Saboteurs
Page 37
It would have been impossible to write this book without access to extensive records on the saboteur case, the most important of which are housed at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. At the Archives, I would particularly like to thank Greg Bradsher, who whetted my interest in the case by giving me a tour of the stacks where the Dasch records are held; Amy Schmidt, for guiding me through the intricacies of captured German records; John Taylor, an inexhaustible fount of information on World War II; David Van Tassel, for opening up thousands of previously secret FBI records on Walter Kappe; and Timothy Mulligan, for helping me understand the operations of a German U-boat. In Berlin, I owe a special debt of gratitude to a very capable researcher, Shannon Smiley, who tracked down numerous records on my behalf, including letters from U-boat survivors and Dasch’s old East German Stasi file, and introduced me to the incredibly helpful Hans-Georg Kohnke, director of museums for the city of Brandenburg.
Once again, I have benefited from the indulgence and encouragement of my longtime employers, the Washington Post. I want to thank the editors, Len Downie and Steve Coll, for allowing me to take a nine-month book leave and teach a course on media and politics at Princeton University. In addition to introducing me to some wonderful teachers and students, Princeton was also an ideal place to carry out much of the research for this book.
My agent, Rafe Sagalyn, was a pillar of support from beginning to end, along with my editor, Ash Green, who jumped on the idea of writing a book about the Nazi saboteurs when I first proposed it in the summer of 1991. At Knopf, I would also like to thank Luba Ostashevsky and Kevin Bourke for shepherding this book to publication so professionally.
Most of all, as with my previous books, I am grateful to my family for sharing my enthusiasms, pointing out my failings, and forgiving my frequent absences. For these reasons, and so many others, I dedicate this book to my oldest daughter, Alex, a never-ending source of pride, joy, and inspiration.
MICHAEL DOBBS
SABOTEURS
Michael Dobbs was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and educated at the University of York, with fellowships at Princeton and Harvard. He is a reporter for The Washington Post, where he spent much of his career as a foreign correspondent covering the collapse of communism. His Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire was a runner-up for the 1997 PEN award for nonfiction. Mr. Dobbs lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
ALSO BY MICHAEL DOBBS
Madeleine Albright: A Twentieth-Century Odyssey
Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire
FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, FEBRUARY 2005
Copyright © 2004 by Michael Dobbs
Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the Knopf edition as follows:
Dobbs, Michael
Saboteurs: the Nazi raid on America / Michael Dobbs.—1st American ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Saboteurs—United States. 2. Spies. 3. Secret service—Germany.
4. World War, 1939–1945—United States. 5. World War, 1939–1945—Germany.
6. United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. I. Title.
D753.3.D63 2004
940.54’8743’0973—dc21 2003056182
www.vintagebooks.com
www.randomhouse.com
eISBN: 978-0-307-42755-7
v3.0