The Rest of the Story of the Nazi Saboteurs

After a summer publicizing “Track 61,” my novel inspired by the Nazi saboteur landing in Amagansett 80 years ago, I have learned that while many people are aware that Nazis came ashore here in the summer of 1942, few know what happened next. Not too many people know that eight Nazis evaded the FBI for over a week and were only captured after one turned himself in. Fewer still know that six men died in the electric chair.

As it turns out, there are elements of the story that even I didn’t know, and family secrets that only recently came to light.

The niece of U.S. Coastguardsman, John Cullen, who encountered four saboteurs on the Amagansett beach the night of their landing, recently wrote me. When the story broke in August 1942, Cullen, described as a “muscular, bronzed boy of 21” was credited with “the capture of four” men. In actuality, Cullen, who was alone when he stumbled across the men, ran back to the Coast Guard station for reinforcements, only to return and find the saboteurs gone. Regardless, John Cullen became a national hero. His niece, Bernadette Tierney, fondly described how her mother, John’s sister, repeated the story of the foggy June night, the mysterious German-speaking strangers, their threats and $300 bribe, every anniversary of the landing. And she recalls how one of her greatest entertainments growing up was reading and “giggling over” all the fan mail that arrived at her grandparents’ house.

“My sister and I loved seeing all the pretty colored stationary: pink, lilac, yellow, from females across the USA describing themselves as John’s potential fiancée,” she said.

A more controversial love interest was the saboteur Herbie Haupt. By all accounts Haupt could not look at a pretty girl without chasing after her. Peter Burger, a fellow saboteur, described the darkly handsome, six-foot-tall Herbie as the “life of the party” and “a typical playboy type.” At 22-years-old, Herbie was the youngest man selected for the sabotage mission and the most Americanized. He had lived in Chicago from age 5 and was an American citizen. So how did a handsome, young American meet his end in the electric chair?

Leslie Saure´, the daughter of Herbie Haupt’s ex-girlfriend Gerda Stuckmann, shared a fantastic story of a baby given up for adoption and an engagement ring sent from the death chamber. Stuckmann has been called the “chief romantic interest” of the story. Newspapers at the time devoted columns of print to the statuesque, 23-year-old brunette whom they branded “the woman in white” because she arrived at the military tribunal dressed in a white suit and matching white turban. Yet it turns out that Gerda’s own daughter only recently learned the full extent of her mother’s involvement.

Around 1962, Saure´ discovered that her mother was not an American citizen “accidently” when she opened the mail and found paperwork concerning Stuckmann’s citizenship status. When questioned, Gerda referred to an ex named Herbie Haupt, the FBI, and an incident from her past she feared would come back to haunt her.

“I was fascinated,” said Saure´, “but for her to live through what she lived through, that was not fascinating to her. It was probably all bad memories. I can almost hear myself saying ‘that’s ridiculous that you think something in the past would affect your application for citizenship now. LOL. I obviously had no idea!”

Saure´ said that over the years, her mother alluded to the fact that Herbie was “the love of her life,” but never revealed much more.

“One time my grandmother, my dad’s mother, threw some comment out in a moment of anger and it always stuck in the back of my mind and I wondered if there was something that I didn’t know and I thought, I’ll ask her about it, and I never did. I never felt there was a right time to do that.”

It was not until after her mother’s death in 1999 and the release of the 3,000 page military trial transcript on the internet in 2003 that Saure´ learned more.

A Yahoo alert led her to the publication of Michael Dobbs’s book “Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America. Saure´ said she bought the book at Barnes & Noble, went out to the parking lot, and sat in the car searching for her mother’s name.

“I felt a little bit guilty,” she said. “I was reading something that had been kept secret. I think I may have felt like I was snooping through her personal things, a drawer or her purse.”

Dobbs’s book detailed the outsized role Gerda Stuckmann played in Herbie’s defense. At the military trail, Haupt claimed he had left Chicago because he “had become involved in some trouble with a girl.” Gerda was pregnant and Herbie had “skipped out” to avoid marrying her.

“It was mindboggling,” Saure´ said. “My mother never mentioned that to me ever.”

If not for its tragic end, Herbie’s plight might be called a comedy of errors. After learning of Gerda’s pregnancy, he fled to Mexico, but could not find work. After running out of money, he was approached by a German at a café (most likely a Nazi recruiter) who suggested that since he was a German boy, who needed help, he go to the German Consulate.

The Consulate provided Haupt with a passport and passage on a freighter to Japan, where he said Herbie could find work at a German monastery. On arrival, Herbie quickly discovered that the so-called monastery was actually a labor camp run by German monks with no sanitation and backbreaking work conditions.

As Haupt later testified, he was left stranded. His only option was to sign on to a German boat and return to Germany as a seaman. He was put to work as a lookout in the crow’s nest of a German blockade breaker. On the day he arrived in Bordeaux — then under German control — Germany declared war on the United States.

Perhaps George Dash, the leader of the Amagansett saboteur group, summed it up best when he wrote that Herbie’s “return to Germany had been something of a boyish lark and he ended up trapped.”

Three months after his arrival in Germany, Haupt was contacted by Walter Kappe, an officer in the Abwehr, the Nazi intelligence service.

