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REVIEWS 

Stan Cohen and Don DeNevi (with Richard Gay), They Came to Destroy America: The FBI Goes to War Against Nazi Spies & Saboteurs Before and During World War II.
Pictorial Histories Publishing Company, Missoula 2003. PB, $16.95. ISBN-10 1575101017

On first sight the heavy red letters on the cover, screaming out Destroy America would suggest just another publication on enemy agents and their brutal assaults against America. Quite to the contrary, what the authors offer is a rather impressive collection of photographs and documents relating to German agents and their actual and planned activities in and against the U.S. prior to and in the course of World War II. Some of them were what in our time would be referred to as terrorists. Others were propagandists or just simply spies. A large number of them were Americans or had lived in the U.S. for some time. Also they were not the first generation of German agents dispatched to the U.S. They followed in the footsteps of an earlier group of saboteurs and propagandists whom the Germans had sent to the U.S. during the period of American neutrality in World War I. Indeed the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) which fought the battle against German agents before and during World War II gained its initial momentum and  experience in the confrontation with enemy agents during World War I when the service was still extremely small and operating as the B.I. (Bureau of Investigation).
Publications such as this, however, are not only important because they examine the ability or in some instances inability of the security services to combat successfully the underground war unleashed by foreign agents, but they can also demonstrate how, in some cases, even rather traditionally minded foreign offices or ministries and armed forces are quite willing to engage in propaganda, to organize espionage networks, and, if considered useful, to attack industrial and other installations in enemy or for that matter neutral territory. Destruction of property and the killing of often innocent non-combatants appear to be unavoidable aspects of this kind of covert warfare.
Because the U.S. in many instances successfully prevented the activities planned and apprehended the agents involved, there were legal procedures and punishment. The question of what type of court should be authorized to try the captured agents, foreign nationals a well as American citizens, has been and continues to be a theme in the lively debate of legal experts and engaged citizens up to the present. Even the observation of foreign or enemy agents, of course, may often require measures and procedures not necessarily in full agreement with civil liberties (where they are valued) or what could be considered normal police activities. Obviously, not only the invading agents were likely to practice their trade outside the law, but American agents pursuing the intruders would occasionally also be found to operate under at least dubious conditions.
Stan Cohen, Don DeNevi, and Richard Gay have not given us the much needed comprehensive study of German intelligence and sabotage campaigns directed against the U.S. in the two World Wars and the respective periods of U.S. neutrality. They have not delved into the immensely rich German depositories whose records were captured by Allied forces and by and large returned to the Bonn (now Berlin) Government on the condition that they would be accessible. They have also not examined the extensive  intelligence holdings in U.S. archives, still more open to researchers than most intelligence holdings in Europe. While the short chapters on such topics as “The FBI Goes to War Against Nazi Spies & Saboteurs”, “The German-American Bund”, “Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and the Abwehr”, Operation Pastorius”, or “Unternehmen Elster (Operation Magpie)” are reliable introductions to the intelligence war, the real contribution of this publication is the presentation of nicely reproduced photographs and documents of the time. The illustrations are generally of high quality and the texts reproduced are readable, thus making the book a commendable teaching tool in connection with other literature on the military and political history of the time.
To be used even more effectively in college history courses, publisher and authors would be well advised to correct a few printing errors, add some footnotes with information concerning the most relevant archival holdings and, most of all, include a name index.

Reinhard R. Doerries
Nürnberg

Louis Fisher. Nazi Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal and American Law.
Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003. $29.95. ISBN-10: 0700612386 (The book has seen a second edition in 2005 as Paperback, $15.95)

