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为什么德国间谍炸毁美国岛屿

来源:可可英语 编辑:Melody   可可英语APP下载 |  可可官方微信:ikekenet

You ready to history?

你准备好听这段历史了吗?
PHIL: Ready. You’re ready?
PHIL:准备好了。你准备好了吗?
Okay. Alright. I’m Coleman Lowndes.
好的。好吧。我是科尔曼·朗兹。
PHIL: I’m Phil Edwards.
PHIL:我是菲尔·爱德华兹。
And this is History Club, where Phil and I tell each other a story from history that ideally the other one doesn’t know anything about.
这是历史俱乐部,菲尔和我在这里向对方讲述一个历史故事,理想情况下对方对这段历史一无所知。
So today is my turn. And it’s a story of sabotage, deception, and spies, culminating in a major attack on US soil in 1916.
今天轮到我了。这是一个关于破坏、欺骗和间谍的故事,最终在1916年引发了一场对美国本土的重大袭击。
PHIL: Alright.
PHIL:好的。
Right here on Black Tom Island. So Black Tom was a munitions depot during World War I.
就在黑汤姆岛上。所以在第一次世界大战期间黑汤姆岛是一个军火库。
And one summer night in 1916, German spies blew it to pieces.
在1916年一个夏天的晚上,德国间谍把它炸成了碎片。
And they almost got away with it.
他们差点就逃脱了。
Okay so a really important thing to know about this whole story is that the US government badly wanted to remain neutral when World War I broke out in Europe.
好吧,所以了解整个事件的一个非常重要的事情是,当第一次世界大战在欧洲爆发时,美国政府非常希望保持中立。
And for the first few years of the war, they were.
在战争的头几年,他们的确是这样的。
They saw the war as a sort of “Old World” problem thousands of miles away, and US President Woodrow Wilson promised to keep the people out of it.
他们把战争看作是一种“旧世界”的问题,远在千里之外,美国总统伍德罗·威尔逊承诺不让人民卷入战争。
PHIL: Yeah, staying out of World War I was kind of one of the cornerstones of his reelection campaign.
PHIL:是的,不参加第一次世界大战是他能够竞选连任的基石之一。
Yes. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t profit from it.
对。但这并不意味着他们不能从中获利。
The sale and shipment of munitions to Europe became a major industry in the United States, and brought the country out of an economic downturn.
向欧洲出售和运输军火成为美国的一个主要工业,使该国摆脱了经济衰退。
I mean they were pumping this shit out.
我的意思是他们从这团乱中抽身而出。
So I could send you a map but you know Europe. You know what Europe looks like.
所以我可以给你寄张地图,但你知道欧洲。你知道欧洲是什么样子。
PHIL: Yeah.
PHIL:是的。
So now imagine Europe.
所以现在想象欧洲。
PHIL: Lots of lines, shapes.
PHIL:很多的线条和形状。
This industry mainly benefited the Entente Allies, led by Great Britain, France, and Russia.
这个产业主要受益于以英、法、俄为首的协约国。
And the Central Powers, led by Germany and Austria-Hungary, could technically also buy American bombs,
以德国和奥匈帝国为首的同盟国在技术上也可以购买美国的炸弹,
but they were excluded becaus eof a really effective blockade the British navy imposed at the beginning of the war.
但由于英国海军在战争开始时实施了有效的封锁,使它们被排除在外。
Getting munitions into Germany was basically impossible, so Germans turned to the next best thing: sabotage.
把军火运到德国基本上是不可能的,所以德国人转向了下一件大事:蓄意破坏。
I’m gonna do the short version of this, but the go-to source for the bigger story is this book.
我要讲这个的简短版本,但更多的故事来源于这本书。
Starting in 1914 and up until the US entered the war in 1917,
从1914年开始,直到1917年美国参战,
Imperial Germany operated a sophisticated network of spies and saboteurs inside the US, secretly wreaking havoc on the munitions industry.
德意志帝国在美国境内经营着一个由间谍和破坏者组成的复杂网络,秘密地对军火工业造成了严重破坏。
Ships and factories were catching fire, and suspicion landed on Germans and German-Americans.
船只和工厂起火,德国人和德裔美国人受到怀疑。
And there were a lot of Germans here, including sailors, who, because of the British blockade, were sort of stranded in neutral US ports.
这里有很多德国人,包括水手,因为英国的封锁,他们被困在中立的美国港口。
And that is where they were being recruited to blow up factories.
这就是他们被招募去炸毁工厂的地方。
PHIL: And was the appeal just one of nationalism? These people were from Germany and they should help the German effort?
PHIL:难道这只是民族主义的诉求之一吗?这些人来自德国,他们就应该帮助德国吗?
Yeah, they saw it as attacks on the English.
是的,他们认为这是对英国人的攻击。
Because the English and the Russians were buying these bombs, so it’s like “these are being sent straight to people who are going to use them on Germans.
因为英国人和俄国人买了这些炸弹,所以就好像“这些是直接寄给那打算用它们来对付德国人的那群人”。
You can’t fight the war because you’re stuck here. Do you want to do this instead?
你不能打仗,因为你被困在这里了。你想改做这件事吗?”
One of my favorite parts of this whole thing is this guy von Bernstorff.
这件事中我最喜欢的一部分就是这个冯·伯恩斯托夫。
I’m going to send you a picture of him.
我要给你寄一张他的照片。
Germany’s ambassador to Washington was secretly overseeing this entire spy network while trying to maintain good relations with the US.
德国驻华盛顿大使在试图与美国保持良好关系的同时,正在秘密监督整个间谍网络。
At first, the plan was to buy up all the munitions before the Allies could, but the sheer scope of US production was overwhelming.
起初,该计划是在协约国能够购买之前买光所有的弹药,但美国的生产规模之大,势不可挡。
German agent Franz von Rintelen remarked that: The daily production was so great that if I had bought up the market on Tuesday, there would still have been an enormous fresh supply on Wednesday.
德国特工弗兰兹·冯·林泰伦说:每天的产量是太大了,如果我在星期二买下市场,星期三仍然会有大量的新产品供应。
So he started setting fire to Europe-bound ships loaded with weapons using a very special device.
所以他开始用一种非常特殊的装置向装载武器的欧洲船只开火。
And I wanted to go into how it works, but it’s too long.
我想了解一下它的工作原理,但它太长了。
But basically, it could be timed to go off after several days.
但基本上,它可以在几天后发射。
So by the time is far out to sea, a massive flame would ignite in the hold, and it burned so hot that it would melt the casing of the bomb so there was no trace of it.
所以当离海很远的时候,一个巨大的火焰会在船舱里点燃,它燃烧热度很高,以至于会融化炸弹的外壳,所以没有任何痕迹。