At the military trial, Haupt testified that Kappe “asked me if I knew that my mother’s brother was in a concentration camp and my father’s brother had been, and I answered in the affirmative. He asked me if I hadn’t noticed that I couldn’t get a job and whether or not the Gestapo and police had been bothering me, which they had. He pointed out that the only thing left for me to do was to return to the United States and I agreed with him.”

Haupt said he understood that the purpose of the proposed trip “would be in connection with assisting the German cause, possibly by acting as a courier for espionage messages or some other work.”

To Herbie, the saboteur mission may have seemed like his ticket home.

“I just think he didn’t know any better,” Sauré said. “He didn’t think about the consequences. I guess he was quite the ladies’ man and he was just out for a good time. I don’t believe he was guilty at all. He just wanted to get back.”

After three months of training, Herbie and seven other saboteurs were sent to France, where they boarded two separate U-boats destined for the United States. One group landed off the coast of Amagansett, New York. Herbie and three others disembarked in Ponte Verde, Florida. There, they buried boxes of explosives on the beach and parted ways.

The plan was to lay low until July 6 when they would contact the Amagansett group, retrieve the explosives, and carry out a mission to destroy railroads and munitions factories. Whether any of the men intended to go through with the plan remains the subject of debate. What is known is that two members of the Amagansett group, George Dasch and Peter Burger, contacted the FBI.

After a yearlong absence, Herbie, toting a canvas bag full of $18,000 in cash given to him by the Third Reich, returned to Chicago and reunited with his parents, and Gerda Stuckmann.

That same week Herbie proposed to Gerda and gave her $10 for the blood test required for a marriage license.

As Gerda testified at the trial, “I did not accept the marriage proposal. I agreed to have a blood test taken, and I wanted to bide for time. I wanted to talk to him a little more about where he had been.”

She later told reporters, “I had a hunch there was something wrong. After this, I’ll follow my hunches.”

Saure´ echoed her mother’s sentiments. “She had no idea that he had been in Germany, but my mother always felt she was very, very intuitive to the point of being psychic and she knew that Herbie was up to no good.”

The FBI followed Haupt for eight days in the hope that he would lead them to other saboteurs. When that proved fruitless, they made their move. On June 27, agents pulled Herbie over while he was driving a brand new Pontiac coupe in the Chicago loop. He was arrested and accused of sabotage, espionage and conspiracy to commit those acts.

Gerda was also picked up. Saure´ said the FBI approached her mother at a bus stop outside the Palmer House in Chicago where she worked as a beautician. They took her home and told her to pack an overnight bag. They also “went through her stuff, and they grabbed a picture of her” that would later be printed in newspapers.

“It was then,” Saure´ said that her mother went from “being a suspect to being a victim.”

The FBI file, now in Saure´’s possession, says that Gerda was receiving death threats and threatening messages. News also leaked that Gerda had been pregnant with Herbie’s child and had suffered a miscarriage. Saure´ believes the press reported that Gerda had had a miscarriage because they were repeating what she had told them.

In fact, Saure´ later learned, Gerda had given birth to a baby boy, who was given up for adoption. The baby was delivered by the same doctor who would later deliver Saure´.

Years later, Saure´ was able to track adoption records and locate her half-brother in Illinois. He had died not long before, but she was able to meet his son who said his father never knew he was Herbie Haupt’s son.

The Nazi Saboteur Military Commission convened on July 8, 1942 in what The New York Times described as “grim secrecy.”

On July 22, Gerda was called to testify and her private pain became public. “Spy Damned by Sweetheart at Death Trial of 8” was the New York Daily News headline. “Haupt’s Ex-Fiancée Weeps at Spy Trial” read another. The article went on to detail how Gerda had “raised her hand, as if to wave, smiled wanly and then broke into tears.”

Today many informed accounts conclude that the 18-day trial was, at best, out of the ordinary, at worst, unconstitutional. There was legal precedent for the men to be tried by a military tribunal, but President Roosevelt overstepped by appointing members of the tribunal and serving as the final reviewing authority. One legal scholar described the proceedings as a travesty of justice spearheaded by J. Edgar Hoover for his own glory.

Again, the saboteur George Dasch may have summed it up best when he wrote “I don’t like to refer to the procedure that we had been put through as a trial. It was not a fair trial; it was not my idea of an honest American trial.”

On August 8, 1942, Herbie Haupt and five other men were put to death in the electric chair. To this day, their execution remains the largest mass execution of prisoners in the United States as well as the fastest. It took only 10 minutes to kill each man. Just this September a South Carolina judge outlawed death by electrocution, stating that there was “no evidence to support the idea that electrocution produces an instantaneous or painless death.”

Herbie’s final letter to his parents highlights his youth and naïveté.

Dear Mother and Father,

Whatever happens to me, always remember that I love you more than anything in the world. May God protect you, my loved ones, until we see each other again, wherever that may be.

Love, your son,

Herbie

The morning of his execution Herbie met with a chaplain and bequeathed a diamond ring to Gerda Stuckmann.

Leslie Saure´ has that ring today.

“I think my mom was not able to live the life that she would have truly wanted to live,” Saure´ said, her voice trembling with emotion. “I think she gave up a lot to try to not draw attention to herself. I think she decided that she was fortunate to find someone to marry and live a quiet life and be a wife and mom and not draw attention to herself, so it makes me sad. I think she sacrificed a lot.”