Community Chat

[Oznell]

Over in TV and Movies, there's been discussion in the past about Hitchcock's chilling tale of infiltration and espionage during World War II,  "Saboteur".

In real life, there were multiple attempts at sabotage.  In "Operation Pastorius"  8 Germans were trained on a secluded country estate and sent to land in two parties on the beaches of Long Island and Florida.  The Long Island group was headed by a man named George Dasch, who had drifted around the U.S. in the past, and knew how to blend the group into the population.

Dasch and his men landed by dark of night, loaded with explosives for blowing up bridges, disrupting the water supply, and generally destroying infrastructure.

There was a twist, though.  Little did his superiors know that Dasch had decided to defect.  He confided this to one of his fellow conspirators and said he would kill him if he didn't also.  Through a long chain of events, he contacted an almost disbelieving FBI and eventually the whole, elaborate plot was foiled.  Six of the eight men were dealt the maximum punishment possible in the U.S. then, and the two who blew the plot wide open were shown leniency.

There's much more to the story at the Smithsonian's web site.  History is just as exciting as fiction, no?

[software]

To answer your  question

Always!

[Oznell]

This is such rich material-- I wonder if it HAS ever been considered for a film.  I could easily have seen a young Jon Voigt playing George Dasch.  But you would need Jon Voigt at about the age he was when he made "Midnight Cowboy".

Kenneth Branagh plays a Swede so convincingly in that PBS mystery series, so surely could do a German. But again, he's not the right age.   Maybe a dark horse like Josh Duhamel...