My adventures as a German secret agent

In the long record of German intrigue in the United States one fact stands out predominantly. If you consider the tremendous ramifications of the system that Germany has built, the extent of its organization and the efficiency with which so gigantic a secret work was carried on, you will realize that this system was not the work of a short period but of many years. As a matter of fact, Germany had laid the foundation of that structure of espionage and conspiracy many years before—even before the time when the United States first became a Colonial Power and thus involved herself in the tangle of world politics.

I am making no rash assertions when I state that ten years ago the course which German agents should adopt toward the United States in the event of a great European war, had been determined with a reasonable amount of exactness by the General Staff, and that it was this plan that was adapted to the conditions of the moment, and set into operation at the outbreak of the present conflict. No element of hostility lay behind this planning. Germany had no grievance against you; and whatever potential causes of conflict existed between the two nations lay far in the future.

That plan, so complete in detail, so menacing in its intent, was but part of a world plan that should assure to Germany when the time was ripe the submission of all her enemies and the peaceful assistance and acquiescence in her aims of whatever parts of the world should at that time remain at peace. Germany looked far ahead on that day when she first knew that war must come. She realized, if no other nation did, that however strong in themselves the combatants were, the neutrals who should command the world’s supplies, would really determine the victory.

Knowing this, Germany—which does not play the game of diplomacy with gloves on—laid her plans accordingly.

The United States offered a peculiarly fruitful field for her endeavors. By tradition and geography divorced from European rivalries, it was, nevertheless, from both an industrial and agricultural standpoint, obviously to become the most important of neutral nations. The United State alone could feed and equip a continent; and it needed no prophet to perceive that whichever country could appropriate to itself her resources would unquestionably win the war, if a speedy military victory were not forthcoming.

It was Germany’s aim, therefore, to prepare the way by which she could secure these supplies, or, failing in that, to keep them from the enemy, England—if England it should be. In a military way such a plan had little chance of success. England’s command of the seas was too complete for Germany to consider that she could establish a successful blockade against her. It was then, I fancy, that Germany bethought herself of a greatly potential ally in the millions of citizens of German birth or parentage with whom the United States was filled.

One may extract a trifle of cynical amusement from what followed. Those millions of German-Americans had never been regarded with affection in Berlin. The vast majority of them were descendants of men who had left their homes for political reasons; and of those who had been born in Germany many had emigrated to escape military service, and others had gone to seek a better opportunity than their native land provided. They had been called renegades who had given up their true allegiance for citizenship in a foreign country, and Bernstorff himself, according to the evidence of U. S. Senator Phelan, had said that he regarded them as traitors and cowards.

But Germany voicing her own spleen in private and Germany with an axe to grind, were two different beings. And no one who observed the honeyed beginnings of the Deutschtum movement in America would have believed that these men who in public were so assiduously and graciously flattered were in private characterized as utter traitors to the Fatherland—and worse.

Certainly no one believed it when, in 1900, Prince Henry of Prussia paid his famous visit to America. No word of criticism of these “traitors” was spoken by him; and when at banquets glasses were raised and Milwaukee smiled across the table at Berlin, the sentimental onlooker might have known a gush of joy at this spectacle of amity and reconciliation. And the sentimental onlooker would never have suspected that Prince Henry had traveled three thousand miles for any other purpose than to attend the launching of the Kaiser’s yacht Meteor, which was then building in an American yard.

But to the cynical observer, searching the records of the years immediately following Prince Henry’s visit, a few strange facts would have become apparent. He would have discovered that German societies, which had been neither very numerous nor popular before, had in a comparatively short time acquired a membership and a prominence that were little short of remarkable. He would have noted the increasing number of German teachers and professors who appeared on the faculties of American schools and colleges. He would have remarked upon the growth in popularity of the German newspapers, many of them edited by Germans who had never become naturalized. And yet, observing these things, he might have agreed with the vast majority of Americans, in regarding them as entirely harmless and of significance merely as a proof of how hard love of one’s native land dies.

