Rumor has credited Franz von Rintelen with relationship to the house of Hohenzollern. Backstairs gossip called him the Kaiser's own son—a stigma which he hardly deserved, as his face bore no resemblance to the architecture of the Hohenzollern countenance. It was one of strong aquiline curves; with a coat of swarthy grease paint he would have made an acceptable Indian, except for his tight, thin lips. The muscles of his jaws were forever playing under the skin—he had a tense, nervous habit of gritting his teeth. From under his pale eyebrows came a sharp look; it contrasted strangely with the hollow, burnt-out ferocity and fright which peered out of the tired eyes of his fellow prisoners when he was finally tried. He had a wiry strength and easy carriage. If he had not been a spy, von Rintelen would have made an excellent athlete.
Like Boy-Ed he had a thorough gymnasium training. He specialized in finance and economics, entered the navy, and became captain-lieutenant. At the end of his period of service he went to London and obtained employment in a banking house. He then went to New York, where he was admitted to Ladenburg, Thalmann & Co., and found time during his first stay in America to serve as Germany's naval representative at the ceremonies commemorating John Paul Jones. The German Embassy gave him entrée wherever he turned. He was a member of the New York Yacht Club, was received at Newport and in Fifth Avenue as a polished and agreeable person who spoke English, French and Spanish as fluently as his native tongue, and he acquired a broad firsthand knowledge of American financial principles and methods. He left New York long before the war, saying he was going to open Mexican and South American branches of a German bank. When he returned to Berlin in 1909, he was well qualified to sit in council with Tirpitz and the navy group and advise them on the development of the German Secret Service in America. American acquaintances who visited Berlin he received with marked hospitality, and some he even introduced to his august friend, the Crown Prince.
In January, 1915, von Rintelen, then a director of the Deutsche Bank, and the National Bank für Deutschland, and a man of corresponding wealth, was commissioned to go to America, to buy cotton, rubber and copper, and to prevent the Allies from receiving munitions. So he went to America. And from his arrival in New York until his departure from that port, he threw sand in the smooth-running machinery of the organized German spy system.
He eluded the vigilance of the Allies by using a false passport. His sister Emily had married a Swiss named Gasche. Erasing the "y" on her passport he journeyed in safety to England as "Emil V. Gasche," a harmless Swiss, who observed a great deal about England's method of receiving munitions. Then he evaporated to Norway. His arrival in the United States was forecast by a wireless message which he addressed from his ship on April 3, 1915, asking an American friend of his to meet him at the pier. The American owned a factory in Cambrai, France, which had been closed by the German invasion on August 29, 1914. The American had hastened to Berlin in late 1914 and asked his friend Rintelen to see that the plant be opened. Rintelen had succeeded, and was come now to break the good news, knowing perfectly well that the American would be under deep obligation and would secure any introductions for him which he might need. When the ship docked, the friend was not there, for some casual reason. But Rintelen, always suspicious, hired a detective, who spent a week investigating; then the friend was discovered, and became Rintelen's grateful assistant.
So it happened that "Emil V. Gasche," the harmless Swiss, dropped out of sight for the time being, and von Rintelen assumed the parts of "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." "Dr. Jekyll" visited the Yacht Club and called upon wealthy friends, proving a more charming, more delightful von Rintelen than ever. He met influential business men who were selling supplies to the Allies. He was presented to society matrons and débutantes whom he had use for. To these he was Herr von Rintelen, in America on an important financial mission. "Mr. Hyde" sought information from von Bernstorff, Dr. Albert, von Papen, Boy-Ed, Captain Tauscher and George Sylvester Viereck about the production of war supplies. Astounded by what he learned from them and had corroborated from other sources, he began to realize how utterly he had misjudged America's potential resources and what a blunder he had made in his predictions to the General War Staff. He saw with a chilling vividness the capacity of America to hand war materials to the Allies, and her rapidly increasing facilities to turn out greater quantities of ammunition and bullets. The facts he obtained struck him with especial force because of his knowledge of the greater strategy. It is upon a basis of the supplies of munitions in the Allied countries, particularly Russia, as von Rintelen knew them, that his acts are best judged and upon this basis only can sane motives be assigned to the rash projects which he launched.
When he arrived in New York the German drive on Paris had failed because in two months the Germans had used up ammunition they confidently expected to last three times as long; the English and French in the west could not take up the offensive because ammunition was not being turned out fast enough; the Russian drive into Germany and Austria would soon fail for lack of arms and bullets. In the winter and spring of 1915 the Russians had made a drive into Galicia and Austria, hurling the Austro-German armies back. They advanced victoriously through the first range of the Carpathian mountains until May. Meantime the German General Staff, as von Rintelen knew, was preparing for a retaliating offensive. The War Staff knew Russia's limited capacity to produce arms and ammunition, knew that during the winter, with the port of Archangel closed by ice, her only source for new supplies lay in the single-track Siberian railway bringing materials from Japan. Rintelen realized that by spring the Russian resources had been well nigh exhausted and he resolved that they must be shut off completely. He knew that England and France could not help. But spring had already come, and the ships were sailing for Archangel laden with American shells.
Von Rintelen's reputation was at stake. The work for which he had been so carefully trained was bound to fail unless he acted quickly. He exchanged many wireless communications with his superiors in Berlin—messages that looked like harmless expressions between his wife and himself, messages in which the names of American officers who had been in Berlin were used both as code words and as a means to impress their genuineness upon the American censor. He received in reply still greater authority than he had on the eve of his departure from Germany. In his quick, staccato fashion he often boasted (and there is foundation for part of what he said) that he had been sent to America by the General Staff, backed by "$50,000,000, yes $100,000,00"; that he was an agent plenipotentiary and extraordinary, ready to take any measure on land and sea to stop the making of munitions, to halt their transportation at the factory or at the seaboard. He mapped out a campaign, remarkable in its detail, scope, recklessness and utter disregard of American institutions.
Germany made her first mistake in giving him a roving commission. Germany was desperate, or she would have restricted von Rintelen to certain well-defined enterprises. Instead he ran afoul of the military and naval attachés on more than one occasion, offended them, and did more to hinder than to help their own plans.
In early April he made his financial arrangements with the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, where he was known by his own name. Money was transferred from Berlin through large German business houses, and he deposited $800,000 in the Trans-Atlantic and millions among other banks. He rented an office in the trust company building, and had his telephone run through the trust company switchboard. He registered with the county clerk to do business as the "E. V. Gibbon Company; purchasers of supplies" and signed his name to the registry as "Francis von Rintelen." In the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company he received the forces whom he proceeded to mobilize; he was known to them as "Fred Hansen." If he wanted a naval reservist he called on Boy-Ed; if an army reservist was required von Papen sent him to "Hansen." Boy-Ed gave him data on ship sailings, von Papen on munitions plants, Koenig on secret service.
His first task was to buy supplies and ship them to Germany. He boasted that there was no such thing as a British blockade. Using his pseudonyms of Gibbon and Hansen he made large purchases and with the aid of Captain Gustave Steinberg, a naval reservist, he chartered ships and dispatched them under false manifests to Italy and Norway, where their cargoes could be readily smuggled into Germany. Through Steinberg he importuned a chemist, Dr. Walter T. Scheele, to soak fertilizer in lubricating oil for shipment to the Fatherland, where the valuable oil could be easily extracted. Through the same intermediary von Rintelen gave Dr. Scheele $20,000 to ship a cargo of munitions under a false manifest as "farm implements"; Dr. Scheele kept the $20,000 and actually shipped a cargo of farm machinery.