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]."
German landings in Newfoundland
==== Weather Station Kurt, Martin Bay ==== Accurate weather reporting was important to the sea war, and on September 18, 1943, U-537 sailed from Kiel, via Bergen, Norway, with a meteorological team led by Professor Kurt Sommermeyer. They landed at Martin Bay, a remote location near the northern tip of Labrador on October 22, 1943, and successfully set up an automatic weather station ("Weather Station Kurt" or "Wetter-Funkgerät Land-26"), despite the constant risk of Allied air patrols. The station was powered by batteries that were expected to last about three months. At the beginning of July 1944, U-867 left Bergen to replace the equipment, but was sunk en route. The weather station remained at the site until it was recovered in the 1980s and placed in the Canadian War Museum.
U-boat operations
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean was a major strategic battle zone (the "Battle of the Atlantic") and when Germany declared war on the U.S., the East Coast of the United States offered easy pickings for German U-boats (referred to as the "Second Happy Time"). After a highly successful foray by five Type IX long-range U-boats, the offensive was maximized by the use of short-range Type VII U-boats, with increased fuel stores, replenished from supply U-boats called Milchkühe (milk cows). From February to May 1942, 348 ships were sunk, for the loss of two U-boats during April and May. U.S. naval commanders were reluctant to introduce the convoy system that had protected trans-Atlantic shipping and, without coastal blackouts, shipping was silhouetted against the bright lights of American towns and cities such as Atlantic City until a dim-out was ordered in May. The cumulative effect of this campaign was severe; a quarter of all wartime sinkings – 3.1 million tons. There were several reasons for this. The American naval commander, Admiral Ernest King, as an apparent anglophobe, was averse to taking British recommendations to introduce convoys, U.S. Coast Guard and Navy patrols were predictable and could be avoided by U-boats, inter-service co-operation was poor, and the U.S. Navy did not possess enough suitable escort vessels (British and Canadian warships were transferred to the U.S. east coast).
U.S. East Coast
Several ships were torpedoed within sight of East Coast cities such as New York and Boston. The only documented World War II sinking of a U-boat close to New England shores occurred on May 5, 1945, when the German submarine U-853 torpedoed and sank the collier Black Point off Newport, Rhode Island. When Black Point was hit, the U.S. Navy immediately chased down the sub and began dropping depth charges. In recent years, U-853 has become a popular dive site. Its intact hull, with open hatches, is located in 130 feet (40 m) of water off Block Island, Rhode Island. A wreck discovered in 1991 off the New Jersey coast was concluded in 1997 to be that of U-869. Previously, U-869 had been thought to have been sunk off Rabat, Morocco.
==== U.S. Gulf of Mexico ==== Once convoys and air cover were introduced in the Atlantic, sinking numbers were reduced and the U-boats shifted to attack shipping in the Gulf of Mexico. During 1942 and 1943, more than 20 U-boats operated in the Gulf of Mexico. They attacked tankers transporting oil from ports in Texas and Louisiana, successfully sinking 56 vessels. By the end of 1943, the U-boat attacks diminished as the merchant ships began to travel in armed convoys. In one instance, the tanker Virginia was torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine U-507 on May 12, 1942, killing 26 crewmen. There were 14 survivors. Again, when defensive measures were introduced, ship sinkings decreased. U-166 was the only U-boat sunk in the Gulf of Mexico during the war. Once thought to have been sunk by a torpedo dropped from a U.S. Coast Guard Utility Amphibian J4F aircraft on August 1, 1942, U-166 is now believed to have been sunk two days earlier by depth charges from the passenger ship SS Robert E. Lee's naval escort, the U.S. Navy sub-chaser, PC-566. It is thought that the J4F aircraft may have spotted and attacked another German submarine, U-171, which was operating in the area at the same time. U-166 lies in 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of water within a mile (1,600 m) of her last victim, Robert E. Lee.
