The German Secret Service in America 1914-1918

by John Price Jones; Paul M. Hollister

Let him first recall that in his Flag Day speech of June 14, 1916, President Wilson said in part:

"There is disloyalty in the United States, and it must be absolutely crushed. It proceeds from a minority, a very small minority, but a very active and subtle minority.... If you could have gone with me through the space of the last two years and could have felt the subtle impact of intrigue and sedition, and have realized with me that those to whom you have intrusted authority are trustees not only of the power but also of the very spirit and purpose of the United States, you would realize with me the solemnity with which I look upon the sublime symbol of our unity and power."

Let him then refer to the President's Flag Day address of one year later (quoted at the beginning of the book). With those admirable expressions in mind, let him recapitulate the activities of German sympathizers or agents since February, 1917.

Ninety-one vessels flying the German flag were in American harbors. Their displacement totalled nearly six hundred thousand tons—the equivalent of a fleet of seventy-five of the cargo carriers on which the United States later began construction to offset the submarine. Months in advance of the severance of diplomatic relations, orders had been issued from the Embassy to the masters of all these vessels in case of war between Germany and the United States to cripple the ships. With the break in relations imminent, German agents slipped aboard the vessels and gave the word: the great majority of the ninety-one ships were then put out of commission by the 368 officers and 826 men aboard. The damage was performed with crowbars and axes. Vital parts had been chalk-marked weeks in advance, so that the destruction might be effected swiftly: delicate mechanisms were mashed beyond recognition, important parts removed and smuggled ashore or dropped overboard, cylinders cracked, emery dust introduced in the bearings of the engines, pistons battered out of shape, and the machinery of the ships generally destroyed as only skilled engineers could have destroyed them. Out of thirty ships in New York harbor, thirty ships were damaged—among them the liners, Vaterland, of 54,000 tons, the George Washington, of 25,000 tons, the Kaiser Wilhelm, the President Lincoln, and the President Grant, of about 20,000 tons each. In the harbor of Charleston, S. C., lay the Liebenfels, of 4,525 tons; her crew, led by Captain Johann Klattenhoff, scuttled her on February 1, in the navigating channel of Charleston Harbor; Klattenhoff, with Paul Wierse, a Charleston newspaper man, and eight of the Liebenfels' crew were tried and convicted of the crime, fined and sentenced to periods averaging a year in Atlanta. The discovery of the damage forced the Government to take over the vessels at once. The Department of Justice hastened on February 2 to notify all of its deputies "to take prompt measures against the attempt at destruction or sinking or escape of such ships by their crews" which those crews had already done; and the customs authorities who boarded the ships in San Francisco, Honolulu, New York, Boston, Manila, and every other American port came ashore with rueful countenances. The combined damage served to tie the vessels up for at least six months more, and to require expensive repair. To return to the comparison: a fleet of seventy-five 8,000 ton cargo vessels, such as have since been built, would have been able to make, during those six months, at least four round trips to France each, or 300 voyages.

When the German fleet put into neutral American ports of refuge in 1914 the personnel of its ships totalled 476 officers and 4,980 men. When the ships were seized in 1917, there were 368 officers and 826 men aboard. Of those who had been discharged or allowed indefinite shore leave a considerable number were active German agents, by far the great majority were German citizens, and the United States was on the horns of a dilemma: either each of the sailors ashore must be watched on suspicion, or else each was free to go about the country as he pleased. Thus more than 4,000 potential secret agents from an active auxiliary arm of the German navy were dumped on the hospitality which our neutrality entailed. When war was declared those men came within the troublesome problem of the status of the enemy alien.

