Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era (St. Antony's)

Spies of the Kaiser German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era

Thomas Boghardt

St Antony’s Series General Editor: David Faure (2003–), Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford

Recent titles include: Thomas Boghardt SPIES OF THE KAISER German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era Ulf Schmidt JUSTICE AT NUREMBERG Leo Alexander and the Nazi Doctors’ Trial Steve Tsang (editor) PEACE AND SECURITY ACROSS THE TAIWAN STRAIT C.W. Braddick JAPAN AND THE SINO-SOVIET ALLIANCE, 1950–1964 In the Shadow of the Monolith Isao Miyaoka LEGITIMACY IN INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY Japan’s Reaction to Global Wildlife Preservation Neil J. Melvin SOVIET POWER AND THE COUNTRYSIDE Policy Innovation and Institutional Decay Juhana Aunesluoma BRITAIN, SWEDEN AND THE COLD WAR, 1945–54 Understanding Neutrality George Pagoulatos GREECE’S NEW POLITICAL ECONOMY State, Finance and Growth from Postwar to EMU Tiffany A. Troxel PARLIAMENTARY POWER IN RUSSIA, 1994–2001 A New Era Elvira María Restrepo COLOMBIAN CRIMINAL JUSTICE IN CRISIS Fear and Distrust Julie M. Newton RUSSIA, FRANCE, AND THE IDEA OF EUROPE Ilaria Favretto THE LONG SEARCH FOR A THIRD WAY The British Labour Party and the Italian Left Since 1945 Lawrence Tal POLITICS, THE MILITARY, AND NATIONAL SECURITY IN JORDAN, 1955–1967

Louise Haagh and Camilla Helgø (editors) SOCIAL POLICY REFORM AND MARKET GOVERNANCE IN LATIN AMERICA Gayil Talshir THE POLITICAL IDEOLOGY OF GREEN PARTIES From the Politics of Nature to Redefining the Nature of Politics E. K. Dosmukhamedov FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN KAZAKHSTAN Politico-Legal Aspects of Post-Communist Transition Felix Patrikeeff RUSSIAN POLITICS IN EXILE The Northeast Asian Balance of Power, 1924–1931 He Ping CHINA’S SEARCH FOR MODERNITY Cultural Discourse in the Late 20th Century Mariana Llanos PRIVATIZATION AND DEMOCRACY IN ARGENTINA An Analysis of President–Congress Relations Michael Addison VIOLENT POLITICS Strategies of Internal Conflict Geoffrey Wiseman CONCEPTS OF NON-PROVOCATIVE DEFENCE Ideas and Practices in International Security Pilar Ortuño Anaya EUROPEAN SOCIALISTS AND SPAIN The Transition to Democracy, 1959–77

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Spies of the Kaiser German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era Thomas Boghardt Historian International Spy Museum Washington, DC, USA

in association with St Antony’s College, Oxford

© Thomas Boghardt 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–3248–4 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Boghardt, Thomas. Spies of the Kaiser : German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era / Thomas Boghardt. p. cm. — (St. Antony’s series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–3248–4 (cloth) 1. Great Britain—Foreign relations—Germany. 2. Espionage, German—Great Britain—History—20th century. 3. Germans—Great Britain—History—20th century. 4. Great Britain—Foreign relations— 1901–1936. 5. Germany—Foreign relations—Great Britain. 6. Germany—Foreign relations—1888–1918. I. Title. II. St. Antony’s series (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) DA47.2.B65 2004 327.1243′041—dc22 2004043855 10 13

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

To my mother In memory of my father

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Contents

List of Illustrations

ix

Acknowledgements

x

List of Abbreviations and Espionage Terms

xii

Introduction Domestic change and the global balance of power Fears of invasion Studies on intelligence

1 1 4 6

1 The Origins of German Naval Intelligence The navy’s organizational framework for intelligence Agents and recruitment

13 13 17

2 The Origins of British Counter-Espionage Invasion scares The campaign for a Secret Service Bureau The early years of British counter-espionage

21 21 27 35

3 German Pre-War Espionage in Great Britain Early attempts at intelligence gathering The case of Siegfried Helm The Agadir crisis Max Schultz Heinrich Grosse Armgaard Karl Graves Karl Hentschel and George Parrott Adolf Frederick Schroeder Implications of Germany’s pre-war espionage in Great Britain

42 44 48 51 54 56 60 63 67

4 The Outbreak of the First World War The ‘Ernst ring’ German espionage centres in Belgium and the Netherlands

74 77

vii

69

80

viii

Contents

5 German Espionage in Great Britain, 1914–1917 Intelligence gathering Social aspects of German espionage The life and death of Carl Hans Lody German spies and British counter-espionage German spies and British propaganda

89 89 94 97 105 109

6 Covert Action Subversion? Sabotage Biological warfare

117 117 121 131

7 The Decline of German Naval Intelligence, 1917–1919 The last major German intelligence operation in Great Britain The last German spies

135

Conclusion Appendix 1 Appendix 2 Appendix 3

136 139 143

Command Structure of German Naval Intelligence, 1911–1914

148

Statistical Evidence on German Espionage and British Counter-Espionage during the First World War

149

Synopsis of German Naval Agents in the First World War

150

Notes and References

166

Bibliography

203

Index

220

List of Illustrations 1 Vernon Kell, director of MI5, c. 1919 2 Gustav Steinhauer in police uniform before the First World War 3 Karl Gustav Ernst, shortly after his arrest in August 1914 4 Naval Lieutenant Carl Hans Lody 5 The alleged agent provocateur, Baron Louis von Horst, c. 1920 6 ‘The World Liberator’, Simplicissimus, 1917 7 Louise Emily Wertheim, c. 1918 8 Flow chart showing command structure of German Naval Intelligence 9 Number of spies and capture/release statistics, August 1914–October 1918

37 47 81 105 122 124 141 148 149

The plate section in the middle of the book shows the cast of spies reproduced on the jacket illustration of the book, with the exception of Paul Hensel replacing the lone woman on the jacket, Louise Emily Wertheim.

ix

Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have been able to draw on the support and expertise of many exceptional individuals during the development of this book, and with the greatest pleasure I express here my gratitude to those who have been particularly helpful. I am deeply indebted to Dr Adrian Gregory who provided expert guidance on the manuscript. His breadth of knowledge and reliably constructive criticism were invaluable. I am also most grateful to Professors Niall Ferguson and Bernard Porter for providing insightful recommendations and for their continued support. While working on this book, I had the honour of communicating frequently and exchanging ideas with Dr Nicholas Hiley. I am profoundly grateful to him for his patience in addressing even my most arcane queries and for his generosity in sharing his insights and expertise in intelligence issues with me. I also would like to express my gratitude to the following scholars who were generous in providing advice and support: Roger Chickering, Reinhard R. Doerries, Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Dietrich Hoffmann, Friedhelm Koopmann, Karl-Egon Lönne, Anthony J. Nicholls, Avi Shlaim, and Zachary Shore. My colleagues at St Antony’s helped shape a superb environment for scholarly exchange and friendship; my special thanks in this regard to Evangelia Achladi, Conrad Barwa, Marc Fumagalli, Tilman Lüdke, Arnaud Mehl, and Guy Tourlamain. I would like to convey my deep gratitude to Trudy J. Kuehner for reading the entire manuscript and her invaluable suggestions. This book is based chiefly on archival research in Germany and Great Britain, and I am particularly indebted to the experienced staffs of the German Foreign Office archives in Bonn (now Berlin), the German military archives in Freiburg, the archives of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, and the Public Record Office at Kew, London. I am most grateful to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for supporting my research with a generous three-year scholarship, and I would like to extend my special thanks to Marlene Graeger and Thomas Straubhaar at the Foundation. I also thank the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University for hosting me as a Visiting Scholar; the Center has provided a stimulating environment in which to pursue historical research. x

Acknowledgements

xi

Above all, I want to convey my gratitude to three individuals who are very important to me. Lori Ann Plotkin has been, and continues to be, a constant source of inspiration for me, and her moral support and encouragement mean more to me than I can put into words. Finally, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my mother and my late father, whose support, advice and understanding have guided me throughout my studies; this book is dedicated to them. THOMAS B OGHARDT The author and publishers are grateful to the Public Record Office for granting permission to reproduce material from its archives, as well as Baron Dr Louis von Horst Jr for providing a picture of his father, Baron Louis von Horst, while Professors H. Keith Melton and Nigel West generously furnished a photograph of Vernon Kell from their private collections. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright-holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.

List of Abbreviations and Espionage Terms

AA

Abwehr AOK ARA BA-MA BE BEF Beobachter BND CID D-notice

DMI DMO DORA FO FRG ‘G’ GDR GStPK HAL HAPAG HBE HMSO

Auswärtiges Amt, German Foreign Office, or Wilhelmstraße, after its location on this Berlin street Military intelligence department of the Third Reich Armeeoberkommando, army supreme command Aliens’ Restriction Act Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, German military archives, Freiburg Berichterstatter, literally ‘reporter’, that is, a naval agent British Expeditionary Force Observer Bundesnachrichtendienst, federal (post-1945) intelligence service Committee of Imperial Defence A notice by the War Office or the Admiralty to news editors not to publish items on specified subjects, for reasons of national security Director of Military Intelligence Director of Military Operations (in 1916 renamed DMI) Defence of the Realm Act (British) Foreign Office Federal Republic of Germany Gegenspionage German Democratic Republic Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Prussian secret state archives Hamburg-America-Line Hamburg-Amerika-Paket-Aktiengesellschaft, that is, the HAL Hauptberichterstatter, literally ‘main correspondant’ His Majesty’s Stationary Office xii

List of Abbreviations and Espionage Terms xiii

HOW HStA IWM KNSt KNW MI5

MI6 MI8 MI9 MO5

MO5(g)

‘N’ Nachrichtenstelle ‘NI’ ‘NIV’ NARA NO OHL OSA PA-AA RMA PRO Schiffsbefragungsdienst

Home Office Warrant Hamburger Staatsarchiv, archives of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg Imperial War Museum Kriegsnachrichtenstelle, war intelligence centre Kriegsnachrichtenwesen, war intelligence system Military Intelligence, department No. 5 (official name of British counter-espionage after 3 January 1916) Military Intelligence, department No. 6, responsible for espionage abroad Military Intelligence, department No. 8, responsible for blocking trade with the enemy Military Intelligence, department No. 9, responsible for postal censorship Military Operations, department No. 5 (Special Section of the War Office that collected army intelligence on Germany in the early twentieth century; not to be confused with MO5(g)) Military Operations, department No. 5, ‘G’ branch (official name of British counter-espionage between August 1914 and January 1916) Nachrichten-Abteilung im Admiralstab (German navy’s intelligence department) Intelligence post First subsection of ‘N’, responsible for German intelligence-gathering abroad Fourth subsection of ‘N’ (German navy’s sabotage department) National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC Nachrichtenoffizier, intelligence officer of Sektion IIIb Oberste Heeresleitung, German supreme army command Official Secrets Act Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, German Foreign Office archives, Bonn/Berlin Reichs-Marine-Amt, Imperial Naval Office Public Record Office, London Marine interrogation service

xiv

List of Abbreviations and Espionage Terms

Sektion IIIb, or IIIb Sektion P SIS SSB

VM WO

Sektion IIIb des Großen Generalstabs (military intelligence department) Sektion ‘Politik’, or politics section of the Great General Staff (sabotage department of the army) Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Secret Service Bureau, responsible for counter-espionage and intelligence-gathering abroad from 1909 until 1910 Vertrauensmann, literally ‘confidential man’, a naval agent War Office

Introduction

No sane person can deny that England is in grave danger of invasion by Germany at a date not far distant . . . That German spies are actively at work in Great Britain is well known to the authorities. The number of agents of the German Secret Police at this moment working in our midst on behalf of the Intelligence Department in Berlin are believed to be over five thousand. And today . . . I am wondering what is to be the outcome of all this organised espionage in England. What will happen? When will Germany strike? Who knows?1

Domestic change and the global balance of power As an island nation, Great Britain relied on commanding the sea for much of its development and protection. While continental Europeans continually invaded and occupied each other over the centuries, the last fully successful invasion of England dates back to the Norman conquest of 1066. Hence, the English population gained a measure of security behind the Channel ‘moat’, protected by a strong Royal Navy.2 During the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, English self-confidence was severely shaken as accelerated domestic change and the emergence of a new global balance of power profoundly transformed Great Britain and her place in the world. Britain’s political system creaked as it struggled to adapt to accelerated societal change. The backbone of the ruling elite, the landowning aristocracy, had been crumbling over the course of the nineteenth century. In 1885, landed aristocrats were for the first time outnumbered in parliament, and the noble majority in the Cabinet lasted only twenty years longer.3 1

2

Spies of the Kaiser

But while the traditional reservoir of the country’s leadership was drying up, over four-fifths of all British citizens remained excluded from the political arena by one of Europe’s most conservative franchises. In 1900, a mere 18 per cent of Britain’s total population was enfranchised. By contrast, 22 per cent of all Germans had the right to vote in elections to the Reichstag, the German parliament, and 29 per cent of all French citizens were entitled to determine the composition of the assemblée nationale.4 The vast majority of those bypassed by the British political system were workers, who began to organize themselves in the Labour movement. Largely excluded from Parliament, one of the few tools available to Labour to express its clientele’s concerns was industrial action, which the movement wielded with increasing success. The London dockers’ strike in 1889 was a milestone in the growth and belligerence of the workers movement, and strikes rose dramatically after the turn of the century, from 422 in 1909, with 2.7 million workdays lost, to 972 in 1914, with 9.9 million workdays lost. In 1912, the year of the great coal strike, a record 40.9 million workdays were lost due to industrial action. Growing worker unrest became one of the prime concerns of the British middle and upper classes in the First World War era.5 The profound change in Britain’s social fabric was compounded by the depression of the 1880s, which shook the upper strata of the middle classes. Meanwhile, inexpensive American agricultural imports threatened the less competitive British farmers. Population growth slowed markedly, while migration from the countryside to the cities accelerated.6 Reported mental illness and alcoholism doubled between 1875 and 1900, and suicide rates increased by 50 per cent. Perhaps the ugliest corollary of change was a marked rise in xenophobia. While all immigrant groups in mid-nineteenth-century Britain experienced social hostility, they were generally tolerated if unloved. But from the 1890s, aversion to aliens became more widespread. The targets were mainly Russian and Polish Jews, but also came to include Italians and increasingly Germans.7 The landslide victory of the Liberal Party in 1905 raised the prospect of social reform and adapting the old political machinery to the new age. And, in fact, the Liberal governments enlarged the franchise, introduced constitutional reform, and curbed the reactionary influence of the House of Lords. However, these measures further bewildered and estranged significant sections of the conservative upper and middle classes, especially within the military and on the right wing of the political spectrum.8 British politics became increasingly divided, and one historian has even suggested that in July 1914 the country was on the verge of

Introduction

3

social explosion, the war being the old order’s last effort to retain control of society. 9 Even more troubling than her domestic problems was Britain’s decline in relative power in the international arena. 10 In 1815, the British fleet was virtually unchallenged and during the six decades following Napoleon’s defeat, British naval supremacy was unrivalled throughout the world. But beginning around 1840 the public became increasingly aware of the deterioration of Britain’s global power. London’s quarrels with Paris over Near Eastern policy in 1839–1840, and even more so the coup d’état of Napoleon III in 1851, aroused old anxieties over hostile French intentions. Furthermore, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, the founding of the German Empire, and the emergence of a powerful German navy seemed to pose a direct and dangerous threat to Britain’s role as the world’s leading naval power. Against the backdrop of these formidable challenges, the Boer War (1899–1902) was profoundly disturbing to Britain. 11 In 1899, British forces invaded the Dutch Boer republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State in southern Africa. But the British, with antiquated battle strategies, were totally unprepared for the war, fighting an enemy they could not see in a terrain they did not understand. Only massive reinforcements and the internment of Boer civilians in concentration camps enabled the British to defeat their opponents after three years. The conflict cost the nation £200 million and laid bare appalling deficiencies in its military capacities. London had fielded 400,000 men and suffered 22,000 deaths – not many by comparison with losses she would suffer in the Great War to come, but a huge loss in a ‘mere’ colonial war.12 The conflict also widened the public’s consciousness of Britain’s diplomatic isolation and focused attention on her problematic relations with the other great powers – her traditional colonial rivals France and Russia and, increasingly, the rising German Empire. Many an Englishman wondered what chance Britain stood against any of the European powers if it took her so long to beat ‘a tiny rabble of untrained peasants’?13 Many Britons regarded the rapid change within and without their country as a period of decadence. The Edwardian era might appear to have been relatively stable when compared to later periods, but at no other time in British history have contemporaries so lamented the decline of their country. Shortly after Queen Victoria’s passing in 1901, The Times captured the prevailing mood of uncertainty: Others have learned our lessons and bettered our instructions while we have been too easily content to rely upon the methods which were effective a generation or two ago. In this way the Victorian age is

4

Spies of the Kaiser

defined at its end as well as at its beginning. The command of natural forces that made us great and rich has been superseded by newer discoveries and methods, and we have to open what may be called a new chapter.14

Fears of invasion The unreliable state of international relations and the internal questioning of British abilities and values gave rise to a unique literary genre: scare literature. From the late nineteenth century, Britons were inundated with books, novels, and pamphlets that depicted, in intricate detail, invasions of England, frequently prepared and aided by hordes of foreign spies, operating clandestinely among the gullible islanders. The ascent of scare literature occurred parallel with the restructuring of British society and Britain’s relative decline vis-à-vis the other great powers. The new genre reflected the growing uncertainty of the British middle classes in particular, and projected their fears on to both the nation’s European rivals and foreigners in the United Kingdom. As more English people felt anxiety over invasion from without and subversion from within, the number of books and fictional works multiplied. 15 From the turn of the century, the new literary genre increasingly fed on and fuelled concerns about the alleged machinations of German spies in Great Britain. Fictional invasion and spy stories created a veritable ‘spy scare’ which, in turn, spurred profound changes in the British legal framework and increased armament spending. Not least, the spy scare had a significant impact on the emerging British intelligence community. By 1909, the public had become so excited over the proliferating stories about rumoured German espionage that the government felt compelled to consider formally the threat posed by German spies. It convened a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence to deliberate the issue which concluded that ‘an extensive system of German espionage exists in this country, and that we have no organization for keeping in touch with that espionage’.16 It also recommended the establishment of a Secret Service Bureau, which was set up immediately. A year later, the Bureau was divided into a counter-espionage section under Captain Vernon Kell and a foreign section under Captain Mansfield Cumming, the precursors of MI5 and MI6, respectively. British concerns over German espionage paralleled the rise of the German Empire and reflected a growing Anglo-German antagonism. The German victory over France in 1870–1871 had resulted in a powerful German nation-state at the heart of Europe. Although Chancellor Otto

Introduction

5

von Bismarck declared the new colossus politically satiated, no European power appeared to be a match for the astonishing rise of German industrial might. Before the First World War, steel production was widely regarded as one of the chief indicators of great-power status, and while in 1890 Britain produced more than twice as much steel as Germany, by 1900 German output had overtaken Britain’s. This gap widened at an amazing pace, and by 1913 German production was two and a half times greater than Britain’s. Germany was also, after Russia, the most populous country in Europe – and growing faster than either France or Britain. Bismarck employed his nation’s might moderately, yet skilfully, and by 1890 few European diplomatic deals could be reached without Berlin’s consent. Towards the turn of the century, however, German foreign policy began to take on a more aggressive tone. The country’s new rulers, the erratic Emperor Wilhelm II and his scheming entourage, gave every appearance that being the linchpin of European diplomacy was not enough.17 For a variety of reasons, both domestic and international, the new German leadership embarked on an aggressive, imperialist foreign policy – Weltpolitik, or world policy. Germany, like the older colonial powers, Britain and France, was to have her ‘place in the sun’.18 This new policy was immensely popular especially among the educated middle classes who embraced Weltpolitik enthusiastically. A representative of this class, the sociologist Max Weber, remarked in his inaugural lecture at the venerable University of Freiburg in 1895: We must grasp the fact that the unification of Germany was a juvenile prank ( Jugendstreich) which the nation committed in its old age and, because of its expense, would have been better left undone, if it was to be the conclusion and not the starting point of German world power politics. 19 In an effort to rally domestic support and to live up to the Kaiser’s rhetoric, the imperial government embarked on a series of colonial adventures in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. These endeavours, however, did not result in a gradually expanding German global sphere of influence. Much rather, Germany flitted around the world like a will-o’-the-wisp, staking out claims, rebuffing and challenging the traditional great powers, without clearly defining German foreign policy aims. Whitehall did not deny Germany colonies or a voice in extra-European affairs; in fact, to many English people Germany’s ambition to play a part on the world stage commensurate with her power was legitimate. What really unsettled them

6

Spies of the Kaiser

was that German goals were so ill-defined and German foreign policy so unpredictable. A particular point of concern for Britain was the German government’s decision to launch a powerful battle fleet. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Secretary of the Naval Office from 1897 until 1916, and the Kaiser himself were the driving forces behind the German naval build-up. They believed that Germany was doomed to become a second-rank power without a strong navy. Tirpitz’s ‘risk theory’ envisioned a battle fleet strong enough to deter even the most powerful navy of the day – that is, the Royal Navy. Strangely, the admiral also hoped that a strong German navy would not antagonize Britain, but rather make Germany bündnisfähig, or a desirable ally for London. 20 However, Germany was a continental power, locked in central Europe between France, Russia and Austria-Hungary. From a strategic point of view, her having a formidable navy made little sense, especially since the greatest threat to Germany appeared to be the alliance of two of her neighbours, France and Russia, and defending against this threat would not depend on naval power. And rather than making Berlin an attractive alliance partner, the Imperial Navy antagonized Great Britain, eventually helping to drive London into the arms of Germany’s enemies. In 1901, when the German naval building programme was well under way, the Admiralstab (Admiralty Staff) established a naval intelligence department, the Nachrichten-Abteilung im Admiralstab, or ‘N’. This constituted a novelty in German history; until then, the country had possessed only a military intelligence department, Sektion IIIb, which collected intelligence on Russia and France. As the German navy rose in size and importance, ‘N’ expanded and assumed a multitude of tasks, including intelligence gathering on foreign navies and espionage in Great Britain.

Studies on intelligence If institutions are always a reflection of the society that creates them, this seems particularly true for the early German and British intelligence communities, whose structure, outlook and performance were profoundly shaped by the domestic context in which they operated. Hence, both communities offer important insights into the histories of their respective countries and into Anglo-German relations. But while the early years of British intelligence have long attracted popular attention and generated a wealth of literature, German naval intelligence has hardly been acknowledged as an institution in its own right. Several factors may

Introduction

7

account for this lack of interest. Imperial Germany’s intelligence services were departments of the army and navy. Hence, German intelligence studies fell into the field of military history, but this historical discipline was somewhat discredited in post-1945 Germany and resurfaced only recently through the adoption of Anglo-Saxon research approaches. Also, there is a powerful tradition in German historiography – and in German literature – of distinguishing between ‘serious’ and ‘popular’ subjects. Given the wealth of popular espionage fiction, intelligence studies were deemed somewhat less worthy of academic study than the established disciplines such as diplomatic, political or social history. Finally, Germany was a continental power, and her army has arguably impacted her history to a larger extent than her navy. Hence, if historians paid any attention at all to German intelligence in the early twentieth century, they usually dealt with military, not naval intelligence. The approach to military intelligence was also made somewhat easier when several former members of Sektion IIIb published their memoirs after the First World War whereas former naval intelligence officers maintained complete silence on their work.21 Characteristically, during the Cold War one of the few academic studies on German intelligence was published in the German Democratic Republic (GDR).22 As the authors openly acknowledge, their aim was not to produce a dispassionate assessment of German intelligence, but to reveal the ‘imperialistic’ roots of the West German secret service. This orthodox Marxist approach biases the book, and, in any case, the authors deal rather cursorily with the early twentieth century. Only recently have German historians broadened their research focus on intelligence studies to include aspects of German espionage in the First World War. Reinhard Doerries’ seminal study on German Ambassador to Washington Count Johann von Bernstorff contains an instructive section on German intelligence operations in America from 1914 until 1917.23 Friedhelm Koopmann has written a detailed doctoral thesis on the same subject,24 and Albert Pethö has published a comprehensive history of Austro-Hungarian intelligence in the First World War. 25 Remarkably, the standard work on the secret service of the Third Reich was written by an American, David Kahn. 26 Kahn’s well-researched book demonstrated not only that the academic study of a German secret service was possible, but also that one could device important insights into historical events by examining the intelligence community. In marked contrast to German scholars, British authors have produced an impressive amount of literature on their country’s secret service. This has partly to do with the fact that the British services have evolved

8

Spies of the Kaiser

continuously for about a century and have developed an institutional tradition that is unrivalled. While ‘N’ existed for barely twenty years, the most important branches of the British intelligence community, MI5 and MI6, are nearing their centennary in 2009. Vernon Kell directed MI5 for over thirty years, almost a third of the department’s entire history. This institutional continuity adds a certain modern relevance to studies on the early years of British intelligence which is virtually absent in the case of ‘N’ or IIIb. Imperial Germany’s intelligence services are history to a much larger extent than Vernon Kell’s MI5. Studies on ‘N’ or IIIb do not necessarily have far-reaching implications for Germany’s current intelligence service, but the modern British services are widely regarded as identical with their precursors of the early twentieth century. Judging by what has transpired from within the British intelligence community, their members have by and large accepted this view.27 Hence, the early twentieth century has become a formative period for the institutional memory of the British services. And perhaps precisely because the early years of MI5 and MI6 have become so important for the services’ selfimage as the guardians against a formidable foreign threat, critical studies on them took a long time in coming. Since their establishment, the British secret services have maintained strong links with sympathetic writers and journalists, who were at times given privileged access to the services’ files. The result was a string of publications that produced a rose-tinted picture that was difficult to contest, as it was largely based on sources closed to professional historians. A case in point is journalist Sidney Theodore Felstead’s German Spies at Bay: Being an Actual Record of the German Espionage in Great Britain during the Years 1914–1918, Compiled from Official Sources, published in 1920.28 As the title indicates, Felstead had been given access to top secret material by both MI5 and the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, the two agencies chiefly responsible for dealing with German spies during the Great War. German Spies at Bay depicts the work of British counter-espionage as a complete success while ‘the German espionage organization, so far as we were concerned, was remarkable chiefly for its stupidity’. 29 As Felstead had used records that have remained closed until recently, his work became a point of reference for anybody seeking to research this subject. In the 1920s and 1930s, several histories of the British intelligence service were published, and the authors usually relied on Felstead or personal connections with secret service members.30 Hence, books published during the interwar period tended to portray the British intelligence community as a resoundingly successful venture. They established a powerful narrative of a highly efficient and professional counter-espionage

Introduction

9

organization. This image was cemented following the Second World War, at the beginning of the Cold War. In this respect, John Bulloch’s history of the early years of MI5 was another important publication. Bulloch had collaborated with the widow of MI5’s first director, Vernon Kell. He emphasized the department’s professionalism, efficiency and accomplishments. While his book provides numerous details of interest, it was hardly a sober appraisal of the early years of British counter-espionage. 31 Neither Kell nor Cumming, the first director of MI6, published their memoirs, but the writings of ex-members of the British intelligence community have contributed significantly to the favourable image of their former employers. At times, ex-secret service members relied on their links with their former departments to gain access to sources that are inaccessible to most professional historians – and are hence difficult to verify. In 1999, former MI6 officer Alan Edwin Petty published a book on the early years of his service, based on the still classified diary of MI6’s first director, Mansfield Cumming. Petty stresses the magnitude of German espionage before and during the First World War, insisting that the establishment of the British intelligence community was a direct response to this threat.32 The former director-general of MI5, Stella Rimington, argued in the same vein in her autobiography, published in 2002. The spy scare, she contends, was not quite as exaggerated as it may appear. Quite early in the century, a fairly sophisticated German intelligence operation was already in place in Britain. As early as 1904, Germany had inserted into the country what we would now call ‘illegals’ – people with false identities, whose job it was to find out key strategic information, and communicate it covertly back to Germany. 33 Critical studies of the secret services were not made easier by the British government’s extraordinary reticence in allowing public access to the records of the British intelligence community. The records of MI5 for the years 1909–1919 were classified until 1997, and the records of MI6 are still under lock and key. Even the court martial files of tried German agents for this period were not accessible until the 1990s. It must also be borne in mind that the Cold War did not provide an intellectual environment conducive to critical studies on this subject. Until recently, the British government did not even acknowledge the existence of MI5 and MI6. Without denying British intelligence due credit for their work during the Cold War, one can note that the inaccessibility of secret service

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records and the widely accepted notion of an intelligence community that hardly ever failed made objective appraisal of their work difficult. Hence, the pioneer historians of the early years of the British intelligence community faced a daunting task. Academic interest in the history of intelligence was stimulated in the 1970s by revelations concerning Bletchley Park, the British deciphering school at Cambridge that helped break German codes in the Second World War. 34 Around that time the idea grew stronger to rewrite history to insert the secret services, and from the late 1970s a small group of British researchers, including Christopher Andrew, David French, and Nicholas Hiley, began to study the early years of the British intelligence community. French was the first to publish his findings. In a groundbreaking article on ‘Spy Fever in Britain, 1900–1915’, he argued that the threat posed by German espionage was minor and that the success of Kell’s unit in dealing with German spies must be qualified. 35 A few years later, Christopher Andrew published a seminal study on the early years of the British intelligence community.36 Andrew’s work demonstrated that it was possible to write a well-connected study on this subject despite the unavailability of official records, and likewise that one could learn much about a society by examining its intelligence community. Around the same time, Nicholas Hiley produced two articles on ‘The Failure’ of British espionage and counter-espionage against Germany before the First World War.37 Based on meticulous research, Hiley argued that the British secret services exaggerated the German threat and failed to assess German espionage correctly. Shortly afterwards, Hiley published an article on British counter-espionage during the First World War, a milestone in the historiography of this subject. Remarkably, his findings largely hold even after the release of the MI5 records for this period.38 In the 1980s, the Conservative premiership of Margaret Thatcher provided an additional spur to some historians. Thatcher’s love of and support for the secret services was unsettling to anyone concerned with the accountability and transparency of the intelligence community, and in the late 1980s Bernard Porter produced The Origins of the Vigilant State, a critical analysis of the role of the metropolitan police in counter-espionage before the First World War. In this insightful study, Porter shows how the emergence of the ‘secret state’ went hand in hand with the abandonment of Britain’s liberal traditions. 39 Phillip Knightley delivered a particularly blistering indictment of MI5 and MI6 in his controversial book The Second Oldest Profession. Knightley argued that the secret services magnified the German threat all out of proportion, and that their personnel were outright incompetent: ‘In Britain, the

Introduction

11

Secret Service Bureau had attracted to it men of little merit, including leaders who, to put it kindly, were eccentric and inefficient.’40 As the Secret Service Bureau was established in 1909 to counter an alleged German espionage threat, the histories of German naval intelligence and British counter-espionage are to some extent linked. Vernon Kell’s unit operated on the assumption that Great Britain was infested with German spies, but to date historians have given scant attention to German intelligence as an organization in its own right. The existing studies on German espionage in early twentieth-century Britain centre on the British intelligence community; German spies are viewed as part of this history, and if the extent and goals of German intelligence are discussed at all, this is generally done on the basis of British sources. These sources, however, give a rather one-sided picture. Constance Kell, for instance, claims that her husband ‘managed to be always a move ahead’ of the Germans.41 In fact, Kell’s unit detected several German spies, but without knowing how many German agents actually operated in Britain, it is impossible to say if he was really ‘always a move ahead’. Analysing German intelligence on the basis of sources pertaining to British counter-espionage alone becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of Kell’s success, since the British authorities were aware only of captured German spies. As historian Richard Rowan observed, this procedure ‘is like judging a business community by its bankrupts’.42 A proper assessment of German espionage ought to start with a study of the German agency responsible for conducting these operations. The making of the British intelligence community is inconceivable without the German espionage threat, be it an imaginary or a real one, but before examining its impact on British society, the extent and scope of German espionage must be determined. On this crucial aspect virtually no research has been conducted, and this book is an attempt to fill the gap. Spies of the Kaiser is based primarily on four major collections. Any research on German espionage in Great Britain must start with the records of German naval intelligence which are almost completely preserved in the German military archives. 43 The documents in this series are a treasure trove of information, and they are here used for the first time with regard to German covert operations in Great Britain. Another important, yet untapped, collection comprises the records of the German consulate in Rotterdam in the German Foreign Office archives. The German consulate in Rotterdam was an important coordination centre of various intelligence services and operations during the First World War.44 Two major British collections were also consulted extensively.

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The records of the trials and courts martial of various German spies were declassified in the 1990s. 45 They contain much useful information on the defendants’ motivation and background. Finally, MI5’s records for the years 1909–1919 were made accessible to the public in 1997 and are here used systematically for the first time.46 These files include a few original documents, such as Vernon Kell’s diary, but the largest section on German espionage before and during the war consists of the ‘historical reports’. These reports were compiled in the early 1920s under the supervision of Lieutenant-Colonel Sywnfen Jervis on the basis of original documents (intercepted letters, court martial records, police evidence and so on) that were then destroyed.47 The reports contain valuable information on MI5’s work, and there is no indication that they were doctored. However, not being primary material, and composed with hindsight, they have to be used with caution. Imperial Germany’s espionage in Great Britain was conducted chiefly by the intelligence department of the Admiralstab, ‘N’, and on one level, Spies of the Kaiser is a history of that department and its operations in Great Britain. But the spectre of German espionage having such a profound impact on British society, on the making of the British intelligence community, and on Anglo-German relations before the war, these aspects are examined as well. ‘N’ was established in 1901 and disbanded in 1919, and these dates provide convenient parameters for this study. The narrative proceeds broadly chronologically and is guided by several questions: To what extent did internal and external factors influence structure, operations, and outlook of German naval intelligence and British counter-espionage? Did ‘N’ threaten British security, and how did British counter-espionage respond to the ‘German threat’? How did each intelligence community contribute to the outcome of the First World War? What were the motivations of individuals for joining the secret service? Finally, are there long-term implications of German espionage in Great Britain, and can modern societies draw lessons from intelligence operations in the era of the First World War? First, however, one needs to look at the origins of both ‘N’ and MI5 and consider to which extent the German and British domestic context shaped the early years of both departments.

1 The Origins of German Naval Intelligence

The navy’s organizational framework for intelligence The rapid rise of the Imperial German Navy began in the late 1890s, buoyed by a combination of hazy foreign policy goals and domestic pressure. On the one hand, many Germans, especially amongst the middle classes, regarded a strong navy as a necessary precondition for the successful conduct of Weltpolitik. The popular contemporary equation of naval might with global power was strongly reinforced by the writings of Alfred T. Mahan, especially his The Influence of Sea-Power upon History, first published in 1890. Mahan, an American naval officer, argued that only the possession of a strong navy guaranteed great power status.1 On the other hand, domestic pressure groups favoured an expansion of the German fleet for economic reasons. While the shipbuilding, iron, and steel industries lobbied for naval orders, Hanseatic merchants, shippers, and chambers of commerce were calling for increased naval protection for German commercial interests in Latin America, China, and elsewhere. 2 It was this combination of hard economic factors and a growing public fascination with naval might that resulted in one of the most ambitious shipbuilding programmes in modern history. In 1897, the Kaiser appointed Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz Secretary of the Naval Office. Tirpitz became the focal point and driving force behind the German naval build-up, displaying exceptional talent in mobilizing public opinion for the navy’s cause; Reichstag deputies were cajoled to vote for the naval budget, and the Naval Office launched an extensive propaganda campaign to fire popular enthusiasm for the fleet. A navy league (Flottenverein) was established, which soon rivalled other pressure groups such as the colonial league (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft) in size and influence. From his appointment in 1897 until the Agadir, or second 13

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Moroccan crisis in 1911–1912, Tirpitz was able to divert major funds to his naval building programme, endowing Imperial Germany with the second largest fleet in the world, surpassed only by the Royal Navy.3 The unprecedented growth of the fleet necessitated a thorough restructuring of the navy’s organizational framework, and Tirpitz deliberately encouraged the fragmentation of the upper echelons of the navy into several bodies. As Secretary of the Naval Office and a personal friend of the Kaiser, he thus ensured himself a key position in the Imperial Navy, but the lack of a clear hierarchy within the new polycratic naval structure resulted in a latent and long-standing rivalry amongst the top offices for funds and power. Once the new organization was in place, Tirpitz was careful not to permit departments outside his own Naval Office to gain too much influence. He was particularly vigilant lest the new Admiralstab, responsible for military planning, develop into something approximating the army’s influential General Staff. Predictably, Tirpitz and the successive Chiefs of the Admiralstab clashed repeatedly over naval policy, which had a significant impact on the making and early years of German naval intelligence. In 1899, the newly created Admiralstab assumed responsibility for operations planning and, in connection therewith, the organization of naval intelligence. The new body immediately set out to establish a naval intelligence department.4 The Chief of the Admiralstab, Admiral Otto von Diederichs, approached the General Staff to learn how its military intelligence department, Sektion IIIb, operated, 5 and on 27 February 1900, Diederichs approached the Kaiser with a view to founding a naval intelligence department. 6 Wilhelm II approved of these plans in general and referred Diederichs to Tirpitz, mainly over the question of finance. On 29 March 1900, Diederichs asked the Naval Office to supply funds for the employment of four naval officers to establish a naval intelligence department. However, the aggressive Diederichs had already clashed with Tirpitz when the Admiralstab had attempted to extend its jurisdiction at the Naval Office’s expense.7 Consequently, Tirpitz was bent on obstructing Diederich’s plans and left his enquiry unanswered. Angrily, Diederichs approached the Kaiser once again, presenting his case in a lengthy memorandum on 12 January 1901. In this key document of naval intelligence, Diederichs expressed his regret that Tirpitz had still not answered his request even though the need for such a department was more urgent than ever. Without competent intelligence, the admiral argued, it was impossible to draft contingency plans for war. So far, Diederichs explained, the Admiralstab possessed only limited means for intelligence gathering, including the evaluation of newspapers from Germany and abroad

The Origins of German Naval Intelligence

15

concerning naval matters and the reports of naval attachés. However, Diederichs remarked, the attachés’ ‘hands were tied to some degree’ and, anyway, they were subordinates of the Naval Office. In order to centralize and strengthen naval intelligence, he advocated the establishment of a special department, modelled on IIIb. For this purpose the Admiralstab requested one staff officer, either a commander or frigate captain, to head the department; one lieutenant commander as an assistant; one officer off active duty as a confidential man and courier for correspondence and to forward money to agents; and one cartographer who was able to double as a photographer. Furthermore, Diederichs asked for 150,000 marks p.a. The memorandum stressed the importance of supplying the fleet with adequate intelligence on Germany’s most likely enemies at sea – France, Britain and, curiously, the United States. It would be a fatal mistake, Diederichs concluded, to create a powerful fleet on the one hand, while on the other hand saving only ‘a couple thousand marks’ by not supplying the Admiralstab with sufficient funds to establish an intelligence department.8 Once again, the Kaiser approved the project and referred Diederichs to the Naval Office for practical execution. Tirpitz could hardly ignore a direct monarchical order, but he urged Diederichs to employ retired naval officers, as that would be less costly.9 Since Tirpitz presided over the entire naval budget, he was in a position to reduce the requested 150,000 marks radically, to a mere 10,000 for 1901. But this meagre sum sufficed to establish the Admiralstab’s naval intelligence department.10 Its original name, Nachrichtenbüro (intelligence bureau), was quickly changed into Nachrichten-Abteilung (intelligence department, or ‘N’),11 and it was located within the Admiralstab building at Königgrätzer Straße 70 in Berlin. 12 Throughout the early years of naval intelligence, Tirpitz continued to cut down or withhold funds for the department. The ensuing haggling between the Naval Office and Admiralstab, and Tirpitz’s attempt to retain some degree of control over ‘N’, reflected the state of affairs in the higher echelons of the Imperial Navy. Diederichs genuinely believed in the necessity of a naval intelligence department, but the establishment of ‘N’ as a department of the Admiralstab was also a means for him to wrest some control over naval affairs from the dominating Tirpitz. Despite the Naval Office’s obstructions, ‘N’s staff was quickly increased to four members, matching the size of IIIb in 1899. 13 In all likelihood, Commander (late Naval Captain) Arthur Tapken became ‘N’s first director. 14 Tapken, who was born in 1863, was married to an Englishwoman, which may have been regarded as an additional qualification for the job.15 Around March 1914 Frigate Captain (later Naval Captain) Walther Isendahl replaced

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Tapken.16 Isendahl held this position until February 1918, when he was replaced by Naval Captain Paul Ebert who ran the department until the end of the war. 17 The director of the department usually signed with a capital ‘N’ (for Nachrichten-Abteilung) and the first letter of his name. The department established several subdivisions for special duties, the most important being the first, ‘NI’, for intelligence gathering abroad. This office was held from about 1913 until the end of the war by Commander (later Naval Captain) Fritz Prieger. After the war Prieger was also responsible for the winding up of ‘N’.18 Naval Lieutenant Georg Stammer served as secretary (Admiralstabssekretär), conducting correspondence on behalf of ‘N’ and ‘NI’ and also working for naval counter-espionage.19 During the war, the naval intelligence department was considerably enlarged. New branches were added, including a separate naval counterespionage agency, called ‘G’ (Gegenspionage or counter-espionage),20 headed by Naval Captain Paul Ebert from spring 1916 until February 1918.21 Another subsection, ‘NIV’, was established in spring 1916 for sabotage operations. 22 ‘NIV’ was located on the Lützowstraße in Berlin and disguised as a commercial enterprise, the Agatit-Werke. The first director of ‘NIV’ was Lieutenant Commander Alfred Lassen,23 succeeded in August 1916 by Naval Captain Paul Reichardt, who ran the department until the middle of March 1917.24 Alfred Lassen’s brother August replaced Reichardt and was in charge until the department’s dissolution.25 During the war, the future head of the Third Reich’s military intelligence department, the Abwehr, Naval Lieutenant Wilhelm Canaris, also joined ‘N’ in a minor function.26 The archives contain little information on the size of German naval intelligence during the war. According to the director of German military intelligence, Walter Nicolai, his own department employed 1,139 staff at its peak in 1918.27 Presumably, the naval intelligence organization was slightly smaller, given the greater importance of the army over the navy. Throughout its existence, ‘N’ remained firmly integrated into the organization of the Admiralstab. Apart from the operatives, naval intelligence personnel were recruited exclusively from branches of the Imperial Navy, and usually returned to other naval duties after completing a stint of a few years with ‘N’. Arthur Tapken, for instance, served in various functions at the Admiralstab after his retirement from naval intelligence and was promoted to rear-admiral during the war.28 Given the continuous exchange of staff, ‘N’ developed less of an institutional tradition than the British intelligence community. While ‘N’ had three successive directors between 1901 and 1919, MI5 had only one from 1909 until 1940.

The Origins of German Naval Intelligence

17

In the winter of 1900–1901, the Admiralstab conducted a war game to assess the odds of success for the Imperial Navy’s East Asian cruiser squadron in an Anglo-German conflict. The results were sobering. Even under favourable conditions, the German cruisers would be no match for the Royal Navy. The Admiralstab therefore concluded that, among other things, a significant number of globally operating naval agents should be recruited to observe the movements of foreign war ships worldwide, and ‘N’ assumed responsibility for this task.29 From the very beginning, ‘N’ focused almost exclusively on the Royal Navy, which, due to its sheer size, was present wherever German battleships ventured. In the Pacific the Admiralstab did not even care to gather intelligence on ships other than British, as there were so few of them about. The sole focus on British ships, however, raised concerns in the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, abbreviated AA, located on the Wilhelmstraße 74–76, and thus often referred to simply as the Wilhelmstraße). The AA intervened, fearing the political consequences if it became known that Germany directed its intelligence exclusively at Britain, and the admirals promised to keep formal track of French warships as well.30

Agents and recruitment ‘N’ divided its agents into two categories, reporters (Berichterstatter or BE) and confidential men (Vertrauensmänner or VM). Originally, BEs reported exclusively on movements of foreign warships while VMs would ‘actively take part in supplying German warships in times of war’. As time passed, the dividing line between the two categories blurred. ‘N’ grouped the globe into seven sectors, with the naval agents operating in each sector receiving a number, in series 200–299 for agents serving in Europe, 300–399 in East Africa, 400–499 in West Africa, 500–599 in East Asia, 600–699 in Australia, 700–799 in the western Americas and 800–899 in the eastern Americas, including Central America and the Caribbean.31 German battleship commanders had orders to recruit agents in their respective ports of call, confirming the contract by handshake. They were advised to ‘pick the persons carefully as their recruitment could not be cancelled easily later on’. Each BE knew only his superior, the ‘main correspondent’ (Hauptberichterstatter, or HBE), who was in possession of the top secret material (codes, wireless telegraph and so on) that was to be handed out to the BEs in periods of rising tension or war. 32 Given its small size, the Admiralstab and its intelligence service would have been unable to conduct their global duties without relying on outside

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support. Hence, the navy approached other German institutions for assistance. From early on, the Admiralstab attempted to recruit reserve army officers. Several army corps in Germany were asked for the addresses of officers residing abroad ‘to fulfil certain tasks’.33 However, the corps commands usually declined to forward such lists and frequently complained to the War Ministry.34 In turn, the War Ministry called on the Naval Office, criticizing this procedure of direct approach and enquiring as to what exactly was expected from these officers. 35 Tirpitz, who had not been informed about the Admiralstab’s procedure, asked Diederichs what this was all about.36 In the end an agreement was reached to the effect that henceforth the Admiralstab would be allowed to approach the army corps directly. 37 Even though this method produced only a few recruits, the navy was able to compile a large number of names and addresses of officers living abroad, and ‘N’ recruited some of them during the war.38 It would have been sensible to liaise closely with the existing intelligence apparatus of the army, but cooperation between ‘N’ and IIIb was never satisfactory. Both agencies worked in great secrecy and usually viewed their counterpart as competition rather than complementary. 39 Although an exchange of agents had been envisaged, each department made only a few of their operatives known to their counterpart, and on the whole the two organizations maintained a sceptical attitude towards each other. 40 More promising for the recruitment of naval agents were the great German steamship companies, in particular the Hamburg-America-Line (HAL) which after 1891 cooperated with the naval authorities on a number of issues.41 From the 1890s, the Admiralstab became more demanding and pressed the HAL to permit its employees to cooperate actively with the navy on intelligence matters. ‘N’ regarded HAL officials as ideal recruits since they were usually experts on naval matters and were based in all the major seaports worldwide. Following negotiations with the Admiralstab, the HAL in 1908 asked several of their employees to assist the navy in any way possible in the case of rising tensions. The request concluded with an appeal to the potential recruits’ sense of duty and a warning not to let the message fall into the hands of third parties, particularly foreigners. 42 Just before the outbreak of war, in July 1914, the Admiralstab approached the director of the HAL, Albert Ballin, enquiring to what extent he would be willing to support the navy during mobilization or war. Ballin replied unequivocally, ‘I place myself and the organization subordinate to me

The Origins of German Naval Intelligence

19

at your Excellency’s disposal as best as possible’. Ballin also asked for an interview with ‘N’s director Isendahl.43 This meeting took place three days later: ‘N’ met Ballin on 10 July during a trip from Hamburg to Berlin. Ballin was very cooperative and mentioned that even His Majesty the Kaiser, on the occasion of the dinner after the Elbregatta, had pointed out the necessity of intellectual support given to the navy by the steamship companies. Ballin put the head of the bureau of the Hamburg-AmericaLine, Captain Polis, at our disposal; ‘N’ will contact him at some point in order to find suitable people in important foreign seaports who could act as BEs or report on ship movements. Finally, Ballin recommended Reserve Lieutenant Commander Wittner, an employee of the HamburgAmerica-Line, as being very suitable for tasks requiring a certain daredevil attitude.44 While Ballin volunteered his assistance out of a sense of patriotism, shipping companies generally profited materially from cooperating with the navy as they received substantial naval contracts in return. 45 Recruiting a BE from a shipping company benefited both the shipping line and naval intelligence since the individual would be able to work for both employers in the case of war, rather than being drafted for active service in the army or navy.46 But the largest German organization abroad was the diplomatic service which had missions, embassies and consulates spread across the globe. The German consular service looked particularly promising, with its offices located in most of the major seaports. Therefore, from a very early stage, the Admiralstab tried to recruit diplomats directly or at least secure their aid in hiring agents. These attempts were accompanied by and resulted in long-standing negotiations between the navy and the Wilhelmstraße. 47 Over the years, the navy succeeded in gaining ever broader access to the consular service. The Wilhelmstraße was generally reluctant to open its service to naval intelligence, but the diplomats’ reservations were not so much due to moral or ethical reservations but rather to concerns over the reputation of the diplomatic service. As Wilhelm von Stumm, counsellor at the German Foreign Office, pointed out to ‘N’s director, a German embassy, mission, or consulate must always be in a position to deny the existence of official orders to become active on behalf of the navy.48 Beyond that, the Wilhelmstraße was quite willing to assist ‘N’ in its quest for agents. In 1911, the year of the Agadir crisis,

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Foreign Secretary Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter practically gave the navy carte blanche to recruit agents from his staff. In a circular memorandum distributed to the consular service he wrote: every individual must judge for himself, based on his own patriotic feelings, if and to what extent he wants to support the navy in peace and war, which includes the peril of being compromised. The desires of the navy in this respect will be communicated to your Excellencies by the naval commanders on the spot. It is left to your own understanding and sense of responsibility to decide how far you think you may lend support without compromising your office. I do not want to set a definite limit to the extent of this support, neither for times of peace nor for war.49 Hence, by 1911 ‘N’ could tap into a significant pool of potential operatives, including the ranks of the consular service and the most important steamship companies as well as military and, of course, naval officers. The purpose of this global service was to secure quick and reliable intelligence on the movement of foreign warships in the case of rising tensions and war. The Admiralstab referred to it as its ‘war intelligence system’ (Kriegsnachrichtenwesen or KNW).50 On the face of it, the KNW was a blatant failure, since the carefully woven global web collapsed shortly after the outbreak of war. In August 1914, Britain cut Germany’s overseas cables, severing contact between many operatives and headquarters in Berlin, and in 1915 the Admiralstab ordered most of its overseas agents to discontinue their activities.51 But the list of names of potential agents compiled in peacetime became an invaluable recruiting tool during the First World War, and numerous German naval agents operating in Britain from August 1914 had long been on ‘N’s records as candidates for the KNW.

2 The Origins of British Counter-Espionage

Invasion scares In 1870, the imperial French government of Napoleon III declared war on Prussia and her allies, but the Germans quickly annihilated the French army, invaded France, captured the emperor himself, and eventually conquered Paris. On 28 January 1871, French General de Valdan signed an armistice.1 Eleven days later, a British officer, Colonel George Tomkyns Chesney, submitted the outline of a short story entitled The Battle of Dorking to Blackwood’s Magazine where it was published soon afterwards.2 Chesney’s tale describes a successful German invasion of England, culminating in the rout and defeat of the British army at Dorking. Through the character of a veteran recalling the disaster for his grandchildren fifty years after the event, Chesney presented an invasion whose ‘coming was foreshadowed plainly enough to open our eyes, if we had not been wilfully blind’.3 His message was straightforward. A false sense of security and lack of preparedness had caused British failure. The story, subsequently reprinted in more accessible book form, adopted the moral imperative of shaking the British people from national indolence. 4 Chesney was not the first writer to portray an enemy invasion of Britain, but he was the first to combine the accuracy of military details with a strong descriptive narrative. His work set the standard in presentation and technique for virtually all subsequent scare stories. 5 This was the first time realistic fiction was blended with real national security concerns. Chesney’s tale was inspired by German military might and thrived on British concerns about what German victory over France meant for the European balance of power and British security. However, good relations with Germany under the stewardship of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck soon dispelled British anxiety about 21

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German intentions and military prowess, and in the late 1870s the German peril gradually faded into oblivion. While the invasion theme remained a constant feature in British fiction, in the 1880s the focus shifted to France, still the traditional enemy for most Britons. The conclusion of a military alliance in 1891 between Britain’s greatest colonial rivals, France and Russia, triggered a spate of invasion stories. William Tufnell Le Queux,6 one of the most successful and influential hack writers of invasion and spy stories and himself an amateur spy, published The Great War in England in 1897, in which Britain faced a combined seaborne attack from France and her Russian ally.7 A numerically superior Franco-Russian fleet defeated an obsolete Royal Navy off Beachy Head, pillaging and massacring enemy armies advanced across the English countryside, and the cruel French bombarded a defenceless London. When Britain and France were at the brink of war over Egypt during the Fashoda crisis in 1898, Le Queux published a sequel to his tale, England’s Peril.8 Technically another invasion story, Le Queux here introduced a new element to the genre: the spy, operating within British society as a fifth column and paving the way for the foreign invader: Attached to the [French] Embassy were many spies, for of recent years the French Secret Service had grown almost as formidable in its proportions as that of Russia, and their constant reports from political and official centres in London would have surprised the Admiralty and War Office. Officially they were unrecognized, being controlled by one man, a renegade Englishman.9 However, as a direct result of major realignments on the international level, Germany gradually replaced France as Britain’s focus of imaginated fears. While better Anglo-French relations, culminating in the entente cordiale in 1904, effectively ended any threat of invasion from France, differences between London and Berlin appeared increasingly irreconcilable. During the Boer War, Germany had openly sympathized with Britain’s enemies. The British public was further irritated by the German naval amendments (Flottennovellen) of 1898 and 1900 and the failure of Anglo-German negotiations on a possible alliance (1901). Many contemporaries regarded Germany’s clamorous pursuit of Weltpolitik as an attempt to undermine the British Empire. English people became increasingly apprehensive of the German colossus, and on 20 February 1903 the Morning Post proclaimed: ‘There is a menace growing up in the east which cannot be ignored.’10

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 23

One of the many Britons who wheeled around and substituted the French with the German peril was a clerk of the House of Commons and amateur sailor, Erskine Childers.11 In 1903, he produced his literary masterpiece, The Riddle of the Sands.12 The book became an instant bestseller throughout the country and inaugurated a new and even more sensational wave of invasion and spy literature that focused exclusively on Germany.13 Childers wrote the book with the sole aim of increasing public awareness of the danger of German invasion. In his fictional work, Carruthers and Davies, two English yachtsmen-gentlemen sailing off the coast of Germany, stumble across preparations in waters inside Borkum for the embarkation of a large German army in barges. The tale ends with Carruthers realizing that they had uncovered nothing less than a gigantic German master plan for the invasion of Britain. Gaining widespread publicity, Childers’ book elicited the desired response from government officials and the general public both of whom clamoured for more effective military intelligence and preparation.14 Pressured by large numbers of conservative Members of Parliament representing constituencies on the east coast of England, William Lord Selborne, First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, asked the naval staff for a feasibility study on the type of invasion scheme outlined in Childers’ novel.15 The verdict of Prince Louis von Battenberg, Director of Naval Intelligence, on The Riddle of the Sands was unambiguous: ‘As a novel it is excellent, as a warplan it is rubbish.’16 In fact, neither the French nor the German government ever seriously contemplated invasion,17 but the commotion caused by Childers’ book and alarming increases in the size of the German navy forced the British government officially to consider the likelihood of an invasion.18 On 18 February 1903, Prime Minister Arthur Balfour chaired an inquiry by the newly formed Committee of Imperial Defence into ‘The possibility of the invasion of England with special reference to . . . the liability of the United Kingdom to French invasion during the South African War’. 19 A subcommittee collected statistics and testimony from experts, service chiefs, intelligence networks and various commercial sources, and the Director of Military Intelligence sent a couple of experts to Germany to verify Childers’ scenario.20 However, the key office, the Admiralty, remained unimpressed.21 The committee’s final report concluded that the minimum force for an invasion proper was 70,000 men, who would require 200 boats and a twenty-hour crossing, which would give the Royal Navy ample time to interfere.22 Hence, there was no need to bolster ground forces in Great Britain. In Balfour’s opinion, the army served a more useful role in the Empire: the British Isles required only minimal

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volunteer and militia forces for protection while a strong Royal Navy adequately defended their shores from continental aggressors.23 Nevertheless, the government set a dangerous precedent by responding to public pressure with an official committee on invasion. When the Moroccan crisis of 1905–1906 pushed Germany and Britain to the brink of war, numerous invasion and spy stories picked up the general excitement, and in 1906 Le Queux published his enormously successful The Invasion of 1910. This work depicted in intricate detail a German invasion with all the popular notions of Teutonic savagery and arrogance. First serialized in the Daily Mail, the novel was the brainchild of that newspaper’s enterprising owner, Alfred Harmsworth. Harmsworth, who later acquired the influential Times and was created Lord Northcliffe, was convinced that the average British person ‘liked a good hate’.24 Moreover, sensational stories with blood, violence and marauding Germans sold newspapers. At Harmsworth’s insistence, Le Queux toured likely invasion routes across the English countryside and revised the initial drafts to allow German troops to pass through every sizeable town on the eastern seaboard where the Daily Mail could be sold in large numbers.25 A massive advertising campaign boosted the series. On one occasion, a long file of veterans in spiked helmets and Prussian-blue uniforms solemnly paraded down Oxford Street in London, carrying sandwich boards advertising Le Queux’s latest masterpiece. 26 The story and the publicity campaign hammered in stereotypes later used so effectively in Allied propaganda during the First World War. In the popular mind, despicable Huns became Britain’s main enemy. 27 The Invasion of 1910 eventually sold over a million copies in book form and was translated into twenty-seven languages.28 Le Queux’s tale of a Teutonic invasion was so successful that even the German Emperor felt compelled to discuss it at length with his closest advisers.29 Besides a desire to cash in on the invasion scare, Le Queux, like Chesney before him, attempted to demonstrate how national idleness and an underdeveloped British army were bound to lead to disaster. In this endeavour, he was very successful.30 Even Winston Churchill, then Home Secretary in the Liberal government, was persuaded that preparations for an inevitable military struggle were more important than Liberal politics and social programmes. 31 And the distinguished FieldMarshal Lord Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Earl of Kandahar, hero of the Boer War and commander-in-chief of the British army from 1902 to 1904, earnestly believed it was ‘most dangerous . . . to ignore so disturbing and apparently so remote a contingency as our being forced into war’. 32

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 25

Roberts was an acquaintance of Le Queux’s and had lent him a helping hand with the military details of The Invasion of 1910, but he was merely an influential figure in a broader conservative movement that used invasion and spy scares for a campaign to hector the Liberal government into adopting conscription. In January 1906, Roberts and Colonel Charles à Court Repington, former director of army intelligence and now military correspondent for The Times, formed the National Defence Association, the sole aim of which was lobby for the adoption of mandatory military service.33 When Le Queux’s Invasion of 1910 plunged the country once more into war hysteria, Repington seized the opportunity to embark on a concerted propaganda campaign to coerce the government into adopting conscription. He hammered away at the invasion scare in The Times to the point where invasion became almost the sole justification for conscription.34 Repington claimed that negligible fortifications and few trained troops within Britain invited a German ‘bolt from the blue’, a contention that was widely credited by the Army General Staff and significant segments of the public. Once the invasion controversy was well under way, Repington formed a ‘Committee of Four’ with Roberts, Lord Lovat, and Sir Samuel Scott, which approached Balfour to persuade him to re-open the investigation on invasion. Repington shrewdly argued that the foe was no longer France, but a much more formidable Germany, warranting a re-investigation of the issue. Balfour, on the other hand, was now in opposition and ready to do anything with a potential to embarrass the Liberal government. As a result, Liberal Prime Minister Henry Campbell-Bannerman, whose campaign platform had been the reduction of armaments, 35 yielded to the public pressure unleashed by Repington and his allies and convened a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence to reexamine once more the likelihood of invasion. 36 The government was divided on the issue. The navy under First Sea Lord John ‘Jackie’ Fisher adhered to the ‘blue water school’, which believed (in contrast to the ‘bolt from the blue’ school) that a potential invader would be kept from Britain by a strong navy. Fisher did not credit the ‘invasion bogey’, as he called it, and feared that a re-investigation of the issue might lead to the diversion of funds from the navy to the army. 37 Others were more favourably disposed. Cecil Spring-Rice of the Foreign Office, for instance, was convinced that it was only a question of when, not if, Germany would launch an invasion.38 But the key government figure was the Secretary of State for War, Richard Burdon, later Lord Haldane, who firmly believed in the army’s voluntary recruiting system. In marked contrast to the men around him, Haldane

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knew Germany well. In his youth, he had studied at Göttingen University. He was fluent in German and took pride in his high standing in German society. He once wrote to his mother: ‘I find myself in Germany more popular than in England. It reminds me of the sort of reception Lloyd George gets when he travels to Wales.’39 But while immune to the Germanophobia surrounding him, Haldane was not reluctant to exploit the invasion scare to his own ends. In 1909, Major Guy du Maurier’s An Englishman’s Home was performed in London. The play, which attracted large audiences, contained thinly veiled allusions to a German invasion.40 Haldane immediately ordered the installation of a recruiting booth in the theatre’s foyer, with a sergeant and enlistment forms. He described these as the ‘modern methods of recruiting’. And indeed, the army was able to recruit over 30,000 men this way. Only when the impact of An Englishman’s Home waned, did Haldane publicly ridicule the stage production. He had made use of the scaremongers’ theme when it suited him, a dangerous gamble that would ultimately cost him dear. The subcommittee on invasion met sixteen times between 27 November 1907 and 28 July 1908. It was composed of politicians of high calibre, including the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Herbert Asquith, the Secretary of War, Haldane, and the First Lord of the Admiralty, Fisher.41 Although Roberts and Repington had spent over a year compiling a vast amount of evidence, the ‘bolt from the blue school’ was thoroughly discredited at the subcommittee hearings, thanks to Haldane and the excoriating cross-examination techniques of the navy officers.42 Echoing the conclusions drawn in the 1903 invasion inquiry, the final report stated that ‘as long as our naval supremacy is assured against any reasonably probable combination of powers, invasion is impracticable’.43 But Repington and Roberts would not admit defeat. In summer 1908, the Royal Navy held manoeuvres intended to test the fleet’s ability to prevent an enemy invasion. Contrary to expectations, a small force was able to break through and set ashore at Wick in northern Scotland. This led to all sorts of rumours to the effect that the Admiralty was trying to keep the affair secret, and the press once again picked up on the invasion theme. In December, Northcliffe’s Daily Mail reported that the Territorials had taken more than three hours to arrive at the spot where the supposed invader had landed. Repington demanded in vain that the government publish the subcommittee’s report. In November 1908, Roberts delivered a speech in the House of Lords calling for the publication of the committee’s findings and claiming there were 80,000 Germans harboured in England ready to assist the invader. He concluded with a demand for a citizen defence force of 1 million men which was approved by 74:32

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 27

votes. The nationalistic press vigorously supported Roberts, and the German ambassador, Count Paul Wolff von Metternich, reported resignedly to Berlin: A year ago the old field marshal’s [Roberts] speech would hardly have been possible. It would have been held to be such a violent exaggeration that it would have left no impression whatever. Today, it is taken more seriously; at any rate, it is not laughed at, and the exaggeration is not remarked upon.44 The Liberal government’s reluctance to publish its findings thus allowed Repington, Roberts and their conservative supporters to score an important publicity victory. Although conscription was not introduced until 1916, the advocates of compulsory military service, by skilfully exploiting public anxiety over invasion, set the pattern for a more successful venture, the campaign for the establishment of a counterespionage department.

