_The German intrigue against the United States. Von Papen,
Boy-Ed and von Rintelen, and the work they did. How the
German-Americans were used and how they were betrayed._
In the long record of German intrigue in the United States one fact
stands out predominantly. If you consider the tremendous ramifications
of the system that Germany has built, the extent of its organization and
the efficiency with which so gigantic a secret work was carried on, you
will realize that this system was not the work of a short period but
of many years. As a matter of fact, Germany had laid the foundation of
that structure of espionage and conspiracy many years before—even before
the time when the United States first became a Colonial Power and thus
involved herself in the tangle of world politics.
I am making no rash assertions when I state that ten years ago the course
which German agents should adopt toward the United States in the event
of a great European war, had been determined with a reasonable amount
of exactness by the General Staff, and that it was this plan that was
adapted to the conditions of the moment, and set into operation at the
outbreak of the present conflict. No element of hostility lay behind this
planning. Germany had no grievance against you; and whatever potential
causes of conflict existed between the two nations lay far in the future.
That plan, so complete in detail, so menacing in its intent, was but
part of a world plan that should assure to Germany when the time was
ripe the submission of all her enemies and the peaceful assistance and
acquiescence in her aims of whatever parts of the world should at that
time remain at peace. Germany looked far ahead on that day when she first
knew that war must come. She realized, if no other nation did, that
however strong in themselves the combatants were, the neutrals who should
command the world’s supplies, would really determine the victory.
Knowing this, Germany—which does not play the game of diplomacy with
gloves on—laid her plans accordingly.
The United States offered a peculiarly fruitful field for her endeavors.
By tradition and geography divorced from European rivalries, it was,
nevertheless, from both an industrial and agricultural standpoint,
obviously to become the most important of neutral nations. The United
State alone could feed and equip a continent; and it needed no prophet to
perceive that whichever country could appropriate to itself her resources
would unquestionably win the war, if a speedy military victory were not
forthcoming.
It was Germany’s aim, therefore, to prepare the way by which she could
secure these supplies, or, failing in that, to keep them from the enemy,
England—if England it should be. In a military way such a plan had
little chance of success. England’s command of the seas was too complete
for Germany to consider that she could establish a successful blockade
against her. It was then, I fancy, that Germany bethought herself of a
greatly potential ally in the millions of citizens of German birth or
parentage with whom the United States was filled.
One may extract a trifle of cynical amusement from what followed. Those
millions of German-Americans had never been regarded with affection in
Berlin. The vast majority of them were descendants of men who had left
their homes for political reasons; and of those who had been born in
Germany many had emigrated to escape military service, and others had
gone to seek a better opportunity than their native land provided. They
had been called renegades who had given up their true allegiance for
citizenship in a foreign country, and Bernstorff himself, according to
the evidence of U. S. Senator Phelan, had said that he regarded them as
traitors and cowards.
But Germany voicing her own spleen in private and Germany with an axe to
grind, were two different beings. And no one who observed the honeyed
beginnings of the _Deutschtum_ movement in America would have believed
that these men who in public were so assiduously and graciously flattered
were in private characterized as utter traitors to the Fatherland—and
worse.
Certainly no one believed it when, in 1900, Prince Henry of Prussia paid
his famous visit to America. No word of criticism of these “traitors” was
spoken by him; and when at banquets glasses were raised and Milwaukee
smiled across the table at Berlin, the sentimental onlooker might have
known a gush of joy at this spectacle of amity and reconciliation. And
the sentimental onlooker would never have suspected that Prince Henry
had traveled three thousand miles for any other purpose than to attend
the launching of the Kaiser’s yacht _Meteor_, which was then building in
an American yard.
But to the cynical observer, searching the records of the years
immediately following Prince Henry’s visit, a few strange facts would
have become apparent. He would have discovered that German societies,
which had been neither very numerous nor popular before, had in a
comparatively short time acquired a membership and a prominence that
were little short of remarkable. He would have noted the increasing
number of German teachers and professors who appeared on the faculties of
American schools and colleges. He would have remarked upon the growth in
popularity of the German newspapers, many of them edited by Germans who
had never become naturalized. And yet, observing these things, he might
have agreed with the vast majority of Americans, in regarding them as
entirely harmless and of significance merely as a proof of how hard love
of one’s native land dies.
