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At the time Operation Lobster was conceived, I was conducting reconnaissance missions into Russia from Poland. I had just come back from a patrol inside Russia (we had brought a very unwilling Russian infantry captain back with us) on December 1st, 1940. During the debriefing, the Colonel asked me to report to his office in the morning, he had a mission for me.

The next morning, I met with the Colonel and a major who was not introduced to me. I was therefore not really surprised when he spoke to me in English. He had a special mission for me involving great danger. The Major worked for the Abwher. He informed me that I would be a part of an assassination team that would be sent after a target in America. When I asked him who the target was, he told me that I would be informed after I joined, not before and he needed a yes or no answer right then and there. At that point I remembered the advice my father gave me when I enlisted in the army - In order to advance in rank, I should volunteer for any mission where I am asked to join. So I said yes.

Within three days I was in Bremen at an Abwher safe house where I met my two other team mates. Lieutenant Bruno Rommel was the team leader and Corporal Alex Rockwell was our third team mate. Lieutenant Rommel had just come back from sabotaging a French aircraft plant in Syria, he was also an extremely talented marksman, and he had been on the 1936 German Olympics team. Corporal Rockwell was our medic and driver. He was also an American from the George Washington Battalion, which was composed of American Nazis and captured German-American soldiers who were given the choice of being tried for treason against Germany or fighting for Germany. I was the explosives and intelligence expert. We would travel to the US via U-boat and our target was the American vice president. We had to be in the US Capital, Washington, D.C. by no later than January 18th. We would have Thompson sub machine guns and Colt automatic pistols, and a vehicle supplied by one of our spies. We were also given $80,000 in cash. We had documents identifying us as American soldiers traveling to Fort Meyer for duty. We were also given the names of several agents who we would contact for information.

We were also told that there would be two other teams in the US (we figured out that one of them would be going after the President, but we had no idea who the 3rd target was.)

Once our targets were neutralized, the Allies would be offered peace terms. The Furher believed that the leaderless Allies (which told me that the British and possibly the French were being targeted as well) would have no choice but to accept them.

We trained for three weeks and during those 3 weeks both Lieutenant Rommel and I developed a strong dislike of the corporal. We were proud German soldiers (not Nazis) and not only was Rockwell a rabid racist, but he was a fanatical Nazi. Being good soldiers, we distrusted fanatics. On December 26th; we boarded the U-88. She set sail that night and for the next thirteen days we traveled above and beneath the Atlantic. Just before 1am, January 2nd, the Captain received a message from U-Boat Command that we were in the path of an England bound convoy of over 100 ships! We were ordered to avoid it.

Our detour cost us a day and a half extra traveling. By January 8, we were off the town of Ocean View, Delaware. Since the was a US Coast Guard Base less than 30 nautical miles from where we were, the Captain wanted us off his ship right away. He would surface at midnight, we would row ashore and he would go about his business of hunting merchant ships. (1)

January 8, 1941. We landed outside of the town just before 12:30am. We encountered an American sailor and his patrol dog. Corporal Rockwell was able to distract them, while Lieutenant Rommel and I killed them. We loaded their bodies back into the raft; the sailors would dump the bodies out at sea. We walked in town, where we had the name and address of a sleeper agent. He would be waiting for us with ration cards, gas coupons and a car that would not attract any attention.

We went to the address we were given and we met our contact. He was the town sheriff, a loyal German who had come to the US in 1911 and had been actively spying ever since. He had relayed much information about the Coast Guard and American Army units that passed through the area. (2)

We were ushered into his home and fed a good breakfast. He told us that an American mechanized cavalry unit was scheduled to move through the area and that all roads would be closed to non-military traffic for the next 16 hours. During our enforced wait, we stripped and cleaned our weapons, Corporal Rockwell and I checked out the 1932 Nash Ambassador that the sheriff had gotten for us, looked over our maps and rested.
January 9, 1941. We left before dawn, we had expected a two day travel to Baltimore and then onto Washington. We had not counted on the weather and US Army. We were slowed down by a mechanized cavalry unit on maneuvers and then ran into a panzer unit engaged in war games. Four hours outside of Ocean View we ran into a snow storm, by the time we had reached the outskirts of Newark, the roads were closing because of the weather. We had no choice but to find someplace to stay.

