Saboteurs

by Michael Dobbs

  Ahlrichs refused to back down. As the representative of the German navy, he would not permit a man with a venereal disease to board the U-boat. If Schmidt was so essential to the mission, it would be necessary to cancel the departure of the second party altogether. “I take full responsibility for my decision,” Ahlrichs said firmly.18

  Kappe relented. They would leave Schmidt behind.

  THE DAY scheduled for the departure of Dasch’s group was Thursday, May 28. That morning, Dasch had another heated argument with Kappe over how the group should operate in America. Kappe wanted the men to begin sabotage work almost immediately, even if in a small way. Dasch insisted they lie low for three or four months to develop good cover stories. He referred to his conversation with Colonel Lahousen at the farewell banquet in the Zoo restaurant: the “big chief” had counseled caution.

  They then quarreled over whether the saboteurs should contact former comrades from the German-American Bund. Heinck, who had been an active member of the Bund when he lived in the United States, wanted to look up a friend in Long Island whom he thought he could recruit. Dasch said that any such meeting would “take place over my dead body.”19 He accused Kappe of failing to follow instructions, reminding him that Lahousen had been opposed to contacting former Bundists on the grounds it was impossible to be sure whether they were still loyal to the Fatherland.

  The conversation quickly degenerated into an argument over political loyalties. With the departure of Schmidt, Dasch was the only member of the group who had never been active in Nazi politics. Kappe complained that Dasch had “no confidence in our people in America who have been in the Bund.”

  “You dirty bastard, we Bund members had to fight people like you in America,” Heinck chimed in.

  Now it was Dasch’s turn to get angry. Privately, he felt only contempt for the swarthy Heinck, whom he considered a “typical German spy, dumb and big mouthed when he is safe, yellow as a coward when in danger.” 20 But he kept these thoughts to himself, and instead yelled, “I’ll kill you if you call me a bad German again.”21

  They then began arguing over who would team up with whom in America. Kappe wanted Dasch to pair with Quirin, and Burger with Heinck. Burger would be leader of the second team, ready to replace Dasch if anything happened to him. Dasch said he did not fully trust Burger because of his old troubles with the Gestapo. He preferred to keep an eye on Burger, and let Quirin be responsible for Heinck. Quirin and Heinck knew each other well, having worked together at Volkswagen. Kappe eventually let Dasch have his way.22

  There was one final dispute that afternoon, as they were preparing to board the submarine. Dasch, who had not been too worried about the gold certificates, now discovered that some of his dollar bills had small Japanese characters scrawled on them. This suggested that they had been acquired through Japan, which was allied with Nazi Germany. “This money I don’t want,” Dasch told Kappe, throwing the bills out. “You should be ashamed, supplying us with money like that.”23

  By the time Kappe escorted the men to the submarine that evening in a navy car, he was glad to be rid of them. The U-boat could not be seen from the shore as it was anchored behind a freighter. Dressed in navy fatigues and hauling their bags, the V-men boarded the freighter by a gangplank, crossed over to the other side, and then climbed down a ladder onto the deck of the submarine. The captain invited them all for a drink in his cramped quarters, but Kappe only stayed long enough to wish everybody “good luck.”24

  ALTHOUGH DASCH and his men had never been on a U-boat before, they felt at home. German newspapers carried frequent reports about life on board submarines, hailing the achievements of the U-boat fleet, particularly in the North Atlantic. 25 “Our submarines are endangering U.S. oil supplies,” boasted the Berliner Lokal-Anzeiger as the saboteurs were preparing to leave Berlin. “Liquid gold is flowing into the ocean.” A cartoon depicted Churchill telling Roosevelt, “You can find our ships all over the ocean,” as the two leaders used telescopes to spot a graveyard of Allied ships at the bottom of the sea.

