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© Getty ImagesThe German documentary, called Attack on America? Hitler's 9/11 will be shown on Saturday on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York
Nazi U-boats dropped saboteurs onto American shores as part of a secret mission during the Second World War, a documentary has claimed.

Eight men landed on beaches off Long Island and Florida with the intention of sabotaging targets across the country over a period of up to two years.

Four men arrived ashore near Manhattan on June 13, 1942 carrying weapons, explosives and primers.

On 17 June 1942 a further four men landed off Ponte Verda Beach in Florida.

The German documentary, called Attack on America - Hitler's 9/11 will be shown on Saturday on the anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Centre in New York.

The programme-makers, Spiegal TV, claim the men intended to attack economic targets such as Penn Station, hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls and aluminium factories in Illinois and Tennessee.

A spokesman for Spiegel TV told the Daily Mail: "It has surprising parallels with 9/11 because the Nazis' goals were the same - to kill as many people as possible while crippling economic installations."

The chief of the German Abwehr counter-intelligence service, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, came up with the plan which was code-named Operation Pastorius after the first German to organise a settlement of his countrymen in the US, Francis Pastorius.

Of the eight men two, Ernst Burger, 36, and Herbert Haupt, 22, were American citizens. The remainder had all worked in America before and were made up of George John Dasch, 39, Edward John Kerling, 33, Richard Quirin, 34, Heinrich Harm Heinck, 35, Hermann Otto Neubauer, 32, and Werner Thiel, 35.

However, on arrival Dasch and Burger turned themselves in to the FBI. Within two weeks the remaining men were caught without any information being made public.

Burger and Dasch were allowed to return to Germany in 1948 but the rest were sentenced to death by the electric chair.