George John Dasch

George John Dasch (7 February 1903 – 1 November 1991) was a German agent who landed on American soil during World War II.

He helped to destroy Nazi Germany's espionage program in the United States by defecting to the American cause, but was tried and convicted of espionage.

George John Dasch was born as Georg Johann Dasch in Speyer in the German Empire.

He entered a Catholic seminary at the age of 13 to study for the priesthood, but was expelled the following year for unknown reasons.

Lying about his age, he enlisted in the Imperial German Army and served in Belgium during the final months of World War I.

In 1923, he entered the United States illegally through the Port of Philadelphia as a stowaway, then stayed in New York City.

For four years, he drifted among several restaurants, and spent one season at a hotel in Miami Beach.

In 1927, he enlisted as a private in the U.S. Army Air Corps.

In 1930, he married Rose Marie Guille, an American citizen.

Dasch re-enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1936 and was stationed at Fort Ontario in Oswego, New York.

He served with the 1st Infantry Division, 28th Infantry Regiment, L Company, and married Charlotte Holliday in the parsonage of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Oswego in March 1936.

He used the alias George Henry Aldasch to hide his bigamy.

He and Charlotte lived at the home of her father, Jay Holliday, in Oswego while he served at Fort Ontario.

They had a son, Howard Elliot Aldasch (October 29, 1937 – October 21, 2013).

Some time in 1938, Dasch left the Army, abandoned his "wife" and their son, and returned to Germany.

Charlotte Aldasch learned his real identity only in 1942, when he turned himself in to the FBI.

She then sent their son to live anonymously with distant relatives in Madison, New York.

On 26 May 1942, Dasch and his team (Ernest Peter Burger, Heinrich Harm Heinck, and Richard Quirin) left by submarine from Lorient, France.

They landed on Long Island, New York, shortly after midnight on 12 June.

They were wearing German Navy uniforms to avoid being shot as spies if they were captured during the landing.

Once they were ashore, they changed into civilian clothes, and buried their uniforms and other equipment.

Early that morning, John C. Cullen, a Coast Guardsman from the station in Amagansett, New York, spotted Dasch and the three others posing as fishermen on a raft off the coast of Long Island.

He saw they were armed and also noticed a submerged submarine.

The men gave him $260 (some sources say $300) to keep quiet.

Increasingly alarmed, he took the bribe but alerted his superiors.

By the time an armed patrol could reach the site, the four Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road train from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked in to a hotel.

A search of the beach revealed concealed explosives, timers, blasting caps, incendiary devices, cigarettes, and the naval uniforms.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the FBI were immediately alerted, and the FBI conducted a massive manhunt.

All information was kept secret to avoid public panic and to prevent the spies from knowing that they had been discovered.

However, the FBI did not know exactly where the Germans were going.

Dasch was unhappy with the Nazi regime.

He eventually talked to one of his compatriots, a naturalized American citizen named Ernst Peter Burger, about defecting to the United States.

Dasch's last communication with Charlotte and Howard was via a lawyer and military officer in 1955.

At that time Dasch was trying to gain entry back into the United States, but it was denied by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.

Dasch and the others were trained for espionage activities in a school run by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German High Command, on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin.

They received three weeks of intensive sabotage training, and were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiary material and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.

Considerable time was spent developing the false background histories they were to use in the United States.

They were encouraged to converse in English, and to read American newspapers and magazines.

He was assigned to the 5th Composite Group in Honolulu, and served with the 72nd Bombardment Squadron, but after a year he bought himself out and received an honorable discharge.

He then worked as a waiter in San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and back in New York City.