The campaign for a Secret Service Bureau German espionage became a public concern – and subsequently one for the British authorities – from about the 1890s. In January 1900, Northcliffe’s Daily Mail informed its readers that ‘Every German officer has his own little bit of England marked off’,45 and German spies became a standard topic in the columns of the Daily Mail, Daily Express and similar newspapers. As such stories were occasionally backed up by British officials, the authorities could not ignore them altogether. For instance, Major William Thwaites, head of the German section of the War Office, informed his superiors in 1907 that he attributed ‘much truth’ to newspaper reports on German espionage.46 The early investigations of cases of alleged German espionage were chiefly conducted by William Melville, who until 1903 had been a detective of the Special Branch of New Scotland Yard, and from 1909 was officially employed by the Secret Service Bureau, the precursor of MI5. 47 In 1901, Melville investigated a US citizen and alleged German spy named Allain. The man was later expelled. Four years later, Melville made enquiries about another alleged German spy, Ludwig SchmidtHederich, and that of thirteen suspicious Germans in Epping. Shortly thereafter he travelled to Hamburg to shadow a certain ‘C. Werner’. None of this produced any evidence of genuine German espionage, but Melville filed several reports to the authorities between 1905 and 1907,

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urging the introduction of a surveillance system for foreigners, to be enforced by the police, post office and coast guard. 48 Other officials reached similar conclusions.49 The campaign to reorganize and strengthen the British intelligence community and establish a department solely responsible for foreign – that is German – espionage, began in earnest in 1907. Although the Committee of Imperial Defence had repeatedly ruled out the feasibility of invasion, military planners continued to think along these lines. When the War Office began to tackle the problem of controlling spies and dangerous aliens in April 1907, it considered this to be merely one aspect of dealing with an invading force. In late 1907, the Director of Military Operations, Major-General John Spencer Ewart, appointed Lieutenant-Colonel James Edmonds as director of MO5, the army’s tiny intelligence unit. Edmonds was to become a key figure in the ensuing reorganization of British intelligence.50 Firmly convinced that Berlin ran a large-scale, sinister undercover organization in the United Kingdom, Edmonds developed tunnel vision in counter-espionage. Rather than launch a systematic investigation of German espionage, which might quickly have revealed its insignificance. Edmonds looked solely for confirmatory evidence of his established views. He thus accepted without question recurrent stories in the press about German spies and spliced them with his own dubious evidence: I myself, inter alios, had recognized a German artillery captain acting as headwaiter at the Burlington Hotel, Dover, whom I had met at the table d’hôte at the Europeischer Hof at Metz. After I had spoken to him, he disappeared for good. I learnt that he had been addicted to long early morning walks. 51 Edmonds’ activities over the next couple of years were significant in two ways. First, he launched a well-organized and successful propaganda campaign for the establishment of a counter-espionage agency. Second, he set the pattern for the future modus operandi of British counter-espionage: rather than assess German intelligence in an unprejudiced manner, investigations would henceforth be based on the assumption that far-reaching German espionage conspiracies were a fact, and that it only remained to uncover them. In this campaign Edmonds relied not only on his superior, Major-General Ewart, but on the help of several men from outside the War Office, including Admiral Charles Beresford, Lord Roberts and Lord Northcliffe. Most importantly, Edmonds forged an alliance with William Le Queux.

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 29

As the similarities between Edmonds’ memoranda and Le Queux’s stories suggest, Edmonds’ evidence of German espionage was partially based on Le Queux’s input. In November 1908, Edmonds drafted a memorandum on German espionage for Ewart. Germany, Edmonds explained, divided its target country into districts, each of which would be assigned one German officer who, in turn, had at his disposal mobile agents with special duties and stationary agents (‘waiters, prostitutes, etc.’) to report on everyday life. In the event of a German invasion the agents had special tasks allotted to them, such as cutting of telegraph and telephone lines. The German General Staff, the memorandum continued, possessed a detailed map of the southeastern coast districts of England and a gazetteer of East Anglia that listed all the bakers and their maximum daily output of bread, the mills and their production, the butchers and their sources and supply, the grocers, brewers, as well as cycle and motor garages.52 Just a few months after Edmonds had submitted this memorandum to the War Office, Le Queux published a short story entitled The Back-Door of England. The protagonist, Ray Raymond, describes the German espionage machinery to a friend in the following terms: We know that our eastern counties have been divided into districts by the Germans, and in each one or more secret agents are busily at work taking notes of food supplies, forage, blacksmiths’ shops, motorcars for transport, the destruction of telegraphs and telephones, positions for artillery, and the best mode of advance south to London. One may rest assured that the ordnance map is being very much amplified just now.53 The similarities with Edmonds’ memorandum are striking. Le Queux probably had provided Edmonds with an outline of his plot, which served Edmonds as a blueprint for his memorandum. Armed with such fabricated evidence, Edmonds urged the War Office to convene a conference with the Home Office to discuss the issue of foreign espionage. 54 But the Secretary for War, Haldane, was reluctant to convene a subcommittee to inquire into German espionage. Initially, Haldane dismissed Edmonds’ ‘evidence’ as ridiculous, mocking him that, far from uncovering German spies, Edmonds had unearthed the apparatus of the white-slave traffic. But Edmonds stuck to his guns, although his tales continued to amuse rather than unsettle his superiors. As he recalled in his memoirs: A document of another kind was a letter written by a German officer to an English girl friend in Bournemouth, begging her to flee with

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him, as England would shortly be invaded. She sent the message to the War Office, and I took it personally to the C.I.G.S. (then Sir William Nicholson). He laughed and said it seemed to be a matter for the Director of Public Morals; but that I had better send a copy to the Admiralty.55 At some point Haldane became so annoyed at Edmonds’ pestering that he wanted to sack him.56 Eventually, however, Haldane succumbed and notified his overzealous subordinate that he would be able to present his evidence to a subcommittee on foreign espionage. Edmonds believed that one of his rather unlikely spy stories had swayed Haldane, but the latter probably conceded the subcommittee to avoid another conservative publicity campaign. After all, the anti-government campaign launched in the wake of the subcommittee on invasion had subsided only a few weeks earlier. Moreover, Haldane had publicly declared that the Territorials were meant to defend the country against invasion and spies. He could not now brush Edmonds off by saying that German spies existed only in the latter’s imagination. William Le Queux was of invaluable assistance to Edmonds in 1909. That year, Le Queux published his most influential piece of writing, Spies of the Kaiser, which consists of fourteen short stories connected around German plots in Great Britain. Le Queux was initially unable to find a newspaper to publish his tales. One editor responded to his solicitation quite reasonably that ‘We cannot publish this! Spies exist only in your imagination. We don’t want to alarm the public.’ Eventually, D.C. Thomson, owner of the Weekly News and a personal friend of Le Queux’s, agreed to serialize the stories in his paper.57 Before commencing with the serialization, the Weekly News asked its readers in February 1909: ‘Foreign Spies in Britain/£10 Given For Information/Have You Seen a Spy?’ The answers were sent to the paper’s ‘Spy Editor’, a position especially established for this purpose. The ‘Spy Editor’ was inundated with letters on activities of German spies. He forwarded them to Le Queux, who wove them into his stories. Thus, Le Queux was able to respond directly to the imagination of his audience while sharing the letters with Edmonds, who presented them as authentic instances of German espionage at the subcommittee hearings.58 Both author and publisher insisted that Spies of the Kaiser contained more fact than fiction. In the preface, ‘If England Knew’, Le Queux claimed that 5,000 German spies were then operating in Britain, under the supervision of a ‘well-known member of the German Secret Police in London’.59 He concluded with a plea for the introduction of ‘some sort of contra

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 31

espionage . . . as has been done in France’.60 This was precisely what Edmonds strove for. The Spies of the Kaiser serialization began in early March, and the subcommittee on foreign espionage met first on 30 March 1909.61 Therefore, both on the eve of and during the proceedings of the subcommittee its members as well as the public were bombarded with Le Queux’s ‘revelations’. The timing was perfect and probably the result of a coordinated effort. As Edmonds later admitted, Spies of the Kaiser played a key role in making his case a success at the subcommittee. 62 The ‘sub-committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence appointed to consider the question of Foreign espionage in the United Kingdom’ included Reginald McKenna, First Lord of the Admiralty; Herbert Gladstone, Home Secretary; Sydney Charles Buxton, Postmaster-General; Lord Esher, Commander of the London Territorial Force; Sir Charles Hardinge, Permanent Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs; Sir George Herbert Murray, Permanent Secretary at the Post Office; Admiral Alexander Edward Bethell, Director of Naval Intelligence; General Ewart, Director of Military Operations; General Archibald James Murray, Director of Military Training; and Sir Edward Henry, Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Haldane acted as chairman. At the first meeting, on 30 March, Edmonds, on behalf of the War Office, and Captain R.C. Temple of the naval intelligence department were also present.63 Haldane opened the meeting by asking the army and navy representatives to present their evidence on foreign espionage in Britain. Edmonds commenced by reading his memorandum on the German intelligence system in peacetime. He recounted how German consular official Count Victor Eulenburg had been caught in a dinghy during the Clacton manoeuvres and depicted Brussels, Geneva and New York as German espionage centres. Edmonds elaborated extensively on Germany’s use of espionage in history, but he was hard-pressed to come up with airtight contemporary spy cases. His efforts to assess the extent of German espionage in Britain, he explained, had been obstructed by apathy on behalf of civilians: ‘One proprietress in Wells, in whose house Germans had been staying, refused information, saying that German money was just as good as any other.’ 64 However, Edmonds also produced a list of ‘cases of alleged espionage’ that detailed several such incidents in 1907 (five), 1908 (forty-eight) and the first three months of 1909 (twenty-four).65 He then unfolded a map of England, on which each of those cases was marked as a red spot. The spots were concentrated mainly in southeastern England, giving the impression that Germany was conducting espionage in preparation of an invasion.66 Edmonds explained that his information did not originate

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with the police or any other official source but with private individuals. This was only too true. As he admits in his memoirs, many of the instances of alleged German espionage on his list came directly from Le Queux: I could not make much of a case to put before the D.M.O. till I had two pieces of luck. One of my friends, F.T. Jane (founder of ‘The Naval Annual’), who was on the look-out for spies, kidnapped a Portsmouth German in his car and deposited him in the Duke of Bedford’s animal park at Woburn. He naturally got into trouble and publicity. Another friend, William le Queux, the popular writer of ‘thrillers’, produced out of his imagination a volume called ‘Spies of the Kaiser’. In both cases the outcome had been that the kidnapper and the author received dozens of letters telling them of the suspicious behaviour of Germans: early morning walks and drives, correction of maps, curiosity about railway bridges, enquiries about gas and water supply .. . I made a map of England showing the position of the various spy locations which had considerable effect upon the Committee of Imperial Defence.67 What is most surprising about Edmonds’ list is that it actually contained an authentic German agent: ‘Paul Brodtmann, a German, managing director of the Continental Tyre Company, London, an ex-officer, with A. Richter, accompanied the Guards’ Motor Trip to Hastings. Brodtmann is in communication with the German Military Attaché, and furnished him with a report on the experiment.’68 In fact, Brodtmann had been recruited by Germany’s Admiralstab in 1903 to report on British battleships in Southampton in the case of rising tension.69 However, he found no fault in accepting a similar assignment from the military attaché for the army’s intelligence service IIIb. To the latter he dispatched excellent reports during the crises of 1911 and 1912.70 It must have been at one of his meetings with the German military attaché, Major Ronald Ostertag, that Brodtmann was observed. In 1914, he was still on the German naval intelligence department’s confidential list.71 Brodtmann’s case highlights the fact that the sole purpose of Edmonds’ list and map was to impress the committee. The British Secret Service Bureau, or SSB, established later in 1909, did not investigate a single case on the list, and consequently Brodtmann’s cover was never blown. Apparently, the SSB assumed quite reasonably that Edmonds’ list was not based on hard evidence but on Le Queux’s imagination. Hence, map and list were quickly shelved as soon as they had fulfilled their purpose at the subcommittee hearings.

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 33

But for the time being, the committee could not be swayed. Upon Lord Esher’s inquiry whether German waiters were a potential danger, Edmonds had to reply in the negative. He also conceded that there was no direct evidence of any German intention to carry out demolitions. He could only argue that presumably Germany would send over dynamiters in the case of war, and there was no proof of that, either.72 Esher commented wryly: ‘A silly witness from the War Office. Spy catchers get espionage on the brain. Rats are everywhere – behind every arras.’73 The evidence presented by Captain Temple of British naval intelligence was even weaker than Edmonds’. Temple produced but a single case: in 1908, a certain Ch. Trianoud had launched a series of ads in the Daily Mail, looking for British naval men willing to write for an American naval review in Brussels. As Temple explained, the British authorities assumed Trianoud’s address was a cover for the German intelligence service. However, no direct evidence could be obtained regarding Trianoud’s connection with the German government, and the affair petered out. Haldane closed the meeting, concluding that while ‘a great deal of reconnaissance [is being] done by the Germans’, more evidence was required to confirm German intentions. 74 Thus, Haldane had passed the buck once again to Edmonds. After the meeting, Haldane left England for a private holiday in Germany. 75 Once there, he enquired of his German friends what they thought about the whole spy issue. The Germans, of course, assured him that there was nothing in it. At the beginning of the second subcommittee meeting, held on 20 April, Haldane informed the members of his findings in Germany. He explained that, although the Prussian General Staff had collected some intelligence, no espionage was being conducted with a view to preparing an invasion.76 This was a severe blow to Edmonds’ presentation of 30 March, which had suggested just that. Edmonds, although present at the meeting, was not asked to give evidence. The subcommittee spent most of their time redrafting the Official Secrets Act of 1889, and on the control of correspondence of foreigners in the United Kingdom. At some point between the second and the third meeting, however, Haldane decided to assent to the establishment of a counter-espionage department. A ‘Subcommittee requested to consider how a SSB could be established in Great Britain’ convened and presented its findings at the end of April, two and a half months prior to the third subcommittee meeting on German espionage.77 When the espionage subcommittee met for the third and last time on 12 July, Haldane flatly declared that he ‘did not think that there was any doubt that a great deal of German espionage

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was being undertaken in Great Britain’. He gave as the reason for his sudden change of mind the story of a Frenchman, travelling from Hamburg to Spa who accidentally mixed up his travelling bag with that of a German fellow traveller. Upon opening it, he found an official German document envisioning an invasion of Britain. Before the Germans could recover the plan, the Frenchman had copied the most important data and passed it on to the British authorities. While initially inclined to regard the plan as a ruse, Haldane explained that generals Murray and Ewart had eventually been able to persuade the War Secretary of its genuineness.78 This document bore all the hallmarks of a Le Queux novel.79 In fact, Le Queux’s short story The German Plot against England vaguely alludes to it. 80 Given their close cooperation at this time, Edmonds probably had requested the story from Le Queux and had then forwarded it to Haldane, like so many others previously. Years later, Edmonds admitted that the plan was a forgery.81 But it is unlikely that just another spy story should have caused Haldane to have an about-face and embrace the establishment of a counter-espionage department. In fact, Haldane’s backpedalling on the spy issue was probably due to political calculations rather than a sudden change of heart. While seemingly lending credibility to an obscure spy story before the committee, Haldane continued to repudiate the spy scare in Parliament: when Sir John Barlow, Liberal MP, asked Haldane if he was aware that there were 66,000 trained German soldiers in England and that in cellars within a quarter of a mile of Charing Cross there were stored 50,000 stands of Mauser rifles with 7.50 million rounds of ammunition, Haldane ironically thanked him for exposing such a far-fetched story to the ridicule it so obviously deserved. 82 In view of Haldane’s sober, if not sympathetic, assessment of Germany, and his defiance of the spy scare in public, it is unlikely that he had changed his opinion on this issue. Yet he was under growing pressure to allow for a reorganization and strengthening of the intelligence community, not only from within the military, but also from influential politicians like the young Winston Churchill, then President of the Board of Trade, who ardently supported the establishment of a SSB. 83 Given that Haldane himself had at times used the spy scare for recruitment purposes, it was even more difficult for him now to resist this pressure, and he certainly wanted to avoid another conservative publicity campaign against the Liberal government. In all likelihood, Haldane made a purely tactical decision when supporting the establishment of a counter-espionage department against his own better judgement. After

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 35

all, there were several advantages to this solution. From now on, any scaremonger could be referred to the new department, and henceforth the conservative opposition and the nationalistic press would be unable to accuse the government of neglecting the German espionage threat.84 Also, as the new department was to be established for a probationary period of two years, its long-term survival was far from certain.85 Haldane, who did not believe in German plots, probably anticipated the new SSB’s failure and its subsequent dissolution. Haldane’s decision to give the green light for the restructuring and enlargement of the intelligence community was a tactical concession to conservative pressure groups that had important repercussions for the emerging intelligence community and its relationship with the state. Since neither the Secretary for War nor the majority of the Liberal government had any real interest in counter-espionage, and both probably believed that the new SSB would be a passing affair, the ensuing reorganization of the intelligence community was left entirely in the hands of men with an explicitly conservative, if not reactionary, frame of mind. The emergence of a politicized intelligence community, in turn, put this community at odds with the Liberal government, and reinforced its tendency to act beyond governmental control. Given their nationalistic outlook, the men in charge of counter-espionage were also inclined to operate on the assumption that extensive German espionage was a fact, which precluded a sober assessment of German intentions. The resulting problems would persist well into and beyond the First World War.86

The early years of British counter-espionage In the years 1909–1911, the spectre of German espionage buoyed jingoistic scaremongers and was critical in permitting conservative pressure groups to curb Britain’s liberal traditions. The Official Secrets Act of 1889, which came to be considered too soft on espionage, was amended in 1911. The new bill rendered it illegal ‘to obtain or communicate any information useful to the enemy as well as to approach or enter a “prohibited place” for any purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the state’. In short, the amendment removed the requirement that the purpose of wrongfully obtaining information be demonstrated. The burden of proof was shifted from the prosecution to the defendant.87 Furthermore, a ‘D-notice system’ was introduced, consisting of an agreement between the War Office, the Admiralty and the press to the effect that the latter would censor themselves if they were asked to do so. Censorship was

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refined as well. In 1911, Winston Churchill, Secretary of the Home Office, began to issue general warrants authorizing the examination of all correspondence of particular people.88 The warrant of the Home Secretary was to be sent to the Postmaster-General under whose supervision the respective letters would be opened, copied, replaced in the envelope, and then forwarded to their destination.89 But it was the establishment of the SSB that responded most directly to concerns over German espionage. On 30 August, Sir Henry, MajorGeneral Ewart, Lieutenant-Colonel George Macdonogh, Captain Temple and Colonel Edmonds met at Scotland Yard to discuss the technicalities of establishing this Bureau. 90 Sir Henry recommended the late chief inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department, Edward Drew alias ‘D’, as a suitable private detective under whose cover and name the Bureau could operate. Drew would also take care of practical matters connected therewith, such as rent, electricity, telephone bills and so on.91 Lt-Commander Mansfield Smith Cumming (‘C’) was suggested as representative for the navy, and Captain Vernon Kell (‘K’) for the army. They were each paid £500 p.a. 92 Henry Dale Long (‘L’) would be the Bureau’s foreign agent resident in Brussels, and the Admiralty had already hired an agent for the Bureau in Germany. 93 Captain Reginald Drake joined the Bureau as an assistant, and William Melville (‘M’) was attached as detective.94 In early October, Cumming came up with the curious proposal to get Alan Burgoyne, Lord Rothschild and Erskine Childers on board as well. 95 Kell accepted his appointment on 19 September 1909, and the SSB officially began to operate on 1 October, with Kell, Cumming, Macdonogh, Edmonds and Ewart attending its first formal meeting on 4 October. 96 The new SSB did not mark the beginning of the British intelligence community, as it drew on resources of the War Office’s Special Section (MO5) and employed several personnel who had already been working in the intelligence and counter-espionage sector, some of them at Scotland Yard. The Special Branch of New Scotland Yard, too, remained involved in counter-espionage. As the SSB was not allowed to make arrests, Kell had to cooperate with the Special Branch for this purpose.97 But in view of the increased powers it wielded and the determination of Kell and Cumming, the SSB marked a decisive turning point in the history of the British intelligence community. From the very beginning, there were frictions between the Bureau’s home and foreign sections. Cumming complained repeatedly about having to share work with Kell and was convinced that ‘K will oust me before long’.98 On 28 April 1910, the two directors had a frank conversation,

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 37

Illustration 1

Vernon Kell, director of MI5, c. 1919

Sources: H. Keith Melton and Nigel West.

concluding that their respective work was totally different, with Cumming focusing on espionage abroad, and Kell on counter-espionage at home, and that it would be desirable to split the Bureau. That same year, the SSB was divided into home and foreign sections, the precursors of MI5 and MI6, respectively.99 Army Captain Vernon Kell seemed to be the ideal candidate to direct the new counter-espionage department. Born in Yarmouth in 1873, he had joined the military and attended Sandhurst where he befriended the young Winston Churchill. Kell then pursued his military career in the Empire. At the time of the Boxer Rebellion, he was a liaison officer

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in China, and subsequently he served in India.100 During his army career, Kell had acquired some knowledge of several foreign languages, including French, German, Russian, and Chinese.101 Given his linguistic skills and first-hand experience of Asia, Kell became Edmonds’ right-hand man in MO5’s Far East Section until his boss recommended him for the job of director of the home section of the SSB. 102 But beyond the skills he undoubtedly possessed, Kell was also a dyed-in-the-wool Germanophobe who shared Edmonds’ paranoia about German espionage plots in the United Kingdom. Kell took Le Queux’s ‘revelations’ about German conspiracies at face value; following his appointment as head of the SSB’s home section, he used his summer vacation to visit Weybourne in Norfolk to find out ‘if there were any German activities going on’.103 Weybourne was, of course, the place where, according to Le Queux’s Spies of the Kaiser, the Germans were planning to land their invasion force.104 And when Kell’s cousin married a German and moved to Germany, Kell voiced strong opposition to the union and threatened to sever relations with the couple.105 Apart from his linguistic skills, his anti-German prejudices and his personal acquaintance with Edmonds, Kell’s personal situation was perhaps the most decisive factor pushing him into the counter-espionage business. Since childhood, Kell had suffered severely from chronic asthma, and on occasion he ‘could barely sit upright in a chair’.106 Kell’s chronic asthma was also the main reason for his transfer from India to England.107 When the War Office planned to send him back to India, Kell asked for a different posting on health grounds and was then picked by Edmonds as staff captain in the German section of the War Office. This not being a permanent position, Kell’s future as a career soldier was in jeopardy. When the SSB was being established, Colonel Francis Davies turned to Edmonds, who offered the job to Kell. 108 Apparently this was Kell’s only opportunity to secure a future in the service. 109 It was therefore not really an option for him to decline Edmonds’ offer. However, the SSB was only being established on a probationary two-year period, and as his illness precluded his return to regular army service, Kell was merely buying time by accepting the appointment as director of counter-espionage. As his wife explained: Vernon had to think quickly. He knew that, should he accept the job which was now seriously offered to him, he would be running a great risk. He would have to retire, on paper, though not in fact, to enable him to remain at the War Office without being moved from one place to another which in the ordinary course of a soldier’s life was

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 39

inevitable. He might be a failure, and what then? He would be left jobless and to what else could he turn, jobs were not easy to find.110 If Kell wanted to survive professionally, he had to make the SSB a success. He was thus compelled to produce tangible results within two years. Should the SSB come to the conclusion that German espionage constituted a mirage, the department might be dissolved, which was precisely what the Liberal government expected. Kell’s utter conviction that German conspiracies existed was thus reinforced by his personal predicament. In other words, Kell was bound to be biased when dealing with – real or invented – German espionage as, in his own interest, he had to produce some German spies. This, in turn, rendered it difficult for him to assess the scope and intentions of German naval intelligence realistically. Kell was a desperate man fighting for his professional survival, a fact which made him not an ideal choice for the job of director of counter-espionage. Although Le Queux and his excited readers had produced miraculous amounts of ‘intelligence’ on German plots, Kell possessed virtually no valid information on any de facto foreign espionage. The bizarre reports in the Bureau’s possession were not examined, probably because they were not taken seriously, and the home section of the SSB had to begin its investigation from scratch. True to his preconceptions about German intentions, Kell operated on the assumption that Germany was contemplating an invasion. In his first report to the War Office and the Admiralty, he related how two Germans had allegedly been spying about Rusper and its hinterland, adding: It is hardly necessary to draw attention to the fact that the knowledge of the country lying on and between the North and South Downs, including as it does the important heights of Hindhead, Box Hill, and the Towers of Holmbush, Rusper Church and Lyne House, would be of greatest value to an invading force advancing from the direction of the coast-line lying between Dover and Portsmouth, as also an intimate acquaintance with the Railway Lines leading to the Guildford, Dorking and Tunbridge junctions from the Coast. 111 In his second report, Kell noted that he had earmarked and trained ‘our own spies in the East Counties, to act behind enemy lines in the case of invasion’.112 Rather than begin a systematic investigation of German espionage, Kell’s section of the SSB based its investigations on Le Queux-style evidence which was collected randomly across the country. In June

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1910, for instance, Melville informed Kell about ‘a suspicious German called “Stiewe” who periodically visits the German Waiters round Dover and Folkestone, and also, it is believed, all along the coast. He professes to be a Commercial Traveller, but carries no samples – and the waiters all seem very afraid of him.’ A few days later, Kell went to see a Major Jarvis of the London Territorial Force, ‘who is in touch with the Horse Contractor, at whose school so many Germans learn to ride. He said he would find out where all those foreigners come from (This is the matter that Lord Esher asked us to investigate).’113 Kell’s diary is full of such anecdotes. In 1911, the Bureau sent Captain Stanley Clarke on a ‘three-weeks walking tour . . . along the coast of Essex and Suffolk’ to detect potential German beachheads’. 114 Convinced that the German colony would act as a fifth column of their fatherland after an invasion, Kell began to compile a secret register of aliens, chiefly Germans, which was completed in 1913. 115 The creation of the alien register and, derived from this, a ‘list of possible suspects’ to be reported upon every three months, necessitated the support of the local chief constables116 since Kell was not empowered to give orders to the local police force and could only ask for their cooperation. At times the police refused, arguing that no cases of German espionage existed in the country. 117 Despite its hectic activism, Kell’s department was unable to detect a single German spy during its first two years. This was especially embarrassing since German authorities had unearthed a complex British intelligence operation in 1910. In August 1910, First Lieutenant Vivian Brandon, codename ‘bonfire’, was arrested by German police within a restricted area on the island of Borkum. Two days later, Captain Bernard Trench, codename ‘counterscarp’, was apprehended in Emden. Both were officers of the Royal Navy, and the German investigation revealed that they had been instructed by British naval intelligence to spy on the German coast and the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Channel, which they had done successfully.118 Their trial took place in an amicable atmosphere in Leipzig on 22 December.119 The defendants acknowledged their connection with the Intelligence Bureau of the British Admiralty, and the court’s findings left no doubt as to their guilt: ‘The defendants had been supplied with excellent equipment and gathered intelligence on fortifications, militarily important economic relations and especially on such facts that would be vital for an English attack on Germany.’120 When asked if they had read Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands, Brandon replied ‘three times’, and there was laughter in the court room. Both received a relatively light sentence of four years’ detention in a fortress.121

The Origins of British Counter-Espionage 41

In a 1912, they were joined by their compatriot Bertrand Stewart, an Eton lawyer, who received a three-and-a-half year sentence for espionage on behalf of Britain.122 In all three cases, the court conceded as a mitigating circumstance that the British agents had been motivated ‘by the desire to serve their fatherland’.123 A few months later, German police uprooted another British spy ring, operated by the Englishman Max Schultz.124 While Schultz served his full term, the Kaiser pardoned Stewart, Trench and Brandon in June 1913. 125 Sir Graham Greene, director of British naval intelligence, asked Kell if he could mount a ‘counter-blast’ to the British spies arrested in Germany, but the director of counter-espionage had to reply in the negative.126 This was particularly worrying for Kell as his department’s probationary period was nearing its end and his work was soon to be evaluated.127 Although he lacked any evidence, he had always insisted that ‘an organized system of German espionage’ in Britain existed, and in his early reports to the War Office and the Admiralty he had repeatedly emphasized his unit’s importance for thwarting this threat. 128 Kell argued that the lack of funds, insufficient staff and a soft legal framework had kept him from producing any tangible results. 129 But it is doubtful whether in the long run such excuses would have ensured the department’s continuity and his own professional survival. What Kell urgently needed now was visible proof of the reality of German espionage.

3 German Pre-War Espionage in Great Britain

In 1901, the Chief of the Admiralstab assigned German naval intelligence an apparently straightforward task, the ‘gathering of accurate and sufficient intelligence on the opponent (Gegner) so as to enable the Admiralstab to make appropriate preparations for the event of war’. 1 However, until 1911 it was far from clear for German naval planners which navy would be their most likely opponent. Chancellor Bismarck, who was in office until 1890, viewed Britain as a potential ally, and the Admiralstab’s operations planning was directed primarily at Russia and France. The German navy even counted on British naval support against France.2 In 1892, Naval Captain Tirpitz, then Chief of Staff of the Naval High Command, submitted a memorandum to the Kaiser outlining contingency plans against Germany’s most likely foes, France and Russia, adding: ‘As soon as the English fleet can be regarded as hostile to the French, we will only have to focus on Russia in the European theatre.’ 3 In effect, the main purpose of the German navy would be to keep the French and Russian navies separated. However, as soon as Tirpitz became Secretary of the Naval Office (1897), he changed his mind and explained to the Kaiser that Germany’s most dangerous foe to date was England.4 German naval circles had been discussing operations against Britain ever since the late nineteenth century, and in the course of Weltpolitik the High Command now drew up contingency plans against the leading naval powers of the time, Britain and the United States, although the navy’s main preoccupation remained Russia. Yet German naval planners eventually realized that any offensive schemes against Britain – and the United States – had to be dropped due to the numerical superiority of the Royal Navy. Thus in 1899, the newly founded Admiralstab had to begin its operations planning against England from scratch. 5 In December 1899 the Chief of the Admiralstab, Admiral Felix von Bendemann, advocated 42

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a strategic defensive against Britain and a naval offensive against Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais in the case of war with the French,6 but the conclusion of the 1904 entente cordiale between London and Paris and the weakening of Russia in the war with Japan (1904–1905) prompted naval planners to reconsider their plans once again. A war with France and Britain, not with Russia, was now considered the most likely scenario, and naval planners drew up a plan for the occupation of Denmark in order to outmanoeuvre the attacking Royal Navy. On 21 November 1904, various subdepartments of the Admiralstab, including ‘N’, jointly decided to complete the preparations for the plan by 1 March 1905. ‘N’ believed it would be possible to enlist civilians and inactive German officers to observe ship movements in Portsmouth, Chatham and Plymouth. It was further agreed to expedite all repairs and new constructions, and to order mines. But that same year the German General Staff declined to support a naval invasion of Denmark, and the Admiralstab’s grand scheme collapsed the moment it was put to paper.7 The German navy therefore lacked any operations plan against Britain at the time of the first Moroccan crisis (1905). The British Admiralty was highly suspicious of German designs. In 1902, British naval planners had concluded that the German fleet was constructed exclusively against Britain, and on 23 October 1906, Admiral Fisher opined to the Prince of Wales that Britain’s only likely enemy was Germany, which kept her entire fleet concentrated within a few hours’ distance of England. Hence, Fisher concluded, Britain had to keep a fleet twice as powerful as that of Germany, concentrated within a few hours of Germany.8 A naval agreement with France, negotiated in the spirit of the entente cordiale, allowed the Royal Navy to transfer numerous ships from the Mediterranean to home waters. These developments, in turn, spurred the Germans to focus their operations planning on Britain.9 Consequently, in 1908 the Admiralstab reconsidered their defensive stance and drew up new plans for offensive operations against the potential foe across the Northern Sea. A series of German war games in 1910 and 1911, however, revealed once again the impracticability of such offensive designs. On the eve of the second Moroccan crisis, which would heighten the threat of war with Britain, German naval planners were still undecided regarding operations against the Royal Navy.10 The Admiralstab’s continuously shifting focus meant that for over a decade ‘N’ was unable to base its espionage in Britain on a reliable operations plan. Building up a clandestine organization in a foreign country takes time and a clear understanding of one’s objectives. The absence of the latter was a serious obstacle to effective

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German intelligence-gathering in Great Britain prior to the First World War.

Early attempts at intelligence gathering In order to conduct espionage in Great Britain, ‘N’ needed men on the spot to set up an efficient intelligence apparatus. Initially, the German naval attaché in London appeared to be a natural and promising contact. In 1903, the Chief of the Admiralstab suggested that the naval attaché recruit agents in all the major English seaports, and the incumbent of this office, Naval Captain Carl von Coerper, was asked to do so. The aim of this scheme was the effective surveillance of the French navy in the event of a Franco-German war.11 On paper, the resulting organization, formally integrated into the navy’s global intelligence war system, looked quite impressive, with agents operating at Devonport (Plymouth), Portsmouth, Portland, Sheerness, the Firth of Forth, Cromarty and Harwich.12 Fairly sophisticated codes were created; for instance, if an agent wanted to communicate to Berlin that there were nine liners, fifteen cruisers and forty-four torpedo boat destroyers lying in the roads, he would cable in English: ‘Price of fish today 9-7½-22.’ 13 The telegram was to be preceded by a ‘C’ for Cromarty, ‘D’ for Devonport, ‘F’ for Fifth of Forth, ‘P’ for Portsmouth, ‘S’ for Sheerness, and ‘W’ for Portland, depending on where the telegram was dispatched. Telegrams were to be sent directly to the naval attaché in London, particularly important messages additionally to a cover address in Berlin.14 In 1904, two persons had been recruited to serve as cover addresses and links between the attaché and his agents,15 and in the same year the Deutsche Bank opened an account on behalf of the German naval attaché for the remuneration of his secret agents.16 When the British replaced the French navy as Germany’s most likely foe at sea, German agents were instructed to observe signs of and report on the mobilization of the Royal Navy. The entire system, of course, was useless in an Anglo-German war when its director, the naval attaché, would have to leave the country. 17 The organization never became fully operative. One important obstacle was the difficulty of recruiting agents willing to spy on their host country. As Naval Attaché Wilhelm Widenmann explained to Captain Tapken, the director of ‘N’, in 1912: In the old days, when we had to recruit Germans resident in England as agents against France, the matter was comparatively easy. But in later years (after the conclusion of the entente cordiale) even the gentlemen

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recruited to work against France claimed that a war between Germany and France alone was unthinkable now, but that England would immediately become entangled, thereby transforming their originally harmless activity into espionage against England. The activities now envisaged by the Admiralstab concern England exclusively. 18 Another obstacle was the naval attaché’s reluctance to become involved in espionage. When Widenmann became naval attaché in 1907, he inherited three agents, in Dover, Glasgow, and Southampton respectively.19 Of those three he personally met only the agent in Southampton. Tapken reminded Widenmann that it was his duty to recruit agents and dispatch them to various seaports in the case of rising tension,20 but all Widenmann did was to contact a single potential agent, identified to him by ‘N’; in 1907 ‘N’ signed an agreement with a Captain de Boer of the London branch of the Bremen-based Argo Steamship Company to the effect that de Boer would act as a naval agent for the Admiralstab in Hull/ Grimsby in the event of rising tension.21 Widenmann was less than keen on handling even this single agent. ‘N’ had encouraged the naval attaché in 1907 to be in touch with de Boer, but Widenmann responded in 1912 that – five years after he had taken over – ‘I haven’t looked him up yet.’22 In 1914, ‘N’ turned directly to de Boer reminding him of his contract, 23 but the Argo director replied that de Boer had been ill for some time and that neither he nor any other of his captains were available for this sort of work.24 The new head of ‘N’, Frigate Captain Isendahl, doubted that de Boer was really ill and begged Widenmann’s successor, Lieutenant Commander Erich von Müller, to contact de Boer personally and/or find a suitable replacement.25 Müller was unable either to re-engage de Boer or to find a replacement and replied that neither de Boer nor any other naval agent were ‘operational’.26 Müller also had a conversation with Paul Brockmann (or Brodtmann), the naval agent who had entered into an agreement with the military attaché. 27 The two engagements were conflicting – for the army, Brockmann would have to report from London, and for the navy, from Southampton – and Müller confronted him with the choice of giving up either contract. Brockmann opted for the army, and thus Müller was left without a single agent in Britain on the eve of the First World War.28 The navy’s war intelligence system in Britain had collapsed before it was put into action. The naval attachés were quite aware of this: ‘For the time being the matter works on no account’, Müller wrote on the eve of the war. 29 The Admiralstab could not issue orders to the naval attachés, who were subordinate to the Naval Office, and the attachés routinely

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answered ‘N’s pleas for assistance by arguing either that it was too hard to find suitable agents or that the attachés’ involvement in intelligence work was compromising their status as members of the embassy. In addition, the German naval officers in London found such work ‘quite unappealing’,30 and occasionally they even delivered volunteers for intelligence work to the British authorities. When an English ship’s mate tried to sell a British naval code to Naval Attaché von Coerper, the latter immediately informed the British Admiralty. The hapless sailor was lured into a trap, arrested, and First Sea Lord Fisher personally thanked Coerper for his chivalrous conduct. 31 The German naval attachés’ reluctance to become involved in intelligence gathering points to an important difference in the British and German conception of espionage. In continental Europe, military ideals centered on leadership and the prospect of heroic demise in open battle. An intelligence officer would find it difficult to fulfill these ideals while operating in the shadows and consorting with traitors.32 The German naval officer corps had fully imbibed these ideals. The navy was a comparatively new branch of the German armed forces and its officers were mostly commoners, as opposed to the predominantly aristocratic officer corps of the Prussian army. But rather than develop a modern outlook, the navy officer corps adopted the ‘noble attitude’ of the army and embraced aristocratic military values, such as leadership and heroism, with the zeal of the newly converted.33 Hence, the German naval attachés to London were locked in a romantic nineteenth-century ideal of military honour which left little room for dealing with spies. 34 Such notions were not unknown in Britain, but in the absence of a large standing army, military values had not permeated British society to the same extent as in continental Europe. More so than the French or the Germans, the British regarded espionage with ambivalence, equally fascinated and repelled by it.35 British espionage literature had developed not only the character of the traitorous spy who works for money, but also the heroic secret agent who collects intelligence in the service of his nation. Hence, the British conceived espionage in broader terms than as simply a foreign threat. A daring intelligence mission, executed by a small group or even a single brave individual, could result in the elimination of this very threat.36 A German spy, imprisoned in Britain at the end of the war, commented tartly on this double standard: ‘Espionage for England is a commendable deed but espionage for Germany is a crime; an English spy is a man of honour, a German spy is a felon.’ 37 Eventually, ‘N’ realized that little assistance was to be expected from the German naval attachés in London, and the Admiralstab chose to send a special agent to England, first to gather intelligence, then to

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recruit operatives on the spot. This was Gustav Steinhauer, ‘the Kaiser’s Master Spy’, as he modestly called himself (see Ill. 2). 38 Steinhauer was born in Berlin around 1870 and served several years in the Imperial Navy. 39 Thereafter he worked in different parts of the world, eventually

Illustration 2

Gustav Steinhauer in police uniform before the First World War

Source: Gustav Steinhauer, The Kaiser’s Master Spy: The Story as Told by Himself, edited by S.T. Felstead (London: John Lane, 1930).

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finding employment as a private detective with the Pinkerton detective agency in Chicago. In the mid-1890s, he returned to Berlin and joined the metropolitan police force. As Steinhauer spoke English fluently and was familiar with nautical and security matters, he was commissioned to accompany the Kaiser on various journeys to Athens, Jerusalem, and Constantinople. 40 In 1901, he was part of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s entourage visiting Queen Victoria, who had fallen seriously ill,41 and Steinhauer cooperated on the personal security of the two monarchs with his later opponent, William Melville. Melville was impressed with Steinhauer’s expertise in intelligence and espionage matters and told the Kaiser so. His Majesty concurred: ‘Yes, Steinhauer is a splendid fellow.’42 According to his own account, Steinhauer was instructed by both the General Staff and the Admiralstab in 1894 to conduct intelligence missions in Germany and abroad. 43 On his first mission for the Admiralstab, he investigated the case of a Heligolander who was suspected of espionage on behalf of Britain.44 Eventually, Steinhauer served the navy exclusively. From the late 1890s, he travelled to Britain on a regular basis to recruit suitable agents and report on the political situation.45 Over the years, the frequency of his voyages decreased, but he was definitely sent over during the Agadir crisis in 1911, when he reconnoitred England in the disguise of an optical goods salesman. 46 On his last mission to Britain in July 1914, he gathered intelligence on the location of British warships in Scottish seaports.47

The case of Siegfried Helm In the summer of 1909, a lieutenant of the 8th Rhenish Pioneer Battalion, Hans Wohlfahrt, spent his summer vacation in Brixton to improve his English. 48 During his sojourn, he had an affair with the twenty-year-old Hannah Wodehouse. In early 1910, Wodehouse visited Wohlfahrt in Berlin, where the latter’s unit was based.49 On that occasion, Wodehouse later stated, ‘He mentioned a comrade was coming to England and asked me if I would be a friend to him, to speak to him and take him out to see the sights and speak English with him.’ This comrade was Lieutenant Siegfried Helm of the 21st Nassau Pioneer Battalion.50 In itself, Helm’s journey to England was nothing exceptional, as German officers routinely travelled abroad to improve their language skills.51 He arrived in Brixton on 17 August 1910 and lodged at the same boarding house as had Wohlfahrt the previous year. 52 Four days later, Helm introduced himself by letter to Wodehouse as a friend of Wohlfahrt’s, and requested a rendezvous. 53 Wodehouse replied that unfortunately she

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did not live in London any more but cordially invited him to her new home in Fratton, a working-class part of Portsmouth.54 Helm accepted at once, adding that he was hoping to have a ‘lovely lady friend’ during his stay. Wodehouse rented a room on his behalf in Fratton close to her own place.55 Hence, Helm came to Portsmouth by invitation and by chance, rather than on his own initiative. Predictably, Wodehouse and Helm soon had a love affair, and Wodehouse later told Kell ‘that she had deliberately egged Lieutenant Helm on to make love to her’.56 Shortly after his arrival at Portsmouth on 3 September, Helm embarked on a rather conspicuous ‘espionage mission’. He asked a naval pensioner to let him use his telescope and enquired about the guns, buoys, and forts around the harbour.57 Wodehouse noticed Helm wandering around with maps on which the local forts were marked. On 4 September, Helm raised the subject of espionage with Wodehouse, and gravely added that the two Englishmen arrested in Borkum (Trench and Brandon) were officers.58 This statement probably provides the key to Helm’s bizarre initiative. On the one hand, he may have felt inspired by the reports on British espionage in Germany to do the same thing in England. On the other hand, he evidently believed that his new English girlfriend would be impressed if he gave himself the air of a German spy. If the latter was Helm’s intention, he overshot the mark. Wodehouse immediately approached the orderly officer at the local Royal Marines Artillery Barracks, Lieutenant Harrison, and informed him that Helm was sketching defence works at Portsmouth. 59 Harrison chose not to pursue the matter, but on 5 September two British officers observed Helm as he sketched Fort Widley. They arrested him, confiscated his pocket book, which contained some rough and indifferently drawn sketches of the fort, and awaited further instructions from the War Office.60 Helm was aware of neither the gravity of the situation nor Wodehouse’s part in it. He wrote to her immediately from his prison cell, apologizing that due to his arrest he would be unable to return that day, but hoping to see her the next day if he was acquitted. At this point, Helm had not much to complain about: ‘The Officers here are very kindly and all is so comfortable I never had [sic]. We have our speeches and eat together. I have all what I wish to have and I feel not that I am observed.’61 Only on 6 September was the Counter-Espionage Bureau informed of Helm’s arrest. Kell arranged an interview with Wodehouse, but upon arrival he discovered that just before him a reporter, under the pretence of being attached to the War Office, had already spoken to her, and that she had handed over to him most of the evidence.62 Wodehouse may have informed the press on her own initiative, or the reporter knew his

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job very well. Possibly, the War Office deliberately leaked information about Helm’s arrest to the press. In any case, the ensuing extensive press coverage of the Helm affair served Kell as much as the British government. Kell still needed to prove the raison d’être of his agency and had from the beginning argued in favour of press participation in the case.63 For Whitehall, the Helm affair was the desired ‘counter-blast’ to the Borkum affair that Graham Greene had demanded. And indeed, the German press was furious that the Helm affair might put Germany on the same morally questionable footing as Britain was on after the Borkum affair. The Wilhelmstraße lamented vis-à-vis the Prussian War Ministry that Helm’s arrest had occurred at an undesirable moment. With an alleged German spy arrested in England, Berlin was hardly in a position to denounce British espionage in Germany. War Minister Josias von Heeringen did not even try to defend his subordinate’s behaviour, writing to Foreign Secretary Kiderlen-Wächter. ‘I completely concur with your excellency in that the arrest of Lieutenant Helm at this moment has attracted unwelcome public attention . . . He must have known that his actions might make him a suspect of espionage, an accusation from which not even his youth may shield him, as I admit without further ado.’ 64 However, the ensuing investigation produced no evidence whatsoever of Helm being a German spy. Kell had obtained Helm’s bag from Wodehouse, but found ‘nothing of an incriminating nature’ in it.65 The confiscated sketches were of a very amateurish nature according to an expert. 66 Hence, Helm was charged not with felony, but merely with misdemeanour, as the sparse evidence would hardly result in a conviction in the former case. 67 Helm immediately reported his arrest to the German embassy in London. He admitted to drawing sketches of coastal defences but insisted he had done so purely for his own instruction.68 The German Foreign Office hired a solicitor on Helm’s behalf69 and enquired of the Prussian War Ministry whether Helm had received instructions to conduct espionage.70 The War Ministry replied unequivocally: ‘He had no assignment for reconnaissance.’71 The statement proves beyond doubt that Helm had acted entirely on his own initiative. When Helm learned about Wodehouse’s role from the newspapers, he held her solely responsible for his predicament. As he wrote her rather graphically from Winchester Prison: ‘You spoke friendly with me and behind my back you did so. Pfui!! I came as a true friend and you were my enemy. The Holy Bible said right, that a wife is as false as a serpent!!’ 72 The publicity of the case also generated some dubious support for Helm, with an anonymous writer warning Wodehouse:

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Dare to go into the witness box against Lieutenant Helm and you will be marked down for extermination. The Main Road leading to Fareham will be closely watched and if you persist I will open out such a fusillade upon you as will put even Dante’s Inferno in the shade. Mark well the advice you are now getting. As I will down you like a lark and let the daylight into you and scatter your brains to the four corners of the earth, and in the same breath a curse on the British Empire the cutthroat of Nations who has poisoned the whole world with her iniquity. Signed on behalf of the Supreme Council. Captain Moonlight. Esto Perpetua[.] 73 In spite of these warnings, Helm’s trial took place in a relaxed atmosphere over two sessions in September and November. Attorney-General Sir Rufus Isaacs asked that Helm ‘be treated with the utmost leniency under the circumstances he narrated’.74 Kell, who attended the hearings under cover, noted in disappointment that ‘Our witnesses are very weak under cross-examination’.75 On 14 November, 20 minutes past the opening of the court, Helm stressed that he was not a spy, but pleaded guilty and was bound over in his recognizance of £250.76 He then left the court with his father and the two took the train to London. Kell followed them and entered the same carriage, but, to his disgruntlement, ‘they did not speak much’.77 The two Helms then returned straight to Germany.

The Agadir crisis A few months after Helm’s departure from England, the Agadir, or second Moroccan crisis erupted.78 Originally a Franco-German dispute over influence in Morocco, the crisis eventually pushed Britain and Germany to the brink of war. Ever since the first Moroccan crisis, which had resulted in a French diplomatic triumph over Germany, German Foreign Secretary Kiderlen-Wächter had been waiting for an occasion to strike back with a vengeance at France. A local revolt against the Sultan in Fez in March 1911 seemed to offer just that opportunity. The French government ordered troops to Fez to quell the uprising, and Berlin seized this breach of the Algeciras agreement of 1906 to protest, with the ultimate goal of receiving colonial compensations in the Congo from Paris. To buttress German claims and intimidate the French, Kiderlen-Wächter sent the torpedo boat Panther into the Moroccan seaport of Agadir on 1 July. However, the Wilhelmstraße had miscalculated, as France refused to pull out of Morocco. Moreover, on 21 July 1911 David Lloyd George, then Chancellor of the Exchequer, declared publicly in a speech at the

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Mansion House that Britain would not stand idly by if her position as a Great Power was threatened. Germans interpreted Lloyd George’s words as a British vow to side with France, and by September war between the three nations seemed a distinct possibility. In the end, Germany yielded relinquishing all claims to Morocco and receiving parts of the French Congo in return. Strictly speaking, this was not a diplomatic defeat as the Wilhelmstraße had always aimed at just such a compensation in Africa.79 German public opinion, however, was outraged, not so much at French policy, but at Britain’s support of her ally. The liberal Frankfurter Zeitung lamented that London was systematically obstructing Germany’s expansion. 80 For the Berliner Tageblatt, England’s intervention was symptomatic of her ill-will and could not be excused as a legitimate act of self defence.81 The nationalistic Kreuz-Zeitung strongly abused ‘perfidious Albion’,82 and the leader of the Conservative Party, Ernst von Heydebrand, thundered in the Reichstag: ‘Now we know where the enemy stands.’ Erich von Falkenhayn, then Prussian War Minister, was henceforth convinced of malevolent British intentions and based his military strategy in 1915–1916 on the assumption that Britain, not France or Russia, was Germany’s most resolute enemy. 83 The Imperial Navy shared this view wholeheartedly. Isendahl, the new director of ‘N’, blamed the Wilhelmstraße for what he regarded as a diplomatic failure. As he wrote on the eve of the First World War in a message to the German naval attaché in Washington, Karl Boy-Ed; ‘In 1911, we experienced just how the Office [that is the German Foreign Office] works.’84 Meanwhile, the Admiralstab vigorously got to work on a new operations plan against Britain. On 24 October 1911, Admiral August von Heeringen, then Chief of the Admiralstab, presented a draft to the Kaiser, advocating a head-on clash with the Royal Navy in the event of war. Wilhelm II enthusiastically endorsed this, and even stated in the infamous ‘war council’ of 8 December 1912 that naval operations against France and Russia, which he had approved on 3 December, should no longer be considered.85 The ‘war council’s’ deliberations should not be taken too literally,86 but the German navy’s focus had clearly shifted to Britain. In the years 1911–1914, Germany reoriented its policy from Weltpolitik to Kontinentalpolitik, and in its strategic planning the Imperial Navy pinpointed the Royal Navy in the Northern Sea as its most likely foe. 87 German naval intelligence adjusted to the new political situation. At the end of 1911 Tapken and his staff decided to reorganize the war intelligence system, which included revamping and extending ‘N’s intelligence apparatus in Britain.88 The department recruited ‘tension travellers’, that is, agents to be dispatched to Britain in a crisis similar

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to the one of 1911, to monitor the Royal Navy. 89 It also intensified espionage in Britain, notably two years after the founding of the British SSB. Crucial for the extension of German intelligence operations in England was Gustav Steinhauer’s invention of Mittelsmänner or intermediaries. 90 Until 1911, Steinhauer had communicated with his agents in Britain by mail or in person, but only a limited number of agents could be operated that way and the method was rather conspicuous. Hence, Steinhauer created the intermediary. Usually the owner of a small shop or a barber, resident in London, the go-between’s task was to receive Steinhauer’s mail from Germany and forward letters to agents in other parts of the country. Using intermediaries, one could avoid having letters from abroad regularly being received in provincial towns, which might easily arouse the local post masters’ suspicion. Likewise, agents outside London would send their reports to the intermediary in the capital who, in turn, forwarded them to Germany.91 Steinhauer’s most important intermediary was the hairdresser Karl Gustav Ernst, a British citizen of German descent (see Ill. 3), who worked for the German service from late 1911 until January 1914. 92 According to Ernst, he was introduced to Steinhauer by two fellow barbers, Wilhelm Kronauer and Otto Kruger, who were already forwarding letters to and from Germany. Around Christmas 1911, Steinhauer visited Ernst personally at his barber shop at 402a Caledonian Road, Ernst’s residence since 1897. When asked if he would act as Steinhauer’s intermediary, Ernst agreed.93 As soon as Steinhauer had gained confidence in Ernst, the latter was also tasked with contacting and recruiting new agents in England.94 Recruiting new naval agents was as important as developing a network of intermediaries. The Admiralstab somewhat misguidedly regarded Germans resident in Britain or Britons of German descent as promising spy material. In his memoirs, Steinhauer boasts that he was particularly adept in recruiting members of the German colony.95 However, his story is unconvincing considering that hardly any Germans residing in Britain agreed to become operatives. In fact, members of the German colony who were asked to become agents sometimes turned to the British authorities instead, denouncing the recruitment attempt.96 A handful of Germans resident in Britain were willing to act as intermediaries, but only for a limited amount of time, and most of them were probably not aware that they were actually serving the German naval intelligence department. This is particularly remarkable in view of the fact that Kell’s unit routinely suspected members of the German colony as prone to engage in espionage. 97

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The German colony in Britain numbered 56,000 in 1911, making up 0.1 per cent of the entire population.98 It may seem astonishing that ‘N’ was not more successful in tapping into this pool. However, contemporary British allegations that every German abroad identified with the Kaiserreich fail to take into account that many Germans resident in Britain were either apolitical, socialist, well assimilated, or even highly critical of Imperial Germany. The German wars of 1864 (against Denmark), of 1866 (against Austria), and of 1870–1871 (against France) generated fresh waves of emigrants, who had either suffered from war or were dissatisfied with the change in political conditions or the introduction of compulsory military service.99 Why should such political refugees conspire against the country that had generously granted them asylum?100 As Naval Captain Widenmann, naval attaché to London, pointed out to the director of naval intelligence in 1912: The whole business [of recruiting Germans in Britain as naval agents] is much more complicated than imagined in Berlin. The Germans of middle age (only gentlemen between the age of 35 and 50 are suitable, as the younger gentlemen do not have steady jobs and change their employer far too often and without prior notice) loath this kind of work more and more, it being hostile to England. 101 Since hiring agents in Britain proved difficult, the Admiralstab began to employ men who could at best be described as adventurers, at worst as ordinary criminals. The naval agents hired in the wake of the Agadir crisis – Max Schultz, Heinrich Grosse, Armgaard Karl Graves and Karl Hentschel – had all been convicted of various crimes prior to their employment by ‘N’. Some, like Grosse, were recruited directly out of prison. One may wonder if ‘N’ had actually approached them in jail or if sentences were reduced in return for a promise to become a naval agent. In any case, such recruiting methods did not yield very reliable employees and got Berlin into some trouble.

