The House History Man
The stately Mayflower Hotel at 1127 Connecticut Avenue has played host to a large variety of prominent international figures, European Royalty, US Presidents, and Hollywood stars. In 1942, it also housed a German spy named George John Dasch, left, who checked into room 351 on June 18, 1942 with the intention of a meeting with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to reveal his spy mission, coined Operation Pastorius.
Dasch never met with Hoover, who unbeknown to him, lunched every day in the Hotel’s dining room. Instead, Dash went to the FBI headquarters and was directed to meet with an FBI agent named Duane L. Traynor.
Dasch’s true story, revealed in detail over the next several days while under constant surveillance at the Hotel, would eventually shock citizens all across the country. Dasch, a German-American citizen, had returned to Germany at the beginning of WWII, as did many people with allegiance to their Fatherland. He and seven others were then chosen by the Führer to participate in a sabotage training school led by Walter Kapp, former propaganda chief of the German-American Bund, an American division of the German Nazi party. The training took place beginning in the fall of 1941 at a former farmhouse at Quenz Lake, west of Potsdam, Germany.
The intensive training consisted of laboratory studies in explosives, and creating a variety of simple delay detonating switches using household goods such as Chile saltpeter and sawdust, or dried peas and cork. Dasch was eventually selected as a leader of a group of three other men, while a similar group was headed by a German-American named Edward Kerling. After additional physical training and taking on aliases and tutoring in American slang, the eight men learned that they were to be sent to America to carry out their sabotage mission on factories, railroads, and bridges.
Their top secret mission was coined Operation Pastorius, named after Franz Daniel Pastorius, a leader of the first group of Germans to arrive in America in 1683. The two groups of four men would each be carried across the Atlantic Ocean beginning on May 28, 1942 in German U-boats, the notorious submarines that had hampered transatlantic travel for steamships for many years.
The trip would take seventeen days in cramp quarters and rough seas. Dasch’s group, on the U-202, would land ashore near the Hampton’s on Long Island, while the other, aboard U-584, landed successfully at Ponte Vedra Beach, near Jacksonville, Florida. Dasch’s group used a rubber boat to get ashore from the U-boat, and quickly buried an array of explosives and sabotage materials, but were met by a Coast Guard patrolman who questioned them before allowing them to flee. Meanwhile, the U-boat had become stuck on a sandbar, and droned its diesel engines until dawn in an attempt to drive itself off the sand, and did so before the Coast Guard could muster up any resistance along the unpopulated shore.
The saboteurs also carried with them huge amounts of American currency, nearly $100,000 worth, to aid them in their mission. Dasch’s group headed to New York City, where they split up into two groups, and proceeded to buy clothes, stay in upscale hotels, and visited many bordellos and bars. Kerling’s group went undetected at their landing, and proceeded to Chicago and then to New York, where they were to meet with Dasch to begin their assaults on America industry and transportation. Several members also visited their families and former mistresses, much to their surprise.
News of the botched Long Island landing was kept secret from the public, and Dasch was worried that the authorities would eventually track them down. So, he hatched a plan to betray his fellow conspirators and called the FBI from New York to request a meeting, thinking he would be hailed a hero for exposing the mission. They treated his call as a hoax, which brought Dasch to the Mayflower Hotel on June 18, 1942 with the intention of meeting in person with Hoover himself.
The FBI agent that met with Dasch first responded with trepidation, but as details were revealed, and accounts from the Coast Guard confirmed his actions, Dasch was followed in Washington constantly as he dined, visited bars, and enjoyed his last days of freedom. He eventually led the FBI to the other seven saboteurs by revealing their predetermined meeting places in New York. Dasch had been tricked into thinking that his guilty plea would save him from a trial and eventual execution. Hoover called a press conference in hast, and took credit for discovering the secret mission, to much fanfare. President Roosevelt called for a Military Tribunal to be held at the Justice Department building. Kenneth C. Royall of the War Department was chosen to serve as their defense attorney, and the tribunal began on July 6, 1942. Royall briefly succeeded in interrupting the Tribunal in an attempt to have it moved to the Supreme Court, which was denied by the Court after a brief hearing in which Hoover attended. The prisoners were held in the empty women’s section of the D.C. Jail, then located in SW DC. The tribunal meant that only limited and controlled press releases were available to the public on the details of the trial.
