished bearing these boxes, which they did, and um
Colin ran off and went and grabbed some of his
fellow Coast guardsmen. By the time they got back, Team
Science had left a train. But apparently, and this is
another thing, so the U boat that dropped off Team
(32:11):
Acience had grounded itself on a sandbar and was sitting
there like trying to get back out to sea because
Dawn was just rocked back and forth in your chair?
Was that that's what it looked, was that the method
in there? Yeah, it just moved right exactly. And finally
the tide came in just enough for them to dislodge
(32:32):
themselves and go back out of seat, just in time.
But apparently um Colon and the other Coast Guards wanh
it came back, caught sight of this U boat heading
back out to sea. Not good, right, No German U
boat off the coast of Long Island just ran into
some guys who are speaking German and tried to pay
you off. And then now all of a sudden, in
the moonlight, you can see the ghostly outlines of four
(32:55):
freshly dug holes in the sand. Let's see what's in there. Yeah,
I wonder if um i couldn't find. I saw that
about the boat being stuck, but I couldn't find if
that was like, if they could have gotten away, you know,
it could have all changed. They may not have been
that suspicious. I think that Collen was suspicious. Yeah, he
was definitely coming back, but seeing the U boat was
(33:17):
just icing on the cake exactly. Okay, so the other
dudes had hop date. Well, they dug up the holes
and they found the stuff and said, okay, um, this
is a huge deal. Yeah, we just found a trove
of explosives in German military uniforms buried on the beach,
like sixty miles from New York. Yeah, so Toots sweet.
(33:39):
By ten twenty three that morning, those boxes were in
the office of New York City Police Captain John Bayliss,
who then promptly got in touch with the FBI, and
by noon that day, thirteen hours after they had arrived,
the FBI had all that stuff in custody, and j
Edgar Hoover said, there's a to get a blackout on
(34:00):
the news, so these guys don't get wise to this,
and we need to get the largest man hunting FBI
history underway. And they did, and we will explore that
and all the ways the FBI got some lucky breaks
on this right after these messages. All right, so Team Science,
(34:31):
let's recap here. They are in Manhattan. They go shopping
at Macy's. Of course. Yeah, we got a lot of cash.
All they had with them was the clothes the civilian,
the clothes they brought and all that cash. Yeah, that
was it. Everything else is buried back to the beach,
but is now an FBI custody unbeknownst to these guys.
That's right. So they go shopping at Macy's. They split
into they said, let's split up into pairs, because that
(34:53):
makes sense. Uh, Kieran and uh he checked into the
hotel Martinique ssh and Burger I went to the Governor
Clinton hotel Governor Bill Clinton, and uh, I don't think so.
And um, unless he was named after the hotel, Oh yeah,
I never know. That's why he always wanted to be governor.
And so apparently, um, Josh and Burger met. He summoned
(35:18):
Burger to his hotel room up on a tall floor
and opened the window and said, I've got a plan
and I'm gonna tell you about it, and if you're
on board, you're on board. But if you're not, then
one of us is leaving through the door. One of
us is leaving through the window. He basically threw down
the gauntlet Burg to Burger, I wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah,
(35:40):
And so Burger he basically said, I would like to
turn and sabbothe tour, sabotage the sabotage, and go against Germany.
And because America is kind of great. So Josh was
going to kill Burger if Burger can go along with it.
(36:00):
That's what he said. And apparently Burger had the choice
to like, or you can you can defeat you and
throw you out the window where you can triumph and
be the living victor. Yeah. So I think Burger was
just on board. And they said that in this article
that um Josh probably was telling the truth that he was.
He was really this was his idea from the beginning.
(36:22):
So here's the here's the question. Like, historically speaking, Josh
has been uh seen as a genuine betrayer of this mission. Sure,
but when he became a genuine betrayer of the mission
is is issue? Still? According to this history and that article,
either he he knew it before they even landed, and
(36:46):
that that is why he showed his face and gave
his real alias to John Colin on the beach, which
makes sense, or his encounter with John Colin on the
beach rattled him enough that he was like, this is
never gonna work. We're already we're already dead in the water.