Max Schultz The German Max Schultz is not to be confused with his British name sake who was arrested and tried in Germany around the same time.102 Schultz, born around 1880, a former student of philology and possibly an army reserve officer, was a notorious fraud. In October 1910, he surfaced in Frankfurt in Hesse under the name of ‘Prince Ouroussoff’ and, together with his girlfriend, spent some 20,000 marks in bars,

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money he had swindled out of a widow. This fortune gone, Schultz took to forging bills and pretended to be a member of the Public Prosecutor’s office at Wiesbaden. He fled Germany, but was soon charged with embezzlement and fraud in Aix-la-Chapelle. When his family heard of his predicament, they put him away in a Frankfurt asylum for several months.103 ‘N’ hired Schultz shortly after his release early in 1911, and the naval authorities must have been aware of his pre-history. Possibly, they were just looking for somebody desperate enough to embark on an intelligence mission in Britain during the Agadir crisis. Schultz arrived at Plymouth in early June, flush with funds,104 accompanied by another young German, Edmund Ahlers, a student in theology.105 A few days after his arrival, Schultz rented a houseboat, the yacht Egret, from a retired army officer. His behaviour aboard the ship could not have been more conspicuous; he threw loud parties and flew the German ensign from the stern of the boat.106 Occasionally, he engaged in gun practice, and in June he inadvertently shot his housekeeper, Miss Sturgeon, in the shoulder. The bullet could not be removed by surgery, and Miss Sturgeon sued him for £100 damages.107 Schultz consulted a solicitor, Hugh Duff, and immediately quizzed him whether he was willing to collect military and naval intelligence for a German newspaper syndicate for which Schultz claimed to work. The salary could total up to £1,000. Duff signed an agreement ‘that I will undertake the duties of a naval and military correspondent to the South Coast of England’, which Schultz put in an envelope addressed to a certain Gustav Neumann in London. But rather than mail the envelope himself, Schultz returned it for mailing to Duff, who took it straight to the police. Henceforth, the Egret was kept under permanent police surveillance.108 Shortly after his arrival, Schultz befriended Hilda Reynolds, who worked as a typist for a certain E.C. Tarren. She introduced the two men, and Tarren became a regular visitor to the Egret. Schultz offered him the same job as Duff and had him sign a similar agreement. Before Tarren’s eyes, Schultz put the document in an envelope addressed to a certain ‘Tobler’ at Ostend, which in turn he put in another envelope addressed to Neumann in London, and handed the parcel to Tarren. Like Duff, Tarren went straight to the police rather than mail the package.109 Schultz’s connection with Neumann and ‘Tobler’ is the only, but definite proof that he was employed by ‘N’. Gustav Neumann, a German shop owner resident in London, had been approached by Ernst on behalf of Steinhauer, and agreed to act as an intermediary for the latter, apparently without knowing that this was all engineered by German

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naval intelligence. He was interrogated by the British authorities but successfully maintained that he knew nothing of Schultz. As soon as Steinhauer was certain that Neumann would not be involved in Schultz’s trial, the German spymaster sent his intermediary £15 as a ‘plaster’ for the inconvenience and urged him to continue his work since ‘I [Steinhauer] do not believe at all that they will further watch you’. 110 In fact, Kell’s ensuing investigation of Neumann eventually petered out.111 ‘Tobler’ was a cover name used by Steinhauer and other members of ‘N’ for communications with agents in England, either from Berlin or from Ostend. 112 Police monitoring of Schultz revealed that he cabled ‘Tobler’ at Ostend four times for money, and each time received £30–£60. However, Schultz’s spymaster was rather dissatisfied with how his agent was spending those funds, and on 29 July he forbade Schultz to contact him again, complaining that his reports were worthless and refusing to send him any more money. 113 Initially, the police did not bother to inform Kell of the ongoing investigation.114 Only when the British Admiralty concluded that Schultz was a spy did the police put Kell in the picture, and on 6 August the Counter-Espionage Bureau took charge of the investigation. Ten days later, Kell laid the collected evidence before the Attorney-General and a warrant was taken out for Schultz’s arrest, which was executed on 17 August. Schultz was tried on 4 November. He pleaded ‘not guilty’ on the grounds that the supposedly secret information he had collected could easily be gathered from the local press. He was nevertheless sentenced to twenty-one months’ imprisonment, of which he served eighteen months in Bristol prison. Afterwards he was kept under close observation until his departure from England.115

Heinrich Grosse Heinrich Ludwig Grosse was born at Grabow, in the state of Mecklenburg, in 1868. 116 He went to sea at the age of fourteen and served one year in the Imperial Navy. In 1898, he was sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude in Singapore for forging banknotes, was released after five years and returned to Germany in 1905. He was then involved in a number of dubious, but highly successful, bank transactions. Grosse invested the money to rent a shooting range in Mecklenburg which gave him access to the local high society. Now apparently an illustrious member of the upper class, he courted numerous ladies, got married and divorced twice, while at the same time promising marriage to several others.

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One of these women, Hedwig (Heddy) Glauer, was pregnant with Grosse’s child and would later play a prominent part in his espionage career. After his parents had volunteered crucial information, the Berlin police arrested Grosse in June 1911, and he was sentenced to one year’s penal servitude for embezzlement and fraudulent promise of marriage in multiple cases.117 Grosse was released from prison on 29 September 1911, and a few days later he received a letter from a certain ‘Petersson’ in Rotterdam, enquiring if Grosse was interested in a meeting in Hamburg. ‘Petersson’ wrote in his letter that ‘a [mutually] known source’ had supplied him with Grosse’s address, which suggests that initial contact was made while Grosse was serving his prison sentence. At the central station in Hamburg, Grosse then met with a ‘Mr Stein’, allegedly the representative of ‘Petersson’ but really a cover name of Steinhauer, as the ensuing correspondence demonstrates. At this meeting, Grosse’s employment was arranged. ‘N’ instructed him to move to Portsmouth and inquire about the local naval fortifications, submarines, guns, and mine laying cruisers. 118 Like ‘Stein’, ‘Petersson’ was probably yet another cover used by Steinhauer to conceal his connection with the German Admiralstab.119 Grosse soon found out that he was in reality employed by German naval intelligence, for in a letter to Steinhauer he referred to ‘you and your friends from the Marine Amt’. 120 Grosse was therefore from the very beginning in the picture regarding his employer’s identity. Grosse arrived at Portsmouth on 26 October 1911. On 14 November, Berlin instructed him to gain a firm footing there, and he received a cipher code to report on torpedo practising and other naval matters. Grosse adopted the name of ‘Captain Hugh Grant’ and advertised as a teacher of modern languages.121 He neither worked very effectively nor remained undetected for long. Steinhauer soon refused to pay Grosse on account of the agent’s sparse and worthless intelligence. Instead, Grosse dedicated most of his time to seducing his female students.122 In December, Grosse threatened Steinhauer with exposure in the Daily Telegraph and added that ‘your last letter goes into the Emperor’s hand without delay’ if Steinhauer wouldn’t meet with Grosse and give him some money. 123 Grosse’s attempts to recruit subagents were rare and clumsy. Although in November he persuaded a certain John Bunn to supply him with information,124 Grosse’s second attempt at recruiting led to his detection and arrest. A naval pensioner, William Salter, had advertised to work as an enquiring agent, and Grosse, claiming to be employed by a German

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coal company, approached Salter and quizzed him about the local coal stocks, how many men there were presently in the naval barracks, and similar matters. Salter immediately informed the dockyard police who, in turn, contacted Kell. The Counter-Espionage Bureau then took charge of the investigation. On 17 November, Inspector Savage followed ‘Captain Grant’ to the post office and observed him receiving a letter from Berlin. From that point onwards, all mail to and from Grosse was intercepted until his arrest on 1 May 1912. 125 The ensuing check on Grosse’s mail revealed his contacts. The intermediary Otto Krüger posted ‘Petersson’s’ instructions from Kilburn to Grosse, who sent his own reports to the intermediary Wilhelm Croner in Hampstead. This discovery had immediate and grave consequences for all participants. Croner, of German descent, was a barber who had lived in Britain for about fourteen years. Steinhauer had recruited him, probably through Krüger. When Grosse was eventually arrested, Croner and his wife, Marie, panicked, and the latter attempted to commit suicide. The couple moved to Walthamstow and changed their name to Kronauer. Ernst visited them regularly and kept Steinhauer informed. 126 However, Kronauer became haunted by the prospect of being caught. He began drinking and fighting with his wife, so that Steinhauer suggested to Ernst to ‘give him up altogether’.127 On 28 January 1913, Marie Kronauer called on Ernst to inform him that her husband had drowned himself in the Thames. 128 Via Ernst, Marie Kronauer then turned to Steinhauer for assistance, and she may have received £10, but Ernst eventually refused to liaise with her.129 On the outbreak of war, the British authorities arrested her, discovering some of Steinhauer’s letters in her room. She was detained throughout the war and deported to Germany on 11 August 1919. 130 Otto Moritz Walter Krüger (or Kruger) came to England in August 1910 and opened a barber shop. Shortly afterwards he married an Englishwoman, Violet Phillips of Bristol. He employed Frederick Ireland, his nephew by marriage, as an assistant and convinced him to join the Royal Navy in July 1911. On his own initiative, Ireland entered the spy business for Steinhauer, receiving a formal contract in January 1912. Ireland obtained a monthly salary and sent in some reports on the navy. As his letters were delivered by intermediary, he was detected and arrested on 21 February 1912. The Counter-Espionage Bureau did not press for a trial as sensitive material would have had to be produced in court. They may also have considered the outcome of a trial uncertain. Ireland was, however, dismissed from the navy. Kruger fled to Germany only four days after Ireland’s arrest, but Steinhauer persuaded him to

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return to Britain in April 1913. Three of Kruger’s letters were intercepted, but only at the end of June 1914 did the police of Abercynon track him down. Both Ireland and Kruger were arrested on 4 August. The former was released, the latter was discharged on 13 August by orders of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and immediately re-arrested. At his own request, Kruger was deported to Germany in December 1916 while his wife remained in Britain. 131 Grosse himself did not fare much better than his intermediaries. At his trial on 9 February 1912, he admitted that he was in possession of correspondence addresses in England (Croner) and Germany (Steinhauer), and the court sentenced him to three years in prison. Following his arrest, Heddy Glauer, by now mother of his child, came to England. 132 In July 1913, Glauer got MP Joseph King interested in Grosse’s predicament. A left-wing Liberal for North Somerset who turned Labour after the war, King had long been critical of the British intelligence community and their conservative members. He had been enquiring about secret service funds for years, and he was one of the few MPs who had voted against the amendment of the Official Secrets Act (OSA) in 1911. During the war, he denounced the methods of Special Branch director Basil Thomson. In turn, Thomson promptly ordered a search of King’s house. MI5 suspected King of collaboration with the German secret service, and in 1918, he was fined £100 and 25 guineas for mentioning the explosion of a German bomb in Calais in a letter to France.133 Apart from his political views, which pitted him against the secret service lobby, King also developed a personal interest in Grosse’s fate. King became friends with Heddy Glauer, and possibly more than that. When the Kaiser pardoned the three convicted British spies (Trench, Stewart and Brandon), King and a few other MPs pleaded for Grosse’s release. But Grosse grew increasingly jealous of King’s relationship with Glauer and refused to accept any assistance from the MP. When Grosse was eventually released due to poor health on 8 May 1914, he harassed Glauer enough for her to forward some incriminating letters to the police. That gave the authorities sufficient evidence to re-arrest Grosse on 6 August 1914, and he was repatriated to Germany on 11 July 1917 on health reasons. Glauer did not fare much better, despite or perhaps because of her connection with King. Initially allowed to remain in Britain, she was then sentenced to six months’ detention for travelling more than five miles from her home without a permit. On 15 March 1916 she was interned for good in Aylesbury on the recommendation of the Home Office. At Aylesbury, she confessed to Marie Kronauer her involvement with ‘N’. In March 1918, Glauer was deported to Germany. 134

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Armgaard Karl Graves Not long after the detection of Schultz and Grosse, another German agent, Armgaard Karl Graves, surfaced. Born in Berlin on 7 May 1882, Graves’ real name was probably Max Meincke. In 1898, he left Germany and henceforth indulged in an adventurous life overseas. Soon enough, Graves was in trouble with the law. He was twice convicted for theft in New South Wales and in December 1910 for molesting a woman in Colombo. Around 1911, he returned to Germany under the name of ‘A.K. Graves Dr med.’ A few weeks later, the Wiesbaden criminal court sentenced him to six months in prison for fraud. But before the sentence was pronounced, Graves fled to Stettin with a prostitute friend and, upon arrest, was found in possession of an apparatus for administering chloroform.135 Several versions exist regarding his entry into the secret service. In Graves’ published memoirs, a friend introduced him to the director of ‘N’, Arthur Tapken.136 However, after his arrest in Great Britain, Graves told Vernon Kell that he had been jailed in Germany in 1911 as a deserter and was offered the opportunity to go to England as a spy for six months. Kell surmised that Graves was in fact recruited from a common gaol, not an unlikely assumption in view of Graves’ background and ‘N’s previous attempts to recruit convicts. Apparently, Graves was interviewed at naval intelligence headquarters in Berlin, in the presence of Tapken, Stammer, and Steinhauer, the latter of whom was introduced to him as ‘W. Lewis’.137 The German spymasters instructed Graves to enquire about the movements of British warships off the Scottish coast, especially around the naval bases Rosyth and Cromarty, and about a new type of gun powder the Royal Navy was using. Graves received £15 per month for his services, and he communicated with Steinhauer alias ‘Lewis’ through cover addresses in Brussels, Paris and Copenhagen. 138 As the British authorities were already checking Kruger’s and Ernst’s mail, Graves was duly detected. He arrived in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1912 and was kept under casual observation as soon as his correspondence with Berlin was discovered. Graves himself did not take great pains to avoid detection. Noticing that his mail had been opened, he complained to the police rather than leave the country while he was still in a position to do so. Meanwhile, Graves’ landlady suspected him of fraudulent intentions and informed the authorities. In his absence, the police searched his room on 22 February, and found, among other incriminating material, a code, a ticket in the name of Meincke from Berlin, and another wire

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code to ‘Lewis’. On 25 March, Graves travelled to Glasgow, complaining once more at the local enquiry office that his letters were delayed and that he was being watched by detectives. Apparently, Graves still did not consider his mission endangered. On 10 April, ‘Lewis’ by letter expressed his satisfaction with Graves’ work and asked when the agent would return to Germany.139 Graves’ imminent departure prompted the Scottish police, upon Kell’s request, to arrest him on 14 April. The authorities again searched his room and discovered sufficient evidence to try and convict him. Graves pleaded ‘not guilty’ at his trial on 22 and 23 July, and was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in a Glasgow prison by unanimous verdict – a rather lax sentence compared with Grosse’s (three years), and bearing in mind that the maximum would have been seven years.140 But Graves’ real espionage career had only begun. The day after his conviction, he let the British authorities know that he was willing to reveal his inside knowledge of the German secret service if they would release him. On 9 and 10 September 1912, an officer calling himself ‘Robinson’ interviewed Graves. In reality, ‘Robinson’ was none other than Vernon Kell. Graves gave ‘Robinson’/Kell the names of Tapken and Stammer and claimed they had instructed him to blow up the Forth bridge and to hire ‘undesirable persons’ to carry out terrorist acts. He further explained that the Germans had divided Britain into twenty-four districts, each under an officer to whom the local spies – chiefly servants, governesses and head waiters – were reporting on a monthly basis. Evidently, he had gathered these ideas from a Le Queux novel or a similar source. Kell, who plainly had not renounced his obsession with large-scale German plots in Britain, fell lock, stock and barrel for Graves’ tales. The director of the Counter-Espionage Bureau offered the convicted German spy an early release from prison, and subsequent employment by the British secret service, an offer that Graves accepted without hesitation. Graves’ transfer from Scotland to Brixton prison was arranged on 5 November, and he was secretly released on 18 December. Kell’s unit then employed him under the name of Snell or Schnell for a minimum period of six months at £2 per week. Graves thus became one of the first double agents in modern history. 141 For Kell, Graves’ ‘revelations’ provided a welcome device to impress his superiors with his work and underscore the peril posed by German spies.142 Graves had claimed to know all about German spies in Britain, and in January 1913, Kell instructed him, together with detective Fitzgerald to hunt them down. Predictably, the ensuing chase produced not a single result. With this mission gone awry, Kell agreed to Graves’ request for

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an assignment to Berlin, where the former German spy was to obtain a comprehensive list of German operatives in Britain from the Admiralstab’s secretary, Stammer. Once in Berlin, Graves immediately cabled for more funds even though he had already received a large sum for his mission. Kell immediately granted Graves’ request. However, the next thing the Counter-Espionage Bureau heard of Graves was that he was on his way to New York, allegedly in pursuit of Stammer, who was in possession of the mysterious list.143 While Graves made for New York, his case put Kell in an awkward position. In April and June 1913, two telegrams were received in England enquiring as to Graves’s whereabouts. The British authorities, assuming that the messages originated with the German secret service, left them unanswered. However, news of Graves’ unorthodox release had leaked through, and on 11, 16 and 19 September, Members of Parliament posed some delicate questions to this effect in the House of Commons. The Liberal MP King took the lead, asking: ‘If such a scoundrel as Graves could be released, why not that good fellow Grosse?’ 144 Eventually, Parliament was incorrectly informed that Graves had been liberated because of poor health. For some inscrutable reason, Kell remained loyal to Graves despite it all. In February 1913, Graves demanded £25 from New York, supposedly for his trip back to England, and the money was promptly sent. On 22 March, he apologized for not having returned yet and explained that he had been hospitalized following an attempt at his life. Once more he begged the Counter-Espionage Bureau for money, which was cabled to him immediately. Only when Graves requested money for a third time from New York, was his message left unanswered. 145 The public embarrassment for both his ex-employers, Germans and British alike, began in 1914. Graves made statements to the American press, promoting himself as a masterspy and revealing details about his former employers. Among other things, he revealed his contact address for the Counter-Espionage Bureau and the identity of the former director of German naval intelligence, Arthur Tapken. Graves’ revelations culminated in his autobiography, The Secrets of the German War Office. Written by the ghostwriter Edward Lyell Fox, the book contained a fair amount of fairy tales, but was also interspersed with details of Graves’ espionage career in both services. Fortuitously for Graves, the book was published on the eve of the First World War, and instantly sold over 100,000 copies. Ironically, while German intelligence suspected Graves of conspiring against Germany, 146 MI5 concluded that ‘Altogether he was zealously promoting the cause of the Central Powers’.147

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The German authorities in the United States considered it necessary to hire a private detective to shadow Graves.148 In reality, Graves had no bonds of loyalty with either side but was simply trying to profit from his secret service experience. He published a sequel to his book in 1915, entitled The Red Secrets of the Hohenzollerns, and filled the columns of American newspapers with predictions about the outcome of the war.149 He did not refrain from blackmailing, either. As the German ambassador to Washington, Count Johann von Bernstorff, could not communicate directly with Berlin after August 1914, the embassy had to rely on messengers travelling to and from Europe on neutral merchant ships. One such messenger was Graves’ ghostwriter Edward Lyell Fox. 150 Through him, Graves may have been able to get his hands on a batch of letters to Bernstorff in November 1916. Graves called upon Count Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg, counsellor of the German embassy, and offered him his bounty for $3,000.151 However, Bernstorff doubted that the letters contained any sensitive material and submitted the matter to the US State Department. When Graves turned up a second time at Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg’s house, the latter pretended he was willing to pay the sum, but the moment Graves left to collect the letters, the police arrested him red-handed. The planned trial was cancelled due to the German government’s refusal to allow Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg to testify, and Graves was released.152 Graves remained in the United States. In 1917, he was arrested near Kansas City for entering a zone prohibited to aliens and was interned until November 1918. After the war he occasionally came up with bizarre statements to the press. In 1928, he was accused of burning a woman alive, but was eventually exonerated. In 1934, a court convicted him of fraudulently obtaining $1,500. After his release in 1937, he was to be deported, but at the last minute a governmental agency intervened on his behalf, and he was taken off the Germany-bound ship. It is unlikely that death awaited him under the Nazis, as Graves claimed, but in view of his criminal record in Germany he was certainly better off in America.153

Karl Hentschel and George Parrott Plainly, Graves had never intended to conduct serious espionage. This was very different in the case of Karl Hentschel and George Parrott. The early stages of Hentschel’s espionage career are murky. According to Steinhauer, Hentschel started to spy around on his own initiative, offering his intelligence to the Russian, French and German service attachés. 154 According to Hentschel, ‘N’ recruited him in 1908 through a job

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advertisement for the position of foreign correspondent for a Berlin newspaper. Tapken, Stammer and Steinhauer interviewed Hentschel in Berlin, hired him at a wage of £10 per month, and instructed him to head for England. 155 By 1909, Grosse had settled in Chatham representing himself as a language teacher but the local authorities soon became suspicious. Melville investigated on behalf of the Counter-Espionage Bureau, and Kell put Hentschel on his ‘possible suspect list’.156 Hentschel married Patricia Riley, a shop assistant, on 15 December 1909. When she found out about his moonlighting as secret agent, she offered her support. Riley was able to persuade her mother to join in, as well as her three sisters, which proved valuable, as the Riley girls frequently dated naval men. Most important, however, was Patricia Riley’s connection with the chief gunner of HMS Agamemnon, Charles Parrott.157 Parrott, born in 1872, entered the Royal Navy in 1887.158 He served on the Agamemnon until August 1910, transferred to the Pembroke, and was put in charge of the rifle range at Sheerness at the end of September 1910. When Patricia Riley asked Parrott to compile reports on naval manoeuvres, he agreed immediately, either out of affection for her or because he was in dire straits, or perhaps a combination of both. In the summer of 1910, Riley introduced him to her husband, and Parrott agreed to procure any type of intelligence for £8 to £10 a piece, a significant sum in view of his yearly salary from the navy of merely £260. From now on, Hentschel supplied Parrott every ten days with fresh lists of questions concerning guns, armour, gunpowder and so on, and by January 1911, Parrott had stolen up to twenty-three confidential books. Hentschel then sold this intelligence for a higher price to Berlin, using cover addresses in Brussels and Paris for communications. Although Parrott and Hentschel initially got along well – Parrott even became godfather of the Hentschels’ first child – their friendship deteriorated over the course of 1911. Parrott complained when he got wind that Hentschel had made a huge profit by selling his intelligence to the Germans, while Hentschel accused Parrott of having an affair with his wife. Hentschel finally decided to break off the connection with Parrott and left England on 29 March 1911 to meet a representative of ‘N’ and discuss matters. After his return, the two Hentschels sailed for Australia on 24 June 1911.159 Parrott was too valuable a source for the Germans to let go. In July 1911, a ‘Captain Fels’ sailed to England to persuade Parrott to continue his work. ‘Fels’ may have been a cover identity of Lieutenant Commander Stammer (Steinhauer was at this time reluctant to visit England). ‘Fels’ moved in with the Rileys and quickly persuaded Parrott to continue his

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valuable work. As soon as Hentschel heard of Parrott’s recruitment, he demanded £250. Otherwise, he threatened to reveal Parrott’s name to the British authorities. When ‘N’ learned of Hentschel’s blackmail attempt, ‘Richard’, probably a cover name for Tapken, assured Parrott that the problem would be taken care of. Berlin then paid the money Hentschel had asked for. The Hentschels, by now stranded in Australia, utilized it to return to England in March 1912.160 Patricia Hentschel now begged ‘N’ to re-employ her husband, which they did on the condition that the latter would refrain from blackmail. Hentschel once again travelled to the Continent and met a representative of ‘N’. He was promised the sum of £30 per month if he kept quiet, and the Hentschels once more departed for Australia in June 1912. Parrott was instructed to enquire about the second and third fleet at Portsmouth and Devonport. However, as he communicated with headquarters in Berlin through the intermediaries Ernst and Kruger, the Counter-Espionage Bureau knew from late 1911 about Parrott’s and Hentschel’s activities. On 6 July 1912, ‘Richard’ proposed a meeting with Parrott in Ostend. The British decided to act, and Melville shadowed Parrott on the journey to Belgium. When Parrott boarded the ferry bound for Ostend, the police stopped him. They found ‘Richard’s’ letter on him and informed the Admiralty since no member of the Royal Navy was allowed to leave the country without first informing their superiors. Nevertheless, Parrott proceeded, and in Ostend Melville observed him meeting a man, ‘evidently a German .. . Age about 35 to 40. Height 5 ft. 9. inches – hair and moustache medium dark. Dress light tweed jacket suit and straw hat. Typical German walk and style.’161 This man may have been Stammer. It was not Steinhauer, who at that very moment was shadowing Melville. Steinhauer contends in his memoirs that he did not dare warn Parrott for fear of alerting Melville, but one may wonder what harm this could have done on neutral ground.162 After his return to Britain, Parrott was immediately confined to barracks for leaving the country without permission. The Attorney-General, Guy Stephenson, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Graham Greene and Vernon Kell convened a conference to deliberate the case, but the AttorneyGeneral decided that there was still insufficient evidence for a trial. Stephenson also feared that the intercepted letters would have to be produced in court, which was not in the state’s interests. 163 Hence, it was left to the Admiralty to take action against Parrott, and he was dismissed from the Royal Navy on 15 August. The Admiralstab, however, decided to take care of their agent. The jobless Parrott first travelled to Rotterdam, then, on 18 October, to Hamburg to arrange his future with

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the Germans. In Hamburg, he met ‘Richard’ who paid him the extraordinary sum of £500 to compensate for his dismissal. Parrott was interrogated by a German gunnery expert, an engineer, a torpedo and an executive expert. He agreed to work for the Imperial Navy in Wilhelmshaven and was to learn German. ‘N’ promised to pay his legal fees if action was brought against him in Britain.164 But by now the British authorities had gauged the magnitude of Parrott’s involvement with the Germans, and they arrested him on 15 November 1912. ‘N’ immediately procured a private enquiry agent in London to prepare his defence, 165 and eventually the Germans paid the fees for his solicitor as well. The payment of Parrott’s legal defence led to some confusion between the Wilhelmstraße and the Admiralstab as Parrott’s lawyers sent the £350 bill to the German embassy in London. Unaware of Parrott’s connection with the Admiralstab, the embassy was perplexed, but Stammer informed them that the case was a ‘naval matter’. 166 All of this was to little or no avail. Parrott was sentenced to four years in jail in January 1913, and his subsequent confession in prison in April 1914 did nothing to reduce his sentence. The only thing ‘N’ was able to do was to pay Parrott’s wife his salary until the outbreak of war. When his sentence expired in 1917, he was immediately interned and only on 5 February 1919 released on parole. His wife, who had by then discovered her husband’s relationship with Patricia Hentschel, left him, and he moved on to Devonport. The last entry in his police file records that he had found work as a storeman under the Metropolitan Asylums Board.167 Hentschel, with the help of the Counter-Espionage Bureau, fared slightly better. In Australia, Patricia had fallen out with her husband, and she departed for England by herself. Bent on fixing the marriage, Hentschel followed his wife on 23 September 1913. Shortly after his arrival, he offered Scotland Yard information about the German secret service under the condition of immunity, reward, and employment by the British secret service. Melville interviewed Hentschel and paid him the hefty amount of £100. But Hentschel, despairing over his wife’s continuing refusal to return to him, took their two children to the Chatham police station and, heavily drunk, confessed his involvement with German naval intelligence. Most inconveniently for Kell’s department, the matter had then to proceed, and on 8 November 1913, Hentschel was tried at Westminster. In court, the Attorney-General, Archibald Bodkin, for the first time publicly mentioned the Counter-Espionage Bureau as ‘an authority specially constituted to deal with similar cases’. Hentschel was discharged and released, but he immediately purchased a gun, threatened his wife and was rearrested. Hentschel eventually realized

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that his marriage could not be mended. As a true soldier of fortune, he left for China following his release in February 1914 and resurfaced as a mercenary in the Mexican civil war in 1916.168

Adolf Frederick Schroeder Prior to the war, the German embassy in London and the Admiralstab in Berlin frequently received requests from Britons and Germans offering their services as spies.169 If the offer was considered serious, Steinhauer would be sent to Britain to negotiate personally with the potential agent.170 Apparently, this was the case with Adolf Frederick Schroeder, alias Frederick Gould, who happened to become the last convicted German peacetime agent as well. Schroeder was born in the late 1850s, came to England shortly afterwards and attended a German school in the Savoy.171 In 1887, he married Rebecca Solomans in Islington.172 In the late 1880s, he returned to Germany, served in the Prussian Army from 1890 until 1895, and was discharged with the rank of lieutenant. In December 1896, he was back in England.173 The Admiralstab may have approached Schroeder while he served in the army, but Steinhauer contends in his memoirs that it was Schroeder who offered his services in 1902. 174 In the very same year, Schroeder admitted to an old school friend of his, Carl Bernhard Reimers, that he had changed his name to ‘Gould’ and that he was really a German spy.175 A year later, Schroeder entered ‘the Secret Service’ as a former employer on his résumé for a job application. 176 In 1906, ‘N’ listed him as an ‘observer’ (Beobachter) for Sheerness and Chatham and issued him a new code to report any sign of naval mobilization.177 One of Schroeder’s earliest tasks was to get in touch with British naval personnel. In 1904, he recommended two impecunious officers as possible informants to Steinhauer.178 The Counter-Espionage Bureau later suspected at least eight other men of having communicated intelligence to Schroeder. 179 In 1907 or 1908, ‘N’ sent him to Leith, and in October 1908, Schroeder moved to Rochester where he obtained a licence for the Queen Charlotte public house. The Counter-Espionage Bureau assumed that Schroeder had received the money for the licence from the German secret service so as to provide him with a platform to lure British sailors and soldiers.180 As Schroeder had a large family to take care of and no regular job besides spying, this may well be correct.181 He held the licence until the end of 1913 when he moved to Wandsworth.

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As soon as Schroeder had hired a few informants, Steinhauer sent him detailed questions on naval matters. Later the Germans asked him to procure several confidential books from the Royal Navy, and from June 1912, Schroeder sent fortnightly reports to Berlin. Most of his communication was dealt with via Kronauer, and he had received cover addresses in Brussels and Potsdam. Occasionally, members of ‘N’, under the cover names of ‘Tobler’ or ‘Petersson’, visited Schroeder personally in Britain. Initially paid on a delivery basis, in May 1912, on Steinhauer’s recommendation, Schroeder received a formal contract and began to receive a regular salary of £15 per month. From then on, he or his wife, who had been actively cooperating with her husband, regularly travelled to Rotterdam, and once to Hamburg, to convey intelligence to Steinhauer or another plenipotentiary of ‘N’. 182 Although Schroeder repeatedly expressed dissatisfaction over his salary, or lack thereof (‘No pay, no work’), 183 and Steinhauer occasionally complained about worthless reports,184 on the whole both parties were content with their relationship, and the connection lasted over a decade. In fact, Schroeder and Steinhauer became close friends, and in an undated letter Steinhauer wrote: ‘If you come here you are always welcome to us. My children are already asking when uncle Gould [Schroeder’s cover name] is coming . . . With best wishes from the children, my wife and self. Yours, St[einhauer].’185 Schroeder, like his fellow agents, was detected through mail interception. Beginning in October 1911, the British authorities enforced a Home Office warrant on mail from and to Steinhauer’s address, and Schroeder’s activities were quickly uncovered. In June 1912, detective J. Regan of the Counter-Espionage Bureau, disguised as a sailor, befriended Schroeder and reported that the latter talked freely about Germany spending money to foment revolution in Britain. When the mail check revealed that Mrs Gould was about to leave for Ostend with a gunnery drill book, charts of Bergen and Spithead, and cruiser drawings, the director of British naval intelligence, Graham Greene, ordered the couple’s arrest, which was executed on 22 February 1914. The subsequent search of Schroeder’s house and belongings produced, among much incriminating evidence, a photograph of Steinhauer in police uniform (see Ill. 2). 186 Schroeder’s trial took place at the Central Criminal Court on 4 April 1914. His wife pleaded ‘not guilty’, and the charges against her were dropped. Schroeder, also pleading ‘not guilty’, was sentenced by Justice Atkin to six years’ penal servitude with recommendation for deportation afterwards. Schroeder was transferred to Brixton prison and spent much of his time there with his fellow convict Kronauer. He also made

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some statements of doubtful value to representatives of British counterespionage. 187 The authorities kept him imprisoned until 1920, and on his release immediately deported him to Germany. Schroeder’s trail then peters out.188 Schroeder was the last captured German agent before the outbreak of war. Several other individuals had been approached by or were in loose contact with ‘N’, but most of them were either active for a very short period of time or the British authorities could not build a sufficient case against them to take action.

Implications of Germany’s pre-war espionage in Great Britain Overall, German pre-war espionage in Great Britain produced few tangible results and hardly posed a significant threat to British security. German surveillance of the British fleet was insufficient, and the most revolutionary development in naval construction during this period, the Royal Navy’s launching of the Dreadnought battleship class, took Berlin by surprise.189 The German secret services typically blamed the painfully evident inadequacy of their pre-war intelligence on the lack of funds, a claim that was equally popular in the British intelligence community. However, money was hardly ever a significant factor when it came to hiring, firing, or tasking agents. The failure of German naval intelligence ought to be ascribed partly to the shiftiness of the Admiralstab’s operations planning. While its army counterpart, Sektion IIIb, could rely on the Schlieffenplan after 1905 and patiently spun a web of agents across France and Russia, ‘N’ had to re-instruct their agents continuously regarding their spying duties in Britain as is graphically illustrated in the case of Johann Engel. ‘N’ recruited Engel, a ship’s chandler of German birth residing in Falmouth, in 1903–1904 to gather intelligence on France in the event of a Franco-German war. When the Admiralstab abolished its operations plan against France in 1911, Engel was retained and paid for two more years without any particular duties. At the end of 1913, Engel retired from the service, but in July 1914 the Admiralstab decided to take him back on board and task him with intelligence gathering on France, evidently on the assumption that Britain would remain neutral in the unfolding July crisis. Engel rejoined the service at the end of July, but by this time the British authorities were intercepting his mail, and they arrested him as a German spy on 4 August 1914.190 In addition to the Admiralstab’s permanently shifting operational focus, which could exasperate the most dedicated spymaster, ‘N’ faced

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significant human intelligence problems. For one thing, the department could never count on the assistance of the German naval attachés whose intelligence apparatus existed on paper only, and in April 1914, the director of ‘N’ in effect wrote the attaché off.191 Police officer Gustav Steinhauer, on the other hand, was more than eager to fulfil his spy duties and proved an active and capable operative. Before and during the Agadir crisis, Steinhauer personally conducted several intelligence missions to Britain, and in July 1914 he embarked on an extended reconnoitring trip to Scotland which earned him the unqualified praise of the director of German naval intelligence: ‘In any case, he [Steinhauer] fulfilled his assignment exceptionally well and deserves a special reward, not least in view of the risk under which he operated. What can we do for him?’192 But resourceful operatives do not necessarily make competent spymasters. When ‘N’ elevated Steinhauer to the position of spymaster for Great Britain, ‘the Kaiser’s masterspy’ failed the test. Time and again, he showed poor judgement by hiring shady characters and former criminals, many of whom betrayed both him and the service. As a label for this class of German naval agents, the verdict of MI5’s Captain Drake on Grosse is rather appropriate: ‘He is such a rogue.’193 Aside from the unsuitability for intelligence work of Grosse and his like, Steinhauer’s organization was fatally weakened through the centralization of agents under a few intermediaries all of whom were linked to a handful of cover addresses and names, and ultimately to Steinhauer himself. Consequently, British mail interception proved lethal, as the detection of a single agent or intermediary would inevitably lead to the unravelling of Steinhauer’s entire intelligence apparatus. The British authorities obtained this key piece of information ‘by chance’, as the historical reports of MI5 put it, when Steinhauer approached a member of the German colony who refused to spy for him, and instead informed the British authorities: It was during this year [1911] that certain valuable information came into the possession of the Bureau due to a casual conversation overheard in a train by Capt. Stanley Clarke. It led to the discovery of the name and address of a German Agent abroad, F. Reimers [Steinhauer’s cover name] who had been approaching a naturalized British subject of German origin, suggesting that he should work for the Fatherland. The British subject refused to have anything to do with the matter and communicated with the authorities. The result was that not only was the name of the German Agent himself obtained but that of several of his correspondents in this country.194

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German agents in Britain informed their spymaster on several occasions about the danger of exposure, but Steinhauer routinely brushed off warnings from his men. After the unmasking of Grosse, Kruger, and Ireland, Steinhauer’s agents were understandably scared; Croner changed his name to Kronauer, moved and eventually committed suicide. Ernst adopted the cover name of ‘Weller’, later ‘Walters’, and Steinhauer himself that of ‘Reimers’. However, as Steinhauer and Ernst continued to use their old addresses, their aliases did not disguise their bearers. 195 Following Croner’s death, Steinhauer offered Ernst the opportunity to retire if he was afraid,196 and in January 1914 Ernst finally did so.197 Grosse once accused Steinhauer of having ‘made a mess’,198 which was quite true, although Grosse also had contributed significantly to the discovery of the German spy organization in Britain.199 The Admiralstab’s unclear operational focus and weak human intelligence constituted the two key factors in the failure of ‘N’s pre-war espionage in Britain. Even if the British authorities had not detected a single German spy prior to the war, the unreliability of ‘N’s naval agents and the haziness of their tasks would have ensured this failure. British mail interception, however, brought to light a number of German spies prior to the war, and the evident shortcomings of German naval intelligence, combined with the apparent efficiency of British counter-espionage, gave Kell’s unit the opportunity to present itself as a successful venture. Yet Kell’s record during the pre-war years is uneven. The CounterEspionage Bureau had fished in troubled waters during its first two years of existence, and Siegfried Helm, the first detected ‘spy’ under Kell’s direction, was an innocent man. It is impossible to say how Kell’s unit would have fared without the Helm case, but the SSB’s probationary period of two years would have expired without Kell’s having anything to show for his efforts, and it is not entirely inconceivable that Kell’s contract might not have been renewed without the Helm case. After Helm’s conviction, however, the question of a possible dissolution of the Counter-Espionage Bureau was not raised again. Max Schultz, the second individual arrested for espionage under Kell, was an inept soldier of fortune who posed no threat to British security whatsoever, although technically he was employed by ‘N’. Neither Schultz nor Helm were detected by the Counter-Espionage Bureau, but by the police, who informed Kell only when the investigation was already well under way. This raises the question whether counter-espionage would not have been better managed by the police or Scotland Yard. 200 It seems inconceivable, for instance, that other powers, such as Russia

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or France, refrained from intelligence gathering in Britain, but Kell stubbornly held on to the view that foreign equalled German espionage.201 As the Counter-Espionage Bureau focused on German spies exclusively, they never turned up any others, and the premise that only the Germans were carrying out espionage became a self-fulfilling prophecy: The experience of M.I.5 between 1909 and 1914 shewed that there was but one really active enemy, viz., the Germans and that their conception of espionage embraced the whole life of the State: naval, military, economic, political and social information and even details of the conduct and fortune of private citizens were of interest to them. 202 While misjudging the scope and intentions of German intelligence, Kell showed little concern about bending the law that he was supposed to protect. For him, the end justified the means, as not only his handling of Graves demonstrates, but also the case of William Klare, a minor German agent recruited by Ernst on Steinhauer’s behalf.203 Since November 1911, the authorities were aware of Klare’s connection with Steinhauer, but Kell’s department was unable to track him down until the barber Levi Rosenthal informed the authorities on 22 October 1912 that a man (who turned out to be Klare) had offered him £200 for a confidential book on submarines. To facilitate matters, Kell hired an agent provocateur, the pensioned naval writer Charles John Bishop, and instructed him to frame Klare by offering him a copy of the Annual Report of Torpedoes. Klare jumped at the bait, purchased the book from Bishop in Rosenthal’s shop on 19 February 1913, and was arrested the moment he stepped outside. Through a German named Schwartz, ‘N’ hired a solicitor on behalf of their captured agent, but Klare was nevertheless sentenced to five years imprisonment. As soon as the sentence had expired, Klare was interned and in May 1918 deported to Germany. The Counter-Espionage Bureau arranged the payment of £10 to Bishop for his assistance, and of £20 each to the dockyard police of Portsmouth and Rosenthal. Rosenthal successfully insisted that he be paid another £10 to keep quiet about the fact that Klare had been framed.204 The handful of German agents arrested in Britain prior to the war hardly presented a threat to British security, and certainly did not warrant the considerable tightening of Britain’s legal framework and extension of its intelligence apparatus. But once the Counter-Espionage Bureau existed, the emergence of genuine German spies helped cement and perpetuate Kell’s department. The trials of Helm, Schultz, Graves, and others received extensive press coverage and seemed to confirm the widespread

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notion in British society of far-reaching and dangerous German espionage plots. A sober analysis of each individual case would have indicated the amateurish nature of German intelligence, but Kell continued to operate on the premise that large-scale German espionage was a fact. Hence, he never considered whether his conception of the German espionage threat was realistic. The unquestioned assumption of a vast hostile clandestine organization, and not the question whether or to what extent it really existed, continued to guide Kell as well as large segments of the public. Just as the spy scare had been indispensable in bringing about the SSB, Kell’s unit continued to exist and expand primarily not because it tracked down German spies, but because German espionage continued to preoccupy so many English people.

4 The Outbreak of the First World War

The outbreak of war was accompanied by an outburst of British paranoia over German espionage.1 The Times journalist Michael Macdonagh noted in his diary on 11 August that ‘London is said to be full of German spies’, 2 and the Daily Mail reported that ‘fully armed’ German ‘Motor Cycle Spies’ had assaulted a signalman at the railway station in Chenies in Buckinghamshire. In September further mysterious attacks on constables were reported to the Home Office, but the ensuing investigation led to nothing.3 Leo Maxse wrote in the National Review: ‘Germany has displayed such genius in the peculiarly dirty business of organising espionage, and employs every stray scoundrel of any nationality who will sell himself for a sufficiently small sum, that we cannot be too careful.’4 Individuals with suspicious accents were hunted down all over the country, 5 and in October the First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Battenberg, was forced to resign on account of his German-sounding name and his birth in Austria.6 Not even British secret service agents were safe from the all-engulfing spy scare; a member of British naval intelligence was nearly arrested by a zealous spy-hunter ‘because the dimmed light of my Ford car glowed a little more brightly’. 7 Up to 400 persons daily offered information on German spies to the London police. The sheer amount of this data overwhelmed the authorities and made it more difficult for them to deal with genuine enemy espionage. Basil Thomson, director of the Special Branch and one of the few officials who was not carried away by the reigning paranoia, later observed: ‘In war-time any story, however wild, was accepted . . . But in August 1914 the malady [the spy scare] assumed a virulent epidemic form accompanied by delusions which defied treatment. It attacked all classes indiscriminately, and seemed even to find its most fruitful soil in sober, solid, and otherwise truthful people.’ 8 74

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William Le Queux, who had almost sunk into oblivion, made an amazing comeback. In September 1914, a sixth edition of Spies of the Kaiser was published, followed soon afterwards by his latest espionage fantasy, The German Spy: A Present Day Story. The British Board of Film Censors also decided to lift its ban on the film version of The Invasion of 1910, which was promptly released as If England Were Invaded, showing an invading army assisted by resident German spies, who unpacked their uniforms, rifles and ammunition from ‘a case supposed to contain a piano’. 9 During the war, as Le Queux gave 228 lectures throughout England, Scotland and Wales, on German espionage his obsession with German spies became ever more irrational.10 On 17 August 1914, he reported to the police that Germans were threatening him, and requested personal protection.11 The reply from the police being evasive, Le Queux insisted that he was a ‘marked man in England among German spies’ and had received twenty to thirty threatening letters, although he was unable to produce any of them. 12 He then contacted Superintendent Patrick Quinn of the Special Branch and urged him to build up his own counter-espionage agency. Le Queux generously offered him a helping hand.13 Quinn declined this offer as deeply disloyal to his superior and forwarded Le Queux’s letters to Basil Thomson. This breach of faith, in turn, outraged Le Queux who threatened to publish their entire correspondence. 14 In the end, the authorities wisely decided to let the matter drop, concluding that ‘Mr. Le Queux’s attention has been so long centred on German spies and their methods that the subject has now become a monomania with him, and he is able to think of nothing else’. 15 The fierce but elusive campaign against German spies soon turned into an attack on a more tangible target, enemy aliens.16 Again, the Northcliffe press was in the vanguard. Robert Blatchford of the Daily Mail demanded categorically: ‘Every German, young or old, is a potential Spy . . . The only safe plan is to arrest and deport every German. No excuse should be accepted . . . While Britain and Germany are at war, the only safe place for all Germans is a concentration camp.’ 17 Horatio Bottomley, editor of John Bull, thundered in the same vein: ‘Germany Must be Wiped Off The Map Of Europe. No Mercy For the Berlin Butcher. NEVER AGAIN! Not A Vestige Of The German Empire To Be Left. Lock Up All Germans, Confiscate Their Property.’18 In some instances, the excited public took matters into their own hands. On 6 August, a crowd of hooligans raided a German-owned bakery in East London. On 29 August, a German butcher shop was bombarded with stones and bottles for three hours, so that the owners had to be evacuated by the police. On 31 August, a mob smashed the windows of two German

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bakers in Upper North Street. 19 Some actions provoked even more tragic results. On 29 October 1914, the Chief Constable of East Suffolk, Captain Mayne, reported two suspects, the twenty-two-year-old Fritz Ludwig, and the fifty-year-old William Smith, to the General Officer Commanding the East Anglian Division: Sir, The undernamed two British subjects are suspiciously regarded by the police and general public and, though neither has committed any definite offence, I have arrived at the conclusion that there is justification for their removal from this ‘Prohibited Area’ which has been extended and now embraces the whole County of Suffolk. Both men are un-doubtedly pro-German in conversation, behaviour and sympathy, and, in my opinion, should a German landing be effected, they would help the enemy. 20 According to Mayne, Smith, a schoolmaster at Henham School in Wangford, was especially untrustworthy, as he had lodged Germans prior to the war and both he and his son had visited Germany. The responsible military authorities issued a removal order under the recently introduced Defence of the Realm Act (DORA). When Smith was informed he despaired. On 4 November, he and his wife committed suicide.21 Although the authorities soon realised that a grave error had been made, the removal order remained effective until the family’s lawyer took up the case and in 1915 persuaded the military authorities to withdraw it.22 Kell is mentioned several times in Smith’s file, but it remains unclear how much responsibility his department bears for the Smiths’ fate. The authorities did little to calm the waves. On the contrary, the government issued numerous official warnings against German conspiracies and began to recruit ‘special constables’ to watch enemy spies and keep track of enemy aliens. 23 Kell’s pre-war aliens register was made official on 5 August, and henceforth continually updated.24 On the same day, the government introduced the Aliens’ Restriction Act (ARA) which had passed through the House of Commons quickly with little opposition. The ARA allowed the government to control the activities of all aliens with regard to entry into Britain, residence, registration and many other aspects of their lives.25 All resident aliens were required to register with the police and to notify the authorities if they moved. And on 8 August, the government enacted the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) which severely curtailed civil liberties in wartime Britain, purportedly in order to thwart the activities of enemy spies. 26 But were these measures really effective in combating enemy espionage?

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The ‘Ernst ring’27 On 5 August, The Times published a statement by the Home Secretary regarding ‘the removal of spies, twenty-one of whom had been arrested, chiefly in important naval centres, within the preceding twenty-four hours’. 28 The names of the alleged agents were not included in the secretary’s statement, but The Times identified four German spies in the same article as ‘Karl Gustave Ernst’, ‘Auguste Klunder’, ‘Friedrich Diederich’ and ‘Adolph Schneider’. The Home Secretary’s statement of 5 August has led later historians to seriously misunderstand the state of German intelligence and British counter-espionage operations in July and August 1914. In 1913, Kell had begun to compile a ‘special war list’ of suspected German spies who were to be watched if they entered Great Britain. The list was continually updated, and in July 1914, twenty-two names were marked for arrest in war. By and large, the list represented a mixed bag of spymasters (Steinhauer, Fels), former spies (Graves, Hentschel), retired intermediaries (Ernst, Klunder) and others whose names had come up through mail interception. As the July crisis unfolded, Kell divided the ‘special war list’ up among various police authorities and sent separate lists to each one, with instructions to wait for his telegram before acting. Just before the outbreak of war, he sent a code telegram ordering the arrests, and the police were able to apprehend about half of the individuals on the list.29 The British authorities did not intend to have public trials for those arrested for espionage, but preferred to detain them indefinitely under the ARA. According to the Home Office, trying enemy spies publicly would reveal to the German secret service precious information on the working methods of British counter-espionage. However, the vast majority of captured German operatives were later court-martialled in closed sessions and at any rate, there was little for the German spymasters to learn but the fact that their agents had been captured. In all likelihood, the British authorities wished to avoid espionage trials because they usually lacked the evidence required to win a conviction.30 However, the ARA permitted only the detention of foreigners, and Karl Gustav Ernst, one of the alleged twenty-one spies arrested on 4 August, was a British citizen (see Ill. 3). Ernst forced the authorities’ hand by appealing immediately against his arrest and detention. If his release was to be avoided, Ernst had to be put on trial and convicted. Hence, he was set free, immediately re-arrested and charged with espionage under DORA on 12 August. Now that his trial was inevitable, the

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authorities made a virtue of necessity by advertising their ability to deal with foreign espionage. As the Secretary of the General Post Office suggested, ‘it might not be impolitic to publish the fact that this professional spy [Ernst] had been long and well known to the authorities, and that his prosecution, which had only been avoided upon a principle of policy, had been made imperative by his release, and the grounds upon which it was granted’.31 Ernst’s trial commenced on 23 September and proved uneventful. As there was abundant evidence against him in the form of intercepted letters to and from his German spymaster Steinhauer, Ernst’s conviction was a foregone conclusion. His defence was not strengthened when his lawyer resigned, leaving Ernst to fend for himself. 32 The prosecutor, Archibald Bodkin, correctly identified the defendant’s main function, serving as Steinhauer’s mail distributor. The trial also established that Ernst had discontinued his involvement with German intelligence in January 1914.33 Ernst did not deny the charges and apologized: ‘I am sorry if I had anything to do with it plus I gave it up at the end of the year.’ 34 On 13 November, the court convicted him to seven years imprisonment for attempting to recruit Frederick Ireland on Steinhauer’s behalf.35 In a political crisis, the arrest of persons with known links to enemy espionage organizations is a routine matter of precaution, but Ernst and the others on Kell’s ‘special war list’ hardly presented a threat to British security. As Ernst’s trial made plain, he had discontinued work for German intelligence long before the outbreak of war, and the same is true for many others on the ‘special war list’. All this list did was help roll up the remnants of Germany’s pre-war espionage apparatus, but during and after the war this mop-up operation was elevated to one of the most significant accomplishments of British counter-espionage. In 1920, journalist Sidney Theodore Felstead, who had gained privileged access to official sources, claimed that the authorities had eliminated a veritable German ‘spy-tree’ in August 1914. 36 MI5’s historical reports, compiled shortly after the war, went so far as to claim that ‘This action . . . at once disorganised and paralysed the whole of the German Secret Service in the U.K. and they never throughout the whole war really recovered from the blow’. 37 Vernon Kell’s deputy, Eric Holt-Wilson, lectured in the same vein in the 1930s.38 The legend of the twenty-one spies was reinforced in 1963 by John Bulloch, who wrote that ‘This [the arrests] was no less than proof of a highly organized and efficient German spy system in Britain’. Bulloch also coined the term ‘Ernst ring’ for the twenty-one German spies, a label implying a fairly sophisticated

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espionage organization with Karl Ernst at its centre. 39 Although modern historians with a critical distance to their subject are reluctant to overstate the extent of Kell’s achievement in August 1914, it is generally accepted that the break-up of the ‘Ernst ring’ represented a major blow against German intelligence at the outbreak of war. 40 How could such a misunderstanding develop? The public proceedings of Ernst’s trial proved his involvement with German espionage prior to the war, but the Home Secretary’s announcement on 5 August 1914 to the effect that twenty-one German spies had been arrested suggested the existence of an espionage organization at the outbreak of war. The fact that hardly anything transpired about the other twenty spies made it tempting to speculate about their possible links with Ernst, all the more so as the prosecution considered charging Ernst with ‘conspiring with Steinhauer and others to contravene the Official Secrets Act, 1911’. 41 It must be borne in mind that Kell’s unit – now reorganized as MO5(g) – and large segments of the British public were utterly convinced of the existence of a vast German espionage organization.42 When the latter failed to materialize, these frustrated expectations probably merged in the collective memory with Ernst’s trial and the anonymous twenty-one German spies into the imaginary ‘Ernst ring’, an organization which, in fact, never existed. By the end of the war, the idea that a veritable German espionage organization had been broken up in 1914 was fairly well established, as evidenced by MI5’s historical reports. Yet when the authors of those reports consulted Kell’s ‘special war list’ for the names of the twenty-one arrested spies, they confronted an obvious problem: only about half of the individuals on the list had actually been arrested. Hence, they compiled a new list to bring the historical reports into line with the legend of the twenty-one arrested spies. They did so on the basis of Kell’s ‘special war list’. First, the names of individuals not arrested on the outbreak of war – that is more than half of the ‘special war list’ – were expunged. Curiously, Ernst’s name was also deleted, perhaps because he was too obviously detached from German wartime espionage. This left nine names.43 To arrive at the number of twenty-one, the authors of the historical reports then added twelve names of individuals who were indeed arrested in August 1914. 44 Virtually none of them had any connection with German intelligence, and most were immediately released and packed off to Austria or Germany, but MI5 now possessed a new list that included twenty-one individuals who had indeed been arrested on the outbreak of war, even though there were hardly any links between them and few of them had been genuine German spies.

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These arrests in no way disrupted ‘N’s activities. In fact, the Admiralstab showed little concern when informed of the matter. 45 By July 1914, German intelligence had completely abandoned peacetime-style espionage. Instead, ‘N’ had activated its war intelligence system (Kriegs- nachrichtenwesen, or KNW) which was made up primarily of naval officers who were instructed to gather information on the mobilization of the Royal Navy in times of rising tension. These ‘tension travellers’ were, with the notable exception of Steinhauer, complete novices to the service. In late July and early August, while Kell was putting the final touches on his ‘special war list’, a handful of tension travellers reconnoitred British seaports.46 Travelling amid the raging spy mania in Britain on the eve of the First World War was a nerve-racking experience for a German secret agent. One of them, Lieutenant Commander Kaiser, cabled exhaustedly to his spymaster after completing his mission: ‘I have been through a lot.’47 But not a single German ‘tension traveller’ was detected, and Steinhauer completed his mission to Scotland successfully despite figuring prominently on Kell’s ‘special war list’. The ‘Ernst ring’ offers an instructive insight into MI5’s approach to counter-espionage. A sober analysis of the information provided by the handful of genuine German spies arrested at the outbreak of war should have informed the department that Berlin was primarily interested in technical naval intelligence and that the German pre-war espionage apparatus was not very extensive. At the same time, most of those spies had long discontinued their activities by the time of their arrest, which should have alerted MI5 that German wartime espionage would follow a different pattern. The postwar period would have been an appropriate time to take stock and make an objective assessment of German intelligence, but instead MI5 sought to bring its historical reports into line with contemporary notions of a dangerous enemy espionage organization that had been successfully dismantled at the outbreak of war. MI5’s approach is understandable in that every institution prefers to be seen in a positive light, but it obscured the structure and aims of German naval intelligence during the war.

German espionage centres in Belgium and the Netherlands In August 1914, all German authorities withdrew from Allied territory and direct exchange of information between Germany and Great Britain ceased. Instead, the intelligence services focused on neutral countries as bases from which to gather information on the enemy, and as gates for espionage missions to enemy territory. For the German services, Spain,

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Illustration 3

Karl Gustav Ernst, shortly after his arrest in August 1914

Source: Courtesy of the Public Record Office.

