The Nazi spies arrived on the shores of Britain under the cover of night, by parachute, by rowing boat and by rubber dinghy. In their suitcases each carried a morse code transmitter, a map of the UK, a handgun and some invisible ink. Their mission: to pave the way for an invasion. 
 
 But the spies chosen for the mission had neither convincing fluency in English nor basic knowledge of British customs. One spy was arrested after trying to order a pint of cider at 10am, unaware that during wartime landlords weren't allowed to serve alcohol before lunchtime. Another pair were stopped while cycling through Scotland on the wrong side of the road: once the police discovered German sausages and Nivea hand cream in their luggage, their cover was blown. 
 
 Of the 12 spies who landed in Britain as part of Operation Lena in September 1940, most were arrested without having come closing to fulfilling their mission, and "because of their own stupidity", as British official records put it. Why Germany sent such inept agents on one of the most important missions of the second world war has remained an enduring mystery. 
 
 A book published in Germany this summer comes up with a new explanation. In Operation Sealion: Resistance inside the Secret Service, the historian Monika Siedentopf argues that the botched spying mission was not the result of German incompetence, but a deliberate act of sabotage by a cadre of intelligence officials opposed to Hitler's plans. 
 
 Siedentopf first became interested in the story of Operation Sealion – the German plan to invade Britain – while researching a book on the role of female spies during the war. For many other missions, German spies had been meticulously well-prepared, she noticed, so why not in 1940? 
 
 Her research led her to a circle of people around Herbert Wichmann, the officer in charge of the Hamburg intelligence unit, one of Nazi Germany's biggest secret service posts. 
 
 Wichmann had close ties not only to Wilhelm Canaris, the spy chief once dubbed the "Hamlet of conservative resistance" by Hugh Trevor-Roper, but also to the Stauffenberg group which planned to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. 
 
 At the end of the war, Wichmann was given a key role in rebuilding Hamburg's shipping industry, upon express orders of the British. MI5 described him and his circle as "good Germans, but bad Nazis". 
 
 After six years of research in the National Archives and using Wichmann's own writing, Siedentopf deduced that the spy chief had deliberately sent agents on Operation Lena who had neither particularly good knowledge of the country nor the language. 
 
 Instead, his preference appears to have been for individuals with low levels of intelligence but resounding enthusiasm for National Socialism, many of them petty criminals and members of far-right organisations in the Netherlands, Belgium and Denmark. 
 
 Wichmann's motives, Siedentopf told the Guardian, were mixed. He feared not only that Operation Sealion was badly planned and would come at a considerable human and material cost to Germany, but also that an attack on England would escalate the conflict into a proper world war – but preventing that was an objective that even its most inept spies could achieve. ||||| Share on Facebook Share on Twitter 
 
 An Italian restaurant in New Taipei City, Taiwan, came under fire for its offensive and insensitive naming of a popular dish. 
 
 
 
 A sausage and pasta dish originating from Germany was named “Long Live the Nazis,” stirring up criticism worldwide following its media coverage on a local TV station, The Independent newspaper reported on Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 This sparked an immediate response from Israeli and German officials, who told the European Pressphoto agency that the naming of the dish demonstrated the “lack of understanding about history and the Nazis’ slaughter of Jews.” 
 
 Chao Ya-hsin, the 24-year-old manager of the Rockmill restaurant, showed a great deal of remorse and apologized, saying “It never occurred to us that the word Nazi would stir up such controversy.”The name was chosen to help customers understand the German origins of the dish, according to Chao, and the restaurant changed the name shortly after to “Long Live Purity” due to the widespread complaints from the public and the international backlash.This was not the first such incident in the region. In 2000, a restaurant based out of Taipei hung photographs of Nazi concentration camps on its walls.The images were eventually taken down.Also, in 2011, the National Defense Ministry posted a photo of three students in Nazi uniforms at a ministry summer camp. The defense minister later apologized for this incident. ||||| An Italian restaurant in New Taipei City, Taiwan, has now apologized and changed the name of one dish that they had originally elected to call "Long Live the Nazis," and no one seems to be mentioning that the new name is barely, if at all, better. 
 