That's a quick turn. So now I'm going to go
ahead and betray it. Yeah. I say that he was
in on it from the beginning. That's what that's my feeling,
(37:08):
because he was in sicycle. Just I don't know, it
seems like a really quick like they just land on
the beach. Five minutes later he meets a guy and
he's like, wait a minute, it's off. I'm gonna betray Germany.
It just seemed I don't know, a little too hasty.
Well maybe he had nerves of spaghetti. Yeah, cook spaghetti.
Even so, uh, he says, here's the plan, the on
(37:29):
Monday burger. Yeah, he said, on Monday, I'm gonna go
to the head. They closed the window by now I
think said they went to dinner and everything was good,
and he said, I'm gonna go to Uh, I'm gonna
go to Washington meet with j Edgar Hoover. That should
be pretty easy to get that meeting. The man himself, Yeah,
here he wears nothing but a caper on the office,
and he said, you go back to the other two
guys and just sort of occupied them for a little
(37:50):
while while I'm going to d C and requesting a
meeting with the FBI. The head of the FBI, um
so Burger, says do this. Josh says, okay. It's Sunday,
and Josh doesn't make his way to d C until
Thursday morning. Instead, he goes so remember he was a
(38:10):
waiter in America. Well, he called. He called the FBI first,
at least right and the reason why he called first
he was a little worried because apparently back in UM
in a training camp in the woods, cop Falter Cop
had said, you guys don't need to worry, we have
a man on the inside of the FBI. So Um,
Josh was worried that if he called, or if he
(38:32):
just showed up at FBI headquarters he talked to that
one guy right out of all the FBI guys, he
would have that that level of bad luck, which, from
what I understand, that was something that was a good
concern for her to have um. So he called the
New York Bureau first and said, I'm a German dude,
I've got information for Jacker Hoover. Tell him I'm coming.
(38:52):
And then he hung up, and he went to a
club for waiters and then played pinuckle for like two
straight days. Yeah, I get I think he was probably gambling.
That's what I think too, because if I'm not mistaken
with the math, he ended up with more money than
he came with. Yeah, so he wentn't gambled with sabotage money.
I think. So, Man, that guy is some serious. He's
(39:16):
pretty awesome. Uh So, eventually he said, all right, I
gotta go to Washington. This peanuckle game has dried up.
So he hopped on the Sella Express for Washington, which
I highly recommend. By the way, man, train travel is awesome.
Regional train travel is a delight, such a delight, And
(39:36):
especially from Boston to New York. You just right along
the coastline there and it's just lovely. It is lovely.
Sailboats and cape cod houses on points, lobster rolls. Yeah,
it's nice, good stuff. All right. So Josh has arrived
by train finally. By this point, team spy has landed. Yeah,
(40:00):
show up in Florida and they're like, let's do this
for real. And I imagine Pontevedra Beach in three It
was a pretty low key scenario for sure, you know, yeah,
I would think so. So they are twenty five miles
south of Jacksonville. They bury their crates, no sweat, hop
on a bus, go to Jacksonville. Um. They split up
from that point to went to Cincinnati too, went to Chicago. Yeah,
(40:22):
and like I mean, there was no must There wasn't
like any no one was calling the FBI like they
were in it to win it basically. Yeah, why they
should have done Team I should have done their recond beforehand.
The U boat should have not pulled up next to
a Coastguard station first of all. That would have been
one thing. Yeah, because that Coastguard station was like half
a mile away. Yeah, it was there. All right, maybe
(40:44):
they're bad until so, uh Josh gets to d C,
checks into the Mayflower Hotel. Yeah, this is the same
day that Caroling's group lands in Pontevedra. It's a big day,
huge day. Uh, And he in d C said all right,
I'm gonna call the FBI again because you gotta meet
with Hoover, and he reached out to a Dwayne Trainer,
(41:05):
and of course, Trainer says, you know, this is probably
not a legitimate call. We get these kind of weird
calls all the time, but just in case, um, let's
go pick him up. Yeah, let's let's see what's going on.
