Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War \u0026 the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America by Howard Blum

Dark Invasion 1915: Germany's Secret War \u0026 the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America Reviews

• 
  Ray

  When I read a non-fiction book, the more interesting facts I learn, the more I like it. This is especially true if the book covers a topic I arrogantly think I'm already familiar with. "Dark Invasion" did an excellent job of covering both of those areas for me.
  
  Similarly, when I read fiction, such as a spy novel, the intrigue, the cleverness of the spies, and the obstacles they face all have to be believable and challenging for me to enjoy it. Once again, "Dark Invasion" did that job brilliantly.
  
  I would assume that many people, like myself, think of the attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon on 9/11 as the first and only large scale terrorist attacks against our Country. I certainly had never known about use of biological agents used against our Country during World War I, or the widespread planting of bombs and incendiary devices on weapon and supply ships heading to England and France, or the millions of dollars in damages caused by bombs planted in munitions depots in the U.S prior to our entry into the War.
  
  Yet, as Howard Blum tells us, all those things took place, as a German spy network was quite active in the New York, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. area. The challenge to identify the people behind these mysterious happenings was more daunting by the fact that the Country had no Agency in place equipped to ferret out the culprits. We know of the Department of Homeland Security formed after 9/11, but in the early part of the 20th Century, the spy hunting was left to local policemen, working without FBI labs, eavesdropping devices, aerial surveillance, and other modern crime fighting techniques. That alone made Blum's book fascinating, introducing us to the small New York City police squad tasked with putting all the pieces together. Having a good guy to root for, who had to depend solely on his instincts and hard work, made this book of non-fiction read like a good spy thriller.
  
• 
  J.S.

  Although President Wilson was determined to remain neutral when the first World War broke out in Europe, the nation's "neutrality" was mostly one-sided. Even if America didn't officially take sides, huge amounts of munitions and weapons were sold to the Allies (Britain enforced a sea blockade, preventing any possibility of trade with Germany). And as German frustration mounted, they began a secret campaign of sabotage against American ships. Inventive cigar-shaped incendiaries and bombs attached to ship's rudders crippled or destroyed ships when they were far from land and sent bullets that would have been fired at German soldiers instead to the bottom of the sea. A bomb blew up in the U.S. Capitol and an assassin tried to kill J. P. Morgan, whose support for the Allies was never in doubt. German spies even initiated germ-warfare against America, all in an attempt to keep America out of the war.
  
  We tend to think terrorism directed at America started with the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. But even before the "infamy" of Pearl Harbor, America was secretly attacked on her own soil by an enemy nation. Howard Blum has pieced together the plots and intrigue of Germany at the beginning of WWI, and it's a lot more extensive that most people realize, and it goes far beyond blowing up the munitions depot at Black Tom, NJ. Blum's "hero" in the story is NYPD Inspector Tom Tunney, who was charged with finding out who was responsible for the ship fires. Blum tells the story in a novel-like way that highlights the action of the story without bogging it down with too many details. Still, there's a lot of information in his narrative - so much that it runs over 400 pages, and sometimes I felt it grew a little tedious. Tunney isn't the most heroic figure either, and he seems to have always been a step or two behind the bad guys (although I'm not faulting him - his was a near impossible task), and President Wilson is portrayed as simple and only looking for excuses to keep his head in the sand. But it's a good story, and I appreciated the many period photos of the people and places.
• 
  Lynn

  
  Today's nonfiction book is Dark Invasion: 1915 Germany's secret war against America by Howard Blum. It is 512 pages long including notes and index. It is published by HarperCollins. The story is told from journals, interviews, and recent conversations with the people involved to the silent author; it is third person close. There is language, talk of sex, and violence in this book. Because of content 16 and up just to be safe. The cover has a newspaper on it with the title and author name overlaid on it. There Be Spoilers Ahead.
  
