Nazi Spies and Their Espionage Plots In America
The USA was slow in joining the fight against the Nazi hollocaust, due to the large number of US sympathizers who supported the Nazis. The Germans however didn't want to take any chances and even before U.S. involvement in World War Two, Nazi strategists-including Abwehr, the German intelligence agency- began inserting operatives into American cities or turning German-American citizens to the Nazi cause. The practice continued throughout the war. While there were some notable successes, especially prior to American involvement in the war, there were also some spectacular failures. Here are ten German spies and their plots, which occurred on U.S. soil during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Long Island Landing
In June 1942, German submarine U-202 carried a small group of would-be saboteurs to a position off the coast of Long Island, New York. The four spies, led by George John Dasch, were expected to perform acts of violence including blowing up bridges, railways, and factories in New York City and the East Coast over a planned two-year period. Dasch and his men comprised half of the assignment known as "Operation Pastorius" (see below), Hitler's pet project which his intelligence advisors told him didn't have a chance of success. The chosen men were inexperienced, and had very little training in intelligence operations.The mission didn't get off to a great start. The U-boat became stuck on a sandbar off Amagansett. Heavy swells made getting to shore in an inflatable raft an extremely hair-raising prospect. The men barely had enough time to bury their supplies-explosives, blasting caps, and timers-and strip out of their uniforms, when a Coast Guard patrolman, John Cullen, almost literally stumbled over them. A nervous Dasch lost his cool, threatened Cullen, and forced a significant cash bribe on him to keep his mouth shut.
Cullen did no such thing. He reported the suspicious incident. A little digging on the beach turned up four crates of explosives and equipment, German uniforms, and the stubs of German cigarettes. The FBI was brought into the case, and a search of Amagansett and Long Island began, but Dasch and his group had already made their way to New York City. While the other three Nazi spies hid out in a hotel, Dasch went to Washington, DC, where he turned himself in and rolled over on his fellow saboteurs. He got a sentence of thirty years in prison, instead of being executed like six other members of the ill-fated Operation Pastorius. He received clemency in 1948, and was deported to West Germany.
Operation Magpie
In November 1944, two German agents were landed in America-not to commit sabotage this time, but to gather intelligence on U.S. military ships, aircraft, and weapons. If possible, they were also to cause delays in America's development of the atomic bomb. The spies were Erich Gimpel, a native of Germany and former Abwehr courier who spoke English, and William Colepaugh, an American of German descent, a Nazi sympathizer, and a shady character who had little experience of spy craft. German submarine U-1230 dropped Colepaugh and Gimpel ashore near Bar Harbor, close by Hancock Point, Maine. Their clothes weren't suited for the cold New England weather and the falling snow, but they managed to walk from the beach on back roads carrying their expensive new luggage full of fake IDs, guns, cameras, cash, and diamonds to a railway station, where they took a train to Boston and then to New York City.
Once in NYC, rather than getting down to the business of spying and surreptitious activities, the unstable and alcoholic Colepaugh began a spree of drinking, partying, and womanizing, much to Gimpel's vocal disgust. In one month, Colepaugh ran through $1,500 of the money they'd been given for operating expenses. Shortly before Christmas, Colepaugh abandoned Gimpel and absconded with the rest of the money-more than $40,000-and a female companion of dubious repute, ending up at an expensive hotel. After a final drunken binge over the holiday, Colepaugh turned himself in to the FBI on December 29. Neither he nor Gimpel had done any actual spying during their brief time in NYC. Colepaugh told authorities everything he knew, including where to find Gimpel. Despite his cooperation with the American government, Colepaugh was tried in a closed military tribunal with Gimpel. Both men were sentenced to death, but the end of the war delayed the executions and the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Gimpel was released in 1955 and returned to West Germany to write his memoirs, while Colepaugh was granted parole in 1960, and settled down to a quiet life in Pennsylvania.
Waldemar Othmer
Born in Germany, Maximilian Gerhard Waldemar Othmer came to the U.S. in 1919. The affable, likable man became a naturalized citizen by 1935, married an American woman, and settled down with his family and a temporary job as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Despite the fact that he made frequent trips to Germany, no one guessed that Othmer was a sleeper agent for Abwehr. He became involved with the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, eventually becoming the leader of the Trenton, New Jersey, branch while working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After establishing himself as a hard-working, average guy, he got a job at Camp Pendleton (Norfolk, Virginia) military base, on the orders of German intelligence. In this position, he was able to send information to his handlers in Germany about British and American military vessels, convoys, and merchant ships in the port as well as Allied ship movements.
In 1942, he was transferred by the Army to Knoxville, Tennessee. An ongoing FBI investigation into Othmer, due to his open Nazi sympathies, proved inconclusive. By 1944, a new FBI investigation turned up some crucial facts-including Othmer's unusual request to a New Jersey dentist for Pyramidon, a common European painkiller used by Abwehr agents as an ingredient in invisible ink. He was brought in by the FBI's Knoxville division for questioning, and immediately confessed to being a Nazi espionage agent. He'd been sending information written in code in invisible ink to his handlers, but he denied sending any letters after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Othmer refused to name other agents, but he did turn over a microfilm containing a code he used when communicating with Abwehr, which was linked to other espionage cases. He was tried as a spy, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Guenther Rumrich's Passport Ploy
Born in Chicago, Illinois to an Austro-Hungarian father and raised in Germany, Guenther Gustav Rumrich returned to America in 1929 and served in the U.S. Army's