OIP.8927m9zLN99QhuYCJHR59QHaF6.jpg

Which is an ideal weapon if you want the fire to look like an accident.

如果你想让这场火看起来像个意外,这是一个理想的武器。
So Americans were suspicious of German sabotage, but they couldn’t prove it.
所以美国人怀疑是德国进行的破坏,但他们无法证明。
And that’s because at this time, there was no infrastructure of domestic intelligence agencies in the US.
这是因为在这个时候,美国国内没有基础建立情报机构。
No Department of Homeland Security, no FBI, no CIA.
没有国土安全部,没有联邦调查局,没有中情局。
Pre-WWI America saw itself as isolated and safe, protected from foreign attacks by thousands of miles of ocean.
第一次世界大战前的美国认为自己是孤立和安全的,隔着数千英里的海洋,免受外来攻击。
Which explains why they left Black Tom their biggest prize virtually unguarded.
这就解释了为什么他们把他们最多的军火留给了黑汤姆。
75% of the US’ booming munitions industry centered around New York and New Jersey, and most of them were shipped from Black Tom.
美国军需品工业蓬勃发展,其75%集中在纽约和新泽西州,其中大部分是从黑汤姆运来的。
The night of July 30th, the warehouses and train cars there were packed to the brim with over two million pounds of munitions,
7月30日晚上,那里的仓库和火车车厢堆满了超过200万磅的军火
making it possibly the largest arsenal in the world outside of the war zone.
使其成为战区以外世界上最大的军火库。
And at 2:08 in the morning, it blew up.
凌晨2点08分,发生了爆炸。
Glass windows shattered all across Jersey City, Lower Manhattan, and Brooklyn.
泽西城、曼哈顿下城和布鲁克林的玻璃窗都碎了。
The massive Brooklyn Bridge shuddered.
布鲁克林大桥震颤不已。
And people as far away as Philadelphia and Maryland felt the blast, which would have registered as a moderate earthquake on the Richter scale.
远在费城和马里兰州的人们都感受到了这次爆炸,这次爆炸可能达到里氏中等地震。
The Statue of Liberty was struck too.
自由女神像也被击中了。
And its damaged torch has been closed to visitors ever since the attack.
自那次袭击以来,受损的火炬一直对游客关闭。
So you used to be able to actually go to the very top of the torch, but it’s been closed since 1916.
所以你以前可以去火炬的最顶端,但它从1916年就关闭了。
PHIL: Wow. I never knew that.
PHIL:哇。我一直都不知道这件事。
Yeah.
没错。
PHIL: So the torch was damaged that way?
所以火炬是这样毁坏的?
Yeah, it was damaged by shrapnel from bombs.
是的,它被炸弹的碎片损坏了。
All told, there were only 5 confirmed deaths, and around $20 million in property damage. Which is about half a billion today.
总的来说,只有5人确认死亡,大约2000万美元的财产损失。放在今天大约有5亿。
PHIL: Wow.
PHIL:哇。
Yeah.
没错。
Black Tom itself was obliterated, and the US had no idea how it happened.
黑汤姆自己也被毁坏了,而美国根本不知道这是怎么回事。
PHIL: And so when did the United States recognize that it was German spies who had been responsible for Black Tom?
PHIL:所以美国什么时候意识到德国间谍改为黑汤姆岛负责?
It took years.At first, there wasn’t much suspicion of sabotage at all.
好几年。起初,根本没有多少蓄意破坏的嫌疑。
Black Tom was seen as an act of gross negligence, and two guys were initially arrested for manslaughter.
黑汤姆被视为因重大过失行为被毁坏,两名男子最初因过失被捕。
The next prevailing theory was mosquitos.
下一个流行的理论是蚊子。
For a long time, the accepted sequence of events was that the fire started after the handful of guards working that night lit “smudge pots,”
很长一段时间以来,人们公认的一系列事件是,火灾是在当晚几个警卫点燃“污渍锅”后开始的,