  
  
  From the back of the book- When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War 1, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs- including an expert of germ warfare, a Harvard professor, and a brilliant, debonair spymaster- devise a series of “mysterious accidents” using explosives and biological weapons to bring down vital targets such as ships, livestock, and even captains of industry such as J. P. Morgan.
  The New York police inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department's bomb squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping these enemy agents. Assembling a team of loyal operatives, the cunning Irish Cop hunts for the conspirators among a population of more than eight million Germans. But the deeper he finds himself in this labyrinth of deception, the more Tunney realizes that the enemy's plan is far more complex and dangerous than he first suspected.
  Full of drama and intensity, and illustrated with photographs throughout, Dark Invasion is a riveting nonfiction war thriller that chillingly echoes our own time
  
  
  
  Review- This book is fascinating and I just could not put it down. The overall plot is pretty simple. Stop America from entering the war. But the execution is so much more complicated. Germany sends and uses some smart people who in turn use dumb people to get the job done. This is the story about the first known Anti-America spy-ring and the first homeland security trying to find them. All of the people are interesting. Tunney is smart and determined to stop the deaths. The German's are just loyal followers to the Fatherland and everyone else is caught between them. The scope of Germany's plans to terrorize America is frightening. The will to serve and destroy is really scary. As I was reading all the things that happened I just kept thinking “Why wasn't I taught any of this in school?”. Because I knew nothing about it at all. If you want an eye-opening and exciting war read, I highly recommend this book.
  
  
  
  I give this book a Five out of Five. I get nothing for this review and I was given this book as a free ARC in exchange for my honest review.
  
• 
  Carolyn Fitzpatrick

  Technically this book is "history," but I've labeled it historical fiction because the author was including so many details of his own invention - personal thoughts, emotions, etc. It reads more like history than fiction. But he is definitely walking on the line.
  
  Blum tells a story of coordinated German sabotage in the US from 1914-17. It isn't really terrorism. The agents worked for the German government and their goal was to operate in secret. They wanted the problems they caused to be dismissed as accidents. Causing panic among Americans is the opposite of what they wanted to accomplish, because it would have brought the US into the war sooner.
  
  There are a few places where I wish that Blum had been more specific. He talks about the plan to bring reserve officers to Germany using fake passports. He says that the plan was discovered, but makes it sound like at least some officers were able to sneak out of the US. No specific number is mentioned though. Similarly, when he discusses the attempt to spread anthrax among horses awaiting shipment to the Allies, he says that four people die in Virginia but not the number of horses who died - which was their actual goal.
  
  Blum says briefly that additional German cells were created in New Orleans, San Francisco, and Baltimore, but rather than include events there the focus remains on the NYPD efforts to find them, with each tiny lead being described in minute detail. The book would be better if German efforts in other US cities were included. Or if the focus is on NYC exclusively, the book could be cut down to half its length.
• 
  Sarah

  How had I never heard of any of this? It seemed not only like an important part of history, but fascinating tale! I mean, I figured there was some German espionage and/or sabotage, but this was much more than I was aware! I vaguely remember something about an attempt on JP Morgan, but I did not recall it having to do with the Germans. The covert activities of the German spy ring and the NY police unit trying to capture them was well told in this book, reading more like a cloak and dagger spy novel than a history book. Some of the successes and failures were crazy and sometimes it was hard to believe this was nonfiction. I will definitely be reading another by this author and hoping for a repeat performance!
• 
  Brian

  Howard Blum’s book Dark Invasion covers the time from just before World War 1 though the conclusion of World War 1 and focuses on the efforts of Germany to seed disruption and terrorism in the United States. The book also follows a New York Police inspector who acted as a homeland security expert tracking down saboteurs and spy rings before groups like the FBI would be tasked with doing so. A German diplomat set up a ring of saboteurs and spies aimed at spreading anti-British propaganda, disrupting war supplies, and even assignation against JP Morgan. In a story that is almost to surreal to be true the author takes us through the events that led up to one of the most bizarre attempts by a nation to undermine another during war time. For those who are interested in World War 1 they will not be disappointed in this book. It is written as a spy thriller with great twists and turns as the drama unfolds. It is a startling look at the danger of neutrality and the blindness that Wilson clung to in order to maintain it. Overall very well written and a must read for those interested in the World War 1 era.
• 
  Roger

