Saboteurs

by Michael Dobbs

  As he watched the rise of Nazism across the Atlantic, Dasch initially had little sympathy for Hitler. But his views began to change in the late thirties as friends and relatives arrived from Germany with stories of how life was getting better under the Führer. After the turmoil and hyperinflation of the Weimar years, the country was moving forward once again. Everybody had a job and a sense of direction. The humiliations heaped on Germany after World War I by the Treaty of Versailles were being overcome and the Fatherland was regaining international respect. The dictatorship imposed by Hitler seemed a small price to pay for the return of prosperity and national self-esteem.

  To Dasch’s great surprise, even his mother “praised the work of Hitler” when she arrived in the United States in early 1939 on a brief visit.6 The former Social Democrat political activist described how workers and farmers were protected by new labor laws, how living conditions had improved, and how “people in general were very happy.” She supported Hitler’s quest for “Lebensraum” in eastern Europe. When Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia signed their non-aggression pact in the summer of 1939, thereby sealing the fate of Poland, Frances Dasch hurried back enthusiastically to Germany, telling her son that “this means war.”

  Confronted with these arguments, Dasch began to rethink his opposition to Nazism. “I said to myself that perhaps I had been wrong all along about Hitler; perhaps I had a prejudiced mind that had been closed to the truth.” His political views now underwent a 180-degree turn. From viewing Nazism with hostility and suspicion, he decided he should follow his mother to Germany, even though this meant abandoning an application for U.S. citizenship, then in its final stages. To stay in America at a time when his own country was threatened by so many enemies would be like a rat deserting a sinking ship, he reasoned.

  There was an additional and perhaps determining reason for Dasch’s decision to leave America: his own fortunes had recently taken a sharp turn for the worse. His clashes with the group that controlled the Waiters’ Union, and his attempts to set up a new union, had led to an expensive lawsuit. 7 He was forced to sell his wife’s beauty parlor and move out of his Bronx home for nonpayment of rent. After eighteen years in America, he was almost back to where he started, forced to take whatever menial job he could find. The experience left him “disgusted” and “nearly a nervous wreck.”8

  Since it was very difficult to book passage back to Germany, and he could not afford to pay for his own ticket in any case, he pestered the German consulate in New York for assistance to return home and perform his duty “as a German citizen.” He also needed a passport, because his previous one had expired. At first, the officials just laughed at him, saying there was no way to get back to Germany in the middle of a war. Dasch was sure he could find a way, even if it meant smuggling himself aboard an Italian steamer as a stowaway. After months of pleading, he finally discovered the real reason for the consulate’s refusal to help him get back to Germany: he was not Nazi enough.

  Dasch would later recall that the doubts about his political soundness “got my fighting Dutch up.”9 He went to the German embassy in Washington, and stated his case to a higher official. After questioning him at length about his political beliefs, the official finally agreed to issue him a new German passport and sponsor his return home. The passport came through in January 1941. Now it was just a question of waiting for a ship to take him from America to Japan, on the first stage of a very roundabout trip back to Germany via California, Japan, China, and Russia. (Most Atlantic ports were closed to German ships.)

  The only remaining snag was his wife, Rose Marie, known to Dasch as Snooks. She was an American citizen. She was also gravely ill with an infected uterus and was admitted to a hospital in the middle of February, her life threatened by dangerous blood clots. By the time Dasch got word of the imminent departure of a Japanese ship from San Francisco, his wife was getting better but was still in no condition to travel.

  The consulate gave him ten hours to make up his mind. Having overcome so many obstacles to get this far, he decided it was now or never. “I thought of my wife in the hospital and at the same time I also remembered the hell I had raised with the consulate for the chance of going home . . . I reached a quick decision to sail.”10 His wife would have to follow later. He did not even have time to say goodbye, instead asking his brother and sister “to go to Snooks at the hospital the next day and explain the circumstances of my sudden departure.”

