Operation Pastorius

True Crime Historian

Richard O Jones

True Crime, Documentary, Arts, Society & Culture, Performing Arts

4.4 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nazis Invade America

Episode 464

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In the summer of 1942, the war was supposed to be a distant conflict. But that illusion shattered when German U-boats, the predators of Operation Drumbeat, brought the fight to the American home front, sinking ships within sight of Long Island. This episode dives into the extraordinary story of Operation Pastorius, Hitler’s audacious plan to cripple the “Arsenal of Democracy.”Eight German agents—all fluent in English and trained in sabotage—landed on American beaches carrying a staggering $175,000 in cash and their most terrifying weapon: the disguised coal torpedo. Their mission: to blow up aluminum plants, railways, and bridges, and sow terror across the nation.The entire operation, however, pivoted on a foggy beach encounter with an unarmed 21-year-old Coast Guardsman, John Cullen, and the stunning betrayal of the mission's leader, George John Dasch. His self-surrender to the FBI exposed the entire plot, leading to a frantic manhunt and the capture of all eight men within two weeks.We explore the secret military tribunal that followed—the first since the Lincoln assassination—which resulted in the swift execution of six saboteurs and set a profound legal precedent that would return sixty years later in the War on Terror. Discover how J. Edgar Hoover transformed an internal catastrophe into an institutional triumph, and the devastating, lifelong cost of "heroism" for the man branded “The Judas of Speyer.”This is the true story of incompetence, constitutional crisis, and the moment American security hung by a thread.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Amagansett, Long Island, June 13, 1942.
0:13.0	The fog rolled thick off the Atlantic that night, the kind of fog that swallowed sound
0:18.0	and made a man question his own eyes. 21-year-old Coast Guardsman John Cullen was
0:23.1	walking his patrol on the beach near Amagansett, unarmed save for a flare gun, when he saw them,
0:28.9	four figures materializing from the mist. It was shortly after midnight. The war was six months old,
0:35.4	and for weeks now, the waters off Long Island had become a graveyard.
0:39.3	German U-boats prowled the shipping lanes with impunity, torpedoing freighters sometimes within sight of the shore.
0:46.3	17 vessels had gone down in the first wave alone, their wreckage and debris washing up on the beaches where vacationers had once sun bathed.
0:56.0	The nation felt vulnerable in a way it never had before, and on this night that vulnerability would take human form.
1:03.0	Cullen approached the men. One of them stepped forward, a thin-faced man who identified himself as George Davis,
1:10.0	a fisherman from Southampton.
1:11.6	But something was wrong. The story didn't hold. There was no fishing boat.
1:16.6	And the other men stood silent in the fog watching.
1:19.6	Then the thin-faced man changed tactics.
1:22.6	He fixed Cullen with a hard stare and said words that would echo through the summer of
1:26.6	1942.
1:29.8	I wouldn't want to have to kill you.
1:33.0	What happened next would strain belief.
1:38.5	The man who called himself Davis pressed a wad of cash into Cullen's hand, $260,
1:41.3	and told him to forget what he had seen.
1:42.3	Forget the men.
1:43.4	Forget this night.
	...

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