My adventures as a German secret agent

Back in Berlin, I sought out Major Köhnemann, and together we spent many days in planning my future course of action. It was a war council in effect, for the object toward which we aimed was nothing less than the crippling of the United States by a campaign of terrorism and conspiracy. It was not pleasant work that I was to do, but I knew, as every informed German did, that it was necessary. Therefore I accepted it.

What would you have? Germany was in the war to conquer or be conquered. America, the source of supply for the Allies, stood in the way. Knowing these things, we set about the task of preventing America from aiding our enemies, by using whatever means we could. We did not feel either compunction or hostility. It was war—diplomatic rather than military, but war none the less.

I do not intend to go into the details of our plans at the present moment. Those will have their place in a later chapter. Enough to say that after a brief visit to both the eastern and western fronts I left Germany for England—en route to America with a program that in ruthlessness or efficiency left nothing to be desired.

But before going to England it was necessary that I take every possible precaution against exposure there. My passport might be sufficient identification, but I knew that since the arrest of Carl Lody and other German spies in England, the British authorities were examining passports with a great deal more care than they had formerly exercised. Accordingly, one morning, Mr. Bridgman Taylor presented himself at the American Embassy for financial aid with which to leave Germany. There was good reason for this. To ask a consulate or embassy to visé a passport when that is not necessary, may easily seem suspicious. But the applicant for aid, receives not only additional identification in the form of a record of his movements, but also secures an advantage in that his passport bears an indorsement of his appeal for assistance, in my case signed with the name of the Ambassador. At The Hague I again applied for help from the United States Relief Commission. I amused myself on this occasion by making two drafts; one for fifteen dollars on Mr. John F. Ryan of Buffalo, N. Y., and one for thirty dollars on “Mr. Papen” of New York City.

I was fairly secure, then, I thought. If suspicion did fall upon me, it would be simple to prove that I had submitted my passport to a number of American officials, and had consequently satisfied them of my good faith as well as that the passport had not been issued to some one other than myself, as in the case of Lody.

As a final step I took care to divide my personal papers into two groups: those which were perfectly harmless, such as my Mexican commission and leave of absence, and those which would tend to establish my identity as a German agent. These I deposited in two separate safe-deposit vaults in Rotterdam, taking care to remember in which each group was placed—and that done, with a feeling of personal security, and even a certain amount of zest for the adventure, I boarded a channel steamer for England.

I was absolutely safe, I felt. In my confidence, I went about very freely, ignoring the fact that England was at the moment in the throes of a spy-scare, and even so well-recommended a German-American as Mr. Bridgman Taylor, was not likely to escape scrutiny.

And yet, I believe that I should not have been caught at all, if I had not stopped one day in front of the Horse Guards and joined the crowd that was watching guard mount. Why I did it, it is impossible for me to say. There was no military advantage to be gained; that is certain. And I had seen guard mount often enough to find no element of novelty in it. Whim, I suppose, drew me there; and as luck would have it, it drew into a particularly congested portion of the crowd. And then chance played another card, by causing a small boy to step on my foot. I lost my temper and abused the lad roundly for his carelessness—so roundly in fact that a man standing in front of me turned around and looked into my face.

I recognized him at once as an agent of the Russian Government, whom I had once been instrumental in exposing as a spy in Germany. I saw him look at me closely for a moment and I could tell by his expression, although he said no word, that he had recognized me also. Thrusting a penny into the boy’s hand, I made haste to get out of the crowd as quickly as I could.

Here was a pleasant situation, I thought, as I made my way very quietly to my hotel. I could not doubt that the Russian would report me—but what then? His word against mine would not convict me of anything, but it might lead to an inconvenient period of detention. I sat down to consider the situation.

After all, I decided, the situation was serious but not absolutely hopeless. Unquestionably I should be reported to the police; unquestionably a careful investigation would result in the discovery that there was no Bridgman H. Taylor at the address in El Paso which I had given to the Relief Commission at the Hague. For the rest, my accent would prove only that I was of German blood; not that I was a German subject.

So far, so bad. But what then? I had, in the safe deposit vaults at Rotterdam, papers proving that I was a Mexican officer on leave. It would be a simple matter to send for these papers, to admit that I was Horst von der Goltz, and to state that I was in England en route from a visit to my family in Germany and now bound for Mexico to resume my services. There remained but one matter to explain: why I was using an American passport bearing a name that was not mine.

That should not be a difficult task. Huerta had been overthrown barely a week before my leave of absence was issued. Carranza’s government had not yet been recognized, and already my general, Villa, had quarreled with him, so that it was impossible for me to procure a passport from the Mexican Government. In my dilemma, I had taken advantage of the offer of an American exporter, who had been kind enough to lend me his passport, which he had secured and found he did not need at the time. As for my name, it was not a particularly good one under which to travel in England, so I had naturally been obliged to use the one on my passport.

