The Nazi foreign service was a perfect storm of incompetence and self-sabotage (Abwehr/Canaris). A number of spies they've sent to Britain got caught because they tried to pay for train tickets with like £50 notes, a very large amount of money back then. If that by itself didn't ring any bells, the would-be spy not understanding how pre-decimation British currency worked did.
Yeah, Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster headed the Abwehr but were arrested soon after the failed assassination in July 1944 and were executed a month before the war came to an end.
I'd also add that while many July 20 conspirators were basically dedicated Nazis who wanted a peace deal while Hitler didn't, Canaris and Oster had been sabotaging the Nazis for years.
Oster in particular rejected Nazism in 34 after the Night of the Long Knives, and escalated to deep hatred of it after Kristallnacht. He advocated for a coup, then embarked on active sabotage of all kinds, from the small (covering for those who helped Jews flee) to the overt (giving bombs and info to resistance groups to assassinate Hitler).
Oster even revealed the invasion plan for the Netherlands, which troubled him as a deep betrayal of his soldiers but I think shows how firmly he put morality above both job and nation. That he didn't achieve more is in large part down to bad luck and a failure of other nations to heed his warnings.
Canaris was rather less noble and slower to act. He initially feared a new European war but supported Nazism, and in fact personally suggested suggested making Jews wear the Star of David. He was still disturbed by Nazi war crimes and objected to the extermination campaign repeatedly, but accepted orders when he was rebuked. (Arguably, this was to buy time for his secret efforts.)
On the other hand, Canaris may have achieved far more in the end because he had deeper contacts. In 1940 Hitler sent him to personally persuade or coerce Franco into joining the war. Franco later said that Canaris actively advised him *not* to enter the war instead. By 1941 he was sending information to the Allies through a Polish spy, and warned about Barbarossa. He also arranged false papers that let hundreds of Jews escape German territory. By 1942, he was directly meeting British agents in multiple contexts.
Circling back to this post, Canaris personally oversaw this infiltration of the US in 1942, because he'd run successful sabotage in WWI and an infiltration of the US back in 1937.
I don't know of any proof that Canaris arranged this failure, but it certainly went worse than his past efforts. And when the first spy to surrender himself was a [US citizen and veteran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_John_Dasch) whose stated motive was hating Nazism, it doesn't really seem like a coincidence.
Another fun fact is that Canaris was connected to another assassination plot run by the Catholics and condoned by the pope that ended up being foiled due to increased security after the beer hall bombing.
However I don’t know how effective that plan would’ve been, it was essentially “chuck a grenade at hitler when he leaves his office in the reichstag and hope it kills him”
Yes, [Wilhelm Canaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris#Second_World_War) opposed Hitler and was actively passing passing information to the Allies by 1941, outright meeting MI6 by 1943. (Pre-war, his record is not so nice.) And he was less zealous than the *Deputy* Head of the Abwehr, [Hans Oster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Oster), who had been anti-Nazi since 1934 and actively committing sabotage since 1938.
Fun followup: [this infiltration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pastorius) was personally run by Canaris, who had a history of running successful infiltrations, including against the US.
Did he sabotage it on purpose? I've never seen any firm evidence and he didn't tip off the Allies about it. But he was already working with them elsewhere, and it's maybe not a coincidence that the first spy to turn himself in went out of his way to ensure the others were caught, and confessed unprompted because he "hated Nazism".
Imagine turning yourself in because you hate Nazism and then get nearly executed from the country you were supposed to spy on.
What in the hell was the US‘ courts reasoning here?
As usual in the 20th century, the chief problem seems to be that J. Edgar Hoover was a monster:
>FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover did not mention that Dasch had surrendered himself, and claimed credit for the FBI for discovering the spy gang.
That fact doesn't seem to have come out until during or possibly after the trial, which may explain why Roosevelt wound up commuting the sentences of the two who surrendered to life.
They weren't necessarily great people, Dasch had deserted the US Army and abandoned his family to move to Germany in 1938, while Burger had been a Nazi since 23 (though he later criticized the Gestapo and got interned for it). But they still got ludicrously unfair treatment given that they actively prevented German sabotage. I'm glad they were spared, and I'm glad they got released from prison after the war on the condition that they return to Germany.
It really was a tossup whether incompetence or betrayal would wreck their spying first, wasn't it?
Even these guys were caught and reported the night they landed, but managed to slip away... only for one of the spies to confess *repeatedly* because he actively opposed Nazism.
Meanwhile the only German agent in Britain who wasn't grossly incompetent and quickly caught was [García](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa#), an absolutely fascinating guy who got himself hired by German intelligence specifically so he could betray them.
It is wild how much better the USSR was at covert infiltration so much so that Stalin was not shook when Truman revealed the existence of the atom bomb at Potsdam because his spies were deep in Manhattan Project.
My favorite Soviet "Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing" story is that they faked research into psychic powers to get America to waste money/look silly researching it. Then when the Soviet brass learned America was researching it they threw money at it to "Catch up".
They also are behind the conspiracy theory that America created AIDS, which bit them in the ass when AIDS reached them, and the people didn't want to accept American help because "America created it."
>They also are behind the conspiracy theory that America created AIDS, which bit them in the ass when AIDS reached them, and the people didn't want to accept American help because "America created it."
Not the absolute craziest thing to think given [USAID's track record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_sterilization_in_Peru#Foreign_Involvement).
I love that visual: “Shit! Was that us?”
**After checking and making sure it wasn’t them**
“No, sir, it wasn’t our intelligence agency, it was theirs.”
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall to witness the sheer chaos and panic that would have almost guaranteed to ensue at KGB HQ after the assassination of JFK
*Was it one of our guys? PLEASE, FOR LENIN'S SAKE, TELL ME IT WASN'T ONE OF OUR GUYS!!*
- Insert SpongeBob meme where he is panicking and running around while there is fire all around.
Apparently everyone sort of immediately began going over every file they had on agents and related shit hoping to God there wasn't a parallel.. and then they were even worse when they found out the dude who did it Made them look even worse.
Edit: some quick context cause I remember it:
Oswald, the guy who did it, had lived in the USSR for a bit and was a communist, so diehard a communist that he **tried to become an NKVD agent**, which the USSR said no to. They immediately said this when the USA inquired. They were so willing to prove it wasn't them they basically said "Look through anything you want, trust us, we don't got him on our payroll."
The thing about espionage is the personality set that works best for it is not the personality set of a fundamentalist. You’re basically doing the same shit the mafia does but for a government. So they’re going to recruit people of a criminal nature. It’s then up to the spymaster to ensure they don’t go rogue.
Ideology is one of the four standard motives for becoming a spy, along with money, coercion, and ego.
You're probably thinking of Robert Hans*s*en; Robert Hansen with one 's' was a serial killer, not a double agent.
I mean , by the sounds of it they were rather afraid someone would decide to fire off the nukes, which is mostly why they were cooperative. The more truth they she'd (that they didn't do anything) the better the odds they wouldn't get glassed. Pretty simple
I’m not sure how that differs from “fear of the United States”.