  He took a bath and packed two suitcases, the maximum permitted for the journey across Russia on the trans-Siberian railroad. His brother drove him down to the New York bus terminal for a five-day trip across the country to San Francisco. He arrived just in time to catch a Japanese steamer, the Tatuta Maru, bound for Yokohama, giving a California acquaintance the impression that he was “overjoyed” to return to Germany and enthusiastic about assisting the Nazi war effort. “If I don’t succeed in Germany, I will kill myself,” Dasch insisted. 11

  Most of his fellow passengers were German-American Bund members returning home to fight for Hitler. They greeted him with a chorus of Sieg Heils. As he boarded the steamer on March 27, and sailed through the Golden Gate Bridge, Dasch had few regrets about leaving America. His failure to advance beyond waiting on tables was a recurring source of annoyance and grievance. While some Americans had been kind and hospitable, others had been “cold and rude.”

  DASCH’S INITIAL attempts to find fulfillment in Germany were as unsuccessful as they had been in America. He told Nazi officials he wanted “to do my duty for my country,” by which he meant something more elevated and patriotic than the mundane jobs he had held in America.12 But when he approached the army for a job that would draw on his experiences traveling around the world, he received a sharp rebuff. “What do you think?” a colonel asked sarcastically. “You want us to fry an extra fish for you?”13 He got a similar response from Dr. Goebbels’ propaganda ministry when he suggested that he could help improve Nazi propaganda efforts in the United States, which were “not correct.” It was more or less the same story everywhere: Nazi bureaucracy, he concluded, was even more obtuse than the American variety.

  Dasch turned for help to someone he had known in America: his wife’s cousin, Reinhold Barth, who gave him an introduction to Walter Kappe of the Abwehr. After questioning Dasch in detail about his experiences in America, Kappe told him he was “crazy” to want to join the army and unlikely to last two weeks there.14 Instead he proposed helping Dasch find a job in the Nazi Party office that monitored foreign broadcasts. For his radio monitoring work, he would receive a salary of 525 marks a month, a respectable sum by wartime standards. When Dasch said he felt he should be doing “something bigger and better for my country,” Kappe told him to be patient. “In due time, I will call on you.”15

  The monitoring work consisted of listening to foreign radio broadcasts, and transcribing and translating anything that might interest senior Nazi officials. Dasch spent up to eight hours every day, six days a week, with his ears glued to headphones, listening to crackly American news broadcasts coming in over shortwave frequencies from places like New York, Ankara, and Cairo. He paid particular attention to commentators like Cyrus Sulzberger and Martin Agronsky who were believed to reflect the views of the American establishment. A teletype machine connected the monitoring station to the offices of Nazi leaders, allowing them to receive Dasch’s translations virtually simultaneously.

  Toward the end of November, after he had been working at the monitoring station for six months, Dasch received another summons from Kappe. The Abwehr lieutenant made him sign an oath of secrecy, and then asked if he would like to “go back to America.”16 He proceeded to give Dasch a sketchy outline of a plan to carry out sabotage attacks against American industry. It was a few days before Pearl Harbor, and the United States was still officially neutral, but Kappe explained that America was helping Germany’s enemies and had thus become an “indirect enemy” of the Third Reich.

  “It is time for us to at
tack them.”

  Dasch told Kappe he was ready for anything.

  His mother had always urged him to do something “bigger and better” with his life—and now that dream seemed closer than ever to fulfillment. He was going back to America as leader of a special wartime mission for the Fatherland. His boyish delight at his new role was reflected in the password he gave his parents to authenticate any message he succeeded in sending back to them while he was away. For this latest adventure, he would be known to his family by his old childhood nickname: Knöppel.

  THE FURLOUGH had a particularly bittersweet quality for Hermann Neubauer, the young soldier wounded on the Russian front. Neubauer had an American wife whom he had met while working at the Chicago World’s Fair in the summer of 1933. When Neubauer decided it was his duty to return to Germany in 1940 to fight for the Fatherland, Alma had been strongly opposed, even though her family was also of German origin. She remained behind in Chicago. He eventually persuaded her to join him, and she arrived in Berlin around Easter, 1941.