  Have read many times about Germany's attempts to prevent the US from supplying the Britian and France in WW1. This book details the depths of the German efforts lead by the German ambassador to the US! Author Blum tells of the efforts of Captain Tom Tunney's of the New York City Police Department and his small squad of detectives to thwart the German sabatouge efforts and the German plans to wage chemical war on the US population and the animals being supplied to the Allies. The Federal government had almost non existant law enforcement divisions to stop the Germans. Thus, Capt. Tunney and the NY Police almost single handed stopped the Germans The book is complete with lots of colorful participants on both sides. Dark Invasion at times reads like fiction. It is hard to believe some of the German "schemes" to stem the US's assistance to the Allies. A well written book that holds you in suspence like a novel would!! Highly recommended for the history buff on a chapter of US history that is not well known. Very enlighting.
• 
  Sara G

  This is the true story of German secret agents and saboteurs in the US during WWI prior to the US entering the war. It's a fascinating story and it really reads like a novel. Basically, President Wilson was determined that the US would remain neutral, but American business and shipping interests were allowing the Allies to purchase war supplies from the US and have them shipped across the Atlantic. Germany obviously didn't like this. We all know the story of the Lusitania, which was torpedoed for similar reasons later on, but who knew that Germany had a spy network to sabotage outgoing ships?
  
  The "good guy" narrative focuses mainly on the New York City bomb squad and one of its detectives, Tom Tunney. I was struck by his obvious intelligence and ingenuity throughout the book. The German agents were more varied and there were a lot of them. It was a little confusing to keep up with each person and what they were doing, but it's understandable since there was so much going on. Bombings, attempted assassinations, and germ warfare are all mentioned.
• 
  Ryan Hannay

  Fascinating story of WW1 espionage. I knew a little about this topic, but had no idea the extent of the German infiltration of America. Really intricate plots designed to disrupt supplies to the allies all while deflecting suspicion and thus America's entrance into the war. Equally interesting are the detectives involved in uncovering this network of spies, and the methods they use are no less devious.
  
  Still, I would have liked some follow up at the end. It's a common nonfiction courtesy. What happened to all these people after the war? Don't make me get sucked into a wikipedia wormhole...
• 
  Lindsey

  This book is fascinating. I had never heard of or had any idea that German terror cells had infiltrated the United States during WWI. The parallels between then and now are stunning. I think the author put it best when he writes "in one large and affecting way, little has changed over the past one hundred years for the officers who are responsible for defending our sprawling republic." What an eye opener this book is. Wow!
• 
  Jan

  I consider myself a WWI buff and yet somehow, I'd never heard of ANY of this before. The extent of Germany's sabotage campaign against the USA (waged for years before the US entered the war) was truly shocking to me. I have to admit I was a little bit impressed, too. These were some very creative terrorists. This book is a page-turner simply because you want to know what they came up with next.
  
  I will say I found the details a bit tedious at times. Also, I really wish this book had an epilogue so I knew what happened to Tom Tunney and von Rintelen and all the rest after the war. But overall, I thought this was a great effort from Blum, who also wrote one of my favorite non-fiction books of all time (American Lightning).
• 
  Marianne

  I so disliked this book that I had to force myself to finish it for two reasons: (1) I wanted the historical content; (2) it was for a nonfiction book club where I knew we'd discuss our opinions about this genre of fictionalized nonfiction, history as spy thriller, etc. Frankly, I understated my first sentence. I hated this book. To be fair to the author and those who like this style of nonfiction, I should say "I hate this genre" and because of that I hated the book. Blum did his research -- four years' worth -- so why RUIN it with this melodramatic, even silly, true-crime narrative? I felt Capt. Tom Tunney and the U.S. agents were trivialized as Keystone Kop-like characters. The saboteurs' damage and the investigators' tenacity were actually lost in this genre, muffled by the cloak-and-dagger prose. To maintain false suspense with cliff-hanger chapters, Blum jumps from character to character, and insists on beginning each chapter with sentences like "So-and-So felt unusually chipper that November morning as he skipped down the steps of his walkup and walked out onto the rain-streaked sidewalk, ready to meet his new cohort in crime." (I made that one up.) The text jumped around so much I gave up trying to keep everything straight. If you read his Note on Sources, you'll see what this book could have been -- a gripping history as well as an illuminating essay on fighting terrorism in different eras. This was REALLY serious sabotage, people, but in Dark Invasion you think you're reading just a rip-roarin' tale.
• 
  Bob H

