Roosevelt realized that neither the death penalty nor secrecy could be guaranteed in a civilian trial, so he issued a proclamation that established a military tribunal consisting of seven generals, the first to be convened in the United States since Lincoln’s assassination. The prosecutor was Attorney General Francis Biddle. The chief defense lawyer was Colonel Kenneth Royall, a distinguished attorney in civilian life and later President Harry Truman’s secretary of war.

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The trial, which was held in secret at the Justice Department, occupied most of the month of July 1942. Biddle accused the Germans of coming to America to wreak havoc and death, basing his accusations on their own confessions. The would-be saboteurs pleaded innocence, denounced Hitler and insisted they had had no intention of actually engaging in sabotage.

The prosecution asked for the death penalty, the punishment required of spies during wartime, but it had a hard time making its case against Dasch and Burger, who had confessed so quickly and collaborated so completely.

On July 27, the defense rested. The seven generals quickly prepared a report and sent it–and the 3,000-page trial transcript–to Roosevelt who, under his proclamation, was responsible for determining the time and place of execution if that was the tribunal’s sentence. Now, finally, Roosevelt found out exactly how Hoover had managed to catch the saboteurs so quickly. He never made any public comment about it, however.

On August 8, six of the eight German agents were electrocuted at the District Jail in Washington, D.C. Burger was sentenced to hard labor for life; Dasch was given 30 years. Meanwhile, fearing more landings, the FBI put out an alert for Walter Kappe and others at the German sabotage school. Late in 1944, the Abwehr did manage to place two spies on the Maine coast, but they were quickly picked up. If other such attempts were made, they have never come to light.

In 1948, Dasch and Burger were deported to Germany, after five years and eight months in prison. In 1953, Der Stern magazine published articles obviously based on information supplied by Burger, which condemned Dasch for causing the deaths of his six colleagues. Vilified in Germany, Dasch unsuccessfully tried to get a pardon from the United States and return to America. In 1959, Dasch published a book that attempted to justify his behavior; he then disappeared from the public eye. *

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