Switzerland and the Netherlands served as jump-off points to France, while the Netherlands, the United States and the Scandinavian countries filled the same need for Britain.48 In order to narrow the distance to enemy countries, the Germans established so-called ‘war intelligence centres’ (Kriegsnachrichtenstellen, or KNSts) just behind the German borders or in occupied territory. These centres, directed by army or naval officers, gathered information on the enemy by evaluating foreign newspapers and other sources. They also recruited and trained operatives and dispatched them to enemy countries. On Germany’s western border, intelligence-gathering on Britain was conducted by agencies in Brussels, Wesel on the Dutch border, and Antwerp, all of which were linked up with German officials and secret service members in the Netherlands. As espionage was legal in pre-war Belgium, Brussels had long been a nexus for European espionage, and when the Germans captured the city, they set up a local KNSt.49 As the German forces swept through Belgium, the army established another KNSt in Antwerp, which quickly surpassed the Brussels KNSt in importance. The latter was reduced to a simple intelligence post (Nachrichtenstelle) under

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First Lieutenant Burmann, whose main task included intelligence gathering on the Dutch armed forces.50 On 26 April 1917, the KNSt Brussels was disbanded and its remnants attached to Antwerp. 51 Established in early November 1914 by IIIb, Antwerp was the largest of Germany’s three western KNSts. It was directed throughout the war by Captain Kefer; 52 Cavalry Captain Ludwig Schnitzer served as a special link with the German consul in Rotterdam.53 Heinrich Grund, a German resident in Antwerp prior to the war, assisted IIIb in establishing the centre. Grund enlisted as the KNSt’s first agent and was assigned the code name A1 (see Appendix 3).54 The KNSt was divided into two subsections, one for France and one for England. Captain Stumpff directed ‘England’, and Dr Elisabeth, or Elsbeth Schragmüller, was in charge of ‘France’. Schragmüller was for a long time the only woman employed by IIIb, and she acquired fame as ‘mademoiselle docteur’ during and after the war. 55 She had done her PhD at Freiburg University in 1913, 56 travelled to Belgium after the outbreak of war and insisted to the German governor, General Field Marshal Colmar von der Goltz-Pasha, that she be permitted to serve her country. Von der Goltz-Pasha transferred her to the KNSt Brussels for censorship duties. When the director of IIIb, Major Nicolai, heard that she excelled in that function, he put her in charge of the ‘France’ subsection. 57 The KNSt Antwerp ran a regular ‘spy school’ and trained agents for missions to France and Britain. Agents were often recruited in Holland and sent to Antwerp where Schragmüller and her assistants instructed them for three (later for six) days. The agents were supplied with funds to keep them afloat for at least four weeks (initially, 1,500 marks) and received cover addresses if necessary. As the British discovered more and more German cover addresses, Antwerp agents were exhorted to procure addresses themselves.58 In addition, agents received secret codes and different types of invisible ink for their reports.59 Agents bound for Britain were assigned a number preceded by the letters ‘A’ or ‘AE’, those bound for France ‘A’ or ‘AF’. Antwerp informed its recruits that they were not entitled to compensation for eventual material losses if they were caught, but that their relatives would be looked after if they were German citizens. The families of agents killed in action received 2,500 marks per year, based on the pension law for officers (Offizierspensionsgesetz). To some extent, this sum was open to negotiation.60 The agents were also encouraged to learn about the legal system of their target country, to enhance their chances of survival if captured; agents apprehended in England were advised to remain silent as ‘the defendant could demand that his

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guilt was proven’ 61 – which was not strickly accurate under the OSA 1911, the Aliens’ Restriction Act and the prospect of being courtmartialled. In November 1916, Antwerp reached the zenith of its activity. In the following months, the German spymasters found it more and more difficult to infiltrate agents via the Netherlands, especially into France. In consequence, IIIb shifted its operations gradually to the KNSt Lörrach in south western Germany as Switzerland proved to be an easier springboard into France. In the spring of 1918, Antwerp was dissolved and the remaining staff transferred to Lörrach.62 However, in an act of incredible carelessness, the Germans left behind a list of agents in Antwerp. The list eventually fell into the hands of the British and proved disastrous for several German agents then imprisoned in France and the United Kingdom. 63 Like the KNSt Antwerp, the ‘report collection station north’ (Meldesammelstelle Nord ) Wesel was founded by IIIb on the outbreak of war. As it dealt exclusively with British affairs, Wesel was transferred to the Admiralstab early in 1915.64 Its first head was Captain Kroeger, 65 succeeded by Lieutenant Commander Walther Freyer, a former Berlin police detective and tension traveller to Britain, under whose leadership Wesel was elevated to a formal KNSt of the Admiralstab. Freyer was particularly active in establishing links with German officials in the Netherlands. 66 Antwerp remained subordinated to the General Staff throughout the war, but Wesel established a liaison officer at Antwerp to coordinate activities. Like other branches of ‘N’, Wesel expanded quickly, employing forty-three staff in May 1915, agents not included. 67 Both the German consul and the military attaché in Rotterdam played a crucial role in the German intelligence apparatus. The consul in Rotterdam since 1911, Legation Counsellor (Legationsrat) Carl Gneist had previously been consul general in New York.68 The Dutch authorities became increasingly concerned about the consul’s covert activities, and Gneist handed his office over to Vice Consul Dr Bosenick in September 1915. 69 Gneist was now officially a commercial attaché, but the conduct of intelligence remained firmly in his own hands, as he assured ‘N’s director Isendahl.70 For this purpose, Gneist kept in close touch with Freyer, Kefer, Schnitzer, and the intelligence agencies in Berlin. Gneist quickly gained notoriety in British counter-espionage circles. 71 On the outbreak of war, Colonel Ronald Ostertag, formerly with the London embassy, was appointed military attaché at The Hague. His cooperation with the General Staff’s intelligence department did not initially run smoothly, but in the summer of 1915 Major Stotten of IIIb paid him

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a visit and they established a formal link. 72 Shortly afterwards, Ostertag retired and was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel Renner. Although the attachés were in close contact with IIIb, they were never formally subordinated to this agency.73 The attaché and consul did not recruit agents personally but left that to contacts, usually Germans or local Dutchmen. One of Gneist’s most consequential contacts was Hilmar Dierks, a non-commissioned officer, who was described by one of his men in the following terms: ‘he is very much reserved nature of a man, and a very cold and unchangeable face, a face – you never see a change in his face.’ 74 Dierks, who occasionally used the pseudonym ‘Sanderson’, served on the Western front in the opening campaigns and was then instructed to go on an espionage mission to England. Having already tried in vain to enter the country disguised as a Belgian prisoner of war, he made another attempt from Sweden, but failed again. 75 Eventually, German intelligence assigned Dierks to Gneist in the Netherlands to assist in the recruitment of spies. Dierks sent potential agents either to Gneist or straight to Antwerp.76 He recruited subcontacts in Rotterdam, Vlissingen, and The Hague and set up a bogus commercial enterprise for this purpose, the Kestein company. The latter’s address was often used by agents when sending reports from Britain to the Continent. 77 On the whole, the German intelligence apparatus within the Netherlands and behind its borders was carefully established, comprised a significant number of people, and ran smoothly until the end of the war. Its most glaring fault was competition among the different branches, particularly between Wesel and Antwerp. The various agencies closely guarded their respective realms and occasionally overbid each other to recruit agents already employed by a rival department. This competition – which was confirmed by German operatives and intelligence chiefs throughout the war – raised prices without increasing the quality of prospective agents. 78 Given its proximity to Belgium, Germany and the Western front, the Netherlands were of interest to the Allied services, as well. While the Russian organization under Military Attaché Colonel Maier was feeble and inactive the Belgian service under Major Mager, in contrast, operated on a much larger scale and was particularly successful in smuggling Belgian refugees out of the occupied zone to enlist with the Belgian armed forces. However, the Belgians frequently competed with the other Allied services, and for the British, division of labour worked much better with the French service. The French service’s offshoot in the Netherlands under Colonel Lefevre agreed to leave the country largely to the British. In exchange,

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the French became more active in countries where the British maintained a smaller presence, such as Spain.79 On the outbreak of war, Kell and Cumming set up two separate organizations in the Netherlands. Kell recruited the journalist James Dunn of the Daily Mail to track down German agents in that country. However, Dunn quickly got himself into trouble and was arrested by the Dutch authorities, and from early on in 1915, MO5(g) had to rely entirely on Cumming’s network in the Netherlands. Cumming hired the businessman Richard Bolton Tinsley (‘T’), who on 25 September 1914 was made commander, royal naval reserve, and sent to Rotterdam, where he set up a fake enterprise, the Uranium Steamship Company, on the first floor of a building in the Boompjes, a kilometer long waterfront area in the city. ‘T’ spoke little Dutch and no German or French. His right-hand man for operative work was, until his arrest by the Germans in early 1916, Brazil Frankignoul, and from May 1916 until the end of the war Captain Henry Landau. The British military attaché, Colonel Oppenheim, ensured that all intelligence collected by Tinsley was sent promptly to London by diplomatic bag. During the last two years of the war, Tinsley’s organization comprised over 2,000 agents, with manifold tasks. Tinsley himself handled the Dutch authorities when British activities became too conspicuous, and his organization paid special attention to the arrival and departure dates of German trains in adjacent Belgium. This information was extraordinarily important, as it allowed conclusions regarding German troop movements and possible offensives in France. 80 But Tinsley’s organization’s most important task was to track down German spies in the Netherlands. On 23 March 1916, the British intercepted a message from the German consul general in Rotterdam to the Auswärtiges Amt announcing the dispatch of the German agent Franz Theodore Greite to Britain. On arrival in England, Greite was detained and sent to Scotland Yard. Meanwhile, MI5 instructed Tinsley to collect evidence on Greite in the Netherlands which led to Greite’s formal arrest. 81 In a similar instance, Tinsley was asked to make enquiries after the British had intercepted a suspicious letter from a certain Leopold Vieyra in April 1916. The enquiries produced sufficient evidence to arrest Vieyra on 24 August. 82 As the war in France became more brutal, Tinsley and his men increasingly preferred a heavy-handed approach to intelligence-gathering and counter-espionage, as the case of Leon Francis van der Goten demonstrates. A Belgian diamond cutter, van der Goten fled to the Dutch city of Breda after the German invasion of his country. In Breda, he and a compatriot successfully assisted several Belgians and Frenchmen in

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escaping from the German-occupied zones to Holland, and he also supplied the British secret service with information. At some point, van der Goten befriended a certain Theunissen, probably a fellow refugee, who was at that time working for the French secret service in the Netherlands. Theunissen began an affair with van der Goten’s wife, which may account for his subsequent behaviour. In early 1917, Theunissen informed an employee of Tinsley’s Uranium Company that van der Goten intended to betray the Allied services to the Germans. The Uranium Company then formally hired van der Goten for the British service while Theunissen got a friend to pose as a German agent and recruit van der Goten for the Germans. This fake agent persuaded van der Goten to carry out a mission to England on behalf of the Germans. Theunissen accompanied van der Goten to Hull in June 1917 and disappeared as soon as they had landed. While van der Goten was then arrested and charged with espionage, Theunissen returned to Holland and moved in with van der Goten’s wife.83 As van der Goten’s case shows, Tinsley was not above framing potential German spies. Neither had he any qualms about infringing on Dutch neutrality. José de Patrocinio, a former employee of the Brazilian consulate in Amsterdam, had agreed to conduct an intelligence mission for the Germans in England. However, de Patrocinio became scared on his way to Britain, and confessed his intelligence mission to the port authorities upon landing at Gravesend in August 1917. The British found it difficult to intern de Patrocinio purely on the basis of his oral confession. To make the case watertight, MI5 asked Tinsley to procure written evidence against de Patrocinio in the Netherlands. Tinsley’s henchmen broke into de Patrocinio’s premises in Amsterdam and collected sufficient incriminating material to intern him until 1919. 84 Given that the Netherlands were literally packed with German and British agents, it is not surprising that the antagonists were well aware of each other. By mid-1915, Gneist referred to Tinsley as ‘the commonly known head of the British secret service in the Netherlands’, 85 whereas MI5 spoke of Gneist’s office as ‘a well known spy centre’.86 Occasionally, the Germans and British used their knowledge to tip off the Dutch authorities about the activities of enemy agents. In November 1914, the Dutch arrested the German agent Tiesing, following receipt of information from the British that Tiesing was working for Ludwig Schnitzer of German intelligence. Schnitzer could be tried only in absentia, but Tiesing was charged with violating Dutch neutrality laws, and Gneist, to his embarrassment, had to attend the trial as a witness.87 In retaliation, the German embassy complained to the Dutch authorities of James Dunn’s espionage activities, and the latter was immediately arrested.88 The British response

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followed at once. They informed the Dutch about the German spymaster Dierks who was duly arrested in June 1915. His contacts were exposed, causing Gneist considerable concern.89 Eventually, Schnitzer was able to convince the Dutch to let Dierks go, but the latter was now compromised and had to be transferred to another branch.90 Dierks was replaced by the director of the German school at The Hague, Peter Herz, and a teacher at the school, Heinrich Flores.91 A few months later the Germans struck back with what the British termed the ‘Frankignoul disaster’. Tinsley’s right-hand man, Frankignoul had built up an efficient spy ring in Belgium to monitor the arrival and departure of German trains. However, he had made the same mistake as Steinhauer in Britain before the war by creating a centralized organization, with all its members linked to each other. As soon as the Germans discovered one agent they could easily track down the others. In early 1916, the German authorities rounded up Frankignoul’s organization which was a severe blow to the Allied armies on the Western front. German General Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, was now able to plan and launch his spring offensive in France in complete secrecy. The ‘Frankignoul disaster’ thus contributed to the initial German successes at Verdun. 92 Given the density of both the German and Allied intelligence organizations in the Netherlands, the absence of more frequent and violent clashes between German and Allied operatives is remarkable. In neighbouring Belgium, the Allied services tried more than once to blow up the KNSt Antwerp,93 and two former German agents attempted to blast the British consulate in Groningen in February 1917. 94 Hence, an escalation on a much larger scale in the Netherlands was not inconceivable, and was prevented only by the impartial yet firm attitude of the Dutch authorities. They allowed the German and Allied services to operate quasi-openly but, at the same time, kept them at arm’s length from cutting each other’s throat. On this far-sighted attitude, Tinsley’s aide Landau comments, the Dutch prevented acts of violence between the German Secret Service and ourselves, which would undoubtedly have occurred if both sides had been forced underground. We would have raided the headquarters of the German Secret Police in the Witte Huis in Rotterdam; they would have done the same thing to us. Chicago methods would have been used probably: we knew each other’s couriers, and we were both aware that they carried information which would have been invaluable to each of us; the Chiefs or Head Agents on either side could have been kidnapped and dragged into enemy country, and forced to give information under third degree methods. 95

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Under the watchful eyes of the Dutch police, the two enemy services learned to tolerate each other reasonably well. At some point, the director of German naval intelligence, Isendahl, considered tipping off the Dutch authorities about the identity of key figures within the British intelligence organization. But on second thought, he wondered if the Dutch might not swoop down on the Germans in return. Isendahl convened a conference with Carl Gneist and representatives of Wesel (Freyer) and Antwerp (Lassen), and they resolved that it was best to leave things as they were.96 The overall peaceful coexistence of German and Allied services in a country so close to the Western front would have been impossible without the Netherlands’ observation of a strict neutrality which, in turn, was inconceivable without German and British support. For the Germans, the Netherlands provided one of the few opportunities to trade with non-belligerent countries, and they constituted an important operational base for the German secret services throughout the war. Hence, Berlin had little interest in interfering with Dutch neutrality. The British, on the other hand, reckoned that German troops would overrun the Netherlands quickly, should that country join the Allies. This, in turn, would signify ‘The closing of our most valuable source of information’.97 Curiously, British and German objectives resulted in the same policy goal, the maintenance of Dutch neutrality, which guaranteed the intelligence services of both countries a secure neutral base close to enemy territory.

5 German Espionage in Great Britain, 1914–1917

Intelligence gathering German naval intelligence in the First World War had to proceed on the basis of the Admiralstab’s operations plans against the Royal Navy. However, throughout 1914–1918 German naval planners struggled to develop a strategy that would allow Germany to overcome the superiority of the Allied navies. As a result, German naval planning during the war was as much in flux as it had been prior to 1914, and without a clear idea about the Admiralstab’s objectives, ‘N’ found it difficult to deliver satisfactory intelligence. Since the Agadir crisis in 1911, Berlin anticipated British hostility in any future major European conflict. 1 This scenario proved correct, however the Admiralstab developed its operations planning solely on the assumption of an all-out surface battle between the German and British navies during the first weeks of hostilities. Crucially, the Admiralstab lacked an alternative concept in case the Royal Navy refused to give battle, as in fact it did for most of the war. This lack of imagination is particularly astonishing since a German war game in March 1913 had demonstrated that the British were likely to employ a blockade in the event of war rather than engage the Imperial Navy. When Tirpitz asked the commander of the High Seas Fleet, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, in May 1914, ‘What will you do if they [the Royal Navy] do not come?’, neither of them knew the answer.2 Yet major readjustments of the Admiralstab’s offensive strategy were neither envisaged nor implemented. Likewise, the Admiralstab made few efforts to coordinate its planning with the General Staff. Concerned solely with the whereabouts of the battleships of the Royal Navy, the Admiralstab gave little consideration to British troop transports to France. This neglect is rather 89

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remarkable as in the wake of the Agadir crisis navy and army officers had begun discussions on joint operations against the transport of a British Expeditionary Force (BEF) from England to the Continent.3 On 23 January 1912, the Chief of the Admiralstab, Admiral August von Heeringen, submitted a memorandum to his colleague at the General Staff, General Helmuth von Moltke, calculating that the British would employ 200 steamers of approximately 3,000 tons to convey 170,000 troops across the Channel to Cherbourg, Le Havre, Boulogne and Calais from the tenth day of mobilization. The German High Seas Fleet, Heeringen suggested, was to break through the screen of British warships shielding this operation and thus enable German submarines and torpedo-boats to attack the enemy naval forces and lay mines along the British coastlines. In reply, Moltke suggested that the BEF might also land at Zeebrugge and Ostend, and the Admiralstab obligingly worked these contingencies into their operations plan. In the course of 1913, however, the navy became increasingly reluctant to subordinate naval to land war, and the exchange of ideas between the two services petered out. 4 In the absence of a German strategy to obviate, or even detect, British mobilization, the Royal Navy was able to convey the bulk of the BEF unhindered to the Continent between 12 and 18 August 1914. Whether the Imperial Navy could have interfered with this movement, had it wanted to is questionable. According to Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, a German ship in the English Channel would have been placed ‘as if it were corked in a bottle’.5 Still, the German navy’s complete failure to block the transfer of the BEF to Belgium and France betrayed an astonishing lack of coordination between army and navy. The Imperial Navy entered the war in expectation of a major clash with its British counterpart. German naval intelligence acted accordingly, and ‘N’s first naval agent in Britain after the outbreak of war, Naval Lieutenant Carl Hans Lody, was instructed to report on British losses in such a battle. When this battle failed to materialize, the Admiralstab was compelled to revise its operations planning. If the Royal Navy refused to give battle as a whole, the Admiralstab concluded, British warships ought to be attacked individually by means of mine laying and, increasingly, submarines. Originally, the submarine was regarded as a tool to combat British warships, but the Germans soon discovered that it was much more effectively employed against the merchant marine. By sinking merchant ships in British waters, the Germans hoped to deprive Britain of its crucial access to world markets and compel her to sue for peace. On 1 February 1915, the German leadership embarked on the first largescale submarine campaign, officially advertised as a retaliatory measure

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in response to the British declaration of a war zone in the Northern Sea in late 1914. The German leadership modified the submarine campaign several times, but ultimately declared ‘unrestricted submarine warfare’ in the Northern Sea and the eastern Atlantic on 1 February 1917, which led to America’s declaration of war on Germany two months later. ‘N’ instructed its agents as best it could on the basis of the Admiralstab’s continually shifting operations planning. Throughout 1914 and 1915, German naval agents’ most important task was to report on the presence or absence of warships in British seaports. Typically, naval agents would spend between four to eight weeks in the United Kingdom, 6 establish themselves in a major city, often London, and make trips to the coastal districts of England, Scotland or Wales. In early 1915, for instance, one of Germany’s most accomplished naval agents, Paul E. Daelen, was reconnoitring Liverpool, Cardiff, Glasgow, Plymouth and Falmouth. 7 Operatives reported the presence and absence of battleships by telegram like this one: 5.6.[1915]: On June 1st at Dover 2 battleships King Edward VII class, 1 cruiser with 3 similar funnels, 2 high masts, numerous torpedo boats and ground vessels. A transport left with 5,000 men for Calais. Daily service of steamers from Dover to Calais.8 Naturally, these telegrams could not be sent en clair. Agents therefore received a code before departure. At times, such codes were camouflaged as commercial orders, and the agent travelled disguised as a salesman. For example, the ‘cigar order’ of naval agent Willem Johannes Roos to his spymaster Hilmar Dierks in Holland – ‘Wire lowest rate 10,000 Sumatra ss 2,000 Sumatra A.K. 22,000 mixture C.I.F. Edinburgh’ – was deciphered as: ‘ten battleships and two old cruisers were in or about to leave Edinburgh and there were 22,000 troops.’ 9 Naval agent Adolf Weiszflog’s ‘order’ to ‘Ship immediately 160 boxes 100 – 2 tins 80 boxes 100 – 4 tins smoked herrings guaranteed good quality’ in reality indicated the presence of sixteen large battleships and eight older destroyers in Edinburgh. 10 Although such codes may appear rather primitive to the modern reader, they usually passed the censor and in February 1915, the British government felt compelled to delay all telegrams to neutral countries for twenty-four hours in order to prevent valuable intelligence from reaching Germany. 11 When the Imperial Navy broadened its submarine campaign to include merchant vessels, ‘N’ instructed its agents to report on the arrival and departure dates of such vessels at British ports. On at least

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one occasion in 1916, a German operative was promised an extra commission for every ship sunk as a result of his reports. 12 In addition to telegraphic reports signalling the presence or absence of ships, agents sent innocuous-looking letters containing messages in secret ink or lemon juice. These reports addressed a wide range of topics such as damage caused by zeppelins (airships), confirmation of the loss of British ships, coal and oil supply, and the impact of the war on the British population. 13 An army agent reporting from Oxford in September 1915 thought it important to mention that ‘there is an officers school in Balliol-College; the participating officers are all very young and are recruited from the university students’.14 German agents were not above committing serious blunders when gathering intelligence. In late August, a rumour began spreading across the United Kingdom to the effect that a large number of Russian soldiers, having embarked at Archangel, had landed in Scotland and were headed south to relieve the Allies on the Western front. This rumour had no basis in fact but was genuinely believed by many English people.15 The head of New Scotland Yard’s Special Branch, Basil Thomson, recalls vividly: I remember Mr. Asquith [the prime minister] saying that, from a legal and evidential point of view, nothing was ever so completely proved as the arrival of the Russians. Their landing was described by eyewitnesses at Leith, Aberdeen, and Glasgow; they stamped the snow out of their boots and called hoarsely for vodka at Carlisle and Berwick-onTweed; they jammed the penny-in-the-slot machines with a rouble at Durham; four of them were billeted on a lady at Crewe who herself described the difficulty of cooking for Slavonic appetites. There was nothing to be done but to let the delusion burn itself out.16 There are several suggestions as to how the rumour of the Russian soldiers in Britain started: some foreign-looking uniforms; 17 a telegram announcing the arrival of a large number of Russian eggs, referred to as ‘Russians’; a tall bearded individual who declared from the window of a train that he came from ‘Ross-shire’; or an excited French officer with imperfect English pronunciation who went about near the Western front, exclaiming, ‘Where are de rations?’ General Vladimir Sukhomlinoff, Russian Minister of War, states in his memoirs that Sir George Buchanan, the British ambassador to Petrograd, actually requested the dispatch of a complete Russian army corps to England, and English ships were to be brought to Archangel for the transport of these troops.18

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The rumour of Russian troops moving southwards to relieve the Allies on the Western front started and spread at a time when the German armies had conquered Belgium and seemed on the verge of defeating France. Talk of the Russians began to subside after the German offensive had ground to a halt at the Marne on 5 September. Whatever sparked it, the thought of a Russian army coming to the aid of the hard-pressed British and French troops was probably a reflection of British anxieties over Allied reversals on the Western front. Curiously, German operatives reporting from Britain succumbed to the myth of the Russian troops as readily as many Britons did. On 4 September 1914, naval agent Carl Hans Lody reported that he had sighted Russian troops moving southwards from Scotland, 19 although he later admitted that he had not seen the Russians personally, but had only heard about them in his boarding house and the barber shop.20 On 5 September, Max Salomon, another German naval agent, informed Berlin that about 72,000 Russians had landed in Aberdeen.21 On 6 September, an agent of German military intelligence elevated the number to 90,000,22 and naval agent Henry R. Cadmus reported to the same effect on 7 September. 23 However, the Germans soon doubted the reliability of these statements. On 9 September, naval officer Oberndorff cabled from Christiania: ‘My personal view: In spite of all eye witness accounts and press coverage not a single Russian soldier has so far crossed the sea from Archangel to England.’ 24 On 17 September, a naval agent reported from Britain that the intelligence on Russian troops was purely imaginary (Autosuggestion).25 Four days later, a military agent dismissed the whole affair as nonsense. 26 German military intelligence later concluded that the Allies had launched a successful disinformation campaign.27 This is unlikely, given that many English people believed in the existence of the Russians as well, and the German spymasters found it perhaps more comforting to attribute their agents’ confusion to a concerted enemy effort rather than gullibility. Yet the episode of the Russians demonstrated that reports from German agents in Britain had to be taken with a grain of salt and could not always be relied upon. Overall, the growing range of issues addressed by naval agents in Britain betrayed a certain lack of focus, and the occasional confusion in their reports was not missed by headquarters in Berlin. In the late spring of 1915, the Admiralstab deliberated whether recruiting and training agents for missions to Britain was still worth the time and money invested.28 As the war dragged on, ‘N’ also found it increasingly difficult to hire suitable agents although individuals fit to do the job could still be won if enough money was spent. 29 In May 1915, the German secret

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services concluded that their system of intelligence-gathering was in urgent need of revision. Consequently, the Admiralstab reduced the number of agents for Britain and shifted its attention to the seaports in neutral countries where intelligence on the arrival and departure of Allied and neutral merchant ships could be obtained more easily than in the United Kingdom. Hence, ‘N’ established a marine interrogation service (Schiffsbefragungsdienst) in the Netherlands and Scandinavia. Heinrich Grund (A1) established the first branch in Rotterdam, and Gustav Steinhauer set up another branch in Esbjerg in Denmark. 30 Dr Wilhelm Filchner, a well-known explorer and leader of the German Antarctica expedition of 1911–1912, directed a similar service in Bergen, Norway.31 Members of the Schiffsbefragungsdienst routinely interrogated the personnel of neutral ships sailing between Britain and the Continent questioning them on such things as the positions of mine-fields, mine-free channels, waters in which submarines could operate safely, and the departure time of Allied ships from neutral harbours. 32 From late 1917, the service also kept track of Allied convoys.33 As the Schiffsbefragungsdienst operated comparatively unhindered in neutral countries, and as its members were able to send telegrams directly and without further delay to Berlin, the intelligence obtained from them was usually more accurate than agent reports from Britain.34 German naval agents continued to operate in Britain throughout the war, but as Elisabeth Schragmüller, head of the ‘France’ subsection of the KNSt Antwerp, pointed out, the use of operatives travelling across the country for four to eight weeks had lost much of its significance after the summer of 1915.35

Social aspects of German espionage Who were those men and, in a few cases, women carrying out intelligence missions for Germany in Britain during the First World War? In view of the natural inclination of intelligence services to reveal as little as possible about their agents, drawing a comprehensive picture of Germany’s wartime spies is difficult. At times, the records do not even mention the names of these individuals, let alone more personal details such as age, profession or religious denomination. Still, the archival evidence is sufficient to draw some general conclusions on the composition, motivations, and social background of German spies in Britain during the First World War. 36 Between August 1914 and November 1918, the Admiralstab sent at least 120 agents to Britain, many of them on several missions. The overall

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number of German operatives in the United Kingdom may be significantly higher, as little archival evidence remains on the activities of other German services. Out of these 120 naval agents, ninety-two can be identified by nationality. As one might expect, the largest number, twenty, were Germans, but Dutch citizens enlisted almost as eagerly, forming a close second-largest group of nineteen, surely a reflection of the vigorous recruiting efforts of German naval intelligence in the Netherlands. It is perhaps not purely coincidental that Germany’s most celebrated First World War spy, Margarete Zelle alias Mata Hari, was Dutch as well. The third group, of fourteen, is most accurately described as ‘German-Americans’ – that is, individuals of German descent residing in the United States, usually possessing an American passport. Their fluency in English and ability to pass as American citizens made them ideal candidates for naval intelligence duties, and early in the war, the director of naval intelligence, Isendahl, asked the German naval attaché in Washington to hire ‘some suitable dashing [schneidige] people who would enjoy espionage’.37 German-Americans were among ‘N’s most successful agents, with one of them, Paul Daelen, successfully completing five missions in Britain and being awarded the Iron Cross therefore. In contrast, only three ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Americans signed up as German operatives in Britain, and they were handsomely paid for their services. Austria-Hungary, Germany’s ally, and Sweden, a country maintaining a benevolent neutrality towards the Central Powers, provided the Admiralstab with five agents each. ‘N’ was only able to exploit discontent within the British Empire to a limited extent, with merely three South African Boers and two Irishmen volunteering for espionage missions to Great Britain. In October 1914, the Irish rebel leader, Sir Roger Casement, arrived in Berlin to discuss German support for Irish independence. Negotiations between Casement and representatives of ‘N’ (Isendahl), the General Staff, and the Wilhelmstraße proceeded quickly, and in mid-November, the German Foreign Office released the following statement: ‘If in the course of this war . . . the fortunes of battle should ever bring German troops to the shores of Ireland, they would land there, not as an army of invaders . . . but as armed forces of a friendly government which is inspired by good will toward a land and people for whom Germany wishes only national prosperity and national freedom.’38 The declaration appealed to some Irishmen then interned as British subjects in Germany. On 28 November, a Bryan A. Kelly, born in Killarney Kerry in 1889, wrote from the prisoners of war camp Ruhleben, near Berlin, that ‘I have now seen the official declaration of

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the German government recognizing that Irish and English represent quite different ideas’, and he asked the camp commander to be released.39 Kelly had enrolled at Marburg University in April 1914 and was interned at Ruhleben as a British subject on 6 November. On 18 December, he was released and asked to report to the Auswärtiges Amt, 40 and a month later he embarked on an espionage mission to England.41 Not many Britons turned traitor. Although four German spies were British citizens, one (John Hahn) was of German and one (Kurt Herlot de Rysbach) of Swiss descent. Citizens of other Allied countries were even more reluctant to enlist as naval agents, and only two Belgians, one Italian and one Russian (a Baltic German, Carl Friedrich Müller), did so. The remaining German naval agents in Britain included three Danes, three Spaniards, two Norwegians, two Brazilians (one of German descent), one Argentinean, one Armenian (presumably from the Ottoman lands), one Peruvian (of German descent), and one Uruguayan. In addition, ‘N’ employed perhaps the only black spy in Europe, a Danish citizen from the Virgin Islands named Francis Al. Duurloo. Only five German naval agents were women, which is not surprising as the military was essentially a male institution. Towards the end of the war, the Prussian War Ministry endeavoured to recruit more women for the staff of its intelligence department, but it is clear from its directive that the Ministry’s primary concern was to free men up for service at the front, not to promote women’s emancipation.42 Given that the German intelligence apparatus was permeated with a military, and hence profoundly male, ethos, women were excluded from playing a significant part in it until long after the First World War. 43 Information on professional background is available only for one-fifth of ‘N’s agents. Three of them had worked as journalists before the war and three were former employees of the large German shipping companies, the Hamburg-America-Line and Deutscher Lloyd; three were sailors; and one was a professional naval officer. Two agents were businessmen, and there was an aircraft engineer, a baker, a chemical engineer, a cocoa nut trader, an engineer, a musician, an opera singer, a piano dealer and a writer. Two, and possibly more, can best be described as rootless adventurers (Trebitsch Lincoln and Horst von der Goltz). In spite of the Kaiser’s vociferous demands for an Islamic jihad against the British Empire, and although ‘N’ had been in contact with a few Ottoman naval officers before the war, apparently not one Muslim was on the payroll of naval intelligence after August 1914.44 On the other hand, at least seven Jews signed up as German naval agents, four of whom are known to be German citizens – a remarkable figure when one

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considers the total number of German naval agents. If one adds up all operatives of German descent (German citizens as well as Americans, South Americans, and the one Russian of German extraction), that makes thirty-eight such agents. As indicated above, four of these, or 10.5 per cent, were Jewish, which is more than ten times the percentage of Jews in Imperial Germany. 45 The sampling may be too small to be statistically relevant, but the high percentage of Jewish volunteers for secret service work is nonetheless remarkable in view of the fact that intelligence missions to Britain were hazardous, with the possibility of being caught and executed well known (and carefully publicised by the British). One of these volunteers, Robert Rosenthal, a member of the military reserve (Landsturm), successfully completed several intelligence missions in Britain but was then caught, court-martialled and executed by firing squad. The majority of agents in Britain were not arrested, and left few traces besides their purely operational record. It is the trials of captured German spies where one finds a wealth of personal information. Since there is no reason to believe that agents captured and prosecuted were recruited and instructed in fundamentally different ways than those who completed their missions successfully, it may be instructive to look at the case of the only German wartime agent publicly tried in Britain, and consider to what extent his case highlights general features of German espionage in the First World War.

The life and death of Carl Hans Lody During the First World War, the British executed twelve enemy agents.46 The first of them, and the one who would have a lasting impact on the image of German spies in Britain, was Naval Lieutenant Carl Hans Lody (see Ill. 4). Much has been written on Lody ever since his public trial and execution in late 1914, but the full story of his espionage mission and death can only be pieced together on the basis of now available court martial files and naval intelligence records. The German demand for naval agents increased sharply with the declaration of war. ‘N’ was particularly keen on individuals with expertise in naval matters and a good command of English, and Lody fit the bill perfectly. Born in Nordhausen, near Lübeck in northern Germany, Lody served for one year in the Imperial Navy, in 1900. Later, he found employment as a steward with the Hamburg-America-Line.47 On one of his transatlantic cruises, Lody met Louise Storz, the daughter of Gottlieb Storz, a wealthy American beer brewer of German descent. In 1912,

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Miss Storz and Lody were married. The marriage was awkward from the start, the wedding having taken place almost clandestinely and creating ‘considerable comment’ in the Storzes’ social circles in Omaha, Nebras ka.48 Presumably, her family did not consider Lody a suitable candidate. Only a year later, the couple were divorced and Lody returned to Germany. The fact that he had received $10,000 from his father-in-law suggests that he was pressured to undo the marriage.49 The whole affair left Lody deeply troubled, and while awaiting his execution in the Tower of London he wrote to a friend in Omaha: ‘My feelings run riot when I can permit myself to review the dramatic events of the last three years and what is to be the probable climax of it all.’ 50 Lody’s connection with German naval intelligence went back to the turn of the century. He was a personal acquaintance of Arthur Tapken, ‘N’s first director and Lody’s commander in the navy. 51 Lody’s name also figures on a list of potential naval agents, compiled by the Admiralstab before the war. 52 Hence, Lody was by no means an unknown quantity to ‘N’, and it was only natural for the director of ‘NI’, Fritz Prieger, to contact him on 8 May 1914 and enquire if he was willing to join the service. The following day, Lody replied that he was ‘honoured by your trust in me’, and that he was at Prieger’s disposal. On 25 May 1914, Lody and Prieger signed a formal agreement to the effect that Lody was to report for ‘N’ from southern France in times of heightened tension.53 He had become an agent out of his own free will. As the July crisis unfolded and it became more evident that London would cast its lot with Germany’s enemies, ‘N’ switched Lody’s assignment from France to Britain. On 7 August, Lody agreed to travel to Britain, not as a ‘tension traveller’, as originally envisaged, but as a war agent, a far more serious assignment. His mission was twofold: first, he was to establish himself in Edinburgh–Leith, whence he was to make short trips along the Scottish coast and report on the first British battle fleet and battle cruiser squadron; second, ‘If or when Mr. Lody comes to know that a naval battle has taken place, he will enquire as much and as unobtrusively as possible regarding losses, damage etc.’ 54 As related above, the Admiralstab assumed that the war between Germany and Britain would be decided quickly by a major surface battle between the two navies, a miscalculation that would cost Lody dearly. Lody was in possession of cover addresses in Christiania, Stockholm, New York, and Rome. He also had the address of ‘N’s Georg Stammer. For entry into the United Kingdom, he was instructed to procure an American passport at the US consulate in Hamburg, and he successfully obtained one in the name of Charles Inglis from the American deputy

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consul in Hamburg, Otto W. Helmrich. 55 Supplied with £250, 1,000 Danish crowns and 1,000 Norwegian crowns, Lody departed for his mission to Norway on the evening of 14 August.56 He boarded a ship bound for Britain in Bergen and arrived in Newcastle on 27 August.57 As planned, Lody moved on to Edinburgh and sent his first telegram on 31 August, in a simple code, informing headquarters in Berlin of the presence of four battleships.58 Through mid-September, Lody dispatched numerous coded telegrams from Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Newcastle. 59 In order not to arouse suspicion, Lody travelled in the company of ‘fellow’ Americans,60 but the British authorities were already on his track, and beginning in mid-September intercepted and held back his reports.61 Both Lody and his spymasters in Berlin realized that the mission was not proceeding as anticipated. Prieger instructed another agent, Paul Daelen, to contact Lody in Britain and supply him with a new cover address.62 However, Daelen reached England too late and missed Lody, who had already gone underground in Ireland. As Lody explained in an intercepted letter to Stammer: ‘I think it is absolutely necessary to disappear for some time because several people have approached me in a disagreeable manner. That does not happen to me only, but several Americans here have told me that they are sharply watched. Fear of espionage is very great and one smells a spy in every stranger.’ 63 But his refuge to Ireland was to no avail. Just a few days after his arrival, the police arrested him at Killarney. 64 Lody’s detection was due to mail interception. British censors had begun examining all letters to Norway and Sweden on 4 August. As instructed by ‘N’, Lody had written some letters to Stammer en clair, but MO5(g) knew Stammer’s identity since the Graves espionage case in 1912. Two of Lody’s letters were allowed to go through, in order to track down the author who had either signed ‘Charles’ or ‘Nazi’,65 and all subsequent mail was held back. 66 As a result, not only was Lody arrested, but also several hitherto ‘clean’ cover addresses fell into the hands of MO5(g). Lody’s court martial was held in public in the Guildhall of Westminster on 30 and 31 October, and began with an unforeseen incident. Reginald Hall, director of British naval intelligence, spotted Charles Stuart Nairne, an Irishman and former lieutenant of the Royal Navy, in the auditorium.67 Hall suspected that Nairne was in cahoots with the Germans and that ‘The man is either a lunatic or a very dangerous person’. Nairne was brought before the court, arrested under DORA, and conveyed to the barracks.68 While he was being escorted out of the courtroom he attempted in vain to shake hands with Lody.69

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In marked contrast to the German pre-war spy Karl Gustav Ernst, whose trial was conducted at the same time, Lody immediately won over the press and public. The Times was impressed with his first appearance in court and described Lody as ‘a clean-shaven man apparently between 30 and 40 years of age, who speaks English fluently with an American accent’.70 Although he pleaded ‘not guilty’, Lody made no attempt to deny his connection with ‘N’. At one point, he even told the prosecutor, Archibald Bodkin, ‘To facilitate matters I would have openly confessed that [the writing of letters to ‘N’] the first day the summary evidence was taken, but as I was not asked I could not do it’; to which Bodkin replied: ‘In this country everything has to be proved.’71 Yet, Lody made small but important changes in his statements regarding his intelligence mission. He told the court that in August he had asked to be released from military service on the grounds of poor health and that he had wanted to emigrate to the United States. The German authorities refused this request, Lody continued, but he was then interviewed by a member of the naval intelligence service whom he said he had never seen before. Despite his reluctance, Lody explained, the Germans coaxed him into the secret service. They supplied him with an American passport and agreed to his return to the United States as soon as he had completed his mission in Britain. Asked by the prosecution if any pressure was exerted upon him, Lody replied: ‘There is no pressure in the sense of the word, but there is certainly an understanding in the military world at least if they make the suggestion you feel obliged to obey. I have never been a coward in my life and I certainly would not be a shirker.’72 Prodded on why he did not simply embark for America in Bergen, where he was beyond the reach of the German authorities, Lody explained further: ‘Once a man has promised to do a thing he does it; that is the understanding.’73 According to Lody, his services were regarded ‘absolutely as an honour and free’.74 Although the prosecution pressed him hard to reveal the identity of his German spymaster, Lody refused to disclose Prieger’s name: ‘I have pledged my word of honour not to name that name.’75 He concluded: ‘I was pressed for secret service, but not as a spy – oh, no. If that would have been mentioned to me at Berlin I surely would have refused. The word in the sentence, I do not think it goes together.’76 The Admiralstab files prove beyond doubt that Lody was not pressed into the service, but that he had volunteered to join ‘N’ in May 1914. He received regular pay, personally procured a passport, and was to return to Berlin following the accomplishment of his mission. Whether

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he really intended to sail for the United States after completing his intelligence mission in Britain, as he claimed, must remain an open question. However, if it had been his aim to avoid capital punishment, he would not have so freely admitted to sending intelligence reports to Germany. He would also have given Prieger’s name away in order to save his own skin. There are no indications that the Germans had even asked Lody to keep Prieger’s name secret in the case of arrest. All this suggests that Lody was less concerned with averting a harsh sentence than he was with projecting a certain image of himself, that of a patriot who, despite his reluctance to join the secret service, rendered his fatherland a final service before starting a new life in America; in short, a ‘man of honour’ rather than a traitorous spy. Until his death, Lody conformed superbly to this image. On the eve of his execution, he wrote to his sister Hanna: With God for Emperor and Empire! And may my life be honoured as a modest sacrifice on the altar of the fatherland. A hero’s death on the battlefield is certainly finer, but this is not my destiny and so I die here in the enemy’s country, forgotten and alone. The knowledge, however, that I die in the service of the fatherland, renders death easy for me. I will die as an officer, not as a spy.77 When facing the firing squad, he walked up to the officer in charge and asked: ‘I suppose you won’t shake hands with a spy?’ The officer responded deeply impressed: ‘I will always shake hands with a brave man.’78 A few minutes later, at 7a.m. on 6 November 1914, Lody was executed. During the last weeks of his life, Lody tried to shatter the negative image usually attached to spies, and in this regard he was utterly successful. Shortly after his death, the House of Commons referred to him as ‘a patriot who had died for his country as much as any soldier who fell in the field’,79 and after the war even MI5 paid their respects: ‘Quite the best of the spies we got was Carl Lody, a patriotic German and an honourable man.’80 In 1930, Sir George Aston exhorted his readers ‘to pay a tribute to a real German spy of the highest type . . . Karl Lody’, 81 and in 1963, John Bulloch, the author of a semiofficial history of MI5, acknowledged that Lody’s bearing turned him into ‘something of a hero even in the country against which he was working’. 82 There can be little doubt that Lody accepted contemporary notions of honour which emphasized patriotism, honesty and personal courage. 83

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But such rather conventional values alone were hardly sufficient to sustain him during the last weeks of his life. While awaiting his execution, he wrote a letter to an American friend in which he alluded to events that had troubled him for the last three years. He went on to say that he was ‘prepared to make a clear breast of all this trouble . . . and avoid as much as possible humiliation for those who have been near and dear to me . . . You may have an opportunity to say a word to some of those for whom I feel an interest. Ask them to judge me not harshly . . . Others have suffered and I must accept the reward of fate.’ 84 As the last sentence suggests, Lody had accepted his trial and probable execution as a form of expiation for events that had occurred long before his becoming a secret agent, and one may wonder if his lines were addressed directly to his ex-wife in Omaha. Whatever had happened to Lody before the war, his eagerness to display his honour may indicate a concern that others doubted this very quality in him. While presenting himself to the world as a man of honour and accepting his fate courageously, Lody may have found comfort and strength in the thought that whoever had doubted his honour previously would now be persuaded otherwise. Lody’s fate was exploited both in Britain and Germany. Based on the evidence they had accumulated, the British could be fairly certain of Lody’s conviction. 85 Although Captain Reginald Drake of MO5(g) was in favour of a closed trial for Lody it was decided to court-martial him in public,86 a measure ensuring broad press coverage which, in turn, removed any doubt in the public’s mind of the reality of German espionage and implied the need for an efficient organization to deal with it. The British also hoped that Lody’s execution, which MO5(g) had recommended as early as 3 October,87 would deter potential imitators.88 To some extent, the Germans were able to use Lody’s fate to their advantage, too. The Admiralstab recommended him for the Iron Cross and argued that it would be easier to recruit naval agents if espionage could be rewarded with this highly esteemed medal. 89 The Kaiser hesitantly complied, and Lody was posthumously awarded the Iron Cross, second class.90 After the war, and especially during the Third Reich, Lody was turned into a martyr of the German cause.91 Was Lody a typical German spy? At first glance, his motivations for joining ‘N’ appear exceptional. Prior to the war, individuals usually signed up as naval agents primarily out of pecuniary concerns and, to some extent, adventurism, and during the war money became the chief incentive for enlisting in the secret service. But in the early months of the war, Lody was not the only one to join ‘N’ out of

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a sense of patriotism. In August and September 1914, the number of volunteers for intelligence work increased sharply, and, like Lody, many of them were Germans who had previously lived in the United States. The Admiralstab instructed army and navy platoon and company leaders explicitly to look out for such men, and when asked to join the intelligence service, a fair number of candidates accepted. 92 In November 1914, the Chief of the Admiralstab pointed out that the majority of naval agents were now volunteers, many of them from overseas. 93 Lody’s decision to volunteer for naval intelligence work in August 1914 reflects a larger trend in German society at the outbreak of war. Like Britain, Imperial Germany was in many respects a divided society, with an enormous political and social gap separating the ruling landed aristocracy from an organized labour movement, which was largely excluded from the political decision-making process. When war broke out, the Kaiser declared before a large crowd at the royal palace in Berlin that he ‘recognized no parties, only Germans’, and traditionally historians have argued that the imperial government succeeded in rallying people from all classes behind the flag in August 1914.94 One contemporary, and soon army volunteer, present at the reading of the declaration of war on Munich’s Odeonplatz, appears to confirm this view: ‘Overpowered by stormy enthusiasm I fell down on my knees and thanked heaven from an overflowing heart for granting me the good fortune of being permitted to live at this time.’95 However, today’s historians have qualified this interpretation. Recent studies indicate that popular responses to the outbreak of war were more complex than had been thought, and that the prospect of war was not greeted with the same degree of enthusiasm by all segments of society. City and country dwellers, Protestants and Catholics, women and men, working and middle classes all responded in different ways to the prospect of war.96 The most enthusiastic contemporary accounts usually originate with middle-class males from urban areas. About 185,000 men volunteered for service in the armed forces in August 1914, and while all classes of society were represented to some degree, the bulk of volunteers were provided by the middle classes.97 Lody fits squarely into this category even if he was upper rather than lower middle class. He possessed 30,000 marks (£1,500) as well as a number of city bonds and considered himself in ‘well to do circumstances’. 98 His sister Hanna was married to a doctor and lived in the elegant West End, just outside Berlin, 99 while Lody resided in the capital’s most prestigious hotel, the Adlon.100 And just like Lody, many volunteers had patriotic

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as well as personal motives for joining the colours: unemployed men hoped to get through difficult times; youths regarded war as an opportunity for personal growth; and many were glad to have a purpose in their lives, even if it was only a vaguely defined desire for adventure or just getting over a relationship. 101 Hence, while Lody’s decision to volunteer for special duty may not be reflective of German society as a whole, his was not an exceptional choice for a German male in August 1914. Yet Lody’s bearing at his trial was exceptional in that virtually all other German agents accused of espionage understandably tried to deny or minimize their involvement with ‘N’. Many supplied the British authorities with information on their German spymasters, in the hope of avoiding a stiff sentence. Not a few collapsed under the Damocles’ sword of the death penalty. One convicted agent, Anton Küpferle (or Anthony Copperlee), committed suicide in his cell before the sentence could be carried out. Another, the Dutchman Willem Johannes Roos, broke down under cross-examination and defended himself incoherently: I am a very nervous man, you know. I was sent out by somebody. I was sent out and told ‘You must have been to look after war ships, and you have to look after troop transports [sic]’; No, I never have been a spy. I know I am a Dutch subject, and never would be a spy, never in my life. If you declare me guilty or not – there is much against me – there is much against me. My health; I give you there my statement about my sickness, and behind me is the High Court in the Hague, which declared me not trust responsible [sic]. I am a man, but you can do with me what you like, and I have never been in England for spying. I married a Belgian woman.102 Lody was made of different stuff, but it is not only his bravery when confronting the death squad that makes his case an unusual one. The very fact that he was arrested makes him the exception who proved the rule. The great majority of German spies in Britain were never caught, let alone tried. To date, historians have based their assessment of the efficiency of German naval intelligence and British counter-espionage exclusively on British records, but these records cover by definition only cases of German spies who were caught. The neglect of the relevant German records has resulted in the impression that Lody’s case was representative and begs the question how effectively MI5 suppressed German espionage during the war.

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Illustration 4

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Naval Lieutenant Carl Hans Lody

Source: Sidney Theodore Felstead, German Spies at Bay: Being an Actual Record of the German Espionage in Great Britain during the Years 1914–1918, Compiled from Official Sources (London: Hutchinson, 1920).

German spies and British counter-espionage During the war, MI5 arrested 31 bona fide enemy agents.103 Based on all available records, at least 120 German agents operated in Britain from 1914 until 1918.104 Hence, British counter-espionage apprehended about a quarter of all German spies, in itself no mean achievement. If

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Walter Nicolai, the director of German military intelligence and counterespionage, is correct in estimating that his own service exposed but a fraction of all Allied spies active in Germany during the war, Kell acquitted himself comparatively well.105 However, one must take into account that many German operatives were able to conduct multiple missions in Britain prior to their arrest. For instance, naval agent Adolf Weiszflog alias Ludovico Hurwitz y Zender had already completed four missions and been awarded the Iron Cross for his achievements when MO5(g) tracked him down in July 1915. And for each captured German agent three others continued to collect intelligence in Britain. The aggregate per month of German agents in Britain fluctuated significantly throughout the war, but a downward trend is evident.106 The heyday of German espionage was in late 1914 and early 1915. The number of operatives active in Britain peaked at twenty-two in January 1915, but beginning in May it dropped sharply and only four agents were still on the ground at year’s end. This reduction reflects the decision taken by the German intelligence services in May 1915 to reduce the use of spies and instead revert to other means of intelligence gathering. As the number of arrests of German spies declined, MI5 concluded that British counter-espionage had throttled the activities of the German secret services.107 However, the statistics do not bear out this claim. Throughout the war, the number of arrests made by MI5 rose and fell along with the number of German operatives in Britain. The British authorities exposed the most spies in the summer of 1915, but very few in 1916 and 1917. In 1918, when the Germans maintained only a couple of agents in Britain, no arrests were made at all. Overall, MI5 became neither more nor less efficient during the war. The value for arrests made runs parallel to that of the overall number of German spies operating in Britain, rather than bending towards or away from it (see Appendix 2). The more German spies operated in Britain, the more were arrested, and the fewer agents the Germans maintained, the fewer got caught. Censorship was by far the most effective means of tracking down German spies. 108 As soon as MI5 had received information regarding a German cover address, the latter was put on a black list and anybody writing to or receiving mail from this address was investigated.109 By the end of the war, this list contained 13,524 names in twenty-one volumes.110 MI5 obtained some German cover addresses through informants. On 26 January 1915, a Belgian refugee wrote to the War Office from Rotterdam that a certain F. Leibacher, living in Rotterdam, was a German agent.111 Leibacher’s address was indeed a mail box used by the German consulate

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general for intelligence purposes. 112 MI5 placed a check on the address, and on 17 February a letter to the German agent Anton Küpferle in Britain was intercepted. Two days later, Küpferle was arrested.113 The surveillance on Leibacher was continued and in the same month produced letters of the agent Carl Friedrich Müller (‘AE111’) and his subagent John Hahn.114 Hahn, a British baker of German descent, had lost most of his possessions in an anti-German riot in London in 1914, an event that drove him into the arms of German intelligence. 115 MI5 scored a major coup through a tip-off by the French secret service. Hilmar Dierks, the German spymaster in the Netherlands, had recruited as one of his aides a certain René Strassen. As the Germans later discovered, Strassen was a member of the French secret service who had penetrated the German organization in the Netherlands. Given the close Anglo-French cooperation in the Netherlands, Strassen forwarded the address used by Dierks’ agents to the British. 116 Consequently, British counter-espionage traced and arrested seven German agents connected with this address between June and August 1915. Six of them were tried and executed. 117 In late 1914 and early 1915, the Germans were confronted with the same problem they had faced prior to the war. The lack of sufficiently secure cover addresses was the Achilles’ heel of the German intelligence apparatus. In June 1915 the Germans identified this problem. Ludwig Schnitzer, of the German consulate in Rotterdam, pointed the issue out to Carl Gneist, 118 and potentially unsafe cover addresses were replaced with clean ones. 119 As a result, the number of German agents discovered through the black list dropped sharply, and from 1916 the British did not detect a single naval agent with this tool. MI5 was well aware that cable and postal censorship had failed to yield significant results after 1915, and the department assumed that the Germans had made increasing use of invisible ink to evade detection by the censor.120 Unable to track down a substantial number of German spies, MI5 chose instead to focus on a more tangible target, the enemy alien community. From 1915 until the end of the war, MI5 maintained strict surveillance on German clubs, associations, professional assemblies, benefit clubs, charitable institutions, religious and educational communities, and even pastors.121 Kell lobbied strenuously for the wholesale internment or repatriation of enemy aliens.122 However, when he proposed putting warnings in hairdresser shops and other places where aliens worked, the Home Office refused to comply on the grounds that this would merely cause panic.123 And in November 1917, the Home

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Office questioned MI5’s efforts to isolate German spies by striking indiscriminately at enemy aliens: Not a single instance of an alien enemy having improperly gained access to a vulnerable point is adduced nor apparently can be adduced and it is well known to MI5 that it is not amongst alien enemies now at large that the real danger from enemy agents exists but amongst alien friends and British subjects without any German blood, whether whole or half. But enemy agents are elusive and hard to find in the mass of British subjects and alien friends, while the alien enemy presents a known and easy target at which MI5 owing to the difficulty and scarceness of the other quarry, keep firing away in their natural anxiety to appear always on the qui vive.124 If the Home Office’s assessment is correct, MI5 focused on alien enemies not so much in an effort to track down German spies but rather out of frustration over the elusiveness of German operatives. The Home Office’s judgement may be too one-dimensional, but the fact remains that German agents roamed about Britain throughout the war, defying the British counter-espionage apparatus. Yet the German agents’ achievements were rather modest, despite claims to the contrary. In the 1920s and 1930s, numerous authors published accounts of alleged German secret agent missions, but in most cases these claims seem vastly exaggerated or wholly invented. 125 In a book published in 1932 entitled The Invisible Weapons, a certain Jules Crawford Silber described how he conveyed a wealth of critical information to the Germans as a British wartime censor in Edinburgh.126 Several authors have concluded that Silber’s account is true, 127 that he was a ‘brilliant man’, 128 and that he ‘became the favourite boy of German Naval Intelligence’. 129 However, there are two problems with Silber’s book. First, he recounts only facts that by 1932 had already been published elsewhere. To prove his point, why did he not reveal details that were still unknown to the public? Second, the Admiralstab records contain no reference whatsoever to Silber, nor are there traces of his work in any other German archives. In fact, the only proof of his existence is a statement by Major-General Lord Edward Gleichen, who was in charge of British censorship during the war, to the effect that a J.C. Silber had indeed been employed as an assistant censor at that time. 130 But if the latter is identical with the author of The Invisible Weapons, this would still not prove his connection with German intelligence. Overall, Silber’s claim of being a secret agent rests on shaky grounds. All one can

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say is that the British censorship bureau employed a man named Silber, but his self-proclaimed status as a German master spy cannot be corroborated. From an operational perspective, both ‘N’ and MI5 failed. Kell’s department was unable to suppress the activities of German naval intelligence. At the same time, the presence of German spies in Britain throughout the war neither resulted in a weakening of British security nor gave the Germans an edge over the Royal Navy. But this is not to suggest that German espionage in Great Britain during the First World War was irrelevant. If German naval agents were unable to convey vital intelligence to Berlin, captured German spies assumed an important role in British propaganda efforts.

