Customer Reviews

In Time of War: Hitler’s Terrorist Attack on America

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is timely and has intellectual weight. It is a well-researched and well-written story of the eight German terrorists who traveled by U-boats to America and landed on the beaches of New York and Florida during World War II. The book outlines the terrorists' backgrounds, their motivations, the circumstances of their arrests, and an interesting view of their trial by a military commission set up by FDR. This book of history is a pleasure to read because it moves like a fast-paced novel with characters of depth. As for the legal analysis following the history portion of the book (i.e. Chapter 22 and following chapters), I make no comment nor take any position.

However in the history portion, Pierce O'Donnell demonstrated that he is not only a great trial lawyer, but a great writer. Bravo!! A well-deserved 5 star read.

Reading Pierce O'Donnell's book is like holding a magnifying glass and a secret decoder ring up to today's headlines - the war in Iraq and the detention of suspected Taliban and Al-Qaeda members in Guantánamo without benefit of trial by jury or protection of Geneva Conventions. At first I thought Mr. O'Donnell's book was just an extremely well-documented look at a little-known case of these Nazi saboteurs in 1942, who were quickly tried and fried by President Roosevelt exercising his war powers. Yet the book is much more than that. It's an in-depth examination of the exigencies of denying civil liberties during times of war and really demystifies the writ of habeus corpus for us laymen.

O'Donnell expertly guides the reader through the legal battles of Lincoln and Roosevelt - two presidents faced with war during times when the very life of our nation was in peril. The book brings us right into 2005 and the Bush administration's compounding woes as it suspends the writ of habeus corpus, civil liberties and adherence to Geneva Conventions with abandon. O'Donnell is very bright because he doesn't demonize Bush. Instead his book is a cautionary tale about the exponential troubles being brought upon our nation - a country founded on law -- by a president bending the rule of law to engage in unconstitutional, unlawful actions.

In his essay on "Prudence" Emerson wrote "In skating over thin ice, our safety is in our speed." That sound you hear is the ice is cracking under President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Just as I started reading this book I watched a news program give a few minutes discussion on the extension of the so called Patriots Act. I am reminded of the quotation from Benjamin Franklin, "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

It also seems that the security authorities always want more power, which they promise to not abuse. This happened when Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War. It happened in the aftermath of 9/11, and as beautifully described in this book it happened during World War II when the Germans landed eight men to sabotage aircraft plants and railway hubs in the US.

The planned acts of sabotage never happened, the eight men were captured when one of them turned himself in. Six of them were executed, the other two sentenced to long prison terms. Public opinion was strongly for this action. Legally, Mr. O'Donnell explains the situation was rather disgraceful. And this is the precedent that President Bush is using to justify his actions in detaining "enemy combatants" in Cuba.

These are strange times in which we are living, but as this book says, it isn't the first. Let's hope we pull out of this as well as we have in the past.

Pierce O'Donnell has written a find history of an attempted terrorist attack on America by Nazi Germany. He examines it from the legal side of how it was handled. In doing so he looks at the legal precedents set earlier such as those from the Civil War, and other key periods in history.

The first section of the book called "Military Necessity" covers the entire sabotage mission, from the preparation, through the operation, and finally the betrayal by one of the saboteurs which resulted in all of them men being arrested. O'Donnell does a good job of telling us about the saboteurs, why they were chosen, how they were trained, and what they did when they were in the United States.

The second section titled "The Rule of Law" covers the legal aspects of the case. It tells us why a Military trial was used, and how President Roosevelt tried to force a quick guilty verdict and execution. The best part of this section though is the details of the representation the saboteurs received from Colonel Kenneth C. Royall.

The final section is titled "A Cautionary Tale", and it covers the aftermath of the trial, as well as what happened to the key characters involved in it. It then moves on to relate the actions by President Roosevelt then to those undertaken by President Bush after the September 11th attacks. He covers the Supreme Court cases which have resulted from the administrations policies, and being a lawyer he is able to attack the actions of the administration from strong legal grounds. It is this section of the book which changes this book from a history of an event at the start of World War II, to one which has strong input into current events.

