Dark Invasion audiobook

When I read a non-fiction book, the more interesting facts I learn, the more I like it. This is especially true if the book covers a topic I arrogantly think I'm already familiar with. "Dark Invasion" did an excellent job of covering both of those areas for me. Similarly, when I read fiction, such as a spy novel, the intrigue, the cleverness of the spies, and the obstacles they face all have to be believable and challenging for me to enjoy it. Once again, "Dark Invasion" did that job brilliantly.I would assume that many people, like myself, think of the attack on the World Trade Towers and Pentagon on 9/11 as the first and only large scale terrorist attacks against our Country. I certainly had never known about use of biological agents used against our Country during World War I, or the widespread planting of bombs and incendiary devices on weapon and supply ships heading to England and France, or the millions of dollars in damages caused by bombs planted in munitions depots in the U.S prior to our entry into the War. Yet, as Howard Blum tells us, all those things took place, as a German spy network was quite active in the New York, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. area. The challenge to identify the people behind these mysterious happenings was more daunting by the fact that the Country had no Agency in place equipped to ferret out the culprits. We know of the Department of Homeland Security formed after 9/11, but in the early part of the 20th Century, the spy hunting was left to local policemen, working without FBI labs, eavesdropping devices, aerial surveillance, and other modern crime fighting techniques. That alone made Blum's book fascinating, introducing us to the small New York City police squad tasked with putting all the pieces together. Having a good guy to root for, who had to depend solely on his instincts and hard work, made this book of non-fiction read like a good spy thriller.

How had I never heard of any of this? It seemed not only like an important part of history, but fascinating tale! I mean, I figured there was some German espionage and/or sabotage, but this was much more than I was aware! I vaguely remember something about an attempt on JP Morgan, but I did not recall it having to do with the Germans. The covert activities of the German spy ring and the NY police unit trying to capture them was well told in this book, reading more like a cloak and dagger spy novel than a history book. Some of the successes and failures were crazy and sometimes it was hard to believe this was nonfiction. I will definitely be reading another by this author and hoping for a repeat performance!

Have read many times about Germany's attempts to prevent the US from supplying the Britian and France in WW1. This book details the depths of the German efforts lead by the German ambassador to the US! Author Blum tells of the efforts of Captain Tom Tunney's of the New York City Police Department and his small squad of detectives to thwart the German sabatouge efforts and the German plans to wage chemical war on the US population and the animals being supplied to the Allies. The Federal government had almost non existant law enforcement divisions to stop the Germans. Thus, Capt. Tunney and the NY Police almost single handed stopped the Germans The book is complete with lots of colorful participants on both sides. Dark Invasion at times reads like fiction. It is hard to believe some of the German "schemes" to stem the US's assistance to the Allies. A well written book that holds you in suspence like a novel would!! Highly recommended for the history buff on a chapter of US history that is not well known. Very enlighting.

Fascinating story of WW1 espionage. I knew a little about this topic, but had no idea the extent of the German infiltration of America. Really intricate plots designed to disrupt supplies to the allies all while deflecting suspicion and thus America's entrance into the war. Equally interesting are the detectives involved in uncovering this network of spies, and the methods they use are no less devious.Still, I would have liked some follow up at the end. It's a common nonfiction courtesy. What happened to all these people after the war? Don't make me get sucked into a wikipedia wormhole...

This book is fascinating. I had never heard of or had any idea that German terror cells had infiltrated the United States during WWI. The parallels between then and now are stunning. I think the author put it best when he writes "in one large and affecting way, little has changed over the past one hundred years for the officers who are responsible for defending our sprawling republic." What an eye opener this book is. Wow!

A fast-paced, tautly-written story of German clandestine warfare in US territory during the period, 1914-1917, when the US had not yet declared war, formally, and yet was under secret attack. Anyone familiar with this dark period, as I am, will recognize the characters -- Ambassador Bernstorff, military attaches von Papen and Boy-Ed, spymasters Dr. Albert and von Rintelen, British intelligence agent Guy Gaunt. We see, 100 years ago, the frontline role the NYPD served even then. The work of Captain Tom Tunney and his detectives gets a more vivid telling in this book than in past accounts of German sabotage.Mr. Blum's research seems to have been thorough, and he's done well to extract this story from the dull and often dense post-war investigations and hearings (see, e.g., Henry Landau's The enemy within: the inside story of German sabotage in America, which centers mainly on the hearings in the 1920s and 1930s).We also get a sense, at the end, why a peace-seeking statesman like Woodrow Wilson would finally seek a declaration of war. The submarine warfare and the Zimmermann Telegram seem to be provocations, certainly, but given this amount of German sabotage -- acts of war, really -- this book explains much.

Okay, I have to start out by saying I am a bit biased in this review; I LOVE history. What I love even more is learning something new about something we think we know. The subject this time around? World War I.The year is 1915 and America is not in the war. President Wilson is doing everything in his power to keep America out of the war. What he does not know is there are German spies on American soil; spies who are employing saboteurs to damage or destroy American ships that carry supplies to Allied troops. The saboteurs are succeeding.Enter NYPD Detective Tom Tunney. He is the lead of the bomb squad and given the task of stopping the saboteurs before more damage is done. Tunney gets a team together and the game of Cat and Mouse begins. For each step closer they get knocked back two on many occasions.Then the Germans up the game and start germ warfare on American soil. The intent is to poison horses and mules that are headed to Europe to help the allies.This book fires on all cylinders. It is a history that reads like a modern day thriller. As I read this book, I could not help but see the similarities between the world of World War I and the world of today. This is a must read.

