CAPTAIN FRANZ VON RINTELEN, GERMAN ARCH-PLOTTER
When the German spy system was working smoothly and giving gleeful
satisfaction to its builders, the War Staff in Berlin sent to America a
masterly schemer who threw sand into the machinery. He was Franz von
Rintelen, a finished product of the Prussian war-mould. He had been born
with a supreme confidence in the conquering destiny of Germany. He had
been trained for his work in that order of things and he had
subordinated to the needs of the Empire, his business, wealth, brains,
energy—yes, his very soul. _He had been ordered here to undertake, with
the aid of Germany’s agents, the enormous task of isolating commercial
and financial America, as a base of war supplies, from Europe._ In
trying to accomplish his aim, _he sought to wreck American institutions
and to use the United States as a battlefield in a rear attack on the
Allies_.
Highly imaginative, keen of foresight, a master of detail, a superb
organizer, and conscienceless in the execution of his plans, he seemed
like a man so perfectly trained for the emergencies of war that under no
circumstances would he lose his poise. And yet when put face to face
with his own misjudgments and forced to take measures to retrieve
himself, he lost the very quality which his training was meant to
insure—a carefully calculating eye and a cool head. His strategic moves
consequently proved to be ridiculous errors that led to his own
confusion.
In a brief sojourn in America he moved in the shadows of mystery,
employing the vast network of German spies, hiring Americans, using
thugs and setting in motion manifold plans for gigantic enterprises that
involved the entire governmental, industrial and financial organizations
of the country. When he went away, his work unfinished, his aims
unaccomplished and a large amount of money wasted, there remained a
multitude of trails, isolated facts and incidents suggesting his
activities. Seizing these clues, Federal agents under A. Bruce Bielaski
and William M. Offley, began to dig up von Rintelen’s associates, to get
their stories and to obtain proof of his doings—his letters and
telegrams, his agents’ speeches and the instructions which they tried to
carry out. Taking these facts, Raymond H. Sarfaty, then Assistant United
States Attorney in New York, working with patience and skill, fitted the
details together into a series of great mosaics—depicting conspiracy,
fraud, purchases of strikes, bribery, perjury, forgery, sedition, almost
treason. Those pictures show how hidden forces—Americans and Germans
working in secret—during von Rintelen’s presence in this country,
plotted to cause commotions in political, industrial and financial
spheres, and all to aid Germany in derogation of our rights.
PICTURES OF VON RINTELEN
In every one of them, von Rintelen looms as the audacious plotter, man
of mystery, user of a hundred aliases, supreme egotist, a vaunted aid to
the Kaiser and a Teutonic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In one picture, you
see him in exclusive homes on Fifth Avenue, a “mould of form”—scarcely
thirty-eight years old, slim and upstanding, with stalwart shoulders,
the bearing of an aristocrat, short stubborn hair, a moustache with a
like independent twist, and greenish-grey eyes that sparkled defiance.
He garbed himself in the cut of London’s most artistic tailors and
selected the colours of his ties, his shirts and his socks with a view
to perfect harmony. He was the “glass of fashion” on the tip-toe of
courtesy, beguiling with his gallant quips and charming his hearers by
his fascinating stories and comments.
Other pictures show him under an assumed name, in conference with
conspirators. He might meet them secretly in offices, or in hotels, or
he might pick them up in an automobile, whizzing along at full speed and
handing gold to hirelings who for a price were ready to undertake some
criminal job. He might be seen dining in one of Broadway’s most alluring
cabarets, ordering the rarest of wines and boasting of his schemes to
accomplish in America what would be equivalent to Germany’s capture of
Paris.
VON RINTELEN’S VALUE
And who is this man? He is so important that when made a prisoner in
England, the Kaiser offered to exchange for the nobleman any ten British
prisoners that King George might select. He is so esteemed in Germany
that large amounts of gold were placed at the disposal of Americans to
go to England and by hook or crook effect his escape. Rumour has sought
to make him a relative of the Hohenzollerns. Another report has put him
down actually as the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. But persons, who knew
him well in Berlin, saw him in the United States and at the prison camp
in England, say he is von Rintelen. He is said to be the son of a former
member of the Kaiser’s Cabinet; but the German “Wer Ist’s” does not
credit that man with a son. Still, von Rintelen married into one of the
wealthiest families in Berlin, his wife being a member of the von
Kaufmann family, and he had a commanding social position in Germany.
