CALLING RESERVISTS
The military attaché also had help from Germany and from German reservists coming from other countries. The War Office in Berlin sent him men. Captain Hans Tauscher, the husband of Mme. Gadski, was in Germany when war was declared. A reserve officer of the German Army, he immediately offered himself for duty. His order was to return to America at once and report to Captain von Papen. Likewise, soldiers and secret agents with special equipment, who were in different parts of the world and who had no definite work, were ordered by wireless or through secret channels to hasten to Captain von Papen’s assistance. After a time, the Chief Spy in Germany detailed some of his aids to America to help in the upbuilding of a still more effective system of espionage.
Though remarkably skilled and trained to a high degree in a number of different lines, Captain von Papen made it his business to gather around him experts on every phase of military affairs, giving definite assignments to each and thus dividing the work so that greater speed and efficiency were obtained. He chose Captain Tauscher, agent of the Krupps and other big and small gun manufacturers in Germany and Austria, as one of his aids in gathering information. Captain Tauscher is an expert on ordnance and as such he was of invaluable assistance to Captain von Papen in obtaining facts regarding the manufacture of heavy ordnance and explosives for the Allies. Tauscher was on most friendly terms with U.S. Ordnance officers.
Von Papen selected George von Skal, a German journalist and former Commissioner of Accounts of New York, as a paid assistant in his office; and as a matter of fact every one of the big German agents in America had on his staff at least one trained newspaper man. He took as his secretary Wolf von Igel, a young man of distinguished appearance, and through him secretly rented a suite of offices in Wall Street “for advertising purposes.”
Another man upon whom he could call for help was Paul Koenig, lent by the Hamburg-American Steamship Company. Through Koenig, von Papen could reach out to countless Germans and select men for any sort of task. Sometimes, however, von Papen met with a refusal. He asked Captain Tauscher to perform a certain piece of work of questionable character and received in substance this answer: “I am ready to do anything within the law but I will not attempt this task.” Experts in the chemistry of explosives, scientists of various sorts, lawyers and other advisers were on the military attaché’s staff, all having special tasks and all working for the Kaiser with or without pay.