to be told. i'm oliver north. good night. tonight on "war stories" nazi camps on american soil. >> secret cells of nazi sympathizers all over the united states. >> plotting a sinister plan. >> that was a worldwide network with the concept of taking over. >> but the fbi covertly filmed these enemy agents. >> if he sees me the whole thing is blown up. >> who were hitler's >> they had orders to spread panic. >> when america was invaded. >> that's next on "war stories." good evening, i'm oliver north on the shores of long island. welcome to "war stories."

adolf hitler once said demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage and assassination. this is the war of the future. he was right, for no one will ever forget those tactics he used more than half a century later on that fateful day in september, 2001. but what you may not know is that america was actually invaded on a foggy night in the summer of 1942. a group of nazi saboteurs landed here, right here on this beach, in eastern long island. their mission, to strike at the heart of america with acts of sabotage. and just like the terrorists from 9/11, they had all lived in america and they all knew our country well. this is the story of the men who invaded our country and those who stopped them. the germans had threatened the united states long before 1942. in 1916 while world war i was

raging in europe, americans felt safe. imperial germany was waging an all-out war against britain and france but the fighting was taking place more than 3,000 miles away across the atlantic ocean. americans were more concerned about baseball. although president woodrow wilson had officially declared the united states neutral in the conflict, we were supplying the british and french with munitions and germans knew it. using a manhattan brownstone as a headquarters, several german spies organized an attack against america. at 2:08 a.m. on july 29th, 1916, an enormous explosion occurred near the statue of liberty at a place then called black tom island. >> plaqblack tom was an ammunit depot off the coast of new jersey in new york harbor and it had an extraordinary amount of explosives. >> richard powers is a history professor at city university of new york and the author of

"secrecy and power, the life of j. edgar hoover." this was detonated with one of the most remarkable explosions in new york city until the world trade center bombings, shattering windows in new jersey, manhattan, over in brooklyn. >> the dark cloud of sabotage rose above the united states. though still neutral, america was becoming painfully aware of the enemy within. and everywhere the words "black tom" or within on angry nation's lips. >> the investigation afterwards pointed to german sabotage. >> reporter: the sabotage had been ordered by this man, german intelligence officer franz van tappen. barely ten months after black tom island was attacked, the united states declared war on germany. then, like now, homeland security became imperative and one government agency stepped up to the plate, the fbi. >> the g-men. this is the bureau of scientific crime detectives. new, modern, up to the minute.

the fbi never sleeps. the g-men have become a legend. so what's the mystery behind their badge? >> the predecessors to the federal bureau of investigation, or the fbi, was the bureau of investigation. the name wasn't officially changed until the fbi until 1935. >> your investigations started with approximately 33 special agents. it went through a number of periods of rapid growth, first and foremost during world war i. >> one young clerk working for the department of justice, monitoring german americans, was a man named j. edgar hoover. by age 29 he had been named the bureau director. as seen here in this fbi film, hoover took an active role, both in his agents' training and in shaping his personal public image. at first hoover targeted

gangsters, used fingerprinting and new technologies to crack down on organized crime. >> you had a series of highly publicized gang-busting campaigns by the fbi. the names are very familiar. this is machine gun kelly, pretty boy floyd, and of course john dillinger. >> when machine gun kelly was captured, he begged g-men don't shoot, meaning government men, and the name g-men flashed in the news. >> during the mid-'30s, j. edgar hoover and the fbi became national heroes. before they knew it, they really had turned the bureau of investigation into public heroes, and hoover himself was even called public hero number one by some publicists. >> but while hoover was wiping the floor with gangsters, a storm was once again brewing across the ocean. barely 14 years after the end of world war i, germany was again on the rise. by 1933, hitler was chancellor and established the third reich and began his master plan for

world domination and racial tiering. although the united states was an ocean away, it didn't escape hitler's plan. >> the nazis had a very dangerous idea. the idea was anywhere there was a distraction anywhere in the world, they were to be officially represented by nazi germany. hitler would speak for them. >> the author of "espionage, the greatest spy operations throughout history." >> they looked over the united states and said there's about 30 million americans of german descent over there. what an incredible pool. >> some american organizations fell in goose step with the german dictator. one organization took the lead role, the german american bund or league, as seen here in these shocking propaganda films made right here in america. >> it was mostly made up of immigrants from germany after world war i. >> marvin miller studied the german american bund

