The American theater was a theater of operations during World War II including all continental American territory, and extending 200 miles (320 km) into the ocean. Owing to North and South America's geographical separation from the central theaters of conflict (in Europe, the Mediterranean and Middle East, and the Pacific) the threat of an invasion of the continental United States or other areas in the Americas by the Axis powers was negligible and the theater saw relatively little conflict. Military engagements include the Battle of the River Plate, submarine attacks off the East Coast, the Aleutian Islands campaign, the Battle of the St. Lawrence, and the attacks on Newfoundland. Espionage efforts included Operation Bolívar.
German operations
South America
Battle of the River Plate
The first naval battle during the war was fought on December 13, 1939, off the Atlantic coast of South America. The German "pocket battleship" Admiral Graf Spee (acting as a commerce raider) encountered one of the British naval units searching for her. Composed of three Royal Navy cruisers, HMS Exeter, Ajax, and Achilles, the unit was patrolling off the River Plate estuary of Argentina and Uruguay. In a bloody engagement, Admiral Graf Spee successfully repulsed the British attacks. Captain Hans Langsdorff then brought his damaged ship to shelter in neutral Uruguay for repairs. However, British intelligence successfully deceived Langsdorff into believing that a much superior British force had now gathered to wait for him, and he scuttled his ship at Montevideo to save his crew's lives before committing suicide. German combat losses were 96 killed or wounded, against 72 British sailors killed and 28 wounded. Two Royal Navy cruisers had been severely damaged.
Submarine warfare
U-boat operations in the region (centered in the Atlantic Narrows between Brazil and West Africa) began in autumn 1940. After negotiations with Brazilian Foreign Minister Osvaldo Aranha (on behalf of dictator Getúlio Vargas), the U.S. introduced its Air Force along Brazil's coast in the second half of 1941. Germany and Italy subsequently extended their submarine attacks to include Brazilian ships wherever they were, and from April 1942 were found in Brazilian waters. On 22 May 1942, the first Brazilian attack (although unsuccessful) was carried out by Brazilian Air Force aircraft on the Italian submarine Barbarigo. After a series of attacks on merchant vessels off the Brazilian coast by U-507, Brazil officially entered the war on 22 August 1942, offering an important addition to the Allied strategic position in the South Atlantic. Although the Brazilian Navy was small, it had modern minelayers suitable for coastal convoy escort and aircraft which needed only small modifications to become suitable for maritime patrol. During its three years of war, mainly in Caribbean and South Atlantic, alone and in conjunction with the U.S., Brazil escorted 3,167 ships in 614 convoys, totalling 16,500,000 tons, with losses of 0.1%. Brazil saw three of its warships sunk and 486 men killed in action (332 in the cruiser Bahia); 972 seamen and civilian passengers were also lost aboard the 32 Brazilian merchant vessels attacked by enemy submarines. American and Brazilian air and naval forces worked closely together until the end of the Battle. One example was the sinking of U-199 in July 1943, by a coordinated action of Brazilian and American aircraft. Only in Brazilian waters, eleven other Axis submarines were known sunk between January and September 1943—the Italian Archimede and ten German boats: U-128, U-161, U-164, U-507, U-513, U-590, U-591, U-598, U-604, and U-662.
By late 1943, the decreasing number of Allied shipping losses in South Atlantic coincided with the increasing elimination of Axis submarines operating there. From then, the battle in the region was lost for Germans, even with the most of remaining submarines in the region receiving official order of withdrawal only in August of the following year, and with (Baron Jedburgh) the last Allied merchant ship sunk by a U-boat (U-532) there, on 10 March 1945.
United States
Duquesne Spy Ring
Even before the war, a large Nazi spy ring was found operating in the United States. As of 2023, the Duquesne Spy Ring is still the largest espionage case in United States history that ended in convictions. The 33 German agents who formed the Duquesne spy ring were placed in key jobs in the United States to get information that could be used in the event of war and to carry out acts of sabotage. One man opened a restaurant and used his position to get information from his customers; another worked at an airline so he could report Allied ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean; others in the ring worked as deliverymen so they could deliver secret messages alongside normal messages. The ring was led by Captain Fritz Joubert Duquesne, a South African Boer who spied for Germany in both World Wars and is best known as "The man who killed Kitchener" after he was awarded the Iron Cross for his key role in the sabotage and sinking of HMS Hampshire in 1916. William G. Sebold, a double agent for the United States, was a major factor in the FBI's successful resolution of this case. For nearly two years, Sebold ran a secret radio station in New York for the ring. Sebold provided the FBI with information on what Germany was sending to its spies in the United States while allowing the FBI to control the information that was being transmitted to Germany. On June 29, 1941, six months before the U.S. declared war, the FBI acted. All 33 spies were arrested, found or pleaded guilty, and sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison.
Operation Pastorius
After declaring war on the United States following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adolf Hitler ordered the remaining German saboteurs to wreak havoc on America. The responsibility for carrying this out was given to German Intelligence (Abwehr). In the spring of 1942, nine agents were recruited (one eventually dropping out) and divided into two teams. The first, commanded by George John Dasch, included Ernst Peter Burger, Heinrich Heinck, and Richard Quirin; the second, under command of Edward Kerling, included Hermann Neubauer, Werner Thiel, and Herbert Haupt.