He would have been mistaken had he so regarded them. The German Government does not spend money for sentimental purposes; and in the last ten years that Government has expended literally millions of dollars for propaganda in the United States. It has consistently encouraged a sentiment for the Fatherland that should be so strong that it would hold first place in the heart of every German-American. It has circulated pamphlets advocating the exclusive use of the German language, not merely in the homes, but in shops and street cars and all other public places. It has lent financial support to German organizations in America, and in a thousand ways has aimed so to win the hearts of the German-Americans that when the time should come the United States, by sheer force of numbers, would be delivered, bound hand and foot, into the hands of the German Government.

It was this object of undermining the true allegiance of the German citizens of the United States which transformed an innocent and natural tendency into a menace that was the more insidious because the very people involved were, for the most part, entirely ignorant of its true nature. Germany seized upon an attachment that was purely one of sentiment and race and sought to make it an instrument of political power; and she went about her work with so efficient a secrecy that she very nearly accomplished her purpose.

By the time the Great War broke out the German propaganda in America had assumed notable proportions. German newspapers were plentiful and had acquired a tremendous influence over the minds of German-speaking folk. Many of the German societies had been consolidated into one national organization—the German-American National Alliance, with a membership of two millions, and a president, C. J. Hexamer of Chicago, whose devotion to the Fatherland has been so great that he has since been decorated with the Order of the Red Eagle. And the German people of the United States had, by a long campaign of flattery and cajolery, coupled with a systematic glorification of German genius and institutions, been won to attachment to the country of their origin that required only a touch to translate it into fanaticism.

Germany had set the stage and rehearsed the chorus. There were needed only the principals to make the drama complete. These she provided in the persons of four men: Franz von Papen, Karl Boy-Ed, Heinrich Albert, and later, Franz von Rintelen.

They were no ordinary men whom Germany had appointed to the leadership of this giant underground warfare against a peaceful country. Highly bred, possessing a wide and intensive knowledge of finance, of military strategy and of diplomatic finesse, they were admirably equipped to win the admiration and trust of the people of this country, at the very moment that they were attacking them. All of them were men skilled in the art of making friends; and so successfully did they employ this art that their popularity for a long time contrived to shield them from suspicion. Each of these men was assigned to the command of some particular branch of German secret service. And each brought to his task the resources of the scientist, the soldier and the statesman, coupled with the scruples of the bandit.

It is impossible in this brief space to tell the full story of the activities of these gentlemen and of their many, highly trained assistants. Violence, as you know, played no small part in their plans. Sedition, strikes in munitions plants, attacks upon ships carrying supplies to the Allies, the crippling of transportation facilities, bomb outrages—these are a few of the main elements in the campaign to render the United States useless as a source of supply for Germany’s enemies. But ultimately of far more importance than this was a program of publicity that should not only present to the German-Americans the viewpoint of their fatherland (an entirely legitimate propaganda) but which was aimed to consolidate them into a political unit which should be used, by peaceful means if possible—such as petitions and the like—and if that method failed, by absolute armed resistance, to force the United States Government to declare an embargo upon shipments of munitions and foodstuffs to the Allies, and to compel it to assume a position, if not of active alliance with Germany (a hope that was never seriously entertained) at least one which should distinctly favor the German Government and cause serious dissension between America and England.

There followed a two-fold campaign; on the one hand active terrorism against private industry insofar as it was of value to the Allies, reinforced by the most determined plots against Canada; on the other an insincere and lying propaganda that presented the United States Government as a pretender of a neutrality which it did not attempt to practise—as an institution controlled by men who were unworthy of the support of any but Anglophiles and hypocrites.

Left to itself the sympathy of German-Americans would have been directed toward Germany; stimulated as it was by an unremitting campaign of publicity, this sympathy became a devotion almost rabid in its intensity. Race consciousness was aroused, and placed upon the defensive by the attitude of the larger portion of the American press, the German-Americans became defiant and aggressive in their apologies for the Fatherland. Even those whose German origin was so remote that they were ignorant of the very language of their fathers, subscribed to newspapers and periodicals whose sole reason for existence was that they presented the truth—as Germany saw it. If in that presentation the German press adopted a tone that was seditious—why, there were those in Berlin who would applaud the more heartily. And in New York Captain von Papen and his colleagues would read and nod their heads approvingly.

