ISBN 1-57510-101-7
166 pages

Preface; Introduction; Acknowledgements; photos; maps; diagrams; documents; Bibliography; About the Authors

   Both cover the same main subject, but it's difficult to imagine two books dealing with that topic in styles more dissimilar than Nazi Saboteurs on Trial and They Came to Destroy America. The former is a very sober, exceedingly academic analysis of Operation Pastorius (the landing by U-boats of two groups of German saboteurs in the United States in 1942) and the ensuing tribunal mostly from a legal and constitutional perspective. Through no fault of its own, this book by Stan Cohen and Don DeNevi seems almost lurid and sensationalized in comparison. Where Fisher wrote a scholarly, legalistic interpretation, Cohen and DeNevi rely heavily on reproductions of wartime photos and documents along with a modicum of mostly generic text. "The stories...have been well-documented through the years and are important today as a predecessor [sic] of future military tribunals proposed for accused terrorists. This, however, is the first time that a thorough photographic search of these operations and other Nazi incursions within and on American shores has been attempted, with the stories and photo evidence put together in one volume.... For a more detailed account of the many spy organizations and landings on our shores the authors direct the reader to the bibliography in this book including the two books written by the perpetrators themselves."
   Fifty percent of They Came to Destroy America covers Operation Pastorius. Before the authors begin that story, however, they set the stage with an assortment of preliminary material.
   In his Introduction, "The FBI Goes to War against Nazi Spies & Saboteurs," Don DeNevi writes six fairly wide-eyed pages about J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation and its organization and evolution from the pre-war years through 1945. After the Introduction, one page summarizes the activities of German spies and saboteurs in the US during the First World War. Next comes a six-page reproduction of a pre-war pamphlet (circa mid-1941), presented without commentary or explanation. Titled "Can Hitler Invade America?" the pamphlet was published and distributed by the isolationist America First Committee with the backing of many prominent Americans and purportedly proved that Germany posed no threat to the United States.
   The next eighteen pages cover the pro-Nazi German American Bund in the US. This section comprises about two pages of text along with numerous photos and reproductions of documents and posters. "Bund members came from all walks of life, from the very young to senior citizens, as can be seen from these three photographs and the one at the top of the next page. The young were sent to various summer camps for Nazi indoctrination, and this was here in the United States!"
   After a half page of text introducing "Spies and Saboteurs in the United States," another half page recounts a mysterious explosion at the New York World's Fair in 1940 which, the authors speculate, might have been caused by "a German spy or possibly a Nazi sympathizer." One page follows with a thumbnail biography of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, and then a two-page photographic spread from Life magazine in July 1941 called "Greatest Spy Roundup in US History." The next six pages are a potpourri of brief notes and photos relating pre-war German espionage efforts in the US.
   In one of the longer text portions of the book, Cohen and DeNevi reprint a seven-page FBI report about a German spy ring headed by Kurt Ludwig. Although the authors' footnote indicates the report dates from 1941, some of the material in the report covers events in 1942, so it's unclear how much of this material is verbatim and how much has been edited and expanded by the authors.
   The next part of the book covers "America's Defenses" with eight pages of photos (showing prospective targets for German espionage and sabotage along with guards, patrols, sandbags, and checkpoints) and a three-page abridgement of "The World War II Beach Patrol" from a 1997 issue of the US Coast Guard magazine The Reservist.
   The central topic of They Came to Destroy America begins on page 47 with another FBI report ("released on Nov 14, 1942") concerning Operation Pastorius. The ensuing pages include material about recruitment, biographies of the eight would-be saboteurs, training, equipment, and sabotage objectives. Next comes a section on the landings made by the saboteurs via U-boats, "the Betrayal," the arrests, the co-conspirators, the legal proceedings, the judges, and the post-war lives of George Dasch and Ernest Burger. Unfortunately, it's very unclear where the FBI report ends and where the text by Cohen and DeNevi begins, or what—if any—parts of the FBI report have been re-written by the authors (although certainly the FBI report from 1942 could not contain the post-war information included here). The section on Operation Pastorius amounts to around eighty pages, but the text represents a small portion of those pages and, for example, seems less extensive than Nazi Saboteurs on Trial. The bulk of the pages contain photos, reproductions of documents (such as Haupt's forged social security card, handwritten letters from Dasch, newspaper clippings, and wartime memoranda from the War Department), maps, brief histories of U-202 and U-584 (which delivered the saboteurs to New York and Florida), and other material related to the case.
   After Operation Pastorius, the authors tackle Operation Pelican with one page about the abortive (and seemingly far-fetched) plot to bomb the Panama canal with a pair of Ju 87 Stukas transported (dismantled) via U-boat to the Caribbean where they were to have been reassembled on an uninhabited island from which they would sortie to drop their bombs on the Gatun dam. The authors don't comment on which uninhabited islands in the Caribbean featured airstrips suitable for Stuka take-offs.
   The next German operation, "Magpie," proved less far-fetched but no more successful when Erich Gimpel and William Colepaugh were landed by U-boat on the coast of Maine in November 1944. As with Operation Pastorius, the authors tell the story with more photos, maps, and documents than words.
   The book ends with a few pages covering Hollywood films about German spies and saboteurs along with an old poster, lists of actors and roles, stills, and a reproduction of a review of They Came to Blow Up America originally published in 1943.
   As the authors indicate in their Introduction, the strength of this book does not reside in detailed, carefully composed paragraphs. Large blocks of text are reprinted here without clear attribution, nothing is footnoted, the book is not indexed, and the bibliography comes without annotations. While the authors direct readers to that bibliography for more information, they (unlike Fisher in Nazi Saboteurs on Trial) fail to point out some of the significant inaccuracies to be found in earlier works. By comparison, They Came to Destroy America has been constructed more like a scrapbook, relying on reproductions of archival photos and documents rather than rigorous research and thoughtful prose. As a scrapbook, Cohen and DeNevi's work seems entirely satisfactory, boasting an impressive collection of vintage images. No one will mistake this as the final, authoritative work on the subject, but there's more than enough fascinating visual material here for those who enjoy that approach. Given the track record of Pictorial Histories with this kind of book, it appears this one will find many fans.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Pictorial Histories.
   Thanks to Pictorial Histories for providing this review copy.