He is wealthy in his own name, his fortune being estimated at
$15,000,000. He is a director of the Deutsche Bank and the National Bank
für Deutschland. He is, or was, a member of the big financial group of
Germany, and as such was one of the Emperor’s financial advisers. His
knowledge and advisory sphere included England, the United States and
Mexico; and of the financial and industrial resources of these countries
he was supposed to have a broad and comprehensive knowledge. He had
influence also because he was a friend of the Kaiser and a close
associate of the Crown Prince.
A SECRET AGENT’S TRAINING
Von Rintelen’s work was cut out for him in his early youth. His
qualifications were considered and he was assigned to studies in
preparation for the tasks he gave promise of performing most
efficiently. At the gymnasium and the university, he divided his time
between economics and finance. In addition, he spent considerable time
in the navy, finally became a Captain-Lieutenant, and as such qualified
for the General Navy Staff. He, too, was one of von Tirpitz’s young men
chosen for definite lines of naval secret service and financial
campaigns that would be of value to the further development of the navy.
Finance may have been a mere cloak for the real nature of von Rintelen’s
naval assignments abroad, or his secret service training may have been a
necessary part of his training for a high place in the Teutonic
financial world. Graduating from the university and finishing the
prescribed part of his tutelage under von Tirpitz, he went to London
where he obtained employment in a banking house. While there, he was
learning not only finance, but he was a part of that branch of Germany’s
spy system that radiated through banking institutions to the various
concerns allied therewith. Under the guidance of wise heads in Berlin,
he grasped far more facts about banking conditions than ever were
suspected by his English associates.
Next he came to America. He entered the banking house of Ladenburg,
Thalmann & Co., spending a short time there and then moving to other
banking institutions, some of which were branches of English and
Canadian banks. He obtained letters of introduction from big bankers to
bankers scattered throughout the United States. He grew in knowledge,
learned American banking methods, the connections of banks with big
industries, and sought to make affiliations of benefit to German
institutions. He served, meantime, as Germany’s naval representative at
the exercises in commemoration of John Paul Jones. His entrance into New
York’s society was paved for him through the German Embassy’s friends.
He was a guest at social functions where only the most favoured were
invited. He was accepted as a member of the New York Yacht Club. He was
entertained at Newport. He made friends among the biggest men in New
York; for he was attractive, a remarkable cosmopolite, extremely
learned, versed in international questions, speaking English, French and
Spanish fluently, and, above all, he was an inimitable raconteur. He
showed himself at all times an ardent pro-German, arguing for a union of
Germany and the United States in the event of war.
Through his wide acquaintanceship and innumerable avenues open to him,
he gained information about America such as only the most favoured
business men in America possess. He left this country finally saying he
would go to Mexico to investigate conditions there, hoping that
eventually he might be able to open Mexican and South American branches
of a German bank. But before going, he had acquired insight not only
into American banking connections with Canada, but also with Mexico. He
knew the big financial groups interested in the development of the
natural resources of those countries and he knew thoroughly America’s
actual and industrial preparedness for war.
BACK TO GERMANY
So, returning to Berlin in 1909, he again took up his banking business
and continued his close affiliation with von Tirpitz and the Big Navy
crowd, setting forth the facts he obtained and making recommendations
for the development of Germany’s secret service in America. He became
more prominent socially than ever, making it a point to entertain
Americans. When his American acquaintances turned up in Berlin, they
invariably found von Rintelen a most cordial and extravagant host. He
obtained introductions at court for some; and he introduced others to
the Crown Prince. When the war started, Americans who besought von
Rintelen for help in the exciting days, found him most obliging.
But before circumstances that brought von Rintelen to this country
arose, he received several Americans. One was a wealthy American
manufacturer who owns a large factory in France. Being on intimate terms
with von Rintelen, he called upon him and explained how the plant had
been closed down with the invasion of the Germans, causing a big
financial loss. He appealed for von Rintelen’s intercession to have the
concern continue business. He got von Rintelen’s promise of aid but
returned to the United States before any definite action was taken as
von Rintelen was too crafty to make any move before he was ready to ask
his compensation.
Von Rintelen was ordered, in January, 1915, the General War Staff to
come to America. It had become necessary to send a man here to buy
supplies of copper, rubber and cotton and to take extensive
precautionary measures against the Allies getting war munitions from
America. He was scornful of American facilities for filling Allies’
orders and backed by the authority of the War Staff and a group of
Berlin’s ablest bankers, he made arrangements for his trip. Knowing he
must elude the English, he obtained the Swiss passport of his sister
Emily V. Gasche, who was with her husband in Switzerland. He erased the
“y” of Emily and had the passport altered in other ways to suit his
needs, travelling as Emil V. Gasche, a Swiss citizen. As he bade goodbye
to his wife and two little daughters, he talked arrogantly of a quick
trip to America past English spies, promised big accomplishments for the
Emperor and an early return home.