He would have been mistaken had he so regarded them. The German
Government does not spend money for sentimental purposes; and in the
last ten years that Government has expended literally millions of dollars
for propaganda in the United States. It has consistently encouraged a
sentiment for the Fatherland that should be so strong that it would hold
first place in the heart of every German-American. It has circulated
pamphlets advocating the exclusive use of the German language, not merely
in the homes, but in shops and street cars and all other public places.
It has lent financial support to German organizations in America, and in
a thousand ways has aimed so to win the hearts of the German-Americans
that when the time should come the United States, by sheer force of
numbers, would be delivered, bound hand and foot, into the hands of the
German Government.
It was this object of undermining the true allegiance of the German
citizens of the United States which transformed an innocent and natural
tendency into a menace that was the more insidious because the very
people involved were, for the most part, entirely ignorant of its
true nature. Germany seized upon an attachment that was purely one of
sentiment and race and sought to make it an instrument of political
power; and she went about her work with so efficient a secrecy that she
very nearly accomplished her purpose.
By the time the Great War broke out the German propaganda in America had
assumed notable proportions. German newspapers were plentiful and had
acquired a tremendous influence over the minds of German-speaking folk.
Many of the German societies had been consolidated into one national
organization—the German-American National Alliance, with a membership of
two millions, and a president, C. J. Hexamer of Chicago, whose devotion
to the Fatherland has been so great that he has since been decorated
with the Order of the Red Eagle. And the German people of the United
States had, by a long campaign of flattery and cajolery, coupled with a
systematic glorification of German genius and institutions, been won to
attachment to the country of their origin that required only a touch to
translate it into fanaticism.
Germany had set the stage and rehearsed the chorus. There were needed
only the principals to make the drama complete. These she provided in the
persons of four men: Franz von Papen, Karl Boy-Ed, Heinrich Albert, and
later, Franz von Rintelen.
They were no ordinary men whom Germany had appointed to the leadership
of this giant underground warfare against a peaceful country. Highly
bred, possessing a wide and intensive knowledge of finance, of military
strategy and of diplomatic finesse, they were admirably equipped to win
the admiration and trust of the people of this country, at the very
moment that they were attacking them. All of them were men skilled in the
art of making friends; and so successfully did they employ this art that
their popularity for a long time contrived to shield them from suspicion.
Each of these men was assigned to the command of some particular branch
of German secret service. And each brought to his task the resources of
the scientist, the soldier and the statesman, coupled with the scruples
of the bandit.
It is impossible in this brief space to tell the full story of the
activities of these gentlemen and of their many, highly trained
assistants. Violence, as you know, played no small part in their plans.
Sedition, strikes in munitions plants, attacks upon ships carrying
supplies to the Allies, the crippling of transportation facilities,
bomb outrages—these are a few of the main elements in the campaign to
render the United States useless as a source of supply for Germany’s
enemies. But ultimately of far more importance than this was a program
of publicity that should not only present to the German-Americans the
viewpoint of their fatherland (an entirely legitimate propaganda) but
which was aimed to consolidate them into a political unit which should be
used, by peaceful means if possible—such as petitions and the like—and if
that method failed, by _absolute armed resistance_, to force the United
States Government to declare an embargo upon shipments of munitions and
foodstuffs to the Allies, and to compel it to assume a position, if
not of active alliance with Germany (a hope that was never seriously
entertained) at least one which should distinctly favor the German
Government and cause serious dissension between America and England.
There followed a two-fold campaign; on the one hand active terrorism
against private industry insofar as it was of value to the Allies,
reinforced by the most determined plots against Canada; on the other
an insincere and lying propaganda that presented the United States
Government as a pretender of a neutrality which it did not attempt to
practise—as an institution controlled by men who were unworthy of the
support of any but Anglophiles and hypocrites.
Left to itself the sympathy of German-Americans would have been directed
toward Germany; stimulated as it was by an unremitting campaign
of publicity, this sympathy became a devotion almost rabid in its
intensity. Race consciousness was aroused, and placed upon the defensive
by the attitude of the larger portion of the American press, the
German-Americans became defiant and aggressive in their apologies for the
Fatherland. Even those whose German origin was so remote that they were
ignorant of the very language of their fathers, subscribed to newspapers
and periodicals whose sole reason for existence was that they presented
the truth—as Germany saw it. If in that presentation the German press
adopted a tone that was seditious—why, there were those in Berlin who
would applaud the more heartily. And in New York Captain von Papen and
his colleagues would read and nod their heads approvingly.