We found a boarding house in South Orange, where the owner was willing to keep her questions to herself (for a hefty bribe). Turns out we had driven into the worst snow storm in this area since 1896. By the time it was over three days later, there was five feet of snow on the ground. The local authorities took another two days clearing the roads. We didn't leave South Orange until 9am January 14th and made our way to Washington, D.C. We pulled into town just before noon on the 16th. We found safe house in Georgetown. It was a trucking company's warehouse near the C & O Canal. We went in and called the owner of the company and he showed up 30 minutes later and gave us papers showing us to be his employees. There were a motorcycle, army jeep and a truck available for our use. He was an expendable asset. He was a Jew who had relatives still inside Germany. As long as he was helping the Fatherland, they stayed healthy.

While Corporal Rockwell stripped down the weapons and checked over the truck, both the Lieutenant and I went out to make contact with our spy inside the US Government. According to our information, she was a secretary on the staff of the Chief of Staff to the American Vice President. She too was a loyal German who had been inside the US Government since 1924. She informed me that the Vice President's residence had been damaged by the last snow storm, and that for now, he was living at the Mayflower Hotel We quickly went over to the hotel and began looking over how to hit our target.

I knew the best place to get information would be in the hotel. We split up, the Lieutenant would hang out in the bar and I would check out the rest of the building. I was able to get into some of the housekeeping and maintenance sections inside the hotel. The bar was the best place to get information. The Lieutenant was able to find out that the Vice President was up on the 10th Floor in the Imperial Suite and that inside the hotel, security around him was tight. But I was able to find out something very helpful. He and President Roosevelt were not speaking to each other and instead of going over to the White House every morning; he would usually go to his office at the Capitol Building. Most of the time he would have his driver and only 1 bodyguard and he would always leave for work at 8:00 am every day except for Sundays. All we needed now was the place.

We had several maps of Washington back at the warehouse and we went back to look them over and let Corporal Rockwell know the situation. We walked in to find Rockwell standing over the Jew's body. According to Rockwell, they had gotten into an argument and the argument had led to blows and Rockwell killed him. This was a complication that we did not need at this moment (our orders had been to kill him anyway, but at the end of the mission). His body was stuffed in to a refrigeration unit at the back of the warehouse and we went about our mission (The Lt and I decided that if Rockwell did something stupid like this again, he would die.) We poured over the maps and from the information we had gathered, we knew he usually drove down Connecticut Ave to K Street to 14th Street to Pennsylvania Ave to the Capitol Building. We decided on hitting the Vice President near Franklin Park.

We scouted out the area around Franklin Park and decided on several places where to spring the ambush. By now it was getting close to dusk and we went back to the warehouse for the night. We would make our final plans the following day. I was ordered by the Lieutenant to plan the attack and we would go over it the following day

January 16, 1941. The Lieutenant and Corporal Rockwell went out just after 8am to pick up some breakfast. I stayed behind, looking over the maps, deciding on what to do and how to do it. The plan that I came up with was simple. Corporal Rockwell would be on the motorcycle and he would follow the Vice President from his hotel. He would have a radio, 4 grenades and a Thompson. He would be dressed as a military courier (a common sight in the city). In the meantime, I would drive the truck to the park and park it alongside the road while Lt. Rommel would bring the Nash and park it a short distance away. I would place grenades in the truck and the Nash (to cover our escape). Lt. Rommel had an American sniper rifle, his Colt .45 and two grenades. I would have the other Tommy gun, some grenades, and the other radio. When the Vice President's car was close to the park, Rockwell would radio ahead. By this time, Rommel was hidden in the bushes, and I would swing the truck out in front of his car. Once the car was stopped, the Lieutenant would take out the Vice President and then I would spray the car with automatic weapons fire and finish it by throwing a grenade inside the car. Plan B was blowing up the truck first and then killing everyone we could. While the Corporal made his escape on the motorcycle, Lt. Rommel and I would get away in the Nash and make our way back to the warehouse.

From the warehouse, we were to proceed to Long Branch, NJ and we would be picked up by a U-Boat at 4am, Jan 23, 1941. The submarine would wait for 2 days and then head for home, with or without us.

January 18, 1941. We woke up to hear the news that Greece and Italy had signed a peace treaty. It turns out that the Greeks also signed a non-aggression treaty with the Reich. Good news indeed.

We left at 6:30 and we were set up by 7am. There wasn't much traffic since it was a Saturday morning. Corporal Rockwell had driven straight to the Mayflower and was waiting for the target to appear.