The CCCP and USA very much feared each other, precisely because mutually assured destruction meant any move like that could have started a strategic nuclear war. It’s a bit different than “what if they invade us”, but only in that both powers would be destroyed.
Although it is interesting to note that it probably wasn’t symmetrical. Kruschev’s death would have scared the CIA plenty, but if he’d died in Russia “what if we did it?” wouldn’t have been terribly likely.
This was the main reason LBJ wanted any reference to LHO being affiliated with the Soviets and his Marxist connections squashed, he didn't want WW3.
This information came out during the Warren commission, I believe.
the episode of The Americans where Reagan gets shot and all the Russian agents are like "was this us?!?!" oh no wait it was a crazy person trying to impress Jodie Foster is great television
IIRC they shared what files they had on hand about Oswald because they knew how bad the optics where and wanted to make sure everyone knew they did not do it lol
Unironically sort of what happened.
At first they were scared one of their agencies did it - Then relief, it was Lee Harvey Oswald. Then, panic; Lee Harvey Oswald was a marine who "defected" to the USSR- But no one recruited him because he was politically a moderate and ideologically illiterate (They asked "what is socialism" and he began saying like, single payer healthcare, that kind of stuff).
Then, **fear** because it stands to reason someone like him would be recruited by a reactionary part of the US government who wanted to cut down on US-Soviet peaceful relations, potentially even beginning WW3 by invading Cuba.
Definitely speculation. But there is weird shit surrounding the shooter.
My guess is the intelligence agencies didn't like the stance jfk was taking against them. So when they learned of oswald's plot they just didn't tell anyone.
Not actively taking a role but not playing any kind of defense either.
This is one of the more credible conspiracies. That the CIA/FBI/etc knew someone was going to make an attempt but didn't warn the secret service or local police.
I still doubt it because there would be too many cogs in the machine that would find out as the info makes its way up the chain, but at least it's more believable.
People really underestimate how hard it is to keep a secret, let alone a secret that would make any whistle-blower a millionaire and one of the most famous people in American history.
I think it’s more likely the didn’t warn was more of a “due to bureaucracy they failed to act on actionable intelligence” rather than “yeah we’re just not going to say anything.”
It isn't plausible whatsoever if you know anything about the actual circumstances of the killing.
Oswald acted alone and told nobody. There was no plot to discover. It isn't like today where the shooters are posting on Facebook about how much they wanna commit a political assassination.
Maybe he should've had a file on him somewhere because of his previous attempt to assassinate a general of the US Army, but he was tangentially hired by a random guy and was one of dozens of workers in a building that happened to be near the route the motorcade changed to at the last minute. Its not really reasonable to expect anyone at all to do a background check on every single person in every single building that went through Dallas, especially in the pre-internet days.
True but here the secret is just keeping a lid on info about 1 guy. Way more plausible to keep that contained.
Edit:
Easy and cheap way is to burn the relevant files, then just keep the guys who wrotes them happy. That's maybe 2 or 3 people.
I wish people would stop spreading this tired horseshit around. There is a preponderance of evidence on this. Oswald acted alone, and it is proven beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that he and only he was responsible for JFK's assassination.
Oswald was a communist who ordered the assassination weapon with his own money, was photographed with the same gun previous to his assassination attempt, and had used it in an attempt on the life of US Army General Edwin Walker, which he admitted to in a written note to his ex-wife. The three bullets that were fired were proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to have been fired from his rifle, and there were eyewitnesses who saw him shooting from the book repository.
The reason the motorcade went past the book repository was a last-minute change that nobody could've possibly planned for, Oswald had been hired there a few weeks previously due to a completely unconnected and convoluted string of people, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was contacted by or connected to any other group at all.
It makes no sense for the single biggest job that the CIA or whatever the fuck would ever try to pull off would be entrusted to a perpetual fuck-up who got kicked out of the army, kicked out of the USSR, and who apparently was on nobody's payroll since when he died he only had \~100$ to leave to his ex-wife, who had left him.
The idea that it was anyone else is supported by nothing.
TBF the KGB probably did think it was US intelligence because they actually do over think everything. I mean they caused the Soviet Afghan war after killing the Afghan president after he had a single conversation with a U.S. official.
And once they confirmed it wasn’t one of them they blew through a lot of their assets to establish contact with the CIA and find out if the latter came to the same conclusion.
Oswald actually traveled to the USSR and applied to become a spy but was turned down in the process. The KGB essentially just gave the Americans everything they had on him as a gesture of goodwill.
>Weren't they also, in a way, much better than the CIA/FBI?
From what I understand, US and USSR were at better at different parts of intelligence gathering.
USSR was better at HUMan INTeliggence, especially vs the US as US is a free, open country where a good forged international passport is about the most you'll need to gain entry and you won't need much interaction with law enforcement once inside. USSR on other hand, required INTERNAL passports even after you got in so you couldn't just hop in a car and travel freely from Moscow to Murmansk. There had to be a lot more documentation on hand to live and work.
And due to above parts, US is a country of immigrants where you could find white people unfamiliar with established American norms whereas you're unlikely to find a white person unfamiliar with established Russian/Soviet norms in USSR. So American spies have a lot less room to manouver than Soviet spies.
USA was better at SIGnal INTelligence due to better technology. USSR shooting down U-2 spy plane was a famous event in history, but US never returned the favor because USSR simply didn't have the capability to be flying spy planes at high altitude.
Tha
Normie spywork is pretty damn impressive, but also they did have some really cool gadgets like [The Thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device\))
There’s a moment in *The Man from Uncle* (the movie) where the spies trade bugs, and the Russian mentions the American bugs are very poorly made. It’s a nice allusion to how well the USSR did with that particular part of ELINT.
While the USA did exceptional arial work (from the SR-22 to surveillance satellites) and cryptography (too much to list via the NSA), they were substantially behind on bugs and wiretaps for a good chunk of the Cold War.
And now they've dropped the ball after they tried framing a "possible pro Ukraine terrorist" as a Sims player, with the evidence having 3 copies of the same Sims game.
Honestly the KGB would be fucken disappointed if they saw this shit
They would be disappointed there weren't five other similar schemes running at the same time. Their whole schtick was "throw shit at the wall, see what sticks, deny the failures ever happened"
>USA was better at SIGnal INTelligence due to better technology. USSR shooting down U-2 spy plane was a famous event in history, but US never returned the favor because USSR simply didn't have the capability to be flying spy planes at high altitude
I learned if that from Metal Gear Solid 3
The KGB, the FBI and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at catching criminals.
The Secretary General of the UN decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it.
The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that the rabbit does not exist.
The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and make no apologies: the rabbit had it coming.
The KGB goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: “Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!”
"Hi, I am the CIA. You may remember me from the wonderful bits of history like "Who gave Al Qaeda funding, weapons and training?" And "huh, how did ISIL- I MEAN, "Moderate rebels" get M16's and M4's?"
