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| Nazi Saboteurs On Trial: A Military Tribunal And American Law (Landmark Law Cases and American Society) | 
 enlarge | Author: Louis Fisher
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $14.98
You Save: $0.97 (6%)
Buy New/Used from $7.98
Avg. Customer Rating:  (2 reviews)
Sales Rank: 670718
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2 Updated
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 183
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5
ISBN: 0700613870
Dewey Decimal Number: 345.730264
EAN: 9780700613878
ASIN: 0700613870
Publication Date: June 2, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
The 9/11 attacks were not the first operations by foreign terrorists on American soil. In 1942, during World War II, eight Germans landed on our shores bent on sabotage. Caught before they could carry out their missions, under FDR's presidential proclamation they were hauled before a secret military tribunal and found guilty. After the Supreme Court's emergency session upheld the tribunal's authority, six of the men were executed. Louis Fisher chronicles the capture, trial and punishment of the Nazi saboteurs in order to examine the extent to which procedural rights are suspended in time of war. One of America's leading constitutional scholars. Fisher analyzes the political, legal, and administrative context of the Supreme Court decision "Ex parte Quirin (1942), reconstructing a rush to judgement that has striking relevance to current events. Fisher contends that the German's constitutional right to a civil trial was hijacked by an ill-conceived concentration of power within the presidency, overriding essential checks from the Supreme Court, Congress, and the office of the Judge Advocate General. He reveals that the trials were conducted in secret not to preserve national security but rather to shield the government's chief investigators and sentencing decisions from public scrutiny and criticism. Thus, the FBI's bogus claim to have nabbed the saboteurs entirely on their own was allowed to stand, while the saboterus' death sentences were initially kept hidden from public view. Fisher also takes issue with the Bush administration's mistaken citing of "Exparte Quirin as an "apt precedent" for trying suspected al Qaeda terrorists. Concisely designed for students and general readers, thisnewly abridged and updated edition provides a cautionary tale as our nation struggles to balance individual rights and national security, as seen most clearly in the recent Supreme Court decisions relating to Yaser Esam Hamdi, Jose Padilla, and the "detainees" at Guantanamo.
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| Customer Reviews:
 highly relevant, esp. to legal scholars October 3, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The previous review is right on; I would add that this book is succinct, and the prose is clear and laypersons should find it understandable. Indeed, laypeople might want to understand the problems that this 60-year-old case poses to our society now. The 9/11 attack and the subsequent Bush Administration order creating special military tribunals -- "military commissions" of the type that tried the 1942 saboteurs -- has inspired several new books on this incident. Mr. Fisher's book distinguishes itself in focusing on the legal importance of this case -- that became the Supreme Court's Ex Parte Quirin ruling. Quirin is still important case law in questions of special tribunals and wartime detention of enemy suspects. Further, and Mr. Fisher brings this out, the Bush Administration's tribunal system seems to be patterned on FDR's.
I recommend this and Louis Fisher's 2005 work, Military Tribunals and Presidential Power to those interested in post-9/11 legal issues.
 Were Nazi saboteurs mistreated? May 22, 2003
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
REVIEWED BY PHILIP GOLD http://www.washtimes.com/books/
The Congressional Research Service, part of the Library of Congress, is filled with people who do fine work. Among the best is Louis Fisher, legal scholar and CRS senior specialist in Separation of Powers. Mr. Fisher combines a plain, effective style with a mature analytic sense. The result has been over three decades of books and studies that - blessings upon the taxpayer - actually inform and affect the real world. "Nazi Saboteurs on Trial," which Mr. Fisher intends as a prelude to his definitive history of American military tribunals, is only the latest example.
This short, meticulously researched monograph assesses one of the stranger legal escapades of World War II. The facts of the case are not in question. What matters is how the military and civilian court systems performed, the interaction of the executive and judicial branches, and whether that episode should or could serve as precedent for the trial of terrorists and other "unlawful combatants" by military means.
Mr. Fisher's answer: While such types do not and should not enjoy automatic access to the U.S. civilian court system and its protections, the use of military tribunals raises questions that cannot and should not be ignored.
The facts of the case are these.
In the 1941 "Sebold Affair," the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with the help of William Sebold, a German turned American counterspy, rolled up over 30 Nazi agents. Adolf Hitler, perturbed, demanded that English-speaking saboteurs be dispatched to America, there to smash factories and railroads and Jewish-owned department stores, spread panic, and generally make themselves a nuisance. German intelligence, the Abwehr, didn't think much of the idea, but deemed it prudent to keep the Fuhrer happy.
So they went out and recruited the original Gang that Couldn't Shoot Straight: eight Germans who had lived in the United States (two of them naturalized citizens), but had returned to Germany in the '30s for various reasons. None was the brightest tree in the forest; group cohesion and mutual trust might be described as negative, at best. Still, the eight were given a few weeks' training, then toted aboard two submarines.
In June, 1942, one group landed in New Jersey, the other in Florida. They came ashore in German uniforms, which would give them combatant status in case of immediate capture. They then changed into civvies, buried their tradecraft, and walked off with not much more than their ample moneybelts and orders to win one for the Fuhrer.
They were apprehended quickly, mostly because one of their number, George Dasch, called the FBI to let them know they'd arrived. Perhaps none of the men intended actually to commit any sabotage. None did. But that didn't keep six of them from the electric chair that August, and two others from life sentences.
Justice, such as it was, came swiftly and questionably. President Franklin Roosevelt, taking a grim special interest in the case, determined to try them by secret military tribunal. He appointed the members and decreed himself the sole reviewing authority. Further, the tribunal would not be a standard court martial, governed by the Articles of War and other legislation. It would be an ad hoc commission, governed by the "laws of war" (a nebulous category) and empowered to make such procedural changes as it deemed expedient.
Among them: Although civilian and military courts could not impose the death penalty for actual acts of sabotage, this tribunal could, and did, for acts that were never committed, and may never have been intended.
Clearly, this setup raised numerous questions regarding the separation of powers, military jurisdiction in time of war, and of fundamental fairness. One of the defense attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court, which effectually evaded the issue until after the executions, then issued its opinion in Ex Parte Quirin - a document that did nothing for the luster of the Court, then or since.
In essence, concludes Mr. Fisher, the Supreme Court functioned as "an arm of the executive." It reaffirmed that enemy combatants have no constitutional right of access to civilian courts; that the two citizens had forfeited their citizenship by taking up arms; and that when they took off their uniforms, they became "illegal combatants" who could have been shot out of hand, but who were graciously afforded a trial.
Finally, the Court held that it could not assess the trial itself, since that was secret.
In sum, a mixed set of precedents, ranging from common sense to dereliction of duty. And the question arises - will we be able to learn from the affair to make the handling and disposition of terrorists and other "illegal combatants" both more effective and more just?
Or will we be fortunate even to do as well?
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