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    Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America
    Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America
    Dark Invasion: 1915: Germany's Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America
    Audiobook10 hours

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

    Written by Howard Blum

    Narrated by Pete Larkin

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Combining the pulsating drive of Showtime's Homeland with the fascinating historical detail of such of narrative nonfiction bestsellers as Double Cross and In the Garden of Beasts, Dark Invasion is Howard Blum’s gritty, high-energy true-life tale of German espionage and terror on American soil during World War I, and the NYPD Inspector who helped uncover the plot—the basis for the film to be produced by and starring Bradley Cooper.

    When a “neutral” United States becomes a trading partner for the Allies early in World War I, the Germans implement a secret plan to strike back. A team of saboteurs—including an expert on 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, factories, livestock, and even captains of industry like J. P. Morgan.

    New York Police Inspector Tom Tunney, head of the department’s Bomb Squad, is assigned the difficult mission of stopping them. 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 more dangerous than he suspected.

    Full of drama and intensity, illustrated with eight pages of black and-white photos, Dark Invasion is riveting war thriller that chillingly echoes our own time.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 11, 2014
    ISBN9780062332790
    Author

    Howard Blum

    Howard Blum is the author of the New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award–winner American Lightning, as well as Wanted!, The Gold of Exodus, Gangland, The Floor of Heaven, In the Enemy's House, and most recently, The Spy Who Knew Too Much. Blum is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair. While at the New York Times, he was twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. He is the father of three children, and lives in Connecticut. 

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    Reviews for Dark Invasion

    4.5/5

    15 ratings8 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Another of the fascinating stories that gets lost in the bigger narrative of World War I. The extent of German espionage and destruction in the United States before the formal American entry into the war was substantial. This included introducing the anthrax virus into American animal populations. This is an interesting whodunit narrative of the New York City detective, Tom Tunney, who assembles a group of undercover operatives committed to breaking the spy ring and halting their carnage.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book reads like fast-paced fiction and I didn't want to put it down. I knew about the RMS Lusitania of course and the plot to have Mexico invade the United States as part of Germany's war strategies but I wasn't aware of the assassination attempt on J.P. Morgan, all the ship bombs, and land based explosions that were going on. Woodrow Wilson's staff were beside themselves with frustration in his not wanting to believe that a "civilized" nation could commit such acts. I did think it was fitting that the doctor who was cultivating glanders and anthrax should in the end die of the Swine Flu that swept the globe during WWI
    • 4/5
      Fascinating account of the first case of terrorism in American history, and it was not September 11, 2011. Woodrow Wilson, a pacifist and our president was attempting to keep us out of the war that was beginning in Europe. A war that began after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. As the war was being waged the Germans believed they could wage war on US soil and keep us in fear of jumping into the war including stopping our help with munitions, horses and food to our allies. A variety of tactics were used and all just led us closer to helping our Allies, including bio terrorism, instead of scaring us from entering the war.

      I loved the quote at the beginning of the book by the then Police Commissioner, Arthur Woods, who said, "The lessons to America are clear as day. We must not again be caught napping with no national intelligence organization. The several Federal bureaus should be welded into one, and that one should be eternally and comprehensively vigilant."

      Unfortunately, we still have not learned anything from history and it will continue to repeat itself. The same thing police Commissioner Woods said in 1919 rang true when it was repeated again after September 11 in the commissioned report after the terrorist attack.

      Well written reading like a mystery thriller with many intersecting characters.
    • 4/5
      I won this book in a GoodReads first reads giveaway.

      While this is a subject I had known next to nothing about prior to reading the book, I am always in the lookout for an engaging historical narrative, and Dark Invasion provided an entertaining read.

      The book's focus is fairly narrow, focusing mainly on the German Spy/Saboteur ring operating in and around New York City in the year prior to the United States entering World War One. Howard Blum has put together a great spy story from a vast array of first hand accounts, memoirs, and contemporaneous accounts. The book follows the investigations of Tom Tunney, who headed the New York City Bomb Squad, and is tasked with tracking down the web of conspirators responsible for bombing allied ships, setting fire to munitions factories, and attempted assassinations.

      The intrigue is satisfyingly convoluted, and several threads, seeming disparate at the start, weave together to show just how vast and far reaching Germany's efforts at sabotage in America were.

      This glimpse at how big the web really was keeps the book from seeming overly narrow. As Blum's history unfolds, we follow the spy network in its attempts to prod Mexico into invading the US, to engage in germ warfare, to undermine the manufacture and supply of munitions, among other plots. We also see the effects these efforts have on the tortured decision to bring America into WWI, and the mighty efforts President Woodrow Wilson made (some might say, against all sense) to keep the country out of the war.

