When fire broke out on two more nitrate-carrying steamers last week, two tenuous theories went up in smoke. Neither Japs nor Reds could be blamed for the plague of nitrate-ship fires (TIME, April 2) after Chile's cocky counter-espionage Departamento 50 nabbed the chief saboteur, a German named Julio Alberto von Appen Oestmann (alias Apfel), and turned him over for shipment to the U.S.
The detained detonator, a marine inspector of the Hamburg-Amerika Line, became chief Nazi saboteur for Chile and Peru in 1939. Last month, when Chile took real steps toward war with Germany, he and his operatives glided...
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