It's a slow day at headquarters. Yeah exactly. So they
go and pick up the German and they bring him
to the Justice Department, and Dash said that he was
(41:25):
basically bounced from agent to agent every He's kind of
a hot potato on nobody wanted to deal with him,
And finally he convinced these guys enough to end up
in the office of Mickey Ladd, who was running the
man hunt for the spies, and the head of the
Spies was now sitting in his office, Yeah, telling him
(41:49):
he's the head of the spies, and he still didn't
quite believe him until Dash said, oh, yeah, well here,
let me show you this and dumped out dollars on
Lad's desk and Lads said, I'm so pleased you came
in today. Come with me. Yeah, so, Josh, here's here's
his idea. Is I want to talk to Hoover himself,
(42:12):
because I'm gonna be a hero and I might even
get like a medal of honor out of this, right,
Like maybe Jagger will have me over to his house
for dinner. Who knows what could come of this. Take
your tape parade, They threw those all the time back then.
Um so they the FBI gets them talking. He does
get to meet Hoover briefly, but um, a couple of
(42:34):
other agents take his deposition, which lasts for thirteen hours.
Before he finished, he had told them about Burger and
where Burger was, and they went and picked up Burger. Yeah,
he like, while he was still telling him the story,
they were already on Burger's hotel staking him out. Yep,
so they before they picked up Burger, they were staking
him out, like you said. And they watched Burger go
(42:54):
meet Karen and Hink and so they just arrested all
three of them, and all all of a sudden, they
had team in custody within like a day of um
dash walking in the FBI headquarters. It didn't go so
well for team I No, so when when the team
leader betrays you, like, yeah, you're you're in trouble. Your
toast so on June twenty two, Hoover wrote to f
(43:18):
d R and said, you know what, sir, we've we've
caught all the members of this group that landed on
Long Island. Pretty great, huh and we are awesome. Um.
He didn't mention that the guy turned himself in and
told him where everyone was, and uh so FDR was
just thought that Hoover had done like a bang up
job basically, and he's like, wait, way to go, way
(43:38):
to do your job exactly. He lied pretty much, so
um Dash had no real leads or anything about team,
but he did have a handkerchief that had contacts on
invisible inc. And surprisingly he hadn't blown his nose in
it at this point, but he and remember how you
(44:00):
were supposed to get the invisible ink to become visible. Luckily,
the FBI had a crack team of lab Tex on
this thing and they figured it out. And now all
of a sudden they had the names and addresses of
all of the German contexts for these teams right there
in their hands, thanks to Josh Right. So they were
all obviously staked out, just waiting on Team Heights or
(44:23):
I'm sorry, Team Spy to meet up with these people, right,
which they did. But first teams FI did some other
weird stuff like Herbert hopped. He was in Chicago, where
again he had lived since he was five, and Holpe
decided that he would buy a Pontiac car. Yea, yeah.
He went to his parents house, told his dad everything. Yeah,
(44:45):
I had his dad buy in the car. Yep, and um,
he proposed to his girlfriend. He remember he had left
during the war and he was an able bodied man
over age eighteen, and so the local draft board um
wanted to know where he was. So he dropped by
FBI headquarters to clear up his draft problem. Says I'm back. Sorry,
I've already registered with my local draft board. No need
(45:08):
to track me anymore. I'm just an all American boy.
And um the FBI was like, yeah, sure, thank you
for coming by, and then tailed them on the way out,
and then he led them to at least one other
team member, right yeah. And while this was going on,
Curling and verner Thiel went to New York UM and
(45:31):
met up with a friend named Helmet Lena because they
wanted to have sex with a lady, and so Lena
hooked him up with the mis his mistress said here,
have sex with her, and he said great, thanks, and
he ended up traveling with that woman. Curling did and
within a couple of days after Dash surrendered. Um, they
(45:52):
spotted Curling because they were trailing him at a bar
where he met with Deal, and they arrested both of
those guys. Right, So two down on team Spy about help,
I'm sorry, three down at this point. Right, Hope was
taken down in Chicago. The only one left at this
point was Herman new Bauer. Right, and new Bauer spent
(46:13):
his time in was it in New York? Uh? I
think he was in chick Okay, you're probably right. Um,
he just went to the movies over and over again.
