Spying in America: Espionage from the Revolutionary War to the Dawn of the Cold War

13. Prelude to War: Germany's First Spy Network

113 113 Prelude to War Germany’s First Spy Network Lost on Saturday. On 3:30 Harlem elevated train at 50th St. Station, Brown Leather Bag, Containing Documents. Deliver to G. H. Hoffman, 5 E. 47th St., Against $20 Reward. Advertisement in the New York Evening Telegram, July 27, 1915, placed by a German diplomat who left espionage documents on a New York train. Quoted by Rafalko, Counterintelligence Reader Immediately after the outbreak of war in 1914, the German ambassador in Washington, Count Johann von Bernstorff, was summoned to Berlin and ordered to establish an espionage and sabotage network inside the United States. Bernstorff was troubled by his new task, because he realized that spying and sabotage on American soil could undermine the policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II by hastening rather than preventing America’s entry into the war. Besides, German intelligence was unable to provide him with any qualified officers to help in the task because most of them were actively spying against their enemies in Europe. Bernstorff could only rely on his three embassy attachés—Captain Franz von Papen, naval attaché Karl Boy-Ed, and commercial attaché Heinrich Albert—all of whom were as unskilled in espionage and sabotage as he was. 13 114 Espionage during the World Wars, 1914–45 Von Papen, the chief of the operation, was a blustery thirty-five-yearold cavalry officer who got his embassy post through his wife’s connections . After the war, von Papen used these same connections to become German chancellor and, when he was shunted aside in 1932, he persuaded the president of the Weimar Republic, Field Marshall Paul von Hindenburg , to replace him with Adolph Hitler.1 Karl Boy-Ed was half German and half Turkish and was an experienced naval attaché, if not a professional intelligence officer. The last of the trio, Albert, was the paymaster for German diplomatic and espionage operations and would commit the costly tradecraft error that revealed their espionage plans to the US government. The three Germans made little attempt to recruit spies in the US government who could provide them with secrets about American intentions. They recruited no one who could serve as an agent of influence to persuade the US government to remain neutral in the European conflict. The von Papen ring’s failure to penetrate the US government is all the more bewildering because American participation in the war could tip the scales irrevocably against Germany. Knowledge of the United States’ policy intentions, especially regarding its continued neutrality, was essential for German war strategy. How far could Germany go in sinking American ships without pushing the United States into the war? How prepared was the United States to wage war against Germany? What incentives were the Allies using to induce America to join the fight? All these were vital questions for the kaiser’s government, but Germany was so obsessed with stopping the arms flow that it made little attempt to find spies in US policy circles with the answers. Instead, von Papen’s ring focused almost solely on sabotage and merely recruited low-level spies and saboteurs among German sailors and immigrants who were sympathetic to the homeland and Irish American longshoremen who hated the British. These spies observed and reported on factories, docks, and other strategic targets—all useful for sabotage but unenlightening on key intelligence issues. VonPapen’soperationswerestymiedintheendbyasillymistake.Albert, the spy network’s paymaster, left his New York City office on July 15, 1915, and headed toward the Sixth Avenue subway with a bulging briefcase in hand. Because an enraged President Woodrow Wilson had ordered surveil- Prelude to War • Germany’s First Spy Network 115 lance of German diplomats after the Lusitania incident, the stocky German diplomat was tailed by a US Secret Service agent. Albert dozed off in the sweltering July heat and awoke with a start as the train jerked to a stop at the 50th Street Station. He rushed out of the car, leaving the briefcase behind. Realizing his mistake, he jumped back on the train, but the bag was already gone. The Secret Service agent had quickly snatched the bag and slipped out of the train. Albert chased the agent, who jumped on a trolley and eluded him. The documents in Albert’s bag outlined German subversion plans for America. The US government was wary of admitting that its agent had filched a briefcase belonging to a diplomat, so it...