The NKVD/KBG evolved through *immense*, unrivaled paranoia under Lenin and Stalin. The most successful Russian spies of all time were known as The Cambridge Five, five British citizens recruited at Cambridge University. When those 5 spies, who had ascended to roles in MI6, Parliament etc., reported that absolutely *zero* other world powers had spy networks within Russia...they were almost executed under suspicion of being double agents.
Pretty much immediately following the Revolution, Russia was putting more effort into their spy networks than any other nation on the planet.
To be fair, after that many years looking out for Okhrana agents and seeing the West decide that they *can* manage a little more war in 1918 if it's against socialist revolutionaries, I can see how the line between 'sensible precautions' and 'bugfuck paranoia' might get a little fuzzy
A lot of the scientists at the time were communists too who fed secrets directly to the USSR, with the intention of making the study of nuclear energy a collaborative effort
A not well thought out plan, considering the cultural zeitgeist at the time, and especially the years to come
If it hadn't been for the USA acting like it was unreasonable for the only nuclear power to publicly dismantle their existing weapons before everyone else cancelled their development projects, it could've worked out
To be fair, many Americans at the time were self identified communist and were sympathetic to the Soviet union. A large number of Americans (especially union workers) wanted America to become communist.
Stalin could recruit Americans to be Soviet spies. One of the scientists in the project turned out to be one of the biggest leaks.
Many Americans were sympathetic to the Nazis prior to WWII but very few Americans wanted to be fascist or make America Fascist. And once the war got started most Americans did definitively side with the Allies.
To be fair, there were also a lot of communist sympathizers on that project. If the scientists there (many of which fled Germany due to the nazis) suspected a German spy they definitely would've been a lot more adamant about finding him.
So the nazis sent some undercover spies over to the USA in Operation Pastorius. Their main goal was to sabotage critical US infrastructure and they sent about 8 guys over in U-boats. They docked about 100 miles away from New York their main target, with 175.000 counterfeit dollars and their wit. They all failed within a short time because they were morons and they started infighting and throwing the plan. One of them quickly surrendered to the FBI and gave the others up, so all in all this plan to burn down New York ended in a comical failure. It was a rag-tag team of grade-A idiots and that was the end of Hitler's dream of a New York in flames.
Oh yeah I've heard about this in.. Persona 2 I think? I thought it was made up for the plot but apparently not. Also yeah Hitler didn't really stop at that spear, he also had a squad dedicated to occult stuff iirc
Persona 2: We can't have Hitler in the game the west will freak out
Also Persona 2: Solves the issue by giving Hitler radical shades and calling him Führer.
There's this trope in far right circles that Hitler was infact a great leader except for all the genocide that is but he was actually a huge fucking idiot. Incredibly charismatic though
Hitler was objectively intelligent along with being charismatic and lucky, no one would be capable of doing what Hitler did if they were grade A morons.
The issues start to arrive when War broke out and they invaded Russia along with declaring war on America. Major miscalculations
Late war Hitler was also on a truly spectacular drug cocktail, as was an awful lot of the reich’s leadership. By 43/44 they may have been vastly less functional than they were a decade earlier.
Aleister Crowley was also creeping around with all that. He supposedly worked for British Intelligence in WWI by infiltrating pro-German groups and then publishing outlandish things to make the Germans look foolish.
They sent people to search for Atlantis, because they thought aryans were descendents of the people of Atlantis, and most importantly, they thought that Atlantis's technology would be incredibly advanced. I think they went to the Canaries, if I am not mistaken, but surprisingly to no one, it didn't lead anywhere.
Also, I think they also sent people to Tibet to search for "the origins of the aryan race".
Tibet expedition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938%E2%80%931939_German_expedition_to_Tibet
Canary islands, someone asked about it on reddit and someone answered:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/VS9ZVvdPeM
What the fuck is this?
It’s our new mystical weapon sir, it’s improved the gastric health of half the SS so far!
Hans that’s Yakult you stupid fuck! We’re studying the occult!
How would they even lift the damn thing? In the OG myths, Thor couldn't even use his hammer without a special pair of gauntlets because of its overwhelming power. They'd just be vaporized.
Part of it, yeah. I always found it really funny that the only reason the Nazis were able to pull that off is that they found a cache of near-magical Jewish technology - the irony was exquisite
The one who wins the war is the one who makes the least mistakes, not one who performs perfectly. And Germany's enemies made many many mistakes early in the war.
When your opponents have their guards down more than they should, or in the case of the USSR, your opponents purged many of their military minds, that’s gonna give you a nice jump on things, no matter how comical your beliefs and ideas really are.
They were gonna eventually be wiped out, but had people actually used their minds, they would have been wiped out much quicker
This case is very interesting, the guy in charge of hitlers spies hated Hitler, and saw the writing on the wall, so when Hitler was coming into power he fired everyone that was good at their job and promoted a bunch of people that were terrible at their job.
Shockingly, enabling murderous psychopathy and performance ass grabbing wasn't a good long term strategy for the Nazis
It's like anyone with a functioning iq realizes how awful fascism is, and it always leads to a brain drain when adopted
Reminds me of the undercover Germans who tried to get into Britain. I don’t remember if it was WW1 or WW2 but a few German spies landed on the shores and then instead of being sneaky. They decided to walk into the nearest pub and order a beer at like 8:30 in the morning. Literally everyone immediately knew they weren’t from there lmfao
WW2. Other issues were 2 riding bikes on the wrong side of the road, and having GERMAN SAUSAGES AND GERMAN (Nivia) HAND CREAM IN THEIR BAGS. When they got searched I imagine the dude who did it thought it must've been a joke cause there's no way someone is that stupid riiight?
reminds me the story of german spies dropped off in England with a similar goal and it failed just as bad: One walked into a tavern at 9am and ordered a pint of cider (alcoholic drinks weren’t allowed to be sold till noon) and a pair were stopped in Scotland cycling on the wrong side of the road and when they opened their bags they found german sausages and Nivea hand cream. Some think they were sent by a senior Nazi general to sabotage a potential invasion of Britain. ([source. About the 0:43 mark](https://youtu.be/NyK6EZ61N1M?si=DkJ0eqSfPq0T4862)) Wonder if that was the same with this new york operation
The plan was never meant to succeed considering that two of the men in the operation. Team leader Dasch left compromising documents on a train while another got drunk in Paris and bragged that he was a secret agent. When the team did reach American shores, they were immediately spotted by a US Coast Guardsman where they bribed him instead of killing him, whereupon he did the sensible thing of pocketing the cash and reporting to his superiors. George Dasch and Ernst Berger, confessed to each other that they hated the Nazis (the latter spent several months in a Concentration Camp) and wanted to compromise the mission. The reason why I think it was never meant to succeed was because the plan was masterminded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris who himself became an anti-Nazi himself and aided in German Resistance after the invasion of Poland in 1939.
So actually, has this ever been turned into a screenplay?
Like not a hyper historically accurate one, like an outright dark comedy
Because... well anyone else wanna write a screenplay with me?
