My adventures as a German secret agent

The meaning of Kueck’s telegram was plain. War had come at last, the war that we had expected and prepared for during so many years. My country was at war and I must leave whatever I was doing and return to its service.

I went to Raul Madero with the telegram.

“It has come,” I said. “War. I shall have to go.”

We had spoken together too often, during the past few weeks, of my duty in the event of hostilities, for any long discussion to be necessary now. I asked for and received all that I believed to be necessary—a leave of absence for six months with the privilege of extension. The next day, August 3, 1914, I said good-bye to my troops and to my commander and hastened north to El Paso.

At the Hotel el Paso del Norte, I met my former enemies, Kueck and his stout secretary. We had dinner together and he gave me letters containing instructions to proceed to New York and to place myself at the disposal of Captain Franz von Papen, the German military attaché at Washington.

“When will Captain von Papen be in New York?” I asked.

“I have just received a communication from Papen,” replied Kueck, adding with a gratified smile, “I am keeping him informed of conditions along the border. He will be in New York two weeks from to-day.”

There was no necessity for haste then, and I remained in El Paso for five days longer, keeping my eyes and ears open and learning, among other things, more “facts” about Mexico than I could have acquired in Mexico itself in a life time. “There are lies, damned lies and El Pasograms,” some one has said. I collected enough of the last-named to cheer me on my way to Washington and to make me marvel that Rome had ever been called the father of lies. No wonder newspaper correspondents like to report Mexican news from El Paso.

Washington was technically on vacation at the time, but there was an unwonted air of excitement about the city—far greater than formerly existed when Congress was in full session. At the German Embassy I found only a few clerks; but letters from Newport, to which the Ambassador and his staff had gone for the summer, informed me that Captain von Papen would meet me in New York in a fortnight. And then I learned for the first time that it was impossible for me to reach Germany, but that I was to be assigned to work in the United States.

I knew what that meant, of course, and I was not wholly unprepared for it. Secret agents could be very useful in a neutral country, and I knew from my acquaintance with German methods in Europe, that plans would already have been made for conserving German interests in the United States. What those plans were I did not know; but my only immediate concern was to remove any possible suspicion from myself by doing something that on the surface would seem to be absolutely idiotic.

I became violently and noisily pro-German. On the train I entered into arguments (as a matter of fact I could not have escaped them if I tried) in which I stoutly defended the invasion of Belgium and prophesied an early victory for Germany. And when I arrived in New York I registered at the Holland House, where my actions would be more conspicuous than at one of the larger hotels, and proceeded to make myself as noticeable as possible by spending a great deal more money than I could afford—and talking. In a day or two the reporters were on my trail and I became their obliging prey. What I told them I do not now remember in its entirety, but newspaper clippings of the day assure me that I made many wild and bombastic statements, promising that Paris would be captured in a very few weeks—in a word uttering the most flagrant nonsense. The reporters decided that I was a fool and deftly conveyed that impression to their readers. And in a very brief time I had the satisfaction of learning that I was everywhere regarded as a person of considerably more loquacity than intelligence.

That was the very reputation I had attempted to get. I wanted to be known—and widely—as a braggart, a spendthrift, a rattlebrain, for the very excellent reason that in no other way could I so easily divert suspicion from myself later on. I was a German, and consequently under the surveillance of enemy secret agents, with whom—oh, believe me!—the United States was filled. It was impossible for me to escape some notice. Since that was the case, the safest course for me to pursue was to comport myself in such a way that all interested persons would report (as I afterwards learned they did report) that I was not worth watching, since no sane government would ever employ me.

While I was engaged in achieving this enviable reputation, I had managed to keep in touch with the Imperial German Consulate in New York, and on August 21 I had received from the Vice-Consul, Dr. Kraske, a note informing me that “the gentleman who is interested in you”—Captain von Papen—“will meet you next morning at the Consulate.” That letter was to figure two years later in the trial of Captain Hans Tauscher. I reproduce it here. You might note that it is addressed to “Baron von der Goltz,” although my card did not bear that title, and I had registered at the Holland House under my Mexican military title of Major.

Upon the following morning I went to that old building at Number Eleven Broadway. There in a little room in the offices of the Imperial German Consulate began a series of meetings that were designed to bear fruit of the greatest consequences to the United States—that would, had they been successful, have made American neutrality a lie and would have perhaps drawn the United States into a serious conflict with England, if not into actual war.

I remember von Papen’s enthusiasm as he outlined the general program to me. “It was merely a question of tying their hands”—that was the burden of his statements, time and again. We could hope for nothing from American neutrality; it was a fraud, a deception. Washington could not see the German viewpoint at all. Everything was done to favor England. Why, the entire country was supporting the allies—the government, the press, the people—all of them! Nowhere was there a good word for Germany. And that in spite of the excellent propaganda that Germany was conducting. I remember that the failure of German propaganda was an especially sore spot with him.