  At a time when German armies were beginning to falter on other fronts, Dönitz’s U-boats provided a steady stream of propaganda triumphs. The Nazi press painted a picture of gallant U-boat captains stalking their prey, and American seamen quaking in fear at the thought of running into a German submarine. “Deadly eye on the Atlantic,” said the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung above a picture of a periscope peeking through the waves.26 “Meeting it means certain destruction. Millions of tons of enemy ships have fallen victim to this magic eye that can observe the sea and the sky at the same time.”

  The same newspapers gave the saboteurs a skewed picture of life in America. To the extent that the Nazi press covered daily life in America at all, it was to mock American popular culture, and the country’s lack of preparedness for war. There were many jokes about the profits made by Wrigley’s chewing gum now that it was being issued to U.S. soldiers along with their rations. Another favorite technique was to run pictures of big-breasted American girls in uniform, under headlines like “Roosevelt’s Freedom Fighters.” It was the Nazi equivalent of soft pornography, making fun of the enemy and selling newspapers at the same time.

  “Into battle with girls in shorts” ran the headline in the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, beneath a picture of drum majorettes. “Hundreds of actresses trained in seducing screen heroes have become soldiers and are now supposed to seduce American men into going to war.”

  SOON AFTER U-202 departed from Lorient harbor, Kapitänleutnant Ahlrichs was surprised to run into Schmidt in the dining car of the Paris–Berlin train. Both men were on their way back to Germany, Ahlrichs to report to naval intelligence, Schmidt to get medical treatment. Far from being despondent about being left behind, the ninth saboteur seemed exceptionally cheerful. He told Ahlrichs that the V-men, particularly those belonging to Dasch’s group, had quarreled with one another constantly. Dasch was very mistrustful of Burger, threatening to kill him or betray him to the FBI.

  When Ahlrichs asked Schmidt whether he had been to see a doctor, the Canadian trapper smiled sheepishly. He didn’t have gonorrhea. He had injected his penis with a soda solution in order to get out of going to America.27

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ACROSS THE ATLANTIC (MAY 28–JUNE 13)

  WHEN HE WELCOMED the four saboteurs on board his submarine on the evening of May 28, Kapitänleutnant Hans-Heinz Linder had been in charge of U-202 for just over a year. It was his first command, and he was proud of what he and his men had accomplished during their previous five patrols: several trips across the Atlantic, half a dozen enemy ships sunk, and many hair-raising escapes.

  A stout man with blue eyes and a ruddy complexion, Linder made no claim to being one of the aces of the German submarine fleet. Unlike the U-boat captains whose feats in sinking dozens of Allied ships and threatening Britain’s lifeline to North America were celebrated by the Nazi propaganda machine, Linder had the reputation of being a solid, reliable officer who was calm during a crisis and did not take too many risks. At twenty-nine, he was already a veteran of the U-boat service, older than many of his fellow skippers. His crew members, most of them boys just out of school, looked up to him as an ancient.

  On board his ship, a U-boat captain had almost godlike status. He was required to exude confidence at all times, even in the face of disaster. If a U-boat was “a community bound together by fate,” in the phrase of the fleet commander, Admiral Karl Dönitz, the captain was at once its savior and its scourge.1 His exploits could bring glory to the ship and the crew, but a single mistake could send them all to their deaths.

  Of the various branches of the German armed forces, the U-boat fleet was perhaps the most glamorous but also the most deadly. Before the end of the war, the Third Reich would lose 785 out of 1,162 submarines, and 28,000 out of 41,000 crewmen. Even during the early part of the war, when the U-boats achieved their greatest successes, the life expectancy of a German submariner could often be measured in weeks or mont
hs. In these circumstances, it was an achievement for a captain to bring his men back alive. The survivors felt they belonged to an elite.