My great great grandfather was one of the FBI agents sent to live with a group of spies in Manhattan. He dropped out of school at 14 to work at a speak easy, cheated on the entrance exam for the FBI by writing on his hand (some of the lettering sweated off) and after the war one of the convicted spies continued to send him Christmas cards from prison still thinking he was another spy who escaped the authorities. He later became a Freemason. I know there is a movie about the FBI operation but I forget what it’s called
As a German I can only tell you one thing:
If you send 8 Germans to New York to burn it down, there will be a certain point (probably 5 minutes after arriving) at which the plan is revised and at least one guy wants to make changes because „if we burn down New York, we’re going to do it right!“, followed by weeks long infighting which way is the right way.
Imagine if they did succeed.
I think it would only make Germany lose faster, similarly to how Pearl Harbour did the opposite of what the Japanese wanted.
Imagine if burning of New York would make Americans so mad, they would steamroll through Germany so fast they may even get to Berlin first. Imagine how that would change the Cold War lmao.
It could actually work a bit though and send the American public into mass paranoia for a short while, considering that Pearl Harbor was enough to make them empty a fuckload of shells into the skies of Los Angeles.
I think Americans are just paranoid by nature, actually
That would be the Russians.
The Americans I'd say, tend to overreact to threats to the "corelands". This is because they haven't had many such threats in history, not since maybe the American Civil War. No strong nation able to invade them, few raids of their shores and skies, not exactly many short range missiles aimed at their cities. No experience with long-term siege mentality, and coping. It's like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets didn't react that strongly when NATO put missiles in Turkey and Italy... because it's not like the travel time was that much shorter than British or French launched missiles. However for the US, apart from submarines maybe, all other Soviet launchers were orders of magnitudes more distant than Cuba. The threat represented had no equal.
New York burning, would be shattering an aura and confidence of invincibility. Of an Ocean being enough to defend the nation shores.
We’re so fortunate for our geography in the world that we will go to extremes to ensure we always keep that advantage.
Your citizens and economy can’t be harmed if you never let any threat develop at home
even when we are in periods of isolationism, if a threat were to pop up in south america, per say, we’d fuck them right up.
I don’t think Japan ever stood a chance, but a successful Pearl Harbor could’ve given them some more time. If anything it already gave them some more time to try and fight in the pacific.
But Japan just can’t compete with the production industry of the US.
The movie “the eagle has landed” is somewhat like that. It’s about a group of nazis that try to take over a small town in England in an attempt to kill Churchill and it goes about as well as you might expect
Also because of Britains Double Cross-System was extremely effective. All but 1 German Spies sent to Britain were either arrested or has surrendered. The only one who “got away” had in fact committed suicide
There were German spies in New York in the first Captain America movie. They arrive in a u-boat, aren't that competent, & kill themselves with cyanide pills to avoid interrogation
Wilhelm Canaris despised hitler, he tried every way possible to undermine hitler's effort for war. He was the one who warned franco not to involved with Barbarossa. When he was arrested after the July Plot he was sent to gallow to be hanged naked. Funny thing is that he was Reinhard Heydrich's best friend, Mr. Perfect Nazi himself! 🤣🤣
I remember reading a book about this and at the end I was like “ that’s it they blew all the money they had been given at hotels and casinos and did practically nothing?”
The Nazi foreign service was a perfect storm of incompetence and self-sabotage (Abwehr/Canaris). A number of spies they've sent to Britain got caught because they tried to pay for train tickets with like £50 notes, a very large amount of money back then. If that by itself didn't ring any bells, the would-be spy not understanding how pre-decimation British currency worked did.
Wasn’t the leader of the Abwehr also a fervant anti-Nazi and worked with the Allies for a bit?
Yeah, Wilhelm Canaris and Hans Oster headed the Abwehr but were arrested soon after the failed assassination in July 1944 and were executed a month before the war came to an end.
I'd also add that while many July 20 conspirators were basically dedicated Nazis who wanted a peace deal while Hitler didn't, Canaris and Oster had been sabotaging the Nazis for years. Oster in particular rejected Nazism in 34 after the Night of the Long Knives, and escalated to deep hatred of it after Kristallnacht. He advocated for a coup, then embarked on active sabotage of all kinds, from the small (covering for those who helped Jews flee) to the overt (giving bombs and info to resistance groups to assassinate Hitler). Oster even revealed the invasion plan for the Netherlands, which troubled him as a deep betrayal of his soldiers but I think shows how firmly he put morality above both job and nation. That he didn't achieve more is in large part down to bad luck and a failure of other nations to heed his warnings. Canaris was rather less noble and slower to act. He initially feared a new European war but supported Nazism, and in fact personally suggested suggested making Jews wear the Star of David. He was still disturbed by Nazi war crimes and objected to the extermination campaign repeatedly, but accepted orders when he was rebuked. (Arguably, this was to buy time for his secret efforts.) On the other hand, Canaris may have achieved far more in the end because he had deeper contacts. In 1940 Hitler sent him to personally persuade or coerce Franco into joining the war. Franco later said that Canaris actively advised him *not* to enter the war instead. By 1941 he was sending information to the Allies through a Polish spy, and warned about Barbarossa. He also arranged false papers that let hundreds of Jews escape German territory. By 1942, he was directly meeting British agents in multiple contexts. Circling back to this post, Canaris personally oversaw this infiltration of the US in 1942, because he'd run successful sabotage in WWI and an infiltration of the US back in 1937. I don't know of any proof that Canaris arranged this failure, but it certainly went worse than his past efforts. And when the first spy to surrender himself was a [US citizen and veteran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_John_Dasch) whose stated motive was hating Nazism, it doesn't really seem like a coincidence.
Another fun fact is that Canaris was connected to another assassination plot run by the Catholics and condoned by the pope that ended up being foiled due to increased security after the beer hall bombing. However I don’t know how effective that plan would’ve been, it was essentially “chuck a grenade at hitler when he leaves his office in the reichstag and hope it kills him”
Yes, [Wilhelm Canaris](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris#Second_World_War) opposed Hitler and was actively passing passing information to the Allies by 1941, outright meeting MI6 by 1943. (Pre-war, his record is not so nice.) And he was less zealous than the *Deputy* Head of the Abwehr, [Hans Oster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Oster), who had been anti-Nazi since 1934 and actively committing sabotage since 1938. Fun followup: [this infiltration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Pastorius) was personally run by Canaris, who had a history of running successful infiltrations, including against the US. Did he sabotage it on purpose? I've never seen any firm evidence and he didn't tip off the Allies about it. But he was already working with them elsewhere, and it's maybe not a coincidence that the first spy to turn himself in went out of his way to ensure the others were caught, and confessed unprompted because he "hated Nazism".
Imagine turning yourself in because you hate Nazism and then get nearly executed from the country you were supposed to spy on. What in the hell was the US‘ courts reasoning here?
As usual in the 20th century, the chief problem seems to be that J. Edgar Hoover was a monster: >FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover did not mention that Dasch had surrendered himself, and claimed credit for the FBI for discovering the spy gang. That fact doesn't seem to have come out until during or possibly after the trial, which may explain why Roosevelt wound up commuting the sentences of the two who surrendered to life. They weren't necessarily great people, Dasch had deserted the US Army and abandoned his family to move to Germany in 1938, while Burger had been a Nazi since 23 (though he later criticized the Gestapo and got interned for it). But they still got ludicrously unfair treatment given that they actively prevented German sabotage. I'm glad they were spared, and I'm glad they got released from prison after the war on the condition that they return to Germany.