Von Rintelen, confident and daring, is said to have gone first to
England. After gathering facts about the manufacture and importation of
munitions of war and England’s method of increasing the supply, he
disappeared suddenly and is believed to have gone to Norway. When he was
on the high seas due to arrive in New York on April 3 he sent a wireless
message to the American owner of the factory in France, asking an
interview at the pier. Von Rintelen, acting at what was the time best
suitable to himself, had succeeded in having the American’s factory
opened. He wished, on landing, to give him this information and in
return get help in the plans that he wished to put into effect. As the
American did not go to the pier, the nobleman, always alert and
suspicious, hired a detective who spent a week investigating. He finally
met this man, told him in part the purpose of his trip to America, and
used him as a means of getting introductions to men who would prove
valuable to him.
JEKYLL AND HYDE
Herr von Rintelen, having dropped the guise of E. V. Gasche, immediately
began to play Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll, visiting the Yacht
Club, and calling upon wealthy friends, proved a more charming, more
delightful von Rintelen than ever, meeting influential business men who
were selling supplies to the Allies. He was presented to society matrons
and débutantes, whom, by flattery and subtlety, he sought to use to
further his purposes. To these, he was Herr von Rintelen in America on
an important financial mission. But occasionally, he made wild boasts of
plans. As a typical Mr. Hyde he sought information from von Bernstorff,
von Papen, Boy-Ed, about the production of war supplies. Astounded by
what he learned from them and 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 statement to the General War
Staff.
Within a brief time von Rintelen realized, with a vividness that chilled
him, the capacity of America to hand war materials to the Allies and her
rapidly increasing facilities to turn out still more ammunition and
bullets. The facts which he obtained struck him with triple force
because of the knowledge he had about the war moves. _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._
He understood these three striking facts thoroughly: (1) that the German
drive on Paris had failed because in two months the Germans had used up
ammunition they confidently expected to last a half a year; (2) that the
English and French in the west could not take up the offensive because
ammunition was not being turned out fast enough; and (3) that the
Russian drive on 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 Austrians and Germans back. In May they
had advanced victoriously through the first range of the Carpathian
mountains. Meantime the German General Staff, as von Rintelen knew, was
preparing for a big offensive against the Russians. The War Staff knew
of 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 material from Japan. He realized that by spring the Russian
resources would well nigh be exhausted, and that with the beginning of
the projected Austro-German offensive the crucial necessity lay in
shutting off supplies from Russia. He knew that England and France could
not help her, and, therefore, the American source must be cut off
absolutely. But spring had already come, ships were sailing for
Archangel laden with American explosives, shells and cartridges.
A PLOTTER AT WORK
Von Rintelen, startled by his mistaken estimate of American industrial
preparedness, and frantically determined that Russia’s supplies must be
crippled, that the cargoes going to France and England must be held
back, began mapping out his gigantic enterprises. These conditions were
the big compelling motive; for 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._ Desperate measures were necessary. With that
situation in view he exchanged many wireless communications with his
superiors in Berlin—messages that looked like harmless expressions
between his wife and himself in which the names of Americans who had
been in Berlin were used both as code words and as means to impress upon
the American censor their genuineness. He obtained as a result still
greater authority than he had received on the eve of his departure from
Germany.
In his quick 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 to $100,000,000; that he was an agent
plenipotentiary and extraordinary, ready to take any measure on land and
sea to stop the making of munitions, and to halt their transportation at
the factory or at the seaboard.
_He mapped out a campaign, remarkable for detail, scope, recklessness
and utter disregard of American laws._ These plots proved von Rintelen,
or the German General Staff, a master of thoroughness and ingenuity, for
he took into consideration the psychology, the customs, habits, and
reported weaknesses of Americans.
_His schemes in brief were (1) the purchase of war materials for Germany
as a means of inflating prices; (2) the fomenting of war between the
United States and Mexico as a means of compelling the American
Government to seize all available war munitions; (3) a campaign of
publicity and the arousing of public sentiment to bring about an embargo
on arms shipments; (4) strikes in American industries; and (5) a series
of acts of violence against factories and munition-carrying vessels._
Von Rintelen rapidly mobilized his forces of money and men. He went
first to the Trans-Atlantic Trust Company, where he was known by his
right name and where he arranged his finances. Money was transferred
from Berlin through the usual German channels—large corporations with
German affiliations—and placed to his credit in various banking
institutions. He deposited large amounts in the Trans-Atlantic Trust
Company and large amounts, totalling millions, in other banks. He next
rented an office on the eighth floor of the same building that housed
the trust company and had a telephone running to it through the
switchboard of the banking institution. He registered with the county
clerk as the E. V. Gibbon Company, a purchaser of supplies, signing his
name to the document as “Francis von Rintelen.”
