The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918. John Price Jones
military attaché to the United States was Captain Franz von Papen. His mission was the study of the United States army. In August, 1914, it may be assumed that he had absorbed most of the useful information of the United States army, which at that moment was no superhuman problem. In July of that year he was in Mexico, observing, among other matters, the effect of dynamite explosions on railways. He was quite familiar with Mexico. According to Admiral von Hintze he had organized a military unit in the lukewarm German colony in Mexico City, and he used one or more of the warring factions in the southern republic to test the efficacy of various means of warfare.
The rumble of a European war sent him scurrying northward. From Mexico on July 29 he wired Captain Boy-Ed—of whom more presently—in New York to
" … arrange business for me too with Pavenstedt,"
which referred to the fact that Boy-Ed had just engaged office space in the offices of G. Amsinck & Company, New York, which was at that time a German house of which Adolph Pavenstedt was the president, but which has since been taken over by American interests. And he added:
"Then inform Lersner. The Russian attaché ordered back to Washington by telegraph. On outbreak of war have intermediaries locate by detective where Russian and French intelligence office."
The latter part of the message is open to two interpretations: that Boy-Ed was to have detectives locate the Russian and French secret service officers; or that Boy-Ed was to place German spies in those offices.
Captain von Papen reported to his ministry of war anent the railway explosions:
"I consider it out of the question that explosives prepared in this way would have to be reckoned with in a European war. … "
a significant opinion, which he changed later.
What of the man himself? He was all that "German officer" suggested at that time to any one who had traveled in Germany. His military training had been exhaustive. Though he had not seen "active service," his life, from the early youth when he had been selected from his gymnasium fellows for secret service in Abteilung III of the great bureau, had been unusually active. He had traveled as a civilian over various countries, drawing maps, harking to the sentiment of the people, and checking from time to time the operations of resident German agents abroad. His disguises were thorough, as this incident will illustrate: In Hamburg, at the army riding school where von Papen was trained, young officers are taught the French style. Yet one fine morning in Central Park he stopped to chat with an acquaintance who had bought a mare. Von Papen admired the mount, promptly named its breed, and told in what counties in Ireland the best specimens of that breed could be found—information called up from a riding tour he had made over the length and breadth of Ireland. It is commonly said that horsemen trained in the French style cling to its mannerisms, but a cavalier revealing those mannerisms in Ireland, where the style is exclusively English, would have attracted undue attention. So he had disguised even his horsemanship!
Captain Franz von Papen
A man who moves constantly about among more or less unsuspecting peoples seeking their military weakness becomes intolerant. Tolerance is scarcely a German military trait, and in that respect Captain von Papen was consistently loyal to his own superior organization. "I always say to those idiotic Yankees they had better hold their tongues," he wrote to his wife in a letter which fell later into the hands of those same "bloedsinnige" Yankees. He was inordinately proud of his facility in operating unobserved, arrogant of his ability, and blunt in his criticism of his associates. He telegraphed Boy-Ed on one occasion to be more cautious. The gracious colleague replied, in a letter:
"Dear Papen: A secret agent who returned from Washington this evening made the following statement: 'The Washington people are very much excited about von Papen and are having a constant watch kept on him. They are in possession of a whole heap of incriminating evidence against him. They have no evidence against Count B. and Captain B-E (!).'"
And Boy-Ed, a trifle optimistically, perhaps, added:
"In this connection I would suggest with due diffidence that perhaps the first part of your telegram is worded rather too emphatically."
Von Papen was a man of war, a Prussian, the Feldmarschal of the Kaiser in America. In appearance he bespoke his vigor: he was well set up, rawboned, with a long nose, prominent ears, keen eyes and a strong lower jaw. He was energetic in speech and swift in formulating daring plans. In those first frantic weeks after the declaration of war he reached out in all directions to snap taut the strings that held his organization together—German reservists who had been peaceful farmers, shopkeepers or waiters, all over the United States, were mobilized for service, and paraded through Battery Park in New York shouting "Deutschland, Deutschland ueber alles!" to the strains of the Austrian hymn, while they waited for Papen's orders from a building near by, and picked quarrels with a counter procession of Frenchmen screaming the immortal "Marseillaise." Up in his office sat the attaché, summoning, assigning, despatching his men on missions that were designed to terrorize America as the spiked helmets were terrorizing Belgium at that moment.
And he, too, failed. Although von Papen marshaled his consuls, his reservists, his thugs, his women, and his skilled agents, for a programme of violence the like of which America had never experienced, the military phase of the war was not destined for decision here, and there is again something ironical in the fact that the arrogance of Captain von Papen's outrages hastened the coming of war to America and the decline of Captain von Papen's style of warfare in America.
The Kaiser's naval attaché at Washington was Karl Boy-Ed, the child of a German mother and a Turkish father, who had elected a naval career and shown a degree of aptitude for his work which qualified him presently for the post of chief lieutenant to von Tirpitz. He was one of the six young officers who were admitted to the chief councils of the German navy, as training for high executive posts. In the capacity of news chief of the Imperial navy, Boy-Ed carried on two highly successful press campaigns to influence the public on the eve of requests for heavy naval appropriations, the second, in 1910, calling for 400,000,000 marks. He spread broadcast through cleverly contrived pamphlets and through articles placed in the subsidized press, a national resentment against British naval dominion. His duties took him all over the world as naval observer, and he may be credited more than casually with weaving the plan-fabric of marine supremacy with which Germany proposed in due time to envelop the world.
So he impressed diplomatic Washington in 1911 as a polished cosmopolite. Polished he was, measured by the standards of diplomatic Washington, for rare was the young American of Boy-Ed's age who had his cultivation, his wide experience, and his brilliant charm. He was sought after by admiring mothers long before he was sought after by the Secret Service; he moved among the clubs of Washington and New York making intimates of men whose friendship and confidence would serve the Fatherland, cloaking his real designs by frivolity and frequent attendances at social functions. His peace-time duties had been to study the American navy; to familiarize himself with its ship power and personnel, with its plans for expansion, its theories of strategy, its means of supply, and finally, with the coast defenses of the country. He had learned his lesson, and furnished Berlin with clear reports. On those reports, together with those of his colleagues in other countries, hinged Germany's readiness to enter war, for it would have been folly to attempt a war of domination with America an unknown, uncatalogued naval power. (It will be well to recall that the submarine is an American invention, and that Germany's greatest submarine development took place in the years 1911–1914.)
Captain Karl Boy-Ed (on the right)
And then, suddenly, he dropped the cloak. The Turk in him stood at attention while the German in him gave him sharp orders—commands to be carried out with Oriental adroitness and Prussian finish. Then those who had said lightly that "Boy-Ed knows more about our navy than Annapolis itself" began to realize that they had spoken an alarming truth. His war duties were manifold. Like von Papen,