At the end of the first two months of the war, and of my active service
in America, the campaign of violence was well under way. Already plans
had been made for several enterprises other than the Welland Canal plot,
which I have discussed already. Attacks had been planned against several
vulnerable points in the Canadian Pacific Railway, such as the St. Clair
Tunnel, running under the Detroit River at Point Huron, Mich.; agents
had been planted in the various munitions factories, and spies were
everywhere seeking possible points of vantage at which a blow for Germany
could be struck. A plan had even then been made to blow up the railroad
bridge at Vanceboro.
But already von Papen and his associates, including myself, knew that
Germany could never succeed in crippling Allied commerce in the United
States and in proceeding effectively against Canada until we could count
upon the implicit co-operation of the German-Americans, even though that
co-operation involved active disloyalty to the country of their adoption.
There lay the difficulty. That the bulk of the German-Americans were
loyal to their government, I knew at the time. Now, happily, that is a
matter that is beyond doubt. Among them there were, of course, many whose
zeal outran their scruples and others whose scruples were for sale. But
for the most part, although they could be cajoled into a partnership
that was not always prudent, they could not be led beyond this point
into positive defiance of the United States, however mistaken they might
believe its policies.
The rest of the story I cannot tell at first hand, for I was not directly
concerned in the events that followed. What I know I have pieced together
from my recollection of conversations with von Papen, and from what many
people in Berlin, who thought I was familiar with the affair, told me.
Who fathered the idea, I do not know. Some one conceived a scheme so
treacherous and contemptible that every other act of this war seems white
beside it. _It was planned so to discredit the German-Americans that the
hostility of their fellow-citizens would force them back into the arms
of the German Government._ These millions of American citizens of German
descent were to be given the appearance of disloyalty, in order that they
might become objects of suspicion to their fellows, and through their
resentment at this attitude the cleavage between Germans and non-Germans
in this country would be increased and perhaps culminate in armed
conflict.
On the face of it this looks like the absurd and impossible dream of
an insane person, rather than a diplomatic program. And yet, if it be
examined more closely, the plan will be seen to have a psychological
basis that, however far-fetched, is essentially sound. Given a people
already bewildered by the almost universal condemnation of a country
which they have sincerely revered; add to that serious difference in
sympathies an attitude of distrust of all German-Americans by the
other inhabitants of this country; and you have sown the seed of a
race-antagonism that if properly nurtured may easily grow into a violent
hatred. In a word, Germany had decided that if the German-Americans could
not be coaxed back into the fold they might be beaten back. She set
about her part of the task with an industry that would have commanded
admiration had it been better employed.
Glance back over the history of the past three years and consider how,
almost over night, the “hyphen” situation developed. America, shaken by a
war which had been declared to be impossible, become suddenly conscious
of the presence within her borders of a portion of her population—a
nation in numbers—largely unassimilated, retaining its own language,
and possessing characteristics which suddenly became conspicuously
distasteful. Inevitably, as I say, the cleavage in sympathies produced
distrust. But it was not until stories of plots in which German-Americans
were implicated became current that this distrust developed into an acute
suspicion. Germanophobia was rampant in those days, and to hysterical
persons it was unthinkable that any German could be exempt from the
suspicion of treason.
It was upon this foundation that the German agents erected their
structure of lies and defamation. Not content with the efforts which
the jingo press and jingo individuals were unconsciously making in
their behalf, they deliberately set on foot rumors which were intended
to increase the distrust of German-Americans. I happen to know that
during the first two years of the war, many of the stories about German
attempts upon Canada, about German-American complicity in various plots,
_emanated from the offices of Captain von Papen and his associates_. I
know also that many plots in which German-Americans were concerned had
been deliberately encouraged by von Papen and afterward as deliberately
betrayed! Time after time, enterprises with no chance of success were set
on foot with the sole purpose of having them fail—for thus Germany could
furnish to the world evidence that America was honey-combed with sedition
and treachery—evidence which Americans themselves would be the first to
accept.
It was in reality a gigantic game of bluff. Germany wished to give
to the world convincing proof that all peoples of German descent were
solidly supporting her. It was for this reason that reports of impossible
German activities were set afloat; that rumors of Germans massing in
the Maine woods, of aëroplane flights over Canada, and of all sorts
of enterprises which had no basis in fact, were disseminated. And
since many anti-German papers had been indiscreet enough to attack the
German-Americans as disloyal, the German agents used and fomented these
attacks for their own purposes.