Using the name of Fred Hansen, he received persons in that office. There
he summoned to his help a part of the German espionage system. He did
not hesitate to call upon any German for assistance, and thousands of
willing workers were at his disposal. If he wished a naval reservist, he
knew where to get him; if a member of the landsturm was needed for any
detail, he was called. From Boy-Ed, he received data about the sailings
of ships; from von Papen, facts about munition factories. He met Koenig
and assigned numerous tasks to him, particularly the location of
munition factories, their products and exports.
His first task, merely incidental in importance compared with his other
aim, was the succouring of the Fatherland and the blocking of the Allies
through purchases. He participated with influential Germans in the
scheme of buying the leading munition factories. He attempted the
running of the British blockade. Dr. Albert also was buying goods, but
von Rintelen, working on a much larger scale, commensurate with his
fertile imagination, and employing a staff of agents, took charge of the
shipments of raw products and food. Carrying on these purchases through
E. V. Gibbon Company, using the name of Gibbon and Hansen, he had as aid
Captain Steinberg, a German naval officer. _Through him, von Rintelen
chartered ships, purchased materials, caused false manifests to be made
for the cargoes, and arranged for shipment to Italy and the Scandinavian
countries, whence they were trans-shipped._
IN THE MAZE
This officer, it is charged, had dealings with Dr. Walter T. Scheele,
the alleged manufacturer of fire bombs, and arranged with him to mix
lubricating oil, so urgently needed in Germany, with fertilizer, and
ship the oil as “commercial fertilizer.” The oil was to be extracted by
a chemical process in Germany. Von Rintelen, through Steinberg,
importuned Dr. Scheele to ship munitions as farming implements, giving
him $20,000 for that purpose. Dr. Scheele did bill the shipment as
requested, but he did not lie because he shipped farming machinery,
taking a fat commission. Again von Rintelen was hoodwinked. The officer,
von Igel and Dr. Scheele have been indicted on a charge of conspiring to
defraud the United States by false manifests.
“_The British blockade_,” von Rintelen used to boast with purring pride,
“_is a myth. I can send to Germany all the goods that I wish._”
So skilfully did he plan—he was a master of detail and a consummate
artist in concealing his movements—and so many different aliases did he
employ, that at first he attracted no attention, and after a time his
doings were credited to a German Red Cross lecturer. Because of the
German method of switching agents to cause confusion to the enemy’s
spies, it is probable that some Red Cross agents did figure in the
purchases. The investigations of the Federal authorities, however, have
laid to von Rintelen the schemes carried on from April to June, 1915.
_Von Rintelen boasted that he bought provisions, amounting to $2,000,000
a week, for shipment to Germany through Denmark. More than $25,000,000
was consumed by von Rintelen in his blockade-running, many of the boats
being seized by British warships._
_Von Rintelen also took a flier at the most elusive and puzzling
diversions of war-brokers, namely the purchase of the 350,000
Krag-Jorgensen rifles which the United States Government had condemned
just prior to the outbreak of the war._ Around those rifles was centred
more intrigue and deceitful scheming than was incited by almost any
other single article connected with the war. Even after the Government
had announced emphatically that they were not for sale, and _President
Wilson had told one banker: “You will get those rifles only over my dead
body_,” every belligerent tried to get them.
Von Rintelen heard that by bribing Government officials he could obtain
the guns. He was stirred; for if an official would accept money for one
thing, he could be influenced to do other things to help Germany.
Sending out agents, he offered to purchase the rifles. He encountered a
man who put a price of $17,826,000 on them, part of the amount being
intended, von Rintelen was told, as bribes of several millions of
dollars for Government officials.
Things looked bright to von Rintelen. “_So close am I to the
President_,” said the agent who promised to deliver them, “_that two
days after you deposit the money in the bank you can dangle his
grandchild on your knee_.” But von Rintelen apparently came to realize
that he was dealing with the secret agent of another government, who was
laying a trap for him, and he quickly withdrew.
THE “LUSITANIA” GOES DOWN
_Then the Lusitania was torpedoed._ Americans who were connected with
von Rintelen’s schemes to ship supplies to Denmark and to buy the Krags,
became alarmed over the prospect of war with Germany. They cut off
negotiations with him and fearing possible government investigations,
they began to talk. Part of the activities of a mysterious German of the
name of Meyer and Hansen reached both the Government officials and
newspapers. A reporter on the New York _Tribune_ who got a “tip” of the
real facts and who hunted for von Rintelen, frightened the German agents
from the office of the E. V. Gibbon Company. Steinberg skipped back to
Germany disguised as a woman carrying a trunk full of reports showing
the necessity of concerted action to prevent the Allies from getting
American war materials.