  Alma spoke scarcely any German and had a hard time adapting to life in Hitler’s Berlin. The living conditions were terrible, at least from an American perspective, and everyone seemed suspicious of the pretty young girl from Chicago. Soon after her arrival, Neubauer was ordered to report to his unit. By midsummer, he was in Russia. The only tangible reminders of their married life were some snapshots of Hermann in uniform in some miserable Russian village and hastily scribbled notes saying he expected to be sent into action soon. A few weeks later, he was back in Germany, in a military hospital in Stuttgart.

  And now Neubauer was going back to the United States as a saboteur while his wife, the pampered daughter of a Republican precinct captain who had never wanted to come to Germany in the first place, was staying behind in the Third Reich. What made the situation even worse was that he was not allowed to say where he was going. He told her simply that he expected to be sent back to Russia.

  They had spent most of his furlough on a farm outside the former “free town” of Danzig, the Baltic port city that had served as the pretext for Hitler’s blitzkrieg attack on Poland. The farm belonged to one of Hermann’s aunts. It was easier to get food in the countryside than in the cities, and Neubauer said he wanted some peace and quiet before returning to the front. To Alma, her husband seemed depressed and unhappy. He spent much of the holiday complaining about severe headaches and talked with foreboding about the hardships he would have to endure in Russia.

  On their last day on the farm, Hermann told Alma to get ready to go to Berlin, where he was to meet some friends before reporting back to his company. He mentioned one of his officers by name, saying, “I must see Herr Kappe in Berlin concerning arrangements for our journey to Russia.” 17

  The evening after their arrival in Berlin, Hermann took his wife to a tavern “to meet some friends and fellow soldiers.” The dimly lit dining room was practically deserted, except for a long table in the middle, at which sat a dozen men and three women. The orchestra was playing English and American music, and Alma concluded that the entire tavern had been specially reserved for the group. As soon as she and Hermann approached the table, all the men rose to their feet with a collective clicking sound, and the conversation died down.

  The only person she recognized was Eddie Kerling, an old friend of Hermann’s from the States. Eddie and Hermann had shared many adventures, including the failed attempt to cross the Atlantic on the yacht Lekala. When Alma and Hermann were married in January 1940, Eddie had served as best man. Six months later, Hermann and Eddie had returned to Germany together.

  Whenever Alma had met him before, Kerling had been smiling and upbeat. But on this occasion, he too seemed downcast. He mentioned how much he wanted to see his wife, Marie, whom he had left behind in America.

  Hermann made no attempt to introduce Alma to anyone at the table, other than a mumbled “This is my wife.” The conversation was dominated by a fat, middle-aged man who sat at the middle of the table. This man was evidently the “Herr Kappe” Hermann had mentioned as his reason for coming to Berlin. Kappe in turn lavished most of his attention on a young, well-dressed woman with dyed red hair sitting next to him. Since smart clothes were practically unavailable in wartime Berlin, Alma guessed that the woman was probably a prostitute.

  After ordering a couple of rounds of drinks for the rest of the group, Hermann and Alma got up and left. They were accompanied to the door by Kerling, who told Alma that he and Hermann would be leaving very soon for the Russian front.

  Back in the hotel, Alma poured out all her frustrations and disappointments, telling Hermann that he should have stayed with her in America.18 She felt as if she was being constantly watched. The police had kept on asking why she didn’t go to work, why she didn’t have a baby, what her family did back in the United States. She was being treated like a criminal.

  They said goodbye the following morning. As they hugged and kissed, Hermann seemed more than usually emotional, telling Alma this might be the last time they would ever see each other.

  AN ENTHUSIASTIC conspirator, Walter Kappe maintained two different offices in Berlin. His official office was in room 1025 of the headquarters of the German High Command, at Tirpitzüfer 76⁄78, on the Landwehr canal near the Tiergarten in the heart of the imperial city. Abwehr II, the sabotage division of military intelligence, occupied one wing of the handsome four-story classical building, which had been built on the eve of World War I. Sixty years later, the same building would house the ministry of defense of a reunited Germany.

