Talk:Operation Pastorius

Word 'terrorist' changed to 'sabotage'

Terrorism generally refers to killing or scaring a civilian population, which is not what the Germans had in mind. Sabotage is more accurate.

Name of Coast Guardsman

This page is in disagreement with Ex parte Quirin regarding the name of the Coast Guardsman that first sighted the saboteurs. Here, he is called "John C. Cullen", whereas on the other page he is called "Frank Cullen". Can someone clear this up? --Cromwellt|talk|contribs 22:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

The pages have long since been reconciled, but just to clarify, the Coast Guardsman was named John Cullen; however, when he ran into Dasch on the beach, he told him his name was Frank Collins as a minor bit of concealment. That's probably where the mistake on the other page came from. Mahousu (talk) 18:46, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Barbizon Plaza

This reference makes little sense - the hotel was 115 miles from where the sub landed. Seeing a signal light on a hotel room ceiling 115 miles away seems implausible, despite being referenced in an obituary in the English Daily Mail.

Correction: the missing infomation is that the saboteurs was staying at the hotel and signaling from there.

Teneriff (talk) 01:50, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

I was going to mention the same thing. The way it reads is that she saw a light 115 miles away from a hotel in the middle of Manhattan. There needs to be some sort of edit with correct information to get rid of this confusion. Bigal888 (talk) 14:16, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

It looks to me now like we're making stuff up to fill in the gaps in a story that to my knowledge is attested in a single source and may or may not be true as written. And given that the source says, "from far off", the current interpretation doesn't even fit the source. I'm deleting from the article, since it's not critical anyway. Jbening (talk) 03:55, 15 November 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I reverted your removal before reading this. On reflection I agree with you. I will reinstate your deletion. --MarchOrDie (talk) 17:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

Photos

I added the image of one of these fellows, you might find the article with photos at : https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/nazi-saboteurs/george-john-dasch-and-the-nazi-saboteurs of interest. Ellin Beltz (talk) 04:45, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

Critique

"Canaris recalled that during World War I, he organized the sabotage of French installations in Morocco, and entered the United States with other German agents to plant bombs in New York arms factories, including the destruction of munitions supplies at Black Tom Island, in 1916. He hoped that Operation Pastorius would have the same kind of success they had in 1916"

This makes it sound as Canaris in person entered the United States, doing sabotage during the first world war. I find this highly implausible, does anyone have a thrusted source for this ? ClausVind (talk) 15:12, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

I don't have access to the cited source, but it seems likely the sentence should read "Canaris recalled that during World War I, he organized the sabotage of French installations in Morocco, and other German agents entered the United States to plant bombs in New York arms factories..." - LuckyLouie (talk) 20:01, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

Why were Dasch and Burger prosecuted?

I have never understood why Dasch and Burger were prosecuted. Not only did they commit no acts of sabotage or espionage, but they turned themselves in immediately and betrayed the others. All of this appears to be universally accepted in the literature on the case. The closest thing I have seen to an explanation is that Hoover initially concealed the fact that they voluntarily surrendered. Did his deception persuade Roosevelt and others to treat them like the other six? And why did Hoover lie? If there is any explanation for this, it would be good to add it to the article.Bill (talk) 19:34, 6 August 2023 (UTC)