Canada
From the start of the war in 1939 until VE Day, several of Canada's Atlantic coast ports became important to the resupply effort for the United Kingdom and later for the Allied land offensive on the Western Front. Halifax and Sydney, Nova Scotia, became the primary convoy assembly ports, with Halifax being assigned the fast or priority convoys (largely troops and essential material) with the more modern merchant ships, while Sydney was given slow convoys which conveyed bulkier material on older and more vulnerable merchant ships. Both ports were heavily fortified with shore radar emplacements, searchlight batteries, and extensive coastal artillery stations all manned by RCN and Canadian Army regular and reserve personnel. Military intelligence agents enforced strict blackouts throughout the areas and anti-torpedo nets were in place at the harbor entrances, making a direct attack on those facilities unfeasible because it was impossible for Germany to provide air support. Even though no landings of German personnel took place near these ports, there were frequent attacks by U-boats on convoys departing for Europe once these had reached the mouth of the St. Lawrence. Less extensively used, but no less important, was the port of Saint John which also saw matériel funneled through the port, largely after the United States entered the war in December 1941. The port's location within the protected waters of the Bay of Fundy made it a difficult target for attack. The Canadian Pacific Railway mainline from central Canada (which crossed the state of Maine) could be used to transport in aid of the war effort. Although not crippling to the Canadian war effort, given the country's rail network to the east coast ports, but possibly more destructive to the morale of the Canadian public, was the Battle of the St. Lawrence, when U-boats began to venture upriver and attack domestic coastal shipping along Canada's east coast in the St. Lawrence River and Gulf of St. Lawrence from early 1942 through to the end of the shipping season in late 1944. From a German perspective, this area contained most of the military assets in North America that could realistically be targeted for attack, and therefore the St. Lawrence was the only zone that saw consistent warfare—albeit on a limited scale—in North America during World War II. Residents along the Gaspé coast and the St. Lawrence River and Gulf of St. Lawrence were startled at the sight of maritime warfare off their shores, with ships on fire and explosions rattling their communities, while bodies and debris floated ashore. The number of military losses is not known, although loose estimates can be made based on the number of surface units and submarines sunk.
==== Newfoundland ==== Five significant attacks on Newfoundland took place in 1942. On 3 March 1942, U-587 launched three torpedoes at St. John's; one hit Fort Amherst and two more hit the cliffs of Signal Hill below Cabot Tower. In autumn, German U-boats attacked four iron ore carriers serving the DOSCO iron mine at Wabana on Bell Island in Newfoundland's Conception Bay. The ships SS Saganaga and SS Lord Strathcona were sunk by U-513 on 5 September 1942, while SS Rose Castle and P.L.M 27 were sunk by U-518 on 2 November with the loss of 69 lives. After the sinkings, the submarine fired a torpedo that missed its target, the 3,000-ton collier Anna T, and struck the DOSCO loading pier and exploded. On 14 October 1942, the Newfoundland Railway ferry SS Caribou was torpedoed by U-69 and sunk in the Cabot Strait south of Port aux Basques. Caribou was carrying 45 crew and 206 civilian and military passengers. One hundred thirty-seven lost their lives, many of them Newfoundlanders. Half a dozen U-boat wrecks lie in waters around Newfoundland and Labrador, destroyed by Allied patrols.
Caribbean
A German submarine shelled the American Standard Oil refinery at the San Nicolas harbour and the "Arend"/"Eagle" Maatschappij (from the Dutch/British Shell Co.) near the Oranjestad harbour situated on the Island of Aruba (a Dutch colony) and some ships that were near the entrance to Lake Maracaibo on February 16, 1942. Three tankers, including the Venezuelan Monagas, were sunk. A Venezuelan gunboat, General Urdaneta, assisted in rescuing the crews. A German submarine shelled the island of Mona, some 40 miles (64 km) from the main island of Puerto Rico, on March 2. On 15 May 1943, CS-13, a Cuban Navy patrol boat, sank the German submarine U-176 northeast of Havana. U-176, a Type IXC U-boat commanded by Kapitänleutnant Reiner Dierksen, had sunk 11 Allied ships before entering Cuban waters while tracking a convoy. While escorting merchant vessels, CS-13, under Ensign Mario Ramírez Delgado, detected the submarine using sonar provided through U.S. military cooperation. After confirming the contact, the Cuban crew launched depth charges, successfully destroying the U-boat with all 53 crew members aboard.
