How Roosevelt handled saboteurs in WWII
The Nazi 'Invasion' of LI
In 1942, four would-be saboteurs paddle ashore at Amagansett and caught the LIRR
At 8 on the evening of June 12, 1942, the German U-boat Innsbruck completed its 15-day journey across the Atlantic Ocean. As darkness descended, the submarine settled quietly to the sandy bottom a few hundred yards off the Amagansett beach.
After midnight, the U-boat rose to the surface and began to move closer to the beach. The Nazi ``invasion'' of Long Island was about to begin.
That month, the war in Europe was 21 months old. The powerful German war machine controlled much of Western Europe right up to the English Channel, and had attacked east into the Soviet Union. The United States had entered the war the previous December, after the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor.
Sticking out into the Atlantic for more than 100 miles, Long Island was, at its eastern end, sparsely populated; German submarines had been spotted on the surface not far from shore. Its miles of beaches invited trouble, as did its nearness to New York City. Two years before, in 1940, a German-American recruited by the Nazis -- who was also working with the FBI -- had set up operations in a house in Centerport where he was to send radio messages to Germany. And a large Nazi spy ring had been broken in Brooklyn before the start of the war.
A German hat, along with explosives, were found in Amagansett Photo
Nazi Saboteurs At Amagansett
But the Nazi threat was to take on a whole new dimension when, on the foggy night of June 12, four men carrying explosives and tens of thousands of dollars in cash paddled from the Innsbruck to a deserted stretch of Amagansett beach and walked ashore.
As they did, John Cullen, a 21-year-old Coast Guardsman who happened to be at this exact spot on the beach as part of his routine beach patrol -- talk about being in the right place at the right time -- saw their shadows through the night fog. Must be fishermen, he thought, and as he walked up to the four men -- Richard Quirin, George Dasch, Ernest Burger and Heinrich Heinck -- he told them to accompany him back to headquarters.
``How old are you?'' Dasch asked Cullen in English.
``Twenty-one,'' he answered. ``What's that got to do with it?''
``You got a mother and a father? You want to see them again?''
Ignoring the question, he noticed one of the men dragging a box over the beach. ``What's in the bag, clams?'' he said.
``You don't know what this is about,'' Dasch said. Dasch reached into his pocket and produced a wad of cash. He thrust $260 into Cullen's hand. ``Forget you ever saw us.''
Cullen backed into the fog and was soon running as hard as he could to Coast Guard headquarters three miles away. ``They're German,'' he breathlessly told his duty officer when he ran in.Within minutes, a group of Coast Guardsmen armed with rifles returned to the beach but found nothing suspicious. But while standing on the beach, something happened: The ground vibrated. Peering out to sea, they thought they saw the outlines of a U-boat stuck on a sandbar, its diesel engines revving hard. Maybe, maybe not. Unsure, the searchers left and returned at dawn to scour the beach.
Meanwhile, the four Germans walked across farm fields to the Amagansett train station, where they caught the 6:57 to New York City.
As the Germans were comfortably riding west across the length of Long Island, Cullen and the other searchers looked for physical proof of a landing. They found it when Cullen spotted a pack of cigarettes. Next to it was a wet trail across the sand, as if something heavy had been dragged; near it was a patch of wet sand. Poking a stick into the sand, one of the men hit a hard surface. Minutes later, they had uncovered all the proof they needed that Long Island had been invaded by saboteurs -- a canvas bag containing German uniforms, and tin boxes that held explosives, detonators and disguised bombs.
When their train reached Jamaica, the four Germans bought suits, got shaves and boarded a train for Manhattan, where they checked into hotels. For reasons not known today, Dasch then did the incredible -- he told Burger that he was going to call the FBI and turn himself in. Two days after walking ashore at Amagansett, Dasch did just that, telling an agent who answered the phone in New York that he was going to go to Washington and personally inform J. Edgar Hoover.
After arriving in Washington, Dasch spilled his guts to the FBI. And he dropped a bombshell -- that four other Nazi saboteurs had landed at the same time from a second submarine on the coast of Florida. Two weeks after the invasion began, all eight Nazis were under arrest. It was over before it began.
In Washington, President Franklin Roosevelt decided all eight would be tried before a military tribunal. He wanted them all dead, he admitted in a memo to his attorney general. In the courtroom, all of the Germans said they had no intention of carrying out their orders to blow up installations.
And Cullen, the man who'd been in the right place at the right time, took the stand and testified that Dasch was the man he'd met on the beach. After his testimony, Cullen ran into J. Edgar Hoover in the hallway.
``Congratulations,'' Hoover said. ``You were a help.''
All were found guilty. Six were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Dasch, the whistleblower, received a 30-year sentence; Burger, who also cooperated, was sentenced to life in prison. On Aug. 8, 1942, the six were executed, their bodies buried in a pauper's grave.
Three of the four men who had landed in Amagansett -- Burger, Heinck and Quirin -- had been associated with Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, according to Marvin Miller. Miller, now 63 and a retired Long Island schoolteacher, wrote ``Wunderlich's Salute,'' the first history of the the German-American Bund on Long Island. Miller said that seven of the eight who landed in the United States were members of the bund, which was established to promote Hitlerism in the United States. The bund sponsored the camp, a summer retreat that attracted thousands of bundists from throughout the metropolitan area.
When the war was finally over, Cullen worked on Long Island as an insurance adjuster, a door-to-door salesman, and a sales representative in the milk business.
Burger and Dasch were paroled by President Harry Truman in 1948 and returned to Germany. In 1952, Dasch told a reporter he had been treated badly in Germany, where he was perceived as a traitor. He wanted to return to the United States, he said.
He also said he'd spared Cullen's life on the beach, as he was under orders by his superiors to kill any witnesses. ``I saved that kid's life,'' he said.
In an interview in 1992, Cullen said he was lucky. Dasch, he said, ``wasn't really a bad guy. If he was, I wouldn't be here.''
And was all of this done without full 24 hour press coverage and Red Cross oversight????? 