  In addition to his Abwehr office, Kappe also had a conspiratorial hideaway known as “the bunker” in the commercial district of the city at Rankestrasse 6, a tree-lined street leading down from the Kaiser Wilhelm Church on the Kurfürstendamm. Here he held court in a fourth-floor safe house behind a smoked-glass door with a sign that read Schriftleiting Der Kaukasus, the Editors of The Caucasus. 19 The name over the bell was Röhrich. Both Herr Röhrich and the Kaukasus magazine were figments of Kappe’s fertile imagination.

  Visitors to the bunker were ushered into a reception room decorated with Baroque furniture. A concealed microphone and spy hole permitted Kappe to keep an eye on whatever was going on in the reception room from his secretary’s office next door. The rest of the apartment consisted of a bedroom, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom, each opening into an L-SHAPED corridor.

  Over the previous five months, Kappe had invited several dozen German-American returnees to the bunker for screening as potential saboteurs. Some, like Dasch, had approached the Abwehr by themselves, looking for a job with foreign intelligence. Most had been the targets of an aggressive recruiting campaign by Kappe. The former Bund rabble-rouser had spent hours poring over the files of the Ausland Institut, the Nazi Party office that coordinated relations with foreign countries. By sifting through questionnaires submitted by returnees, Kappe was able to identify candidates for a future sabotage mission. He also addressed reunions of former Bund members around Germany, during which he insinuated that there were ways to “help the Fatherland” back in America. This was how he came across Heinck and Quirin, two returnees who had found work with Volkswagen.

  Kappe had ordered Dasch and Kerling, the two group leaders, to report to Abwehr headquarters on May 11, the day before the rest of the men, for further instructions in secret writing. They spent that Monday morning in the laboratory, dabbling with handkerchiefs and matches impregnated with an invisible ink. Abwehr officials also gave them the address of a mail drop in Lisbon, through which they could communicate with Berlin with some delay. As a neutral country, Portugal still had mail service with both the United States and Germany.

  They had lunch at Kappe’s favorite restaurant on the Nollendorfplatz, a fifteen-minute stroll from Abwehr headquarters on the other side of the canal. As they walked to the restaurant, Kappe raised the question of finances. 20 He proposed giving each group leader $50,000 “for operational purposes,” and $5,000 for each agent. In addit
ion, every man on the mission would carry a specially designed money belt containing $4,000, plus $450 in ready cash for immediate use. In all, the two groups would take over $180,000 with them to the United States, the equivalent of two million dollars today. Dasch suggested sewing his cash into the lining of an old Gladstone bag that he had picked up in America.

  After lunch, the discussion turned to the best landing places on America’s two-thousand-mile eastern coastline. Dasch knew Long Island well, particularly the Hamptons.21 He had worked as a waiter at various inns in East Hampton and Southampton, and thought that the broad expanse of sand on the southeastern tip of Long Island would be the perfect place to bring in a dinghy. For his group, Kerling proposed the beaches of northern Florida around Jacksonville. He was familiar with this stretch of coastline as a result of his adventures on the Lekala two years earlier. After intercepting the boat off Atlantic City and impounding it for three weeks, the U.S. authorities had permitted Kerling and his friends to sail it down to Florida so they could sell it. But there was a stringent condition designed to prevent the Bundists from making a dash across the Atlantic: they were obliged to report to every Coast Guard station between New York and Miami.

  When the rest of the men reported to the bunker the following day, Kappe announced that submarines were not immediately available for their voyage across the Atlantic.22 Instead, they would take part in a field trip intended to familiarize them with the targets of their sabotage mission.

  First stop on the tour was the canal system around Berlin. Their guide was Dasch’s relative Barth, a mousy, nearsighted man who had worked for six years on the Long Island Rail Road cleaning coaches and repairing railway cars.23 While in America, Barth had also served as the Bund’s logistics expert, organizing special trains to transport large groups of American Nazis to parades and training camps around Long Island. This was how Barth had first come into contact with Kappe.