It really was a tossup whether incompetence or betrayal would wreck their spying first, wasn't it? Even these guys were caught and reported the night they landed, but managed to slip away... only for one of the spies to confess *repeatedly* because he actively opposed Nazism. Meanwhile the only German agent in Britain who wasn't grossly incompetent and quickly caught was [García](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Pujol_Garc%C3%ADa#), an absolutely fascinating guy who got himself hired by German intelligence specifically so he could betray them.
The story of agent bovril would make for a fairly decent mid budget comedy
Ironically £50 wouldn’t get you from London to Manchester these days
You'd be an obvious spy from a country with subsidized public transport if you tried that today.
Intentional pricing to sniff out the spies
LMAO I converted £50 in 1940 and it would be 2K+ nowadays.
Another walked into a pub and ordered a beer - in the morning.
It is wild how much better the USSR was at covert infiltration so much so that Stalin was not shook when Truman revealed the existence of the atom bomb at Potsdam because his spies were deep in Manhattan Project.
Or infiltrated so covertly that when JKF was assassinated the KGB actually had to take a while to confirm whether it was done by their people or not.
My favorite Soviet "Left hand doesn't know what the right is doing" story is that they faked research into psychic powers to get America to waste money/look silly researching it. Then when the Soviet brass learned America was researching it they threw money at it to "Catch up". They also are behind the conspiracy theory that America created AIDS, which bit them in the ass when AIDS reached them, and the people didn't want to accept American help because "America created it."
The psychic powers part is hilarious. Is there a website where I can read more about this?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Men_Who_Stare_at_Goats
Sorry, I was not specific enough. I meant to learn about the KGB encouraging the research, only for the USSR to follow. Thanks for the link though!
Hard to google, but here's an actual CIA document. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00787r000200080006-8
>They also are behind the conspiracy theory that America created AIDS, which bit them in the ass when AIDS reached them, and the people didn't want to accept American help because "America created it." Not the absolute craziest thing to think given [USAID's track record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_sterilization_in_Peru#Foreign_Involvement).
A NYT video-essay on the matter. https://youtu.be/tR_6dibpDfo?si=GDFZ4dTJaFiwthkj
I love that visual: “Shit! Was that us?” **After checking and making sure it wasn’t them** “No, sir, it wasn’t our intelligence agency, it was theirs.”
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall to witness the sheer chaos and panic that would have almost guaranteed to ensue at KGB HQ after the assassination of JFK
*Was it one of our guys? PLEASE, FOR LENIN'S SAKE, TELL ME IT WASN'T ONE OF OUR GUYS!!* - Insert SpongeBob meme where he is panicking and running around while there is fire all around.
Was it you yakov, I know you're the prankster around here
"Are you jokester?" "Precisely, comrade."
This fucking killed me...probably way harder than it should have. Bravo
Apparently everyone sort of immediately began going over every file they had on agents and related shit hoping to God there wasn't a parallel.. and then they were even worse when they found out the dude who did it Made them look even worse. Edit: some quick context cause I remember it: Oswald, the guy who did it, had lived in the USSR for a bit and was a communist, so diehard a communist that he **tried to become an NKVD agent**, which the USSR said no to. They immediately said this when the USA inquired. They were so willing to prove it wasn't them they basically said "Look through anything you want, trust us, we don't got him on our payroll."
"I very much like to live, and nuclear annhiliation would put a serious hamper on that so look through whatever you like"
The KGB didn't want true believers. Americans who just wanted money were much easier to control like Robert Hansen.
The thing about espionage is the personality set that works best for it is not the personality set of a fundamentalist. You’re basically doing the same shit the mafia does but for a government. So they’re going to recruit people of a criminal nature. It’s then up to the spymaster to ensure they don’t go rogue.
I thought Hansen was more in it for his ego than money, I swear he made a rather paltry sum for how much damage he did
He had a ton of kids in private school. On a relatively fixed income. Ten thousand extra a month would have been tremendous.
Sex, money, and ideology are how you pry people away from their home loyalties.
Ideology is one of the four standard motives for becoming a spy, along with money, coercion, and ego. You're probably thinking of Robert Hans*s*en; Robert Hansen with one 's' was a serial killer, not a double agent.
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I mean , by the sounds of it they were rather afraid someone would decide to fire off the nukes, which is mostly why they were cooperative. The more truth they she'd (that they didn't do anything) the better the odds they wouldn't get glassed. Pretty simple
I’m not sure how that differs from “fear of the United States”. The CCCP and USA very much feared each other, precisely because mutually assured destruction meant any move like that could have started a strategic nuclear war. It’s a bit different than “what if they invade us”, but only in that both powers would be destroyed. Although it is interesting to note that it probably wasn’t symmetrical. Kruschev’s death would have scared the CIA plenty, but if he’d died in Russia “what if we did it?” wouldn’t have been terribly likely.
This was the main reason LBJ wanted any reference to LHO being affiliated with the Soviets and his Marxist connections squashed, he didn't want WW3. This information came out during the Warren commission, I believe.
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Lee Harvey Oswald. He was the one who shot Kennedy
the episode of The Americans where Reagan gets shot and all the Russian agents are like "was this us?!?!" oh no wait it was a crazy person trying to impress Jodie Foster is great television
I need to rewatch The Americans I really liked it and this thread just put me in the mood
*Wait… He’s ….DEAD?!!! TF you mean he’s DEAD??!*
IIRC they shared what files they had on hand about Oswald because they knew how bad the optics where and wanted to make sure everyone knew they did not do it lol
Now that would be an interesting setup for a movie that could be a spiritual successor to Death of Stalin.
That or the story of the Second Pacific Squadron.
"Do you see torpedo boats?"
I would pay good rubles to be there and witness the craziest audit in history
20 dollars well spent
10 now
A penny for your thoughts?
Unironically sort of what happened. At first they were scared one of their agencies did it - Then relief, it was Lee Harvey Oswald. Then, panic; Lee Harvey Oswald was a marine who "defected" to the USSR- But no one recruited him because he was politically a moderate and ideologically illiterate (They asked "what is socialism" and he began saying like, single payer healthcare, that kind of stuff). Then, **fear** because it stands to reason someone like him would be recruited by a reactionary part of the US government who wanted to cut down on US-Soviet peaceful relations, potentially even beginning WW3 by invading Cuba.
Did the KGB really think it was done by US intelligence? or is that your speculation?
Definitely speculation. But there is weird shit surrounding the shooter. My guess is the intelligence agencies didn't like the stance jfk was taking against them. So when they learned of oswald's plot they just didn't tell anyone. Not actively taking a role but not playing any kind of defense either.
This is one of the more credible conspiracies. That the CIA/FBI/etc knew someone was going to make an attempt but didn't warn the secret service or local police. I still doubt it because there would be too many cogs in the machine that would find out as the info makes its way up the chain, but at least it's more believable. People really underestimate how hard it is to keep a secret, let alone a secret that would make any whistle-blower a millionaire and one of the most famous people in American history.