extensively. >> hitler to them was a god send. they couldn't glory him more than their favorite movie star. >> people believed in the chief nazi propaganda of the so-called new world order. it would be a facistic nazi pro world order. >> the head of the german american bund was this man. he came to america in 1927 and lived in new york and detroit. he created a network of approximately a dozen camps throughout the u.s., attracting thousands of enthusiastic followers. >> the bung had several so-called training camps, summer camps. most notoriously camp hin denburg. >> you're watching training films shot. their mission, to train americans to become nazis. >> they would get the children. the children would be enrolled

in bund's version of the hitler youth. they would have uniforms, they would march around and sit around the campfire and listen to german propaganda. >> he had a place for the girls. he wanted them to be strong and they'd do various exercises to build up their bodies, build up their bodies for what purpose? to be strong mothers. to give birth to the future. >> they would support nazi policies and serve as a potential fifth column possibly down the road. and more importantly, a recruiting pool from which they could draw intelligence assets. >> one man especially valuable to hitler was walter cappy. he worked at a factory making farm tools before he became a journalist in chicago at a german american newspaper. in 1935 he applied to become a u.s. citizen, but he was denied. >> cap became the press chief

for the german american bund. >> by the late 1930s their success began to worry some americans. j. edgar hoover was only too happy to investigate. >> president roosevelt asked hoover to conduct an investigation to let them know what the scope of their activities were and how dangerous this was. before long they had a pretty good sense of everyone who was involved in the german american bund and the nazi underground in this country. >> coming up next, how many nazi sympathizers were living here in the united states in 1939? more than enough to fill madison square garden to the rafters. find out how 33 members of a nazi spy ring conducted covert operations right here in america. that's next on "war stories." when i was growing up,

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february 20th, 1939. you're looking at 22,000 german american bund members at madison square garden in new york city for a fund-raising rally. throughout the night tension mounted in the garden, then all hell broke loose when the bund leader spoke to the crowd. >> i am very privileged to welcome you to another mass demonstration sponsored by the german american bund. >> a young jewish man stormed the stage. >> this youngster ran up towards the stage and was intercepted by the strong man group of the german american bund. he was beaten. this made headline news. >> six months after the rally in new york, the nazi blitz invaded poland. world war ii had begun. immediately american public

opinion turned against nazi germany and its sympathizers and groups like the german american bund and its network of camps were closed. although the u.s. wouldn't enter the war for another two years, hoover was on high alert for espionage operations that could damage u.s. war production efforts, already under way. >> we had the space and focus on the fact that there was a worldwide network building with the long-range concept of taking over our country. >> kenneth crosby grew up on a farm in mississippi where he helped his father grow cotton and raise cattle. after graduating from college, he earned a law degree from the university of mississippi. in 1939, crosby became fbi agent number 831. >> what kind of training did you get for dealing with things like counterespionage. >> we had routine investigative procedures, we had surveillance procedures. we spent two full weeks out at a marine base firing range.

>> agent crosby was quickly assigned to infiltrate and help capture 33 german men and women who were operating inside new york city as enemy agents. all spoke english and moved about the city unnoticed. their mission, stealing u.s. secrets. >> they stole the blueprint of the norton bomb site which before the atom bomb was the most important secret we had. they stole the prints and got them to germany. >> this man was sent bite german intelligence service to run the spy network. it was called the duquesne spy ring. >> it was anticipated that the united states was going to get in the war. that's why he was here. >> we were in the middle of a buildup two years before pearl harbor, and they wanted the information of what was going -- raw materials, weaponry. >> the problem was how do you get all this information back to germany? well, you can't send fritz back

and forth, they would find a master spy. he would collect all their information. he would encode it and then he would send it via a special radio back to germany. >> enter william siebold, fbi double agent harry sawyer. >> a man walking up and down the street is harry sawyer, a naturalized german american citizen. sawyer visited germany in 1939, where he was approached by the gestapo who urged him to return to the united states as a spy. before leaving germany, he sent word to us. a spy trap was set. sawyer was working for the fbi. >> next, the fbi got siebold an office in times square where he could meet with enemy agents. ken crosby was one of the fbi agents who helped shoot these undercover films. >> we set up his office. we set it up with a double mirror where we could photograph