It was a good story and had somewhat the appearance of truth. The question was, would it be believed? Even if it were, it had its disadvantages; for I should certainly be arrested as an enemy alien, and after a delay fatal to all my plans, I should probably be deported. I decided to try a bolder scheme.

In Parliamentary White Paper, Miscellaneous No. 13, (1916), you will find a statement which explains my next step. “Horst von der Goltz,” it says, “arrived in England from Holland on the fourth of November, 1914. He offered information upon projected air raids, the source whence the Emden derived her information as to British shipping, and how the Leipsic was obtaining her coal supply. He offered to go back to Germany to obtain information and all he asked for in the first instance was his traveling expenses.”

What is the meaning of these amazing statements? Simply this. I realized that even if the story I had concocted were believed it would mean a considerable delay and ultimate deportation. And as I had no mind to submit to either of these things if I could avoid them, I decided to forestall my Russian friend by taking the only possible step—one commendable for its audacity if for nothing else. Accordingly I walked straight to Downing Street and into the Foreign Office. I asked to see Mr. Campbell of the Secret Intelligence Department. This was walking into the jaws of the lion with a vengeance.

I told Mr. Campbell that I wished to enter the British Secret Service; that I was in a position to secure much valuable information.

“Upon what subject?” asked Mr. Campbell.

Zeppelin raids, I told him. I choose that subject first, because it was the least harmful I could think of in case my “traitorous” offer ever reached the ears of Berlin. No one knew better than I how impossible it was to obtain information about Zeppelins. I reasoned that the officers in command of Abteilung III B in the General Staff would know that I was bluffing when I offered to get information upon that subject for the English. They would know that I was not in a position to have or to obtain any such knowledge, for in Germany no topic is so closely guarded as that. Also, I reasoned that it was a topic in which the English were vastly interested. They were.

Mr. Campbell was hesitating, so I added two other equally absurd subjects, the movements of the Emden and the Leipsic, about which I knew—and the service chiefs knew that I knew—absolutely nothing.

Mr. Campbell was plainly puzzled. My intentions seemed to be good. At any rate, I had come to him quite openly, and any ulterior motives I might have had were not apparent. Then, too, I had offered him the key of my safe deposit box, telling him what it contained. He considered a moment.

“We shall have to investigate your story,” he said finally. “We shall send to Holland for the papers you say are contained in the vault there; and you will be questioned further. In the meantime I shall have to place you under arrest.”

I had expected nothing better than this, and went to my jail with a feeling that was relief rather than anything else. My papers would establish my identity and then, if all went well, I should go back to Germany and make my way to America by another route.

But all did not go well. Somehow, in spite of my commission and leave of absence—perhaps because my offer seemed too good to be true—the British authorities decided that it would be better to lose the information I had offered them and keep me in England. Whatever their suspicions, the only charge they could bring against me and prove was that I was an alien enemy who had failed to register. They had no proof whatever of any connection between me and the German Government. So on the 13th of November, 1914, they brought me into a London police court to answer the charge of failing to register. I was delighted to do so. It was far more comfortable than facing a court martial on trial for my life as a spy, as the English newspapers had seemed to expect. Accordingly on the 26th of November I was duly sentenced to six months at hard labor in Pentonville Prison, with a recommendation for deportation at the expiration of my sentence. I served five months at Pentonville—where Roger Casement was hanged—and then my good behavior let me out. Home Secretary MacKenna signed the order for my deportation. I was free. I was to slip from under the paw of the lion.

And then something happened—to this day I don’t know what. Instead of being deported I was thrust into Brixton Prison, where Kuepferer hanged himself, strangely enough, just after his troubles seemed over. Kuepferer had driven a bargain with the English. He was to give them information in return for his life and freedom; and then, when he had everything arranged, he committed suicide. In Brixton I was not sentenced on any charge, I was simply held in solitary confinement, with occasional diversions in the form of a “third degree.” After my first insincere offer to give the English information I kept my mouth shut and made no overtures to them, although I confess that the temptation to tell all I knew was often very great. The English got nothing out of me and in September, 1915, I was shifted to another prison. They took me out of Brixton and placed me into Reading—the locale of Oscar Wilde’s ballad. Conditions were less disagreeable there. I was allowed to have newspapers and magazines, and to talk and exercise with my fellow prisoners.

You may be sure that all this time the English made attempts to solve my personal identity as well as to learn the reason for my being in England. They could not shake my story. Time after time I told them: “I am Horst von der Goltz, an officer of the Mexican army on leave. I used the United States passport made out to Bridgman Taylor from necessity—to avoid the suspicion that would be attached to me because of my German descent.

“Gentlemen, that is all I can tell you.”