What was an enemy alien? The United States, on April 6, declared war against Germany. "Meanwhile," reads the report of the Attorney-General for 1917, "prior to the passage of the joint resolution of Congress of April 6, 1917, elaborate preparation was made for the arrest of upward of 63 alien enemies whom past investigation had shown to constitute a danger to the peace and safety of the United States if allowed to remain at large." These "alien enemies" were male Germans. Not Austrians, for the United States did not go to war with Austria until December 7. Not Bulgars, nor Turks, for the United States has not declared war upon Bulgaria or Turkey. Not female Germans, in the face of the full knowledge of the predilections of Bernstorff, Boy-Ed, and von Papen for employing women in espionage. Of the thousands of Germans in the United States whose sympathies were presently to be demonstrated in numerous ways against the successful prosecution of America's war, sixty-three had been deemed worthy of arrest. By June 30 this number had risen to 295, and by October 30 to 895. "Some of those, interned," continues the report, "have been paroled with the necessary bonds and restrictions." Although the United States went to war on April 6, Karl Heynen, who managed the Bridgeport Projectile Company for Bernstorff and Albert, and who had previously earned the good will of the United States by gun-running in Mexico, was not arrested until July 6, in his offices in the Hamburg-American Line at 45 Broadway. At the same time F. A. Borgemeister, former adviser to Dr. Albert, and latterly Heynen's lieutenant, was arrested. Both were interned at Fort Oglethorpe and during December, Borgemeister was allowed three weeks' liberty on parole. Rudolph Hecht, confidant of Dr. Albert, who had sold German war loan bonds for the Kaiser, and who had also been interned, was released for a like period of liberty in December. G. B. Kulenkampf, who had secured false manifest papers for the supply-ship Berwind in August, 1914, was arrested on May 28, 1918, more than one year after America had entered the war; on the same day Robert J. Oberfohren, a statistician employed by the Hamburg-American, was arrested and in his room were captured compiled statistics covering the exports of munitions from the United States during the two years past: Oberfohren said he expected to turn the figures in to the University of Munich after the war.

Bernstorff himself left an able alien enemy in the Swiss Legation in Washington. He was Heinrich Schaffhausen, and had been one of the brightest attachés of the German Embassy. As a member for three months of the Swiss Legation he might readily have sent (and no doubt did send) information of military value to his own people in code, under protection of the Swiss seal. The State Department on July 6 ordered his deportation. Adolph Pavenstedt was arrested on January 22, 1918, in the Adirondacks, after having enjoyed nine months' immunity; Otto Julius Merkle was not interned until December 7; Gupta, the Hindu, was finally caught in New York in 1917, gave bail, and escaped; Dr. John Ferrari, alias F. W. Hiller, a German officer who had escaped from a British detention camp in India and had joined the German intrigue colony, was interned in January, 1918; Baron Gustave von Hasperg was arrested only after he had displayed undue interest in the National Army cantonment at Upton in the same month; Franz Rosenberg, a wealthy German importer, convicted in 1915 of having attempted to smuggle rubber in cotton bales into Germany, and fined $500 for that offense, was allowed at liberty until February 9, 1918; in a round-up which took place in January, 1918, the Federal authorities collected such celebrities as Hugo Schmidt, Frederick Stallforth, and Baron George von Seebeck (the son of General von Seebeck, commander of the Tenth Corps of the German army).

The cases cited are picked at random out of a mass. They illustrate the breathing periods given to Germans who had been active under Bernstorff in disturbing America's peace and defying her laws. They serve also to illustrate the contrast between the methods employed by the United States, and those adopted by her Allies, from whom she has taken other lessons in the business of warfare. France gave alien enemies forty-eight hours in which to leave the soil of the country, and any such person found at large after that date was to be interned in a detention camp. To have interned all of the Germans in the United States would have been impossible and the Government took some time to find a second best method. By May 2 the Department of Justice was in a position to announce that it had plans for internment camps for three classes of aliens: prisoners of war, enemy aliens, and detained aliens, and it announced on that date there were some 6,000 in those classes already detained. By February 17, 1918, however, there were actually no more than 1,870 aliens interned under the war department and under military guard at Forts McPherson, Oglethorpe and Douglas, and some 2,000 at Hot Springs, North Carolina, in the Department of Labor's detention camp.

At both camps the prisoners were fed and housed at the expense of the Government, and it was not until the early spring of 1918 that they were put to work.

From April 6 to July 10, 1917, an enemy alien could be employed by any shipbuilder, tug-boat captain, lighterage firm or steamship line; he could go about any waterfront at will, provided he did not enter the so-called "barred zones" in the vicinity of Government military or naval property, and he could make unmolested such observations as his eyesight afforded of the shipping upon which the United States depends for its share in this war. After that date he was forbidden such employment, and denied approach to all wharves and ships. On July 9 the Government discharged from its employ 200 German subjects who for weeks past had been loading transports at the docks in an "Atlantic port." A raid on the Hoboken waterfront in the following winter rounded up 200 more enemy aliens who had calmly ignored the "barred zone" regulations.