That's what he did. He was apparently lonely, so he
sought out some friends of his wife, whom he hadn't
really met before. Umthing told him everything. He gave him
(46:36):
his money for safekeeping, but kept enough to go to
the movies a bunch. So basically he kept a dollar right,
and um, okay, dollar fifty and h then he um
was I think he just come back from the movies
when the FBI picked him up. Right, So Dash remember
is sure that like he's going to be feted as
(46:59):
a herero that Jaker Hoover is probably like thinking about
him right then, he's just like basically like Ralphie in
a Christmas story, just daydreaming about like how he's going
to be carried around on everyone's shoulders. He probably should
have been so, I mean, he's the reason why this
went south because he said, you know what, I'm siding
with America. The thing is Hoover. He didn't care Jager Hoover.
(47:24):
Not only did he not care, Hoover was taking the
credit for all of this unraveled, right. He couldn't let
Josh be known as this guy who had come and
um given him this whole thing on a platter, or
else Hoover would look like an idiot, and Josh might
very well have been hailed as at least a slimy
(47:44):
collaborators rather than a criminal. After everybody was rounded up,
the FBI arrested Josh, and Josh must have been quite
surprised by this. Well, yeah, they arrested him, but they said, hey,
just go along with this. You'll get a full presidential
pardon after six months. Sort of play along with the arrest,
and he was like, Okay, I see so put me
in the jail with the other guys so they don't
(48:07):
know yeah exactly. It was like, yeah, sure, well, because
that job with Hooper's planned to keep it all quiet
still exactly was working out great for Hoover, it didn't
work out great for Josh or the others. Chuck No.
So um FDR wanted to make sure that he could
get the death penalty and that this could be kept quiet.
(48:27):
So he as he formed a military tribunal to try
these guys, and it was the first one since um
Lincoln had been assassinated. It was a big deal. So
the prosecutor was Attorney General Francis Biddle, chief defense was
Colonel Kenneth Royal Um. They defense argued initially for a
civilian trial that was quickly scrapped and they said, no,
(48:50):
we're going to move forward with the tribunal and held
the trial out the Justice Department in Washington during the
month of July nine and basically said, we know the
whole there's not going to be much of a trial, fellas,
we know everything because you told us everything. You are
coming here to sabotage and blow up our junk and
(49:11):
you're in big trouble. Right, And the prosecutors sought the
death penalty as expected. Um, but it was up to
FDR to decide when and where, and to do that
he had to have a transcript of the trial. And
when he got this transcript of the trial, he it
became obvious that Hoover hadn't really done anything. Yeah. Appinently
(49:31):
FDR never called him out on it in public, No,
which was a nice thing to do, I guess, because
that would have just been further embarrassment for like the
whole country, you know. So they kept that quiet, but
at this point it was news all over the country.
They weren't keeping it quiet with a press, uh. And
the American public was way in favor of the death penalty.
In fact, there was an open letter published in one
(49:54):
newspaper calling for them to be fed to Gargantua, the
guerrilla at the Wringling Brothers circuit, because that's fair to
Gargantua too, Yeah, eat those Germans. Well. Instead, they electrocuted
six of them on August eight of the District jail
in Washington, d C. That's right, um, including Herbert Hout
(50:14):
who was just like, I just wanted up Pontiac, Yeah,
I just wanted to see my parents. Right, Burger and
Uh and Josh were spared the death penalty because they
basically had a hard time proving in court that they
didn't you know, fully intend to betray the operation. Yeah, exactly,
So they did not get electrocuted. Um. They were sentenced
(50:38):
Burger too hard labor for the rest of his life,
and Josh was given thirty years. But President Truman commuted
their sentences, released them and deported them, had them shipped
to UM West Germany. West Berlin said don't come back, Nope,
get out, and the other guys were buried in a
potter's field by the way and outside Washington, Yes, which
(51:00):
is now UM the d C Municipal Water treatment plant
where they were buried. Yeah, just right now. They're part
of the system, I guess Um. And so Josh and
Burger go back to Germany and Burger starts like feeding
the media Um the story basically five years later and
(51:23):
blames Right and blames Josh for the deaths of these
other six German patriots who were saboteurs. Right and Josh
Um tried to publicly clear himself through he first saw
to pardon in America so that he could come back.
