Germany, lacking iron ore, obtained extensive concessions of land in
Normandy and annually sent vast quantities of mineral to Krupp's,
where it went to the making of munitions to be used against the
Allies. In the extraction of this ore only German machinery, worked by
German coal, was used. Simultaneously our arch-enemy got possession
of a place called Diélette, eighteen miles west of Cherbourg, and
constructed there a deep-water port, capable of accommodating vessels
of fifty thousand tons. The ostensible purpose set forth by the
_concessionnaires_ was the shipping of ore and the working of a
submarine iron-mine, but the real object was made clear when the German
newspapers, in their bragging way, began to write about Diélette as
the "German Gibraltar." And a German Gibraltar it would have become
but for Great Britain's intervention in the war. For if France had not
had our Navy behind her, nothing would have been easier than to land
German troops at Diélette. The port and arsenal of Cherbourg would have
been but a mouthful for the Huns, the western side of Cherbourg, owing
to the natural disposition of the land, being undefended, as it has
always been looked upon as impregnable. And so it was until the port of
Diélette was constructed.
Diélette, the proposed German submarine base for the Channel, and
adapted not only for military and naval purposes, but most conveniently
situated for spying on Cherbourg, was used for the first time as a port
only a week before the outbreak of war. On July 25th, 1914, the first
big vessel arrived and was loaded in the record time of twenty-four
hours. Under the superintendence of Raders, the chief spy, large
quantities of explosives had been accumulated. The greater part was
seized by the French Government, but when the authorities attempted to
visit the mine it was discovered that many of the galleries had been
wilfully flooded.
After all the arrangements had been made at Diélette, the Germans began
to say that the carriage of iron ore thence to a German port had been
found to be too costly, so they immediately began to acquire land and
make arrangements for smelting on the spot. Furnaces were built at
Caen, a railway line was constructed, the canal from that town to the
sea was deepened, and things were so arranged that at any given moment
Caen could be cut off from its natural port, Ouistreham. The electric
cable transmitting the motive force for this port and for the opening
and shutting of the bridges over the canal was aerial, and passed over
land acquired by another of the prime movers of the Diélette and Caen
schemes, a man named Thyssen, an intimate friend of the Kaiser. This
cable was cut on August 12th, 1914.
The machinery and materials, directors and workmen of all these
undertakings were German, so that, although some of the capital of the
company was furnished by French shareholders, practically the whole of
this part of Normandy was already, when war broke out, in the hands of
the Huns. Normandy in their power, they set about getting Brittany.
Private individuals bought up large tracts of land and islands, and
there is no doubt that the splendid port of Brest would before long
have been theirs. Was not one of the Kaiser's sons familiarly known in
Berlin as the "Duke of Brittany?"
I have mentioned two of the chief spies connected with the Normandy
plots, Raders and Thyssen. The former left the mine at Diélette on
August 1st, but was arrested. Hefter, one of his subordinates, received
a telegram that his brother had been run over by a train, and so got
away on July 26th, whilst a third, a so-called Swiss, named Strobel,
stayed in France for a month, and even returned to Diélette in January
to destroy a trunk full of papers in a house which he had occupied.
Rheims, the cathedral city of saddened memories, was another of the
great spy centres of France. More than seventy inhabitants, in every
imaginable disguise, had to be shot, we are told by M. Léon Daudet, who
before and since the war has thrown much light on German espionage.
Every woollen mill in Rheims was known to the enemy, and at the time of
the invasion they sent off to Germany more than a hundred wagon-loads
of models and drawings of machines, and so on, together with
multitudinous bales of merchandise. All account-books were soaked with
paraffin and burnt, and all workmen's dwellings were systematically
destroyed.
There is no doubt that as regards works, factories, and mills of all
kinds, a systematic plan was followed wherever the German system of
espionage operated. Those that could in any way be useful to the
invaders during their occupation were carefully preserved, and those
judged prejudicial to their future commercial prosperity were as
ruthlessly destroyed. It was the same with private residences. Anything
belonging to spies--many of them naturalized Frenchmen--was marked by
advance guards in accordance with a carefully-prepared list, and was
neither burnt nor pillaged when all around was destroyed.
Henkell, of Wiesbaden, had some years ago started a wine business at
Rheims, and his warehouse was built between the barracks, the aviation
ground, the military fodder stores, and other official buildings. From
the windows of his establishment he and his _employés_ could keep an
eye on the movement of all military trains on the three lines leading
from Rheims to Chalons, Charleville, and Laon.