While von Papen had a staff of experts and of secret agents prior to the war, he did not then have the perfectly developed system at his command which he used afterwards. That he had his plans well mapped out for any contingency and that he knew the situation thoroughly is vividly illustrated in a draft of a cable message which he sent to Captain Boy-Ed from Mexico City on July 29, 1914, saying:
“If necessary, arrange business for me too with Pavenstedt. Then inform Lersner. The Russian attaché ordered back to Washington by telegraph. On outbreak of war have intermediaries located by detective where Russian and French intelligence office.” The latter part of the message, referring to intermediaries, is open to two interpretations: first, that Boy-Ed was to have detectives locate the Russian and French intelligence offices; second, Boy-Ed was to place spies in the Russian and French intelligence bureaus.
Hurrying to Washington, the military attaché immediately took charge of the military part of Germany’s spy system. He began to weld together into a vast organization scientists, experts, secret agents and German reservists who would gather information for him and who would be ready at the command of the General War Staff, to undertake any military enterprise. The entire organization of German consuls and representatives in America work in unity in war as in peace. How quickly von Papen got his staff together is shown in a statement made by Franz Wachendorf, alias Horst von der Goltz, alias Bridgeman Taylor, who became one of Papen’s aids in spy work and military enterprises. Wachendorf, who was a major in the Mexican army at the outbreak of war, said under oath: “The 3rd of August, 1914; licence was given me by my commanding officer to separate myself from the service of the brigade for the term of six months. I left directly for El Paso, Texas, where I was told by Mr. Kuck, German consul at Chihuahua, Mexico, who stayed there, to put myself at the disposition of Captain von Papen.”
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.
FOREIGN ARMY ON U.S. SOIL
Von Papen sought to protect his Wall Street suite of offices from public investigation by installing therein a safe bearing the seal of the Imperial German Government. That safe, protected by time-locks and by electrical devices against the curiosity of other secret agents or the prying eyes of policemen, is said to have contained the plans of the military phases of German propaganda. When the Federal agents suddenly descended upon the office one day to arrest von Igel, they found the safe open and the documents neatly laid out on the table preparatory to shipment to Washington. From those papers the State Department and the Attorney-General have learned much of the history of von Papen’s activities—the inner workings of the German spy system. In that office von Papen kept the full list of his various secret agents, German and American, working for him, their addresses and telephone numbers; various code books for the deciphering of messages sent to him and for sending word to agents in this country or making reports.