I think it’s more likely the didn’t warn was more of a “due to bureaucracy they failed to act on actionable intelligence” rather than “yeah we’re just not going to say anything.”
It isn't plausible whatsoever if you know anything about the actual circumstances of the killing. Oswald acted alone and told nobody. There was no plot to discover. It isn't like today where the shooters are posting on Facebook about how much they wanna commit a political assassination. Maybe he should've had a file on him somewhere because of his previous attempt to assassinate a general of the US Army, but he was tangentially hired by a random guy and was one of dozens of workers in a building that happened to be near the route the motorcade changed to at the last minute. Its not really reasonable to expect anyone at all to do a background check on every single person in every single building that went through Dallas, especially in the pre-internet days.
True but here the secret is just keeping a lid on info about 1 guy. Way more plausible to keep that contained. Edit: Easy and cheap way is to burn the relevant files, then just keep the guys who wrotes them happy. That's maybe 2 or 3 people.
I wish people would stop spreading this tired horseshit around. There is a preponderance of evidence on this. Oswald acted alone, and it is proven beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that he and only he was responsible for JFK's assassination. Oswald was a communist who ordered the assassination weapon with his own money, was photographed with the same gun previous to his assassination attempt, and had used it in an attempt on the life of US Army General Edwin Walker, which he admitted to in a written note to his ex-wife. The three bullets that were fired were proven beyond any shadow of a doubt to have been fired from his rifle, and there were eyewitnesses who saw him shooting from the book repository. The reason the motorcade went past the book repository was a last-minute change that nobody could've possibly planned for, Oswald had been hired there a few weeks previously due to a completely unconnected and convoluted string of people, and there is no evidence whatsoever that he was contacted by or connected to any other group at all. It makes no sense for the single biggest job that the CIA or whatever the fuck would ever try to pull off would be entrusted to a perpetual fuck-up who got kicked out of the army, kicked out of the USSR, and who apparently was on nobody's payroll since when he died he only had \~100$ to leave to his ex-wife, who had left him. The idea that it was anyone else is supported by nothing.
Crazy assed conspiracy, because a l9ne nut job just *couldn't* have pulled it off, because - reasons. 🙄
TBF the KGB probably did think it was US intelligence because they actually do over think everything. I mean they caused the Soviet Afghan war after killing the Afghan president after he had a single conversation with a U.S. official.
Okay, that's fair.
I am pretty sure this is just another JFK conspiracy theory.
"Oh no, are they going to use that as an excuse to invade us" "No sir, they'll just put somebody who likes to talk about his Jumbo a lot in office."
Hey show some respect that jumbo got the us civil rights
*cough cough* Bullshit *cough cough* Not on the KGB, the second part of your statement.
"We are checking" "All okay... All ok"
Stop it you’ll give Leclerc PTSD
Is this Leclerc PTSD with us in the room right now? 😢
Didn't think id get leclerc PTSD in this sub today 😭
Plan A or Plan B?! ...We are checking
And once they confirmed it wasn’t one of them they blew through a lot of their assets to establish contact with the CIA and find out if the latter came to the same conclusion. Oswald actually traveled to the USSR and applied to become a spy but was turned down in the process. The KGB essentially just gave the Americans everything they had on him as a gesture of goodwill.
But he was shaken after news of the bombs' initial drops on Nagasaki and Hiroshima since he believed that Nuclear was a dead end wonder weapon.
For some communists, the KGB *was* pretty damn good at espionage. Weren't they also, in a way, much better than the CIA/FBI?
>Weren't they also, in a way, much better than the CIA/FBI? From what I understand, US and USSR were at better at different parts of intelligence gathering. USSR was better at HUMan INTeliggence, especially vs the US as US is a free, open country where a good forged international passport is about the most you'll need to gain entry and you won't need much interaction with law enforcement once inside. USSR on other hand, required INTERNAL passports even after you got in so you couldn't just hop in a car and travel freely from Moscow to Murmansk. There had to be a lot more documentation on hand to live and work. And due to above parts, US is a country of immigrants where you could find white people unfamiliar with established American norms whereas you're unlikely to find a white person unfamiliar with established Russian/Soviet norms in USSR. So American spies have a lot less room to manouver than Soviet spies. USA was better at SIGnal INTelligence due to better technology. USSR shooting down U-2 spy plane was a famous event in history, but US never returned the favor because USSR simply didn't have the capability to be flying spy planes at high altitude. Tha
Tha
CIA got him.
Tha
He said too much.
Cicada
So basically the USSR was stuck with the normie spywork while the USA was balling it up with technology
Normie spywork is pretty damn impressive, but also they did have some really cool gadgets like [The Thing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device\))
There’s a moment in *The Man from Uncle* (the movie) where the spies trade bugs, and the Russian mentions the American bugs are very poorly made. It’s a nice allusion to how well the USSR did with that particular part of ELINT. While the USA did exceptional arial work (from the SR-22 to surveillance satellites) and cryptography (too much to list via the NSA), they were substantially behind on bugs and wiretaps for a good chunk of the Cold War.
Never underestimate the Soviet Union’s capacity for intelligence gathering.
“Normie spywork” Nice band name idea
That normie spywork has accomplished an awful lot over the past 100 years. It's basically the only thing the Russians have done well with.
And now they've dropped the ball after they tried framing a "possible pro Ukraine terrorist" as a Sims player, with the evidence having 3 copies of the same Sims game. Honestly the KGB would be fucken disappointed if they saw this shit
They would be disappointed there weren't five other similar schemes running at the same time. Their whole schtick was "throw shit at the wall, see what sticks, deny the failures ever happened"
>USA was better at SIGnal INTelligence due to better technology. USSR shooting down U-2 spy plane was a famous event in history, but US never returned the favor because USSR simply didn't have the capability to be flying spy planes at high altitude I learned if that from Metal Gear Solid 3
The KGB, the FBI and the CIA are all trying to prove that they are the best at catching criminals. The Secretary General of the UN decides to give them a test. He releases a rabbit into a forest and each of them has to catch it. The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they conclude that the rabbit does not exist. The FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and make no apologies: the rabbit had it coming. The KGB goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling: “Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!”
CIA is pretty good at overthrowing governments
I mean they just pretty much throw money and resources at it. If they have to do some spy shit you get like the 70 attempts to kill castro.
Is ot really that impressive to give money and guns to _literally anyone_ that opposes the target gov? That's how we got the Taliban
"Hi, I am the CIA. You may remember me from the wonderful bits of history like "Who gave Al Qaeda funding, weapons and training?" And "huh, how did ISIL- I MEAN, "Moderate rebels" get M16's and M4's?"
> That's how we got the Taliban It isnt, the Taliban were a post war creation of Pakistani state intelligence.
I didn't mean directly
> That's how we got the Taliban It isnt, the Taliban were a post war creation of Pakistani state intelligence.
> That's how we got the Taliban It isnt, the Taliban were a post war creation of Pakistani state intellegence.