German spies and British propaganda The First World War was the first ‘total war’. Not just professional armies, but whole nations were locked in mortal combat. The entire resources of the state – military, economic and psychological – had to be mobilized. The belligerent governments could not sustain their large armies without securing domestic support for the war effort, and morale on the home front thus became a significant military factor. 131 Propaganda, defined as the conscious attempt of governments, semi-official agencies and the press to persuade citizens of the need to continue the war, emerged as a key tool to sustain domestic support. The breakdown of the homefront could have grave consequences, as witnessed by the collapse of Russia in 1917 and the near-collapse of France and Italy in 1917 and 1918, respectively. Another aim of propaganda was to persuade public opinion in neutral countries of the justice of one’s own cause. Here, the United States, which did not join the war until 1917, was a primary target of both German and British propaganda agencies. By and large, the Germans proved to be no match for the British in the propaganda arena.132 For one thing, the British fully exploited their geographical position. Prior to the war, Germany possessed six submarine cables to transmit and receive messages and news to and from overseas. The British quickly cut all of them , and throughout the war, the Germans were physically disadvantaged in communicating their point of view beyond central Europe.133 Building on their geographical advantage, the British ably conducted their propaganda campaign abroad, and the technique of accusing Germany of atrocities quickly became a centrepiece of this effort.134

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Soon after the German armies had stormed through Belgium into France, Allied newspapers were filled with tales of atrocities perpetrated by German soldiers on hapless civilians. The British press kept hammering away at ‘German Brutality’, ‘barbarity’ and ‘excesses’.135 Recent research has confirmed that German troops, while pushing their way through Belgium in August and September 1914, did kill significant numbers of civilians.136 Yet the more outrageous atrocity stories were often fabricated. After the war, a correspondent of the Daily Mail recalled how such tales were at times outright invented: A correspondent of the London Daily Mail, Captain Wilson, found himself in Brussels at the time the war broke out. [Wilson recalls:] They telegraphed me that they wanted stories of atrocities. Well, there weren’t any atrocities at that time. So I said to myself, ‘That’s fine, I won’t have to move’. There was a little town outside Brussels where one went to get dinner – a very good dinner, too. I heard the Hun had been there. So I wrote a heart-rending story about the baby of Courbeck Loo being rescued from the Hun in the light of the burning homestead.137 Some British papers even reprinted pre-war photographs of genuine Russian pogroms to ‘illustrate’ stories of German behaviour in Belgium, 138 but the most successful venture to sway public opinion at home and abroad against Germany was the Bryce report. In December 1914, the British government created a committee, chaired by Lord Bryce, to investigate rumours and numerous reports of German atrocities in Belgium and northern France. Based on uncorroborated evidence and anonymous witnesses, the Committee proclaimed Germany guilty in the most sweeping terms. The report presented countless atrocities such as the following, allegedly witnessed by a ‘Belgian Soldier’: ‘I saw the Germans kill with their bayonets six little children (all girls) and a woman who was with them.’ 139 Although Bryce’s allegations were largely unfounded or exaggerated out of proportion, the report had a profound impact on neutral opinion. 140 After Belgium, the Germans remained on the defensive in the war of words. 141 When the Allies invaded neutral Greece in 1915, ‘paralleling the German violation of Belgian neutrality’, in the words of one historian, 142 Greek newspapers printed numerous stories of brutalities committed by Allied soldiers.143 The Germans tried to exploit the affair to their own ends but their propaganda machine was not up to the task. 144

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The countless atrocity stories, widely publicized by the Allied press, created the impression of a ruthless Germany vis-à-vis a law-abiding Great Britain. British propagandists exploited or manipulated the fate of captured spies, Allied and German, to mould this image further. In late August 1915, the German authorities broke the back of the Belgian resistance movement and arrested thirty-four of their members. Among them was Edith Cavell, the daughter of an Anglican clergyman. Cavell had stayed in Belgium following the German occupation; she was in charge of a nursing order in Brussels and remained there attending to wounded soldiers, both Allied and German. She became involved with local resistance groups, helping smuggle out messages, and, finally, soldiers as well. When brought to trial, Cavell freely confessed to having helped Allied soldiers cross the frontier, and acknowledged that some of them had rejoined their units in England, going so far as to read a thank-you note she had received from one of the men she helped. Her confession even implicated eight other people who had not been arrested. She was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed along with two men on 15 October 1915.145 Nurse Cavell’s execution provoked an outcry in Britain. At about the same time, two German agents, Louise (‘Lizzie’) Emily Wertheim, a German Pole (see Ill. 7, p. 141), and Georg Traugott Breeckow, a naturalized German born in Russia, were tried in London. 146 The British authorities decided to try both by civil court, not by court martial, on account of Wertheim’s gender. 147 The evidence was overwhelming, and Breeckow confessed his involvement in a lengthy statement at the end of the trial.148 He was found guilty, sentenced to death, and executed by firing squad on 26 October 1915, eleven days after the execution of Cavell. 149 Wertheim was equally found guilty, but received a mere ten years’ penal servitude. 150 A month after the trial, on 25 October 1915, the following article appeared in The Times: [Home Secretary] Sir John Simon, in conversation to-day with a representative of the Associated Press of America in London, referred to the killing of Miss Cavell as ‘a horrible act of brutality’ and said that the case had, and could have, no parallel in Great Britain. Even in cases of clearly proved espionage, Great Britain had meted out to a woman no sentences of death. ‘No woman’, said Sir John Simon, ‘who has been tried for any military offence in this country has suffered the death penalty since the war began, or has even been sentenced to death. In this country a woman of whatever nationality is always tried by a Civil Court’.151

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The statement was clearly aimed at American public opinion, and the mild treatment of German spies, especially women, in Britain was repeatedly contrasted with the execution of Edith Cavell by the Germans. 152 When another female agent, Eva de Bournonville, a Swede, was sentenced to death for espionage on behalf of Germany, the verdict was quickly commuted into life imprisonment. 153 Again, German efforts to counter charges that they were behaving brutally while the British showed mercy failed dismally. A short time after Cavell’s execution, the French executed two German nurses in very similar circumstances. But nothing was said about this in German newspapers or in propaganda directed at other nations. An American reporter in Berlin pointed out this discrepancy to the Prussian director of propaganda for the General Staff, asking him why the Germans did not ‘raise the devil about those nurses the French shot the other day’. The Prussian officer replied: ‘What? Protests? The French had a perfect right to shoot them!’ 154 And the Germans’ attempt to make a martyr out of the Dutch–Javanese dancer, Mata Hari, killed by a French firing squad as a spy in 1917, lacked appeal when compared to the shooting of a nurse. 155 The British authorities were equally prudent when dealing with German agents of US citizenship. In February 1915, an agent of the KNSt Antwerp, Anton Küpferle or Anthony Copperlee, was arrested in London. Küpferle claimed to be a naturalized US citizen who had changed his name into ‘Anthony Copperlee’ in 1912. 156 As soon as Gneist heard of Küpferle’s arrest, the consul ventured to procure a certificate to prove Küpferle’s affiliation with the United States.157 In Britain, the uncertainty about his nationality led to ‘political difficulties’ in trying him. 158 Only when his US citizenship could not be confirmed was he sentenced to death. As another case demonstrates, US citizenship was a virtual guarantee against the firing squad for a German spy. Gustav Kenneth Triest was nineteen years old when he entered Princeton University in the fall of 1914. Although his father was German, Triest had never been to Germany nor did he speak German. Despite or maybe because of this he displayed an unusual interest in all things German from an early age, and shortly before the outbreak of the European war, he told his fellow students that he and his father were about to make a trip across the Atlantic at the personal invitation of the Kaiser.159 In January 1915, Triest disappeared from Princeton and sailed from New York to Britain. Under the pretence of being a Canadian citizen named Latham R. Mahan, he enlisted with the Royal Navy on 25 January and was transferred first to HMS Eagle,

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thence to the depôt at Crystal Palace. In March, he volunteered for signalling work and was trained to become a wireless operator at Chatham. On 25 May, he introduced himself by letter to the London banker Baron Bruno von Schröder as a German fellow countryman, and asked how best to escape to Germany. ‘Once there’, Triest explained, ‘I would be of service, on account of my knowledge of naval secrets in connection with the new wireless apparatus and the up to date codes’.160 Schröder’s secretary forwarded the letter to the authorities, and Triest was immediately arrested. The ensuing investigation quickly revealed that Triest had acted entirely on his own initiative, and there were doubts as to whether he could be held fully responsible for his actions.161 Nevertheless, the authorities decided to try him by naval court martial. 162 However, when Kenneth’s father, Wolfgang Triest, was informed, he contacted the American ambassador in London, Walter Hines Page, to obtain his son’s release.163 Shortly afterwards, Page asked Foreign Secretary Edward Grey to let young Triest return to the United States. 164 As the British stood by their decision to court-martial him, Wolfgang Triest envisaged travelling to London to attend the trial. At the same time, the elder Triest intensified his efforts to secure help from influential American political circles, which quickly bore fruit. US Secretary of State Robert Lansing took up Triest’s case,165 and on 5 October, former President Theodore Roosevelt intervened, asking the British not to execute Triest on the grounds of insanity. 166 The next day, the British ambassador to Washington, DC, Cecil Spring-Rice, informed the Foreign Office that Triest’s family was very influential and that the trial should be postponed ‘on political grounds’.167 The following day, Spring-Rice received ‘very strong appeals’ from Roosevelt and New York Senator James O’Gorman, in support of Triest’s release, and the British ambassador strongly advised London to postpone the trial indefinitely.168 At the end of October, he again expressed his hope that no trial would take place because ‘Roosevelt has worked so hard for us that his personal appeal should be considered; besides at present moment execution would have bad effect’. 169 When Kenneth’s parents left for Britain in the same month, Captain Guy Gaunt, the British naval attaché in the United States, urged London that ‘every consideration and courtesy may be shewn to these people, as their movements will be very keenly watched on this side and the smallest details given full publication in the American press.’ 170 The press coverage in the United States was indeed considerable. 171 The British finally succumbed and decided not to court-martial Triest, but instead to hand him over to his father, and the reunited family arrived back in New York at the end of

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November. 172 However, the quid pro quo was an open letter by Roosevelt in which he praised the mercy of the British government, contrasting it with the Germans’ merciless behaviour in executing Edith Cavell. The letter was published in both the American and the British press,173 and Spring-Rice cheerfully reported to Grey that the decision to release Triest was having a very positive impact on American public opinion.174 Political considerations also played a significant role when the British authorities were dealing with German agents of neutral citizenship. Four agents of neutral citizenship, convicted of espionage, were not executed, although there was enough evidence to do so. These were the Dutchman Leopold Vieyra, Spaniards Mario Guell and Adolfo Guerrero, and Alfred Hagn, a Norwegian. Vieyra was originally sentenced to death but the verdict was subsequently commuted into a life sentence, and then to ten years imprisonment.175 Guell had been a double-agent for the Allies and the Germans. After his arrest and detention by Scotland Yard, the Spanish ambassador pressed for his liberation which was granted in February 1917, long before the end of the war.176 Guerrero, whom ‘N’ had promised £50 for each ship sunk due to his reports, was sentenced to death, but as with Vieyra the verdict was commuted in 1917 to life imprisonment, then to ten years penal servitude. In 1920, the Spanish ambassador requested in vain Guerrero’s immediate release.177 One of the most striking examples of a sentence’s being reduced on political grounds is the case of Alfred Hagn. Hagn had sent intelligence reports to the Germans and, in consequence, was sentenced to death. Like many of his predecessors, he wrote a petition in prison, begging for a more lenient verdict. This was at once supported by the Norwegian minister in London.178 Simultaneously, the Foreign Office came to the conclusion that ‘it would considerably assist them [the Foreign Office] diplomatically if the sentence could be reduced to one of penal servitude for life. They are anxious to show some act of friendship to Norway, and Lord Hardinge is of opinion that an act of clemency would be held in high appreciation by the Norwegian Government.’179 The German submarine campaign had prompted stern British counter-measures, and Norway’s trade was particularly hard hit. Under such favourable circumstances Hagn’s sentence was quickly commuted to life imprisonment. Due to poor health he was deported to Norway as early as 19 September 1919.180 Allied citizens, too, were fairly safe from the firing squad if convicted of espionage, as the case of the Belgian van der Goten demonstrates. As recounted earlier, Leon Francis van der Goten was framed by the British

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secret service and had never been a genuine German agent. He was nevertheless sentenced to death, but his sentence was immediately commuted into one of penal servitude for life, the sole reason being the intervention of the Belgian government on van der Goten’s behalf.181 British citizens were somewhat privileged in that significant legal barriers had to be overcome in order to court-martial them. British nationals John Hahn (the baker of German descent) and Kurt Herlot de Rysbach (of Swiss family background) were both tried by civil court after all efforts had failed to try them by court martial. 182 Hahn’s defence counsel argued that his client’s shop had been destroyed in an anti-German riot of 1914,183 while de Rysbach’s explained to the jury that his client had agreed to become a spy only in order to be released from the German internment camp at Ruhleben.184 Hahn, a collaborator of the subsequently executed Müller, was sentenced to seven years’ penal servitude while de Rysbach was sentenced to life imprisonment. Male German nationals, on the other hand, were shown no mercy. Carl Hans Lody, Robert Rosenthal, Georg Traugott Breeckow, Albert Meyer and Paul Hensel (alias Irving Guy Ries) were executed. All of them realized that German citizenship was a serious disadvantage at their trial. Breeckow, Hensel and Rosenthal claimed US citizenship, while Meyer claimed to be a Dane. Rosenthal vainly cried out: ‘I indeed have never cared for any German, never liked Germans, always wanted to be a real Yankee.’185 Hence, the sentence that a spy received bore little relation to what he or she had actually done. Instead, the punishments meted out by the authorities reflected both their desire to deter and overall political considerations, which at times led to absurd results. German spies caught during the war were considered deserving of the death penalty, but were at times admired as patriots, like Lody. Several spies from neutral countries, and especially Allied and British ‘traitor’ spies, were considered beneath contempt but usually escaped capital punishment.186 This is not to suggest that British espionage trials were unfair. Under the existing legislation the death sentence could have been passed in most cases. If political considerations were taken into account and influenced the verdict or led to the subsequent commutation of a sentence, this was always done to the defendant’s advantage. Over the course of the war, the British authorities commuted altogether six death sentences into prison terms. 187 British leniency compares rather favourably with standards in France and Germany, let alone Russia. The French executed more individuals found guilty of spying than the

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British, started earlier, and did not hesitate to put women to death. Estimates of the number of females executed by the French vary between nine and eighty-one.188 In Germany, the number of convictions, 273, and the number of these who were executed, twenty-one, was also higher than in Britain, although Allied espionage in Germany was probably much more extensive than Germany’s in Britain. However, these figures do not include occupied Belgium, where espionage-related court martials numbered well over one thousand.189 The British had realized that propaganda aspects were as important as legal ones when dealing with espionage. The Germans, on the other hand, looked at intelligence throughout the war from a purely military and legal perspective. While the German authorities had the law on their side when trying and executing Edith Cavell, 190 the British scored a propaganda coup by orchestrating a worldwide campaign condemning her execution. 191 And when given the option of executing female agents, the British authorities prudently chose to spare Louise Wertheim and Eva de Bournonville for political reasons. Consequently, neutral and, particularly, American public opinion regarded the Germans as narrow-minded and cruel and the British as merciful and just. After the war, the former director of German military intelligence, Walter Nicolai, admitted that it had been a mistake to disregard such non-military aspects of intelligence work. 192

6 Covert Action

In August 1914, the war was widely expected to last but a few months. Most military planners envisioned a few major battles that would decide the outcome of the conflict, as had been the case in the Franco-German war of 1870–1871. In this scenario, secret services had the task of detecting the mobilization of foreign armies and navies and supplying military and naval intelligence on the enemy. After the great but indecisive battles in Belgium and France in August and September 1914, the Western front froze into a continuous line of trenches stretching from the Swiss Alps to the Northern Sea. By late 1914, military and political leaders on both sides began to bury their short-war illusions and, until the end of the conflict, both sides attempted to break the trench deadlock by introducing several innovations and tactical adjustments. The tank, submarine, fighter and bomber aircraft, chemical warfare and shock troop tactics all originated in the First World War and were meant to break the enemy’s resistance. While warfare was thus revolutionized in many ways, the role of intelligence changed as well. The secret services on all sides began to extend their missions from pure intelligence-gathering to a more active support of military operations that included sabotage, subversion and biological warfare.

Subversion? It was not unreasonable for British officials to expect German support for domestic opposition in the United Kingdom. In fact, the Germans were quite active in this field throughout the war. German agents financed French pacifists, American labour organizations and Indian nationalists. They supported Russian revolutionaries, Muslim jihadists 117

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and Irish republicans. The question here is if and to what extent German naval intelligence endeavoured to support British domestic opposition to the war. An alliance between German spies and British socialists had always been a bogey in Edwardian Britain, and William Le Queux prophesied in 1909, ‘How Germany Foments Strife’: As in France and Russia, so also in England, German secret agents are, we have discovered, at work stirring strife in many directions. One is a dastardly scheme, by which, immediately before a dash is made upon our shores, a great railway strike is to be organised, ostensibly by the socialists, in order to further paralyse our trade and render us in various ways unable to resist the triumphant entry of the foe. When ‘the Day’ comes, this plot of our friends across the North Sea will assuredly be revealed, just as the truth was revealed to me at Ostrog.1 In counter-espionage circles such voices were taken quite seriously. During the coalminers’ strike in South Wales in 1911, Home Secretary Winston Churchill consulted the Chief Inspector of Mines, Professor Redmayne, on the danger of ‘evilly disposed persons’ inflicting damage on the powerhouses of the collieries in the event of war. Redmayne replied that this possibility could not be dismissed, especially in view of the fact that virtually all electrical components were being obtained from Germany, and he advised that German companies be replaced with English ones.2 About a month later, Kell received information that four Germans had visited the strike area, and that Professor Redmayne, after interrogating the suspects, had come to the conclusion that they must be political agitators attempting to exploit the strike to Germany’s advantage.3 As a result of these observations, a permanent detective force for the Welsh coalfields was established although not a single German agitator could ever be identified, let alone arrested.4 At about the same time, Winston Churchill received information that a German agent was subsidizing the Liverpool dock strike of August 1911. Half a year later, a Home Ports Defence Committee memorandum reported widespread German espionage in South Wales, and the local military commander opined that the Labour movement could not be ‘relied upon not to utilize the fact of war being imminent to enforce their demands for improved wages or other conditions’. 5 In fact, Labour was staunchly non-interventionist during the July crisis, and on 2 August 1914 the party organized mass demonstrations

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against the war, demanding British neutrality in the conflict. However, once Britain had aligned herself with France, Labour quickly wheeled around and henceforth loyally supported the war effort.6 The same was true of many suffragettes and pacifists. After 1914, only fringe ideologues continued to oppose the war, while the overwhelming majority supported their nation’s struggle.7 The few remaining antiwar agitators were widely suspected of being in Germany’s pay. 8 Prominent members of the politically insignificant British Socialist Party were attacked as ‘acting under instructions from Berlin’, and the Union of Democratic Control and other peace societies were accused of receiving funds from Berlin. 9 The Special Branch of New Scotland Yard investigated such groups on the assumption that they were financed by Germany, and detectives shadowed their most prominent members. 10 On 20 July 1915, MO5(g) and the Special Branch produced a joint memorandum, concluding: There is no doubt but that there is a good deal of activity going on just now in the various groups recently formed in connection with the Peace Movement, and among these Groups are men who are capable of any inhuman action as long as it would serve their own political ends . . . Many people are asking where the funds are coming from to carry on this Peace propaganda. There is little doubt but that there is German money in it, but it is impossible to find out the source through which it percolates.11 There was little hard evidence to support such charges. In their historical reports for 1915, MI5 contended that German agents who were militarily unfit or over age were used to organize peace propaganda, strikes and sedition. One such person was, according to British counter-espionage, Frigate Captain Frederick Dunbar alias William Guilden, who had been arrested but could not be tried for lack of evidence.12 However, the files of the German Admiralstab prove beyond doubt that Dunbar alias Guilden was sent on a simple espionage mission to Glasgow and Portsmouth, and not to foment civil strife. 13 The year 1917 brought a fresh wave of industrial unrest, triggering concerns over German attempts to make use of it. The reasons for the dramatic rise of working-class discontent in that year were many; among them were the conscription acts and the manner in which they were applied by overzealous authorities, attempts by private employers to extend dilution, high prices, bad housing and skilled workers’ resentment that the unskilled were often receiving higher wages than themselves. 14

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Breaking news of the Russian Revolution in March further excited the weary working class. 15 That year, 575,000 workers engaged in strikes and 5.5 million workdays were lost, each figure being more than double those for 1916. 16 MI5 was unable to track down more than a handful of German agents in 1917, and the department concluded that the Germans had shifted their focus to the support of peace propaganda, strikes, sedition and revolution.17 Kell was unable to identify a single German agent provocateur, but nevertheless, in October a governmental committee was set up to explore the origins of rising labour unrest and growing pacifist propaganda. 18 The investigators’ report remained inconclusive as to whether German money was behind pacifist and revolutionary organizations, but Basil Thomson, the director of the Special Branch, identified one alleged German agent provocateur by name: Baron Louis von Horst (see Ill. 5). A US citizen born in Germany , von Horst had successfully established a competitive enterprise, the Horst Company, in England prior to the war. Although he felt strongly about his German heritage and displayed considerable enthusiasm for the Irish question – he admired and was friends with Sir Roger Casement – he was never involved in illegal activities and had no connections with German intelligence. But his ethnic background and his Irish friends made him a vulnerable target in the heady days of July–August 1914. The Special Branch of New Scotland Yard arrested von Horst at the end of August 1914, charging him with espionage on behalf of Germany. In 1917, Thomson presented von Horst’s case to the committee as that of an agent provocateur. The authorities planned to try von Horst, but due to the lack of evidence, the trial never materialized. While in internment, von Horst was stripped of his considerable business interests. His health deteriorated to a point where he was unable to walk by himself, and he suffered severe eczema. In 1919, the British authorities expelled him to his alleged home-country, Germany, but the German authorities refused to acknowledge von Horst’s German citizenship. After the war, even Thomson conceded that von Horst had not been an agent provocateur.19 Although rumours about German sponsorship of subversion in Britain circulated throughout the war, they cannot be corroborated in a single instance. Only two alleged agents provocateurs were ever identified by name – Dunbar alias Guilden and Louis von Horst – and both were innocent of this charge. Nor is there a German agency which had any interest in fomenting strife in Britain; the army’s sabotage branch, Sektion P (see below) confined its activities to Ireland, and German military intelligence focused chiefly on Russia and France. ‘N’ would

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have been the only agency capable of linking up with British opponents to the war, but the Admiralstab unequivocally stated that they were solely interested in gathering naval intelligence. 20 Although the British Cabinet worried a great deal about German-sponsored subversion, and MI5 and the Special Branch tended to reinforce rather than dispel these concerns, the Germans never actively supported British domestic opposition to the war.

Sabotage Sabotage, or Propaganda der Tat (‘action propaganda’) as the Germans euphemistically referred to it, assumed a growing importance in Berlin’s war effort. On 28 November 1914, the Admiralstab issued a circular to naval attachés and agents explaining that ‘It is necessary to hire through third parties who stand in no relationship to the official representatives of Germany, agents for arranging explosions on ships bound for enemy countries’.21 At about the same time, military intelligence established a sabotage department, Sektion P under Captain Rudolf Nadolny, and the General Staff considered blowing up Canadian railway tracks in order to prevent the anticipated movement of Allied troops from the Pacific to the Atlantic coast, and thence to the Western front.22 From 1916 onwards, German sabotage grew in scope and sophistication. With the British naval blockade tightening its grip on the Central Powers and German troops locked into a fierce and costly ten-month battle against the French at Verdun, the German military leadership became more eager to employ sabotage for strikes at the Allies and their neutral supply bases. Consequently, Sektion P extended its operations, and in spring 1916, the navy added a sabotage branch to its intelligence service, ‘NIV’, under Lieutenant Commander Alfred Lassen.23 The KNSt Antwerp also began to dabble in sabotage.24 Sabotage operations against Great Britain were usually prepared and launched from Scandinavia and, until February 1917, from the United States.25 The German secret services put considerable effort into obstructing the delivery of military hardware from the neutral United States to the Allies. A particularly notorious incident was the explosion at Black Tom pier in New Jersey in July 1916. The pier, located opposite the Statue of Liberty in the harbour of New York, was a depôt where war matériel manufactured in the northeastern states was stored for transport to the Allied powers. On the evening of the explosion, barges and freight cars at the depôt were reportedly filled with over 2 million lb of ammunition

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Illustration 5 The alleged agent provocateur, Baron Louis von Horst, c. 1920. Note the crutches that von Horst depended upon after becoming partially paralysed during internment Source: Courtesy of Baron Dr Louis von Horst, Jr.

destined for a Russian offensive. The munitions included shrapnel, black powder, TNT, and dynamite. Shock waves from the ensuing explosion at Black Tom and a succession of smaller explosions that

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lasted for several hours, could be felt as far as 90 miles away, caused $14 million in damage, and killed four people. After the war, a German– American mixed claims commission investigated the incident and implicated several former German secret service members as likely perpetrators.26 Illegal German activities in North America are well documented, but German officials always claimed that the ultimate target of their underhand warfare was the entente. To what extent, then, did the German secret services conduct such operations against Great Britain? In September 1914, the German military attaché to Washington, Captain Franz von Papen, recruited a certain Horst von der Goltz, apparently born in Koblenz as Franz Wachendorf. Not unlike Armgaard Graves, von der Goltz had indulged in an adventurous lifestyle that quickly brought him in conflict with the law. At the age of sixteen, he was arrested for forgery in Brussels and extradited to Germany. In 1912, he moved to the United States, thence to wartorn Mexico where he joined General Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa’s revolutionary army and was promoted to major.27 In all likelihood, he assumed the name ‘Horst von der Goltz’ to impress the Mexicans. 28 Under that name he was captured by Villa’s enemies and imprisoned in Chihuahua where he remained until the revolutionaries conquered the town and liberated the German mercenary.29 Shortly after the outbreak of war in Europe, von der Goltz showed up at von Papen’s office in New York and offered his services. Both men quickly agreed that von der Goltz should blow up the Welland Canal on the US–Canadian border. 30 Von Papen supplied his new recruit with $500 and a letter of introduction, and von der Goltz proceeded to Baltimore where German consul Carl A. Lüderitz procured him a false passport under the name of Bridgeman A. Taylor. Von Papen’s straw man, one Federico Stalforth, put further financial means at von der Goltz’s disposal, and a certain Captain Hans Tauscher, a representative of the Krupp company, was to provide the necessary explosives to carry out the mission. Von der Goltz hired a motley group of men and was headed for the Canadian border when the military attaché called the whole operation off while the sabotage team was still in Buffalo.31 It is unclear why the mission was suddenly aborted, but given that von der Goltz was immediately recalled to Germany, one of the services in Berlin may have decided that his skills were better employed elsewhere. On 29 August 1914, von der Goltz applied for a US passport in the name of Bridgeman Taylor which was granted, and on 2 October, he had it visaed at the Italian consulate general in New York. Travelling via Genoa on the Duca d’Aosta, he reached Berlin about three weeks later.32

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Illustration 6 Olaf Gulbransson, Der Weltbefreier, or ‘The World Liberator’, showing a German knight cutting off the tentacles of a British octopus, straddling the globe Source: Simplicissimus, 1917.

No records survive of von der Goltz’s sojourn in Berlin. In 1916, he stated that the Germans had ordered him ‘to proceed to England for spy duty’.33 In his memoirs, however, he claims that German intelligence had instructed him to return via Britain to the United States ‘with a program which, in ruthlessness and efficiency, left nothing to be desired’. 34 The American press soon picked up on that version, and ever since most authors have concurred that von der Goltz was simply

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stopping over in England on his way back to the United States, or possibly to Mexico.35 But von der Goltz was in no hurry to reach the United States. He arrived in England on 4 November 1914 on the Batavia, a vessel plying between Rotterdam and Falmouth.36 If his final destination had really been the United States, he would have immediately re-embarked on a ship bound for America, but instead he registered at a London hotel under the name of Bridgeman Taylor of El Paso. 37 Because he failed to register as an alien, the police arrested him on 14 November 1914. 38 His passport bore stamps from Germany, and the British authorities rightly suspected that von der Goltz was up to something. He was sentenced to six months imprisonment, after which he would be expelled from Britain. 39 In January 1915, von der Goltz asked for an audience with Reginald Hall, director of British naval intelligence, who agreed to a meeting. The German ex-mercenary offered Hall some ‘inside’ information in return for an early release, but instead the authorities wisely decided to intern von der Goltz until the end of the war. 40 Then came von Papen’s blunder. In December 1915, the US government declared the German military and naval attachés personae non gratae, and Berlin had to recall both of them. Military Attaché von Papen knew that all ships bound for Europe were being stopped and searched by the British, but he sincerely believed that his diplomatic immunity would spare him and his belongings from this procedure. Von Papen was carrying a number of highly sensitive documents with him when the British intercepted his ship and, as might have been expected, thoroughly searched his possessions. Among the many top secret documents, the British discovered a cheque made out to ‘Mr. Bridgeman Taylor’ with the additional explanation: ‘This person came over to England to offer himself for work under His Majesty’s Government. His real name is von der Goltz, and he is now in England.’ 41 The British authorities now had ultimate proof that von der Goltz was a German agent and that he had been on a mission to Britain, not the United States. Following von Papen’s interception, von der Goltz was escorted to Scotland Yard, where he confessed and offered his cooperation in order to save his skin. He was fortunate in that the British were then collecting evidence to prove and publicize German conspiracies in the United States. In a sworn statement, von der Goltz implicated von Papen and several others. The British Foreign Office proposed to publish the statement, but before doing so consulted the US State Department, which requested that von der Goltz be sent to America to give evidence

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against the persons implicated. Von der Goltz eagerly agreed and left Britain on the Finland in late March 1916.42 Von Papen’s cheque proves that von der Goltz’s destination had not been the United States or Mexico, but Great Britain. Basil Thomson of the Special Branch suspected that von der Goltz had come to England on a sabotage mission and, given his earlier activities in the United States, this may well be an accurate assumption.43 Only the fact that he was of value for British propaganda in the United States saved von der Goltz from the firing squad. Washington and London had originally agreed to keep von der Goltz’s journey to the United States secret. He was to return to Britain after giving evidence. 44 But von der Goltz frustrated this plan on the way to New York. The chief reporter of the New York Sun, one Fougner, happened to be travelling on the same boat as von der Goltz. According to Basil Thomson, Fougner ‘pumped him [von der Goltz] on the way and had a garbled account of the business wired over to a Press Agency in New York’. As a result, von der Goltz’s secret journey was widely known in New York prior to his arrival, and the British Admiralty was forced to release his story to the press. 45 The Scotland Yard officer accompanying von der Goltz, Harold Brust, was at great pains to explain why he had failed to keep his prisoner separated from the other passengers. 46 As a state witness in the ensuing trial, von der Goltz did great damage to the individuals implicated, and he contributed significantly to the Germans’ image as ‘dynamiters’ in the United States. Due to von der Goltz’s confession, Hans Tauscher and Papen’s aide Wolf von Igel were arrested. 47 Moreover, von der Goltz accused members of the German diplomatic corps, including former service attachés Karl Boy-Ed and von Papen, as well as Consul Carl Lüderitz, of involvement in espionage, sabotage, and pass forgery.48 In England, von der Goltz would doubtless have been sentenced to death, and he was lucky to be shunted off to an internment camp on Ellis Island instead. Von der Goltz was not the only German saboteur sent on a mission to Great Britain. Early in the war, German naval intelligence decided to make an effort to hire Irishmen in the United States for placing explosives aboard British ships.49 In early 1915, naval agent Hans Boehm recruited Irishman Anthony J. Brogan for sabotage work. According to Boehm, Brogan was ‘ready for anything’ and ‘hates England’.50 In February 1916, Brogan, under the cover name ‘Kelly’, contacted Prieger of ‘NI’ and the General Staff from Portugal and explained that he had six men at his disposal to attack the main telephone and cable centre at

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London, which was situated 50 yards north of Westminster Cathedral and controlled the entire air defence of the City. He knew one of the Irish workers on the site and asked for money to pay his men.51 Isendahl instructed the German minister in Lisbon to forward £100 to ‘Kelly’, but the operation did not materialize. 52 In late March 1916, ‘Kelly’ informed Sektion P from Madrid that one of his agents, a certain Jennings, knew some men who were working at docks and military factories in Britain and were ready to carry out sabotage missions in their workplaces. He asked that Jennings be forwarded £2,000 for this purpose. 53 Nadolny, the director of Sektion P, agreed to this amount with the reservation that ‘Kelly’ should be reimbursed only after the successful conclusion of the mission.54 As Nadolny’s cable was not sent direct, but through the Auswärtiges Amt, the German military attaché in Madrid who was in charge of the operation never received it. Jennings’ gang was disbanded. 55 Nadolny was naturally annoyed and admonished Madrid that ‘bungling [Durcheinanderarbeiten] of different agencies is to be avoided’ in the future. 56 This aborted mission is a telling example of the German services’ inefficient, decentralized structure during the war. In December 1914, I.A. Mulder, an Afrikaner, proposed to NI’s director Naval Captain Prieger the placing of ‘infernal machines’ (Höllenmaschinen) on steamers carrying matériel bound for France or Britain and calling at ports on the United States’ Atlantic seaboard.57 ‘Infernal machines’ were bombs that looked from the outside like coal briquettes, oil tanks, jam jars, small margarine barrels, or other harmless items. The shell of the bomb broke down into two parts, one containing the explosive and the other the substance as which it was disguised. A thin glass tube containing sulphuric acid, covered by a metal sheath of a thickness according to the time required before the bomb exploded, was left in contact with the explosive, and as soon as the bomb was placed in the selected spot, this tube was broken. The acid then attacked the metal sheath and finally reached the explosive matter and caused it to explode. 58 The advantage of this mechanism was that it gave the agent placing the bomb on board ample time to leave the ship before the explosion. As these ‘infernal machines’ were often placed on Allied ships in neutral countries, the time-delay also served to let the explosive go off on the open sea, outside territorial waters, thus reducing the danger of diplomatic complications. The Germans produced the necessary devices in the United States and Berlin. In America, the German chemist Dr Walter Scheele used his New Jersey Agricultural and Chemical Company at 1123 Clinton Street in Hoboken for this purpose.59 The navy had a

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production site at their Agatit-Werke, and Sektion P procured explosives and the like chiefly from its subsection Materialien-Verwaltung.60 In 1915, German agents attacked several Allied ships from New York: on 21 May 1915, the British merchant ship Bayropea caught fire on its way to Le Havre; on 10 June 1915, the British merchant ship Kirkswald put into Marseille, where nine bombs were discovered on board which had failed to go off; on 18 June 1915, a fire broke out on the Ingleside, which had arrived in Hull from New York, and upon search a bomb was found which had not exploded; similar incidents occurred on the Saltmarsh and other British ships coming from the United States.61 The British authorities issued several warnings about the danger of ‘infernal machines’.62 However, not all suspicious-looking fires can be ascribed to German sabotage. In 1916 and 1917, numerous vessels shipping copper from Australia and New Zealand sank or were severely damaged by fire, and the authorities were quick to suspect enemy aliens – and behind them German intelligence – as the source of these calamities. 63 But it is inconceivable that the German services could have carried out these assaults in Australia, and hence it is much more likely that the fires were due to accidents brought about by the ships’ cargoes. At times, the Germans ventured attacks on Allied ammunition factories. In his memoirs, Nadolny relates that the Chief of the General Staff, General Falkenhayn, awarded him the Iron Cross for the destruction of a Russian gunpowder factory at Ochta.64 Nadolny denies that any such operations took place in France or Britain, although Basil Thomson ascribes explosions at factories in Lancashire, Silvertown and Kensington in 1917 to German sabotage. 65 The most controversial case of alleged sabotage in a British ammunition factory occurred in 1915. On the night of 30–31 July, a series of fires and explosions at Nobel’s Explosives Company in Ardeer killed three workers and injured twenty-two. The whole of the TNT plant was destroyed along with a number of other buildings, including three cordite blending houses and three cordite stoves. The Home Office immediately suspected sabotage and set up a committee to inquire into the circumstances of this catastrophe. After a thorough investigation the committee concluded that enemy sabotage could not be ruled out, but shortly after the war MI5 conceded that the explosions ‘proved not to be the work of an enemy agent, but an accident’.66 Throughout the war, in not one instance could German authorship of an explosion in British factories be proven. Given that it was much easier for the Germans to conduct sabotage against Great Britain from neutral countries, sabotage within the United Kingdom was virtually nonexistent.

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Following America’s entry into the war in April 1917, the Scandinavian countries, in particular Norway, were among the few remaining options whence the Germans could launch sabotage operations against Great Britain. August Lassen, who had become director of the navy’s sabotage section ‘NIV’ in March 1917, even contemplated destroying the iron ore shipment facilities at Narvik, but this project was eventually abandoned. 67 As in the United States, ‘N’ sought to place ‘infernal machines’ on Allied ships in Norwegian seaports. The Admiralstab chose Baron Friedrich Walter von Rautenfels, born of German parents in Helsingfors in 1880, to execute this scheme. After the outbreak of war, the German diplomatic service hired Rautenfels as a translator for Russian and Finnish: later he worked as a courier for the Admiralstab. In 1917, Rautenfels hired a handful of subagents, mostly Finns, and smuggled several hundred kg of explosives, bombs, time mechanisms and the like required for the construction of infernal machines into Norway. The devices were stored in the homes of private individuals.68 Until June 1917, Rautenfels employed a specially trained saboteur to place explosives on ships bound for England. This man may be identical with Otto Cornehlsen, who operated in Gothenburg, Bergen, Hull and Hartlepool, and sent down several Allied and Norwegian vessels, according to his own account.69 However, British naval intelligence intercepted a German cable alluding to Rautenfels’ identity and his doings. The British immediately forwarded this information to the Norwegian government. By 1917, Norway maintained a hostile neutrality towards Germany, and the Norwegian government made no effort to hush the affair through diplomatic channels.70 Quite to the contrary, the police immediately arrested all suspects.71 In the course of this shakedown, the Norwegian authorities discovered a number of boxes containing explosives which, to make matters worse, were labelled with the address of the imperial German legation. Confronted with this evidence, Minister Hans Michahelles told the Norwegians that the suspects arrested so far, all of them Finns, were actually Bolshevik revolutionaries, not German agents. 72 One day later, Isendahl suggested that Michahelles should admit that the explosives were indeed German property, but that they had been intended exclusively for the destruction of the German auxiliary cruiser Berlin if it were seized by the enemy. At worst, the German legation should claim the devices were to be used against Russia, not Norway.73 However, the flood of evidence could not be stemmed. One of Rautenfels’ men confessed not only that the bombs were intended for England-bound ships in Norwegian ports, but also that this practice had already been applied in several cases.74 Meanwhile, the Norwegian

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police discovered a major depôt in the house of Hjalmar Wirtanen, a Finn, containing fourteen large boxes with bombs, explosives and other devices. 75 The Wilhelmstraße successfully insisted to the Norwegian government that, as a member of the German diplomatic corps, Rautenfels be released. 76 At the end of 1917, however, Norwegian courts convicted numerous Germans, Norwegians, and Finns of espionage and sabotage at several trials in Bergen and Christiania. Michahelles was recalled to Germany, and his successor was refused an audience with the Norwegian king.77 The Norwegian government was even more willing to cooperate with the British authorities in fighting German intelligence after the discovery of extensive German sabotage operations on Norwegian soil in 1916 and 1917. In the course of investigating these plots, the Norwegian authorities became suspicious of a certain Erik Laven, later discovered to be the German agent Fritz Lavendal. Early in 1917, a check was placed on Laven’s mail. Consequently, Norwegian intelligence discovered that Miss Synnoeve Braaton regularly forwarded letters from Alfred Hagn to Laven. The Norwegian police quickly ascertained that Hagn was a German agent who had been operating in Britain since April 1917, and that Miss Braaton was his girlfriend, who was used by Laven as a cover address. Laven, together with another German agent, Leifhold, had approached Hagn in 1916 and persuaded him to sign up for an espionage mission to Britain. As the British service had helped the Norwegians to smash the German sabotage plots, the Norwegian police now returned the favour and informed London about Hagn. In May 1917, MI5 sent detective Melville to Bergen to befriend Hagn and collect incriminating evidence in his apartment. As soon as he set foot in England on 24 May, Hagn was arrested. At the same time, the Norwegian police arrested Laven together with the German agents Schwartz, Thoresen and Harthern. 78 Apparently Leifhold had escaped, and another suspect, the director of Germany’s marine interrogation service, Dr Filchner, had already left the country. The ensuing trial inflamed Norwegian public opinion. At the end of August, Laven was sentenced to five years, Schwartz to four years and the Norwegian Thoresen to two years’ penal servitude. Harthern was forced to leave the country.79 But this was not the end of it. Investigation and trial led to the unmasking of ever more German agents. By the end of October, another fourteen suspects were charged with espionage,80 and in November a Norwegian court sentenced two German sailors to seven months in prison for espionage.81 In December, Norwegian police discovered scores of letters bearing inscriptions in invisible ink or code-phrases in the clothing or personal effects

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of ships’ crews bound for or departing from Norwegian ports. Again, numerous arrests were made,82 and by early 1918, Norway had essentially been cleared of German agents.

Biological warfare Microbiological knowledge was quite advanced at the outbreak of the First World War. Since the 1880s, German and French scientists, physicians, and veterinarians had played leading roles in achieving a better understanding of major bacteriological diseases and their modes of transmission. This may partially account for the fact that Germany and France were the first nations to investigate and conduct biological warfare. While further research is needed to determine the scope of French efforts in this regard, the ramifications of the German programme can be sketched broadly. 83 The German biological warfare programme began in early 1915 and was administered by Sektion P under Captain Nadolny. As such, it was subordinated to the General Staff and essentially independent of civilian oversight. The most common types of bacilli used were glanders and anthrax, which were cultured at the laboratory of the military veterinary academy in Berlin under the supervision of Professor Troester.84 A question that needed to be addressed early on was whether the programme was to target only livestock or human beings as well. Consistent with international law, which prohibited the use of poison or poisoned arms against enemy troops, the General Staff denied permission for anti-human biological warfare on at least two occasions in 1916. When Portugal entered the war on the side of the Allies, the German legation in Madrid cabled the following suggestions to Berlin, which the German government promptly ruled out: In order to close the Spanish–Portuguese frontier to make communications difficult between Portugal and the Allies, I [probably the military attaché, Commander Krohn] suggest contaminating at the frontier, with cholera bacilli, rivers flowing through Portugal. Professor Kleine of the Cameroons considers the plan to be perfectly feasible. It is necessary to have two glass phials of pure culture, which please send when safe opportunity occurs.85 In September 1916, Oberstabsarzt (captain and physician) Winter, sanitation officer of the 21st army corps, proposed spreading the plague to England. Winter’s apocalyptic scheme envisaged dropping liquid

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cultures of plague bacilli from zeppelins onto ports, 100 litres at a time, with the aim of infecting rats and thereby setting off an epidemic. His memorandum was forwarded to General Erich Ludendorff of the General Staff, who passed it on to the Chief of the Surgeon General’s Office, with a note enquiring as to the proposal’s feasibility. On 24 September, the Surgeon General rejected the plan and admonished Winter: ‘My dear Stabsarzt, all respect to your courage and patriotism, but if we undertake this step we will no longer be worthy to exist as a nation.’86 When the Emperor heard of the brainstorming on this subject, he categorically forbade the use of zeppelins for bacteriological attacks on England, and a postwar memorandum of the army’s medical corps states that bacteriological warfare on humans had been ruled out on ethical as well as technical grounds.87 Winter’s memorandum had been circulated to several officials, and it is not difficult to imagine that his bizarre proposals generated a fair amount of gossip. Rumours to the effect that the Germans were considering a plague attack on Britain must have spread quickly. As related above, even the Emperor had heard of these ideas although he was not supposed to be informed. Only a few weeks after Winter had put his thoughts to paper, the rumour of the plague attack had spread to France and thence to Britain. A British Home Office memorandum recalled in April 1918: ‘In October, 1917, information was received from a French source that the enemy had inoculated a large number of rats with plague, and they intended to let them loose in the United Kingdom from submarines or aeroplanes.’ 88 While the Germans refrained from the use of biological weapons against humans, no such restrictions applied to animals. The German General Staff considered the contamination of horses, cattle and other livestock an attack on military supplies, which was permissible under contemporary legal notions of warfare. 89 It must be borne in mind that beasts were still a crucial means of transport in the First World War. In 1917–1918, the British armed forces possessed 591,000 horses, 213,000 mules, 47,000 camels, and 11,000 oxen, as opposed to merely 57,000 lorries and tractors, 23,000 cars and vans, and 7,000 motor ambulances. Horses, in particular, were as indispensable to the British war effort as machine guns, dreadnoughts, railways, and heavy artillery.90 The British government made considerable efforts to obtain animals from overseas, and the Remount Department of the British army spent £67.5 million between 1914 and 1920 on purchasing and training horses and mules and delivering them to the front.91 Therefore, the Germans directed their biological warfare programme primarily at neutral

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livestock supplier countries, including the United States, Rumania, Spain, Norway and South America. The Germans usually dispatched a secret agent supplied with glanders or anthrax germs to one of these countries where the operative would then apply them to livestock bound for Britain. As late as 14 February 1918, the Royal Navy intercepted the German submarine U-35 off the Argentinian coast, where it had just landed two naval agents at Cartagena on whom anthrax or glander germs were found.92 The largest supplier of livestock was North America, which provided the British armed forces with 429,000 horses and 275,000 mules before the armistice, and the Germans made a particular effort to interfere with this trade by the means of biological warfare. In April 1915, Sektion P sent Dr Anton Dilger, a Heidelberg-trained physician and US citizen of German parents, to the United States. Dilger had in his possession glanders and anthrax germs. He set up a laboratory, casually referred to as ‘Tony’s Lab’ by German secret agents, in the basement of his house in north western Washington, DC. There he successfully produced cultures of bacillus anthracis and pseudomonas mallei, the causative agents of anthrax and glanders. A few months after Dilger’s arrival in Washington, his biological programme became operational and the cultures were administered to horses and mules in holding pens at the docks in New York, Baltimore, Newport News, and Norfolk. The programme ended in fall 1916 after Dilger’s return to Germany.93 While Berlin’s biological warfare programme was directed primarily at neutral countries, German agents made a few attempts to spread anthrax and glanders in France and Britain as well. On 30 March 1917, Scotland Yard circulated the following confidential memorandum to police officers across the United Kingdom: (1) A piece of sugar was found in which a tiny glass tube had been inserted and covered up with melted sugar. The presence of the tube in the lump of sugar was eventually detected in a strong transmitted light, but was not obvious to casual observation. The tube was sealed at both ends and contained liquid which was found by the usual tests to contain the anthrax bacillus in large quantities. (2) A German agent was found on arrest (by the French) in possession of an apparatus, consisting of a small wooden box, about 3 inches in length and ½ inch in diameter, which enclosed a metal tube. This contained a glass phial which contained the germs of the anthrax bacillus. He had also a small wire brush with two loops for the fingers, which was to be used for painting the solution in the nostrils of

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the horse it was desired to infect. He had wired the nasal passage of the horse with view to the easier infection of the wound. Scotland Yard warned the police to keep this information secret ‘for fear of putting ideas into the heads of ill conditioned people in this country’. 94 The success of the German biological warfare campaign is difficult to measure, but one historian suggests that many of the cultures had become nonviable or avirulent by the time German agents administered them to horses or mules.95 To date, only one instance of anthrax in the United Kingdom can be linked to the German biological warfare programme. In April 1917, the Isle of Man reported four unconnected outbreaks of anthrax which implied deliberate inoculation as no previous cases had been recorded on the island for at least eight years.96 The psychological impact of Germany’s biological warfare probably exceeded the actual physical damage. As a result of Scotland Yard’s memorandum of 30 March 1917, the Home Office ordered that precautions be taken against the dissemination of anthrax in the United Kingdom.97 The German campaign caused a good many rumours such as the above-mentioned German plague attack on London. And in August 1917, the British embassy in Copenhagen investigated but dismissed a rumour that the Germans were smuggling contaminated spam from Norway to Britain.98 Ultimately, the German bacteriological campaign boomeranged when some of the operations were uncovered as happened after Rumania’s declaration of war on the Central Powers in August 1916. German officials in Bucharest had been unable to destroy or smuggle out of the country the cultures in their possession, and the German military attaché was observed burying some boxes in the garden of the German legation. Someone informed the new occupant of the building, the US chargé d’affaires, who unearthed a number of glass phials.99 The Americans quickly established that the phials contained bacteria cultures, a discovery that caused outrage in the international press and provided British propaganda with excellent ammunition. William Le Queux published an inspired article on the Rumanian incident, entitled ‘The German Death Factory’. 100

Adolf Weiszflog alias Ludovico Hurwitz y Zender

Carl Friedrich Müller

Ernest Waldemar Melin

Fernando Bushman

Georg Breeckow alias Reginald Rowland

Haicke Marinus Petrius Jannsen

Paul Hensel alias Irving Guy Ries

Robert Rosenthal

Willem Johanes Roos

Albert Meyer

Augusto Alfredo Roggen

George Vaux Bacon

7 The Decline of German Naval Intelligence, 1917–1919

At the request of President Woodrow Wilson, the American Congress declared on 6 April 1917 that a state of war existed between the United States and the German Empire. The debate over American participation in the war had been going on for a while. In the short term, Washington’s decision to join the Allies was triggered by Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare on 1 February 1917, with its complete disregard for the rights of neutrals.1 But the origins of American intervention ran deeper. President Wilson entered the conflict ‘to make the world safe for democracy’, and the majority of the East Coast establishment had long preferred the ‘democratic’ Allies over the ‘autocratic’ Central Powers. Anglo-American ties, in particular, played an important role in shaping Americans’ perceptions of the conflict. On a more mundane level, trade between the United States and the Allies had reached huge proportions by early 1917, and the economic consequences for North America of an Allied defeat would have been considerable. Neither was a German victory in Washington’s strategic interest. 2 One historian has also implied that German covert operations on American soil contributed significantly to the United States drifting into the Allied camp. 3 The consequences of America’s entry into the war were of course enormous. There can be little doubt that April 1917 was the turning point of the First World War. The United States provided the exhausted Allies with virtually unlimited access to raw materials, ammunition, guns, foodstuffs and funds. Neither should American manpower be discounted. Overall, the contribution of the United States to the Allied victory can hardly be overestimated, and without President Woodrow Wilson’s decision to align his country with the entente in April 1917, the German surrender of November 1918 is inconceivable. 135

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The last major German intelligence operation in Great Britain If it took the Allies another year and a half after being joined by United States to defeat Germany, American participation in the war had an immediate and decisive impact on the work of German naval intelligence. Neutral countries were of paramount importance to any intelligence service as bases for covert operations in enemy territory. Early in the war, the Admiralstab had focused on the Netherlands for recruitment, training and dispatch of naval agents to Britain. However, the British and German services kept a close watch over each other, and ‘N’ found it increasingly difficult to recruit Dutch agents. In the United States, on the other hand, German naval agents could still operate with relative ease, and given the country’s size, surveillance by the authorities was easier to evade than it was in the Netherlands, which was tightly packed with enemy spies. In addition, American citizens were less prone to suspicion than Dutchmen in the United Kingdom, and their fluency in English was an additional plus. Before the war, Frigate Captain Isendahl had proposed to recruit American journalists for intelligence work in Britain,4 and this suggestion was taken up with some success in 1916. The scheme was executed by reserve officer Karl Wünnenberg alias Charles Wunnenberg alias ‘Robert Davis’, and the journalist Albert A. Sander. Wünnenberg, a reserve naval lieutenant, had lived in New York since about 1900.5 Sander wrote for various Hearst newspapers.6 After the outbreak of war, ‘N’ instructed the pair to set up an office in New York City and carry out sabotage and intelligence operations in Britain as well as in the United States.7 To provide them with a suitable cover, Sander was promoted to manager of the Central Powers War Film Exchange and Wünnenberg became his associate. Unlike other agents in America, they maintained no links with German officials in the United States, but were instead subordinated to the KNSt Antwerp. In 1915, Wünnenberg was ordered to attend classes at the Antwerp spy school. There he received a codename (A13) and was instructed in the use of secret ink, recruitment methods, and the kind of intelligence he was to provide. Antwerp issued him two cover addresses and sent him back to New York with instructions to enlist American journalists for intelligence missions to the United Kingdom.8 Subsequently, Wünnenberg and Sander recruited several agents, among them the journalists George Vaux Bacon (A58), Rutledge Rutherford (A30 or A20), J.C. Roodhardt (A93), Charles E. Hastings, Peter J. Cribben, George Born and Roslyn Whytock. Each was paid up to $1,000 in advance and promised another

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$125 per week, a considerable amount of money, reflecting the importance the Germans attached to the venture. The journalists were to report on the arrival and departure of merchant ships to and from the British Isles, locate anti-aircraft gun bases and ascertain the location of the shore anchorages of transatlantic cables. Likewise, they were to plant anti-British articles in American newspapers. Rutledge Rutherford landed in England on 3 April 1916 and left on 19 April for Holland, where he remained for about a year. He supplied a socialist American journalist, Charles Edward Russell, with news from Ireland, and the latter published a lengthy article on the British suppression of the Irish uprising. Rutherford produced several anti-British articles for American papers, among them the New York American. Antwerp was full of praise for Rutherford’s work.9 Meanwhile, George Vaux Bacon arrived in Liverpool in early September. He had found employment with the Central Press Association and, under this cover, gathered intelligence for the Germans in London. His contact on the Continent was Arthur Denis Meisner (A82), a retired German lieutenant turned tobacco broker in Amsterdam. Unfortunately for Bacon and Antwerp, Meisner had been on MI5’s blacklist since June 1916 and his mail was under check. When Bacon left Britain and arrived in Holland on 22 September, MI5 asked Tinsley to monitor the American journalist, and Tinsley’s men observed Bacon at a meeting with American journalists Peter Cribben and Rutledge Rutherford. Despite this clear evidence, Kell’s unit almost bungled the operation. Major Carter of MI5, who dealt with Bacon’s intercepted letter, did not forward it to the addressee, Meisner. Consequently, Bacon and his German spymasters realized that the letter had been intercepted. In addition, one of Tinsley’s agents approached Bacon ‘somewhat clumsily’, as the MI5 historical reports put it, thus strengthening Bacon’s suspicions that the British were on his track. However, rather than keeping Bacon out of Britain, Antwerp merely substituted Bacon’s compromised cover address of Meisner with Rutherford’s equally compromised address. Eluding Tinsley and his henchmen, Bacon returned to Britain in November, but he was soon rediscovered through mail interception. Following two weeks in Ireland, where he contacted a Sinn Feiner, he returned to London and found a letter from Basil Thomson requesting his appearance for an interview at New Scotland Yard. On 9 December, Thomson interrogated him, and Bacon admitted his connection with Meisner. While Bacon was detained, the British authorities ordered a search of his belongings, which produced a bottle of Argyrol, a new type of secret ink, and letters from Rutherford as well as the cover addresses of Meisner and

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W. van der Kolk. Only two days later another of Sander’s and Wünnenberg’s recruits, Roslyn Whytock, turned up at Thomson’s office and confessed all he knew about his employers. Whytock delivered the names of Charles E. Hastings, Alfred Schultze, and Wilhelm Dunell (A77), and confirmed that the German consul in Rotterdam was playing an active role in German intelligence operations. However, except for Bacon and Whytock, all members of the ‘Antwerp ring’ were currently in the Netherlands and none of them was likely to cross the Channel after Bacon’s arrest. Although Bacon made a full confession on 9 February, he was tried by court martial and sentenced on 26 February 1917 to death by firing squad. Only his citizenship and inside knowledge of German covert operations in the United States saved his skin. With America’s entry into the war now a distinct possibility, Whitehall was especially keen to forward evidence on German clandestine activities operations on American territory to Washington. The British authorities relayed Bacon’s confession to their American counterparts, who immediately arrested Sander and Wünnenberg.10 However, US officials were aware that Bacon’s active cooperation, rather than merely his written confession, was needed to indict the pair. Consequently, Washington persuaded London to commute Bacon’s death sentence into one of penal servitude for life and send him to the United States to give evidence against his spymasters. 11 In March, a New York court indicted Bacon, along with Sander and Wünnenberg. A search of Sander’s house had provided some incriminating evidence, but it was Bacon’s full confession that sealed their fate. Sander and Wünnenberg received sentences of two years’ penal servitude in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta and were fined $2,500 each. Bacon reaped the full reward for his cooperation. Rather than being shot in Britain, the New York court sentenced him to one year of penal servitude, with Judge Van Vleet lamenting that ‘he disliked very much to send such a bright young man to the penitentiary’. In addition, Bacon was to pay the symbolic fine of $1. Bacon’s sentence persuaded Hastings in the Netherlands to accompany a US emissary to Scotland Yard where Thomson interrogated him. Like Bacon, Hastings was then sentenced by a New York court to one year’s penal servitude and fined $1. 12 Rutledge Rutherford, who was more deeply compromised than Hastings, chose to stick with his German spymasters. They sent him to Stockholm and thence to Hamburg, where he found employment with the Continental Times, a propaganda sheet sponsored by the German Foreign Office. 13 Heinrich Grund (A1) forwarded Rutherford’s private correspondence to the United States. An attempt by the Germans to send Rutherford to

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Switzerland failed as the Swiss legation would not grant him a passport. His trace then peters out. He probably stayed hidden in Germany until the war was over and then returned clandestinely to the United States. 14 Antwerp continued to make use of journalists in the Netherlands, but overall the scheme lost its significance after America’s declaration of war.15

The last German spies With America’s entry into war, German naval intelligence’s ambit became extremely restricted. From 1917, the Imperial Navy was chiefly concerned with the conduct and impact of unrestricted submarine warfare. The Admiralstab tried to use its agents to gather intelligence on the departure, route, and arrival of Allied convoys, albeit to little avail. The few remaining German spies in Britain could do little more than report the fact that the submarine campaign had failed to suppress British trade. As a German naval agent reported dejectedly from England in October 1917: Secret! Impact of unrestricted U-boat war. Inexperienced, but apparently reliable W 97a reports from London dating 1 October: . . . A stroll through London stores would not be pleasant for a German. Harrods, Whiteley’s, Fortnum’s, Billingsgate, Smithfields and Convent Garden, photographed with their stock of food, would make great publicity for the large amounts of food England has at her disposal.16 In September 1918, the Chief of the Admiralstab, Admiral Scheer, candidly acknowledged the failure of naval intelligence to provide the submarines with more accurate data on Allied shipping: ‘Our intelligence regarding convoy routes is rather inexact and incomplete.’ Scheer added that the morale of German naval agents was at a nadir, and he vainly encouraged the commanders of the submarine fleet to report any success achieved through naval intelligence to uplift his operatives’ mood. 17 By mid-1918, ‘N’ had largely discontinued its operations in England, and on 11 November, the day of the armistice, the Germans maintained but a single agent (W29) in Great Britain.18 Following the armistice, ‘N’ was quickly wound up. August Lassen, director of ‘NIV’, feared that the Allies might send fact-finding committees to Berlin and commandeer the department’s files. He also dreaded that revolutionaries (dunkle Elemente, literally, ‘dark elements’) might storm the Admiralstab building and capture and publish ‘N’s files. Apparently,

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he was thinking of events the previous year in Russia where the Bolshevik revolutionaries had scoured the Tsarist archives and published numerous secret documents. Lassen begged his superior, Naval Captain Ebert, to order the destruction of all incriminating material. Ebert complied, and Lassen got to work with some of his men.19 The surviving files show that Lassen was primarily concerned with the destruction of the records of his own department, the sabotage division ‘NIV’. He might have felt that these were particularly worthy of destruction, or perhaps he wished to protect the department’s agents. He may have feared that the files implicated him and was trying to save his own skin. The Admiralstab and its naval intelligence department did not survive the armistice for long. On 14 November 1918, Admiral Scheer resigned, and the following day the Naval Office assumed control of the Admiralstab. On 15 July 1919, Friedrich Ebert, President of the new German republic, dissolved the Admiralstab and its intelligence department. 20 At the end of the war, several individuals convicted of espionage on behalf of Germany still languished in British prisons, and in 1920 and 1921 the new Director of Military Intelligence, William Thwaites, reviewed most of the cases with a view to possibly reducing prison terms. Just as the nationality of an individual accused of espionage for Germany had played a major role in determining the severity of a sentence during the war, citizenship now played a crucial role in Thwaites’ decision to recommend for or against remission. Throughout the war, an accused spy could expect little mercy if he held a German passport, but after the armistice German citizenship might come in handy, as the British authorities were more likely to sympathize with a spy who had acted out of patriotism, as the following cases illustrate. Louise Mathilde Smith, née Zastrow, was a German who had married an Englishman and thus acquired British citizenship. Yet on account of her German roots, her mail was being intercepted, and MI5 discovered that she was sending newspaper clippings to her family in Germany. She was interviewed at Scotland Yard, and on 4 March 1917 a civil court convicted her to ten years’ penal servitude.21 When reviewing her case in 1920, Thwaites described her as ‘A German born woman, who married a British subject in 1913, and who is to all intents and purposes a German subject (her husband died in March, 1917)’. He concluded that she had forwarded information to Germany out of patriotism, and he recommended her immediate release on the condition that she return to Germany. 22 Non-Germans could expect less leniency once the war was over. Franz Lausitz Theodore Greite had been sentenced to ten years in prison

Decline of German Naval Intelligence, 1917–1919

141

for espionage on behalf of Germany in 1916. His guilt proven beyond doubt, Greite probably avoided a harsher punishment on account of his US passport. However, when Greite asked for a pardon in 1920, Thwaites informed him that no remission would be made as his sentence was already rather lenient, and that he was lucky not to have received capital punishment in the first place. 23 German spies who had been protected from the firing squad by Allied citizenship during the war, incurred Britain’s full wrath for their ‘betrayal’ after the armistice, as is evident in the case of the Belgian Leon Francis van der Goten, who was sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage in 1917.24 Although van der Goten had never been a genuine German spy, he was shown no mercy after the war. Thwaites had only scorn for van der Goten and ignored pleas from his family and the Belgian ambassador: ‘There is no doubt that this man ought to have been shot and but for the intervention of the Belgian Government at the time he would have been shot.’25 To Thwaites, van der Goten remained ‘A traitor to the Allied cause, who deserves no consideration

Illustration 7

Louise Emily Wertheim, c. 1918

Source: Leonard Sellers: Shot in the Tower: The Story of the Spies Executed in the Tower of London during the First World War (London: Leo Cooper, 1997).

