The Dark Storm: America in World War Two

If there’s one event in history that none of us ever forget, it’s World War Two.

Though it was the second World War, it is remembered as the most horrific and horrible war in the history of mankind. Thousands of Christians shuddered and wondered if the end of the world had come, and to many it certainly seemed it had. Hitler’s Nazis stormed Europe, shocking everyone with their lightning war techniques known as Blitzkrieg (Literally means “Lightning War”), the Nazis swept through their neighboring countries with little or no resistance. At the same time, Russia overtook several of its neighbors and invaded half of Poland, (the Nazis invaded the other half that bordered their country) Italy took over parts of East Africa and the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and several outlying islands. The entire world had seemed to go crazy over the course of three years.

It wasn’t until the attack of Pearl Harbor that America joined in the war. We’d been sympathetic to the British and their allies (who joined the war on September 3, 1939, after the Nazis and Soviets invaded Poland) for two years prior to that, and had sent many supplies and even some soldiers over to England to help with the fight. But from 1939 to 1941, Americans quarreled among themselves on if they should join the war or stay out of it.

“It’s so easy to look back and say, ‘Well, all the things that the people who wanted to stay out of the war were wrong,’” author Lynne Olson wrote in an interview with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “...But back then, in ‘39, ‘40 and most of ‘41, people didn’t know what was going on in Europe. No one had any idea what was going to happen.”

Lynne goes on to say that, “Americans looked on the war in Europe kind of like a movie. It was something that just didn’t affect them. We didn’t have the technology. We didn’t have the instant communication. (i.e, social media) We didn’t have the ability to travel- the ability to travel quickly- to Europe like we do now. And so most Americans- not all, but most Americans, especially those living in the heartland- really didn’t feel that they had anything in common with Europe. They hadn’t been there. They thought this was a distant place that they really had nothing to do with, and they felt that way until 1940.”

No one could come close to guessing what was going on behind the front-lines, what the Nazis were doing to Jews and to prisoners of war. And no one would find out until the Third Reich was crushed in 1945, when the horrors of the concentration camps came into view.

But we’re going to focus on something a little different. We’re going to talk about the Home Front of America during World War Two. Particularly the war on espionage, a topic most of you might not know about.

Espionage is defined the by Google dictionary as “the practice of spying or of using spies, typically by governments to obtain political and military information.”

In other words, espionage is spying. Real life spies.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “FDR” was adamant that such a surprise attack like that could not happen again. The FBI was pressured to find subversives (those who are sympathetic to other countries other than America and give them information) and put them behind bars, before a disaster like Pearl Harbor could happen again. It didn’t help that for the purpose of finding spies and traitors, the military created the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. With the FBI and the OSS on the case, you’d think they’d be happy to help each other with the many cases that would pop up during the course of the war.

Wrong. They were rivals.

It’s a long story as to why they were rivals, but OSS agents and FBI agents didn’t get along very well. They were determined to one-up each other and catch the most bad guys. Sounds ridiculous? It really happened!

During WWII, the FBI and OSS caught 44 German spies, 3 from Ireland, (strange place to have a spy from, but it’s true) 15 from Japan, and 26 from Soviet Russia, who would later join the Allies after the Germans attacked them. That’s a lot of spies!

Because of how many pages it would take to cover all these stories, Marin and I have narrowed down the list to two groups of spies we think you’d be the most interested in hearing. The first group landed in America from a submarine in 1942 on Long Island and Florida. The second group came to American shores 1944 on the coast of Maine.

Enter Operation Pastorius and Operation Elster, the two most intriguing spy stories from WWII.

The men involved in Operation Pastorius.

Operation Pastorius was a plan that the Nazis came up with in 1942, after they declared war on America. The plot included landing four spies in Florida and four on Long Island, loaded with explosives, fake IDs and $175,000 dollars in American money. Their mission was to poison New York’s water system, blow up Jewish owned stores and derail trains. They planned on being in America for two years, terrorizing the people and making no one feel safe.

Believe it or not, what blew the plan was the leader of the group himself. George Dasch had been put in charge of the mission. He had come ashore with the Long Island group, and they encountered a Coast Guard man who was on his rounds. After failing to get the man to be quiet by threatening him, Dash tried to bribe him. The Coast Guard pretended to take the bribe, but the minute he got back to his unit he told his commanding officer.