Though historians generally have not given much attention to German attempts of sabotage in the U.S. in both World Wars, not only specialists in the history of intelligence have pointed out that such operations did have an influence on American reaction to German aggression both times. Woodrow Wilson in his often cited Address to a Joint Session of Congress on April 2, 1917, included the underground war with Imperial German agents inside America during the period of American neutrality in what he referred to as the German “challenge of hostile purpose” and Franklin Roosevelt, facing German intelligence operations in the U.S. prior to and in the course of World War II, had been Asst. Secretary of the Navy in World War I and remembered the German operations from personal experience then as well as from almost two decades of dealing with them in the Mixed Claims Commission. The eight saboteurs treated in Fisher’s Nazi Saboteurs on Trial were agents dispatched to New York and Florida by Germany’s Abwehr (Military Intelligence) in order to commit acts of sabotage against industrial plants and the transportation network.
The American Counter Intelligence Corps correctly observed that “the eight saboteurs sent over from Germany by submarine ... [were] a fairly good indication that Germany had no such apparatus functioning in the United States”. This absence of a functioning network in the U.S. among other things, of course, was related to an earlier (April 1940) explicit order of the Abwehr chief Wilhelm Canaris that “no sabotage operations are permitted to be carried out in the U.S.”. By 1942 things had changed. Germany had declared war against the U.S. in December of 1941 and the Abwehr a few weeks later had organized four sabotage teams to be deployed in Canada, the U.S. and Panama. The American government knew what to expect and was prepared to react.
Fisher’s study, however, clearly is less directed to the planned German sabotage operations than to the trial of the saboteurs by an American military tribunal rather than a civil court. In his introductory references to Franklin D. Roosevelt and George W. Bush, Fischer poses the question that has occupied the media and legal experts since the attack on the World Trade Center in Manhattan: “Does Quirin lend legitimacy to President Bush’s initiative in 2001?” (p. X) The book jacket, identifying Fisher as “Senior Specialist in Separation of Powers with the Congressional Research Service of the Library of Congress” could suggest that the author may be more interested in American political power structures than in a historical case of intelligence and sabotage. In this he is not alone. The military trial of the German saboteurs of 1942 and the political context of the legal decisions taken then have continued to captivate legal and historical scholars. More recently critics of American justice in general and more specifically of certain policies of the “War on Terror” have suggested that Ex Parte Quirin may still be of considerable legal – and political – interest and relevance.
Chapter 1 offers an introduction to this Abwehr operation and the eight men involved. All of them were German born, with one of them often considered an American citizen due to the naturalization of his parents. The unimpressive biographies of the German operatives do not indicate any experience useful for risky intelligence assignments. Fisher’s text is largely based on the legal transcripts available at the National Archives and the author does not appear to have seen either German or American intelligence records, declassified and strewn about depositories on both sides of the Atlantic. This may be the reason why the nature of Quenzgut, where the saboteurs received their training in deception and destruction, remains rather in the dark. Chapter 2 covers the poorly prepared landing of the agents on Long Island and in Florida and their quick apprehension by the authorities. Chapter 3 entitled “The Military Tribunal at Work” treats what the author sees as an incorrect if not to say unconstitutional decision by the President of the United States, namely using his authority as President and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces to establish a military commission which would try the German agents. Much of the chapter details the legal procedures from the respective viewpoints, including defense lawyer Kenneth Royall’s futile attempt to obtain permission to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in behalf of the seven men (all except Georg Johann Dash) he represented. Consequently the very extensive testimony and the confessions of the eight accused are reduced to a few sentences and less informed readers may rightfully wonder about the facts of this German operation against the U.S. Also, some Roosevelt experts may have different points of view regarding the justification of the death sentences carried out in six of the eight cases or concerning “Roosevelt’s effusive state of mind” on the day of execution. (p. 80) The chapter closes with rather brief comments on friends and relatives of the saboteurs and the fines meted out to them, most of the information offered coming from The New York Times.
Chapter 4 is the author’s worthwhile attempt to cast some light upon the curious interlude before the United States Supreme Court. In essence, defense counsel argued for the saboteurs’ petitions for a writ of habeas corpus. In Fisher’s words “The brief challenged the validity of Roosevelt’s proclamation creating the [military] tribunal and his military order appointing the tribunal members.” (p. 89) The prosecutors in contrast argued that the German saboteurs were enemies of the United States, having entered the country to destroy American industrial installations and lives. Therefore, in the views of the prosecution they had no right to be heard before an American civil court. The exchanges in the deliberations of the Supreme Court were learned and demonstrated a breadth of  legal opinions, the details of which have been studied repeatedly by legal experts and can be found in numerous contributions to law journals over the years. In the end, the Supreme Court held “that the charges preferred” authorized the President “to order trial before a military commission”, that “the military commision was lawfully constituted”, and that the saboteurs had “not shown cause for being discharged by writ of habeas corpus”.
Fisher’s final chapter “Rethinking Tribunals” suggests that the United States Supreme Court, and he mentions “the curfew and detention of Japanese-Americans,” “provided stark evidence of a Court forfeiting its reputation as the guardian of constitutional rights”.(p. 128) The author presents a thoughtful collection of pros and cons on the question of trying persons before a military tribunal. The danger of an erosion of the constitutional rights of persons charged in the U.S. is evident, and categorization into citizens, non-citizens, legal aliens, illegal aliens, etc. does not really allay that concern. The legality or advisability of the Roosevelt and Bush decisions naturally remains an open question which will continue to be debated by the experts. The author’s conclusion that “the Nazi saboteur case represented an unwise and ill-conceived concentration of power in the executive branch” (p. 172) is one of several legal – and political – opinions in the ongoing debate.

