FRANZ VON RINTELEN
The leak in the National City Bank--The _Minnehaha_--Von
Rintelen's training--His return to America--His aims--His
funds--Smuggling oil--The Krag-Joergensen rifles--Von Rintelen's
flight and capture.
There was a suggestion in the newspapers of dates immediately following
Paul Koenig's arrest that the authorities had been lax in allowing the
Germans to have later access to the safe in his private office in the
Hamburg-American building. As a matter of fact the contents of the safe
were well known to the authorities--how, it is not necessary to say.
The multitudinous notes and reference data kept by the industrious "P.
K." uncovered a plentiful German source of information of munitions.
They knew the factories in which war materials were being turned out.
They knew the numbers of the freight cars into which the materials were
loaded for shipment to the waterfronts. They knew the ships into which
those cargoes were consigned. How they knew was revealed by Koenig's
secretary, Metzler, after he had been arrested in the second Welland
episode.
[Illustration: _Copyright, International Film Service_
Franz von Rintelen]
Down in Wall Street, in the foreign department of the National City
Bank, there was a young German named Frederick Schleindl. He had been
in the United States for several years, and had been employed by
various bankers, one of whom recommended him to the National City Bank
shortly after the outbreak of war. In the foreign department he had
access to cables from the Allies concerning the purchase of munitions.
It was customary to pay manufacturers for their completed orders when
the bank received a bill of lading showing their shipment by railroad
or their delivery at points of departure. Close familiarity with such
bills of lading and cablegrams gave Schleindl an up-to-the-minute
survey of the production of supplies.
In late 1914 Schleindl registered with the German consul in New York,
setting down his name and address as liable to call for special
service. In May, 1915, he was directed by the consul to meet a certain
person at the Hotel Manhattan; the unknown proved to be Koenig, who had
been informed of Schleindl's occupation by the alert German consul.
Playing on the youth's patriotism and greed, Koenig agreed to pay him
$25 a week for confidential information from the bank. From that time
forward Schleindl reported regularly to Koenig. Nearly every evening
a meeting occurred in the office in the Hamburg-American building,
and Koenig and Metzler would spend many hours a night in copying the
letters, cables and shipping documents. In the morning they would
return the originals to Schleindl on his way to work--he made it his
custom to arrive early at the bank--and the papers would be restored to
their proper files when the business day began.
On December 17, 1915, Schleindl was arrested. In his pocket were two
documents, enough to convict him of having stolen information: one
a duplicate of a cablegram from the Banque Belge pour Etrangers to
the National City Bank relating to a shipment of 2,000,000 rifles
which was then being handled by the Hudson Trust Company; the other
a cablegram from the Russian Government authorizing the City Bank to
place some millions of dollars to the credit of Colonel Golejewski, the
Russian naval attaché and purchasing agent. From a German standpoint,
of course, both were highly significant. Schleindl's arrest caused
considerable uneasiness in Wall Street, and other banking houses who
had been dealing in munitions "looked unto themselves" lest there be
similar cracks through which information might sift to Berlin. There
had been many such. Koenig was tried on the charge of having bought
stolen information, and convicted, but sentence was suspended, although
the United States already looked back on two years of waterfront
conspiracies to destroy Allied shipping.
The City Bank episode gave a clue to the source of those conspiracies,
by the white light which it cast upon an explosion in hold number 2 of
the steamship _Minnehaha_ on July 4, 1915. Thousands of magnetos were
stored there destined for automobiles at the front. The only person
besides the officers of the bank and of the magneto factory who could
have known of the ship in which they were transported was the man who
wrote the letter to the bank enclosing the bill of lading for the
shipment. Naturally the officers were not suspected of circulating the
news; the leak therefore must have occurred in handling the letter.
That theory was a strong scent, made no less pungent by the activities
in America of one Franz von Rintelen.
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.