By 7:20am, more cars were on the road, but traffic was still light. As I was trying to "repair" my engine, a company of US troops came back out on their morning run. Another complication that we probably didn't need. As they ran out of sight, I could only hope that they were not coming back this way on their return trip.

At 7:45, Rockwell radioed that the target's car was pulling up in front of the hotel and 2 minutes later his car was on the move - followed by an army jeep with military policemen inside. This was a complication that we did not need. We did not know about the other teams had attacked their targets in London and Tripoli and that the Americans now knew something was up. Fortunately for us, Vice President Garner insisted that he go to work as usual (He told the MP Lieutenant sent to protect him that he was not scared of the Germans), instead of to the White House.
The Lieutenant and I quickly talked it over. We would go with Plan B. I would blow up the truck just as Garner's car was passing us. Traffic was still light when at 7:52, we saw Garner's car. Thirty seconds later, as his car was passing the truck, the truck blew up.

The explosion stunned Garner's driver who lost control of his car which hit a passing bus. Rommel opened up on Garner's car, and before I even fired, Rockwell was firing his Tommy gun into the MP jeep. I returned my attention to Garner's car just in time to see the Vice President die, I opened up on a soldier rushing over to the scene, killing him and scattering a bunch of civilians. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Corporal Rockwell go down, I didn't see who had shot him, but it was time to leave. We had completed our mission - the Vice President of the United States was dead (hopefully President Roosevelt was dead too).

I tossed a smoke grenade to give us some cover and yelled at Lt. Rommel to head for the car, I looked over at Rockwell expecting to see his body. I was surprised to see him standing up but moving towards the fallen soldiers. I was shocked and outraged when he started shooting each fallen soldier in the head. I screamed at Rockwell to head back to the rendezvous when I heard a bullet fly by my head and into Rockwell's head. I turned around and saw the Lieutenant lower his rifle.

Rushing back to the car, I found that Lt. Rommel had taken a bullet to his left arm, but was otherwise ok. As we drove away, someone opened up on us with a rifle, shattering the back window and planting a bullet in the roof beside my head.
By 8:30am we were back at the warehouse. With the damaged Nash and the dead Jew, we couldn't stay for long (on the way back, we had heard over the radio that the local military commander, had ordered his units to full alert, that the civilian population should not worry, this was just an exercise.). (3)

I patched up the Lieutenant's arm and we changed into our US Army uniforms. We were now 2 Military Police sergeants with orders taking us to New York City. I set the timers for the dynamite I had planted and we left just before noon, the explosives would go off at 2pm.
We left Georgetown heading towards McLean, Virginia. We took the Arlington Bridge, passing through 2 separate roadblocks, our documents getting us through each time. Traffic was moving slowly, but we reached Rockville, Maryland just after 3pm. We listened to ABC Radio announce that Vice President Garner had died in an automobile accident while observing the military exercises in Washington. We decided that we should put as much distance between Washington and us as possible before stopping for the night.

We stopped for the night in Federal Hill, Maryland, close to the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. We simply rented a room at a bed and breakfast and went to sleep. We had had an exhausting day. The FBI had a lot of information. They had recovered Rockwell's body and they had seized the warehouse intact, the timer turned out to be a dud. They had descriptions of the three men who stayed at the warehouse for several days. They had quietly put out a nationwide manhunt for us.

January 19, 1941. We were woken up at 5am by pounding on the door. The Lieutenant opened the door to see the town sheriff standing there. Law enforcement officials up and down the Eastern Seaboard had been ordered to check out strangers in their areas and report back on any suspicious behavior back to the FBI.

We showed our identifications to the sheriff who appeared satisfied with our answers. As he was leaving, he noticed some bloody bandages that we had changed on the Lieutenant's arm. The sheriff went for his gun as Rommel grappled with him. I had no sooner leapt towards them when the gun went off; I was rather surprised to see the Lieutenant fall to the ground. I knocked the sheriff down onto the ground where I was able to crush his windpipe, unable to breath; he died a minute or so later. The Lieutenant was still breathing when I got to him, but I could see that he was dying. He told me that my mission was to make it back to Germany, that I was to inform his wife and parents that he had died doing his duty and that he was proud of what he had done.