All eight saboteurs, including Dasch, were found guilty on August 2, 1942; the following day Roosevelt accepted the outcome, and sentenced six of them to death by electric chair. Dasch and a conspirator named Ernst Burger were sentenced to long prison terms. However, both the result and execution were kept secret from the public. He assigned General Albert Cox to oversee the most dramatic mass execution in American history since the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators. On August 8, 1942, six of the convicted saboteurs were electrocuted to death at the D.C. Prison’s chair, nicknamed “old sparky,” in just over an hour’s time. The chair was kept in a niche above the prison dining room as a constant reminder to the prisoners. Reporters, still not told of the outcome or the planned execution, held vigil outside the prison and watched for a browning of lights, indicating that electricity was being directed to the chair. It was only later that day, at 1:27 p.m., as the White House Press secretary Steve Early read from a typewritten sheet the outcome of the Tribunal, as well as the executions already carried out, that the public learned of the prisoner’s deaths. Their bodies were buried in secret on the evening of August 11 th on the southernmost tip of the District, in a pauper’s gravesite near Blue Plains waste water treatment center. They were marked with wooden headstones, marked with numbers 276 to 281.
Dasch and Burger were eventually sent to a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. In January 1945, prisoners threatened to throw Dasch off the roof during an uprising, unless their demands were met. President Truman pardoned Dasch and Burger in April of 1948, and both were deported to a then devastated Germany. Dasch escaped into the Russian zone in October of that year, and Burger wrote a letter to Hoover requesting a return to U.S. prison, where food and housing were plentiful. Dasch published his account of Operation Pastorius in a 1959 book called Eight Spies Against America; he died in Germany in 1992. Burger had died earlier, in 1962.
Copyright Paul K. Williams Posted by HouseHistoryMan at 3:39 PM 1 comment:Thursday, June 14, 2012
Groovy Pool at the International Inn, baby.The structures located at 10 Thomas Circle have had a long and varied past, from a regal dwelling believed to have first been built in 1843, to the large and streamlined International Inn, built in 1962 with an innovative pool enclosure, designed by controversial modernist architect Morris Lapidus. Interestingly, while the mansion that occupied the site from 1843 to 1947 was elaborate, it was not unique for the era or a rare example if its style when demolished in 1947.
However, the International Inn that replaced the dwelling, while not pleasing to every eye, has its own, more contemporary history that may be far more innovative and unique to the architectural historian. It often takes decades to develop an appreciation of architectural styles, and critiques of today’s designs often need to be reminded that the Victorians thought little of Greek Revival architecture, and routinely adapted and upgraded it to fit their more fanciful taste. All styles are subjected to this cycle, as periods of art noveau, art deco, streamline, and even 1950s modern all went through periods where they are lucky to exist all today.
In any event, the first house that is known to exist at 10 Thomas Circle was a house built for Charles L. Coltman (1800-1862), an early brick maker and builder in Washington -seen above as a red brick house to the right of the church. It was believed to have been built in 1843. However, the house was long known as the Wylie house when a later owner named Judge Andrew Wylie occupied the house during a time when he presided over a sensational trial surrounding the Lincoln assassination conspirators. It sat prominently on the northeast section of the circle until a fire on April 20, 1947 destroyed a significant portion of the structure, and it was torn down a short time later.
In 1962, the International Inn chain of hotels hired architect Morris Lapidus to design a modern hotel at the site. It marked the beginning of a transition of Thomas circle from a residential circle to commercial uses. It appeared in the July 26, 1963 edition of LIFE magazine, seen at left. Lapidus was a highly successful designer of a new form of Hotel structures, albeit one that was panned by architectural critiques for more than 40 years of his career. Born in Russia in 1902, Lapidus began his design career by revolutionizing retail architecture: from the previous tendency of large display windows and small signs to his concept of letting the stores name become one with the building. His examples include the Floresheim shoe storefronts, where the ‘F’ extends from the second floor to the sidewalk, and shoppers literally wander around the remaining letters to browse their way right into the entrance of the store.
Morris Lapidus big break came in 1954, when he was provided Carte Blanc to design a hotel in north Miami Beach coined the Fontainebleu. He chose to design it for the user, and not the critic, which
Posted by HouseHistoryMan at 12:30 PM No comments: Subscribe to: Comments (Atom)Washington, DC History
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HouseHistoryMan I have an educational background in Historic Preservation, having attended both Roger Williams and Cornell Universities. After a five year stint as a civilian in the Air Force running a very cool historic preservation grant program, I formed my own business in 1995 researching and writing up house histories in Washington, DC. I renovated the house at 1800 Vermont Ave, NW, and had it designated a National Historic Landmark before I listed the entire neighborhood as a historic district. I headed up Dupont Main Streets beginning in 2008 (remember the recession?), and began as the President of Historic Congressional Cemetery in 2012. My husband and I and our two cats live on Capitol Hill near the cemetery when we are not living aboard our Beneteau 473 sailboat in Baltimore during the extended sailing season. View my complete profile
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