Who could gain by such a campaign of slander and the feeling it would
produce? Certainly not the Administration, which had great need of a
united country behind it. Certainly not the American press, which was
certain to lose circulation and advertising; nor American business, which
would suffer from the loss of thousands of customers of German descent,
who would turn to the German merchant for their needs. Only two classes
could profit: the German press, which was liberally subsidized by the
German Government, and the German Government itself.
It was to the interests of the administration at Washington to keep the
country united by keeping the Germans disunited. The reverse condition
would tend to indicate that Americanism was a failure, since the country
was divided at a critical time; it would seriously hamper the Government
in its dealings with all the warring nations; and it would be of benefit
only to the German societies and German press, and through them to the
German Government. It _was_ of benefit. The German newspapers increased
their circulations and advertising revenues, in many cases by more than
one hundred per cent. German banks and insurance companies received money
that had formerly gone to American institutions and which now went to
swell the Imperial German War Loans. And the German clubs increased their
memberships and became more and more instruments of power in the work of
Germany.
There is a typical German club in New York—the _Deutscher Verein_ on
Central Park South. During the war it has been used as a sub-office of
the German General Staff. It was here that von Papen used to store the
dynamite that was needed in such enterprises as the Welland Canal plot.
It was here that conspirators used to meet for conferences which no one,
not even the other members of the club, could tell were not as innocent
as they seemed.
These German societies and other agencies were used not merely to promote
sympathy for the German cause, but also to influence public opinion in
matters of purely American interest. On January 21, 1916, Henry Weismann,
president of the Brooklyn branch of the German-American National Alliance
sent a report to headquarters in Chicago, regarding the activities of his
organization in the recent elections. In the Twenty-third Congressional
District of New York, Ellsworth J. Healy had been a candidate for
Congress. Both he and another man, John J. Fitzgerald, candidate for
Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, were regarded by German
interests as “unneutral.” They were defeated, and Weismann in commenting
upon the matter, wrote: “_The election returns prove that Deutschtum is
armed and able, when the word is given, to seat its men._”
Even in the campaign for preparedness Germany took a hand. Berlin was
appealed to in some cases as to the attitude that American citizens of
German descent should adopt toward this policy. Professor Appelmann of
the University of Vermont wrote to Dr. Paul Rohrbach, one of the advisers
of the Wilhelmstrasse, requesting his advice upon the subject. Dr.
Rohrbach replied that American _Deutschtum_ should not be in favor of
preparedness, because “_it is quite conceivable that in the event of an
American-Japanese war, Germany might adopt an attitude of very benevolent
neutrality toward Japan and so make it easier for Japan to defeat the
United States_.” And not long ago the _Herold des Glaubens_ of St. Louis,
made this statement: “When we found that the agitation for preparedness
was in the interest of the munition makers and that its aim was a war
with Germany, we certainly turned against it and we have agitated against
it for the last three months.”
But this anti-militaristic spirit was a rather sudden development on the
part of the German societies. In 1911, when a new treaty of arbitration
with Great Britain was under consideration, a group of roughs, _led and
organized by a German_, violently broke up a meeting held under the
auspices of the New York Peace Society to support that treaty. The man
who broke that meeting up was Alphonse G. Koelble. It was this same
Koelble who in 1915, when Germany’s attack upon America was most bitter,
organized a meeting of “The Friends of Peace,” in order to protest
against militarism! Strange, is it not, this inconsistency? _Or was it
that Mr. Koelble was acting under orders?_
Germany did these things not only for their political effect, but also
because she knew that she could turn the evidence of her own meddling
to account. It was for the same reason that Wolf von Igel, von Papen’s
secretary and successor, retained in his office a list of American
citizens of German descent who “could be relied on.” This list was found
by agents of the Department of Justice when von Igel’s office was raided.
And the German agents were glad it was discovered. _It gave to Americans
an additional proof of the hold that Germany had obtained over a large
group of German-Americans._
It was as late as March, 1916, that the members of the Minnesota chapter
of the German-American National Alliance received a circular, advising
them of the attitude _toward Germany_ of the various candidates for
delegate to the national conventions of the different parties, and
indicating by a star the names of those men “about whom it has been
ascertained that they are in agreement with the views and wishes of
_Deutschland_ and that if elected they will act accordingly.” I do not
believe that the men who sent that circular expected it to be widely
obeyed. But unquestionably they knew it would be made public.
