George John Dasch (7 February 1903 – 1 November 1991) was a German agent who landed on American soil during World War II.

He was assigned to the 5th Composite Group in Honolulu, and served with the 72nd Bombardment Squadron, but after a year he bought himself out and received an honorable discharge.

At that time Dasch was trying to gain entry back into the United States, but it was denied by J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI.

[citation needed] Dasch and the others were trained for espionage activities in a school run by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German High Command, on an estate at Quenz Lake, near Berlin.

They received three weeks of intensive sabotage training, and were instructed in the manufacture and use of explosives, incendiary material and various forms of mechanical, chemical, and electrical delayed timing devices.

On 26 May 1942, Dasch and his team (Ernest Peter Burger, Heinrich Harm Heinck, and Richard Quirin) left by submarine from Lorient, France.

By the time an armed patrol could reach the site, the four Germans had taken the Long Island Rail Road train from the Amagansett station into Manhattan, where they checked in to a hotel.

A search of the beach revealed concealed explosives, timers, blasting caps, incendiary devices, cigarettes, and the naval uniforms.

He eventually talked to one of his compatriots, a naturalized American citizen named Ernst Peter Burger, about defecting to the United States.

He revealed that the goals of the sabotage program had been to disrupt war industries and launch a wave of terror by planting explosives in railway stations, department stores, and public places.

The FBI withheld the true circumstances of their arrest prior to the trial of the eight men, including the fact that they did not actually consummate their plans of sabotage.

[4] Dasch, Ernest Peter Burger, and six others – Edward John Kerling, Heinrich Harm Heinck, Richard Quirin, Werner Thiel, Hermann Otto Neubauer, and Herbert Hans Haupt (who had landed in Florida to meet with Dasch and Burger) – were tried by a military commission appointed by President Roosevelt on 8 July 1942.

FBI Director Hoover and Attorney General Biddle appealed to President Roosevelt, who commuted the sentence to life imprisonment for Burger, and thirty years for Dasch.