Rintelen's next venture attracted some unpleasant attention. The United
States Government had condemned some 350,000 Krag-Joergensen rifles,
which it refused to sell to any of the belligerents. Rintelen cast
a fond eye in their direction. President Wilson had told a banker:
"You will get those rifles only over my dead body." Rintelen heard,
however, that by bribing certain officials he could obtain the guns,
so he sent out agents to learn what they would cost, and found a man
who said he could buy them for $17,826,000, part of which was to be
used for effective bribery. "So close am I to the President," said the
intermediary, "that two days after I deposit the money in the bank you
can dandle his grandchild on your knee!" But just when the negotiations
were growing bright, Rintelen was told that the man who proposed to
sell him the rifles was a secret agent from another government. A
certain "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was known to have been groping for those
rifles, and the newspapers and government officials became suddenly
interested in his real identity. A dowdy woman's implication reached a
reporter's ears; presently the newspapers burst out in the "discovery"
that "Dr. Alfred Meyer" was none other than Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt, a
German Red Cross envoy then in the United States. Like the popping of
a machine gun, "correct versions of the facts" were published: "Dr.
Meyer-Gerhardt denied vigorously that he was 'Dr. Alfred Meyer,'" then
"'Dr. Alfred Meyer' was known to have left the United States on the
same ship with Dr. Meyer-Gerhardt," then "an American citizen came
forward anonymously and said that he had posed as 'Dr. Alfred Meyer' in
order to test the good faith of the Government."
This last announcement may have been true. It was made to a New York
_Sun_ reporter by a German, Karl Schimmel, who professed his allegiance
to the United States, and by the "American citizen" who said he had
posed as "Dr. Alfred Meyer." It may have been made to shield Rintelen
himself, for the "American citizen" was an employe of a German
newspaper in New York, a friend of Rintelen's, a friend of Schimmel's
and Schimmel himself was in von Rintelen's pay.
Let a pack of reporters loose on a half dozen tangents and they will
probably scratch the truth. A _Tribune_ man heard a whisper of the
facts and set out on a hunt for "two Germans, Meyer and Hansen, who
have been acting funny." He frightened the personnel right out of the
office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Captain Steinberg fled to Germany
with a trunkful of reports on the necessity of concerted action to
stop the shipment of munitions to the Allies, and Rintelen migrated to
an office in the Woolworth Building. Some one heard of his activities
there and he was evicted, taking final refuge in the Liberty Tower, in
the office of Andrew M. Meloy, who had been in Germany to interest the
German government in a scheme similar to Rintelen's own. In Meloy's
office Rintelen posed as "E. V. Gates"--preserving the shadow of his
identity as "Emil V. Gasche." So effective was his disappearance
from the public view, that he was reported to have gone abroad as a
secretary, and he sat in the tower and chuckled, and sent messages by
wireless to Berlin through Sayville, and cablegrams to Berlin through
England and Holland, and enjoyed all the sensations of a man attending
a triple funeral in his honor. "Meyer," "Hansen" and "Gasche" were all
dead, and yet, here was Rintelen!
Although his sojourn in New York covered a period which was the peak
of the curve of German atrocities in the United States, Rintelen was
a fifth wheel. No man came to America to accomplish more, and no man
accomplished less. No German agent had his boldness of project, and
no German executive met a more ignominious fate. Whatever he touched
with his golden wand turned to dross. He was hoodwinked here and there
by his own agents, and frustrated by the vigilance of the Allied and
the United States governments. He has been introduced here because of
his connection with subsequent events, and yet this picturesque figure
played the major part in not one successful venture.
Four months he passed in America, until it became too small for him.
In August the capture of Dr. Albert's portfolio and the publication
of certain of its contents frightened Rintelen, and he applied for a
passport as "Edward V. Gates, an American citizen of Millersville,
Pa.," but he did not dare claim it. Though he had bought tickets under
the alias, and had had drafts made payable in that name, he did not
occupy the "Gates" cabin on the _Noordam_, but at the last minute
engaged passage under the renascent name of "Emil V. Gasche," the
harmless Swiss. He eluded the Federal agents, and sailed safely to
Falmouth, England, where, after a search of the ship, and an excellent
attempt to bluff it through, he finally surrendered to the British
authorities as a prisoner-of-war. Meloy and his secretary were captured
with him.
Rintelen was returned to the United States in 1916. He was convicted
in 1917 and 1918 on successive charges of conspiracy to violate the
Sherman Anti-Trust law, to obtain a fraudulent passport, and to destroy
merchant ships--which combined to sentence him to a year in the Tombs
and nine years in a Federal prison.