I tied up the B&B owner (killing her would be pointless), grabbed Lt. Rommel's body and drove to a nearby Lutheran church. I carried his body inside and laid him on a pew and left. I had a U-boat to catch. (4)

Noon, January 22, 1941. I was outside of Trenton. It had been a rough couple of days. I had had four separate run ins with the FBI or local law enforcement, I had killed 3 men while getting away. I had briefly considered surrendering, but considering that I had just killed their Vice President, plus a number of others, plus the fact that I had worn a US Army uniform, well I did not want to be shot as a spy. I didn't have any information on German agents in the area, so for now I was on my own. As I sat in the car that I had stolen last night, I was listening to the noon news on CBS radio, by order of the President, the coastal areas of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and Pennsylvania were now classified as restricted military areas. Only local residents and those persons on official government travel were authorized to be in those areas. I was trapped. I needed someplace to think things over.

That someplace turned out to be a small hotel near the Trenton Train station. After grabbing a bunch of train schedules, I went to my room to ponder my situation. I did have an ace up my sleeve. We had friends in the Russian Military Government and we were provided with documents identifying us as Russian Consular officials, which meant we had diplomatic immunity. The only problems were 1) no one in the Russian Foreign Ministry knew about us and b) the Russian diplomats here in the US were still loyal to Stalin and would denounce us as spies. But the Russian embassy in Ottawa was loyal to the Russian Military Government and probably would help, so I needed to get to Canada. We had not taken the documents with us when we killed Garner, so Rockwell didn't have his on him when he died and I burned Rommel's after he died, so I just had mine. The thing to do was to get to a port and book passage to Portugal or Spain.

After pouring over the schedules, I decided that my best option would be to catch a train to Morristown, NJ and from there travel to Erie on the Morristown and Erie Railway. From Erie I could travel to Buffalo and then onto Toronto. From Toronto I could go to Halifax where I could catch a ship to Spain or Sweden.

I checked out of the hotel the next morning and booked a ticket to Morristown. Enroute to Morristown, I went into the Men's Lavatory and destroyed all but the Russian documents. Several hours later, the train pulled into the Morristown train station and I quickly got tickets that would take me straight through to Toronto.

I made friends with an American woman reporter for the New York Times who was traveling to Halifax. She was going to England to report on the US Army there. She was interested in Russia and even spoke some of the language and she was looking to learn more, so I offered to be her teacher. I knew that the Americans would probably be looking for a single military age male traveling alone, so she would be the perfect cover for me. Sure enough, just outside of Buffalo, 2 men in army uniforms came through the train car. They stopped and talked to the five single men traveling alone. I was speaking in Russian to my "student" and they walked right on by us.

The Canadian immigration officials took one look at my "diplomatic" passport and moved on. It was so easy I couldn't actually believe it. A week after the death of the American Vice President, I was in Halifax booking passage on a Swedish freighter. Sixteen days later (and numerous U-boat scares) my freighter pulled into Gothenburg. I immediately went to the German consulate. After my credentials were confirmed by the Abwher, I was flown directly to Berlin.

I was decorated by the Furher himself with the Knight's Cross with Swords and feted as a hero. But not for long, we were still looking to invade Russia and I was needed back in the field. (5)

1. The U-88 was sunk four days later off of Norfolk, VA.

2. Six months later his cover was blown, Sheriff "James Alexander" was arrested and tried by military court-martial. He was found guilty and executed August 6, 1941. His real identity has never been discovered.

3. Brigadier General Frederick Benteen III was the Commanding General of the Military District of Washington.

4. Lieutenant Bruno Rommel was quietly buried at the Fort McNair cemetery. His remains were disinterred and returned to Germany in 1951. He was posthumously award the Knights Cross and Swords. Corporal Alex Rockwell was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in southern Virginia on orders from President Roosevelt. He had been positively identified as an American last seen in Germany before the war.

5. At first the US Government denied that Vice President John Nance Garner had been assassinated. The truth came to light after the war when Sergeant Burkhalter was arrested by the US Army and charged with spying and assassination of the Vice President. Only when numerous senior American and British special operations commanders interceded on his behalf were charges dropped. He was forbidden to enter the US or US territory for his lifetime, if he violated those conditions, he would be tried for his crimes.

With the exception of Burkhalter's mission, Operation Lobster was a failure.

Stay tuned Jan, that will be revealed.


Burkhalter's grand daddy and daddy were the general officers, his older brothers did indeed become officers (the eldest dying during the Battle of France). Burkhalter when he was a younger lad, tended to be a bit of rebel and was deemed unsuitable officer material.