According to several documents and sources, Dasch “realized that the mission was going to be doomed after the encounter with the Coast Guard, and decided he had a secret of his own. The day after the landing at Amagansett, he called Ernest Burger, the most guarded and disciplined member of the team, into the upper-storey hotel room the two men shared. He walked over to the window and opened it wide. "You and I are going to have a talk," Dasch said, "And if we disagree, only one of us will walk out that door—the other will fly out this window." He then revealed the truth to Burger: he had no intention of going through with the mission. He hated the Nazis and wanted Burger on his side when he turned the entire plot over to the FBI. Burger smiled. Having spent seventeen months in a Nazi concentration camp, his own feelings for the party were less than warm. He too had been planning to betray the mission. They agreed to defect to the United States immediately.”

The other six members, Herbert Haupt, Edward Kerling, Richard Quirin, Heinrich Heinck, Hermann Neubauer and Werner Thiel had no idea about the plan. Dasch presented himself to the FBI, told them the whereabouts of his colleagues, and the rest of them were rounded up. All but Dasch and Burger were executed for espionage, a crime deemed worthy of death during war time. To this day you can still visit the sites where the Nazis came ashore, and in the FBI courthouse where they held the trial, there is a plaque recounting the capture of eight Nazi spies.

William Colepaugh and Erich Gimpel

Operation Elster took place on November 28th, 1944. Two spies named Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh (an American) were put ashore by two German submariners, who are possibly the first enemy of America to land on American shores in uniform since the Mexican war of 1840s. (Hmmm, so the Nazis came ashore exactly a hundred years later…) Erich Gimpel, a trained professional spy had been given instructions to find where the atomic bomb was being made and how far in the process the Americans gotten with it. If the opportunity presented itself, Gimpel was to sabotage the project.

His mission went wrong because of William. An American born German, William decided he liked Germany better and sailed to the Third Reich during World War Two. He presented himself to the Reich government and said he wanted to be a spy on America. Erich Gimpel heard about him not long before he had to take the trip to America himself. To survive as a spy in the United States, Gimpel had concluded, he would need to take along "a proper American. He must know the latest dance steps and the latest popular songs. He must know everything about baseball and have all the Hollywood gossip at his fingertips." That said, Gimpel had to wonder where he would find "an American who was prepared to work against his own country and who at the same time was courageous, sensible, and trustworthy."

William was eager to betray his country- but he wasn’t exactly the other three characteristics that Gimpel was looking for. Still, he was the only American Gimpel could find, so he settled with William.

It was about a month into the mission that William decided to hit the bars one night in New York City. He got drunk, decided he would steal the money he and Gimpel had brought with them to America ($60,000 in small bills, the equivalent of $656,000 today) and took off for Central Station. Erich found out what happened and decided to turn the tables. He went to Central Station, found the bags and claimed to be the owner. After successfully identifying the items inside the cases, he whisked the baggage away and left William to fend for himself. In turn, William got angry, found a friend of his and hit the bars for several nights in a row. On one particular rowdy night, he confessed he was a spy for Germany. When his friend realized that William was telling the truth, he called the FBI and they picked him up.

In only a matter of days before they found Erich. Caught and tried, both William and Erich were sentenced to death, but the sentence was postponed when FDR died in office. Right after that, the war with Germany ended and President Truman pardoned the spies, saying that, “we are no longer at war with Germany, and so they are no longer enemies of America.”

Overall, there was a lot more involvement with WWII than most people realize. Not only did we have spies among us, but they were on deadly missions to destroy us from within. It is by the grace of God none of these missions were ever completed, and we can all be thankful that the war ended the way it did. Otherwise history would have had a very different story.

U-1230 and it's crew.

Little Known Fact: Did you know that the U-Boat that dropped Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh off in Maine had a sister ship that had been torpedoed only weeks before? U-1230 was the U-boat that was commissioned to take the spies to America, and U-1229 was blown up six weeks before they took off. Allegedly though never confirmed, U-1229 supposedly carried another spy that was on a mission to Canada.

Today in History: Wow, a lot of things happened today in history! Here are some of the events of the day in 1944.

- 58th US Women's Tennis: P Betz beats Margaret Osborne duPont (6-3 8-6)

- 68th & last transport of Dutch Jews (including Anne Frank) leaves for Auschwitz concentration camp

- Canadian troops liberate Abbeville, France

- Frank Parker beats Bill Talbert for US Tennis title

- French troops liberate Lyon

- Last transport from Westerbork to Auschwitz

- Prince Bernhard appointed supreme commander of Neth Domestic Arm Force

- Tank division of British Guards free Brussels

Thanks to NPR.org interview with Angry Days and Wikipedia for contributing to this post. Come back next week when we give you some books to read!