Operation Pastorius

Operation Pastorius was a failed German intelligence plan for sabotage inside the United States during World War II. The operation was staged in June 1942 and was to be directed against strategic American economic targets. The operation was named for Francis Daniel Pastorius, the founder of the first organized settlement of Germans in North America. The plan involved eight German saboteurs who had previously spent time in the United States. The plan quickly failed after two of the agents, George John Dasch and Ernest Peter Burger, defected to the Federal Bureau of Investigation shortly after being deployed, betraying the other six. A military tribunal – whose constitutionality was challenged to the Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin – sentenced all eight to death later that year. President Franklin D. Roosevelt commuted the sentences of Dasch and Burger, while the other six were executed. In 1948, Dasch and Burger were granted executive clemency by President Harry S. Truman, conditional on their permanent deportation to the American occupation zone in Germany. Sixteen other people were charged with aiding those in charge of the operation.