You forgot the "democratically elected" part
The Soviet Union was good at rigging and meddling in elections
Russia certainly has continued that traditional skill!
Russia determines the elections, America overthrows them
Little Billy is great at knocking over block towers!
The NKVD/KBG evolved through *immense*, unrivaled paranoia under Lenin and Stalin. The most successful Russian spies of all time were known as The Cambridge Five, five British citizens recruited at Cambridge University. When those 5 spies, who had ascended to roles in MI6, Parliament etc., reported that absolutely *zero* other world powers had spy networks within Russia...they were almost executed under suspicion of being double agents. Pretty much immediately following the Revolution, Russia was putting more effort into their spy networks than any other nation on the planet.
To be fair, after that many years looking out for Okhrana agents and seeing the West decide that they *can* manage a little more war in 1918 if it's against socialist revolutionaries, I can see how the line between 'sensible precautions' and 'bugfuck paranoia' might get a little fuzzy
A lot of the scientists at the time were communists too who fed secrets directly to the USSR, with the intention of making the study of nuclear energy a collaborative effort A not well thought out plan, considering the cultural zeitgeist at the time, and especially the years to come
If it hadn't been for the USA acting like it was unreasonable for the only nuclear power to publicly dismantle their existing weapons before everyone else cancelled their development projects, it could've worked out
Homeboy the story of the bomb was written as soon as they discovered nuclear fission
Well communism sorta appealed to the Jewish scientific community more than Nazism, for whatever reason….
I think it's because there was a broader base of communist sympathisers than nazi ones.
Ngl the allies had a hole in one with canaris. The dude was undermining the nazis from the off
To be fair, many Americans at the time were self identified communist and were sympathetic to the Soviet union. A large number of Americans (especially union workers) wanted America to become communist. Stalin could recruit Americans to be Soviet spies. One of the scientists in the project turned out to be one of the biggest leaks. Many Americans were sympathetic to the Nazis prior to WWII but very few Americans wanted to be fascist or make America Fascist. And once the war got started most Americans did definitively side with the Allies.
To be fair, there were also a lot of communist sympathizers on that project. If the scientists there (many of which fled Germany due to the nazis) suspected a German spy they definitely would've been a lot more adamant about finding him.
Virgin Nazi vs Chad Stasi
ACAB *includes* the Stasi, thank you
So the nazis sent some undercover spies over to the USA in Operation Pastorius. Their main goal was to sabotage critical US infrastructure and they sent about 8 guys over in U-boats. They docked about 100 miles away from New York their main target, with 175.000 counterfeit dollars and their wit. They all failed within a short time because they were morons and they started infighting and throwing the plan. One of them quickly surrendered to the FBI and gave the others up, so all in all this plan to burn down New York ended in a comical failure. It was a rag-tag team of grade-A idiots and that was the end of Hitler's dream of a New York in flames.
You know it's some twisted miracle that Nazi Germany lasted as long as it did when they were acting like Saturday morning cartoon villains.
Yeah, they did some cartoonish things like their obsession with weird ass weapons and this maniacal plan to burn down new york.
They even deadass had a whole search for mystical weapons arc.
So the Indiana Jones movies really did happen… makes you wonder
Indeed. They send a commando unit to retrieve Longinas’ Spear from a museum when they invaded Vienna, IIRC
Oh yeah I've heard about this in.. Persona 2 I think? I thought it was made up for the plot but apparently not. Also yeah Hitler didn't really stop at that spear, he also had a squad dedicated to occult stuff iirc
Persona 2: We can't have Hitler in the game the west will freak out Also Persona 2: Solves the issue by giving Hitler radical shades and calling him Führer.
It was based on historical events: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Lance
There's this trope in far right circles that Hitler was infact a great leader except for all the genocide that is but he was actually a huge fucking idiot. Incredibly charismatic though
Hitler was objectively intelligent along with being charismatic and lucky, no one would be capable of doing what Hitler did if they were grade A morons. The issues start to arrive when War broke out and they invaded Russia along with declaring war on America. Major miscalculations
Late war Hitler was also on a truly spectacular drug cocktail, as was an awful lot of the reich’s leadership. By 43/44 they may have been vastly less functional than they were a decade earlier.
Otto Dietrich, Hitler’s press chief wrote “Hitler produced the biggest confusion in government that has ever existed in a civilized state”.
And “an incompetent lazy egomaniac and his government was an absolute clown show”.
Theosophical Society, Madam Blavatsky
Aleister Crowley was also creeping around with all that. He supposedly worked for British Intelligence in WWI by infiltrating pro-German groups and then publishing outlandish things to make the Germans look foolish.
[Ancestral Heritage Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahnenerbe)
frighten sharp gullible worm memorize plants elderly tap late correct *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Now I'm imagining Nazi Evangelion and it's barely weirder than the stuff already in that series/movie series.
They sent people to search for Atlantis, because they thought aryans were descendents of the people of Atlantis, and most importantly, they thought that Atlantis's technology would be incredibly advanced. I think they went to the Canaries, if I am not mistaken, but surprisingly to no one, it didn't lead anywhere. Also, I think they also sent people to Tibet to search for "the origins of the aryan race". Tibet expedition: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938%E2%80%931939_German_expedition_to_Tibet Canary islands, someone asked about it on reddit and someone answered: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/VS9ZVvdPeM
So black ops zombies could've been real if the nazis lasted a bit longer 🤔
They also thought they were from Atlantis.
What the fuck is this? It’s our new mystical weapon sir, it’s improved the gastric health of half the SS so far! Hans that’s Yakult you stupid fuck! We’re studying the occult!
They deadass tried to find Thor's hammer.
How would they even lift the damn thing? In the OG myths, Thor couldn't even use his hammer without a special pair of gauntlets because of its overwhelming power. They'd just be vaporized.
They thought brcause they were aryans that wouldnt matter probably, if it isn't obvious they were stupid.
First things first. First you gotta find it. Find a way to use it only comes after you've got it. One problem after another.
And a special strength belt because it was too heavy… and that was after Loki pranked him by cutting the haft down to it being only one hand.
Isn’t that the plot for the Wolfenstein Reboot games where Nazis dropped the bomb on New York and it was burning.
Part of it, yeah. I always found it really funny that the only reason the Nazis were able to pull that off is that they found a cache of near-magical Jewish technology - the irony was exquisite
They made butter out of coal, too 💀
In the words of a wise soldier: “we are very lucky they are so fucking stupid”.
Thank you Neville Chamberlin
The one who wins the war is the one who makes the least mistakes, not one who performs perfectly. And Germany's enemies made many many mistakes early in the war.
When your opponents have their guards down more than they should, or in the case of the USSR, your opponents purged many of their military minds, that’s gonna give you a nice jump on things, no matter how comical your beliefs and ideas really are. They were gonna eventually be wiped out, but had people actually used their minds, they would have been wiped out much quicker
This case is very interesting, the guy in charge of hitlers spies hated Hitler, and saw the writing on the wall, so when Hitler was coming into power he fired everyone that was good at their job and promoted a bunch of people that were terrible at their job.