==== Central America ==== Before 1941, the Central American nations had various diplomatic ties with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, they declared war on the Axis nations. The Central American nations joined the Allied side, broke diplomatic relations with the Axis nations, and initiated persecutions of German and Italian immigrants. During the course of the war, several merchant ships were sunk in the Caribbean by German submarines, for example the Tela, a Honduran cargo ship sunk by U-504 in 1942. This led the country to carry out constant air patrols over the coasts under fear of the approach of more German submarines or the general fear of an attack by Germany. Other Central American cargo ships sunk by U-boats are the Olancho, the Comayagua, and the Bluefields, of Honduran and Nicaraguan origins. Central American volunteers in the United States Army participated in both the European and Asia Pacific theater.
Japanese operations
Aleutian Islands campaign
Before Operation MI could be carried out, the Japanese decided to take the Aleutian Islands. On June 3–4, 1942, Japanese planes from two light carriers Ryūjō and Jun'yō struck the U.S. against the city of Unalaska, Alaska, at Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. Originally, the Japanese planned to attack Dutch Harbor simultaneously with its attack on Midway, but the Midway attack was delayed by one day. The attack only did moderate damage on Dutch Harbor, but 43 Americans were killed and 50 others wounded in the attack. On June 6, two days after the bombing of Dutch Harbor, 500 Japanese marines landed on Kiska, one of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. Upon landing, they killed two and captured eight United States Navy officers, then seized control of American soil for the first time. The next day, a total of 1,140 Japanese infantrymen landed on Attu via Holtz Bay, eventually reaching Massacre Bay and Chichagof Harbor. Attu's population at the time consisted of 45 Alaska Native Aleuts and two white Americans – Charles Foster Jones, a 60-year-old ham radio operator and weather observer, and his 62-year-old wife Etta, a teacher and nurse. The Japanese killed Charles Jones after interrogating him, while Etta Jones and the Aleut population were sent to Japan, where 16 of the Aleuts died, and Etta survived the war. A year after Japan's occupation of Kiska and Attu, U.S. troops invaded Attu on May 11, 1943 and successfully retook the island after three weeks of fighting, killing 2,351 Japanese combatants and taking only 28 as prisoners of war at the cost of 549 lives. Three months later, on August 15, U.S. and Canadian forces landed on Kiska expecting the same resistance as at Attu; they later found the entire island empty, as most of the Japanese forces secretly evacuated weeks before the landing. Despite enemy absence on the island, over 313 Allied casualties were sustained nonetheless through car accidents, booby traps, land mines, and friendly fire, in which 28 Americans and four Canadians were killed in the exchange of fire between the two forces.
=== Submarine operations === Several ships were torpedoed within sight of West Coast Californian cities such as Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and Santa Monica. During 1941 and 1942, more than 10 Japanese submarines operated on the West Coast and Baja California. They attacked American, Canadian, and Mexican ships, successfully sinking over 10 vessels, including the Soviet Navy submarine L-16 on October 11, 1942.
Bombardment of Ellwood
The continental United States was first shelled by the Axis on February 23, 1942, when the Japanese submarine I-17 attacked the Ellwood Oil Field west of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, California. Although only a pumphouse and catwalk at one oil well were damaged, I-17 Captain Nishino Kozo radioed Tokyo that he had left Santa Barbara in flames. No casualties were reported, and the total cost of the damage was officially estimated at $500–1,000. News of the shelling triggered an invasion scare along the West Coast.
==== Bombardment of Estevan Point Lighthouse ==== More than five Japanese submarines operated in Western Canada during 1941 and 1942. On June 20, 1942, the Japanese submarine I-26, under the command of Yokota Minoru, fired 25–30 rounds of 5.5-inch shells at the Estevan Point lighthouse on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, but failed to hit its target. Though no casualties were reported, the subsequent decision to turn off the lights of outer stations caused difficulties for coastal shipping activity.