At the end of the first two months of the war, and of my active service in America, the campaign of violence was well under way. Already plans had been made for several enterprises other than the Welland Canal plot, which I have discussed already. Attacks had been planned against several vulnerable points in the Canadian Pacific Railway, such as the St. Clair Tunnel, running under the Detroit River at Point Huron, Mich.; agents had been planted in the various munitions factories, and spies were everywhere seeking possible points of vantage at which a blow for Germany could be struck. A plan had even then been made to blow up the railroad bridge at Vanceboro.

But already von Papen and his associates, including myself, knew that Germany could never succeed in crippling Allied commerce in the United States and in proceeding effectively against Canada until we could count upon the implicit co-operation of the German-Americans, even though that co-operation involved active disloyalty to the country of their adoption.

There lay the difficulty. That the bulk of the German-Americans were loyal to their government, I knew at the time. Now, happily, that is a matter that is beyond doubt. Among them there were, of course, many whose zeal outran their scruples and others whose scruples were for sale. But for the most part, although they could be cajoled into a partnership that was not always prudent, they could not be led beyond this point into positive defiance of the United States, however mistaken they might believe its policies.

The rest of the story I cannot tell at first hand, for I was not directly concerned in the events that followed. What I know I have pieced together from my recollection of conversations with von Papen, and from what many people in Berlin, who thought I was familiar with the affair, told me. Who fathered the idea, I do not know. Some one conceived a scheme so treacherous and contemptible that every other act of this war seems white beside it. It was planned so to discredit the German-Americans that the hostility of their fellow-citizens would force them back into the arms of the German Government. These millions of American citizens of German descent were to be given the appearance of disloyalty, in order that they might become objects of suspicion to their fellows, and through their resentment at this attitude the cleavage between Germans and non-Germans in this country would be increased and perhaps culminate in armed conflict.

On the face of it this looks like the absurd and impossible dream of an insane person, rather than a diplomatic program. And yet, if it be examined more closely, the plan will be seen to have a psychological basis that, however far-fetched, is essentially sound. Given a people already bewildered by the almost universal condemnation of a country which they have sincerely revered; add to that serious difference in sympathies an attitude of distrust of all German-Americans by the other inhabitants of this country; and you have sown the seed of a race-antagonism that if properly nurtured may easily grow into a violent hatred. In a word, Germany had decided that if the German-Americans could not be coaxed back into the fold they might be beaten back. She set about her part of the task with an industry that would have commanded admiration had it been better employed.

Glance back over the history of the past three years and consider how, almost over night, the “hyphen” situation developed. America, shaken by a war which had been declared to be impossible, become suddenly conscious of the presence within her borders of a portion of her population—a nation in numbers—largely unassimilated, retaining its own language, and possessing characteristics which suddenly became conspicuously distasteful. Inevitably, as I say, the cleavage in sympathies produced distrust. But it was not until stories of plots in which German-Americans were implicated became current that this distrust developed into an acute suspicion. Germanophobia was rampant in those days, and to hysterical persons it was unthinkable that any German could be exempt from the suspicion of treason.

It was upon this foundation that the German agents erected their structure of lies and defamation. Not content with the efforts which the jingo press and jingo individuals were unconsciously making in their behalf, they deliberately set on foot rumors which were intended to increase the distrust of German-Americans. I happen to know that during the first two years of the war, many of the stories about German attempts upon Canada, about German-American complicity in various plots, emanated from the offices of Captain von Papen and his associates. I know also that many plots in which German-Americans were concerned had been deliberately encouraged by von Papen and afterward as deliberately betrayed! Time after time, enterprises with no chance of success were set on foot with the sole purpose of having them fail—for thus Germany could furnish to the world evidence that America was honey-combed with sedition and treachery—evidence which Americans themselves would be the first to accept.

It was in reality a gigantic game of bluff. Germany wished to give to the world convincing proof that all peoples of German descent were solidly supporting her. It was for this reason that reports of impossible German activities were set afloat; that rumors of Germans massing in the Maine woods, of aëroplane flights over Canada, and of all sorts of enterprises which had no basis in fact, were disseminated. And since many anti-German papers had been indiscreet enough to attack the German-Americans as disloyal, the German agents used and fomented these attacks for their own purposes.

