ISBN 0-275-96684-4
178 pages

Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; diagrams; Notes; Bibliography; Index

   James Duffy explains in his Introduction that this book, which began years earlier with a different focus, in 1999 morphed into a response to Patrick Buchanan's claim that during the Second World War Germany presented no threat to the United States because the Wehrmacht was incapable of invading the western hemisphere. The author suggests that he wanted to test the validity of Buchanan's statement by researching and analyzing German intentions and capabilities in that regard.
   In order to do so, Duffy first reaches back to 1897 to examine the earliest planning for a German invasion of America. These "theoretical studies" evolved through a variety of configurations, including one variant which aimed to land "several battalions of infantry and a battalion of engineers" on Long Island to assault Manhattan, and one variant designed to capture Cuba as a base for operations against the mainland. Through the final years of the nineteenth century and the earliest years of the twentieth century, according to Duffy, Germany judged the US as its most likely military opponent. In fact, a German-American naval confrontation at Manila Bay in 1898, including a shot fired across the bow of an uncooperative German cruiser, in Duffy's estimation nearly escalated into armed conflict. The remainder of the first chapter goes on to explore further German studies through World War I for an invasion of the US.
   Chapter two, quite derivative (with extensive quotes from other secondary works) and somewhat muddled (especially a confusing paragraph that seems to mingle what Hitler planned with what actually happened with what might have happened), emphasizes that by the start of the war the Fuehrer did not think highly of the US or its military potential and remained determined in the long run to defeat America. Unexpectedly, Osama Bin Laden also pops into the discussion.
   Of considerably greater interest, chapter three examines a German document from May 1942, written by Luftwaffe Colonel Dietrich Schwenke, which mostly lays out the feasibility of using long-range air transports to haul strategic materials from Japan and elsewhere in the Far East to Germany. The same document also contains sections on potential long-range bombing targets in the Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf, Northwest Africa, and North America. Duffy thoroughly inventories the 33-page plan ("I worked from a photocopy of original copy number five"), quotes the relevant section, reproduces diagrams, and reviews the list of potential targets. Based on the target list, the Luftwaffe officer who penned the document seems to have intended to slow American aircraft assembly lines by attacking aluminum production facilities and plants turning out engines and propellers. Was this merely a speculative investigation—much like the nineteenth century "theoretical studies" for an invasion of the US—or was it a high-priority reality? Duffy seems to regard it as the smoking gun which proves Hitler's intentions to attack, if not conquer, America.

   Looking back with hindsight at the goals enumerated in this plan, we can see the flaws in the plan and the extreme optimism of the men who prepared it. But, taking into consideration the perspective of men whose nation had conquered most of Europe in a short period of time, and seemed virtually invincible and capable of developing whatever technology was required for military success, it is easier to understand how they could plan to attack a nation halfway across the world, and expect to succeed.

   The next chapter reviews the Luftwaffe aircraft, real and hypothetical, designed for long range bombing. No true "America bomber" with a suitable payload and radius of action, even allowing for the possibility of refueling in the Azores, ever entered serial production. What's more, Duffy provides little discussion about American fighter defenses. As the USAAF learned the hard way, daylight strategic bombing over Germany required long-range escorts capable of accompanying the bombers and dealing with interceptors. Furthermore, the large airbases required to accommodate a force of suitable German warplanes would have become a primary target for Allied bombers. Although Duffy doesn't delve into it, producing the bombers and drawing up target lists would have been only part of a long, difficult process. The author makes no comment, but here Pat Buchanan seems to have been right when he wrote, as Duffy quotes him in the Introduction, "If Goering's Luftwaffe could not achieve air supremacy of the [English] Channel, how was it to achieve it over the Atlantic?"
   Chapter five discusses development of the V-1, devoting more pages to the US JB-2 program and in particular the efforts, largely post-war, to modify the American version of the V-1 for launching from USN surface ships and submarines. Duffy also examines the V-2 program with its advanced A9, A10, and A11 versions which eventually might have made the American East Coast vulnerable to rocket attack. He provides a couple of pages of information about American testing of captured V-2s, including a launch at sea from the aircraft carrier Midway, and mentions in passing that the Germans would also have been capable of launching V-2s against the US from surface ships, although he doesn't address the viability of getting German surface ships across the Atlantic during 1944 and 1945 when the rockets were actually ready for use.
   The author continues the theme of rockets and warships in the next chapter, beginning with the factual story of U-boat operations against the US coast and the landing of German saboteurs in Operation Pastorius. Harking back to the previous chapter, he follows with far more speculative material on the German project to tow V-2s behind U-boats and launch them from vertical, partially submerged canisters, apparently while the U-boat itself remained on the surface. Again, Duffy takes little account of the air-naval situation in the Atlantic at that time, but he seems to find it vaguely unlucky that the Germans failed conduct such launches.

   As with many of the other projects in this book, we are left to wonder just how close the Germans came to attacking an American city. If they had started Test Stand XII a year earlier, they would no doubt have been able to build and test the canisters. The real challenge would have been in getting the U-boat with its three canisters in tow across the Atlantic Ocean undetected. Yes, with a little luck it might have reached a point 100 miles off the coast, and with a little more luck might have successfully launched its missiles, but fortunately, we'll never know how much luck the mission might have had. Once launched, there was no defense against these missiles, and no way to stop them.