Over and over again I repeated that meagre statement to the men who questioned me. I would not tell them the truth, and I knew that no lie would help me. And then came an event which changed my viewpoint and made me tell—if not the whole story—at least a considerable part of it.

I had, as I have said, managed to secure newspapers in my new quarters. It is difficult to say how eagerly I read them after so many months of complete ignorance, or with what anxiety I studied such war news as came into my hands. It was America in which I was chiefly interested, for I knew that after my capture, some other man must have been sent to do the work which I had planned to do. I know now that it was von Rintelen who was selected—that infinitely resourceful intriguer who planted his spies throughout the United States, and for a time seemed well on the way to succeeding in the most gigantic conspiracy against a peaceful nation that had ever been undertaken. But at the time I could tell nothing of this, although I watched unceasingly for reports of strikes, explosions and German uprisings which would tell me that that work which I had been commanded to do and from which I was only too glad to be spared, was being prosecuted.

So several months passed—months in which I had time for meditation and in which I began to see more clearly some things which had been hinted at in Berlin—and of which I shall tell more later on. And then one day I read a dispatch that caused me to sit very silently for a moment in my cell, and to wonder—and fear a little.

Von Papen had been recalled.

I read the story of how he and Captain Boy-Ed had over-reached and finally betrayed themselves; of the passport frauds that they had conducted; of the conspiracies and sedition that they had sought to stir up. I learned that they had been sent home under a safe-conduct which did not cover any documents they might carry. It was this last fact which caused me uneasiness. Had von Papen, always so confident of his success, attempted to smuggle through some report of his two years of plotting? It seemed improbable, and yet, knowing his tendency to take chances, I was troubled by the possibility. For such a report might contain a record of my connection with him—and I was not protected by a safe-conduct!

My fears were well-founded, as you know. Von Papen carried with him no particular reports, but a number of personal papers which were seized when his ship stopped at Falmouth.

In my prison I read of the seizure and was doubly alarmed; increasingly so when the newspapers began publishing reports that they implicated literally hundreds of Irish- and German-Americans whose services von Papen had used in his plots. Then as the days passed, and my name was not mentioned in the disclosures, I became relieved.

“After all,” I thought, “he knows that I am here in prison and that I have kept silent. He will have been careful. These others—he has had some reason for his incautiousness with them. But, he will not betray me, just as he has betrayed none of his German associates.”

Then, on the night of January 30th, 1916, the governor of Reading Prison informed me that I was to go to London the next day.

“Where to?” I asked.

“To Scotland Yard,” he said briefly.

“What for?”

“I do not know.”

My heart sank, for I realized at once that something had occurred which was of vital import to me. I have faced firing squads in Mexico. I have stood against a wall, waiting for the signal that should bid the soldiers fire. And I have taken other dangerous chances, without, I believe, more fear than another man would have known. But never have I felt more reluctant than that night when I stood outside of Scotland Yard, waiting—for what?

I was brought in to the office of the Assistant Commissioner and found myself in the presence of four men, who regarded me gravely and in silence. I had never seen them before, but later I learned their names: Capt. William Hall of the Admiralty Intelligence Department; Mr. Nathan, the Oriental expert of the Foreign Office; Captain Carter of the War Office, and Mr. Basil Thompson, Assistant Commissioner of the Police of London.

There was something tomb-like about the atmosphere of the room, I thought, as I faced these men—and then I changed my opinion, for I saw lying open on the table around which they were seated—a box of cigarettes. I reached forward to take one, forgetting all politeness (for I had not smoked in six weeks) when my eye caught sight of a little pink slip of paper which one of them held in his hand—a slip which, I knew at once, was the cause of my presence there.

It was Captain Hall who held the paper toward me. It read:

When I had read it he turned over the check so that I could see the endorsement.

They were all watching me. The room was very still. I could hear myself breathe. Mr. Nathan of the Foreign Office handed me a pen and paper.

“Sign this name, please—Mr. Bridgman Taylor.”

I knew it would be folly to attempt to disguise my handwriting. I wrote out my name. It corresponded exactly with the endorsement on the back of the check.

“Do you know that check?” he asked.

“Yes,” I admitted, racking my wits for a possible explanation of the affair.

“Why was it issued?”

I had an inspiration.

“Von Papen gave it to me to go to Europe and join the army—but you see I didn’t——”

“Ah! Von Papen gave it to you.”

I was doing quick thinking. My first fright was over, but I realized that that little check might easily be my death warrant. I knew that von Papen had many reports and instructions bearing my name. I was afraid to admit to myself that after all these months of security, I had at last been discovered. Von Papen’s check proved that I had received money from a representative of the German Government. There might be other papers which would prove every thing needed to sentence me to execution. I was groping around for an idea—and then in a flash I realized the truth. It angered and embittered me.