“How about the German-Americans?” I asked him upon one occasion.

He made a sound that was between a grunt and a cough.

“I am attending to them,” was his reply. I did not understand what he meant until much later.

We talked much of American participation in the war in those days. Papen was convinced that it would come sooner or later; and certainly upon the side of the Entente—unless the German-Americans could be brought into line. They were being attended to, he would repeat, but meantime it was necessary for us to decide upon some immediate action. Of course there was Mexico to be considered. It was too bad that Huerta had fallen. What did I think of Villa? Could he be persuaded to cause a diversion if the United States abandoned its neutrality?

I told him that I thought it very unlikely. “He is not very friendly toward Germans,” I said, “and he appreciates the importance of keeping on good terms with the United States. No, I don’t think you can reach him—now. Later on, he may take a different attitude—when we have had a few more victories.”

Von Papen nodded. I was probably right, he thought. We must show these ignorant people how powerful the Germans were. It would have a great moral effect. But that was for the future. Meantime what did I think of this letter as a suggestion for possible immediate action?

“This letter” was from a man named Schumacher, who lived in Oregon, at Eden Bower Farm. He had written to the Embassy, suggesting that we secretly fit out motor boats armed with machine guns, and using Buffalo, Detroit, Cleveland and Chicago as bases, make raids upon Canadian cities and towns on the Great Lakes.

There were some good features to the plan—its value as a means of terrorizing Canadians, for instance—but it was doubtful whether at that time we could carry it out successfully. Then, too, we could not be sure whether it was not merely a trap for us. Papen had been making inquiries about Schumacher and was not entirely satisfied as to his good faith.

There were a number of other schemes which we considered at this time. One was to equip reservists of the German Army, then in the United States, and co-operating with German warships then in the Pacific Ocean to invade Canada from the State of Washington. This plan was abandoned because of the impossibility of securing enough artillery for our purposes.

Another plan that we considered more carefully, involved an expedition against Jamaica. This was a much more feasible scheme than any that had been proposed thus far, and we spent many days over it. Jamaica was none too well defended, and it seemed fairly probable that with an army of ragamuffins which I could easily recruit in Mexico and Central America, we could make a success of it. Arms were easy to secure; in fact, we had a very well equipped arsenal in New York; and filibustering had become so common since the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, that it would be easy to obtain what additional material we needed without disclosing our purpose. On the whole the idea looked promising, and matters had gone so far that von Papen secured my appointment as captain, so that in the event of my being captured on British soil with arms in my hand, I should be treated as a prisoner of war.

Then just when we were making final preparations for my departure from New York, von Papen came to me in great excitement and said he had come upon a plan that would serve our purposes to perfection. Canada was, after all, our principal objective; we could strike a telling blow against it, and at the same time create consternation throughout America by blowing up the canals which connected the Great Lakes!

“It is comparatively simple,” said von Papen. “If we blow up the locks of these canals, the main railway lines of Canada and the principal grain elevators will be crippled. Immediately we shall destroy one of England’s chief sources of food supply as well as hamper the transportation of war materials. Canada will be thrown into a panic and public opinion will demand that her troops be held for home defense. But best of all, it will make the Canadians believe that the thousands of German reservists and the millions of German-Americans in the United States are planning active military operations against the Dominion.”

I looked at him in surprise. Where had he got such a plan? Papen enlightened me with his next words.

Two men—not Germans but violently anti-English—had come to him with the suggestion, he said. It was in a very indefinite form as yet, but the idea was certainly worth careful consideration. He wished me to discuss the matter with the two men at my hotel.

It did seem a good plan. As I discussed it the next evening with the two men, whom von Papen had sent to me, it seemed entirely practicable and immensely important. Together we went over the maps and diagrams they had brought with them, which showed the vulnerable points of the different canals and railways. After a number of conferences with them and with von Papen, the plot took definite shape as a plan to blow up the Welland Canal.

“It can be done,” I told von Papen one day, and together we discussed the details. Finally von Papen looked up from the notes we had been examining.

“I think it will do admirably,” he said. “Will you undertake it?”

I nodded.

“Good,” said von Papen. “I shall leave the details to you—but keep me informed of your needs and I shall see that they are taken care of.”

So began the plot which was literally to carry the war into America. My first need was for men, and for help in getting these I appealed to von Papen, who obligingly furnished me with a letter of introduction—made out in the name of Bridgman H. Taylor—to Mr. Luederitz, the German Consul at Baltimore. There were several German ships interned at that port, and we felt that we should have no difficulty in recruiting our force from them.