  A fast-paced, tautly-written story of German clandestine warfare in US territory during the period, 1914-1917, when the US had not yet declared war, formally, and yet was under secret attack. Anyone familiar with this dark period, as I am, will recognize the characters -- Ambassador Bernstorff, military attaches von Papen and Boy-Ed, spymasters Dr. Albert and von Rintelen, British intelligence agent Guy Gaunt. We see, 100 years ago, the frontline role the NYPD served even then. The work of Captain Tom Tunney and his detectives gets a more vivid telling in this book than in past accounts of German sabotage.
  
  Mr. Blum's research seems to have been thorough, and he's done well to extract this story from the dull and often dense post-war investigations and hearings (see, e.g., Henry Landau's
  The enemy within: the inside story of German sabotage in America, which centers mainly on the hearings in the 1920s and 1930s).
  
  We also get a sense, at the end, why a peace-seeking statesman like Woodrow Wilson would finally seek a declaration of war. The submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram seem to be provocations, certainly, but given this amount of German sabotage -- acts of war, really -- this book explains much.
• 
  Darren

  Okay, I have to start out by saying I am a bit biased in this review; I LOVE history. What I love even more is learning something new about something we think we know. The subject this time around? World War I.
  The year is 1915 and America is not in the war. President Wilson is doing everything in his power to keep America out of the war. What he does not know is there are German spies on American soil; spies who are employing saboteurs to damage or destroy American ships that carry supplies to Allied troops. The saboteurs are succeeding.
  Enter NYPD Detective Tom Tunney. He is the lead of the bomb squad and given the task of stopping the saboteurs before more damage is done. Tunney gets a team together and the game of Cat and Mouse begins. For each step closer they get knocked back two on many occasions.
  Then the Germans up the game and start germ warfare on American soil. The intent is to poison horses and mules that are headed to Europe to help the allies.
  This book fires on all cylinders. It is a history that reads like a modern day thriller. As I read this book, I could not help but see the similarities between the world of World War I and the world of today. This is a must read.
  
• 
  Thom

  Fictionalized account of the efforts by German secret agents to undermine US support for the Allies in World War I. The "first terrorist cell" of the subtitle seems like a stretch - this group was funded by Germany and there were covert terrorists and anarchists long before 1915.
  
  Focuses mostly on three stories - fires on American ships delivering materials to the Allies; a murderer who planted a bomb in the capitol building and attacked JP Morgan Jr.; and a group trying to infect horses headed for Europe with glanders and anthrax. The last was the least covered, with many hints in the final chapter that the full story came out in litigation after the war - it would have been appropriate to have the full story here.
  
  All three tales are intermingled to add "page-turning pace" but this really didn't work for me. One example - the story of Muenter's attack on Morgan mentions that after the attack there was an increased mistrust of Germans. What the author doesn't mention is that the well-publicized sinking of the Lusitania two months earlier probably had a lot more to do with anti-Germanic feelings. Dates were elsewhere ignored to my irritation.
  
  I understand the individual threads have all been published elsewhere. I would recommend reading those instead of this.
• 
  David

  Dark Invasion tells the story of German sabotage efforts in the US during the early (pre-US declaration of war) days of World War I, and the efforts to track down and neutralise these German efforts. Since one of the main German strategies was to place bombs on munition ships heading to the Allies, and there was apparently no US federal agency able or willing to lead, the hero on the US side was Tom Tunney, head of the New York City police bomb squad.
  
  On the one hand, the book tells a story that is not well-known. While the author doesn't come right out and say it, one can assume that the story was actively repressed because US President Wilson wanted to stay neutral in the war. Also, some information isn't revealed in the narrative until it was available to Tunney, which lends an air of mystery to it. So it's recommended for these reasons.
  