Who could gain by such a campaign of slander and the feeling it would produce? Certainly not the Administration, which had great need of a united country behind it. Certainly not the American press, which was certain to lose circulation and advertising; nor American business, which would suffer from the loss of thousands of customers of German descent, who would turn to the German merchant for their needs. Only two classes could profit: the German press, which was liberally subsidized by the German Government, and the German Government itself.

It was to the interests of the administration at Washington to keep the country united by keeping the Germans disunited. The reverse condition would tend to indicate that Americanism was a failure, since the country was divided at a critical time; it would seriously hamper the Government in its dealings with all the warring nations; and it would be of benefit only to the German societies and German press, and through them to the German Government. It was of benefit. The German newspapers increased their circulations and advertising revenues, in many cases by more than one hundred per cent. German banks and insurance companies received money that had formerly gone to American institutions and which now went to swell the Imperial German War Loans. And the German clubs increased their memberships and became more and more instruments of power in the work of Germany.

There is a typical German club in New York—the Deutscher Verein on Central Park South. During the war it has been used as a sub-office of the German General Staff. It was here that von Papen used to store the dynamite that was needed in such enterprises as the Welland Canal plot. It was here that conspirators used to meet for conferences which no one, not even the other members of the club, could tell were not as innocent as they seemed.

These German societies and other agencies were used not merely to promote sympathy for the German cause, but also to influence public opinion in matters of purely American interest. On January 21, 1916, Henry Weismann, president of the Brooklyn branch of the German-American National Alliance sent a report to headquarters in Chicago, regarding the activities of his organization in the recent elections. In the Twenty-third Congressional District of New York, Ellsworth J. Healy had been a candidate for Congress. Both he and another man, John J. Fitzgerald, candidate for Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, were regarded by German interests as “unneutral.” They were defeated, and Weismann in commenting upon the matter, wrote: “The election returns prove that Deutschtum is armed and able, when the word is given, to seat its men.”

Even in the campaign for preparedness Germany took a hand. Berlin was appealed to in some cases as to the attitude that American citizens of German descent should adopt toward this policy. Professor Appelmann of the University of Vermont wrote to Dr. Paul Rohrbach, one of the advisers of the Wilhelmstrasse, requesting his advice upon the subject. Dr. Rohrbach replied that American Deutschtum should not be in favor of preparedness, because “it is quite conceivable that in the event of an American-Japanese war, Germany might adopt an attitude of very benevolent neutrality toward Japan and so make it easier for Japan to defeat the United States.” And not long ago the Herold des Glaubens of St. Louis, made this statement: “When we found that the agitation for preparedness was in the interest of the munition makers and that its aim was a war with Germany, we certainly turned against it and we have agitated against it for the last three months.”

But this anti-militaristic spirit was a rather sudden development on the part of the German societies. In 1911, when a new treaty of arbitration with Great Britain was under consideration, a group of roughs, led and organized by a German, violently broke up a meeting held under the auspices of the New York Peace Society to support that treaty. The man who broke that meeting up was Alphonse G. Koelble. It was this same Koelble who in 1915, when Germany’s attack upon America was most bitter, organized a meeting of “The Friends of Peace,” in order to protest against militarism! Strange, is it not, this inconsistency? Or was it that Mr. Koelble was acting under orders?

Germany did these things not only for their political effect, but also because she knew that she could turn the evidence of her own meddling to account. It was for the same reason that Wolf von Igel, von Papen’s secretary and successor, retained in his office a list of American citizens of German descent who “could be relied on.” This list was found by agents of the Department of Justice when von Igel’s office was raided. And the German agents were glad it was discovered. It gave to Americans an additional proof of the hold that Germany had obtained over a large group of German-Americans.

It was as late as March, 1916, that the members of the Minnesota chapter of the German-American National Alliance received a circular, advising them of the attitude toward Germany of the various candidates for delegate to the national conventions of the different parties, and indicating by a star the names of those men “about whom it has been ascertained that they are in agreement with the views and wishes of Deutschland and that if elected they will act accordingly.” I do not believe that the men who sent that circular expected it to be widely obeyed. But unquestionably they knew it would be made public.

