Biographical Record Of The Lutheran Theological Seminary At Philadelphia 1864 1962

One man could have enabled the most audacious terrorist threat against America prior to 9/11 and helped the Nazis win World War II—the Nazi spy pastor, Carl Krepper. His riveting story brings to light a forgotten chapter in the history of the Second World War. As America continues to wrestle with issues surrounding the threat of sabotage and terrorism, this eye-opening work details a very real threat faced by our country in the Second World War, and the key aspects of the underground war that was fought in this country by Nazi agents. The Nazi Spy Pastor: Carl Krepper and the War in America presents the fascinating true story of a secret plot to be executed on American soil—a German sabotage operation with intended targets in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Illinois. This book chronicles, for the first time, the remarkable life of Carl Krepper—naturalized American citizen, Lutheran pastor, and the Nazi deep-cover operative who could have made possible the greatest terrorist threat on American soil prior to the attacks on September 11th. Historian J. Francis Watson draws on newly declassified archival and documentary materials to tell the full story of how a devoted clergyman lost his way and betrayed his calling, instead advocating an ideology that supported genocide and the deaths of innocent victims in America, and how he came to play a key role in the Pastorius sabotage plot. The book covers fascinating cloak-and-dagger details of submarine infiltrations, safe houses, and secret codes, detailing Krepper's life, his work as a Nazi agent, and the FBI sting operation that finally brought about his arrest in December of 1944. This little-known, real-life espionage story will serve students of World War II history and appeal to readers interested in immigration and the integration of immigrant populations as well as the histories of New York and New Jersey.

More Americans trace their ancestry to Germany than to any other country. Arguably, German Americans form America's largest ethnic group. Yet they have a remarkably low profile today, reflecting a dramatic, twentieth-century retreat from German-American identity. In this age of multiculturalism, why have German Americans gone into ethnic eclipse--and where have they ended up? Becoming Old Stock represents the first in-depth exploration of that question. The book describes how German Philadelphians reinvented themselves in the early twentieth century, especially after World War I brought a nationwide anti-German backlash. Using quantitative methods, oral history, and a cultural analysis of written sources, the book explores how, by the 1920s, many middle-class and Lutheran residents had redefined themselves in "old-stock" terms--as "American" in opposition to southeastern European "new immigrants." It also examines working-class and Catholic Germans, who came to share a common identity with other European immigrants, but not with newly arrived black Southerners. Becoming Old Stock sheds light on the way German Americans used race, American nationalism, and mass culture to fashion new identities in place of ethnic ones. It is also an important contribution to the growing literature on racial identity among European Americans. In tracing the fate of one of America's largest ethnic groups, Becoming Old Stock challenges historians to rethink the phenomenon of ethnic assimilation and to explore its complex relationship to American pluralism.