PASTORIUS. An unsuccessful Nazi sabotage attempt in the United
States, Operation pastorius originated in the Abwehr in the spring
of 1942, apparently as a directive from Adolf Hitler. The Abwehr
officer responsible for the operation, Walter Kappe, had been active
in various pro-Nazi groups in Cincinnati, Ohio, and named the op-
eration after Franz Daniel Pastorius, the leader of the first group of
German emigrants to the United States and founder of Germantown,
Pennsylvania. The eight men selected for the operation were German
born but had acquired a knowledge of American life and customs
from time spent earlier in the country. Two of them were naturalized
citizens. With one exception, all of them had returned to Germany af-
ter the outbreak of war. Although their three-week training course at
a farm outside Berlin provided them with ample knowledge regard-
ing the use of explosives and the intricacies of the American railway
system, it failed to develop any sense of group cohesion.
Their principal objective was to cripple the production of magne-
sium and aluminum essential for aircraft construction. Transported
by two submarines across the Atlantic, one group of four landed at
Amagansett, Long Island, on 12 June; the second group came ashore
four days later at Ponte Vedra Beach south of Jacksonville, Florida.
The leader of the first group, George Dasch, decided the final out-
come of the mission. After confiding his disenchantment with Ger-
many to another member of his group, Ernest Burger, an early Nazi
activist who had been arrested by the Gestapo in 1940 and served
time in a concentration camp, Dasch contacted the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI). He proceeded to explain that he and Burger, as
staunch anti-Nazis, had already intended to betray the operation prior
to leaving Germany and had simply desired asylum in the United
States. Hoping that this voluntary admission would absolve him of
any wrongdoing, he nevertheless could not satisfactorily explain his
return to Germany in May 1941. Based on information that Dasch
provided, the remaining members of both groups were apprehended
within a matter of days. The version of events released to the public
made no mention of the saboteur’s betrayal and gave full credit to
the FBI’s efforts.
On 2 July, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued a proclama-
tion establishing a military tribunal to determine the men’s fate. The
procedure had not been used since the American Civil War, but the
PASTORIUS • 341