      Overall, this is in interesting and engaging historical narrative, well executed and highly readable. I would recommend it for any history buff, not just war- or WWI scholars.
    • 5/5
      Engaging and well-written account of Germany's sabotage efforts in the United States in the 1914-1917 period, largely from the perspective of the NYPD squad that tried to run down the conspirators. Interestingly, while some plans aren't covered in detail (such as the 1916 Black Tom explosion, covered deeply in Jules Witcover's book), other plots, like plans to poison horses with germs, and the "cigar bomb" plots, are covered in deep detail that you don't see in many other places. The illustrations are well-chosen, since they largely show the players involved. Recommended as a good read.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating, I had no idea Germany had so many active agents in the US before and during WWI
    • 4/5
      Narrater did an excellent job.
      Rated a 4.3.
      I r
    • 4/5
      Apart from the 1916 explosion at the Black Tom munitions plant in New Jersey, a surprisingly minor part of this book, German covert operations in America during World War One have largely been forgotten. They included attempted assassination, physical and economic sabotage, and even biological warfare. It’s not that these events were unknown. Blum’s narrative, as suspenseful as a novel, is largely based on the memoirs of the Germans and Americans involved. Blum resurrects this history and puts it in the context of the current War on Terror with his protagonist, Captain Tom Tunney, head of New York City’s Bomb and Neutrality Squad, being dubbed as, effectively, America’s first head of Homeland Security.His cast of characters – and this book opens with a helpful listing of them since there are so many – includes German diplomats Johann von Bernstorff and Franz von Papen, Franz von Rintelen (sent over to rectify the shortcomings of the diplomats), a former German infantry man on the Western Front turned saboteur, a German-American chemist, a medical doctor turned biowarfare specialist, and, most bizarrely of all, an ex-Harvard professor wanted for the murder of his wife.Though the outlines of this story, apart from the biological warfare (which did result in American deaths though horses, a vital war resource exported to the Allies, were the target), were known to me through G. J. A. O’Toole’s Honorable Treachery, I appreciated this book. It not only shows the counterespionage activities against the Germans that existed outside the Federal government, but it also shows how espionage operations can be affected by contingencies of fortune and personality. One agent’s cheapness results in a major breach of operational security. The resentment of another recruit, over not being paid, points to another major operative in the German network. Blum also details what for me, apart from the biological warfare, was the most interesting part of the story: German financial sabotage through the creation of fake companies to divert munitions from the allies and the creation of fake labor unions to disrupt production.A major part of the story is the evolution of Tunney’s work from simply preventing anarchist bombings and getting criminal convictions toward the more nebulous activity of operating in the context of international espionage. He and his men proved, due to their experience in undercover operations, surprisingly inventive at interrogations and deceptions to get information out of suspects. Wiretaps were also used.Blum also shows the frustrations of the Germans which motivated their covert war against a country they regarded as anything but neutral. Their own ships were impounded in American harbors at the beginning of the war – thus supplying a wealth of maritime personnel willing to aid sabotage on American soil. While the American government proclaimed that Germany could certainly buy American munitions and other supplies, in fact, due to the British naval blockade, it was only an option on paper. All the while, the US continued to sell to the Allies and loan them money when needed. It was no wonder the Germans felt compelled to engage in sabotage, unlimited submarine warfare, and, most fatally of all for the sake of German-US relations, incite Mexico to invade the United States.Since Blum keeps a suspense novelist’s tight focus on his characters, he can be forgiven for a too simplistic explanation for the origins of World War One. Why the war happened is really not that important to his story. Though he wants us to consider this early war on terror in the context of our own, Blum doesn’t really touch the issue of dual loyalties. The German military certainly found a lot of recruits among American citizens. While the large majority of German-Americans remained loyal, certainly many had sympathies with Germany and aided it when asked. How many more would have aided it if asked? The latter question is, of course, beyond the scope of Blum’s book, but, given that he’s the one that brought up the analogy between our time and 1915, the problem of dual loyalties with Moslem Americans comes to mind. Another question brought to mind, again outside of the scope of Blum’s intent, is how much the commission of sabotage by German Americans influenced the Roosevelt Administration’s decision to inter Japanese-Americans.Those are relatively minor quibbles. Anyone looking for murder and mayhem and cat-and-mouse games of espionage in a setting old enough to be exotic, modern enough to be easily understood, will appreciate this book.