Reinhard R. Doerries
Nürnberg

John H. Morrow, Jr., The Great War: An Imperial History.
London:  Routledge, 2004. £25,00. ISBN: 0415204399

The well-known air war historian John W. Morrow has given us a new history of “perhaps the single most important formative experience of the twentieth century“ (p. XIII), namely the First World War and its international imperial context. One could be inclined to ask what still might be said about this conflict which irreparably broke up older European structures and as a consequence of Germany’s unlimited submarine warfare and Berlin’s offer to Mexico of an alliance against the United States brought Washington into the brutal European conflict. Morrow’s view of the Great War transcends traditional largely national perspectives of military history and avoids the heated revisionist debates carried on by historians of various schools of thought in Germany and the U.S. We are instead presented with a world history of what turned into a “tragedy of enormous proportions” (p. 322).
The almost global report on this tragedy is organized here chronologically, probably because this may be the most plausible manner of presenting the totality of international violence and suffering. The reader learns of earlier struggles in the 19th century and the jealousies of imperial powers and those who wanted to be.  Taking a different stance than most historians, the author prefers to assign an across the board responsibility to those nations involved in the diverse bloody confrontations prior to World War I, and the often argued significance of “The German Problem” consequently is thought to be an error. Instead the suggested view is one of “an unparalleled orgy of self-destruction which began in 1914 and concluded in 1945” (pp. 33-35). Morrow’s year by year report on the war and ensuing calamities for the common peoples in all participating nations therefore is not a history of military strategy, weapons systems or even of national military or geopolitical goals. It is the history of war and what happens to those making it, including such war lords as Joseph Joffre and Erich von Falkenhayn   facing each other in the incomprehensibly senseless slaughter of Verdun.
Quite in contrast to most traditional chroniclers of World War I and very much in line with more recent concerns of military historians such as demonstrated in John Keegan’s The Face of Battle, the finesses of diplomacy, national interest and strategic pursuit have been relegated to the background, and the common people, particularly “the others” have been allowed to monopolize front stage. Nameless soldiers of varied race, nationality and social class, massacring each other on the blood soaked fields of battle or somewhere on the Atlantic are heroes and victims alike, not to mention the sorry lot of women and children back home everywhere.
This history of the Great War is packed with interesting detail on the lot of the many. It frankly contradicts a great number of the traditional interpretations of that conflict and will cause readers to reexamine previously held and cherished views. The next generation who Morrow hopes would “right the wrongs” of their elders [dedication] will be inspired by the thoughts of this publication.

Reinhard R. Doerries
Nürnberg

Dagmar Unverhau, ed., State Security and Mapping in the German Democratic Republic: Map Falsification as a Consequence of Excessive Secrecy?
Lit Verlag: Berlin, 2006. €29.90 ISBN 3-8258-9039-2.

This translation of a volume published by the “Birthler office” (caretaker of the “Stasi” files) is of interest to those who do not read German but would like to keep abreast of research findings from the former Soviet satellite countries. It emerged from a conference in 2001 and comprises ten essays as well as ninety pages of translated documents.
If deception is an essential part of warfare, the manipulation of maps is no doubt an important element, as Mark Monmonier (How to Lie with Maps, first published in 1991) and others in this volume point out. They provide numerous examples on how GDR mapping manipulation fits into a wider historical context. For example, it is still against the law in Germany today to mark military airfields and other large military installations in commercially distributed maps such as road maps. Publicly available satellite imagery, such as Google Maps, must block imagery of such sites or reduce visible detail. In other words, mapping runs though a filter of government security checks even in liberal western societies who have otherwise stopped preparing for major war.
In October 1965 the National Defence Council of the GDR passed a ruling which specified how publicly distributed maps had to be modified in order to meet the concerns not only of GDR security agencies but equally of the Soviet Union which maintained some three hundred thousand soldiers on GDR territory. The authors amply illustrate how military installations were diminished in size or made to look like farm buildings. Railway lines were deleted, electrical power lines made to vanish. And if this adaption of reality was too obvious to even the casual hiker or villager, those rail or power lines were reduced to their prewar state which could be found in older maps anyhow. The 1965 order also banned grid coordinates which made it possible to move road intersections or even villages by several kilometres. Pages 81, 85, 86 and 116 are particularly recommended for close study on this point.
Though much of this work was done by the Stasi, or Ministry of State Security, one wonders if the result would have been very different if it had been done by the military themselves. But in 1989, when the east Germans began to discover the many restricted areas, those secret (un-mapped) military roads and facilities as well as the lavish residential quarters of their communist leadership, map-forgery seemed to be just one of many ways in which their leaders had lied to them for over 40 years.
Alas, there is no reference to how western intelligence and military planners, particularly the west German BND and the western “Military Liaison Missions” in Potsdam were dealing with this deception effort. This topic would certainly merit another conference.