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Spies of the Kaiser

whatsoever’. 26 The British Foreign Office informed the Belgian ambassador ‘that the conduct of Van der Goten, an ally, constituted a very heinous form of espionage’ and that no remission would be made.27 Finally, there was Louise Emily Wertheim, a German woman and a spy (see Ill. 7). She had avoided the death penalty in 1915 on account of her gender, while her accomplice, Reginald Rowland alias Georg Traugott Breeckow was executed. Wertheim’s sentence had been reduced to ten years with expected further remission after the war. After all, she had not been a traitor, but a patriot, at least according to the prevailing logic of the time. Yet despite the remarkable leniency the British authorities displayed towards her, she paid the ultimate price for being a German spy. In January 1918, she was certified insane and transferred to Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum. There, she retreated into her own world, claiming to be an important person in contact with consuls and legislations, and that nobody could leave England without her signature. Her physical health deteriorated rapidly. She developed severe eczema and pulmonary tuberculosis, of which she died on 29 July 1920, aged thirty-six years.28

Conclusion

The history of German espionage in Great Britain during the First World War era reveals a curious double failure: the incapacity of ‘N’ to make a significant contribution to the German war effort and the inability of British counter-espionage to produce a realistic assessment of German espionage. It would be tempting to attribute the failure of German espionage to British countermeasures. However, the incapability of both the German and the British intelligence communities to fulfil their respective tasks was due far more to inherent deficiencies than to the activities of an enemy service. Unlike the fairly independent British intelligence community, ‘N’ was firmly integrated into the structure of the Imperial Navy, and the overall failure of German naval intelligence to contribute in any measure to the German war effort derives in large part from this fact. ‘N’ had to gather intelligence according to the Admiralstab’s operations plans, but the latter were continuously in flux. While originally the Admiralstab demanded intelligence on the disposition of foreign warships around the globe, after 1911 German naval planners focused increasingly on the Northern Sea and the British Isles. At the outbreak of war, the Admiralstab considered a decisive surface battle between Imperial and Royal Navy likely, and instructed ‘N’ accordingly. But from 1915 the submarine replaced the surface fleet as Germany’s most promising naval weapon, and ‘N’ had to redefine its mission once again. Unlike the army’s intelligence service, ‘N’ had to keep adjusting to the navy’s ever-changing operations plans, which made long-term intelligence-gathering difficult. Moreover, ‘N’ generally competed with rather than complemented the activities of the army’s intelligence service, Sektion IIIb. The two services shared little information; while ‘N’ focused on naval intelligence in Britain, IIIb limited its activities to collecting military intelligence in France and 143

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Spies of the Kaiser

Russia. Consequently, neither of the two services felt fully responsible for the monitoring of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), which crossed the Channel virtually without being noticed in August 1914, presenting the advancing German armies in Belgium and France with an unpleasant surprise. ‘N’ also committed a series of tactical errors. Especially prior to the war, agents were recruited clumsily and unprofessionally, occasionally straight out of prison. Moreover, the German naval attaché could never be induced to participate wholeheartedly in intelligence work. And Gustav Steinhauer, the man in charge of much of Germany’s pre-war espionage in Great Britain, was a capable operative but made a poor spymaster. Finally, German agents never entirely resolved the problem of conveying intelligence securely and quickly to headquarters in Berlin. Given that Britain was an island with a limited number of exit and entry points, and that German agents had to rely on telegram and mail for communications with their spymasters, this was perhaps an insoluble problem at the time.1 ‘N’ would have failed regardless of the existence or nonexistence of MI5. The majority of German wartime agents were never caught, but their successful intelligence missions in no way helped the Admiralstab meet the challenge of overwhelming British naval superiority. Occasionally, German secret service members lamented Britain’s ‘draconian’ counterespionage measures,2 but such observations were more often than not defensive lies to disguise their own impotence. German intelligence found it convenient to blame its failure on the enemy. Comments in this regard must also be juxtaposed with remarks to the opposite effect; in December 1914, for instance, a German agent reported that British intelligence was ‘utterly primitive’.3 If ‘N’ at no point really threatened British security, the spectre of German espionage had a significant impact on the evolution of the British intelligence community. Many secret service members took the spy scare quite seriously. Vernon Kell, in particular, never abandoned his original notion of far-reaching German plots that needed to be uprooted. Although – or perhaps because – Kell’s unit never determined how limited the objectives of ‘N’ really were, the ‘German threat’ became a defining moment in the history of MI5. The department’s failure to produce a realistic assessment of German intelligence derived largely from the fact that the Secret Service Bureau (SSB) had been established to counter a perceived German threat, not a real one. Kell never endeavoured to investigate what German intelligence was really up to, but rather looked for evidence to confirm his idée fixe of large-scale German conspiracies. His preconceptions led him to tour

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the Scottish coast to detect potential beachheads for a German invasion force, and to focus obsessively on the German colony in Britain although the latter posed no threat at all to the country. And he not only credited former spy Karl Armgaard Graves’ fairy tales about German machinations in Britain because they tallied with his own views, Kell also liberated the convict, supplied him with funds and even procured him a job with the Counter-Espionage Bureau. Overall, one may wonder if Kell’s agency did not do more to obscure rather than illuminate the scope and intentions of German intelligence. As one historian points out, the police and Scotland Yard took a much more sober approach towards this issue and, if in charge, might have produced a more realistic assessment of enemy espionage than Kell’s department did.4 In view of the failures of both German naval intelligence and British counter-espionage, it is difficult to credit either MI5 or ‘N’ with a significant contribution to the war. Rather, it appears that the actions of neither service made much of a difference. In the final analysis, German naval intelligence and British counter-espionage were working not against, but next to each other; the Germans against insurmountable obstacles, the British against a fictitious threat. If intelligence largely failed to affect the outcome of the Anglo-German struggle in the era of the First World War, the existence and operations of the secret services were not without consequences. Imperial Germany’s naval build-up, of which ‘N’ was an integral part, and British paranoia over German espionage contributed significantly to the deterioration of relations between London and Berlin before 1914. Captured German agents became a valuable propaganda tool for Whitehall after August 1914. And the war itself revealed dark and destructive sides of both German intelligence and British counter-espionage, with implications reaching beyond the realm of the secret services proper. Neither ‘N’ nor IIIb incorporated political aspects into their decisionmaking process. Army and navy were solely interested in the obstruction of the enemy’s war effort, in damaging their trade and cutting their supply lines. Hence, the German secret services launched several sabotage operations against Allied merchant vessels and waged biological warfare against livestock destined for enemy countries. As the Germans usually operated from neutral countries, their actions were a blatant breach of international law, as Allied propagandists were quick to point out when some of the plots were uncovered. From a military perspective, Germany’s underhanded warfare was hardly more than a pinprick at Allied material superiority, but the more German sabotage missions were exposed, the more international public opinion condemned the German cause.

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Spies of the Kaiser

In Great Britain, Kell’s continued obsession with far-fetched German plots was an important contributing factor in the government’s decision to round up and intern much of the sizeable and thriving German colony. Even before the war, Kell was inclined to equate German citizens residing in England with spies, and after August 1914, he repeatedly urged the Home Office to intern all male enemy aliens as potential or actual enemy agents. Neither were the British secret services above bending or breaking the law, which they were supposed to protect, as evidenced by Kell’s illegal handling of the pre-war cases of Karl Armgaard Graves and Karl Hentschel and the framing of Leon Francis van der Goten in 1917. Given the independent nature of the British intelligence community, the services were never held accountable for their actions. The end of the First World War influenced the German and British intelligence communities in very different ways. Imperial Germany’s bid to become a major naval power had been rejected for good, and henceforth the country reverted to a continental policy. In 1919, the interned German fleet was scuttled off Scapa Flow, and in the same year ‘N’ was disbanded. The German intelligence community then evolved on the basis of the army’s intelligence service, to which the remnants of ‘N’ were later attached. One former member of Imperial Germany’s naval intelligence service, Wilhelm Canaris, became director of the new intelligence service, the Abwehr, in 1935. His involvement in a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler led to Canaris’ arrest, torture and hanging in April 1945, just a few weeks before the end of the Second World War. After the war, the modern German intelligence community emerged. Drawing partly on the structure and staff of Germany’s former military intelligence service, and under US auspices, the BND, or federal intelligence service, was established in 1956. Very little links ‘N’ with the BND, a civilian agency under direct supervision of the Chancellor’s Office, and by law the sole German secret service permitted to gather intelligence outside German territory. The BND is essentially a product of the Federal Republic of Germany’s Cold War history. 5 The many ruptures in the institutional history of the German intelligence community are largely absent in the evolution of its British counterpart. Founded in 1909, MI5 and MI6 still operate today, with essentially the same tasks, counter-espionage within the United Kingdom for MI5 and intelligence gathering abroad for MI6. Even the directors of each service are still referred to as ‘K’, originally the initial used by MI5’s Vernon Kell, and ‘C’, the initial of MI6’s Mansfield Cumming. As German espionage had never posed a serious threat to British security, Kell could afford to base his work on preconceptions, not on

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facts, without endangering his country. The institutional continuity of the British intelligence community, however, meant that the services would change their modus operandi only gradually. Their work not being seriously evaluated in the interwar period, MI5 continued to operate along pre-war lines even after the First World War. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Kell was still running MI5, and he was still concerned with plotting enemy aliens and other unlikely German schemes. However, by this time the German threat was of a much more formidable nature than three decades earlier. Nazi Germany challenged the existing world order in far more fundamental ways than Imperial Germany, and the Führer would tolerate British mistakes to a much lesser extent than the Kaiser. When Winston Churchill assumed the prime ministership, he realized at once that Kell’s handling of counter-espionage posed a great risk to Britain’s security and sacked the director of MI5 on 10 June 1940, after a tour of duty of thirty-one years.6 Kell died two years later, in 1942, at the height of the Second World War. The history of German espionage in Great Britain in the early twentieth century is not a success story, but one of shortcomings, bungling, and dubious methods on both sides of the Northern Sea. Yet it provides important lessons for a world in which real and chimerical threats are, once again, difficult to distinguish from one another. Today, few people will deny the necessity for smoothly functioning intelligence services. At the same time, democratic societies must ensure that their services are accountable, that they work efficiently, and that they operate on the basis of realistic rather than imagined scenarios. Likewise, the intelligence community must remain integrated into the larger political decisionmaking process rather than work in isolation for departmental interests. While competent intelligence services will help thwart potential threats, an agency gone astray will not only fail to do this, but may even compromise the values of the society it was created to protect.

Appendix 1 Command Structure of German Naval Intelligence, 1911–1914 The Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II

Secretary of the Naval Office

Chief of the Admiralstab

Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz

Admiral Hugo von Pohl

Naval Attaché London Lieutenant Commander Wilhelm Widenmann (1907–1912) Lieutenant Commander Erich von Müller (1912–1914)

Director of Naval Intelligence Department (‘N’) Naval Captain Arthur Tapken (1901–1914) Frigate Captain Walther Isendahl (1914–1918)

Director of Subdivision ‘NI’ Commander Fritz Prieger

Attached to Admiralstab on Special Duty

Secretary to ‘N’ Naval Lieutenant Georg Stammer

Police Officer Gustav Steinhauer

Naval Agents (BEs, VMs) Worldwide Intermediaries in Great Britain Wilhelm Croner or Kronauer, Karl Gustav Ernst, August Wilhelm Julius Klunder, Otto Krüger, Gustav Neumann, Adolf Schneider, Heinrich Schütte

Naval agents in Great Britain Paul Brodtmann or Brockmann (later IIIb), Johann Engel, Karl Armgaard Graves, Heinrich Grosse, Lina and Max Heine, Paul Hentschel, Frederick Ireland, Karl Franz Joseph alias Charles Francis Bubenheim, Wilhelm Klare, Charles Parrott, Walter Riemann, Alberto Celso Rodriguez, Max Schultz, Stielow, Izzel ben Aladdin, Ottoman Naval Officers Ahmed Nedjib and Frederick Schroeder alias Gould

Illustration 8 Flow chart showing command structure of German Naval Intelligence 148

Appendix 2 Statistical Evidence on German Espionage and British Counter-Espionage during the First World War 25

Number of German spies

20

15

10

5

Au

g

19

14 O c Fe D t b ec 19 15 Ap Ju r ne Au g O Fe D ct b ec 19 16 Ap r Ju il ne Au g O c Fe D t b ec 19 1 Ap 7 r Ju il ne Au g O ct Fe D b ec 19 1 Ap 8 r Ju il ne Au g O ct

0

Total number of German spies operating in Great Britain Captured by British authorities

Released for lack of evidence

Illustration 9 Number of spies and capture/release statistics, August 1914– October 1918

149

Appendix 3 Synopsis of German Naval Agents in the First World War

Agent and alias(es)

Brief description of activities

A1 A2 A3 A7 A13 A15

See Grund, Heinrich. See Schroeder, C. See Calkoen, Jonkheer Johan Jakob. See Greite, Franz Lausitz Theodore. See Wünnenberg, Karl. Naval agent, reporting from Great Britain on AngloRussian Commission in May 1917. See Ritzkey, Carl. See Gleichmann, Emil. See van Balen, Willem. Naval agent, reporting from Amsterdam in December 1916. See Vieyra, Leopold. See van Graff. Dutch (?), employee of De Telegraaf, present at David Lloyd George’s speech on 19 December 1916. Naval agent, reporting from Holland in June 1917. See Bacon, George Vaux. Dutch ship expert, reporting from Holland in December 1916. See Flores, Heinrich. See Dunell, Wilhelm. See Meisner, Arthur Denis. Naval agent, reporting from Holland about conversation with an English journalist in January. In May 1918, reported on conversation with Wood, secretary of British consulate at Rotterdam. See Roodhardt, J.C. See Pass, Adolph. See Mahler, Georg Henri. See Müller, Carl Friedrich. Naval agent, on missions to London, Folkestone and Portsmouth throughout 1915. Sailor, working for ship line connecting Continent and England in October 1915.

A19 A21 A29 A34 A35 A42 A49 A57 A58 A63 A68 A77 A82 A87

A93 A103 A107 AE111 AE115 AE123

150

German Naval Agents AE128 AE129 AE134 AE146 Ahrens, Paul H. alias Otto C. Storbeck Albanians, two anonymous Ayllonrivas, Antonio Bacon, George Vaux alias A58

van Balen or Baalen, Willem alias A29 Ballin, anonymous contact of HAL director Albert Ballin Bekker or Bekkers Berg

Black alias Kopreko

Boehm or Böhm, First Lieutenant Hans alias Joseph D. Noerndle alias Jelks Leroy Thrasher

Born, George

151

Naval agent, reporting from London in July 1915 on recruitment of volunteers. Dockyard worker in Denmark, reporting to ‘N’ in October 1915. Dutch precision mechanic. Employed by Wolseley Company in October 1915. English journalist resident in Holland, reporting in October 1915. German–American, employed by ‘NI’. Undertook two reconnaissance voyages to Britain in October 1914 and in May 1915. Two Albanians, recruited by German consul Tjaben in Rumania. Supposed to undertake reconnaissance voyage to Britain in the summer of 1915. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. American journalist, reported on behalf of ‘N’ for Central Press Agency from England to Rutledge Rutherford and others in Holland. Arrested and court-martialled in February 1917, sentenced to death. On request of US government extradited to the United States, where he was tried and convicted to one year’s penal servitude. Naval or military agent, probably Dutch, employed by Antwerp in 1915. Acquaintance of Emil Brugman. An anonymous contact of Albert Ballin, forwarded a report to the latter about an espionage mission to Britain early in 1916. Ballin sent the report to the German government. Undertook reconnaissance mission for Antwerp to Liverpool in August 1915. Naval agent in Scandinavia. Upon arrest in the summer of 1917 betrayed all confidential material to the local authorities in Denmark. Naval agent, employed by Antwerp, undertook at least one voyage to Britain prior to December 1914. Then deactivated because ‘N’ suspected that his identity had been exposed. German engaged in sabotage in the United States in 1914. Early in 1915, in Ireland to promote unrest. In March on intelligence mission to Scotland on behalf of ‘N’. In April 1915, declared his inability to go on another mission to Britain, but in January 1917 arrested and interned there, after the war repatriated. Recruited William Mac Cully and Anthony J. Brogan. American journalist, working for Wünnenberg and Sander.

152

Appendix 3

Bosch, Exequiel Boulan, C. de Bournonville, Eva

den Braber, Cornelius Marinus

Brandes, Gertrude Elizabeth Sophia

Brandt, Dr

van Brandwijk, Jan alias A51 Braun, Kapitän

Breeckow, Georg Traugott alias Reginald Rowland alias George Parker Brodersen, J.

Brogan, Anthony J. alias Kelly

Brugman, Emil alias A32

Bruns

Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. Naval agent, possibly arrested in England in July 1915 and subsequently released. Naval agent, born Dane, naturalized Swede. Worked at Danish Legation in London from August to November 1915. Arrested, sentenced to death, sentence commuted to life imprisonment. Naval agent, probably hired by Hilmar Dierks. Dutch seaman, travelled to England in June 1915, arrested and released due to lack of evidence in same month. Private Secretary to Lady Baroness von Schröder. Knew Heddy Glauer (Grosse) in 1912 and hosted Louise Emily Wertheim in 1915. Herself probably not employed by ‘N’. German, PhD in economics. Recruited agents, until December 1914 for IIIb, then for ‘N’ in Holland. Collaborated with Hilmar Dierks in recruiting Louise Emily Wertheim and Jacob Dirkszwager in 1914 and 1915. Dutch casual labourer, served as cover address (‘Brandwijk & Co.’) for naval agents in Britain in 1915. Possibly involved in exposing Hilmar Dierks. Employed by Consul Gneist in Rotterdam for ‘N’, but also recruiting, in competition with ‘N’, for another department in Berlin. Was exposed in 1915 when one of Gneist’s agents lost documents on German intelligence system. German piano dealer, acquired US citizenship. Naval agent for Antwerp, came to England in May 1915, worked together with Louise Emily Wertheim. Arrested in June, executed in October 1915. Swede, in October 1914 offered to go on espionage mission to England, and probably did so shortly afterwards. Irish businessman, recruited by Hans Boehm in New York. From March until June 1915 in Scotland to recruit Irishmen for ‘N’. Then coordinating German sabotage in Britain from Lisbon and Madrid. In contact with Roger Casement. Dutch chemical engineer. Employed by Antwerp. Travelled to England in October 1915, obtained interview with and pass of Minister of Munitions, Lord Moulton. In May 1916 arrested, but due to lack of evidence released. Naval agent, possibly arrested in Britain in July 1915.

German Naval Agents Buer Burhorn alias Charles Morton

Bushman, Fernando or Ferdinand Buschmann

Cadmus, Henry R. alias Gentz alias Edward

Calkoen, Jonkheer Johan Jakob alias A3 Cléton, Mrs N.M. Cornehlsen, Otto alias Kolker Cribben, Peter Cursach, Juan Curtis Daelen, Paul E. alias P.E. Parker alias Lambrecht alias William Kottkamp

Dane, anonymous

Davis, Robert Dierks, Hilmar, NCO alias Sanderson or Saunderson

153

Naval agent, Armenian. In July 1915 sent to England on intelligence mission for Antwerp. German–American, end of December 1914 sent to United States by ‘N’ to obtain passport and recruit naval agents. Finally dismissed by Ambassador Johann Bernstorff in Washington, DC due to exaggerated financial demands. Brazilian of German origin, naval agent, possibly recruited by Hilmar Dierks or Heinrich Flores. Travelled to England in April 1915, arrested in June and executed in October. Argentinean businessman, recruited by ‘N’ through Dr Max Salomon. On intelligence mission in Britain September to November 1914. Had an acquaintance in War Office. In London in contact with Hugo Gramatzki. Finally dismissed by Prieger due to exaggerated financial demands. Dutch cocoa nut trader, reported from London to Antwerp from May until June 1915. Cover name used by Hilmar Dierks’ wife while he was in Dutch custody. German saboteur in England and Norway in 1917. American journalist, working for Wünnenberg and Sander. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. Naval agent, reported to ‘N’ from London in May 1915. German–American, captain, former Norddeutscher Lloyd employee. Employed by Prieger and subsequently by Wesel, on several missions to Britain: September–October 1914, December– January 1915, April–May 1915. In March, in New York. In the same month awarded the Iron Cross, second class. In 1916–1917, organizing espionage from Amsterdam. Unnamed Danish skipper of the German steamboat Septima. Sent to England on behalf of ‘N’ by Lieutenant Commander Kaiser in Rotterdam. See Wünnenberg, Karl. On Western front in opening campaign. Instructed by Wesel to go on intelligence mission to England in October 1914, but failed. In December 1914 in Denmark for ‘N’. Then as recruiter for ‘N’ in The Hague. Involved in numerous recruitments in the Netherlands. In June or July 1915 arrested by Dutch authorities. In September 1915 free again, but transferred to another German intelligence branch.

154

Appendix 3

Dirkzwager, Dirkswager or Dirkszwanger, Jacob

Dittmar, brothers Adolphe, Charles, Otto, Friedrich Drilsma Dunbar, Frigate Captain Frederick alias William Guilden

Dunell, Wilhelm alias Thuringen alias A77 Duurloo, Francis Al. Earle, Martha, née Baroness von Bothmer Edwin, Edward

Egelis, A.P. Elve (cover name) Eugling, Franz Failde Filchner, Dr Wilhelm

Flores, Heinrich alias A68

Funke de Garden, Mrs C. Gleichmann, Emil alias A21 von der Goltz, Horst alias Bridgeman Taylor alias Franz Wachendorf

Dutch, naval agent, recruited by Dr Brandt. Succeeded in being employed by British consulate in Netherlands. Arrested by Dutch authorities in September 1916, but in October 1917 back on duty. Belgian or German, came to England after outbreak of war for ‘N’ or IIIb. Arrested in January 1915, then released. Dutch, naval agent. For ‘N’ on intelligence mission to England in July 1915. German–American, naval officer, scion of the British Dunbar family and son of an American mother. In October 1914, on intelligence mission to Scotland for ‘N’. Quickly arrested and interned in February 1915. Dutch, in December 1916 mission to England. In October 1917 reported on conversation with Eduard Carl Fimmen, leader of Dutch Socialists. Black Dane from Virgin Islands, sent to Britain by ‘N’ in December 1914. German, married to Englishman, residing in Bristol. In May 1918, arrested for communicating with enemy and sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment. Swedish masseur, arrested for espionage in August 1915 and sentenced to seven days’ hard labour. Then left Britain. Naval agent, sent on a mission to Britain by Antwerp in July 1915. Naval agent, sent to London in March 1915. German–American, sent on intelligence mission to Hull by ‘NI’ in September 1914. Spaniard, sub-agent of Wilhelm Rehder in England. German explorer, served as army officer on the Western front. In 1916, director of the marine interrogation service in Bergen, Norway. German teacher of languages in Rotterdam. Worked for Wesel and Hilmar Dierks whom he assisted in recruiting agents. Before or in April 1915 dismissed by Freyer. Naval agent, undertook intelligence mission to London, Leith, Folkestone in August 1914. Naval agent, employed by Antwerp. Naval agent, captain of the mercantile marine, name found on Antwerp list. German mercenary in Francisco ‘Pancho’ Villa’s army in Mexican civil war. After August 1914 involved in sabotage in United States and Britain. Arrested in Britain in November 1914. In November 1916 extradited to United States and interned for duration of war.

German Naval Agents van der Goten, Leon Francis

van Graff alias A42 Gramatzki, Hugo

Greite, Franz Lausitz Theodore alias A7

Grund, Heinrich alias A1

Guell, Mario alias Guell y Lynch

Guerrero, Adolfo alias Guantas

H21 Hagn, Alfred

Hahn, John

Hardenberg

Harmer

155

Belgian, sought employment with German secret service, but was framed by Allies. Arrested on arrival to Hull in June 1917. Sentenced to death, then life imprisonment. Name discovered on Antwerp list. German engineer, born in Assam, India. On two missions to Britain on behalf of ‘N’, August– November 1914 and January–March 1915. Recommended for the Iron Cross, second class, by Chief of Admiralty Staff. In August 1917, in Norway sentenced to nine months’ penal servitude for espionage. German–American, employed by Antwerp. Sent to United States (Karl Boy-Ed) in August 1915, then on espionage mission to France and Britain. Arrested in March 1916 and convicted to ten years’ penal servitude in July 1916. German, resident in Antwerp before war, employed by ‘N’ to place agents on ships to Britain. In 1916 moved to Utrecht. Recruited Alfredo Buschmann and Augusto Roggen. Spaniard, triple agent for French, British and German service (Antwerp). Arrested by Scotland Yard in January 1917, released to Spain under pressure of Spanish government. Spaniard, naval agent, recruited by German naval attaché von Krohn in Madrid. Landed in England in February 1916, arrested in same month and tried in July. Sentenced to death, commuted to ten years’ imprisonment. Was promised £50 for every ship sunk due to his reports. See Zelle, Margarete Gertrud. Norwegian, naval agent, came to Britain in October 1916 and in April 1917. Arrested, tried in August, sentenced to death, commuted into life imprisonment. In 1919, released due to bad health. British citizen of German descent, subagent of Karl Friedrich Müller. Arrested in February 1915, tried and sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude in July 1915. Naval agent, employed by Wesel. Instructed to travel to England from Holland, but failed. Showed up at Karl Boy-Ed’s office in New York in March 1915. Eventually dismissed. English journalist, working for ‘N’ before and after outbreak of war.

156

Appendix 3

Harmsworth

Hastings, Charles E.

Harthern

Heineken, Philipp

Heldenbergh, Maurice Hensel, Paul alias Irving Guy Ries Herbert, Louise

Herrmann, Fred

Herz or Hertz, Peter alias Hecht

Higgs, May

Hockenholz

Import (cover name)

English journalist, employed by British service. Then offered his services to Colonel Ostertag at Rotterdam, and was subsequently employed by IIIb. In February 1915, on intelligence mission to England. American, communicated with George Vaux Bacon from Holland. Interrogated at Scotland Yard in March 1917, sent to United States, sentenced to one year’s penal servitude German, correspondent of the Frankfurter Zeitung in Norway, arrested for espionage by Norwegian police in 1917. Dutch, employee of Norddeutscher Lloyd. On two intelligence missions to Britain for ‘N’, September and October 1914. In December barred from entering the country because listed as ‘undesirable alien’. In May 1915, again sent to Britain. Communicated through Mrs Hilde Wilhelmi and recruited Bruno Jablonsky for ‘N’. In contact with Sir Roger Casement. Belgian, naval agent for Antwerp. German–American, employed by Wesel. Arrived in England in July 1915, arrested in August, courtmartialled and executed. German woman married to an Englishman. Sentenced to six months’ penal servitude for communicating with Germans via Switzerland. American, recruited by Daelen. Came together with him to England in February 1915. Second mission to England launched from United States and supplied with funds by Karl Boy-Ed in October 1915. Possibly involved in sabotage at Black Tom pier in United States in 1916. Director of German School in Rotterdam where Flores taught. Recruited as VM by Gneist for Wesel. Successor of Ludwig Schnitzer. Under cover of Hecht Co. in contact with Jannings. British, a minor, sent letter to Holland offering to work for German service in July 1915. Consequently interned, then sent to a convent for rest of war. Skipper, employed by Hilmar Dierks to recruit Dutch seamen for ‘N’, among them van Zwol. Along with Dierks arrested by the Dutch authorities in June 1915. Naval agent, sent to London by Gneist in March 1915.

German Naval Agents Irace, Captain Tullio

Jablonsky, Bruno alias Heidecker Jakobsen Jänicke, Paul Jannings alias Olenschlager

Jannsen, Haicke Marinus Petrius

Jansen Jennings Jensen, Herrmann Jordan, Miguel Joseph Josofson or Josephson, Olaf alias A87 Kelly, Bryan A.

Kestein

Kinberg

Klancke

Klopfer, Georg

Knieper Koch, Adolf

157

Italian infantry captain, volunteered to travel as agent to London and instructed by Prieger to proceed in June 1916. Recruited by Heineken for ‘N’ in Britain in September 1914, betrayed by his English girlfriend, who gave away Heineken’s name. Agent of AA service in Copenhagen. Betrayed by Berg. HAL employee, recruited by ‘N’ in August 1914. Sent to Sweden, but recalled in December 1914. Probably Belgian, worked for British consulate in Flushing, in January 1915 to England, tried in vain to get employment in censorship bureau. In contact with Herz alias Hecht. Dutch, possibly introduced to ‘N’ by Wilhelm Rehder. Trained by Hilmar Dierks. Came to England in February 1915, then again in March. Arrested, court-martialled and executed. Knew Wilhelm Johannes Roos. Dutch, subagent of Wilhelm Rehder in England Engaged in sabotage for Sektion P. Directed a gang of saboteurs. Cooperated with Anthony J. Brogan. Swede, subagent of Wilhelm Rehder in England. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. Naval agent, in August 1916 in Britain. German reserve army officer, recruited agents in the Netherlands from November 1915. Irish student at Marburg university, interned at outbreak of war. Volunteered to work for Germans, sent on intelligence mission to England in January 1915. Resident of Rotterdam, subagent of Wesel and/or Antwerp. Forwarded mail from Holland to Belgium. Under cover of ‘Kestein Co.’ and ‘European Textile Co.’ acted as cover address for Paul E. Daelen. In July 1915 in connection with Hilmar Dierks exposed. Swede, introduced to ‘N’ by Adolph Nathanson. In March 1915, recruited to obtain documents and covers for naval agents in Britain. Naval agent, recruited by Hilmar Dierks. In July 1915 in Britain and possibly arrested due to Jan van Brandwijk’s betrayel. Naval agent, dismissed from service after he was observed visiting the British consul in Rotterdam in March 1915. Naval agent in Holland in September 1915. German waiter, reported to Wesel in January 1915 about sojourn in Britain.

158

Appendix 3

Koedel, Simon R.

van der Kolk, W. Koslowsky, Abraham alias Werge

Küpferle, Anton alias Anthony Copperlee

Lance Laprovida, Juan José

Lassen, Julius

Lassen, Lieutenant Commander August

Leibacher, F. Leiberich

Lent Lincoln, Trebitsch

Links, Maximilian Johann alias John Mack

Lody, Carl Hans alias Charles Inglis alias Nazi

Naval agent operating in Holland. In June 1915 in New York whence he left for intelligence mission to Britain. German cover address in Rotterdam. Norwegian Jew, introduced to Prieger by Joseph J. Bachrach. Three intelligence missions to Britain: November–December 1914, January 1915, March–April 1915. In April arrested in Hull, but released in May. German–American, served as officer on Western front in opening campaigns. Recruited by Antwerp, sent to United States where he was paid $100 by von Papen. In February 1915 came to Britain where he was arrested, sentenced to death, but committed suicide on eve of his execution. Naval agent, in October 1916 in New York. Argentinean, recruited as agent for AA service, departed to England from Buenos Aires in February 1917. Danish merchant. Recommended to German ambassador Brockdorff-Rantzau by Danish princess Harald. Recruited by AA and sent on intelligence mission to Britain. Arrested in November 1915, but eventually acquitted and released. Further missions in 1916. In February 1918 employed by British censorship in London. Naval intelligence officer, dispatched Steinhauer on his mission to Britain in July 1914. Then assigned to Antwerp. In 1916 counsellor to Chief of Admiralty Staff in Berlin. After winter 1917, head of ‘NIV’. Employed by ‘N’ in Rotterdam in 1915, served as cover address for agents in Britain. Naval agent, reporting from Scotland in March and April 1915. Possibly identical with Fred Herrmann. Naval agent, in August 1915 in New York supplied with funds by Karl Boy-Ed. Hungarian Jew, naturalized Englishman, ex-MP. Recruited by Gneist and Wesel in December 1914 and sent to England. Defected there in February 1915. Hungarian and British, interned in Berlin at beginning of war, then sent to England in October 1914 by Prieger. Later arrested in Germany as British agent. Naval officer, recruited by ‘N’ before the war. Sent on espionage mission to Scotland, caught, courtmartialled and executed. Awarded the Iron Cross, second class, posthumously.

German Naval Agents Mac Cully, William

Madsen, Emilius Mahler, Georg Henri alias A107 Manory

Marang Marks, Joseph alias Nelcz alias Multerer Marquardt, Fritz alias Frank Miller Martes Mascotte (cover name) Meisner, Arthur Denis alias A82 Melin, Ernest Waldemar

Melnitz, Curt Mergelkamp, Jan Meurling, C. Meyer, Albert

Mulder, I.A. Müller, Carl Friedrich alias AE111

Nathanson, Adolph Noktia (Friedrich Katsch)

159

American of Scottish descent. Introduced to ‘N’ by Hans Boehm. Operated in Scotland and on English west coast from March–May 1915 on behalf of ‘NI’. In October at Karl Boy-Ed’s office in New York. Dane, recruited by AA service (Brockdorff-Rantzau); possibly also employed by British service. Worked with Grund and transmitted telegraphic reports on Dutch shipping. Name discovered on Antwerp list. Sent to Portsmouth in December 1914 by Prieger. In January 1915 in New York supplied with funds by Karl Boy-Ed. Subagent of Wilhelm Rehder in England. German–American, sent to Britain by Antwerp in July 1915. Quickly arrested and interned. In December 1919 deported to Germany. In Britain on behalf of ‘NI’ from October–November 1914 to find out about air defences. In June 1917 reporting from Holland. Naval agent, in November 1915 in Britain sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. Naval agent, sent to Leith in March 1915. First lieutenant of the Landwehr (military reserve). In communication with George Vaux Bacon. Name discovered on Antwerp list. Swede, recruited by Hilmar Dierks. To England in January 1915 and between February and June 1915. Arrested in June, court-martialled and executed. German–American. Sent to Scotland by ‘NI’ (Prieger). Stayed there from May to June 1915. Dutch opera singer, was in England for Antwerp before September 1915. Swede, recruited by Brockdorff-Rantzau as agent for AA service. Danish or Germans naval agent, probably for Antwerp. Reported from London in July and August 1915. Arrested together with van Zwol. Court-martialled and executed in December 1915. Afrikaner, sent on intelligence mission to England and Scotland in January 1915 by Prieger. Russian (Baltic German). Naval agent of Antwerp, on mission to England from January–February 1915. Employed John Hahn as subagent. In February 1915 arrested, court-martialled and executed in June. German, recruited by Isendahl in March 1915 to go on an intelligence mission to England. Agent of IIIb, based in Stockholm, employed several subagents in Britain.

160

Appendix 3

O’Nell alias Key

Obericolab, Alfred Olofson, S.

Olsson, Ernst Gustav Waldemar Pandion (cover name) Pass, Adolph alias A103 de Patrocinio, José

Pendleton, Oscar Perez, Felipe Perring, Mary, née Styzczynska

Plesner, Nicolay

Plümacher Politopoulos, Andreas

Psycha, Despina Ramonsbarbi Rehder, Wilhelm

Reinwald, Hans alias Henry Paul Schill

Ries, Irving Guy

Employed by Antwerp, conducted at least one voyage to England prior to December 1914. Then deactivated due to fear that his identity might be known to British authorities. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. Swede, naval agent, employed by Wesel. Reported from Hampstead and London in December 1914 and January 1915. Convicted of espionage on behalf of Germany in April 1915. Naval agent, dispatched to Southampton in March 1915. Supply officer of the Rhenish district. Name discovered on Antwerp list. Brazilian journalist, employee of Brazilian consulate in Rotterdam. Arrested as spy in Britain in September 1917 and deported to Brazil in January 1919. American. Suspected of espionage and deported to United States in November 1916. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. German Jew, married Englishman, recruited by Ambassador Romberg in Berne in October 1916. Introduced by Despina Psycha. Until 1917 on several missions to France and Britain. Swede, possibly double agent for Wesel and British service. Conducted two missions to Britain in December 1914 and January 1915. Then dismissed. Distant relative of Fritz Prieger. Recruited for ‘N’ by Naval Attaché Möller in Buenos Aires. Greek resident in Hamburg, introduced to Prieger by Wilhelm Rehder. Recruited for intelligence mission to Scotland in May 1915. Greek journalist in Switzerland, introduced Mary Perring to German Ambassador Romberg. Argentinean, in October 1916 sent to Holland to work as agent for Antwerp. Sent to England by Prieger in October 1914 to inquire about arrival of Canadian troops. Another mission in December 1914 to enquire into loss of U8 submarine. Last mission in March–April 1915. Employed subagents Failde, Jansen, Herrmann Jensen, Maag, Pascuale Segenti. Naval agent for ‘NI’, in October 1914 on mission to inquire about air defences between Brighton and Folkestone. In December sent to Ireland. In January 1915 found employment with Vacuum Oil Co. in Liverpool, ordered to stay put for two months. See Hensel, Paul.

German Naval Agents Ritzkey, Carl alias A19 Roggen, Augusto Alfredo

Roodhardt, J.C. alias A93

Roos, Willem Johannes

Rosenberg Rosenthal, Robert alias John Salomon

Rotheudt, Pierre

von Rottweiler alias Krause

Rumanian, anonymous

Rutherford, Rutledge alias A30 or A20 de Rysbach, Kurt Herlot alias Captain Hensler Salomon, Dr Max alias Alfons Melzer alias Melwin A. Riée

161

Russian, name found on Antwerp list. Uruguayan, probably employed by Antwerp. Arrived in Tilbury in May, arrested in June, courtmartialled and executed in September. Possibly in communication with Georg Breeckow while in England. Probably recruited by Rutherford for ‘N’. Reported from Hull, Edinburgh and London for one month in 1916. Applied also to British service, dismissed from both services in 1917. Dutch, recruited through Hilmar Dierks. Knew Haicke Marinus Jannsen. Arrived in Britain in May, arrested in June, court-martialled and executed in July although certified insane. German Jew, resident in London. Served as Dr Max Salomon’s contact in September 1914. German Jew, Landsturm (army reserve). Sent on three missions to Britain by ‘N’, in November– December 1914, January and April–May 1915. Arrested in May 1915, court-martialled and executed in July 1915. Was to inquire about British naval losses at Falklands. Belgian, recruited by Antwerp. Travelled to England in January 1915, and later to France. There arrested, court-martialled in December 1915, sentenced to death, subsequently commuted into penal servitude for life. American aircraft engineer. After August 1914 several missions for IIIb into France. For ‘N’ mission to England in November 1914 to reconnoitre aviation and air defences. From January until March 1915 in United States. At least two more missions to Britain in April 1915 and January 1916. Dismissed in March 1916. Rumanian intelligence officer, ex-employee of Vickers. Recruited by Consul Tjaben in Bucharest for extended intelligence mission to England. American. Recruited by George Vaux Bacon to serve as his correspondent in Holland. Stayed in Germany until end of war. British, recruited from Ruhleben camp in 1915 by ‘N’. Came to Britain in June, arrested in July 1915, sentenced to penal servitude for life. Sent to London in August–September 1914 by Prieger. Then served as cover address in Holland. In April 1915 sent to France by ‘N’. In July 1915 one aborted mission to Scotland.

162

Appendix 3

Sander, Albert A. Sanders Sauter, Wilhelm Schellhass Schenk, Adolf Schenk, Frau Schill Schmidt Schnitzer, Ludwig

Schroeder, C. alias A2 Schultze, Alfred Schwartz Schwarz

Schwedersky, A.H. alias Jan Verysel Segenti or Seganti, Pascuale

Slager, Pauline alias A54

Smith, Louise Mathilde, née Zastrow

Smits, Jan Solger

Reporting from New York in December 1916, collaborated with Karl Wünnenberg. Dutch, sent by Prieger to Britain in January–February and again in March 1915. German, in June 1916 on trial for espionage in Britain. Refused to make any statements. Naval agent, reporting from Edinburgh in October 1914. Hungarian, saboteur (August 1915). Hired for espionage mission to Britain by Freyer in August 1915. Naval agent, reported from Liverpool and Plymouth in January 1915. Skipper of the Eduard Woermann, naval agent for Wesel or Antwerp. Recruited as VM for Rotterdam in July 1913 by Prieger. In November 1914 together with Tiesing arrested and tried by Dutch authorities. Replaced with Peter Herz by Gneist. Naval agent, name found on Antwerp list. German agent in the Netherlands German, arrested and sentenced to five years of penal servitude in Norway in August 1917. Probably citizen of Austria-Hungary. Recruited by Wesel in September 1914, in October in Britain, then to United States whence Karl Boy-Ed sent him on another mission to England in January 1915. Employed by Wesel. Served as ‘Schwedersky & Co.’, after June 1915 as ‘J. Verysel & Co.’, as cover address for agents in Britain. Italian, subagent of Wilhelm Rehder, employed by Freyer. Sent to England in December 1914, in February in Hamburg. Second mission to Britain in March 1915 did not materialize. Dutch, landed at Tilbury in July 1915 to establish relations with suitable persons in artist circles for espionage in England. Immediately arrested and eventually sent back to Holland. German, married to Englishman, resident in England. Communicated on own initiative intelligence to Germany. In November 1917 arrested, in April 1918 tried and convicted to ten years’ penal servitude. In 1920 sentence remitted. Dutch, served as cover address for naval agents in Britain. German army captain, for Wesel in communication with his wife in England in January 1915.

German Naval Agents Sopher

Spies, Marteen Spitz, Georg alias George S. Speetz Stad, David

Stegler, Richard Peter

Steiner, Eugen alias Edward Rush

Stern, Frau Thomas (cover name?)

Thoresen

Tiesing Treitel Triest, Gustav Kenneth alias Latham Ramsey Mahan Uhlrich

Ullmann, Arthur and wife Ulrich, Georgine Vanderberg, Harry Vega, David Vielhaber, Mrs née Caroc

163

Indian, resident in Brighton. Arrested upon application to go to Holland in February 1916. Admitted knowing Pauline Slager. Interned until end of war. Boer, for Wesel on several missions to Britain between July 1915 and June 1917. Austrian, in September sent to southern England by Prieger. In April 1917 in prison in Germany on account of confidence trickery. Naval agent for Wesel or Antwerp. Shortly after arrival in Britain in June 1915 arrested, released due to lack of evidence and re-interned for rest of war. German resident in United States. In March on trial in New York in connection with pass forgery for German officers based in the United States and trying to return to Germany. German–American. Employed by Wesel, on mission to London, Bristol, Edinburgh and other cities from March until May 1915. In June 1915 in New York. Sent on intelligence mission to Holland and England in December 1914 by Isendahl. Englishman, for ‘N’ on intelligence mission to England from April till May 1915. In November employed by Sektion P for sabotage. Norwegian, in Norway sentenced to two years of penal servitude for espionage on behalf of Germany. Naval agent, in November 1914 together with Ludwig Schnitzer arrested by Dutch authorities. Naval agent, sent on a mission to England by Antwerp in July 1915. American, German father. Enlisted in Royal Navy in January 1915, offered to spy for the Germans. Arrested, released upon intervention of Theodore Roosevelt. Never in contact with ‘N’. German police detective (Kriminalschutzmann), attached to German consulate in Rotterdam. In this capacity also working for ‘N’. In September and October for Prieger on mission to Britain where his wife lived. In March 1915 transferred to Wesel. Naval agent, arrived in England together with Pauline Slager in March 1915. Naval agent, nephew of van Zwol. Dutch, resident in London. In January 1915 recruited by Antwerp. Served as messenger for Hans Boehm.

164

Appendix 3

Vieyra, Leopold alias Leo Pickard alias A35

Vronery W29 (cover name)

W440 W62 W64c W97a

W98

von Wedell, Adam

Weiszflog, Adolf alias Ludovico Hurwitz y Zender

Wensky, Walter alias Walter Williams and Jane

Werner, Otto M.

Wertheim, Louise ‘Lizzie’ Emily, née Klitzke

Dutch Jew, on mission for Antwerp, arrived and arrested in England in May 1916. Courtmartialled, sentenced to death, commuted first to life imprisonment, then to ten years in 1920. Austrian, naval agent for Antwerp, in July 1915 on mission in Britain. Agent of Wesel, businessman. Operated since 1915 until end of war, had five subagents at his disposal, reporting from London, English east coast and Amsterdam. Naval agent, reporting from London about impact of submarine campaign in September 1917. Naval agent, reporting from London on slavery in Nigeria in December 1916. Naval agent, on mission to England in March 1918. Naval agent, reporting from London about impact of submarine campaign in July, October 1917 and January 1918. Agent reporting from Switzerland about interview with teacher from Cardiff on impact of the submarine campaign in May 1917. American notary and former Prussian officer. Employed by German intelligence in the United States as pass forger for German officers trying to return to Germany. Fled to Norway, captured by British and drowned on HMS Vinknor in midJanuary 1915. German Peruvian, sent by Prieger to Britain in October 1914 to reconnoitre air defences. Three more missions in November–December, January– February, March–May 1915. In May 1915 awarded the Iron Cross, second class. On next mission in July arrested, court-martialled and executed. German army captain, served for IIIb in France in August and September 1914. Sent to Britain with his American wife in October 1914 by Prieger. In January 1915 sent to United States to recruit agents against England. In May 1915 with his wife on another mission to England. Sent to England by Prieger on reconnaissance mission and to contact Muhammad Asaf Ali, a leader of the Indian resistance movement in London. German, married to Englishman. Introduced to ‘N’ by Dr Brandt in December 1914. After January 1915 for ‘N’ in London, lodging with Gertrude Elizabeth Sophia Brandes. Espionage mission together with Georg Traugott Breeckow. Arrested in June 1915, tried by civil court, sentenced to ten years’ penal servitude. Died shortly after end of war in lunatic asylum.

German Naval Agents Whytock, Roslyn Wilhelmi or Wilhelmy, Mrs Hilde Wilhelms alias Wedstedt Woodford, E.G.

Wünnenberg, Karl alias Charles Wunnenberg Alias Robert Davis alias A13 Wuppermann, Dr Hermann alias J. Arnold Zelle, Margarete Gertrud alias Mata Hari alias H21 Van Zurk, alias Johan Zurmuehlen Van Zwol

165

American journalist, working for Sander and Wünnenberg. For Prieger on two intelligence missions to London in October 1914, reconnoitring local air defences. Naval agent, linked to Naval Captain Lassen. In July 1917 arrested in Denmark. Boer (?), resident in New York. Recruited through Karl Boy-Ed. In December 1915 on intelligence mission to England, arrested, released. In February 1916 back in New York. German naval officer resident in New York. Helped recruit George Vaux Bacon. In 1917 tried in United States and sentenced to two years’ penal servitude. Collaborated with A80 and Albert A. Sander. Naval agent, reporting from Bristol in April 1915. In 1916 carrying out biological warfare from Argentina as agent for Sektion P. German spy, visited England, eventually executed in France. Double agent, came to England in June 1916, in August sent to Holland with no return permit. Dutch, recruited by Hockenholz. Chief officer of Caledonia. Arrested in August 1915 together with Albert Meyer. Interned and deported to Netherlands in October 1919.

Note: The reader may find archival references for each individual in my doctoral thesis, ‘German Naval Intelligence and British Counter-Espionage, 1901–1918’, pp. 323–37, at the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

Notes and References Introduction 1. William Tufnell Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser: Plotting the Downfall of England with a Preface by Nicholas Hiley (1909; London: Frank Cass, 1996), pp. xxxiii, 219. 2. N.A.M. Rodger, The Safeguard of the Sea: A Naval History of Britain (London: HarperCollins, 1997), 1, p. 429. 3. David Cannadine, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 136; Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London and New York: Routledge, 1989), p. 41. 4. Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War: Explaining World War I (London: Allen Lane, 1998), p. 29. Even semi-autocratic Austria allowed 21 per cent of its subjects to cast a vote in lower-chamber elections. 5. Gerard J. De Groot, Blighty: British Society in the Era of the Great War (London: Longman, 1996), p. 110. 6. The Times, 31 October 1913, ‘The Declining Birth-Rate’. 7. Bernard Porter, The Refugee Question in Mid-Victorian Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 124. During the First World War, Germanophobia and anti-Semitism merged on the extreme right-wing fringe of British society and politics, see Arnd Bauerkämper, Die ‘radikale Rechte’ in Großbritannien: nationalistische, antisemitische und faschistische Bewegungen vom späten 19. Jahrhundert bis 1945 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1991), Chapter 1. See also the contemporary polemics of John H. Clarke, England under The Heel of the Jew (London: C.F. Roworth, 1918), p. 58: ‘It is easy to understand that the Ashkenazim generally should have desired and worked for a German victory, which would have been, after all, an Ashkenazim victory. For whilst an “English” Jew is by no means an English man; or a “Polish” Jew, a Pole; or a “Russian” Jew, a Russian; all these Jews are Ashkenazim, “German Jews”, and Germany is their home-land.’ 8. Gregory D. Phillips, The Diehards: Aristocratic Society and Politics in Edwardian England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979); J. Lee Thompson, Northcliffe: Press Baron in Politics, 1865–1922 (London: John Murray, 2000), p. 133; J.A. Thompson, ‘George Wyndham: Toryism and Imperialism’, in Arthur Mejia and J.A. Thompson, Edwardian Conservatism: Five Studies in Adaption (London: Croom Helm, 1988), pp. 105–28. 9. George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England (1935; London: MacGibbon & Kee, 1965), p. 320. While Dangerfield’s is an exaggerated view of British society on the eve of the First World War, he does capture the existing tensions within that society. Cf. Ernest H. Phelps Brown, The Growth of British Industrial Relations (London: Macmillan, 1959), pp. 330f. 10. Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism 1850–1970 (London: Longman, 1975), p. 119; Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary 166

Notes and References 167

11. 12.

13.

14. 15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

25. 26.

Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), especially pp. 152–203. For an account of the conflict see Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979). R.Q.J. Adams, ‘Field-Marshal Earl Roberts: Army and Empire’, in Arthur Mejia and J.A. Thompson, Edwardian Conservatism: Five Studies in Adaption (London: Croom Helm, 1988), p. 56. The vast majority died through disease. Bernard Porter, ‘The Edwardians and Their Empire’, in Donald Read (ed.), Edwardian England (London: Harrap, 1982), p. 129, referring to contemporary British notions about the Boers. An anonymous English writer referred to the Boer in 1902 as ‘a preposterously little fellow’, whose defeat ‘was not in itself an essentially pleasant or heroic thing to carry through’, ibid. The Times, 23 January 1901. See the seminal study of Ignatius F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War, 1763–1984 (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), and the expanded edition by idem, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, 1763–3749 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). PRO, CAB 16/8, report by subcommittee on foreign espionage in the United Kingdom, 25 March 1909, pp. 3f. John C.G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 83. The term was coined by Foreign Secretary Bernhard von Bülow, in his maiden speech to the Reichstag on 26 December 1897, see Gerd Fesser, Der Traum vom Platz an der Sonne: Deutsche ‘Weltpolitik’ 1897–1914 (Bremen: Donat, 1996), p. 25. Quoted from James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd edition (London: Longman, 1992), p. 182. Holger Herwig, ‘Luxury Fleet’: The Imperial German Navy, 1888–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 91. See, for instance, the memoirs of Walter Nicolai, director of IIIb during the First World War: Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg (Berlin: Mittler, 1920), and the English translation: ibid., The German Secret Service (London: S. Paul, 1924). There exists, however, no critical history of Sektion IIIb. Albrecht Charisius and Julius Mader, Nicht länger geheim: Entwicklung, System und Arbeitsweise des imperialistischen deutschen Geheimdienstes, 3rd edition (Berlin: Deutscher Militärverlag, 1978). Reinhard R. Doerries, Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorff and German – American Relations, 1908–1917 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 141–90. Imperial Challenge is a revised edition of the author’s doctoral thesis of 1975. Friedhelm Koopmann, Diplomatie und Reichsinteresse: Das Geheimdienstkalkül in der deutschen Amerikapolitik 1914–1917 (Frankfurt/M. and New York: Peter Lang, 1990). Albert Pethö, Agenten für den Doppeladler: Österreich-Ungarns Geheimer Dienst im Weltkrieg (Graz: Stocker, 1998). David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies: German Military Intelligence in World War II (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978).

168

Notes and References

27. See the autobiography of Stella Rimington, Director-General of MI5 from 1992 until 1996, drawing a continuous line from the early until the late twentieth century: Stella Rimington, Open Secret: The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5 (London: Hutchinson, 2001). 28. Sidney Theodore Felstead, German Spies at Bay: Being an Actual Record of the German Espionage in Great Britain during the Years 1914–1918, Compiled from Official Sources (London: Hutchinson, 1920). 29. Ibid., p. 281. 30. See, for instance, Nicholas Everitt, The British Secret Service during the Great War (London: Hutchinson, 1920); Sir George Aston, Secret Service (London: Faber & Faber, 1930); Mildred G. Richings, Espionage: The Secret Service of the British Crown (London: Hutchinson, 1934). 31. John Bulloch, M.I.5: The Origin and History of the British Counter Espionage Service (London: A. Barker, 1963), p. 6, Bulloch thanking Vernon Kell’s wife for her support. 32. Alan Judd [Petty’s pseudonym], The Quest for C: Sir Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999), p. 69. 33. Rimington, Open Secret, p. 83. 34. Beginning with the publication of Frederick William Winterbotham’s The Ultra Secret (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). I am grateful to Nicholas Hiley for information on the evolution of intelligence studies in British academe. 35. David French, ‘Spy Fever in Great Britain 1900–15’, Historical Journal, 21 (1978), pp. 355–70. 36. Christopher M. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community (London: Heinemann, 1985). 37. Nicholas Hiley, ‘The Failure of British Espionage against Germany, 1907–1914’, The Historical Journal, 26, 4 (1983), pp. 867–89; idem, ‘The Failure of British Counter-Espionage against Germany, 1907–1914,’ The Historical Journal, 28, 4 (1985), pp. 835–62. 38. Nicholas Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage and Security in Great Britain during the First World War’, English Historical Review, 101 (1986), pp. 635–70. 39. Bernard Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State: The London Metropolitan Police Branch before the First World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), p. 120, referring to the emergence of the ‘secret state’ in 1909–1911. 40. Phillip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: The Spy as Bureaucrat, Patriot, Fantasist and Whore (London: André Deutsch, 1986), p. 52. 41. IWM, Kell papers, Constance Kell, ‘A Secret Well Kept’, p. 144. 42. Richard Wilmer Rowan, The Story of the Secret Service (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1938), p. 590. 43. See the relevant series in the German military archives, BA-MA, RM/3650–716, entitled ‘Department N, 1902–1919’. 44. PA-AA, series entitled ‘Records of the Imperial Consulate in Rotterdam’. 45. PRO, DPP 1 and 3, series entitled ‘Records of the Director of Public Prosecutions’. 46. PRO, KV 1 and KV 2, series entitled ‘Records of the Security Service’. 47. See Public Record Office (ed.), M.I.5: The First Ten Years, 1909–1919 . . . with an Introduction by Christopher Andrew (Kew: PRO Publications, 1997), pp. 12–15.