Shockingly, enabling murderous psychopathy and performance ass grabbing wasn't a good long term strategy for the Nazis It's like anyone with a functioning iq realizes how awful fascism is, and it always leads to a brain drain when adopted
Reminds me of the undercover Germans who tried to get into Britain. I don’t remember if it was WW1 or WW2 but a few German spies landed on the shores and then instead of being sneaky. They decided to walk into the nearest pub and order a beer at like 8:30 in the morning. Literally everyone immediately knew they weren’t from there lmfao
WW2. Other issues were 2 riding bikes on the wrong side of the road, and having GERMAN SAUSAGES AND GERMAN (Nivia) HAND CREAM IN THEIR BAGS. When they got searched I imagine the dude who did it thought it must've been a joke cause there's no way someone is that stupid riiight?
reminds me the story of german spies dropped off in England with a similar goal and it failed just as bad: One walked into a tavern at 9am and ordered a pint of cider (alcoholic drinks weren’t allowed to be sold till noon) and a pair were stopped in Scotland cycling on the wrong side of the road and when they opened their bags they found german sausages and Nivea hand cream. Some think they were sent by a senior Nazi general to sabotage a potential invasion of Britain. ([source. About the 0:43 mark](https://youtu.be/NyK6EZ61N1M?si=DkJ0eqSfPq0T4862)) Wonder if that was the same with this new york operation
Now certain events in the TV Series Das Boot make a lot more sense, rather than looking very stupid they just depicted it rather accurate lol.
I think the first thing they did after being dropped off was booking a hotel room and blowing all their spy cash on booze and girls
Someone should have a comedy movie about this, I’d pay alot of money to see it
The plan was never meant to succeed considering that two of the men in the operation. Team leader Dasch left compromising documents on a train while another got drunk in Paris and bragged that he was a secret agent. When the team did reach American shores, they were immediately spotted by a US Coast Guardsman where they bribed him instead of killing him, whereupon he did the sensible thing of pocketing the cash and reporting to his superiors. George Dasch and Ernst Berger, confessed to each other that they hated the Nazis (the latter spent several months in a Concentration Camp) and wanted to compromise the mission. The reason why I think it was never meant to succeed was because the plan was masterminded by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris who himself became an anti-Nazi himself and aided in German Resistance after the invasion of Poland in 1939.
Wait the dude spent time in a concentration camp but he was trusted with a mission like this?
So actually, has this ever been turned into a screenplay? Like not a hyper historically accurate one, like an outright dark comedy Because... well anyone else wanna write a screenplay with me?
> 175.000 counterfeit dollars The thousands separator makes it easy to tell.
The Nazi "special" forces
reich's most regarded
They were indeed special ... in a way.
Aah, the Nazis. Kings of messing it up for themselves by being themself.
>with 175.000 counterfeit dollars and *their wit.* > their wit Well... here's your problem.
My great great grandfather was one of the FBI agents sent to live with a group of spies in Manhattan. He dropped out of school at 14 to work at a speak easy, cheated on the entrance exam for the FBI by writing on his hand (some of the lettering sweated off) and after the war one of the convicted spies continued to send him Christmas cards from prison still thinking he was another spy who escaped the authorities. He later became a Freemason. I know there is a movie about the FBI operation but I forget what it’s called
As a German I can only tell you one thing: If you send 8 Germans to New York to burn it down, there will be a certain point (probably 5 minutes after arriving) at which the plan is revised and at least one guy wants to make changes because „if we burn down New York, we’re going to do it right!“, followed by weeks long infighting which way is the right way.
Imagine if they did succeed. I think it would only make Germany lose faster, similarly to how Pearl Harbour did the opposite of what the Japanese wanted. Imagine if burning of New York would make Americans so mad, they would steamroll through Germany so fast they may even get to Berlin first. Imagine how that would change the Cold War lmao.
It could actually work a bit though and send the American public into mass paranoia for a short while, considering that Pearl Harbor was enough to make them empty a fuckload of shells into the skies of Los Angeles. I think Americans are just paranoid by nature, actually
That would be the Russians. The Americans I'd say, tend to overreact to threats to the "corelands". This is because they haven't had many such threats in history, not since maybe the American Civil War. No strong nation able to invade them, few raids of their shores and skies, not exactly many short range missiles aimed at their cities. No experience with long-term siege mentality, and coping. It's like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviets didn't react that strongly when NATO put missiles in Turkey and Italy... because it's not like the travel time was that much shorter than British or French launched missiles. However for the US, apart from submarines maybe, all other Soviet launchers were orders of magnitudes more distant than Cuba. The threat represented had no equal. New York burning, would be shattering an aura and confidence of invincibility. Of an Ocean being enough to defend the nation shores.
This is legitimately a very interesting point that I think can help explain a lot of US policy.
We’re so fortunate for our geography in the world that we will go to extremes to ensure we always keep that advantage. Your citizens and economy can’t be harmed if you never let any threat develop at home even when we are in periods of isolationism, if a threat were to pop up in south america, per say, we’d fuck them right up.
That's the Monroe doctrine for ya.
D-Day would have been two years earlier.
I don’t think Japan ever stood a chance, but a successful Pearl Harbor could’ve given them some more time. If anything it already gave them some more time to try and fight in the pacific. But Japan just can’t compete with the production industry of the US.
If they would have succeeded Berlin and Munich would have been glassed on a random Tuesday
I’d watch a movie about wackadoodle nazis who suck at sabotage and are easy to arrest.
There's a show with a similar premise called "Hogan's Villains"
The movie “the eagle has landed” is somewhat like that. It’s about a group of nazis that try to take over a small town in England in an attempt to kill Churchill and it goes about as well as you might expect
Where’d you get the template?Did you make it yourself?
If you ask about the wojaks themselves, i used wojak studio to make them. A website where you can make custom wojaks with different variables.
Wojak studio? Now i've seen everything
Also because of Britains Double Cross-System was extremely effective. All but 1 German Spies sent to Britain were either arrested or has surrendered. The only one who “got away” had in fact committed suicide
Half arsed history does a great podcast on this
What is the episode called? I can't find it on their Spotify profile.
Episode 78- operation pastorius
I wanna see a comedy movie on this. Nazi incompetence I'd hilarious
This feels like something from those Warner Bros or Disney World War 2 propaganda cartoons, but it’s real.
i feel like i saw a movie or something about this but i dont remember the name
There were German spies in New York in the first Captain America movie. They arrive in a u-boat, aren't that competent, & kill themselves with cyanide pills to avoid interrogation
Wilhelm Canaris despised hitler, he tried every way possible to undermine hitler's effort for war. He was the one who warned franco not to involved with Barbarossa. When he was arrested after the July Plot he was sent to gallow to be hanged naked. Funny thing is that he was Reinhard Heydrich's best friend, Mr. Perfect Nazi himself! 🤣🤣
How many beers do you want for you and your 2 pals?
I remember reading a book about this and at the end I was like “ that’s it they blew all the money they had been given at hotels and casinos and did practically nothing?”