Mission from Berlin

Under the shroud of fog the four men paddled quietly towards shore. The submarine which had brought them turned its nose again to the open sea, vanished into the Atlantic.

The beach where the four men landed was a stretch of sand half-hidden by high grass and the low rolling dunes of Long Island's south shore, near Amagansett. They worked fast, dug a hole, gingerly buried a number of wooden boxes unloaded from their boat, finally buried the collapsible rubber boat itself, covered everything with sand. Then they headed swiftly for New York. . . .

Four nights later, 1,100 miles south along the Atlantic Coast, a second submarine surfaced, crawled towards shore. Again four men pushed off in a collapsible boat, paddled into palm-bordered Ponte Vedra Beach near Jacksonville. The second batch of silent men made a cache in the sand, headed north. . . .

The Invaders. Among them, the eight men had almost $170,000 in U.S. currency. The eight looked like respectable, intelligent mechanics from the corner garage. But in the boxes left buried on the beaches were bombs resembling lumps of coal, delayed-timing instruments, incendiary pistols, explosive pencils, acids. The eight men were trained Nazi saboteurs, exported from Germany. They had careful instructions for their work. Their list of targets included aluminum plants, railroads, bridges, terminals, canals, power plants, reservoirs, even department stores. Their objectives were to damage U.S. industrial production--especially the light-metal plants which make airplane materials--and to spread death and panic.

They all spoke English and had spent many years in the U.S. They were former waiters, machine-tool workers, painters, chauffeurs, butlers. One was a naturalized U.S. citizen, the youngest, 22-year-old Herbert Haupt, was U.S.-born. He had gone through Chicago's public schools, had been a cadet officer in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps. Most were in their late 30s. All had been active in the German-American Bund. In the years 1939-41 they had returned to Germany, aided by German diplomats and Nazi funds. Back in Germany they had volunteered or been drafted into training at a Berlin school for sabotage.

Thriller-Diller. Such was the Hollywood thriller which startled newspaper readers this week. J. Edgar Hoover, Chief of the FBI, solemnly declared that the invaders had buried enough explosives on the beaches to conduct a two-year campaign of destruction. The invaders had not lasted long--nor done any reported damage. Before they had time to start their operations, they had been captured in what the FBI chief indicated was a brilliant, decisive stroke. Six had been seized within ten days; the other two, four days later in Chicago.

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