Notes and References 169

1

The origins of German naval intelligence

1. Volker Ullrich, Die nervöse Großmacht 1871–1918: Aufstieg und Niedergang des deutschen Kaiserreiches, 3rd edition (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1999), p. 196. 2. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 224. 3. For Tirpitz and the restructuring of the Imperial Navy see Walther Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab und die obersten Marinebehörden in Deutschland 1848–1945 (Frankfurt/M.: Bernard Graefe, 1958). 4. BA-MA, RM 5/273, memoranda by Admiralstab regarding the establishment of a central intelligence agency (‘Berichte und Erwägungen über die Einrichtung einer Zentralnachrichtenstelle beim Admiralstab’), 28 April 1899. 5. Ibid., ‘Handschrift betreffend “N”-Wesen im Großen Generalstab’, Berlin, 28 August 1899, this being an assessment of IIIb. 6. BA-MA, RM 5/273, Chief of Admiralstab, Admiral Otto von Diederichs, to HM the Emperor and King, Berlin, 12 January 1901. 7. Ivo N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), p. 191. For von Diederichs see also Terell D. Gottschall, By Order of the Kaiser: Otto von Diederichs and the Rise of the Imperial Navy, 1865–1902 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), especially pp. 257–66. 8. BA-MA, RM 5/273, Diederichs to Wilhelm II, 12 January 1901. 9. Ibid., Naval Office to Chief of Admiralstab, Vice-Admiral von Diederichs, Berlin, 20 February 1901. 10. To date, the year 1905 has been cited erroneously as the founding date of German naval intelligence: Koopmann, Diplomatie und Reichsinteresse, p. 75, referring to Charisius and Mader, Nicht Länger geheim, p. 82, who do not quote their source. 11. On 22 January 1901, the ‘Nachrichtenbüro’ was mentioned first, see Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab, pp. 241f. Five months later, Tirpitz referred to the ‘NachrichtenAbteilung des Admiralstabs’ (intelligence department of the Admiralstab) which bore this name until its dissolution in 1919: BA-MA, RM 5/273, Tirpitz to Chief of Admiralstab, 16 June 1901. 12. HStA, HAPAG, 621–1, 1109, Tapken to board of directors of the HamburgAmerica-Line, 11 April 1912, marked ‘strictly confidential’. Tapken enquires if a HAPAG employee at Antwerp, a certain Heinz, would be available to work for ‘N’. An answer should be sent direct to ‘N’ at ‘Berlin SW 11, Königgrätzer Straße 70’. 13. Ibid., ‘Handschrift betreffend das Nachrichtenwesen im Großen Generalstab’, Berlin, 28 August 1899. 14. BA-MA, RM 5/3679, Hamburg-America-Line to Tapken, 28 September 1904. 15. PRO, WO 71/1236, court-martial and examination of Carl Lody, 31 October 1914, p. 219. 16. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Tapken to Naval Attaché von Müller, London, 13 February 1914. Tapken requests information on German agents in Britain for his successor Isendahl. 17. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 4493424, statement by Naval Captain Ebert, Wallhausen, 31 December 1930. 18. BA-MA, RM 5/3677, memorandum by Prieger, 6 February 1920. 19. BA-MA, RM 5/3642, Stammer, ‘N’, to Commander Gercke, Berlin, 29 July 1911.

170

Notes and References

20. Hubatsch, Admiralstab, p. 252. ‘G’ was subdivided into ‘GI’ (organization of the enemy intelligence services) and ‘GII’ (counter-espionage). 21. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 493424, statement by Naval Captain Ebert, Wallhausen, 31 December 1924. 22. Some members of ‘N’, for instance Isendahl and August Lassen, occasionally referred to ‘NIV’ as ‘NIII’, but Paul Reichardt explicitly stated that the official name was ‘NIV’ and ‘not NIII’, see PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 4493425, statement by retired Naval Captain Paul Reichardt, Klotzsche bei Dresden, 25 January 1925. 23. Ibid., K 497187, Lieutenant Commander August Lassen to Reichardt, 14 July 1930. 24. Ibid., K 493425, statement by Naval Captain Paul Reichardt, Klotzsche bei Dresden, 25 January 1925. 25. Ibid., K 493427, retired Frigate Captain August Lassen to Ministry of Defence, Naval Department, Berlin, 8 January 1925. 26. BA-MA, RM 5/3664, Naval Lieutenant Canaris to naval attaché Buenos Aires, 10 October 1915. Canaris asked the attaché to recruit agents in South America and send them to Europe. 27. Walter Nicolai, Geheime Mächte: Internationale Spionage und ihre Bekämpfung in Weltkrieg und heute (Lerpzig: Woehler, 1923), p. 150. 28. Marine-Offizier-Verband (ed.), Die Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine 1914–1918, bearbeitet von Kontreadmiral a.D. Stoelzel (3 vols, Berlin: Thormann & Goetsch, 1930), 2, pp. 121, 577. 29. PA-AA, R 870, Tapken to Stumm, AA, 14 April 1910. The task was first carried out by the Admiralstab, then, from the early 1900s, by its intelligence department. 30. PA-AA, R 871, Chief of Admiralstab to AA, 30 June 1910. 31. BA-MA, RM 5/3682, ‘Vorschrift über die Verpflichtung von BM und VM sowie das Zusammenarbeiten mit denselben (Vorschrift A)’, 2nd edition (Berlin, 1908). Secret. 32. BA-MA, RM 5/3682, Chief of Admiralstab to Imperial Commodore and senior officer of Eastern American Station, [name illegible], 1902. 33. BA-MA, RM 5/772, Admiralstab to Royal Commando X. Army Corps, 1 November 1901. Similar requests were sent to several army corps. 34. Ibid., General Commando V. Army Corps, Posen, to Chief of Admiralstab, 27 November 1901. 35. Ibid., Prussian War Ministry to Naval Office, 3 December 1901. 36. Ibid., Tirpitz to Chief of Admiralstab, 31 January 1902. 37. Ibid., Chief of Admiralstab to Naval Office, 12 February 1902. 38. BA-MA, RM 5/773, ‘Nachweisung der beim Bezirkskommando Hamburg kontrollierten und in das Ausland beurlaubten Offiziere der Reserve und der Landwehr’, Hamburg, 12 November 1901. Many of them lived in England and the United States. 39. See Nicolai’s critical view of two separate intelligence agencies: Nicolai, Geheime Mächte, p. 13. 40. BA-MA, RM 5/3682, IIIb to ‘N’, 1 March 1912, an exchange of notes between Lieutenant Commander von Tyska (naval intelligence) and First Lieutenant von Sydow (IIIb) on swapping of names and addresses of agents. Further cooperation was envisaged, but petered out.

Notes and References 171 41. HStA, HAPAG, 621–1, 1105, passim. All contracts were struck between 1891 and 1907. 42. HStA, HAPAG, 621–1, 1116, HAPAG to M. Bohn, Paranagua, 14 February 1908. 43. BA-MA, RM 5/3681, Ballin to Admiral Pohl, 6 July 1914. 44. Ibid., handwritten comment (‘Vermerk’) by I[sendahl]. 45. HStA, HAPAG, 621–1, 1113, Naval Office to board of directors of HAPAG, 16 June 1908. 46. BA-MA, RM 5/3681, HAPAG to Admiralstab, 21 November 1912. 47. The files of these negotiations are preserved in both the military archives and the archives of the German Foreign Office: BA-MA, RM 5/3710; PA-AA, R 870–81. For a narrative of these negotiations see Thomas Boghardt, ‘German Naval Intelligence and British Counter-Espionage, 1901–1918’, PhD thesis, Oxford, 2001, pp. 37–43. 48. PA-AA, R 870, memorandum by AA, 1 February 1910. 49. PA-AA, R 873, draft memorandum by AA, 8 April 1911, subsequently distributed to various consuls. Italics mine. 50. BA-MA, RM 5/3682, top secret, Chief of Admiralstab, Berlin, to Imperial Commodore and senior officer of East American Station, 1902. 51. BA-MA, RM 5/3663, top secret, decree by Chief of Admiralstab, 2 January 1915.

2

The origins of British counter-espionage

1. Michael Howard, The Franco-Prussian War: The German Invasion of France, 1870–1871, 2nd edition (London: Routledge, 2001), p. 441. 2. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, p. 27. 3. Sir George T. Chesney, The Battle of Dorking: Reminiscences of a Volunteer (1871; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 4. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, p. 36. 5. Ignatius F. Clarke, ‘The Battle of Dorking, 1871–1914’, Victorian Studies, 8 (June 1965), pp. 316f. 6. On Le Queux, see Norman St. Barbe Sladen, The Real Le Queux: The Official Biography of William Le Queux (London: Nicholson & Watson, 1938). 7. William Tufnell Le Queux, The Great War in England in 1897 (London: Tower Publishing, 1894). 8. William Tufnell Le Queux, England’s Peril: A Story of the Secret Service (London: F.V. White, 1899). 9. Quoted from Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, p. 106. 10. Morning Post, 20 February 1903. 11. Andrew Boyle, The Riddle of Erskine Childers (London: Hutchinson, 1977), p. 134 12. Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands (1903; London: Penguin, 1995). 13. Maldwin Drummond, The Riddle (London: Macmillan, 1985), p. 181. 14. Thomas Fergusson, British Military Intelligence, 1870–1914: The Development of a Modern Intelligence Organization (London: Arms & Armour Press, 1984), p. 211. 15. John Gooch, The Prospect of War: Studies in British Defence Policy 1847–1942 (London: Frank Cass, 1981), p. 10. 16. Prince Louis of Battenberg to Lord Selborne, 23 February 1904, quoted from Maldwin, The Riddle, p. 153. 17. Boghardt, ‘German Naval Intelligence’, pp. 68–71.

172

Notes and References

18. John P. Mackintosh, ‘The Role of the Committee of Imperial Defence before 1914’, English Historical Review, 77 (1962), p. 494. 19. PRO, CAB 2/1, 6/1, Committee of Imperial Defence, 11 March 1903. 20. Nicholas Hiley, ‘Decoding German Spies: British Spy Fiction 1908–1918’, in Wesley K. Wark (ed.), Spy Fiction, Spy Films and Real Intelligence (London: Frank Cass, 1991), pp. 58f. Predictably, this investigation led to nothing. 21. PRO, CAB 2/1, 27/1, Broderick to Nicolson, 12 December 1903. 22. PRO, CAB 38/3/63, remarks on the possibility of invasion, 24 July 1903. 23. Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of Two World Wars (London: Maurice Temple Smith, 1972), p. 22. 24. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 39. 25. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War: Future Wars, p. 145. 26. Thompson, Northcliffe, p. 134. 27. Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton and London: Princeton University Press and Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 43. 28. Sladen, The Real Le Queux, pp. 181–84. 29. BA-MA, RM 5/919, ‘Immediatvorträge’, Berlin, 20 June 1906, compilation for meeting on 26 June 1906, heading No. 8, ‘The Invasion of 1910’, including two copies, one synopsis and two English newspaper cuttings. The Kaiser and the German leadership were rather concerned about the spread of scare stories and reassured British politicians on several occasions that Germany did not contemplate invasion. 30. Phillips, The Diehards, p. 100. 31. Peter Padfield, The Great Naval Race: The Anglo-German Rivalry 1900–1914 (London: Hart-Davis, MacGibbon, 1974), p. 256. 32. David James, Lord Roberts: A Biography (London: Hollis & Carter, 1954), p. 424. 33. R.J.Q. Adams, ‘The National Service League and Mandatory Service in Edwardian Britain’, Armed Forces and Society, 12 (1985), p. 62. 34. R.J.Q. Adams, The Conscription Controversy in Great Britain, 1900–1918 (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 34. 35. Howard Weinroth, ‘Left-Wing Opposition to Naval Armaments in Britain before 1914’, Journal of Contemporary History, 6 (1971), p. 99. 36. W. Michael Ryan, ‘The Invasion Controversy of 1906–1908: Lieutenant-Colonel Charles à Court Repington and British Perceptions of the German Menace’, Military Affairs, 44 (1980), p. 10; Edward Spiers, Haldane: An Army Reformer (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1980), p. 169. 37. Ruddock F. Mackay, Fisher of Kilverstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), p. 382. 38. Andrew Morris, The Scaremongers: The Advocacy of War and Rearmament, 1896–1914 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), pp. 136–8, 158. 39. Stephen E. Koss, Haldane: Scapegoat for Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), p. 65. 40. For a discussion of the play, and its political context, see Nicholas Hiley, ‘The Play, the Parody, the Censor and the Film’, Intelligence and National Security, 6, 1 (1991), pp. 218–28. 41. PRO, CAB 2/2, 100/1, report by subcommittee on invasion, 22 October 1908. 42. John Gooch, The Plans of War: The General Staff and British Military Strategy c. 1900–1916 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 285. 43. PRO, CAB 38/13/11, report by subcommittee on invasion, 22 October 1908.

Notes and References 173 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69.

70.

Morris, The Scaremongers, p. 147. Daily Mail, 4 January 1900. PRO, WO 32/8873, Thwaites to Gleichen, 7 May 1907. PRO, KV 1/8, memoirs of William Melville, 1917, p. 9. Towards the end of his career at Scotland Yard, Melville directed his activities against alleged German espionage. He resigned from the Special Branch on 1 December 1903 and was employed as the first detective of the newly founded Secret Service Bureau (SSB) in 1909 (ibid., p. 2). Following his departure from Scotland Yard, Melville immediately joined the army’s intelligence service MO5, as Kell refers to him in 1910 as having ‘worked for us now for the past 6 years’, see PRO, KV 1/9, third progress report by Vernon Kell for October 1910 to May 1911. PRO, KV 1/8, memoirs of Melville, pp. 17–23. PRO, HD 3/131, Davies to WO, 18 and 21 November 1905. Nicholas Hiley, ‘The Failure of British Counter-Espionage against Germany, 1907–1914’, The Historical Journal, 28, 4 (December 1985), pp. 835f. Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III, 5, 1. PRO, KV 1/2, memorandum by Edmonds on ‘Espionage in Time of Peace’, November 1908; Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III/5/1f. Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 45f. PRO, KV 1/2, memorandum by Edmonds, 2 December 1908. Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III/5/4. Ibid., III/5/5: ‘I learnt afterwards from General Haldane that I was very nearly thrown out of my job for my pains.’ Sladen, Le Queux, pp. 182f.; William Le Queux, Things I Know about Kings, Celebrities and Crooks (London: E. Nash & Grayson, 1923), p. 237. Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, p. xvi. Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, p. xxxiii. As demonstrated above, Edmonds and Le Queux had collaborated on this scheme. Ibid., p. xxxiv. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report and Proceedings of a subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence appointed to consider the question of Foreign espionage in the United Kingdom’, 25 March 1909. It was formed at the request of the General Staff. Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III/5/2. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, pp. 5–8. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, p. 6. Ibid., Appendix i, p. 11, ‘Cases of alleged German espionage which have been reported to the DMO’. Ibid., p. 3. The map itself is irretrievable, but a list of the cities, presumably derived from the map, can be found in IWM, the papers of Vernon Kell. Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III/5/2f. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, Appendix i, case 23, 20 March 1909, source: London journalist. Brodtmann’s name is occasionally spelled ‘Brockmann’. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Tapken to IIIb, 21 February 1913. The German military attaché to London, Major Ronald Ostertag, played a minor role in intelligence gathering in England. Ibid., Captain Marklowski, IIIb, to Admiralstab, 25 February 1913.

174

Notes and References

71. BA-MA, RM 5/3712, Isendahl to Imperial Naval Office, 30 July 1914. Forwarding a list of army officers ‘who, in the event of war, will be used on behalf of the Admiralstab . . . necessity to treat these detachments strictly confidential’. The list contains thirty-four names, among them Brodtmann’s. 72. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, p. 6. 73. Morris, Scaremongers, p. 160. 74. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, pp. 7f. 75. Jean Graham Hall and F. Douglas Martin, Haldane: Statesman, Lawyer, Philosopher (Chichester: Barry Rose Law, 1996), p. 241. 76. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, p. 9. 77. PRO, CAB 16/232, subcommittee on SSB. The report is signed ‘Whitehall Gardens, April 28th 1909’. 78. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Report’, p. 10. 79. Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession, p. 22. The document itself is lost, if it ever existed. Apparently, it was not produced at the meeting. Haldane merely referred to it. 80. Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, pp. 124–39. 81. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 57. 82. Morris, Scaremongers, p. 161. 83. Judd, The Quest, p. 95. Churchill put the resources of the Board at the SSB’s disposal. 84. Morris, Scaremongers, p. 162. In fact, after 1909 the number of spy and invasion stories in the press declined, but from 1913 the number of such stories rose again. 85. PRO, KV 1/5, Kell to Ewart, 19 September 1909. 86. PRO, CAB 16/8, ‘Conclusions of the subcommittee of the Committee of Imperial Defence’, p. 4: ‘By means of this Bureau our Naval and Military Attachés and Government officials would not only be freed from the necessity of dealing with spies, but direct evidence could not be obtained that we were having any dealings with them.’ See also Bernard Porter, Plots and Paranoia: A History of Political Espionage in Britain, 1790–1988 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 123–34. Basil Thomson, the head of the Special Branch of Scotland Yard, denounced humanitarians as ‘subhuman’. 87. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 63. 88. Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis (5 vols, London: Thornton Butterworth, 1927–1929), 1, p. 52. 89. PRO, DPP 1/27, confidential memorandum by Major Drake, 23 September 1914. 90. PRO, KV 1/3, memorandum on creation of Secret Service Bureau, no date [1909]. 91. Ibid., pp. 2 and 4. 92. PRO, KV 1/5, Kell to General Ewart, 19 September 1909; Judd, The Quest, p. 86. 93. Ibid., pp. 222–4. 94. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 59; Judd, The Quest, pp. 109, 115, 168; PRO, KV 1/8, memoirs of William Melville, 1917. 95. Judd, The Quest, pp. 93, 178. Judd implies that Childers is identical with a certain ‘Z’ who had reported to the Admiralty on Emden and Borkum since 1901. 96. PRO, KV 1/5, Kell to Ewart, 19 September 1909; Judd, The Quest, pp. 86, 93. 97. Porter, Plots and Paranoia, pp. 101, 199, with a list of the leading personnel of the Special Branch. The Branch had been founded in the 1880s, mainly as a response to the Fenian bombings, and soon extended its activities to the

Notes and References 175

98. 99.

100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109.

110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115.

116.

117.

surveillance of anarchists, suffragettes, Indian nationalists and, as Melville’s activities demonstrate, foreign espionage. From 1913 until 1919, Basil Thomson directed the Branch as one of the assistant commissioners of the London Metropolitan Police. Judd, The Quest, p. 115. PRO, KV 1/9, second progress report by Kell, October 1910. The early administrative history of Kell’s department is complicated; after splitting from the SSB, Kell’s department was referred to as the Intelligence Police Service or Counter-Espionage Bureau. On the outbreak of war, the department was formally incorporated into MO5 as MO5(g). On 3 January 1916, it was reorganized as MI5. See PRO (ed.), M.I.5, pp. 4, 6. For Kell’s biography, see Bulloch, M.I.5, pp. 23–8. For Kell and Churchill see Judd, The Quest, p. 95. PRO, KV 1/3, memorandum on creation of SSB, p. 2. Liddell Hart Centre, Edmonds papers, memoirs, Chapter xx, III/5/5. Hiley, ‘Decoding German Spies’, p. 58. Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 55. IWM, Kell papers, Lady Constance Kell, ‘A Secret Well Kept’, p. 116. Hiley, ‘The Failure of British Counter-Espionage’, p. 848, quoting from Star, 30 March 1942. IWM, Kell papers, Lady Kell, ‘A Secret Well Kept’, p. 4. Ibid., p. 111. Ibid., p. 115: ‘Vernon had now heard that he would be getting a job on the Imperial Defence Committee and this gave us the chance to look ahead and feel more secure.’ Ibid. p. 119. PRO, KV 1/9, first progress report by Kell, 25 March 1910, pp. 3–5, ‘Rusper case’. In the early years, Kell forwarded reports to War Office and Admiralty every six months, later every four months. Ibid., second progress report by Kell, October 1910, p. 11. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 6 June 1910; ibid., entry for 10 June 1910. PRO, KV 1/9, third progress report by Kell, May 1911, pp. 23f. Ibid., second progress report by Kell, October 1910. Until October 1910, the first 500 aliens were registered. In July 1913, 28,880 aliens were registered, 11,100 being Germans and Austrians, see ibid., p. 71, ‘Summary of Results of Informal Alien Registration to July, 1913’. In this effort, Kell was supported by the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, see PRO, HO 45/10629/ 199699, HO to Kell, 1 November 1910. Although it is true that ‘N’ did regard the German colony as a potential recruiting ground, not a single agent was later on tracked down through this enormous register. See also Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 60. PRO, KV 1/9, fourth progress report by Kell, for quarter ending 30 June 1911. The list was handed to seventeen Chief Constables of the coastal counties who were asked to report regularly on these individuals. Until 1914, the list was gradually enlarged and renamed ‘Special War List’, comprising names and addresses of persons to be arrested or closely watched in the case of war. See the various lists in PRO, KV 1/7. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 15 June 1910. This incident refers to a Chief Constable in Scotland.

176

Notes and References

118. The origins of the Trench–Brandon mission are complicated. Apparently, Captain Roy Regnart recruited the two, but Mansfield Cumming eventually took over and funded the operation. See Judd, The Quest, pp. 177ff. 119. The Times, 23 December 1910. 120. GStPK, HA 1, Rep. 77, tit. 872, folder 1, ‘index of individuals convicted of treason (Landesverrat) in the years 1908–1912’, No. 53, ‘Brandon’, No. 54, ‘Trench’, No. 60, ‘Stewart’ (occasionally spelt ‘Steward’); BA-MA, RM 3/43, ‘Espionage against the Imperial Navy’, pp. 39ff., Trench and Brandon. Walter Nicolai, the wartime director of IIIb, responsible for counter-espionage in Germany, also stressed the offensive character of this mission, see Nicolai, Geheime Mächte, p. 29. 121. BA-MA, RM 3/43, pp. 39ff. The sentence was passed on 22 December 1910; it can be considered ‘lax’ as compared to the treatment of German spies in Britain, where the evidence was usually much less convincing. To serve a sentence in a fortress (Festungshaft) was a privilege reserved for officers; ordinary convicts had to serve their term in a prison. 122. Ibid., pp. 18ff., Stewart. The sentence was passed on 3 February 1912. Stewart had been sent across the Northern Sea to find out whether Germany was mobilizing in the wake of the Agadir crisis. 123. BA-MA, RM 3/43, pp. 39ff. 124. BA-MA, RM 3/22641, ‘Espionage trials of Schultz and comrades’. Schultz was eventually sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in 1911. He had employed several German subagents. For a detailed account of Schultz’s mission see Judd, The Quest, pp. 217ff. Other cases of convicted British spies include those of Krueger (on 13 August 1911 sentenced to three months for copying plans of the Nassau, the first German dreadnought), police officer Reich (on 31 March 1912 sentenced to eleven-and-a-half years for stealing an artillery guide and attempting to steal a copy of the regulations of the Imperial Navy), John and Albert Lindinger and Gustav Boehlert (the latter on 15 May 1912 sentenced to four years for copying the construction plans of the Goeben and the Moltke), Leopold Eilers and Olga Kling (on 5 July 1912 sentenced to four years and six months, respectively, for spying in Heligoland), Edmund Kegelmann (on 10 October 1912 sentenced to six years for spying in Wilhelmshaven); see BA-MA, RM 3/43, pp. 18ff. The list also contains numerous cases of French and Russian espionage against the Imperial Navy. 125. The Times, 20 May 1913. 126. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 30 August 1910. 127. PRO, KV 1/5, Kell to Ewart, 19 September 1909. 128. PRO, KV 1/9, first progress report by Kell, 25 March 1910, p. 7; ibid., second progress report by Kell, October 1910, p. 10. 129. Ibid., second progress report by Kell, October 1910, p. 10.

3

German pre-war espionage in Great Britain 1. BA-MA, RM 5/273, top secret, Chief of Admiralstab, Admiral Otto von Diederichs, to His Majesty the Emperor and King, Berlin, 12 January 1901. 2. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, p. 113.

Notes and References 177 3. Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab, pp. 61f. 4. Paul Kennedy, ‘Maritime Strategieprobleme der deutsch-englischen Flottenrivalität’, in H. Schottelius and W. Deist (eds), Marine und Marinepolitik (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1972), p. 179. 5. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 91, 118, 209, 211. 6. Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab, p. 91. 7. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 248, 257. 8. Kennedy, ‘Maritime Strategieprobleme’, pp. 186, 192. 9. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 273. 10. Ibid., p. 356. 11. Klaus-Volker Giessler, Die Institution des Marineattachés im Kaiserreich: Militärgeschichtliche Studien (Boppard: Boldt, 1976), p. 134. 12. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Tapken to Widenmann, 16 February 1912. Agents were also to be recruited in Hull, Dover and Glasgow. 13. BA-MA, RM 5/3642, ‘Special Codes’, memorandum by von Koch, 11 April 1907. 14. Ibid., memorandum by ‘N’, 5 June 1907. The cover address was ‘Nekpatus Berlin’. 15. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, ‘N’ to naval attaché, London, 13 February 1914. The two individuals, referred to as ‘Dr. E . . .’ and ‘Albert K . . .’, had been recruited by Naval Attaché Hugo von Cotzhausen. 16. BA-MA, RM 5/3679, Koch, Deutsche Bank, Berlin, to Chief of Admiralstab, Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Büchsel, 28 September 1904. The sum put at the attaché’s disposal amounted to a hefty £2,500. 17. BA-MA, RM 5/3682, Widenmann to Tapken, London, 31 January 1913. Widenmann also emphasized that the introduction of censorship in times of rising tension would render swift communication almost impossible. In the case of a Franco-German war, with Britain remaining neutral, the agents could have reported unhindered throughout the period of hostilities. This had been the original idea. 18. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Widenmann to Tapken, 22 April 1912. 19. Ibid. The agents are merely identified by their initials: ‘O’ in Dover, ‘W’ in Glasgow and ‘B’ in Southampton. ‘B’ was probably Brodtmann or Brockmann who later defected to the military attaché. 20. Ibid., Tapken to Widenmann, 22 April 1912. 21. Ibid., ‘N’ to de Boer, 31 March 1914. The agreement was reached with a certain Herr Boedicker, probably acting on behalf of the Admiralstab. 22. Ibid., Widenmann to Tapken, 22 April 1912. 23. Ibid., ‘N’ to de Boer, 31 March 1914. 24. Ibid., Bischoff, director of the Argo Steamship Company, Bremen, to Prieger, 27 April 1914. 25. Ibid., Isendahl to Müller, London, 29 April 1914. 26. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, Müller to Admiralstab, 28 July 1914. 27. See p. 32. 28. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, Müller to Admiralstab, 28 July 1914. 29. Ibid. 30. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Widenmann to Tapken, 22 April 1912. 31. PA-AA, R 908, Naval Attaché Carl von Coerper, London, to Naval Office, 6 December 1906. Coerper wrote that he refused to consider the offer because he did not want to ‘buy a pig in a poke’.

178

Notes and References

32. Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: From the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 42. 33. Holger H. Herwig, The German Naval Officer Corp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 101. 34. For the conception of honour among officers, see Ute Frevert, Men of Honour: A Social and Cultural History of the Duel translated by Anthony Williams (Cambridge, MA: Polity, 1995), pp. 36–84. 35. For an insightful treatise of the ambiguity of espionage see Hiley, ‘Decoding German Spies’. 36. This is the main theme of Erskine Childers’ The Riddle of the Sands and many other espionage novels. 37. PRO, WO 32/4898, 15th petition of Franz L. Th. Greite, HM Prison, Parkhurst, to Secretary of Home Office, 12 September 1921. Greite fails to take into account that the British were quite capable of honouring Germans who had spied for their country out of patriotism, see p. 101 38. Gustav Steinhauer, The Kaiser’s Master Spy: The Story as Told by Himself ed. S.T. Felstead (London: John Lane, 1930). However, Steinhauer later repudiated this ‘title’, claiming that the British greatly exaggerated his espionage activities: Gustav Steinhauer, Der Detektiv des Kaisers: Spionage und Spionageabwehr (Berlin: Oestergaard, 1932), p. 161. Steinhauer’s memoirs were published simultaneously in German and English, with Felstead doing most of the writing and editing. 39. Gustav Steinhauer, Der Meisterspion des Kaisers: Was der Detektiv Wilhelms II. in seiner Praxis erlebte. Erinnerungen (Berlin: K. Voegels, 1930), pp. 171, 188; PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 55ff. 40. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, passim; PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 55ff. 41. Steinhauer, Der Meisterspion, pp. 210–30. Steinhauer also gives a dramatic account of how he and Melville were dragged into a shoot-out with Russian anarchists who had attempted to assassinate the two monarchs. 42. PRO, KV 1/8, memoirs of Melville, 1917, pp. 6f. 43. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, p. 161. 44. Steinhauer, Der Meisterspion, pp. 137ff. Following Britain and Germany’s exchange of Zanzibar and Heligoland, the inhabitants of the latter island still spoke English and were generally suspected of pro-English sympathies by the Admiralstab. 45. Steinhauer, Der Meisterspion, pp. 151f. Steinhauer’s account of his activities remains rather vague, probably due to the fact that he published his story two decades after the event, but maybe also to protect his former employees. The fact that he undertook regular journeys to England after 1900 led some in the British counter-intelligence community to the conclusion that Steinhauer was in fact the head of the German secret service, see Felstead, German Spies, p. 3. 46. PRO, DPP 1/28, Drake to Director of Public Prosecutions, Williamson, 26 February 1914. 47. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, report by Steinhauer, Potsdam, 25 July 1914. Containing Steinhauer’s handwritten twenty-three-page report on his reconnaissance trip to Scotland. 48. PRO, DDP 1/4, memorandum submitted to Bodkin, not dated; ibid., statement by Mildred Towse, 12 September 1910. Wohlfahrt spent five–six weeks at her boarding house.

Notes and References 179 49. Ibid., statement by Hannah Isabel Wodehouse, 22 September 1910. Wodehouse claimed that she had visited Berlin in the company of an English lady whose identity she would not reveal. In Berlin, Wodehouse stated, she met Wohlfahrt who ‘gave her to understand he had been to England on an intelligence mission’. As there is no corroborative evidence on Wodehouse’s trip to Berlin, she may well have made up the story of the ball, or even the entire trip: ibid., exhibits, letter by Helm to Wodehouse, 21 August 1910. According to one of her acquaintances, Miss Wodehouse was ‘inclined to romancing’: ibid., statement by Mrs Flood-Jones, 14 September 1910. 50. Ibid., statement by Miss Wodehouse, 8 September 1910; ibid., Fareham Police Court, 15 September 1910. 51. PA-AA, R 809–16, ‘Voyages of German officers abroad’. 52. PRO, DDP 1/14, statement by Mildred Towse, 12 September 1910. 53. Ibid., exhibits, letter from Helm to Wodehouse, 21 August 1910. 54. Ibid., exhibits, letter from Wodehouse to Helm, 24 August 1910. She also enquired about ‘Hans’ [Wohlfahrt] and asked whether she had met Helm previously in Berlin to which the latter replied in the negative. This suggests that Wodehouse indeed visited Wohlfahrt in Berlin. 55. Ibid., Helm to Wodehouse, no date; ibid., statement by Miss Wodehouse, 8 September 1910. 56. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 6 September 1910. Wodehouse claimed that she had done so to gain Helm’s confidence for she had suspected him all along of being a spy. In view of her personality, and her previous relationship with Wohlfahrt, she was probably passed on by one German officer to a comrade for more natural reasons. 57. Ibid., statement by James Lodder, 19 October 1910. 58. Ibid., statement by Miss Wodehouse, 8 September 1910. 59. Ibid., statement by Lieutenant H.C. Harrison, Portsmouth, 12 September 1910. 60. Ibid., memorandum by Colonel John Adye, WO, to Pearce, Whitehall, 29 October 1910; ibid., statement by Captain Martelli, no date. Martelli and Lieutenant Salmond had arrested Helm. 61. Ibid., exhibits, letter by Helm, Fort Purbrook, to Wodehouse, 6 September 1910. 62. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 6 September 1910. As Kell found out one day later, the name of ‘that press correspondent’ was K. C. St. Spiers: ibid., entry for 7 September 1910. 63. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 6 September 1910. While the First Sea Lord wished the case would stay out of the papers, Kell argued that press coverage might deter potential imitators. 64. BA-MA, RM 3/22641, cutting from newspaper Der Tag, no date, article entitled ‘The lost sea battle’ by Richard Nordhausen; PA-AA, R 815, AA to Prussian War Ministry, 12 September 1910; ibid., War Minister Josias von Heeringen to AA, 7 December 1910. 65. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 28 September 1910. However, Helm’s bag contained ‘a few addresses where German officers stay when they come over here’. 66. PRO, DPP 1/4, memorandum by Col. John Adye, WO, to Pearce, Whitehall, 29 October 1910. 67. Ibid., Office of Attorney-General to War Office and Admiralty, 3 November 1910. Helm was tried under the old OSA of 1889 which obliged the authorities

180

68.

69.

70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

77. 78.

79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91.

Notes and References to prove that the defendant intended to forward the material to a foreign government. Ibid., exhibits, Helm to German embassy: ‘Meldung. Bin Montag 12½ p.m. Fort Widley festgenommen. Habe im Notizbuch Zeichnungen von Hafenbefestigungen. Dies geschehen von Clarence Parade Pier zur eigenen Belehrung. Helm P.B. 21 Fort Purbrook.’ Ibid., L. Goldberg, solicitor, ‘Kgl. (royal) Preuss. Geheimer Justizrat, Rechtskonsulat des Kaiserlich Deutschen Generalkonsulats’, to Director of Public Prosecutions, 23 September 1910. The official legal counsel to the German general consulate in London offered no evidence on Helm’s behalf to expedite the trial, but instead applied for bail. PA-AA, R 815, AA to Prussian War Ministry, 12 September 1910. Ibid., War Minister von Heeringen to AA, 7 December 1910: ‘Einen Auftrag zur Erkundung hatte er nicht.’ PRO, DPP 1/4, letter by Helm, Winchester Prison, to Wodehouse, Fratton, 11 September 1910. Ibid., anonymous letter to Miss Wodehouse, Liverpool, 19 September 1910. The author is using rhetoric associated with Irish Republicanism. Ibid., cutting from The Southern Daily Echo, 14 November [1910]. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 20 September 1910. The hearing took place at Earsham. PRO, DPP 1/4, cutting from The Southern Daily Echo, 14 November. The sum was presumably paid by the German consulate. The final hearing took place at Winchester. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 14 November 1910. For the political dimension of the Agadir crisis see: Geoffrey Barraclough, From Agadir to Armageddon: Anatomy of a Crisis (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1982). Ralf Forsbach, Alfred von Kiderlen-Wächter (1852–1912): Ein Diplomatenleben im Kaiserreich (2 vols, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 1997), 2, p. 533. Frankfurter Zeitung, 24 July 1911. Berliner Tageblatt, 26 July 1911. Kreuz-Zeitung, 12 August 1911. Holger Afflerbach, Falkenhayn: Politisches Denken und Handeln im Kaiserreich (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1994), p. 79. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Isendahl to Naval Attaché Boy-Ed, Washington, DC, 30 April 1914. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, pp. 391, 405. See, for instance, Ferguson, The Pity of War, pp. 64f. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, p. 448. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Tapken to Naval Attaché Widenmann, London, 16 February 1912. See p. 80. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 73ff. The term ‘intermediary’ was coined by MI5. Steinhauer called them Mittelsmänner (mediators) or simply Agenten: Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, pp. 195f. Ibid., p. 196. Steinhauer claimed he had forty intermediaries in England which seems exaggerated. According to Steinhauer, each agent received 20 marks plus stamps and envelopes.

Notes and References 181 92. PRO, DPP 1/27, ‘Trial of Carl Gustav Ernst’, Mr Bodkin’s opening speech for the prosecution, 28 September 1914. Ernst was born in Hoxton in 1871. 93. The Times, 14 November 1914. 94. PRO, DPP 1/27, passim, see especially Ernst’s intercepted communications with Steinhauer (exhibits). 95. Steinhauer, Der Meisterspion, p. 198. 96. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary of pre-war period , p. 33. 97. PRO, KV 1/9, eighth progress report by Kell, 9 April 1913. 98. Panikos Panayi, German Immigrants in Britain during the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1914 (New York, Oxford: Berg, 1995), p. 53. 99. F. Burgdörfer, ‘Migration across the Frontiers in Germany’, in Walter F. Willcox (ed.), International Migrations (2 vols, New York: Gordon & Breach, 1969), 2, p. 343. 100. Porter, The Refugee Question, pp. 1–3. From 1826 until 1905, Britain in practice took in anyone. 101. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Widenmann, London, to Tapken, 22 April 1912. 102. See p. 41. 103. Berliner Tageblatt, 21 August 1911. 104. PRO, FO 371/1126, report by Chief Constable, Plymouth, 22 July 1911. According to his own statement, Schultz possessed £50,000, which seems exaggerated. 105. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, p. 123. 106. PRO, FO 371/1126, report by Supt Dixson, metropolitan police, Devonport, to Wodehouse, Scotland Yard, 2 August 1911. To counterbalance his display of Teuton might, Schultz flew the English flag from the mast of the boat. 107. Ibid., Martin to Sowerby, 14 August 1911. 108. Ibid., police report, 22 July 1911. Neumann’s address was 37 Pembar Avenue, Walthamstow, London. 109. Ibid., Martin to Sowerby, 10 August 1911. ‘Tobler’s’ full address was 22, Rue d’Ouest, Ostend, Belgium. 110. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 115a, Ernst to ‘Mr. Tony Reimers’, 31 October 1911; ibid., exhibit 116a, Ernst to Steinhauer, 7 November 1911; ibid., exhibit 123a, Steinhauer, Potsdam, to Neumann, via Ernst, November 1911. 111. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, p. 141. 112. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 56ff., regarding the case of Charles Frederick Wagener, Southampton. Wagener communicated occasionally with ‘Tobler’ via Ernst. 113. PRO, FO 371/1126, ‘R.T.’ (that is, ‘Tobler’) to Schultz, 29 July 1911. Message intercepted by the police. 114. Ibid., Dixson to Wodehouse, 2 August 1911. 115. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 126f., 132, 140. 116. PRO, DPP 1/16, exhibit 14, translation of Heinrich Grosse’s birth certificate. 117. Ibid., two newspaper cuttings from an unidentified German newspaper on Grosse; ibid., Heddy Glauer to Public Prosecutor, 4 June 1914; PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 152ff. 118. PRO, DPP 1/16, translation of three letters from ‘Petersson’ to Grosse, 12 October, 1 November and 30 November 1911.

182

Notes and References

119. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 152ff. Heddy Glauer told Melville that, in her opinion, Stein and ‘Petersson’ were identical. Furthermore, ‘Petersson’ never appeared in person, and Stein[hauer] introduced himself as a representative of the former. 120. PRO, DPP 1/16, Grosse, Chatham, to Steinhauer, Potsdam, 13 December 1911. 121. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 152ff. 122. PRO, DPP 1/16, statement by Lucinetta Hollidge, Portsmouth, 7 December 1911. 123. Ibid., Grosse to Steinhauer, 13 December 1911. 124. Ibid., statement by John Bunn, Southsea, 16 January 1912. 125. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 152ff. 126. Ibid., p. 76. 127. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 39a, Steinhauer, Potsdam, to ‘Walters’ (that is, Ernst), 1 August 1912. 128. Ibid., exhibit 87a, ‘Walters’ to ‘Reimers’, 28 January 1913. 129. Ibid., exhibit 106a, ‘Walters’ to ‘Reimers’, 28 April 1913. 130. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary of pre-war period , p. 80. 131. Ibid., ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 202ff., 214ff. 132. Glauer fond employment as a governess with the family of Gertrude Elizabeth Sophia Brandes in March 1912. Brandes was also hosting a naval agent during the war, Louise Emily Wertheim. MI5 points out that the Glauer–Brandes–Wertheim connection constitutes one of the very few links between German pre-war and war espionage in Britain. To call this a link is, however, too far-fetched. Brandes was the private secretary to Baron Bruno Schröder’s wife. During the war, her brother was interned in Britain. It was probably known in Berlin that she was pro-German and therefore unlikely to betray a lodger, but there is no evidence of her being in contact with members of the German secret service. See PRO, WO 141/3/1, trial of L. Wertheim and R. Rowland, proceedings of first day, 14 September 1915, pp. 2–8, testimony by Gertrude Elizabeth Sophia Brandes; when Melville, masquerading as a German secret agent, approached Glauer in July 1912, she said nothing indicating she was a German spy, see PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 171ff. 133. PRO, HO 144/1467/322490, memorandum on Joseph King, September 1918. 134. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1911, pp. 171ff. 135. PA-AA, Botschaft Washington 826, cutting of article of the Frankfurter Zeitung, ‘German Court Records on Dr. Graves’, 19 December 1914; PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff. 136. Armgaard K. Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office: By Late Spy of the German Government with the Collaboration of Edward Lyell Fox (New York: A.L. Burt, 1914), p. 14. 137. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff. 138. Steinhauer would contact Graves via Kruger under the pseudonym ‘James Stafford’, see Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office, pp. 129ff.; PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff.; PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 163a, letter to Graves via Ernst, 3 February 1912, including £15. 139. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 26, letter by ‘W. Ls.’ to Dr Graves, Glasgow, via ‘Walters’, 10 April 1912.

Notes and References 183 140. Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office, p. 146; PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff. 141. Ibid.; Graves, The Secrets of the German War Office, pp. 147f., gives a much less detailed account of his interview with ‘Robinson’ but does not contradict MI5’s historical reports in any way. It is worth noting that both sources describe Kell as the one who came up with the idea of employing Graves. 142. IWM, Kell papers, Lady Constance Kell, ‘A Secret Well Kept’, p. 128. 143. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff. 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid. 146. PA-AA, R 2346, Sektion IIIb to AA, 5 September 1917. The fact that IIIb knew so little about Graves illuminates how badly military and naval intelligence coordinated their activities. 147. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 22ff. 148. PA-AA, Botschaft Washington, 826, memorandum by Hossenfelder, New York, 5 December 1916. The detective, a certain König, was an employee of the HAL. The investigation took place at the request of a ‘higher military person’ but the relevant files have been destroyed by the imperial embassy. 149. The New York Times, 27 June, 22 August 1915, 28 December 1916. 150. NARA, RG 59, General Records of the Department of State, Office of the Counsellor/Under Secretary and Chief, special agent, classified records of the Office of the Counsellor, 1916–27, box 8, folder 136, translation of intercepted letter from Lieutenant-Colonel H. Herwarth to Captain von Papen, Berlin, 10 March 1915. 151. The New York Times, 12 November 1916. 152. PA-AA, Botschaft Washington, 826, Bernstorff to AA, 19 November 1916. The letters chiefly turned out to be correspondence from von Bernstorff’s son. 153. The New York Times, 12, 16, 21, 25 November 1916; 18 August, 23 September 1917; 12 March 1925; 21 February 1928; 5 December 1935; 15 April 1937. 154. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, p. 206. 155. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 96ff, ‘Hentschel alias Atlantis alias Ch. G. Hills’. Tapken was presented to him as ‘Robert Tornow’, aged sixty-four, and chief of the ‘German secret service’; Stammer, Tapken’s assistant, as ‘Captain Fels’, aged forty-five; Steinhauer, without cover name, aged forty-five. 156. Ibid. The list itself is lost. Hentschel may have been included in the list simply because he was a German-language teacher rather than due to suspicious behaviour. This list did not help the Counter-Espionage Bureau in any way to track him down later on. 157. Ibid. The name ‘Riley’ suggests that the family was of Irish origin, perhaps accounting for the Rileys’ subsequent willingness to support the Germans. Patricia Riley had known Parrott since 1908. 158. PRO, DPP 1/20, shorthand notes of Parrott’s trial, pp. 50, 65. 159. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp 96ff. 160. Ibid., pp. 144ff.; Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, p. 208. 161. PRO, DPP 1/20, report by W[illiam] M[elville], 14 July 1912. 162. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, p. 207. As only the Counter-Espionage Bureau knew that Melville was shadowing Parrott, Steinhauer’s account must be taken seriously. This makes it even less comprehensible why he did not

184

163. 164. 165.

166.

167. 168.

169.

170.

171. 172. 173. 174.

175. 176. 177. 178. 179.

Notes and References warn Parrott. Possibly, ‘N’ wanted to make use of him as long as possible and was afraid he might quit as soon as he noticed that his movements were being monitored by the British authorities. PRO, DPP 1/20, ‘correspondence’, memorandum by Director of Public Prosecutions to Attorney-General, 7 August 1912. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 144f. PRO, DPP 1/20, Drake to Stephenson, Assistant Director of Prosecution, 3 January 1913. This agent was a German named Steel, residing on the Edgware Road. PA-AA, R 909, AA to Chief of Admiralstab, 5 July 1913; ibid., C. Groebel & Co., solicitors, London, to ‘Herrn Ober Direktor Geheimdienst, Berlin, Deutschland’, 21 June 1913. PRO, HO 144/1250/233717, ‘George Charles Parrott’, note by New Scotland Yard, 8 March 1919. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, pp. 96ff.; NARA, State Department, Office of the Counsellor, RG 59, special agent, classified case files of Edward Bell, 1917–1919, box 2, confidential file 73a, memorandum by Office of the Counsellor, 19 July 1916. PA-AA, R 908–10, ‘recruitment, and offers from agents’. Three large files containing letters from volunteers for secret service work on Germany’s behalf. Usually, the offers were not taken seriously. In 1904, for instance, a certain R. Westwood claimed that he possessed ‘all the vital facts relating to the defences of the Thames and Medway’ which he would offer ‘for a reward of course’ to Germany as he had ‘German interests at heart’, see PA-AA, R 908, R. Westwood, Walsall, to Admiralstab, 5 March 1904. A German official attached the following note: ‘I intend to let this offer unanswered.’, see note, 10 March 1904. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 91ff., ‘Schroeder @ Gould’. PRO, DPP 1/28, ‘Gould @ Schroeder’, exhibit 17, certified copy of marriage. BA-MA, RM 5/773, list of the district command in Kiel, November 1901, No. 2: ‘Oberleutnant der Reserve Schroeder . . . London’. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, pp. 211–18. Steinhauer refers to him as ‘Benneth’, but he also writes that, when this man was arrested in 1914, a photograph of himself, Steinhauer, was found, revealing his identity to the British authorities. This was exactly the case when Schroeder alias Gould was arrested in February 1914 (see below) and one may infer that Steinhauer changed the name in his memoirs. A letter from Gould to Steinhauer in 1904 proves that by that time the two communicated regularly with each other, see PRO, DPP 1/28, exhibit 31, letter from Gould to Steinhauer, 15 October 1904. PRO, DPP 1/28, proceedings of trial, 4 March 1914, pp. 2–9. Ibid., exhibit 27, letter in German by Gould to T. Macmaster, 8 October 1903. BA-MA, RM 5/3642, memorandum by von Koch of ‘N’, 22 January 1906. PRO, DPP 1/28, exhibit 30, Gould to Steinhauer, 7 October 1904. These two were Captain Guy Burrows and Captain James Butler-Carter. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 91ff. Most of them were sailors: Billy Knight (HMS Actason), George William

Notes and References 185

180. 181. 182. 183. 184. 185. 186.

187. 188.

189. 190. 191. 192. 193. 194. 195.

196. 197. 198. 199.

200. 201.

Shepherd (HMS Pembroke), T.J. Mott (ex-torpedo engineer), J.H. Pinkard (HMS Cyclops), furthermore a Swiss German named Klockenbusch resident in Chatham, and the director of the British Cinema Productions, Austin Fryers. In all cases the ensuing investigation proved inconclusive. PRO, DPP 1/28, memorandum by Drake to Director of Public Prosecutions, 24 February 1914. Ibid., R. Wilson, Treasury Solicitors Department, to Williamson, 8 March 1914. The Goulds had ‘about 10 children’. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 91ff. PRO, DPP 1/28, exhibit 31, Gould to Steinhauer, 15 October 1904. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 134a, C.F. Schmidt to Charles Shattock c/o Gould, London, 16 August 1913. Ibid., exhibit 6a, Steinhauer to Gould/Schroeder, undated. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 91ff.; PRO, DPP 1/28, memorandum by Drake, 24 February 1914. The photograph was signed ‘In freundlicher Erinnerung von G. Steinhauer, London, February 1913’. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 99ff.; PRO, DPP 1/28, proceedings of trial, 4 March 1914, p. 46. PRO, KV 1/41, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, pp. 91ff. When MI5’s historical reports were compiled – that is, in the early 1920s – Schroeder was still imprisoned. Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, pp. 217f., claims that Schroeder was later murdered. Volker R. Berghahn, Der Tirpitz Plan: Genesis and Vefall einer innerpolitischen Krisenstrategie unter Wilhelm II: (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971), p. 437. Boghardt, ‘German Naval Intelligence’, pp. 115–7, 160f. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Isendahl to Boy-Ed, Washington, DC, 30 April 1914. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, handwritten comment by Isendahl, 22 August 1914. PRO, DPP 1/16, trial of Grosse, Drake to Guy Stephenson, 11 June 1914. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary of pre-war period, ‘Information Obtained by Chance’, p. 33. Ernst received his mail in his barber shop at 402a Caledonian Road in London, and Steinhauer received his in Potsdam, either at Brauerstrasse 1–2 or at Allée Sanssouci 4. Steinhauer occasionally invited his agents to either address. PRO, DPP 1/27, Steinhauer to ‘Walters’, 20 April 1912. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary of pre-war period, pp. 81ff. PRO, DPP 1/16, Grosse to Steinhauer, 13 December 1911. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 66a, ‘Weller’ to Steinhauer, n.d. Ernst complains ‘that your agent Grosse had not the slightest consideration who further despatched the letters’. In fact, Grosse had even written letters out of his prison cell to Croner and ‘Petersson’. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, p. 173. PRO, KV 1/10, Kell’s diary, entry for 24 August 1910. Kell attended the case of an Italian, a Signor Paluso, who was allegedly a secret service agent of the Italian embassy. Paluso was sentenced to nine months’ imprisonment for obtaining money under false pretences. This is one of the rare cases in which Kell took interest in alleged espionage other than German, although

186

Notes and References

Steinhauer claims in his memoirs that the French were much more active in this respect than the Germans, see Steinhauer, Der Detektiv, p. 139. 202. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, preface, p. 8. 203. PRO, DPP 1/27, exhibit 100a, ‘Walters’ to ‘Reimers’, 13 March 1913. Steinhauer was particularly keen on information about the proceedings of Klare’s trial. 204. PRO, KV 1/40, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1912, pp. 67ff., ‘William Klare’.

4

The outbreak of the First World War

1. Jost Hindersmann, Der Britische Spionageroman: Vom Imperialismus zum Ende des Kalten Krieges (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1995), p. 25. 2. Michael Macdonagh, In London during the Great War: The Diary of a Journalist (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1935), p. 6. 3. PRO, HO 45/10484/103444, passim. Articles like ‘The Kaiser’s Eyes’ in the Daily Express, 29 September 1914, were common and widespread. 4. The National Review, December 1914, p. 564. 5. Andrew Clark, Echoes of the Great War: The Diary of the Reverend Andrew Clark, 1914–1919 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), entry for Saturday, 26 September 1914. 6. Trevor Wilson, The Myriad Faces of War: Britain and the Great War 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Polity, 1986), p. 160. 7. Aston, Secret Service, p. 82. 8. Sir Basil Thomson, Queer People (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1922), pp. 10, 37. 9. In 1912, the Board of Film Censors had considered the movie, then entitled The Raid of 1915, as too offensive to Germany. Such considerations evidently did not apply after August 1914, see Hiley, ‘The Play’, p. 225. See also Hiley’s introduction to Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, p. xxiv. 10. Sladen, The Real Le Queux, p. 200. 11. PRO, MEPO 3/243, Le Queux, Sunbury, to Commissioner of Metropolitan Police, 17 August 1914. 12. Ibid., Le Queux to Commissioner, 17 September 1914. 13. Ibid., Le Queux to Superintendent Patrick Quinn, 21 February 1915. 14. Ibid., Quinn to Le Queux, 22 February 1915; ibid., Le Queux to Lambton, 1 March 1915. 15. Ibid., memorandum by (illegible), 2 March 1915; ibid., memorandum by S.R.H., 2 March 1915. 16. See Panikos Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst: Germans in Britain during the First World War (New York, Oxford: Berg, 1991), especially pp. 153–83. 17. Quoted from Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the First World War (London: Allen Lane, 1977), p. 109. Italics as in Haste. 18. Alan Hyman, The Rise and Fall of Horatio Bottomley: The Biography of a Swindler (London: Cassell, 1972), p. 160. Bottomley had made a remarkable u-turn. A month earlier, John Bull had taken a staunchly non-interventionist stance: ibid., p. 145, ‘TO HELL WITH SERBIA. Why Should Britain Shed Her Blood To Save A Nation of Assassins?’.

Notes and References 187 19. Panikos Panayi, ‘Anti-German Riots in Britain during the First World War’, in idem, Racial Violence in Britain, 1840–1950 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993), pp. 66f. 20. PRO, WO 141/1/2, Captain J.G. Mayne, Ipswich, to General Officer Commanding the East Anglian Division, 29 October 1914. 21. Ibid., report by Major Byrne, 27 November 1914. 22. Ibid., Goldstone to Tennant, London, 7 May 1915. 23. Clark, Echoes, entry for 26 September 1914. 24. Porter, Plots and Paranoia, p. 137. By the end of the war, the Aliens’ Office had compiled a list of c. 100,000 names, which included British citizens of foreign descent. 25. Panayi, The Enemy in Our Midst, pp. 46f. 26. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War, 2nd edition (London: Macmillan, 1991), pp. 76f. 27. This section is based largely on an exchange of ideas with Nicholas Hiley, and his research in progress on the early years of British counter-espionage. I am grateful to Dr Hiley for his permission to let me incorporate some of his as yet unpublished findings in my work. 28. The Times, 6 August 1914. 29. PRO, KV 1/7, ‘Alphabetical Name Index to S.W.L.’, 1913, with later amendments. Marked for arrest in case of war [as spelled in list]: Alaadin, Apel, Berger, Bubenheim, Diderichs, Johann Engel, Ernst, Fels, Fowler, Graves (marked ‘Wanted if in Great Britain’), Heine, Hentschel (marked ‘Wanted if in Great Britain’), Klunder, Kruger, Rimann, Rodriquez, Schmidt, Schneider, Schutte, Steinhauer, (marked ‘If in this country’), Theissen (marked ‘Wanted if in Gt. Britain’), Wagener. 30. French, ‘Spy Fever’, pp. 364f. 31. PRO, DPP 1/27, memorandum by the Secretary, GPO, September 1914. 32. The Times, 29 September 1914. 33. PRO, DPP, 1/27, Mr Bodkin’s opening speech for the prosecution, 28 September 1914. 34. Ibid., minutes of the trial, p. 68, statement by the accused. 35. Ibid., memorandum by Under Secretary of State, 30 November 1914. 36. Felstead, German Spies at Bay, p. 7. 37. PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary for 1914, p. 50. 38. IWM, the papers of Vernon Kell, lecture notes by Eric Holt-Wilson on ‘Security Intelligence in War, 1914–1918’, 1934, pp. 16f. 39. Bulloch, M.I.5, p. 30. 40. See, for instance, Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 73: ‘Kell exaggerated the scale of his achievements in August 1914, [but] he had none the less totally defeated third-rate opposition.’ 41. The Times, 20 October 1914. Italics mine. 42. Porter, Plots and Paranoia, p. 129. 43. Apel, Diederich, Engel, Heine, Klunder, Kruger, Rodriguez, Schneider, Schutte. 44. A large number of people were arrested on the outbreak of war, often merely for ‘suspicious behaviour’. The ones selected for the ‘special war list’ were: Buchwaldt, Hengnauer, Marie Kronauer, Kuhr, Laurens, Lozel, Meyer, Nemlar, Rummenie, Stubenwoll, Sukowski, von Willer. For the full list see PRO, KV 1/39, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report, summary for 1914, p. 49.

188

Notes and References

45. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, Trapp, Imperial Naval Office, to Admiralstab, 15 August 1914. 46. BA-MA, RM 5/3712, memorandum by ‘N’, 27 July 1914. Yet it took the Germans some time to detect British naval mobilization. 47. Ibid., telegram by Kaiser, Hanover, to Prieger, 5 August 1914. 48. Nicolai, Geheime Mächte, p. 59. For German intelligence in the United States, see Koopmann, Diplomatie und Reichsinteresse, and Doerries, Imperial Challenge. For Norway, see Olav Riste, The Neutral Ally: Norway’s Relations with Belligerent Powers in the First World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965). 49. Elsbeth Schragmüller, ‘Aus dem deutschen Nachrichtendienst’, in Friedrich Felger (ed.), Was wir vom Weltkrieg nicht wissen (Berlin: Andermann, 1929), p. 142. 50. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 504. 51. BA-MA, PH 3/604, memorandum by Kefer, KNSt Antwerp, 26 April 1917. 52. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, pp. 451ff. 53. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iii, Gneist, Rotterdam, to Schnitzer, Antwerp, 19 July 1915. 54. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 134ff. 55. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 676. She is also featured in several movies. 56. See her published doctoral thesis: Elsbeth Schragmüller, Die Bruderschaft der Borer und Balierer von Freiburg und Waldkirch (Karlsruhe: Volkswirtschaftliche Abhandlungen der Badischen Hochschulen, 1914). 57. Schragmüller, ‘Aus dem deutschen Nachrichtendienst’, p. 142; Nicolai, Geheime Mächte, p. 172. 58. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 98. 59. Ibid., p. 1030. The types of invisible ink in 1916–1917 included nervine, perogene, gaede B and gaede J. 60. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, agreement between Admiralstab (Isendahl) and Paul Jänicke, 10 August 1914.; ibid., negotiations of Admiralstab with agent [Paul] Daelen, 4 September 1914. ‘N’ conceded to Daelen that his family would receive 3,000 marks yearly if he became victim of an ‘accident’. In addition, his wife was promised 300 marks while he was abroad. 61. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, pp. 251ff. 62. Ibid., p. 676. 63. PRO, WO 32/4898, memorandum by Thwaites, 23 December 1920: ‘In December 1918 a list of German agents was found in the German Admiralty Bureau in Antwerp.’ British forces had conquered Antwerp in June 1917, but apparently did not search the former KNSt thoroughly. It is strange that it took the list, which itself does not survive in the files, a year and a half to reach the desk of British counter-espionage. 64. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, pp. 349ff. 65. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, Captain Kroeger, Wesel, to Admiralstab, 6 August 1914. 66. For the role of the Netherlands vis-à-vis Britain and Germany in the First World War, see Marc Frey, Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Niederlande: Ein neutrales Land im politischen und wirtschaftlichen Kalkül der Kriegsgegner (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998). 67. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, p. 447. The staff included five officers.