Wolfgang Krieger
Marburg

Friedrich L. Bauer, Decrypted Secrets: Methods and Maxims of Cryptology
4th revised and extended edition
Berlin: Springer 2007 $99,00. ISBN-10: 3540245022.

This is a somewhat expanded version of a classic which needs no introduction. David Kahn called the earlier edition “the best single book on cryptology today”. No further comment is needed except perhaps for those who are new to intelligence studies or new to cryptology. The book’s origins go back to the 1970s when Professor Bauer, who was then building up the new field of computer science at Munich’s Technical University, began to lecture on the history of cryptology. His aim was to tell his engineering students that cryptology was many centuries older than they could possibly imagine. By bringing together that history with an introduction to its mathematical and technical aspects he published the book’s first German edition in 1993. The English version followed in 1997.
Bauer’s work is partly a great pleasure to read, partly a veritable treasure trove of techniques and of people often completely unknown to the amateur cryptologist. There is of course a certain emphasis on modern techniques, on the electronic age, on the momentous advances during World War II (Enigma, Colossus and all that …), and then on modern computer systems. But the author has immersed himself deeply into the history of secret writings and messages all the way back to ancient history. Thus there is a marvellous history book inside of what looks like a technical manual.
Serious scholars will wish to follow those many traces, dig up those ancient volumes on encryption, and brood over those encryption tables and formulas. But unless they are mathematically trained there will, alas, be various sections of the book which remain “encrypted”, namely undecipherable, to them. This is not the author’s fault who does an excellent job in making the difficult seem easy. It is only a reminder that this work was originally written for engineers, not for the mathematically challenged folks in the humanities. So, dear historians, just skip a page here or a table there, but do read on. It is well worth your time!

Wolfgang Krieger
Marburg

Germain Galérant et Jacques Heulliard, Le Combat de la Rougemare. Un Western entre Beauvais et Rouen pendant la guerre 1914-1918.
Luneray: Editions Bertout, 1989. € 9,15. ISBN 2867430917

The slim volume describes in detail an event well known in France but neglected by German military historians: a German raid against French railway communications in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of the Marne.
On 14 September 1914 a commando of the 18th Engineers Batallion left the lines of the German First Army to the West of Soissons. Captain Tiling and 40 soldiers were heading for the Seine in four cars with 500 kg of explosives. Their targets were the bridges at Oissel to the South of Rouen nearly 200 km away. Travelling by night and resting by day, on the third day out they were discovered by a patrol of French gendarmes. The confrontation - named 'the combat at Rougemare' by the French - left three of the French gendarmes, a French civilian accompanying them and one of the German soldiers dead. Tiling, who by then had lost two of his cars by accidents and therefore left half of his men behind, decided to make a run for it and succeeded in reaching the Seine river bend below Rouen, but to no avail. As the countryside was up against them by then, he and his men were quickly rediscovered, surrounded and taken prisoner.
The French military authorities assumed that it was impossible for a German commando to pass nearly 200 km through enemy territory without revealing its real identity, supposed that they had pretended to be English soldiers and considered therefore to treat its members as spies. But the German soldiers were in regular German uniforms with the proper insignia, no civilian clothes were found in the cars, enquiries showed that they had been been taken to be English soldiers by the people they had met on the road, and they were under no legal obligation to rectified this misperception. Therefore, they were treated as regular prisoners of war.
The German First Army dispatched seven commandos in the middle of September. Two of them succeeded: the bridge of the Nièvre at Canaples to the North of Amiens was blown up and the Viaduct at Poix de Picardie to the Southwest of Amiens heavily damaged, slowing down troop movements to Amiens and from Amiens to the North considerably for several days. About the other four nothing could be found out.

Hilmar-Detlef Brückner
München

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