which are these things that use smoke to keep away mosquitos.
这些东西是用烟来驱赶蚊子的。
PHIL: Okay.
PHIL:好吧。
I was wondering, I was imagining mosquitos wearing little robber masks sneaking in or something.
我在想,我在想象蚊子戴着小强盗面具偷偷溜进来什么的。
PHIL: “For Bavaria!”
PHIL:“为了巴伐利亚!”
It’s either mosquitos or it’s negligence and manslaughter.
要么是蚊子,要么是过失。
But all the investigating parties initially agreed that it definitely wasn’t sabotage.
但所有调查方最初都认为这绝对不是蓄意破坏。
The year after Black Tom, the US cut diplomatic ties with Germany and entered World War I.
在黑汤姆事件后的第二年,美国与德国断交并进入第一次世界大战。
It wasn’t until 1939 that the US declared Germany responsible for blowing up Black Tom, along with other acts of sabotage.
直到1939年,美国才宣布德国对炸毁黑汤姆以及其他破坏行为负责。
They just weren’t equipped to handle an investigation like this, nothing like it had ever happened before.
他们只是没有能力处理这样的调查,之前从来没有发生过这样的事情。
And I want to read you one more quote. From the Washington Evening Star in 1919.
我想再给你念一句话。1919年华盛顿晚星报。
The German sabotage campaign set the stage for the passage of the Espionage Act in 1917 and the eventual establishment of domestic intelligence agencies.
德国的破坏活动为1917年通过《间谍法》和最终建立国内情报机构奠定了基础。
PHIL: So what attracted you to this story?
PHIL: 那么是什么吸引你来看这个故事的?
Black Tom is the signature attack of this campaign, but the spy ring I think is what gets me the most.
“黑汤姆”是这次战役的一次标志性袭击事件,但我认为最让我抓狂的还是那个间谍团伙。
Just this amazing spy network that these German diplomats had set up and were operating for years inside the US.
正是这些德国外交官在美国建立并运作多年的惊人间谍网络。
And just think about an America that isn’t what it is today where we record everything, and keep tabs on everyone, you know?
想想今天的美国,你知道吗,我们不是在记录一切,监视每一个人吗?
It was just like.... this could have only happened pre-global America.
就像...这只可能发生在全球一体化之前的美国。

重点单词   查看全部解释    
shipment ['ʃipmənt]

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n. 装船,货物,出货

 
massive ['mæsiv]

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adj. 巨大的,大规模的,大量的,大范围的

 
confirmed [kən'fə:md]

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adj. 习惯的,积习的,确认过的,证实的 动词conf

 
establishment [is'tæbliʃmənt]

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n. 确立,制定,设施,机构,权威

联想记忆
negligence ['neglidʒəns]

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n. 疏忽,粗心大意

联想记忆
melt [melt]

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vi. 融化,熔化,消散
vt. 使融化,使熔

 
spy [spai]

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n. 间谍,侦探,侦察
vt. 侦探,看到,找

 
supply [sə'plai]

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n. 补给,供给,供应,贮备
vt. 补给,供

联想记忆
appeal [ə'pi:l]

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n. 恳求,上诉,吸引力
n. 诉诸裁决

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recognize ['rekəgnaiz]

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vt. 认出,认可,承认,意识到,表示感激

 

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