Von Rintelen slipped away to an office in the Woolworth Building. On
disclosing something of his schemes to men there, he was quickly ordered
out. He moved to the offices, in the Liberty Tower, of Andrew M. Meloy,
who had gone to Germany hoping to interest the German authorities in a
scheme having the same purpose as von Rintelen’s. In Meloy’s office he
posed as E. V. Gates—still retaining the initials of E. V. G. So
effective was von Rintelen’s “getaway,” that he was reported to have
gone abroad as a secretary. Those newspaper stories again gave von
Rintelen cause to chuckle over his cleverness and his elusiveness, and
encouraged him to still more reckless projects. He was reporting
meantime to Berlin by means of apparently innocuous commercial messages
sent by wireless, and also by cablegrams _via_ England and Holland.
Von Rintelen, always scheming to prevent arms and ammunition from going
to the Allies, reached into Mexico to use that country as another angle
from which to harass the United States. _He planned_—and this project
was a part of his vast campaign—_to embroil Mexico and this country in
war, or to cause such a jumble of revolutions within the Mexican borders
that the United States would be compelled to intervene. He pictured this
country in war with Mexico, a mobilization of the regular army and the
militia, an assembling of the American fleet. That would require a large
part of the output of the munition factories. The horses that were being
shipped to the Allies, the arms, the clothing for soldiers, the shoes
and the hundreds of other things which American factories were busily
turning out, would be required for a large American army moving south of
the Rio Grande._
STIRRING UP MEXICO
He seized, therefore, upon President Wilson’s opposition to General
Huerta, and he planned to start a revolution in Mexico with the aim of
returning Huerta to power and thus placing the United States in a
position where it would be compelled to go into Mexico and restore
order. The United States would not be in a position then to dictate
terms for the settlement of the _Lusitania_ controversy, would seize the
war supplies going to the Allies, and, incidentally, would be hampered
for the remainder of the European war.
Ensconced in Meloy’s office, von Rintelen had as his daily associate a
man of his own age and of much the same appearance, tall, slender,
splendidly dressed, namely, a Mexican of German ancestry and a banker of
Parral. These two, who had known each other for years, met in New York.
The banker was versed in Mexican affairs, and the young German-Mexican
knew some of von Rintelen’s plans which had been set in operation before
the latter’s arrival in America.
German agents had been sent to Barcelona, Spain, to confer with General
Victoriano Huerta, former dictator of Mexico, and dazzle him with the
prospect of returning to power. Von Rintelen appreciated keenly the fact
that Huerta in Mexico virtually meant a declaration of war by the United
States, and, therefore, he wanted to put him there.
Having coaxed the old warrior to the United States, von Rintelen got
Boy-Ed and von Papen to map out Huerta’s plans. The two attachés, with
von Rintelen standing, invisible, far in the background and pulling the
strings, had many secret conferences in New York hotels, overheard by
Federal agents. They developed the plans for Huerta’s dash into Mexico,
and the uprising of Mexicans to support him. Von Rintelen, Boy-Ed and
von Papen made trips along the Mexican border, arranged for the
mobilization of Mexicans, for the storing of supplies and ammunition and
for furnishing funds. Von Rintelen deposited in Cuban banks and in banks
in Mexico City more than $800,000 for Huerta’s use. When the aged
general, stealing away from New York, reached Texas, he was nipped,
while attempting to jump the international border.
_While the Huertista faction was amply financed, it was only one of
seven groups, five of which were in Mexico, to which von Rintelen passed
out money._ Striving to stir up trouble and still more trouble for the
United States, he poured gold upon gold into Mexico, hoping that
President Wilson, nervous and harassed, would raise a big army for a
march.
Next, as an English banker making a special study of Mexican railway
securities, he called one day upon Villa’s representative in New York,
and discussed the Mexican situation with him, and afterwards he sent
money to Villa. He gave support to Carranza. He financed Zapata, and he
started two other small revolutions in Mexico. He gave $350,000 to one
agent who hurriedly left the country carrying the cash with him. He sent
$400,000 travelling through devious channels to help one of the
revolutionary parties; but that money was recovered by von Rintelen’s
superiors after a most exciting scramble. The reckless agent is reported
to have expended $10,000,000 in his Mexican enterprises, and airily he
said he would spend $50,000,000 if necessary.