Before I went to Baltimore, however, I did engage one man, Charles Tucker, alias Tuchhaendler, who had already had some dealings with the two men who originally proposed the scheme.

Tucker accompanied me to Baltimore, and together we paid a visit to Consul Luederitz. The consul glanced at the letter I presented to him.

“Captain von Papen requests me to give you all the assistance you may ask for, Major von der Goltz,” he said, intimating by the use of my name that he had previously been informed of the enterprise. “I shall be happy to do anything in my power. What is it you wish?”

Men, I told him, were my chief need at the moment. He said that there should be no difficulty about securing them. There was a German ship in the harbor at the time, and we could doubtless make use of part of the crew and an officer, if we desired. He offered me his visiting card, on the back of which he wrote a note of recommendation to the captain of the ship. But while we were talking this man entered the office and we made our preliminary arrangements there.

The following day, a Sunday, Tucker and I visited the ship and after dinner selected our men, who were informed of their prospective duties. I also listened to the news that was being received on board by wireless; for the captain was still allowed to receive messages, although the harbor authorities had forbidden him to use his apparatus for sending purposes.

I needed nothing more in Baltimore, so far as my present plans were concerned, but at Consul Luederitz’s suggestion, I decided to furnish myself with a passport, made out in my nom de guerre of Bridgman Taylor. Luederitz was of the opinion that it might be useful at some future time as a means of proving that I was an American citizen, and accordingly we had one of the clerks make out an application, which was duly forwarded to Washington; and on August 31st the State Department furnished the non-existent Mr. Bridgman H. Taylor with a very comforting, although as it turned out, a decidedly dangerous document. One other thing I needed at the moment—a pistol, for my own was out of order. This Mr. Luederitz provided me with, from the effects of an Austrian who had committed suicide in Baltimore, not long before, and whose property, in the absence of an Austrian Consulate in the city, had been turned over to the German Consul.

The days immediately following my return to New York were filled with preparations for our coup. I engaged three additional men to act as my lieutenants, acquainted them with the main objects of our plan and agreed to pay them daily while in New York, and to add a bonus when our enterprise should succeed. These men had all been well recommended to me, and I knew I could trust them thoroughly. One, Fritzen, who was later captured in Los Angeles, had been a purser on a Russian ship. A second, Busse, was a commercial agent who had lived for many years in England; the third bore the Italian name of Covani.

Meantime I saw von Papen frequently, and had on one occasion received from him a check for two hundred dollars, which I needed for the sailors who were coming from Baltimore. That check, which is reproduced in this book, was to prove a singularly disastrous piece of paper, for in order to avoid connecting my name with that of von Papen, it was made out to Bridgman Taylor. I cashed it through a friend, Frederick Stallforth, whose brother, Alberto Stallforth, had been the German Consul at Parral when I was there. He, incidentally, was later implicated in the Rintelen trial and was detained for a time on Ellis Island, from which he was subsequently released.

Mr. Stallforth lifted his eyebrows when he saw the name on the check. I smiled.

“I am Bridgman Taylor,” I told him. He laughed, but said nothing, merely getting the check cashed for me at the German Club on Central Park South, of which he was a member.

In a few days everything was ready. My men had arrived from Baltimore, my plans were definitely made—I needed but one thing: the explosives. These, von Papen told me, I could obtain through Captain Hans Tauscher, the American agent of the Krupps, which means, in effect, the German Government.

It has been asserted many times in the last year that the charges against Capt. Tauscher were utterly unfounded. It is easy to understand the motives of this gentleman’s defenders. There are many people still in this country whose friendship with the amiable captain would wear a decidedly suspicious look were his complicity in the anti-American plots of the first two years of the war to be proved. I shall not quarrel with these people. But reproduced in this book are four documents, the originals of which are in the possession of the Department of Justice, which tell their own story to the curious and are a fair indication of the way I secured the explosives I needed for my expedition.

These documents show:

First, that on September 5, 1914, Captain Tauscher, American representative of the Krupps, ordered from the du Pont de Nemours Powder Company, 300 pounds of sixty per cent. dynamite to be delivered to bearer, “Mr. Bridgman Taylor,” and to be charged to Captain Tauscher.

Second, that on September 11th, the du Pont Company sent Captain Tauscher a bill for the same amount of dynamite delivered to Bridgman Taylor, New York City, on September 5th; and on September 16th, they sent him a second bill for forty-five feet of fuse delivered to Bridgman Taylor on September 13th—the total of the two bills amounting to $31.13.

Third, that on December 29, 1914, Tauscher sent a bill to Captain von Papen for a total amount of $503.24. The third item, dated September 11th, was for $31.13.