   Duffy looks at the imaginative but impractical suggestion for piggy-back flights of long-range aircraft carrying lighter planes to within range of New York where they would be detached to bomb the city after which the pilots would head back out to sea and parachute down to waiting U-boats for rescue. He then turns his attention to the concept of a "U-boat bridge" of mid-Atlantic submarine "milk cows" to allow seaplanes to transit the ocean, load bombs at a waiting sub off-shore, and attack New York. Again, planes would be ditched and pilots would be rescued by U-boats. In either case, for all the exertion and expenditure of resources—including the heavy requirement for U-boat support, which Doenitz would not countenance—the bombers would have been able to deliver pinpricks at most, and then only under optimal conditions. Duffy next tackles the question of the mysterious flight by a Ju 390 of KG 200 from France to the American coast in 1944. This old story has been pretty well debunked over the years (including in the new book on KG 200 by Geoffrey J. Thomas and Barry Ketley), but here it's retold in a manner that almost seems designed to leave its authenticity unsettled. ("Extensive research into this by the author proved fruitless.") The chapter continues with a few pages about the possibility of German occupation of the Azores for use as a base for attacks against North America. According to Duffy, in August 1940 Admiral Raeder believed capture of the islands was a matter of urgency. On the next page, Duffy notes that in a conference in November of the same year the admiral argued against taking the islands because "it would push Brazil, still a part of Portugal, closer to the United States." That's doubly confusing, because Raeder's change of position between August and November is never explained, and because it would seem that Raeder would have known, and Duffy might have mentioned, that Brazil actually achieved independence from Portugal in 1822. In any event, the whole issue of the Azores is better handled in both Norman Goda's Tomorrow the World and Norman Herz's Operation Alacrity.
   Chapter eight describes the futuristic "Sanger bomber." Ground breaking though design of this orbital craft might have been, there was never any chance it could have become a reality in the 1940s, and especially not in the waning days of the Third Reich. In any event, with bombing accuracy estimated at somewhere within 400 miles of the intended target, this could hardly be considered a military weapon. Duffy further reviews the possibility of Germany using South America as a base for operations against the US; much of this material emphasizes the fears and rumors that circulated during the war years rather than the true potential, or lack thereof, for such a threat. His penultimate chapter discusses various Italian schemes for using miniature subs against shipping in New York City harbor as well as their own long-range bombers against American targets.
   Duffy's book isn't without redeeming features, such as Schwenke's study. Overall, the author does a reasonable job of enumerating schemes, practical or otherwise, for attacking the US, and some readers will certainly get a big kick out of this material. Unfortunately, the book is often marred by a sensationalizing tone. Many paragraphs have been written in the style of a hyped up television "documentary" that mixes a few facts with unsubstantiated speculation when entertainment is a higher priority than reliable information. Some TV channels specialize in this kind of specious titillation: "Could these strange markings in the desert be the work of an extraterrestrial civilization? Some people think so, and we can only speculate." Duffy tends to write with the same demeanor:

   Alarms went off in early 1944 when a photo interpreter discovered that this bunker was aimed "within a half degree of the accurate Great Circle bearing on New York." The reason for this has never been explained. Also left unexplained is why the bombproof doors for this particular bunker were twice the size needed to pass an A4 through them. We are left to speculate whether this was to be the launch site for the combined A9/A10 intercontinental missile that many Germans hoped would bring the war home to America.

   Speculation is fine, but it needs to be clearly distinguished from facts, otherwise it can seem like pandering to fantasy fetishists, which might sell a few books—or spawn a TV show—but is not in the long run the best way to build a body of respectable non-fiction work. Duffy tries to resolve this dichotomy in his concluding chapter, but he continues to hedge a bit.

   We began with the question: "How close did Nazi Germany come to launching a meaningful attack on the United States?" If we define "meaningful attack" as one that would have had a significant impact on the American war effort, then the answer is that they did not even come close. But, if we define "meaningful attack" as one that had an impact on the morale of the American people, or perhaps one that demonstrated that our nation was not immune to assault by an enemy power, then perhaps they came a lot closer than we had previously believed....

   Interesting though it might be to daydream about such fantasies, it's easy to boil this down. Did Hitler want to strike the US? Yes. Were there assorted schemes of varying practicality hatched to do so? Yes. Did any of those schemes ever reach the point where there was a real chance of German bombs or missiles actually hitting the US? No. As to Patrick Buchanan's original claim—the one that put Duffy onto this subject in the first place—whatever readers might make of the man's politics and his book as a whole, Buchanan seems in this particular case to be correct that in a very narrow sense, leaving aside the long-term strategic interests of the United States, Germany—especially in the period before Pearl Harbor—did not represent a military threat to the North American mainland.
   Target America might be fine for readers who want a quick, simplistic introduction to unusual German weapon systems, but it's a book that needs to be read with critical thinking facilities fully engaged.
   Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Praeger.
   Thanks to Greenwood - Praeger for providing this review copy.