  Linder and his men had had a very narrow escape on their fourth patrol back in December, when they were ordered to break through to the Mediterranean via the Strait of Gibraltar, which was controlled by the British. 2 A Royal Air Force plane had dropped four bombs on the U-boat, destroying its diesel engines. For thirty-six hours, the ship lay on the seabed at a depth of six hundred feet, waiting for the enemy to disappear, then limped back to the French port of Brest on its electric motors. When asked about the incident, Linder would shrug his shoulders and say simply, “I was lucky to get home.”3

  After major repairs, U-202 set out again in March to join the submarine “wolf packs” that were causing havoc along America’s Atlantic coast in Operation Drumbeat, one of the most successful Nazi naval operations of the war. According to Dönitz’s figures, U-boats managed to sink 303 Allied ships, a total of two million tons, in a period of just four months. This rate of destruction would soon outpace America’s ability to build new ships. Linder’s luck held once again. This time, he and his men survived a depth charge attack by a U.S. destroyer.

  Linder only found out about the mission for his sixth patrol a few hours before his submarine was due to sail from Brest, when he received a sealed package labeled “MOST SECRET” direct from Dönitz. The orders specified that he was to take a group of saboteurs across the Atlantic and land them on the southern coast of Long Island. The landing should be timed to coincide with a “new moon night” in the middle of June.4 Since darkness was vital to the success of the “special operation,” it would take priority over the sinking of enemy ships. Nevertheless, Linder was authorized to seize “opportunities of attack” if they presented themselves.

  The U-boat High Command war diary listed the following objectives of Operation Pastorius:

  To carry out sabotage attacks against vital economic targets.

  To stir up discontent and lower fighting resistance.

  To recruit fresh forces for these duties.

  To reestablish disconnected communications.

  To obtain information.

  THE CREW of U-202 were in a good mood as they took their ship out of the harbor at Brest, the headquarters of the German submarine fleet, on the evening of May 27. There were cheers of “Hurrah” and “Good luck” from their comrades and friends gathered on the pier.5 All the crew members knew was that they were setting off on another mission across the Atlantic. Before heading out, they had been instructed to put in at Lorient to receive supplies. There were rumors that a war correspondent would join them: the navy sometimes allowed reporters to accompany the U-boats and write up their exploits for a public eager for nautical victories.

  The next day, they took on board not just one civilian but four, along with four wooden crates and a large seabag. The civilians were all dressed in navy fatigues. Except for Linder, none of the crew knew who they were, or what they were meant to be doing. They did not look like war correspondents: for one thing, they seemed far too reticent for reporters. New rumors began to circulate: could they be secret agents?

  Linder showed the men their bunks in the petty officers’ quarters, on either side of his own minuscule cabin. In order to make room for the saboteurs, he had had to leave several less essential crew members behind, including the ship’s doctor. Every square inch of available space in the U-boat seemed to be occupied by bodies, torpedoes, crates of food, or some kind of dial or gauge.6 For the next two months, forty-five men would be living, working, eating, sleeping, and fighting for their survival in a cigar-shaped space just 211 feet long on the outside and 142 feet on the inside, about the length of two subway cars. Linder, who was six feet tall, could barely stand erect in his own control room. Most parts of the ship were no wider than ten feet; much of that space was crammed with equipment, leaving just enough room for one person to squeeze by at a time.

  As his ship sailed out of Lorient harbor on Thursday evening, Linder made a note of the time in his neatly kept ship’s log: 1957. He invited his guests up to the bridge to see U-202 leave the concrete submarine pens constructed by the Germans as protection against Allied air raids. The sub was accompanied by a small flotilla of ships: patrol boats on either side and a minesweeper in front, trailing a long wire with various electronic antimine devices. Leading this procession was a large tramp steamer weighed down with concrete. Linder explained that this ship was a “punch absorber,” to shield U-boats from floating mines dropped by British warplanes. 7 If a mine went off, it would do little more than damage one of the steamer’s many airtight compartments.

  As U-202 left the harbor, the crew tested out the antiaircraft gun mounted to the rear of the bridge, firing some tracer bullets into the night sky. An officer was able to steer the boat from a panel on the conning tower underneath the bridge, which duplicated the instruments in the control room below.