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 Rockmill restaurant had apparently intended the original name to help customers know the dish was German-inspired, because, sure, there aren't literally hundreds of other ways to do that without effectively saying "hey, wasn't the Third Reich awesome?" or anything (personally I like "Die Uberspaghetti," but I'm open to more suggestions — go nuts, you guys). When they caught wind of it, both Israeli and German representatives in Taiwan had the same "WHOA, REALLY NOT OK" reactions, and complaint calls flooded into the restaurant until Rockmill decided to change it: 
 
 "When we were deciding on a name for this pasta dish, it never occurred to us that the word Nazi would stir up such controversy," said Chao Ya-hsin, the 24-year-old manager...who offered a sorrowful apology over the restaurant's lack of sensitivity. 
 
 Now, you might think this is the most blatant bit of anti-semitism you've ever seen, and that Chao's apology must be bullshit. Weeeeeelllllllll...that's where it gets tricky. See, the entire region of South and Southeast Asia has had a bit of an unfortunate, cluelessly enthusiastic relationship with Nazi iconography in the last decade. In 2013, a fried chicken takeaway opened in Thailand named "Hitler." A likewise-named clothing store opened in India in 2012. Taiwan has been through this before, too — in 2011, 7-11's sold gimmicky key chains that featured cartoon versions of vampire Hitler (bring this up any time someone tries to tell you that Japan has a monopoly on weird). 
 
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 From what I can tell, there's no real malice behind any of this, the same way there isn't any true malice behind Japan's awkward and bizarre relationship with African-American culture. I believe them when they say they didn't think it would offend anyone, because no one who didn't believe a statement that absurd would try to make it with a straight face. They just do not understand the concept that this is totally in no way OK. I can't say I'm angry at them for this, either. My reaction can more or less be summed up thusly: 
 
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 All of this helps explain why the restaurant received no complaints about the name of the dish until a local TV station aired a story about it. Only then did people raise an issue, which is probably the most groan-inducing part of this whole story. 
 
 ...or at least it would be, were it not for the new name of the same dish, which is barely better than the first one: they're now calling it "Long Live Purity." Come on, seriously? HOW ARE YOU SO BAD AT THIS, ROCKMILL?! You are worse at naming dishes than Congress is at accomplishing things. 
 
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 Look, Rockmill employees, go read my comments section here. I guarantee you my regulars are going to come up with at least 15-20 naming options that would ALL be better than what you keep coming up with. Just use one of theirs. I'm sure they're happy to share. Maybe then you wouldn't keep trying to pick names that either directly (the first one) or indirectly (come on, we all know what "purity" means) endorse Nazism. 
 
 Just for fuck's sake, read a fucking book on World War II some time. You know, the one that ultimately helped lead to your existence as an entity separate from China after Chiang Kai-Shek, whose ineffective army was riven with factionalism and corruption and couldn't stand in the wake of Mao's Communist offensive from the North, fled the mainland? 
 
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 See? SOME OF US KNOW BASIC SHIT ABOUT THE HISTORY OF COUNTRIES WE'RE NOT FROM. THIS ISN'T HARD. 
 
 Edit: Kinja user frau meixia points out that another source reports that they changed the name to "World Champion Pasta." If this is true, that's a hell of a lot better than "Long Live Purity." In the meantime, I'm not sure which source to believe. 
 
 Image via chrisdorney/Shutterstock.
– Who would send ill-prepared spies on a vital mission knowing they were bound to screw up? Nazi intelligence official Herbert Wichmann, that's who—at least according to one historian who argues that Wichmann and his circle were trying to sabotage Hitler's plans. In Operation Sealion: Resistance Inside the Secret Service, Monika Siedentopf writes that Wichmann sent a dozen spies to Britain in 1940, ostensibly to lay the groundwork for a Nazi invasion, the Guardian reports. But most were soon arrested for foolish things like cycling on the wrong side of the road or ordering a pint of cider in the morning (when wartime rules didn't allow landlords to serve booze before lunch). As UK records put it, the spies were nabbed "because of their own stupidity." In fact, Wichmann purposely chose spies for Operation Lena who were lacking in intelligence but brimming with excitement for National Socialism, the book says. Turns out he was linked to Wilhelm Canaris, an intelligence official and conservative resister of the Nazis, as well as the Stauffenberg group that tried to kill Hitler in 1944. After the war, the British gave Wichmann a key job in Hamburg shipping, and the MI5 called him and his group "good Germans, but bad Nazis." In other Nazi-related news, a restaurant in Taiwan has apologized for calling a pasta dish "Long Live the Nazis," the Jerusalem Post reports. After taking heat from German and Israeli officials, the restaurant manager changed the dish's name to ... "Long Live Purity," Jezebel notes. (Click to read about an American couple who saved dozens of Jewish children from the Nazis.)