Notes and References 189 68. Reichsamt des Innern (ed.), Handbuch für das Deutsche Reich (Berlin: C. Heymann, 1914), p. 112. 69. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, pp. 96ff. 70. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iv, Gneist to Isendahl, 10 September 1915. 71. PRO, WO 141/2/1, memorandum by Major Drake, 30 July 1915. 72. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, p. 504. 73. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 115. 74. PRO, WO 141/3/1, trial of Louise Wertheim and Reginald Rowland, 20 September 1915, cross-examination of Rowland, p. 133. 75. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, Dierks to Teschemacher, Meldesammelstelle Nord, 1 November 1914. 76. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, war period, pp. 52ff. 77. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iii, Uhlrich to Gneist, Rotterdam, 2 July 1915; BA-MA, RM 5/3694, telegram Kottkamp, Bristol/Plymouth, to Prieger, via Kestein, 1 January 1915. 78. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 80, IIIm, i, Consul Dr Walther, Vlissingen, to Gneist, Rotterdam, 28 February 1915; ibid., Isendahl to Gneist, 17 March 1915; PRO, WO 71/1237, file 2, 2nd day of trial of Ernest Waldemar Melin, 21 August 1915, statement by Melin, pp. 21ff. 79. Henry Landau, All’s Fair: The Story of the British Secret Service behind the German Lines (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1934), pp. 134–6. 80. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 639; Judd The Quest, pp. 282, 416; Landau, All’s Fair, passim. 81. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 118ff. 82. Ibid., pp. 127ff. 83. Ibid., pp. 67ff.; PRO, WO 32/4898, memorandum by Thwaites, 23 December 1920. 84. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 73ff. 85. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iv, Gneist to Isendahl, 26 August 1915. 86. PRO, WO 141/2/1, memorandum by Major Drake, 30 July 1915. 87. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 80, IIIm, i, memorandum by Gneist, 8 November 1914. 88. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 639. 89. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iii, Uhlrich to Gneist, 2 July l915. One of the contacts was a certain Kapitän Hockenholz. 90. Dierks continued to work for German intelligence until his death in a car accident in Hamburg in 1940, see Nikolaus Ritter, Deckname Dr. Rantzau: Die Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus Ritter, Offizier im Geheimen Nachrichtendienst (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1972), pp. 15–20, 254–56. 91. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iii, Uhlrich to Gneist, 2 July 1915; ibid., Schnitzer, Antwerp, to Vice Consul Bosenick, Rotterdam, 8 July 1915; ibid., Gneist to Chief of Admiralstab, 29 July 1915; ibid., Gneist to Schnitzer, 26 July 1915; ibid., Schnitzer to Gneist, 27 July 1915; The Times, 21 October 1915. 92. Landau, All’s Fair, p. 53; Alistair Horne, The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, 3rd edition (London: Penguin, 1993), p. 1.

190

Notes and References

93. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, war period, pp. 52ff. The address was 38 Chaussée de Malines, Antwerp; Schragmüller, ‘Aus dem deutschen Nachrichtendienst’, p. 152. 94. The New York Times, 24 February 1917. 95. Landau, All’s Fair, p. 131. 96. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 80, IIIm, ii, Isendahl to Gneist, 27 April 1915. 97. PRO, CAB 24/4, G-153, ‘The position of the Northern Neutral Countries. Report of Committee’, 27 August 1917, p. 4.

5

German espionage in Great Britain, 1914–1917

1. Ullrich, Die nervöse Großmacht, p. 229; Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, pp. 447f. 2. Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), p. 23. 3. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, p. 392. The planning began in January 1912. 4. Ibid., pp. 394f. 5. Halpern, A Naval History, pp. 28f. 6. BA-MA, RM 5/3694, memorandum by Prieger, 30 December 14, on expedition of Robert Rosenthal; ibid., memorandum by Prieger, 2 January 1915, on expedition of Adolf Weiszflog alias Ludvico Hurwitz y Zender. 7. BA-MA, RM 5/3695, memorandum by Prieger, 21 February 1915. 8. PRO, ADM 137/4177, ‘German Intelligence Centres’, intercepted message dated 5 June 1915. 9. PRO, WO 141/1/7, file 2, ‘General Court-Martial of Roos, 2nd day’, 17 July 1915, Roos’ telegram to Dierks, 2 May 1915. 10. BA-MA, RM 5/3696, Oberndorff, Kristiania, to AA, 29 April 1915. 11. PRO, DEFE 1/130, memorandum by Browne, 13 December 1919, p. 16. 12. PRO, WO 32/4898, DMI Thwaites, 23 December 1920. The agent was the Spaniard Adolfo Guerrero. 13. BA-MA, RM 5/3695, Prieger, received on 20 March 1915. 14. BA-MA, PH 3/575, KNSt Antwerp, 8 September 1915, report by C37. 15. IWM, The Diary of Miss W.L.B. Tower; Wilson, The Myriad Faces, p. 161. 16. Thomson, Queer People, p. 37. 17. Caroline Playne, Society at War 1914–1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931), p. 256. 18. Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-Time: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated throughout the Nations during the Great War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1928), p. 63. 19. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, Fischer, Stockholm, to Admiralstab, 17 September 1914. Forwarding a letter from Lody, dated 4 September. 20. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, p. 175. 21. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, memorandum by Prieger, 5 September 1914. 22. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, p. 15, IIIb, gouvernement Cologne, 17 September 1914. 23. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, memorandum by Prieger, 7 September 1914.

Notes and References 191 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46.

BA-MA, RM 5/3691, Oberndorff, Christiania, to Admiralstab, 9 September 1914. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, BE (name illegible) to Admiralstab, 17 September 1914. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, p. 16, IIIb, Lüttich, 21 September 1914. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 813. NARA, T 77, 1439, Gempp-monographs, pp. 404f., memorandum on reorganization of intelligence services, May 1915. BA-MA, PH 3/602, intelligence officer of Army Supreme Command (AOK) 5 to IIIb West, 14 May 1916; BA-MA, RM 5/3696, memorandum by Prieger, 9 May 1915. Andreas Politopoulos, a Greek citizen and Hamburg merchant, was recruited in spite of his excessive pecuniary demands because Prieger judged him to be of outstanding value. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 134ff.; KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 30ff.; BA-MA, RM 5/3696, memorandum by Prieger, 2 June 1915. PA-AA, R 8411, Michahelles to AA, 10 June 1917. According to Michahelles, Filchner had left Norway in November 1916. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 96ff, French report on German centres of espionage 1916–1917. BA-MA, RM 5/3697, passim. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl, Wilhelms-Reede, to Admiralstab, 29 November 1914. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, pp. 601–3, memorandum by Dr Schragmüller, 1915. For statistical data, see appendices 2 and 3. BA-MA, RM 5/3639, Isendahl to Naval Captain Karl Boy-Ed, Washington, DC, 16 December 1914. Quoted from Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 157. PA-AA, Der Weltkrieg no. IIk secr., ii, postcard by Bryan A. Kelly, Ruhleben prisoner camp, Baracke No. 6, to (illegible), 28 November 1914. The card may be addressed to Sir Roger Casement who was in personal contact with Kelly later on. Ibid., iii, Chief of General Staff to AA, 23 December 1914. Ibid., iv, Rasmussen to AA, 19 January 1915. It is unclear which service employed Kelly at this point. BA-MA, PH 2/51, memorandum by War Ministry, Berlin, 3 October 1918, ‘Establishment of a “Female Intelligence Corps” ’. On women and espionage in World War I, see Tammy Proctor, Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (New York, London: New York University Press, 2003), especially pp. 42–51 on female spies in England. According to Kell, the German secret service had tried to enlist Ottoman naval officers attached to the Royal Navy, see PRO, KV 1/9, eleventh progress report by Kell, 30 April 1914, p. 80. About 500,000 Jewish citizens lived in Germany in 1914, and over 10,000 Jewish men volunteered for military service in the first weeks of the war: See Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 129f. Felstead, German Spies at Bay, p. 20. In addition, one German agent committed suicide while on death row.

192

Notes and References

47. HStA, HAPAG, 621–1, 416, Bünz, Meyer, HAL, New York, to HAL board of directors, Hamburg, 27 November 1914. 48. The New York Times, 31 October, 11 November 1914. 49. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, p. 152. 50. The New York Times, 14 November 1914. 51. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, p. 219. 52. BA-MA, RM 5/3712, Admiralstab, Berlin, 27 July 1914, No. 11, Lody, naval command, Hamburg III. 53. BA-MA, RM 5/3711, agreement between Admiralstab and Lody, 25 May 1914. 54. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, memorandum by ‘N’, 7 August 1914. 55. Ibid., Lody, Bergen, to Stammer, 22 August 1914. 56. Ibid., memorandum by Prieger, 14 August 1914. 57. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, p. 166. 58. BA-MA, RM 5/3691, telegram from ‘Inglis’, Edinburgh, 31 August 1914. 59. Ibid., Lody to Prieger, 2 August 1914. 60. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, report by Lody to ‘N’, received 15 September 1914. 61. PRO, WO 71/1236, folder 14–2, Lody, Dublin, to Stammer, Berlin, via Burchard, Stockholm, 1 October 1914. 62. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, memorandum by Prieger, 23 September 1914. 63. PRO, WO 71/1236, court martial of Carl Lody, folder 14–2, Lody, Edinburgh, to Stammer, Berlin, via Burchard, Stockholm, 26 September 1914. 64. PRO, WO 71/1236, statement by District Inspector Cheesman, not dated (the police arrested Lody on 2 October). 65. Originally, ‘Nazi’ was the Bavarian short form for the Christian name ‘Ignatz’, see Franz Ringseis, Neues Bayerisches Wörterbuch: Wortschatz – Worterklärung – Wortschreibung (Munich: Ludwig, 1997), p. 159: ‘Nazi – short form for “Ignatz”, unfortunately superseded by abbreviation for National Socialist.’ 66. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1914, war period, pp. 30ff. 67. As a matter of fact, Nairne had written several letters to the German naval attaché early in 1914, asking him for a ‘pretty German uniform’ and an appointment as German vice consul in Newhaven. In return, Nairne offered to compel the British government to ‘bow to the Kaiser’s wishes’. Naval Attaché von Müller dismissed this ‘proposition’, but Nairne’s name appeared several times in the local press, see BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Naval Attaché von Müller, London, to Admiralstab, 22 April 1914. 68. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, pp. 121–4, 144f. 69. The Times, 1 November 1914. 70. The Times, 31 October 1914. 71. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, p. 164. 72. Ibid., pp. 155–60. 73. Ibid., p. 194. 74. Ibid., p. 164. 75. Ibid., p. 156. 76. Ibid., p. 194. 77. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Hanna John, née Lody, Berlin, to Isendahl, 16 November 1914. Hanna John urged Isendahl to permit publication of the letter, which was granted. The letter was subsequently published both in the German and the British press.

Notes and References 193 78. The New York Times, 25 November 1914. 79. Baron Robert Baden-Powell, My Adventures as a Spy (London: C.A. Pearson, 1915), p. 45. 80. Quoted in Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession, p. 41. 81. Aston, Secret Service, p. 84. 82. Bulloch, M.I.5, p. 99. 83. For the concept of honour in Europe at the outbreak of war, see Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 200–7. 84. The New York Times, 25 November 1914. 85. The New York Times, 16 April 1915. 86. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, pp. 638f. 87. PRO, WO 71/1236, folder 14–2, memorandum by MO5(g), 3 October 1914. 88. F.R., ‘Vom Leben und Sterben deutscher und feindlicher Agenten’, in Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck (ed.), Die Weltkriegsspionage: Original-Spionage-Werk (Basle: Moro, 1931), p. 339. 89. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Chief of Admiralstab to Naval Cabinet, 18 November 1914. 90. Ibid., Admiral von Müller to Chief of Admiralstab, 12 December 1914. 91. See, for instance, Hans Fuchs, Lody: Ein Weg um Ehre (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1936). 92. PRO, HO 144/1437/298806, Davies, Pentonville Prison Commissioner, 20 October 1915. Report on conversation with Georg Traugott Breeckow. 93. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Chief of Admiralstab to Naval Cabinet, 18 November 1914. A considerable number of German reserve officers lived abroad, many in the United States. 94. For a critical appraisal of ‘the spirit of 1914’ see Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, pp. 13–17. 95. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf translated by Ralph Mannheim (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1943), p. 161. 96. Thomas Rohkrämer, ‘August 1914 – Kriegsmentalität und ihre Voraussetzungen’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Erste Weltkrieg: Wirkung, Wahrnehmung, Analyse (Munich: Piper, 1994), pp. 759–77. 97. Jeffrey Verhey, The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 97. 98. PRO, WO 71/1236, proceedings of court martial of Lody, pp. 154, 160, 166. 99. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Hanna John, née Lody, Charlottenburg, West End, to Isendahl, 16 November 1914. 100. BA-MA, RM 5/3712, Lody, Hotel Adlon, to Prieger, 9 May 1914. 101. Verhey, The Spirit of 1914, p. 99. 102. PRO, WO 141/1/7, courts martial of Haicke Marinus Petrius Jannsen and Willem Johannes Roos, file 2, 17 July 1914, p. 57. Roos was found guilty and executed by firing squad. 103. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 639. 104. This calculation is based on Appendix 3. 105. Nicolai, Nachrichtendienst, p. 40. 106. See graph in Appendix 2. 107. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 91ff. Historians have generally accepted this claim, see Felstead, German Spies at Bay, pp. 80f.; Bulloch, M.I.5, p. 121; Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 188.

194

Notes and References

108. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 639. 109. PRO, KV 1/61, MI5 black list, Vol. xiv, 8 October 1918. This is the only preserved volume of MI5’s black list. 110. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 640; PRO (ed.), M.I.5, pp. 18f. 111. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 59ff. The address was 1 Zwaanensteeg, Rotterdam. 112. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 80, IIIm, report by anonymous author, Rotterdam, 14 June 1915. 113. PRO, WO 141/1/3, memorandum by Major Drake, 26 February 1915. 114. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 59ff. 115. PRO, WO 141/2/2, third day of trial of Hahn and Müller, 4 June 1915, p. 56. 116. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 81, IIIm, iii, Gneist, Rotterdam, to Admiralstab, 29 July 1915. 117. Willem Johannes Roos, Georg Traugott Breeckow, Fernando Buschmann, Paul Hensel alias Irving Guy Ries, Haicke Marinus Petrius Jannsen, Augusto Alfredo Roggen were executed. 118. PA-AA, Konsulat Rotterdam, Bündel 80, IIIm, ii, Schnitzer to Gneist, 5 June 1915: ‘An wirklich guten Deckadressen haben wir, trotz der verhältnismäßig vielen, die wir haben, noch stets Mangel.’ 119. Ibid., deciphering by Wesel, 16 April 1915; ibid., Freyer, Wesel, to Gneist, Rotterdam, 21 May 1915. 120. PRO, DEFE 1/139, report by MI5, 1919 [?]; ibid., KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 96ff., ‘French report on German Centres of Espionage in 1916/1917’: ‘The great danger in transmitting news was reduced to a minimum by German chemical science.’ 121. PRO, KV 1/45, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915–1918, ‘German Clubs etc.’, passim. 122. PRO, HO 45/10881/338498, file 2, Kell to Troup, HO, 30 April 1917. 123. Ibid., Troup to Kell, 11 May 1917. 124. Ibid., memorandum by J.F. Moylan, Aliens Division of HO, 10 November 1917. 125. For instance, Henry de Halsalle (ed.), A Secret Service Woman: Being Confessions, Experiences and Opinions of Olga von Kopf, the Famous International Spy (London: T. Werner Laurie, 1917); Fritz Segelken, Hans Ludwig, der Spion: Seine Erlebnisse als Spion in England (Leipzig: Vogel & Vogel, 1917); Ernst Carl, One against England: The Death of Lord Kitchener and the Plot against the British Fleet (London: Jarrolds, 1935). Note the similarity of the name, certainly a pseudonym, with that of the real Carl Ernst, the alleged leader of the ‘Ernst ring’. For two celebrated spy cases of the First World War see Julia Keay, The Spy Who Never Was: The Life and Loves of Mata Hari (London: Michael Joseph, 1987) and Bernard Wasserstein, The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), especially pp. 97–105. 126. Jules Crawford Silber, Die anderen Waffen (Breslau: Korn, 1932). Translated as The Invisible Weapons (London: Hutchinson, 1932). 127. Ronald Seth, The Spy Who wasn’t Caught: The Story of Julius Silber (London: Hale, 1966), p. 7. 128. Bulloch, M.I.5, p. 132. 129. Richard Deacon, The Silent War: A History of Western Naval Intelligence (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1978), p. 118.

Notes and References 195 130. Silber, The Invisible Weapons, p. 9. 131. David Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, 1914–1918: The Sins of Omission (London: Athlone, 2000), p. 1. 132. Horace C. Peterson, Propaganda for War: The Campaign against American Neutrality, 1914–1917 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1939), p. 330: ‘she [the USA] also could have remained at peace. The reason she did not act in the same way was because of the tremendously successful British propaganda campaign.’ Even though this may be an exaggeration, Peterson highlights an important fact – that British propaganda was far more efficient than its German counterpart. 133. Barbara Tuchmann, The Zimmermann Telegram, 5th edition (New York: Ballantine, 1985), pp. 10f. 134. James Morgan Read, Atrocity Propaganda, 1914–1919 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1941), pp. 22ff. 135. Thompson, Northcliffe, p. 231. 136. See John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 137. Quoted from Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-Time, p. 90. Wilson’s story is taken from The New York Times and the Crusader of 24 February 1922. 138. Ferguson, The Pity of War, p. 232. 139. HMSO (ed.), Evidence and Documents laid before the Committee on Alleged German Atrocities: Being an Appendix to the Report of the Committee Appointed by His Britannic Majesty’s Government and Presided over by The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M. (London: HMSO, no date [1915]), p. 97, report by a ‘Belgian Soldier’. 140. Michael L. Sanders and Philip M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914–1918 (London: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 173, 188. 141. Alice Goldfarb Marquis, ‘Words as Weapons: Propaganda in Britain and Germany during the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, 13, 3 (1978), p. 492. 142. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (London: Arnold, 1997), p. 158. 143. I am grateful to Evangelia Achladi, St Antony’s College, for sharing this information with me. 144. Welch, Germany, Propaganda and Total War, p. 24. 145. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, pp. 210–15. 146. PRO, WO 141/3/1, proceedings of trial of Louise Emily Wertheim and Reginald Rowland [that is, Georg Traugott Breeckow], 14–20 September 1915. 147. PRO, WO 141/3/1, Major (illegible) to WO, 22 July 1915. 148. Ibid., fourth day of trial, p. 207, statement by Breeckow. 149. Ibid., fourth day of trial, p. 209; folder 22A, Francis Lloyd to WO, 26 September 1915. 150. Ibid., fourth day of trial, p. 208. As a mitigating circumstance, Justice Sir Reginald More Bray maintained that Breeckow had talked Wertheim into spying. In fact, she had volunteered to work for ‘N’ in December 1914, and had even declined a salary: BA-MA, RM 5/3694, memorandum by Prieger, 29 December 1914. 151. The Times, 25 October 1915.

196

Notes and References

152. The New York Times, 22 October 1915. See also the case of Gustav Kenneth Triest below. 153. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp.86ff. 154. Gary S. Messinger, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992), p. 19. 155. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, p. 215. 156. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 58ff. 157. BA-MA, RM 5/3696, memorandum by Prieger, 23 April 1915. 158. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 59ff. 159. PRO, ADM 178/99, statement by Octave Blake, 29 September 1915. 160. Ibid., circumstantial letter to Secretary of the Admiralty, 7 September 1915. 161. Ibid., Burminstion, fleet surgeon, 28 July 1915: ‘I consider the man is deficient in certain respects, but he can hardly be called a lunatic.’ 162. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 129ff. 163. PRO, ADM 178/99, Wolfgang Triest to Kenneth Triest, 11 June 1915. 164. Ibid., Page to Grey, 30 June 1915. 165. The New York Times, 8 October 1915. 166. PRO, ADM 178/99, Theodore Roosevelt to British Ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice, 5 October 1915. 167. Ibid., Spring-Rice to Nicolson, 6 October 1915. 168. Ibid., Spring-Rice to Nicolson, 7 October 1915. 169. Ibid., Spring-Rice to FO, 31 October 1915. 170. Ibid., Captain Guy Gaunt to Director of Naval Intelligence, 19 October 1915. 171. The New York Times, 8 October 1915, ‘American Boy Faces Death as Teuton Spy’. 172. Ibid., 29 November 1915. 173. The New York Times, 29 November 1915; The Times, 30 November 1915. 174. PRO, ADM 178/99, Spring-Rice to Grey, 3 December 1915. 175. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 127ff. 176. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 48ff. 177. PRO, WO 32/4898, memorandum by Thwaites, 23 December 1920. 178. PRO, WO 141/3/5, B. Vogt to Balfour, 21 September 1917. 179. Ibid., memorandum by Macdonogh, 14 September 1917. 180. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 55ff. 181. PRO, WO 141/3/6, memorandum by Director of Military Intelligence, 22 April 1920. 182. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 59ff. 183. Just a few days after the outbreak of war, two German bakers’ shops were looted in London: The Times, 12 August 1914, ‘Germans in London. Outbreaks of Violence’. 184. PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 99ff. 185. PRO, WO 141/1/5, statement by Robert Rosenthal, Scotland Yard Prison, May 1915. 186. Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession, p. 41. 187. Felstead, German Spies at Bay, p. 20. 188. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, p. 215; The Times, 23 February 1916, on the execution of Marie José dei Basi; The Times, 7 May 1918, on execution of Victorine Francher. 189. Nicolai, Nachrichtendienst, p. 39.

Notes and References 197 190. Read, Atrocity Propaganda, p. 214. 191. Messinger, British Propaganda, pp. 18f. 192. Nicolai, Nachrichtendienst, p. 13.

6

Covert action 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

Le Queux, Spies of the Kaiser, p. 198. PRO, ADM 1/8264, Edward Troup to Admiralty, 23 October 1911. Ibid., Colonel Andrew Pearson to Kell, 27 November 1911. Ibid., Troup to Admiralty, 2 August 1912. Quoted from Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, p. 169. Francis L. Carsten, War against War: British and German Radical Movements in the First World War (London: Batsford Academic and Educational Publishing, 1982), pp. 25f. De Groot, Blighty, p. 143. Andrew, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, p. 199. Walter Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement in Britain 1900–21 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1969), p. 99; Martin Swartz, The Union of Democratic Control in British Politics during the First World War (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 117. Hiley, ‘Counter-Espionage’, p. 650; Kendall, The Revolutionary Movement, p. 99. PRO, HO 45/10782/278537/18c, memorandum by J. McBrien and P. Quinn on ‘Anti-War Propaganda’, 20 July 1915. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 30ff. BA-MA, RM 5/3692, memorandum by Prieger, 2 October 1914, ‘expedition of Frigate Captain Dunbar to England’. Marwick, The Deluge, p. 243. Carsten, War against War, p. 167. Ferguson, The Pity of War, p. 275. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 91ff. PRO, CAB 24/4, G-157, memorandum on pacifist propaganda, by Sir Edward Carson, 3 October 1917. Thomas Boghardt, ‘A German Spy? New Evidence on Baron Louis von Horst’, The Journal of Intelligence History, 1, 2 (December 2001), pp. 101–27. PA-AA, Der Weltkrieg IIk, vii, Behncke to AA, 17 March 1915. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 492972ff., Sthamer, London, to AA, 17 July 1924. Although some doubt must be cast on the authenticity of this document, it being published by a British insurance company in an attempt to avoid payment for a ship lost during the war, this sort of covert action was indeed carried out from 1914. Martin Kitchen, ‘The German Invasion of Canada in the First World War’, International History Review, 7, 2 (Canada, 1985), pp. 245–60. For Sektion P (‘P’ stands for politics) see Koopmann, Diplomatie und Reichsinteresse, p. 82. Rudolf Nadolny’s memoirs, Mein Beitrag (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1955), contain little information on his activities as director of Sektion P. For ‘NIV’ see also Chapter 1.

198

Notes and References

24. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 497184, August Lassen to Reichardt, 14 July 1930. 25. The director of the ‘S-service’ in Scandinavia was August Lassen, the brother of Alfred Lassen, see PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 497170, Reichardt to August Lassen, 13 July 1930. August Lassen was later succeeded by Bruno Fischer. Sabotage against Britain from the United States was directed by naval agent Kurt Jahnke, see PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 493432ff., Jahnke to Ministry of Defence, 29 January 1925. 26. Koopmann, Diplomatie und Reichsinteresse, pp. 170–82. 27. The New York Times, 27 June 1916. Both Papen and the AA considered ‘Horst von der Goltz’ a pseudonym: PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 493277f., memorandum by Solmann of the AA, 2 May 1925; ibid., K 493297, A. Wandel, Prussian War Ministry, to AA, 25 July 1916. 28. Captain Guy Gaunt, The Yield of the Years: A Story of Adventure Afloat and Ashore by Admiral Sir Guy Gaunt, Naval Attaché and Chief of the British Intelligence Service in the United States, 1914–1918 (London: Hutchinson, 1940), pp. 138f. 29. PRO, HO 144/21710/270992, file 5, Emerson, British Consul at Chihuahua, to FO, 27 November 1914. 30. Franz von Papen, Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich: List, 1952), pp. 57ff.; Horst von der Goltz, My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent (London: Cassell, 1918), p. 149. Each claimed that the proposal to blow up the Welland Canal originated with the other man. 31. Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 179. 32. The New York Times, 9 May 1916. 33. Ibid. 34. Von der Goltz, My Adventures, p. 180. 35. The New York Times, 25 October 1917; Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 337, footnote 242; Bulloch, M.I.5, p. 140; Gaunt, The Yield of the Years, pp. 138f. 36. PRO, HO 144/21710/270992, file 1, cover sheet, note on ‘Horst von der Goltz’. 37. The New York Times, 22 November 1914. 38. PRO, HO 144/21710/270992, file 1, cover sheet, note on ‘Horst von der Goltz’. 39. Ibid., file 3, memorandum by police court, 26 November 1914. 40. Ibid., file 7, Hall to Moylan, HO, 5 April 1915. 41. Ibid., file 14, selection from papers in possession of Papen, 2–3 January 1916. 42. Ibid., Basil Thomson to Under Secretary of HO, 14 March 1916. 43. Thomson, Queer People, p. 121. It is unlikely that such a mission would have been put in writing on the cheque, just as Papen’s negotiations with von der Goltz in New York in 1914 were purely oral. 44. PRO, HO 144/21710/270992, file 14, Thomson to Under Secretary of HO, 14 March 1916. 45. Ibid., confidential memorandum by HO, 6 March 1917. 46. Harold Brust, ’I Guarded Kings’: Memoirs of a Political Police Officer (London: Stanley Paul, 1935), p. 131. 47. The New York Times, 1, 18, 19 April 1916. According to The New York Times, Igel ‘fought like a tiger’ when taken into custody. 48. The New York Times, 7, 18 April 1916. 49. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 493425, statement by Naval Captain Paul Reichardt, Klotzsche at Dresden, 25 January 1925.

Notes and References 199 50. PA-AA, Der Weltkrieg IIk secr., Nadolny, Sektion IIIb, Pol., to AA, 2 March 1915, including a report by Boehm from New York. 51. PA-AA, R 2342, Ratibor, embassy Madrid, to AA, 4 February 1916. Hence, Kelly now worked for both ‘N’ and IIIb. 52. Ibid., Isendahl to AA, 5 February 1916. It is unclear why not. 53. Ibid., R 2343, military attaché Madrid to Sektion P, 31 March 1916. 54. Ibid., Nadolny to AA, 5 April 1916. 55. Ibid., military attaché Madrid to Sektion P, 14 April 1916. 56. Ibid., Nadolny to military attaché Madrid, 15 April 1916. 57. BA-MA, RM 5/3694, memorandum by Prieger, 23 December 1914. 58. PRO, HO 45/10779/277334, E. Blackwell, HO, to Chief Constables, 22 August 1917. 59. Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 182. 60. Under the direction of the agents Steinwachs and Wuppermann, see Erhard Geißler, Biologische Waffen – nicht in Hitlers Arsenalen: Biologische und Toxin-Kampfmittel in Deutschland von 1915–1945 (Münster: Lit Verlag, 1998), p. 95. 61. Aston, Secret Service, pp. 157f. Aston holds Papen and Paul König responsible for these acts. 62. PRO, HO 45/10779/277334, memorandum by Board of Trade, 4 August 1915; PRO, MT 25/2, memorandum by Sir E. Howard, 26 June 1917. 63. PRO, HO 45/10779/277334, memorandum by Donovan, police department of Wellington, to inspector-general of police, Suva, 21 March 1918; ibid., Admiralty to HO, 18 June 1915. 64. Nadolny, Mein Beitrag, p. 41. 65. Thomson, Queer People, p. 196. Thomson’s insinuations that the explosions originated with German intelligence cannot be corroborated. 66. PRO, HO 45/10722/249623/111, file 113a, ‘Report of the Committee appointed by the Right Honourable Secretary of State to the Home Department to inquire into the circumstances attending a series of explosions and fires which occurred on the night of July 30th–31st, 1915, of the factory of Messrs. Nobel’s explosives Company, limited, at Ardeer, in the county of Ayrshire. 1915’; PRO, KV 1/42, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1915, pp. 101ff. 67. PA-AA, Rechtswesen 6, sabotage claims, K 497182, minutes of conversation between Limmer and August Lassen, 23 June 1930. 68. PA-AA, R 8411, Michahelles to AA, 16 June 1917. 69. Otto Cornehlsen, Als deutscher Spion im Weltkrieg (Berlin: Nord-Verlag, 1929), pp. 73–8. Cornehlsen’s name is not mentioned in the German archives, but his matter-of-fact account tallies with a number of incidents. 70. Olav Riste, The Neutral Ally: Norway’s Relations with Belligerent Powers in the First World War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1965), p. 184. 71. PA-AA, R 8411, translation of report by Norwegian police officer Larssen, 15 June 1917. 72. Ibid., Michahelles to AA, 18 September 1917. 73. Ibid., Isendahl to AA, 19 June 1917. 74. Ibid., report by police officer Larssen, 15 June 1917. 75. Ibid., index of content of bags found in the house of Hjalmar Wirtanen on 16 and 18 June 1917; ibid., Paul von Hintze to AA, 6 July 1917.

200

Notes and References

76. Ibid., AA to Michahelles, 25 June 1917. Cornehlsen barely escaped arrest and returned to Germany, see Cornehlsen, Als Deutscher Spion, p. 77 77. PA-AA, R 8412, Hintze, Christiania, to AA, 16 August 1917; ibid., Hintze to AA, 31 August 1917; ibid., Hintze to AA, 27 October 1917; Admiralstab to AA, 31 October 1917. 78. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 55ff. 79. PA-AA, R 8412, Hintze, Christiania, to AA, 31 August 1917. 80. Ibid., Hintze, Christiania, to AA, 27 October 1917; ibid., Admiralstab to AA, 31 October 1917. 81. The New York Times, 26 November 1917. The sailors’ names were Orth and Stachel. 82. Ibid., 23 December 1917. 83. See Mark Wheelis, ‘Biological Sabotage in World War I’, in Erhard Geißler and J.E. Courtland Moon (eds), Biological and Toxin Weapons Research, Development and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945: A Critical Comparative Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 35–62. 84. Geißler, Biologische Waffen, p. 98. 85. Quoted from Patrick Beesly, Room 40: British Naval Intelligence, 1914–1918 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1982), p. 201. Portugal had joined the Allies in 1916, Spain remained neutral until the end of the war. Professor Kleine was a refugee from the German colony of Cameroon. When Allied forces invaded the colony, Kleine fled and received asylum in the Spanish colony of Muni. He spent the rest of the war as an internee in mainland Spain. 86. Wheelis, ‘Biological Sabotage’, p. 38. 87. Geißler, Biologische Waffen, pp. 40ff. 88. PRO, HO 45/10839/333624, memorandum by ‘A’, 28 April 1918. 89. Wheelis, ‘Biological Sabotage’, p. 38. Wheelis argues that later legal rulings confirmed the General Staff’s interpretation of contemporary law, as defined in The Hague Convention. 90. John Singleton, ‘Britain’s Military Use of Horses, 1914 –1918’, Past and Present, 139 (May 1993), pp. 178, 194f. 91. Ibid., pp. 178, 186f. 92. Beesly, Room 40, pp. 200ff. 93. Benjamin C. Garrett, ‘Tony’s Lab: Clandestine German Biological Warfare in the USA’, The ASA Newsletter, 37 (1993), pp. 1, 10–11. Dilger’s address was 5503 33rd St. NW, according to the 1916 edition of the Washington, DC city directory. 94. PRO, HO 45/10839/333624, memorandum by New Scotland Yard, 30 March 1917. 95. Wheelis, ‘Biological Sabotage’, p. 46. 96. PRO, HO 45/10839/333624, Sargeaunt, Isle of Man Governor’s Office, to HO, 12 April 1917. 97. Ibid., memorandum by HO, 5 April 1917. 98. Ibid., Lieutenant-Colonel Wade, Copenhagen, to Foreign Office, 28 August 1917. 99. Beesly, Room 40, pp. 200ff. 100. PRO, HO 45/10839/333624, cutting from Empire News, January 1918. See also The Daily Telegraph, 5 April 1917.

Notes and References 201

7

The decline of German naval intelligence, 1917–1919

1. Arthur Link, Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916–1917 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 390–431. 2. For a concise overview see Ross Gregory, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War (New York: Norton, 1971). See also Thomas Boghardt, ‘The Zimmermann Telegram: Diplomacy, Intelligence and the American Entry into World War I’, Working Papers of the BMW Center for German and European Studies at Georgetown University, 1, 4 (November 2003). 3. Doerries, Imperial Challenge, p. 190. 4. BA-MA, RM 5/3684, Isendahl to Boy-Ed, 30 April 1914. 5. BA-MA, RM 5/773, Admiralstab, ‘Nachweisung der beim Bezirkskommando Hamburg kontrollierten und in das Ausland beurlaubten Offiziere der Reserve und der Landwehr’, Hamburg, 12 November 1901, No. 21: Wünnenberg, Lieutenant of Reserve. 6. Press baron William Randolph Hearst was frequently accused of supporting the Germans, see Ian Mugridge, The View from Xanadu: William Randolph Hearst and United States Foreign Policy (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), p. 114. 7. PA-AA, Politische Abteilung 6, Sabotage Claims, K 495297, memorandum regarding witness Albert Sander’s statement of 24 July 1928. 8. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 82ff. 9. BA-MA, RM 5/3756, subdivision (Zweigstelle) Antwerp of the Admiralstab to ‘N’, naval corps Bruges, Wesel, department P of Admiralstab, and KNSt Antwerp, 1 December 1916. 10. The New York Times, 20 February, 1917. 11. PRO, WO 141/3/4, memorandum by Kell, 27 February 1917; ibid., KV 2/4, printed forms on Bacon, Rutherford and Hastings; ibid., KV 2/5, MMC, secret, 31 December 1916–1 January 1917; ibid., KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 82ff., George Vaux Bacon. 12. The New York Times, 3, 22, 27 March 1917, 14 July 1918. 13. James Gerard, My Four Years in Germany (New York: George H. Doran, 1917), p. 315. 14. PRO, KV 1/43, MI5 historical reports, ‘G’ branch report for 1916, pp. 82ff. 15. BA-MA, RM 5/3758, subdivision Antwerp to ‘N’, P, Haeften, 11 January 1918. This is the last time the records refer to the use of ‘newspaper spies’, here an agent codenamed A87. 16. BA-MA, RM 5/773, report by Meldesammelstelle Nord, Wesel, 24 October 1917. 17. Ibid., Chief of Admiralstab to submarine commanders and the Imperial Command of the High Seas Fleet, 3 September 1918. 18. NARA, T 77, 1440, Gempp-monographs, p. 676. W29 regularly reported from London between 23 October 1916 and 20 October 1918, see BA-MA, RM 5/ 3756, Wesel to Admiralstab, 23 October 1916, and ibid., Freyer to Admiralstab, 20 October 1918. The letter ‘W’ indicates the agent’s affiliation with Wesel. 19. PA-AA, Politische Abteilung 6, Sabotage Claims, K 497224ff., statement by Naval Captain Lassen to Amtsgericht Berlin-Mitte, July 1929. 20. Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab, pp. 181f., 255; Heinz Höhne, Canaris translated from the German by J. Maxwell Brownjohn (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979), p. 139.

202

Notes and References

21. PRO, KV 1/44, MI5 historical report, ‘G’ branch report for 1917, pp. 82ff. 22. PRO, WO 32/4898, memorandum by Director of Military Intelligence Thwaites on Louise Mathilde Smith, née Zastrow, 23 December 1920. 23. Ibid., Kell to DMI, 15 October 1921; ibid., Cubitt to governor, Parkhurst Prison, 27 April 1921. Greite had filed fifteen petitions for his release, and complained of unfair treatment. France, Greite explained, had already released all German agents in November 1920: ibid., 15th petition of Franz L. Th. Greite, HM Prison, Parkhurst, to Secretary of Home Department, 12 September 1921. 24. See p. 85f 25. PRO, WO 141/3/6, file on Leon Francis van der Goten, p. 21A, memorandum by Director of Military Intelligence, 22 April 1920. 26. PRO, WO 32/4898, memorandum by Thwaites on van der Goten, 23 December 1920. 27. PRO, WO 141/3/6, Charles Tufton, Foreign Office, to Belgian Ambassador Moncheur, 14 May 1920. Given that van der Goten had been framed by the British service, and never been in touch with German intelligence, his treatment seems rather harsh. 28. Aston, Secret Service, p. 144; Leonard Sellers, Shot in the Tower: The Story of the Spies Executed in the Tower of London during the First World War (London: Leo Cooper, 1997), pp. 118–39.

Conclusion 1. For a sceptical assessment of the role of intelligence in the First World War, see John Keegan, Intelligence in War: Knowledge of the Enemy from Napoleon to Al Qaida (New York: Knopf, 2003), especially Chapter 4 and pp. 144f. 2. BA-MA, PH 3/602, intelligence officer of AOK 5 to IIIb West, 14 May 1916. 3. BA-MA, RM 5/3693, Teschemacher, Wesel, to IIIb, 17 December 1914. 4. Porter, The Origins of the Vigilant State, p. 173: ‘The Special Branch had no one (or no one prominent) with a military background. All its personnel were professional policemen, with experience of the civilian grass roots. Many of them came from working class stock. They were solider, dourer, and generally less silly than the upper-class community who ran the military side.’ 5. For a history of the BND see Udo Ulfkotte, Verschlußsache BND (Heyne: Munich, 1997). 6. Kell was replaced by Sir David Petrie, a veteran policeman, who introduced methodical investigating practices and reformed the department thoroughly, see Ladislas Farago, Burn After Reading: The Espionage History of World War II (New York: Walker, 1962), p. 82; Judd, Quest, p. 95; Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession, p. 113.

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Printed sources Newspapers/magazines Berliner Tageblatt, Crusader, Daily Express, The Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Empire News, Frankfurter Zeitung, John Bull, The Independent, Kölnische Zeitung, Kreuz-Zeitung, Morning Post, The National Review, The New York American, The New York Times, Simplicissimus, The Southern Daily Echo, Star, Der Tag, The Times

Official publications Gooch, G.P. and Harold Temperley (eds), British Documents on the Origins of the War 1898–1914 (11 vols, London: HMSO, 1928–1938). His Majesty’s Stationary Office (ed.), Evidence and Documents Laid before The Committee on Alleged German Atrocities: Being an Appendix to the Report of the Committee Appointed by His Britannic Majesty’s Government and Presided over by The Right Hon. Viscount Bryce, O.M. (London: HMSO, n.d. [1915]). ————Selection from Papers Found in the Possession of Captain von Papen, Late German Military Attaché at Washington, Falmouth, January 2 & 3, 1916, miscellaneous, No. 6 (London: HMSO, 1916). ————Sworn Statement by Horst von der Goltz (alias Bridgeman Taylor, alias Franz Wachendorf ) (London: HMSO, April 1916).

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Lichnowsky, Fürst Karl Max von, Meine Londoner Mission 1912–1914 und Eingabe an das preußische Herrenhaus (Berlin: Flugschriften des Bundes Neues Vaterland, 1919). Lloyd George, David, War Memoirs (2 vols, London: Odhams Press, 1938). Macdonagh, Michael, In London during the Great War: The Diary of a Journalist (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1935). Mahan, Alfred Thayer, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (2 vols, New York: Sampson Low, 1892). Maurier, Guy du, An Englishman’s Home (London: Edward Arnold, 1909). Marine-Offizier-Verband (ed.), Die Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine 1914–1918, bearbeitet von Kontreadmiral a.D. Stoelzel, 3 vols (Berlin: Thormann & Goetsch, 1930). Maxse, Leo, Germany on the Brain, or: The Obsession of a Crank. Gleanings from the National Review, 1899–1914, With an Introductory Note by L.J. Maxse (London: Periodical Publications, 1915). Monka, Friedrich, Achtung IIIb – geheim! (Berlin: Scherl, 1931). ————Spionage an der Westfront: Aus den Aufzeichnungen eines ehemaligen Mitgliedes des deutschen Geheimdienstes im Weltkrieg 1914/18 (Berlin: Scherl, 1930). Nadolny, Rudolf, Mein Beitrag (Wiesbaden: Limes, 1955). Nicolai, Walter, Geheime Mächte: Internationale Spionage und ihre Bekämpfung im Weltkrieg und heute (Leipzig: Woehler, 1923). ————The German Secret Service (London: S. Paul, 1924). ————Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg (Berlin: Mittler, 1920). Niemann, August, The Coming Conquest of England, translated by J.H. Freese (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1904). Pankhurst, Sylvia, The Home Front (1932; London: Cresset Library, 1987). Papen, Franz von, Der Wahrheit eine Gasse (Munich: List, 1952). Playne, Caroline, Society at War 1914–1916 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1931). Ponsonby, Sir Arthur, Falsehood in War-Time: Containing an Assortment of Lies Circulated throughout the Nations during the Great War (London: Allen & Unwin, 1928). v. R., ‘Die Invasion Englands in englischer Beleuchtung’, Marine Rundschau (November 1908), pp. 1246–58. Repington, Charles à Court, Vestigia (London: Constable, 1919). Rintelen, Franz von, The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer with an Introduction by Reinhard R. Doerries (1933; London: Frank Cass, 1998). Ritter, Nikolaus, Deckname Dr. Rantzau: Die Aufzeichnungen des Nikolaus Ritter, Offizier im Geheimen Nachrichtendienst (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1972). Schellenberg, Walter, Memoiren (Cologne: Verlag für Politik und Wirtschaft, 1959). Schragmüller, Elsbeth, Die Bruderschaft der Borer und Balierer von Freiburg und Waldkirch (Karlsruhe: Volkswirtschaftliche Abhandlungen der Badischen Hochschulen, 1914). ————‘Aus dem deutschen Nachrichtendienst’, in Fredrich Felger (ed.), Was wir vom Weltkrieg nicht wissen (Berlin: Andermann, 1929), pp. 138–55. Schwarte, Max (ed.), Der Große Krieg 1914–1918 (10 vols, Leipzig, Berlin: Barth, 1921–1923).

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Index

Note: for individual secret service members see also Appendices 1 and 3. Agadir (or second Moroccan) crisis, 13f., 19, 48, 51f., 55, 70, 90 Ahlers, Edmund, 55 Aliens’ Restriction Act (ARA), 76, 77, 83 Anti-Semitism, 2, 166 (n. 7) Argo Steamship Company, 45 Asquith, Herbert, 26, 92 Australia, 64, 65, 66, 128 Bacon, George Vaux, 136, 137, 138 Balfour, Arthur, 23 Ballin, Albert, 18, 19 Barlow, Sir John, 34 Battenberg, Prince Louis von, 23, 74 Belgium, 36, 65, 68, 81–3, 90, 110–12, 116, 117, 141 Bendemann, Felix von, 42 Beresford, Charles 28 Bernstorff, Count Johann von, 7, 62 Bethell, Alexander Edward, 31 Biological warfare, 131–4, 145 Bismarck, Otto von, 5, 21, 42 Bletchley Park, 10 Bodkin, Archibald, 66, 78, 100 Boehm, Hans, 126 Boer (or South African) War, 3, 22 Borkum affair, 40f., 49, 50, 176 (n. 118) Born, George, 136 Bournonville, Eva de, 112, 116 Boy-Ed, Karl, 52, 95, 126 Brandon, Vivian, 40f., 49, 59 Breeckow, Georg, 111, 115, 142 British intelligence community administrative history, 175 (n. 99) Counter-Espionage Bureau, 49, 56, 58, 61, 62, 64, 66, 67, 68, 71, 72 MI5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 16, 59, 62, 70, 72, 79, 80, 85, 86, 101, 104, 105–9,

119, 120, 121, 128, 130, 137, 144–7 MI6, 8, 9, 10, 146 MO5, 28, 36, 38 MO5(g), 79, 85, 99, 102, 106, 119 Naval intelligence, 23, 31, 41, 65, 68, 99, 125 Secret Service Bureau (SSB), 4, 11, 32, 34, 35, 36–41, 73, 144 Special Branch of New Scotland Yard, 27, 36, 59, 74, 75, 92, 119, 120, 121, 126, 174f. (n. 97), 202 (n. 4) see also entries for individual members of the British intelligence community Brodtmann (or Brockmann), Paul, 32, 45, 177 (n.19) Brogan, Anthony J., 126f. Burdon, Richard, see Haldane, Lord Buxton, Sydney Charles, 31 Cadmus, Henry R., 93 Campbell-Bannerman, Henry, 25 Canaris, Wilhelm, 16, 146 Casement, Sir Roger, 95, 120 Cavell, Edith, 111f., 116 Chesney, George Tomkyns, 21, 24 Childers, Erskine, 23, 36, 40 Churchill, Winston, 24, 34, 36, 37, 118, 147, 175 (n. 115) Clarke, Stanley, 40, 70 Coerper, Carl von, 44, 46 Committee of Imperial Defence considers establishment of a Secret Service Bureau, 33 considers extent of German espionage, 4, 30–4 considers possibility of German invasion, 23f., 25f. 220

Index Communication censorship and mail interception, 35f., 56, 58, 68, 69, 70, 71, 99, 106f., 177 (n. 17) codes and secret writing, 44, 91, 92, 107, 137 difficulty in time of war, 109, 144 Cornehlsen, Otto, 129 Cribben, Peter J., 136, 137 Croner (later Kronauer), Marie, 58, 59, 68, 71 Croner (later Kronauer), Wilhelm, 53, 58 Cumming, Mansfield, 4, 9, 36f., 85, 146, 176 (n. 118) Daelen, Paul, 91, 95, 98 Dale Long, Henry, 36 Davies, Francis, 38 Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), 76, 77, 99, 115 Denmark, 43, 94, 134 Deutsche Bank, 44 Diederichs, Otto von, 14, 15, 18 Dierks, Hilmar, 84, 87, 91, 107, 189 (n. 90) Dilger, Dr Anton, 133 ‘D-notice system’, 35 Drake, Reginald John, 36, 70, 102 Drew, Edward, 36 Duff, Hugh, 55 Dunbar, Frederick, 119, 120 Dunn, James, 85, 86 Duurloo, Francis Al., 96 Ebert, Friedrich, 140 Ebert, Paul, 16, 140 Edmonds, James, 28–34, 36, 38 Engel, Johann, 69 Englishman’s Home, An (play by Guy de Maurier), 26 Entente cordiale, 22, 43, 44 Ernst, Karl Gustav, 53, 60, 65, 71, 77–80, 81, 100, 194 (n. 125) Esher, Lord, 31, 33 Eulenburg, Count Victor, 31 Ewart, John Spencer, 28, 31, 34, 36 Falkenhayn, Erich von, 52, 87, 128 Fashoda crisis, 22

221

Felstead, Sidney Theodore, 8, 78 Filchner, Dr Wilhelm, 94, 130 Fisher, John ‘Jackie’, 25, 26, 43, 46 Flores, Heinrich, 87 Fox, Edward Lyell, 62, 63 France, 2, 3, 6, 17, 21, 22, 25, 31, 42, 43, 51f., 72, 84f., 86, 87, 90, 93, 109, 110, 112, 117, 120, 121, 132, 133, 143 Franco–German war of 1870–1, 3, 4, 21, 54, 117, 119 Frankignoul, Brazil, 85, 87 Freyer, Walther, 83, 88 Gaunt, Guy, 113 German intelligence community Abwehr, 16, 146 BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst), 146 ‘G’, 16 Intermediaries (Mittelsmänner), 53, 55, 56, 58, 68, 70 KNW (Kriegsnachrichtenwesen, war intelligence system), 20, 45, 52, 80 ‘N’, 6, 8, 12, 14–19, 43–6, 52, 54, 55f., 60, 63–8, 69–71, 72, 80, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 100, 104, 109, 114, 120, 136, 139, 143–6 ‘NI’, 16, 98, 126 ‘NIV’, 16, 121, 129, 139, 140, 170 (n. 22) Naval attachés and espionage, 15, 44–6, 63, 70, 144 Schiffsbefragungsdienst (marine interrogation service), 94, 130 Sektion IIIb, 6, 7, 8, 14, 15, 16, 18, 32, 69, 83f., 120, 121, 143f. Sektion P, 120, 127, 131 Tension travellers, 52f., 80 see also entries for individual members of the German intelligence community Germany Admiralstab (Admiralty Staff), 6, 14–20, 32, 42–4, 52, 53, 57, 65, 66, 67, 69, 71, 80, 89, 90, 93, 98, 102, 103, 121, 129, 136, 139, 140, 143f. Auswärtiges Amt (Foreign Office), 17, 19f., 50, 52, 66, 127, 138

222

Index

Germany – continued Imperial Navy, 6, 13f., 17, 47, 52, 66, 89, 90–2, 97, 139, 143 outbreak of the First World War, 20, 98, 102–4 Reichstag (German parliament), 2, 13 submarine warfare, 90–2, 114, 135, 139 Third Reich, 16, 63, 102, 147 Weltpolitik, 5, 6, 13, 22, 42, 52 see also German intelligence community Gladstone, Herbert, 31 Glauer, Hedwig, 57, 59, 182 (n. 132) Gneist, Carl, 83, 84, 86, 107, 112 Goltz, Horst von der, 96, 123–6, 198 (n. 27) Goten, Leon Francis van der, 85f., 114f., 141f., 146 Graves, Armgaard Karl, 54, 60–3, 72, 77, 99, 123, 146 Great Britain Admiralty, 23, 26, 35, 36, 40, 41, 43, 56, 65 British Expeditionary Force (BEF), 89f., 144 conscription controversy, 25–7 German colony in, 40, 53f., 75f., 107f., 146, 175 (n. 115) invasion and spy scare literature, 4, 21–5, 46, 145 labour movement, 2f., 59, 118–20 outbreak of the First World War, 2f., 74–6, 118f., 166 (n. 9) Royal Navy, 1, 6, 14, 17, 23, 25, 26, 43, 44, 52, 65, 68, 89, 90, 109, 112, 143 see also British intelligence community Greene, Sir Graham, 41, 50, 65, 68 Greite, Franz Theodore, 85, 140f. Grey, Edward, 113, 114 Grosse, Heinrich, 54, 56–9, 62, 70, 71 Grund, Heinrich, 82, 138 Guell, Mario, 114 Guerrero, Adolfo, 114 Hagn, Alfred, 114, 130 Hahn, John, 96, 107, 115

Haldane, Lord, 25, 26, 29–35 Hall, Reginald, 99, 125 Hamburg-America-Line (HAL), 18, 19, 96, 97 Hardinge, Sir Charles, 31 Harmsworth, Alfred, see Northcliffe, Lord Hastings, Charles, 136, 138 Heeringen, August von, 52, 90 Heeringen, Josias von, 50 Helm, Siegfried, 48–51, 71, 72 Henry, Sir Edward, 31, 36 Hensel, Paul, 115 Hentschel, Karl, 54, 63–7, 77, 146 Hentschel, Patricia, 66 Herz, Peter, 87 Heydebrand, Ernst von, 52 Hitler, Adolf, 103, 146, 147 Holt-Wilson, Eric, 7 Honour and espionage, incompatibility of, 46, 101f. Horst, Baron Louis von, 120, 122 Ireland, 95f., 99, 120, 134 Ireland, Frederick, 58, 71, 78 Isendahl, Walther, 15, 19, 45, 52, 88, 95, 127, 129, 136 Isaacs, Sir Rufus, 51 Jane, Fred T., 32 Jews, 96f., 191 (n. 45) Jihad, 96, 117 Kaiser, Lieutenant-Commander, 80 Kefer, Captain, 82 Kestein Company, 84 Kell, Constance, 11, 38f. Kell, Vernon, 4, 9, 11, 36–41, 49–51, 56, 60, 61f., 64, 65, 66, 71, 73, 76, 77–80, 85, 86, 106, 107, 118, 120, 144–7 Kelly, Bryan A., 95f. Kiderlen-Wächter, Alfred von, 20, 50, 51 King, Joseph, 59, 62 Klare, William, 72 Kruger (or Krüger), Otto Moritz Walter, 53, 58f., 60, 65, 71 Küpferle, Anton, 104, 107, 112

Index Landau, Henry, 85, 87 Lansing, Robert, 113 Lassen, Alfred, 16, 121 Lassen, August, 16, 88, 129, 139 Lavendal, Fritz, 130 Le Queux, William Tufnell, 1, 21, 24, 28–34, 38, 61, 75, 118, 134 Leibacher, F., 106, 107 Lincoln, Trebitsch, 96 Lody, Carl Hans, 93, 97–105, 115 Lloyd George, David, 51f. Lovat, Lord, 25 Ludendorff, Erich, 132 Macdonogh, George, 36 Mahan, Alfred T., 13 Mata Hari, see Zelle, Margarete Gertrud McKenna, Reginald, 31 Meisner, Arthur Denis, 137 Melville, William, 27f., 40, 48, 64, 65, 130, 173 (n. 47) Metternich, Count Paul Wolff von, 27 Mexico, 67, 123, 125 Meyer, Albert, 115 Michahelles, Hans, 129f. Moroccan crisis (first), 24, 43 Mulder, J.A., 127 Müller, Carl Friedrich, 96, 107, 115 Müller, Erich von, 45 Murray, Archibald James, 31, 34 Muslims, 96 Nadolny, Rudolf, 121, 127, 128, 131 Nairne, Charles Stuart, 99, 192 (n. 67) Napoleon III, 3, 21 Netherlands, 81, 83–8, 94, 136–8 Neumann, Gustav, 55f. Nicolai, Walter, 16, 82, 106, 116 Northcliffe, Lord, 24, 28 Norway, 94, 98, 114, 129–31, 134 Official Secrets Act (OSA), 33, 35, 59, 79, 83 Ostertag, Ronald, 32, 83f. Page, Walter Hines, 113 Papen, Franz von, 123, 125, 126 Parrott, George, 63–7

223

Patrocinio, José de, 86 Phillips, Violet, 58 Prieger, Fritz, 16, 98, 99, 100, 101, 126 Propaganda, 108–16, 144 Quinn, Patrick, 75 Rautenfels, Baron Friedrich Walter von, 129 Reichardt, Paul, 16 Repington, Charles, 25, 26, 27 Riley, Patricia, 64 Roberts, Lord Frederick, 24, 25, 26f., 28 Roodhardt, J.C., 136 Roos, Willem Johannes, 91, 104 Roosevelt, Theodore, 113, 114 Rosenthal, Levi, 72 Rosenthal, Robert, 97, 115 Russell, Charles Edward, 137 Russia general, 3, 6, 22, 42, 43, 71, 109, 120, 122, 128, 140, 144 Russian Revolution, 120, 140 Russian soldiers rumoured to be in Britain, 92f. Rutherford, Rutledge, 136, 137, 138f. Rysbach, Kurt Herlot de, 96, 115 Sabotage, 121–31, 145 Salomon, Max, 93 Sander, Albert A., 136, 138 Scheele, Dr Walter, 127 Scheer, Reinhard, 90, 136, 140 Schnitzer, Ludwig, 82, 86, 87, 107 Schragmüller, Dr Elisabeth (‘mademoiselle docteur’), 82, 94 Schroeder, Adolf Frederick, 67–9 Schröder, Baron Bruno von, 113, 182 (n. 132) Schultz, Max (British spy), 41, 54, 176 (n. 124) Schultz, Max (German spy), 54–6, 71, 72 Scott, Sir Samuel, 25 Selborne, William Lord, 23 Silber, Jules Crawford, 108f. Smith, Louise Mathilde, née Zastrow, 140

224

Index

Smith, William, 76 Spring-Rice, Cecil, 25, 113, 114 Stammer, Georg, 16, 61, 62, 64, 66, 98, 99 Steinhauer, Gustav, 47f., 53, 55f., 57, 58, 60, 64, 65, 67f., 70, 71, 77, 78, 80, 87, 94, 144 Stephenson, Guy, 65 Stewart, Bertrand, 41, 59 Storz, Louise, 97f., 102 Stumm, Wilhelm von, 19 Stumpff, Captain, 82 Subversion, 117–21 Tapken, Arthur, 15, 16, 44, 45, 52, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 98 Tarren, E.C., 55 Temple, R.C., 31, 33 Tinsley, Richard Bolton, 85f., 137 Thatcher, Margaret, 10 Thomson, Basil, 59, 74, 75, 92, 120, 126, 128, 137, 138, 175 (n. 97) Thomson, D.C., 30 Thwaites, William, 27, 140–2 Tirpitz, Alfred von, 6, 13, 14, 15, 18, 42, 89

Trench, Bernard, 40f., 49, 59 Triest, Gustav Kenneth, 112–14 United States of America, 42, 63, 91, 100, 101, 109, 112–14, 116, 121–3, 125f., 128f., 132, 133, 135–9 Uranium Steamship Company, 85f. Victoria, Queen, 3, 48 Vieyra, Leopold, 85, 114 Weber, Max, 5 Weiszflog, Adolf, 91, 106 Wertheim, Louise Emily, 111, 116, 141, 142, 182 (n. 132), 195 (n.150) Whytock, Roslyn, 136, 138 Widenmann, Wilhelm, 44f., 54 Wilhelm II, 5, 13, 14, 15, 48, 52, 96, 103, 112, 132, 172 (n. 29) Wilson, Woodrow, 135 Wodehouse, Hannah, 48–50 Wohlfahrt, Hans, 48 Wünnenberg, Karl, 136, 138 Zelle, Margarete Gertrud (Mata Hari), 95, 112