  The escort ships pulled away once the U-boat had cleared the most dangerous waters in the immediate vicinity of the port. For the rest of the night, the ship remained on the surface, tossed around on the ocean like a cork on a rushing stream. Four seamen stood watch on the bridge, scanning the horizon with binoculars for any sign of an enemy plane or warship. Each man faced in a different direction, and was responsible for a ninety-degree segment of sea and sky. A few seconds’ delay in spotting a plane and ordering an emergency dive could mean the difference between life and death. In order to make any headway at all, they had to travel on the surface as much as possible. On the surface, the boat could use its diesel engines and travel between ten and twelve knots, about the speed of a bicycle. Submerged, it was restricted to its electric motors, and could go no faster than two and a half knots, the pace of a leisurely walk.

  As they lay in their bunks that first night, Dasch and the other saboteurs tried to adapt to the strange sensations of life aboard a U-boat. Sleep was practically impossible. They already felt seasick from the violent rocking of the boat back and forth on the waves. And then there was the constant din from the two 1,160-horsepower diesel engines, known affectionately to the crew as Max and Moritz, in the stern of the ship. The diesels made a gurgling sound as they sucked in air from a pipe mounted in the bridge.

  At dawn, the U-boat dived to avoid being spotted by the Allied planes constantly patrolling the Bay of Biscay in a circular loop from their bases in Cornwall, on the southwest tip of England. When the ship was below the surface, everything seemed much more peaceful to the saboteurs huddled in their bunks. The roar of the diesels was replaced by the hum of the battery-powered motors. The violent rocking and shaking subsided, and it was as if the submarine were floating gently through space.

  For the first two days, the crewmen were told nothing about their new passengers. On the third day out of Brest, Linder finally made an announcement over the loudspeakers, his voice echoing from the forward torpedo room to the engine room in the stern. He informed the crew that their four guests were undertaking a “special assignment” to America. 8 The crew members were to treat the visitors well, refrain from asking questions, and observe strict secrecy on pain of death.

  AS U-202 was leaving Lorient harbor, a battle of wits was under way on the grounds of a rambling English manor house that would eventually determine the outcome of the Battle of the Atlantic. Hundreds of cryptanalysts were attempting to unscramble the latest batch of top-secret telegrams from the German High Command to military and naval units all over Europe and North Africa. Bulky machines known as “bombes” spun their rotors to discover the precise match of letters and numbers that would break the German code.

  Crude precursors of the computer, the bombes were meant to simulate the operation of the Enigma machine, the supposedly unbreakable cipher system used by the German army and navy for their daily communications. Breaking the German code was somewhat like solving a vast jigsaw puzzle while blindfolded: a combination of inspired guesswork and trying every
single logical possibility. What made the process even more mind-numbing was that the Germans kept rescrambling the puzzle.

  By late 1941, the code breakers of Bletchley Park had developed a system that allowed them to read secret German messages within a few hours of receiving them. By dint of analytical brilliance, a captured German codebook, and mechanical force, they gained priceless insights into Hitler’s plans and intentions, which they passed on to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and other wartime commanders. The code-breaking operation opened up intelligence on a vast range of subjects, from Hitler’s decision to invade the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941 to Luftwaffe raids on Britain to the mass murder of Jews in Nazi-occupied territories. British commanders were also able to use the decrypted messages to plot the movements of German U-boats around the Atlantic, and order Allied convoys to make adjustments in course to steer clear of the submarine menace.

  At the beginning of February 1942, disaster struck. Suspicious of Allied successes in evading his U-boats, Admiral Dönitz ordered the installation of a new, and even more complicated, cipher system on board the submarines. By adding a fourth rotor to the three-rotor Enigma machines, he increased by a factor of twenty-six the number of possible letter combinations available to German cipher clerks.9 What had become a manageable deciphering operation was now beyond the capabilities of even the cryptological geniuses of Bletchley Park, at least until they succeeded in building faster and more powerful code-breaking machines. Almost overnight, the task of tracking down Dönitz’s U-boats became far more difficult.