Blum's book Dark Invasion, a nonfiction account of German sabotage in the United States during WWI, reads more like a fiction thriller. If I didn't know the setting (and I definitely didn't know the story) I would think it was fiction after all.I hemmed and hawed over the five stars, because Blum's background as a newspaper reporter almost makes the book too punchy. But, that is what makes it so readable. Makes me want to read up on the conundrum German-Americans faced during World War I, to understand this story and my family history a little better.

World War I is a perplexing war to understand. With WWII there is Hitler and Pearl Harbor, but WWI started with an entanglement of treaties and eventually led the majority of the world into a witch's brew of machismo, nationalism and "The enemy of my friend is my enemy." taken to a murderous degree.Woodrow Wilson, the US President in 1914, was a bit of a pacifist and isolationist and held back America from the war . . . kind of. While America was technically neutral, the non-German and Irish communities were torn. The Anglophiles of America strongly backed the Allies with large numbers of dollars and materials used to by the Allies to fight Germany and their allies.America's neutrality was easily seen through when the leaders claimed that they would have also sent materials to Germany, but Germany had no means to get those materials to the Fatherland. England had the greatest navy in the world and used that navy to block all shipments headed to their enemies. Of course, Americans knew this, and rather than choose to send materials to neither side, they used this lame excuse to covertly support the Allies, with whom they were obviously aligned. In my opinion, the Germans were left with little choice. They had to stop materials from getting to England and France to tilt the scales for evenly . . . This fine book of history written to be read as well as studied, tells all about how the Germans used ambassadors, longshoreman, and everything in between to destroy ships on the high seas that were headed for the Allies. Their work expand from there.This interesting network of saboteurs included high society German immigrants as well as Irish working men who hated the English for their treatment of Ireland.In that there was no real federal investigation bureau to investigate the growing number of explosions and fires at sea, it was left largely to the New York City Police Department to get to the bottom of this destruction.The details of both the Germans hard at work and the NYCPD hard at work to stop them are fascinating. Those interested in WWI, spies or just a good mystery story will love this book.

In his nonfiction spy tale, Howard Blum told the true story of how Germany launched a sophisticated, covert campaign of terror - bombs, germ warfare, and murder - against an unsuspecting America during World War I. Blum successfully weaved multiple plot lines together to create an intelligible arc, focusing on the establishment of the German terrorist cell, the execution of various German sabotage operations, and the eventual capture of the network through the work of the New York Police Department. While a well-written narrative with strong evidence, Blum avoided discussing some of the more interesting questions that arise when writing this history. In the title of his book, he referred to the German operation as the "first terrorist cell in America". However, in the 450 pages that follow, Blum only mentioned the word "terrorist" a handful of times. Was Germany's espionage network in America during World War I a terrorist organization? Is there a such thing as state-sponsored terrorism? Also, he half-heartedly attempts to draw a parallel between the hunt for Abteilung IIIB's operation and modern day America's fight against terrorism. What lessons can America learn from these 100 year-old events? Despite these missed opportunities, I recommend this book to anyone interested in some of the lesser known history of World War I.

This book is about a very interesting time in our American history about which I knew very little. I was surprised to learn that foreign espionage was so hard at work (although a bit inept, at times) on our shores prior to our involvement in WWI. Having not read much about that period of time in US history, and the struggle by President Wilson to keep us out of the war, I find that I will now need to dig in a bit deeper to understand a more about this country at that time. With German ancestors, I find it interesting to consider what they may have been feeling or doing at this time in history - were they approached by German nationalist to undermine the US government or at least demonstrate in the streets on behalf of the Fatherland.I found the book well written and capable of keeping my attention even through some of the tedium of providing the backstory on some of the characters and their circumstances. I am a sucker for mystery novels and this one held me equally captive. I was quite impressed with Tom Tunney's incredible tenacity and investigatory skills. It makes one wonder what kind of a career he had in the military after the NY bomb squad was rolled into the Army after the US entry into WWI.A very enjoyable read.

This book was fantastic with regard to the twists, turns, loops, and dead ends Blum leads the reader through while learning about Germany's secretive terrorist activities during WWI before the US declared war. Even though we are given both points of view from the standpoint of the New York police and the Germans in the act, so we readers know what exactly what is going on before the police do, it is still mysterious to follow through the logic of the New York police as they trace the clues to bring down the German saboteurs. Somehow a lot of this was new to me, so it is an especially interesting and quick read. I highly recommend it, especially for history buffs.For those unfamiliar with the historical figures involved, which is probably most of us, a helpful cast of characters is included in the beginning for the reader's reference.Incidentally, I learned after I started reading this book that I had signed up to try to win a copy of Howard Blum's new books without even realizing he had written this one when I checked it out at the library. This tells me I would probably enjoy reading his other work.I could not find a paperback edition, which is what I read, containing 474 pages.