He really wanted to get that Germany, Yeah, I can imagine, um,
and Uh America said, no, we're not going to do that.
(51:45):
We're not going to pardon you. We're still mad at you.
Germany said, we're mad at you too, and so he
just kind of faded out of the public spotlight. Ye.
He he ended up dying in nineteen at the age
of eighty nine, and I didn't see any follow up
or Burger for Burger. I think he wasn't quite as
vilified as Doosh was, right for sure. But that was
(52:09):
not the last time the Germans sent saboteurs ashore. There
was at least one other ill fated attempt in another
German submarine. These are expensive boats. Many, they are really
taking a massive risk to drop off a couple of saboteurs.
But they did it again off off of Maine in
(52:31):
a snowstorm, and two uh former American residents German Americans, um,
we're we're sent off under the main coast in a snowstorm.
They were seen by a local boy scout using a
compass during the snowstorm on the side of the road,
and the boy scout was suspicious, so he traced their
(52:52):
tracks all the way back to the shoreline when they
come out of nowhere and he's like, I'm going to
call the police. So the scouts actually called these guy. Yeah,
that's pretty cool. What's ironic is one of these German
American saboteurs was a boy scout himself, so it's like
boy scout on boy scout tattling um. And they got
picked up immediately, and as far as everybody knows, that's
(53:14):
the last time Germany ever tried that. Yeah. I think
the idea was that hitler Um. It's like this, this
is embarrassing. Yeah, let's just focus on the rocket program. Yeah,
we can't keep sending guys to the United States who
immediately get there and start doing stupid things giving themselves up.
Go and see mom and Dad seeing the movies playing
(53:37):
p knockle. So that's it. That's the story of the
time the Nazis invaded Florida and New York and Maine. Uh.
If you want to know more about that, check out
history Net, check out damn interesting, check out all sorts
of stuff. Yes, just search it. You'll find all sorts
of cool things on it. I would not look for
the movie coming soon into a theater near you know,
(53:57):
the third act non existent? Not really, No, it's just
kind of a let down. Yeah, that end with a
bang hands with Germany being mad at them in America too.
Uh let's see. I think I said Germany's mad, which
means it's time for listener, ma'am. I'm gonna call this
a cute our cutest youngest fan and it includes an
(54:21):
audio clip. Hey, guys, did you hear this? Yes, it's
pretty great. My son, Archer is two and a half
years old, Just two and a half. We listened to
podcasts together while I rock him to sleep at naptime
and bedtime. Anytime he's tired, he says, Mommy, let's go
Archer's room and listen to podcast. I usually rotate between
(54:41):
Stuff you Should Know and other house stuff works podcasts.
He's never seemed to have a preference until about two
weeks ago when I put another podcast on. He said, no, Mommy,
not that podcast, just stuff you know, the red one. Uh.
You guys are his favorite, which is fine with me.
And I've even to attach the voice recording of him
requesting your podcast. It was not rehearsed, find you, It's
(55:05):
just me asking him before his naptime today. That is
from Shawna and Shawna it was permission to hear from Archer.
So let's go ahead and play that clip right now. Okay,
are you ready to take a nap? Yeah? Do you
want to listen to a podcast? Okay? Which podcast? Stuff
(55:26):
Stuff you should Know? Okay, ah, wow, pretty cute, Holy cow,
kid knows his stuff. Unbelievable, So Archer, if you can
understand what's going on here, a boy, the sound coming
out of the speakers. We know you don't have four memories,
but hopefully this episode will be a documentation. That's right, Archer,
(55:48):
So good luck in life. You're off to a great start,
and now take your nap a little buddy nice. Well,
if you want to share with us how you're cute
kid loves stuff you should know? We love hearing that, right,
chuckers do? You can tweet to us at That's Why
sk podcast. You can join us on Facebook dot com
slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send us an
(56:08):
email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff Works dot com
and has always joined us at our home on the web,
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