through the mirror everything that went on in the office. >> and every time somebody came into siebold's office and handed over blueprints, somebody was running a movie camera. >> the first time that i covered that particular role of the camera, i'll never forget, fritz walks into the office to give his report to siebold. very suspicious. he stops and he looks all around the room very carefully. and he looks right at that mirror. i think he's looking right at me. i thought uh-oh, something's gone wrong. i haven't worked this thing right. if he sees me, the whole thing is blown. i've blown the whole case. i'm ready to collapse. he pulls out his pocket comb and he starts combing his hair. >> on june 29th, 1941, the fbi simultaneously arrested all 33 german spies. the trial was head in federal district court in brooklyn. >> toward the end of the trial,

the prosecution brings siebold in. they say that that was the most memorable, shocking instant to these 33 subjects when they realized how they had been duped by this double agent. >> all 33 spies were found guilty december 13th, 1941, and sentenced to almost 300 years in prison. by 1954, they had all been paroled. duquesne died of a stroke in 1956. >> what happens to siebold after? >> we did not have a formal witness protection program at that time, which we have today. but in effect the bureau sent him to california. >> agent kraucrosby would be seo latin america and arrest hundreds of spies. the agency brought down the duquesne spy ring, but more were on the way. hitler ordered sabotage operations against key targets in the united states.

find out how eight nazi saboteurs slipped into the country right here, on a mission to wreak havoc. that's next on "war stories."

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december 7th, 1941. america was surprised when japan, not germany, struck first. and in response, as we entered the war, poise boys enlistsed t shipped out. out at sea u.s. ships faced an ever-present u-boat threat. germans called it happy time when they sunk hundreds of u.s. and british ships off our east coast. >> the losses in the first month of the war were enormous. ships were being sunk sometimes

within sight of the city, and they began to black out cities at night and that brought losses to a very dramatic decline. >> bright lights of new york, as they will not be seen again until after this war. no more bright signs flicker on times square. the east coast is dimmed out, because nazi u-boats can sink ships by silhouetting them against the shore. a blackout, and off go the lights. >> just months after pearl harbor, the nazis came up with a terror plot of their own. it was called operation pestorius, named after one of the first german immigrants to come to america. >> the main german intelligence agency was given the assignment by hitler, do something about this huge american production facility which is about to bury

us under weapons. there is no way in the world we can outproduce the united states. that american production capacity is going to have to be crippled in some way. >> a team of saboteurs were given multiple targets to blow up, including aluminum plants, railroads and jewish-owned department stores. >> the saboteurs also had orders to try to spread panic and confusion by putting time-release bombs in movie theaters, in places where the public would assemble. and so from that point i guess you'd say that these were terrorist operations as well in which the purpose was to convince the public that they could not be protected by the government and, therefore, the public was helpless. >> remember this man from the german american bund? they chose 39-year-old walter cappy, former chief, to lead operation pestorius. he left the u.s. and moved back to german.

he recruited eight men who would undergo terrorist training at a camp outside of berlin. >> some of them were picked because they had been members of the bund. seven of the eight saboteurs were members of the bund. it's my understanding that three of them knew about camp siegfried and attended there. >> they had all lived here. they had in two cases become american citizens. they had all returned to germany because they wanted to work for the german war effort. a number of them were already in the german army. then they underwent a reimmersion into american life by means of movies, magazines and newspapers so that they would know ball scores, they would know who the movie stars were, they would know public events. >> these were the eight saboteurs cappy chose. george dash, earnest berger, richard curran, john curling, wernor theel, and at 22, the

baby, bert howell. they all spoke flawless english so they could blend in easily. it was foggy here on this beach that night in '42 when a german u-boat delivered four nazi saboteurs and a boatload of explosives. their mission, the destruction of key installations vital to america's war effort and to terrorize the american people. one man stood between success and failure of this nazi invasion. find out what happened when the saboteurs met a 21-year-old coast guardsman. that's next on "war stories."

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on may 26, 1942, the eight nazi saboteurs were poised to launch their attacks on america.