I think that if the German conspirators in America had confined their activities to this field they might ultimately have succeeded. They had managed to seduce a sufficient number of German-Americans to cause the entire German-American population to be regarded with suspicion. They had contrived to discredit the pacifist and labor movements by making public their own connection with individuals in these bodies. They had aroused the public to such a pitch of distrust that in the Presidential campaign of 1916 the support of the “German vote” was regarded with distaste by both candidates. And they had helped to create so tremendous a dissension in America that friendships of long standing were broken up, German merchants in many communities lost all but their German customers, and German-Americans were belabored in print with such twaddle as the following:

“The German-Americans predominate in the grog-shops, low dives, pawn shops and numerous artifices for money-making and corrupt practices in politics.”

The foregoing statement, which I quote from a book, “German Conspiracies in the United States,” written by a gentleman named Skaggs, is not perhaps a fair sample of the attacks made upon German-Americans by the press in general, but it is indicative of the heights to which feeling ran in the case of a few uninformed or hysterical persons. The point is that to a large portion of the populace the German-Americans had become enemies and objects of abuse.

They, in turn, beset on all sides by a campaign of slander insidiously fostered by men to whom they had given their trust, did exactly what had been expected. They fell right into the arms of that movement which for fourteen years had been subsidized for that very purpose. They ceased to read American newspapers. They read German newspapers, many of which almost openly preached disloyalty to the United States. They became clannish and joined German societies which frequently contained German agents. They began to boycott American business houses and dealt only with those of German affiliations.

Germany had gained her point. She alone could gain by the disunity of the country. It was to her advantage that the profits which had formerly gone to American business houses should be deflected to German corporations. And had she rested her efforts there, she might, as I say, have seen them produce results in the form of riots and armed dissension, which would have effectively prevented the United States from entering the war.

But Germany over-reached herself. Emboldened by the apparent success of their schemes, her principal agents, von Papen, Boy-Ed and von Rintelen (who had begun his work in January, 1915) became careless, so far as secrecy was concerned, and so audacious in their plans that they betrayed themselves, perhaps intentionally, as a final demonstration of their power. The results you know. Insofar as the disclosures of their activities tended further to implicate the German-Americans, they did harm. But by those very disclosures the eyes of many German-Americans were opened to the true nature of the influence to which they had been subjected, and through that fact the worst element of the German propaganda in America received its death blow.

To-day the United States is at war and no intelligent man now questions the loyalty of the majority of the citizens of German blood. That in the past their sympathies have been with Germany is unquestioned and, from their standpoint, entirely proper. That in many cases they view the participation of the United States in the war with regret is probable. But that they will stand up and if need be fight as staunchly as any other group in the country, no man may doubt.

That is the story of the darkest chapter in the history of German intrigue. Other things have been done in this war at which a humane man may blush. Other crimes have been committed which not even the staunchest partisan can condone. But at least it may be said that those things were done to enemies or to neutral people whom fortune had put in the way of injury. The betrayal of the German-Americans was a wanton crime against men whom every association and every tie of kinship or tradition should have served to protect.

Germany has not yet abandoned that attack. There are still spies in the United States, you may be sure—still intrigues are being fostered. And there are still men who, consciously or unconsciously, are striving to discredit the German-Americans by presenting them as unwilling to bear their share in the burden of the nation’s war. Only a week before these lines were written one man—George Sylvester Viereck—circulated a petition begging that Germans should not be sent to fight their countrymen, and an organization of German Protestant churches in America is repeating this plea. As a German whom fortune has placed outside the battle, and as one whose patriotism is extended toward blood rather than dynasty, I ask Mr. Viereck and these other gentlemen if they have not forgotten that many German-Americans have already shown their feelings by volunteering for service in this war—and if they have not also forgotten that the two great wars of American history were fought between men of the same blood.

Ties of blood have never prevented men from fighting for a cause which they believed to be just. They will not in this war! And when Mr. Viereck and his kind protest against the participation in the war of men of any descent whatever, they imply that the American cause is not just and that it is not worthy of the support of the men they claim to represent.

Is this their intention?