I think that if the German conspirators in America had confined their
activities to this field they might ultimately have succeeded. They had
managed to seduce a sufficient number of German-Americans to cause the
entire German-American population to be regarded with suspicion. They
had contrived to discredit the pacifist and labor movements by making
public their own connection with individuals in these bodies. They had
aroused the public to such a pitch of distrust that in the Presidential
campaign of 1916 the support of the “German vote” was regarded with
distaste by both candidates. And they had helped to create so tremendous
a dissension in America that friendships of long standing were broken up,
German merchants in many communities lost all but their German customers,
and German-Americans were belabored in print with such twaddle as the
following:
“The German-Americans predominate in the grog-shops, low dives, pawn
shops and numerous artifices for money-making and corrupt practices in
politics.”
The foregoing statement, which I quote from a book, “German Conspiracies
in the United States,” written by a gentleman named Skaggs, is not
perhaps a fair sample of the attacks made upon German-Americans by the
press in general, but it is indicative of the heights to which feeling
ran in the case of a few uninformed or hysterical persons. The point is
that to a large portion of the populace the German-Americans had become
enemies and objects of abuse.
They, in turn, beset on all sides by a campaign of slander insidiously
fostered by men to whom they had given their trust, did exactly what had
been expected. They fell right into the arms of that movement which for
fourteen years had been subsidized for that very purpose. They ceased
to read American newspapers. They read German newspapers, many of which
almost openly preached disloyalty to the United States. They became
clannish and joined German societies which frequently contained German
agents. They began to boycott American business houses and dealt only
with those of German affiliations.
Germany had gained her point. She alone could gain by the disunity
of the country. It was to her advantage that the profits which had
formerly gone to American business houses should be deflected to German
corporations. _And had she rested her efforts there, she might, as I say,
have seen them produce results in the form of riots and armed dissension,
which would have effectively prevented the United States from entering
the war._
But Germany over-reached herself. Emboldened by the apparent success
of their schemes, her principal agents, von Papen, Boy-Ed and von
Rintelen (who had begun his work in January, 1915) became careless, so
far as secrecy was concerned, and so audacious in their plans that they
betrayed themselves, perhaps intentionally, as a final demonstration of
their power. The results you know. Insofar as the disclosures of their
activities tended further to implicate the German-Americans, they did
harm. But by those very disclosures the eyes of many German-Americans
were opened to the true nature of the influence to which they had
been subjected, and through that fact the worst element of the German
propaganda in America received its death blow.
To-day the United States is at war and no intelligent man now questions
the loyalty of the majority of the citizens of German blood. That in
the past their sympathies have been with Germany is unquestioned and,
from their standpoint, entirely proper. That in many cases they view the
participation of the United States in the war with regret is probable.
But that they will stand up and if need be fight as staunchly as any
other group in the country, no man may doubt.
That is the story of the darkest chapter in the history of German
intrigue. Other things have been done in this war at which a humane man
may blush. Other crimes have been committed which not even the staunchest
partisan can condone. But at least it may be said that those things were
done to enemies or to neutral people whom fortune had put in the way of
injury. The betrayal of the German-Americans was a wanton crime against
men whom every association and every tie of kinship or tradition should
have served to protect.
Germany has not yet abandoned that attack. There are still spies in the
United States, you may be sure—still intrigues are being fostered. And
there are still men who, consciously or unconsciously, are striving to
discredit the German-Americans by presenting them as unwilling to bear
their share in the burden of the nation’s war. Only a week before these
lines were written one man—George Sylvester Viereck—circulated a petition
begging that Germans should not be sent to fight their countrymen, and
an organization of German Protestant churches in America is repeating
this plea. As a German whom fortune has placed outside the battle, and
as one whose patriotism is extended toward blood rather than dynasty, I
ask Mr. Viereck and these other gentlemen if they have not forgotten that
many German-Americans have already shown their feelings by volunteering
for service in this war—and if they have not also forgotten that the two
great wars of American history were fought between men of the same blood.
Ties of blood have never prevented men from fighting for a cause which
they believed to be just. They will not in this war! And when Mr. Viereck
and his kind protest against the participation in the war of men of any
descent whatever, they imply that the American cause is _not_ just and
that it is not worthy of the support of the men they claim to represent.
Is this their intention?