  However, on the other hand, at times I found the chronologies difficult to follow and at others, it seemed as some things were being glossed over or skipped. This makes it difficult for me to give it a higher rating. But this is a strong three stars.
• 
  Bob

  Before the US entered WW-I, German agents conducted massive sabotage acts designed to prevent munitions from reaching Britain. The Germans planted delayed action fire bombs on ships, bombed munitions plants, and tried to start a Mexican war with the US. They even set off a bomb in the US Capitol building, and shot JP Morgan in a murder attempt.
  
  Pres Wilson desperately tried to keep the US out of the war but finally had to concede there was no alternative other than to fight. He did not know that German agents were growing anthrax -- in a basement about 6 miles from
  The White House - to do biological warfare in a big way.
  
  If the Germans would have resisted the temptation to commit acts of terrorism, and if they had not sunk the Lusitania and other US vessels, maybe America would not have declared war on them. On the other hand, if Germany would had the sense not to start the war in the first place, everybody in Europe would have been far better off.
  
  Interesting that only a short time ago, Germany booted out a US guy for spying.
• 
  Ruth

  I will be honest. I did not read this book. Here's the first sentence. "If Eric Muenter hadn't walked across the Harvard campus to Emerson Hall on that wet February day in 1906 to borrow a book, he would never have seen the student pull the short-barreled black revolver from his pocket, aim, and just as his arm was grabbed, fire. And then things might have been different."
  Dum de dum dum.
  I hate this kind of writing. I wish Blum would have gone to a different creative writing class, because this paragraph is an example of everything I dislike about how some people write.
  If you like it, great. It will work out well for you.
• 
  Andy

  Blum's book Dark Invasion, a nonfiction account of German sabotage in the United States during WWI, reads more like a fiction thriller. If I didn't know the setting (and I definitely didn't know the story) I would think it was fiction after all.
  
  I hemmed and hawed over the five stars, because Blum's background as a newspaper reporter almost makes the book too punchy. But, that is what makes it so readable. Makes me want to read up on the conundrum German-Americans faced during World War I, to understand this story and my family history a little better.
• 
  Melinda

  An interesting book. Never really had the war from this perspective. Told from different POV - and from different countries - Germany, New York...police, medicos...good stuff.
• 
  Andy

  The facts are interesting but the non-fiction novel format didn't work very well for me.
• 
  Dan Keefer

  World War I is a perplexing war to understand. With WWII there is Hitler and Pearl Harbor, but WWI started with an entanglement of treaties and eventually led the majority of the world into a witch's brew of machismo, nationalism and "The enemy of my friend is my enemy." taken to a murderous degree.
  
  Woodrow Wilson, the US President in 1914, was a bit of a pacifist and isolationist and held back America from the war . . . kind of. While America was technically neutral, the non-German and Irish communities were torn. The Anglophiles of America strongly backed the Allies with large numbers of dollars and materials used to by the Allies to fight Germany and their allies.
  
  America's neutrality was easily seen through when the leaders claimed that they would have also sent materials to Germany, but Germany had no means to get those materials to the Fatherland. England had the greatest navy in the world and used that navy to block all shipments headed to their enemies. Of course, Americans knew this, and rather than choose to send materials to neither side, they used this lame excuse to covertly support the Allies, with whom they were obviously aligned.
  
  In my opinion, the Germans were left with little choice. They had to stop materials from getting to England and France to tilt the scales for evenly . . .
  
  This fine book of history written to be read as well as studied, tells all about how the Germans used ambassadors, longshoreman, and everything in between to destroy ships on the high seas that were headed for the Allies. Their work expand from there.
  
  This interesting network of saboteurs included high society German immigrants as well as Irish working men who hated the English for their treatment of Ireland.
  
  In that there was no real federal investigation bureau to investigate the growing number of explosions and fires at sea, it was left largely to the New York City Police Department to get to the bottom of this destruction.
  
  The details of both the Germans hard at work and the NYCPD hard at work to stop them are fascinating. Those interested in WWI, spies or just a good mystery story will love this book.
• 
  Stuart Bobb

  This is almost a "4" star book for me - it falls short because while well executed, I am not sure I'm a fan of the "detective story" style of history writing. If you like that style, you will truly love this book, I think.
  
