I saw a poster warning about this “Loose Lips Sink Ships”. Were there really spy rings in American shipyards and defense plants? German espionage in the USA was pretty amateurish, and I doubt that Japan had any really organized intelligence in the USA.
In any case, how much useful intelligence could you get from overhearing shipyard workers? Suppose a Nazi spy overheard a conversation by shipyard workers who were building the allied invasion transports (used at Normandy)-what good would that have been to Germany?
If these rings existed, how would they have communicated with the home country-would a compact high frequency radio transmitter have sufficed?
I imagine that Americans were worried about it after the Niihan Incident.
This is another topic that is served well just by Googling.
“Hmm. The shipyard has added a third ship to build more troop carriers.”
“Hmm. The shipyard sure is producing a lot of amphibious landing craft.”
“Hmm. I heard a cargo ship just left bound for North Africa/England/the Pacific with all those amphibious landing craft.”
A teacher told me of a German spy who lived near the Norfolk navy base during WW 2. He was caught and I guess was held until the war was over and then sent back to Germany.
I recall reading that just before Pearl Harbour, someone from Japanese intelligence phoned a Japanese dentist whose office overlooked Pearl Harbour to ask him what ships were there. He had no clue why they wanted to know.
As was already pointed out, the German espionage activities against the United States during WWII are usually judged to have been amateurish and ineffective.
I wonder, though, (and this is pure speculation) whether the whole story will ever be known: The German military had plenty of time to destroy large quantities of sensitive files before the surrender. And I’m assuming that German spies in the United States (or in other Western countries, for that matter) who weren’t caught during the war would have kept their mouths shut after the war.
On the other hand, files containing intelligence about the Soviet army and information about existing spy networks in Eastern Europe were deliberately preserved by leading German intelligence officers and handed over the Western Allies (→ Reinhard Gehlen) at the end of the war.
Hey, who told you about that? There’s been a leak!!! :eek:
The Germans had an excellent intelligence service- that was headed by Admiral Canaris, a man who despised Hitler and was part of the plot to kill him. It’s pretty obvious that Canaris had no real motive for effective espionage vs the USA or GB.
It’s pretty much known that Canaris- a close friend of Franco- advised the Generalissimo not to ally with Hitler.
Canaris also saved the lives of numerous Jews by making them “Abwehr agents”.
He has even been nominated for “Righteous Among the Nations” (aka righteous Gentile) honors.
In 1916 when America the Germans set off the Black Tom explosion which killed at least 7 people.
But during World War II we had J Edgar Hoover and the FBI doing their outstanding job of making sure no Axis terrorist acts occured.
“well, gee, no aircraft carriers.”
Man, I would like to know the story behind that. If they knew the carriers were out, surely the Japanese would have postponed things.
Here is the story behind that. 
Almost impossible the time table was pretty set in stone, you also had attacks elsewhere, so much oil, etc. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.
I thought the Philippines attack was the next day. MacArthur’s critics say that he knew the attack was expected.
Next day due to the Date line. The Pearl Harbor attack occurred 3AM, Philippines time. The Japanese didnt attack until about Noon, as they were delayed by fog from taking off. They were supposed to attack at Dawn, just like Pearl.
In theory that gave Dug-out Doug almost nine hours to get ready, which he bungled.
wiki: *"After news reached the Philippines that an attack on Pearl Harbor was in progress at around 03:00 am local time on 8 December 1941,[24] FEAF interceptors had already conducted an air search for incoming aircraft reported shortly after midnight, but these had been Japanese scout planes reporting weather conditions.[25][26]
At 05:00 am FEAF commander Gen. Brereton reported to USAFFE headquarters where he attempted to see MacArthur without success. He recommended to MacArthur’s chief of staff, Brig. Gen. Richard Sutherland, that FEAF launch bombing missions against Formosa in accordance with Rainbow 5 war plan directives from which an attack was likely to come. Gen. Breteron was further made aware of an attack against the USS William B. Preston at Davao Bay.[27] Authorization was withheld, but shortly afterward, in response to a telegram from General George C. Marshall instructing MacArthur to implement Rainbow 5, Brereton was ordered to have a strike in readiness for later approval.[26][28]
Through a series of disputed discussions and decisions, authorization for the first raid was not approved until 10:15 am local time for an attack just before sunset, with a follow-up raid at dawn the next day. In the meantime, Japanese plans to attack Clark and Iba Fields using land-based naval bombers and Zero fighters were delayed six hours by fog at its Formosa bases, so that only a small scale Army mission attacked targets in the northern tip of Luzon. At 08:00 am, Brereton received a telephone call from Gen. Henry H. Arnold warning him not to allow his aircraft to be attacked while still on the ground…
At 11:27 am and 11:29 am, the radar post at Iba Field detected two incoming raids while the closest was still 130 miles out. …
Even though tracked by radar and with three U.S. pursuit squadrons in the air, when Japanese bombers of the 11th Kōkūkantai attacked Clark Field at 12:40 pm,[33] they achieved tactical surprise. Two squadrons of B-17s were dispersed on the ground. Most of the P-40s of the 20th PS were preparing to taxi and were struck by the first wave of 27 Japanese twin-engine “Nell” bombers; only four of the 20th PS P-40Bs managed to take off as the bombs were falling."*
I think the Nazis fully expected a beachhead assault as soon as the US could build the support equipment for it and mobilize the Allied troops. So such info would have been of only passing use.
The brilliant deception of convincing the Germans that the attack was going to come from Sicily/Italy - the ‘soft underbelly’ - was what had to remain secret. The details of Operation Mincemeat and the other components were still classified until fairly recently.
Thanks, DrDeth.
I asked a variation of this question of Cecil maybe a year back - Sure, the roundup of Japanese-Americans is one of our greatest civic crimes. No question. But… were there ever any working Japanese moles/sleepers/spies among the prior 20-30 years of immigrants? I find it almost impossible to believe there were not. I suspect the stories remain untold to preserve the fiction that the US was 100% unilaterally wrong to suspect J-A’s. (Just as those who wail about the McCarthy era blacklists conveniently overlook how many in Hollywood and labor were indeed on Moscow’s payroll as provocateurs… info which came out with the publication of the Venona codebreak story in the 1990s.)
That would be quite unusual. Spies were usually either turned into double agents or executed.
There’s some good detail in Gordon Prange’s At Dawn We Slept about Japanese espionage in Hawaii before the Pearl Harbor attack - it’s been a while since I read it, but as I recall the consular officials in Honolulu, as well as a dentist (who I think may actually have been of German descent) provided information on Pearl Harbor prior to the attack - some of which was very useful (water depths in Pearl Harbor from pleasure boat excursions) and some of which was not (I think they significantly may have flubbed providing good information on ships in the harbor - the dentist anyway, not necessarily the consular officials.)
I’ve read a bit about espionage in WWII and the Cold War, and what strikes me is how often spies have either/both been incompetent or out-and-out lied to their superiors, not at all what I tend to see in fiction.