The Accidental History of the U.S. Immigration Courts: war, fear, and the roots of dysfunction by Alison Peck

Author:Alison Peck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

9

Reckoning

The astonishingly swift defeat of Norway, France, and the Low Countries led many in Europe and the Americas to assume that Germany must have been aided by vast numbers of undercover agents attacking from within, undetected—a fifth column. The reality was defeat of a far more ordinary and ignominious nature.

Contrary to American newspaper accounts at the time, the fifth column played little role in the invasion of Norway. In his postwar study of the Nazi fifth column threat, Dutch historian Louis De Jong reported that, in Norway, “Hitler and the generals wished to keep their plans completely secret, and this precluded making full use of any military fifth column.” Vidkum Quisling, the leader of the Norwegian national socialist movement who offered to organize internal assistance for the Nazis, was distrusted by the Nazis and written off by one official as “of no importance, held to be a dreamer of phantasy.” A plan to sabotage Norwegian railways and mines by fifth column agents was discussed, but the explosives designated for the project still sat in the German embassy in Stockholm as of the invasion on April 9. De Jong concluded that “the success of the German invasion, taking into account the too unsuspecting attitude of the Norwegians, must undoubtedly be mainly ascribed to the purely military aspect of the German operations.”1

Historians have attributed the rapid fall of France and the Low Countries to conventional military and political failures of the French and supporting British forces: aging leadership, outdated strategic thinking, slow mobilization, fragmented command structures, and lack of modern technology.2 The notion of German agents sneaking around the French hinterlands giving false orders is without support. De Jong concluded that “[i]n the French military literature on the struggle of 1940 there is not one single truly convincing Fifth Column case of this nature described.” The only fifth column activity noted in the diary of one French general was that, on his unit’s retreat from the Belgian frontier into France, he and his troops were branded as fifth columnists by a hysterical person who was promptly placed into custody.3

In Holland, the Germans did send in some troops near the border disguised as Dutch soldiers, but the uniforms were so poor (with cardboard helmets, no less) that few were fooled. De Jong did not find a single German military document referring to a fifth column in Holland. Moreover, there was not a single documented case of the Germans “dress[ing] their forces in the western part of the country in Dutch, British, Belgian or French uniforms. Nor is there any case on record in which their parachutists, airborne troops or accomplices operated in the disguise of farmers, policemen, postmen, conductors, delivery boys, priests, nuns, maid-servants or nurses.” Even the use of parachute troops was limited to a few locations.4

In the United States, the fifth column threat was almost entirely illusory. Hitler, nervous about provoking war with the United States, for which he was unprepared, ordered in April 1940 that no sabotage plans be pursued in the United States.

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