It is refreshing to read a book which touches on September 11th and the war in Iraq which doesn't resort to name calling, but rather deals with the issues intelligently, looking at historical and legal precedents. Oddly enough the strength of the book is also perhaps its biggest weakness. The legal discussion is clearly Mr. O'Donnell's strength, but it can be difficult for those without a legal background to follow. Nevertheless, this is a book which should be read

Pierce O'Donnell's "In Time of War: Hitler's Terrorist Attack on America" is a book that lets a good story be ruined by the author's biases and thinly-disguised motives for writing it. The first three-quarters is an interesting tale about the "Nazi saboteurs' trial" during World War II, while the last quarter is a diatribe against the Bush Administration's legal tactics in the current war on terror.

O'Donnell tells the story of eight German saboteurs, landed on Americans soil in 1942 by German U-Boats, on a secret mission to sabotage American industry. He tells the story of their capture (after one of the Germans turned himself in to the FBI) and their subsequent secret trial by a military commission. This story focuses on then-Colonel Kenneth C. Royall, the US Army officer detailed to defend the saboteurs. This part of the book, drawn heavily from the transcripts of the military commission and Royall's unpublished memoirs, is an easy read that is written more like a novel than history. O'Donnell tells a good story and does a good job describing the military commission and the dramas surrounding it (including the hurried Supreme Court arguments).

Although interesting and well-written, O'Donnell loses focus at times, including a detailed history of the FBI (only tangentially related to the story), a discussion of the internment of the Japanese (tangentially related to his theme but not to the story), and a long discussion on the plights of blacks in Washington, DC, during the 1940s. O'Donnell also incorrectly calls the German saboteurs terrorists (even in the title), despite the fact that these were German soldiers intending to inflict damage on the American infrastructure and thus harm the war effort. This was likely done to try to tie this story into the modern legal cases and, in the case of the title, to help market the book. However, this is an important distinction that O'Donnell never explores as he interchangeably calls them "saboteurs" and "terrorists."

O'Donnell also argues that the military commission that tried the saboteurs was unconstitutional and unjust. I found his argument unconvincing and believe that too often he viewed too much of the history of the commission through the prism of modern sensibilities. Although he briefly traced the history (and rationale behind) military commissions in America, admitted that publicly trying the saboteurs would have exposed the truth that the FBI did not break the case (thus exposing a weakness in American defenses), and admitted that the Germans never sent anymore saboteurs to America after the swift justice done to the saboteurs, O'Donnell does not believe that FDR was right in trying the saboteurs with a military commission. While O'Donnell argues the unjustness of the commission, six saboteurs wrote, "Being charged with serious offenses in wartime, we have been given a fair trial." If the condemned men, sent secretly by an enemy government to America, believe that they were given a fair trial, how can O'Donnell say that they weren't?

The last quarter of the book is of very poor quality, dated and is almost worthless. In this part, O'Donnell discusses President Bush's war on terror and the myriad of legal challenges and issues surrounding the detention of unlawful combatants at Guantanamo Bay and some other high-profile cases in the war on terror. Reading this part exposes the reason that O'Donnell wrote this book - as a thinly-veiled attack on the Bush Administration's legal tactics in the war on terror. This section is hastily put-together and already out of date. It is also lacking in O'Donnell's analysis and full of quotes and statistics from outside groups. The problem is that so many of those he quotes are partisan groups: it is difficult to give much credence to their perspective on these contentious issues - especially when O'Donnell prints a chart from "Human Rights First" that (incorrectly) states that there is no jury in American courts-martial. (There is, but it is called a "panel.")

This is a decent book about the German saboteurs' mission and the military commission that tried them in the summer of 1942. I would give the first part of the book 3 ½ to 4 stars for being a well-written, if flawed, story about this interesting and little-known episode. However, the rest of the book should be ignored - except that it exposes O'Donnell's true motive behind writing this book and explains his perspective on the German saboteurs' trial.

The first portion of this book - regarding the Nazi attack on America, is good. However, I can only imagine that the balance of this book would only be of interest to lawyers.

This book gives a fascinating account of a critical event in WW II history. You can't read this book without changing your view of FDR and J. Edgar Hoover. Colonel Major becomes my hero.

The book was presumably written solely for the purpose of attacking the Bush Presidency, rather than advancing our knowledge of a WWII event. While struggling to stay on his subject initially, he soon switches to his real reason for writing it......to attack President Bush. His choice of the flaming "liberal" Anthony Lewis to introduce his book is evidence enough as his true purpose.

There are other true historical accounts of the German landing in New York and Florida if readers are looking for an historical perspective. They won't find it in this untruthfully entitled book.