  The story was eye opening in many ways and while it didn't spend much time on the one thing I thought it would cover in depth (sabotage at Black Tom munitions depot), it did a great job of giving you a flavor of the complexities of being a "neutral" in a world war and how a sabotage network has to operate. It is very relevant in the sense that the next great act of foreign (or domestic!) sponsored sabotage is probably on its way and it must be nerve-wracking for those charged with trying to "sniff out" what's coming next.
  
  One other thought this book provided to me - and I word this carefully, I hope - was that I gained some insight on the Japanese American internment of WWII (not covered in this book, of course). I had largely assumed that the fears of sabotage after Pearl Harbor were purely a cover for racist jingoism and that the internment could largely be answered with the word "bigotry".
  
  I had not fully appreciated that a very real sabotage network by a particular ethnic group within the US was an established event and that the internment concerns had some roots in real, previous behavior. I did not realize the depth and breadth of German interference prior to America entering the war.
  
  To be clear, what some Germans did in 1915 does not in *anyway* justify what was wrongfully done to Americans of Japanese descent 25 years later. Even so, this book made me realize that the actual fears of sabotage rings orchestrated by a foreign government were not entirely groundless. The solution was utterly wrong, but the perceived risk itself was not entirely hysterical - it had happened before.
• 
  David

  Today we are all too familiar with the idea of terrorism and plots to cause panic through various means such as bombings, shootings, germ warfare, and more. But over a hundred years ago America was already dealing with terrorist plots sponsored by Germany leading up to WWI in order to intimidate us into staying out of the coming war. Their embassador to the US had assembled and financed a team of espionage agents in the US, many of German descent, including military officers, a germ warfare expert, a bomb technician, a Harvard professor, and a document forger. They conspired to set off explosions in the New York area as well as rigging explosives that would sink ships on their way to England with war supplies. New York Police Department captain Tom Tunney frantically tried to discover the causes of these terror attacks being like David determined to find and bring down the German Goliath. One of the attacks involved sneaking into holding pens with horses ready to be shipped to England and swabbing germ-laden cloths in their nostrils to contaminate them with a deadly virus that would then spread throughout the herd. Fortunately, the germ material had mostly expired because it wasn't applied soon enough. But they were responsible for sinking several ships as well as blowing up warehouses and other targets. In Dark Invasion 1915, the author details the efforts by the New York Police Department to unravel this plot, identify the players, and bring them to justice in one of America's first encounters with a national security threat and terrorism that most American's today are not aware of. Well written account of historical events that essentially backfired and did not keep the US out of the war.
• 
  Gary

  This book is about a very interesting time in our American history about which I knew very little. I was surprised to learn that foreign espionage was so hard at work (although a bit inept, at times) on our shores prior to our involvement in WWI. Having not read much about that period of time in US history, and the struggle by President Wilson to keep us out of the war, I find that I will now need to dig in a bit deeper to understand a more about this country at that time. With German ancestors, I find it interesting to consider what they may have been feeling or doing at this time in history - were they approached by German nationalist to undermine the US government or at least demonstrate in the streets on behalf of the Fatherland.
  
  I found the book well written and capable of keeping my attention even through some of the tedium of providing the backstory on some of the characters and their circumstances. I am a sucker for mystery novels and this one held me equally captive. I was quite impressed with Tom Tunney's incredible tenacity and investigatory skills. It makes one wonder what kind of a career he had in the military after the NY bomb squad was rolled into the Army after the US entry into WWI.
  
  A very enjoyable read.
• 
  MaryCatherine

  An example of an excellent historical thriller. This is a riveting telling of German espionage in America prior to our involvement in World War One. The author is a master storyteller who keeps the reader fascinated from beginning to end with a tale of saboteurs, spies, bomb-builders, poisoners, and even a wife-murdered turned bomber! I had never heard anything about most of these plots, such as infecting horses being shipped to the Allies with disease that also resulted in mysterious deaths here in America. Until the United States entered the war, these German sabotage efforts continued, mostly undetected, and with relative success, despite quiet efforts to infiltrate and detect the operators, who were coordinated by German diplomats and agents. If you have enjoyed other historical accounts, such as Erik Larson's books, you would most likely enjoy this book.