Is it difficult to tell of whom I got my explosives or who eventually paid for them? I got the dynamite at any rate, by calling for it myself at one of the company’s barges in a motor boat, and taking it away in suitcases. At 146th Street and the Hudson River we left the boat, and, carrying the explosives with us, went to the German Club, where I applied to von Papen for automatic pistols, batteries, detonators, and wire for exploding the dynamite. Von Papen promised them in two or three days—and he kept his word.[3]

Bit by bit, all this material was removed from the German Club—in suitcases and via taxi-cab. They were exciting little rides we took those days, and my heart was often in my mouth when our chauffeur turned corners in approved New York fashion. But luckily there were no accidents and in a day or so all of our materials were stored away; part of them in my apartments—not in the Holland House, alas!—but in a cheap section of Harlem. For von der Goltz, the spendthrift, the braggart, was seen no longer in the gay places of New York. He had spent all his money, and now, no longer of interest to the newspapers—or to the secret agents of the allies—had taken a two dollar and a half room in Harlem where he could repent his follies—and be as inconspicuous as he pleased.

So it came about that toward the middle of September we five—Fritzen, Busse, Tucker, Covani and myself—took train for Buffalo, armed with dynamite, automatic guns, detonators and other necessary implements, and proceeded absolutely unmolested, to go to Buffalo. There I engaged rooms at 198 Delaware Avenue and began to reconnoitre the ground. I made a trip or two over the Niagara River via aëroplane, with an aviator who unquestionably thought me mad and charged accordingly; and at the suggestion of von Papen, I secured money for my expenses from a Buffalo lawyer, John Ryan.

It had been decided that von Papen should let us know when the Canadian troops were about to leave camp so that we might strike at the psychological moment. A telegram came from him, signed with the non-committal name of Steffens, telling me that Ryan had money and instructions. Ryan gave me the money, as I have stated, but insisted that he had no instructions whatever.

Then, after a stay of several days in Niagara, during which we did nothing but exchange futile telegrams with Ryan and “Mr. Steffens”—we learned that the first contingent of Canadian troops had left the camp—and my men and I returned to New York, unsuccessful.

Our failure was greater than appears on the surface, for my men and I were a blind. Our equipment, our loud talking, our aggressive pro-Germanism—even our secret preparations, which had not been secret enough—were intended primarily to distract attention from other and far more dangerous activities.

We had been watched by United States Secret Service men from the very beginning of our enterprise. During our entire stay in Buffalo and Niagara, we had been under the surveillance of men who were merely waiting for us to make their suspicions a certainty by some positive attempt against the peace of the United States. We knew it and wanted it to be so.

And while they were waiting for sufficient cause to arrest us, other men, totally unsuspected, were making their way down through Canada, intent upon destroying all of the bridges and canal locks in the lake region!

You can see what the effect would have been had our plan succeeded—Canada crippled and terrorized—England robbed of the troops which Canada was even then preparing to send her, but which would have been forced to remain at home to defend the border. But far more desirable in German eyes, the United States would have been convicted in the sight of the world of criminal negligence. For my band of men—the obvious perpetrators of one crime had been acting suspiciously for weeks. And yet, in spite of that, we were at liberty. The United States had made no effort to apprehend us.

Good fortune saved the United States from serious international complications at that time. While we were waiting for word from von Papen the Canadian troops had left Valcartier Camp, and were then on their way to England. Part of our object had been removed, and for the rest—well, the plan would keep, we thought.

It was a disappointed von Papen whom I met on my return to New York—a rather crest-fallen person, far different from the urbane soldier that Washington knew in those days. We commiserated with each other upon our failure, and talked of the better luck that we should have next time. I did not know that there was to be no next time for me.

For it came about that Abteilung III B., the Intelligence Department of the General Staff wished some first-hand information about conditions in the United States and in Mexico; and I, who knew both countries (and who was the possessor of an American passport bearing an American name) was selected to go.

On October 3rd, 1914, Bridgman Taylor waved farewell to New York from the deck of an Italian steamer, bound for Genoa. The curious might have been interested to know that in Mr. Taylor’s trunk were letters of recommendation to various German Consuls in Italy; strangely enough, they bore the name of Horst von der Goltz within them, and the signature of each was “von Papen.”

I had said good-bye to von Papen the night before, at the German Club. He had asked me to turn over to him all the fire-arms I had, for use again when needed.

We talked of the war that night, and of Germany, which I had not seen in two years. And we spoke of the United States, and of what I was to tell them “over there.”

“Say that they need not worry about this country,” he told me. “The United States may still join us in the splendid fight we are making. But if they do not it is of small moment. And always remember that if things look bad for us, something will happen over here.”

I left him, speculating upon the “something” that would happen; for then I did not know of all the plans that were in my captain’s head. I was to learn more about them later on—and I was to know a bitter disgust at the things that men may do in the name of patriotism. But of those things I will speak in their proper place.