There passed across my memory the year and more of solitary confinement, during which I had held my tongue.

I swung around on the Englishmen.

“Are you the executioners of the German Government?” I asked. “Are you so fond of von Papen that you want to do him a favor? If you shoot me you will be obliging him.”

The four grave faces looked at me. “We are going to prosecute you on this evidence,” was the only answer.

“You English pride yourselves,” I said, “on not being taken in. Von Papen is a very clever man. Are you going to let him use you for his own purposes? Do you think he was foolish enough not to realize that those papers would be seized? Do you think”—this part of it was a random shot, and lucky—“do you think it is an accident that the only papers he carried, referring to a live, unsentenced man in England refer to me? Just think! Von Papen has been recalled. The United States can investigate his actions now without embarrassment. And he, knowing me to be one of the connecting links in the chain of his activities, and knowing that I am a prisoner liable to extradition, would ask nothing better than to be permanently rid of me. And in the papers he carried he very obligingly furnished you with incriminating evidence against me. You can choose for yourselves. Do him this favor if you want to. But I think I’m worth more to you alive than dead. Especially now that I see how very willing my own government is to have me dead.”

The four men exchanged glances. I had made the appeal as a forlorn hope. Would they accept it and the promise it implied? I could not tell from their next words.

“We shall discuss that further,” said Captain Carter. “You will return to Reading.”

The next few days were full of anxiety for me. I could not tell how my appeal had been regarded, but I knew that it would be only by good fortune that I should escape at least a trial for espionage—for that is what my presence in England would mean. Finally I received a tentative assurance of immunity if I should tell what I knew of the workings of German secret agencies.

In spite of any hesitancy I might formerly have felt at such a course, I decided to make a confession. Von Papen’s betrayal of me—for that he had intentionally betrayed me, I was, and am, convinced—was too wanton to arouse in me any feeling except a desire for my freedom, which for fifteen months I had been robbed of, merely through the silence which my own sense of honor imposed upon me. But I must be careful. I had no desire to injure anyone whom von Papen had not implicated. And I did not wish to betray any secret which I could safely withhold.

I speculated upon what other documents von Papen might have carried. So far as I knew the only one involving me was the check; but of that I could not be sure, nor did it seem likely. It was more probable that there were other papers which would be used to test the sincerity of my story. My aim was to tell only such things as were already known, or were quite harmless. But how to do that? I needed some inkling as to what I might tell and on what I must be silent.

That knowledge was difficult to obtain, but I finally secured it through a rather adroit questioning of one of the men who interrogated me at the time. He had shown me much courtesy and no little sympathy; and after some pains I managed to worm out of him a very indefinite but useful idea of what matters the von Papen documents covered.

What I learned was sufficient to enable me to exclude from my story any facts implicating men who might be harmed by my disclosures. I told of the Welland Canal plot so far as my part in it was concerned, and I told of von Papen’s share in that and other activities. And I took care to incorporate in my confession the promise of immunity that had been made me tentatively.

“I have made these statements,” I wrote, “on the distinct understanding that the statements I have made, or should make in the future, will not be used against me; that I am not to be prosecuted for participation in any enterprise directed against the United Kingdom or her Allies I engaged in at the direction of Captain von Papen or other representatives of the German Government; and that the promise made to me by Capt. William Hall, Chief of the Intelligence Department of the Admiralty, in the presence of Mr. Basil Thompson, former Governor of Tonga, and Assistant Commissioner of Police, and in the presence of Superintendent Quinn, political branch of Scotland Yard, that I am not to be extradited or sent to any country where I am liable to punishment for political offences, is made on behalf of His Majesty’s Government.”

It was on February 2nd that I turned in my confession and swore to the truth of it. Affairs went better with me after that. I was sent to Lewes Prison, and there I was content for the remainder of my stay in England. And although I was still a prisoner I felt more free than I had felt in many years. I was out of it all—free of the necessity to be always watchful, always secret. And above all, I had cut myself loose from the intriguing that I had once enjoyed, but which in the last two years I had grown to hate more than I hated anything else on earth.

And there my own adventures end—so far as this book is concerned. I shall not do more than touch upon my return to the United States on so far different an errand than I had once planned. My testimony in the Grand Jury proceedings against Captain Tauscher, von Igel and other of my onetime fellow conspirators, is a matter of too recent record to deserve more than passing mention. Tauscher, you will remember, was acquitted because it was impossible to prove that he was aware of the objects for which he had supplied explosives. Von Igel, Captain von Papen’s secretary, was protected by diplomatic immunity. And Fritzen and Covani, my former lieutenants, had not yet been captured.[4]

But though my intriguing was ended, Germany’s was not. It may be interesting to consider these intrigues, in the light of what I had learned during those two years—and what I have discovered since.