On June 12, 1942, the German submarine U-202 landed Dasch's team with explosives and plans at Amagansett, New York. Their mission was to destroy power plants at Niagara Falls and three Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) factories in Illinois, Tennessee, and New York. However, Dasch instead turned himself in to the FBI, providing them with a complete list of his team members and an account of the planned missions, which led to their arrests.
On June 17, Kerling's team landed from U-584 at Ponte Vedra Beach, 25 miles (40 km) south-east of Jacksonville, Florida. They were ordered to place mines in four areas: the Pennsylvania Railroad in Newark, New Jersey; canal sluices in both St. Louis, Missouri, and Cincinnati, Ohio; and New York City's water supply pipes. The team members made their way to Cincinnati and then split up, two going to Chicago, Illinois, and the others to New York. Dasch's confession led to the arrest of all of the men by July 10.
Because the German agents were captured in civilian clothes (though they had landed in uniforms), they were tried by a military tribunal in Washington, D.C., with six of them sentenced to death for spying. President Franklin D. Roosevelt approved the sentences. The constitutionality of military tribunals was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Ex parte Quirin on July 31, and the six men were executed by electrocution at the D.C. jail on August 8. Dasch and Burger were given thirty-year prison sentences because they had turned themselves in to the FBI and provided information about the others. Both were released in 1948 and deported to Germany. Dasch (aka George Davis), who had been a longtime American resident before the war, suffered a difficult life in Germany after his return from U.S. custody because he had betrayed his comrades to the U.S. authorities. As a condition of his deportation, he was not permitted to return to the United States, even though he spent many years writing letters to prominent American authorities (J. Edgar Hoover, President Eisenhower, etc.) seeking permission to return. He eventually moved to Switzerland and wrote a book, titled Eight Spies Against America.
Operation Magpie
In 1944 another attempt at infiltration was made, codenamed Operation Elster ("Magpie"). Elster involved Erich Gimpel and German-American defector William Colepaugh. Their mission's objective was to gather intelligence on a variety of military subjects and transmit it back to Germany by a radio to be constructed by Gimpel. They sailed from Kiel on U-1230 and landed at Hancock Point, Maine, on November 29, 1944. Both then made their way to New York, but the operation soon collapsed. Colepaugh lost his nerve and turned himself in to the FBI on December 26, confessing the whole plan and naming Gimpel. Gimpel was then arrested four days later in New York. Both men were sentenced to death, but eventually their sentences were commuted. Gimpel spent 10 years in prison, while Colepaugh was released in 1960 and operated a business in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, before he retired to Florida.
Nazi landings in Canada
St. Martins, New Brunswick
One month earlier than the Dasch operation (on May 14, 1942), a solitary Abwehr agent, Marius A. Langbein, was landed by a U-boat (U-213) near St. Martins, New Brunswick, Canada. His mission, codenamed Operation Grete, after the name of the agent's wife, was to observe and report shipping movements at Montreal and Halifax, Nova Scotia (the main departure port for North Atlantic convoys). Langbein, who had lived in Canada before the war, changed his mind and moved to Ottawa, where he lived off his Abwehr funds until he surrendered to the Canadian authorities in December 1944. A jury found Langbein not guilty of spying, since he had never committed any hostile acts against Canada during the war.
New Carlisle, Quebec
In November 1942, U-518 sank two iron ore freighters and damaged another off Bell Island in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, en route to the Gaspé Peninsula where, despite an attack by a Royal Canadian Air Force aircraft, it successfully landed a spy, Werner von Janowski, four miles (6.5 km) from New Carlisle, Quebec, at around 5 am on November 9, 1942.
Von Janowski arrived at the New Carlisle Hotel at 06:30 and checked in under the alias of William Brenton. The son of the hotel owner, Earle Annett Jr., grew suspicious of Von Janowski because of inconsistencies in the German spy's story and because he used an out-of-circulation note to pay his bill. When Von Janowski left for the train station, Annett followed him.
At the station, Annett alerted a Quebec Provincial Police constable, Alfonse Duchesneau, who boarded the train as it pulled away from the station and began searching for the stranger. Duchesneau located von Janowski, who said he was a radio salesman from Toronto. He stuck with this story until the policeman asked to search his bags; the stranger then confessed: "That will not be necessary. I am a German officer who serves his country as you do yourself." Inspection of von Janowski's personal effects upon his arrest revealed that he was carrying a powerful radio transmitter, among other things.
Von Janowski spent the next year as a double agent, codenamed WATCHDOG by the Allies and Bobbi by the Abwehr, sending false messages to Germany under the joint control of the RCMP and MI5, with spymaster Cyril Mills having been seconded to Canada to assist in the double cross initiative. The effectiveness and honesty of his "turn" is a matter of some dispute. For example, John Cecil Masterman wrote in The Double Cross System: "In November, WATCHDOG was landed from a U-boat in Canada together with a wireless set and an extensive questionnaire. This move on the part of the Germans threatened an extension of our activities to other parts of the world, but in fact the case did not develop very satisfactorily... WATCHDOG was closed down in the summer [of 1943]."