K. A. Jahnke and the German Sabotage Campaign in the United States and Mexico, 1914–1918

I<. A. JAHNKE AND THE GEWN SABOTAGE CAMPAIGN IN THE UNITED STATES

AND MEXICO, 1914-1 91 8 RICHARD B. SPENCE

f the most successful secret agents are those who remain secret, Kurt Albert I Jahnke must rank as one of the greatest spies of the twentieth century, his involvement in clandestine affairs stretching from the first decade of this century through the mid-1950s. He was an enigma to those who worked with or against him, and he remains no less a mystery today. While there is ample evidence of Jahnke’s work as a British double agent in Germany during World War 11, his activities between 1914 and 1918 have received little analysis in this regard. This study will argue that during the First World War Jahnke functioned both as a German saboteur and a British double agent in the United States and Mexico. While much of the evidence to support this assertion is circumstantial, taken with his subsequent actions it establishes a clear picture of duplicity.’

Jahnke’s significance within the broader context of World War I rests in two areas. First, his activities, guided more by British than German directives, shed light on the secret war between German and Allied-primarily British-agents in North America, both before and after U.S. entry into the struggle. It was an unorthodox war fought through sabotage, subversion, and the manipulation of public and official opinion, but a war nonetheless, and not without bloodshed. Secondly, as a shadowy warrior in this conflict, Jahnke exemplifies the ability of a maverick individual to manipulate and even control policies and events, an exception in a broader war characterized by mass obedience and political consensus. Like the equally shadowy “Ace of Spies,” Sidney Reilly, Jahnke was a mercenary who worked all sides. As such, he was a valuable, but never wholly reliable, asset to any who employed him. As he

Richard B. Spence is an associate professor of history and department chair at the University of Idaho.

’Walter Schellenberg, Memoirs (London, 1956), 299-305; Anthony Cave Brown, ‘C’: The Secret Lfe of Sir Stewart Menzies (New York, 1987), 2 10-12,344,652; Marck Aarons and John Loftus, Unholy Trinity: The Vatican, the Nazis and Soviet Intelligence (New York, 1991), 161-63, 167-68, 170-71, 214,225.

90 THE HISI‘OKLAN

later boasted, the “full value of a secret service always depended on the number and the standard of Double Agents,@ and there is no doubt that Jahnke considered himself a prime example of this art. Moreover, by “double agent” Jahnke did not mean a simple turncoat. The measure of a double agent lay in his or her ability to serve the interests of two-or more-conflicting parties at the same time. One of these parties usually was the primary employer to whom the interests of the others would be sacrificed as the need arose, but the situation was fluid and the agent always sought to preserve freedom of action, and thus relative independence.

Little is known about Jahnke’s origins and early career. Some of his German records, which might clarify many issues, were confiscated by the Nazis during World War I1 and lost in 1945. Others were destroyed during the Allied bombing campaigns in Germany. British records on Jahnke are sequestered among the closed files of MI6 and MI5, the British foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, and guarded by the Official Secrets Act; and while a large Jahnke file is believed to exist in the former Soviet archives, it has not yet been found. Indeed, one reason for focusing on the 1914-18 phase of Jahnke’s career is that it is one of the few periods about which any definite information can be obtained, largely from records com- piled by the U.S. Army’s Military Intelligence Division (MID), the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation (BI, later FBI), and other agencies.’

Even the most basic facts about Jahnke are difficult to establish. For example, his birth year is variously cited as 1882, 1884, or 1888, with the former considered most likely. It appears that Kurt Albert Jahnke was born the son of a minor landowner near Gnesen (Gniezno) in West Prussia, not far from the border of Russian Poland. The mixed ethnic character of the region and its proximity to Russian Poland may have given him an early acquaintance with Polish and Russian, languages he employed in his later a~tivit ies.~

Just over six feet tall, Kurt Iahnke had broad shoulders, brown hair, and piercing blue eyes. He had a large, top-shaped head and a pock-marked face dominated by a long nose. He spoke excellent English and Spanish and at least passable Polish and

2U.S. National Archives, U.S. Army General Staff, IRR File #XE001752, “Final Report in the Case of Walter Schelleiiberg,” 30 September 1946, Appendix XV, “Jahnke and the Iahnkebiiro,” 2. Recorded immediately after the war, Schcllenberg’s recollections of Jahnke differ slightly from those later presented iii his memoirs. For the latter see Schellenberg, Memoirs, 40-41,299-305, and passim.

’Schellenberg, Memoirs, 304-5.

4Schellenberg, Memoirs, 40-41; see also Henry Landau, The Etiemy Within: The Inside Story of Germun Sabotugr in Americu (New York, 19371, 34.

K. A. JAHNKE AND THE GERMAN SABOTAGE CAMPAIGN 91

Russian. Although his craggy outward appearance sometimes concealed it, beneath the surface was a “thorough man of the world. . . a charming, cultivated gentle ma^^."^

Soon after the turn of the century, Jahnke enlisted in the German navy or merchant marine. By 1903 he was in China, where he worked for the International Customs Service based in Peking. This experience was most valuable for his later enterprises which included smuggling opium, weapons, and human beings to and from China. Jahnke’s stint in East Asia is significant because his probable partner in WWI double-dealing, Sidney Reilly, was also in the area at that time. Reilly was later said to have acted as an agent for the Japanese, the Russians, and the British during this period. Similarly, by 1914 Jahnke also evidenced a cozy familiarity with Japanese intelligence. Jahnke and Reilly’s acquaintance, and perhaps their active cooperation, may well stem from this period.6

Jahnke returned to Europe soon after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese conflict, as did Reilly. Jahnke appears to have remained in Europe until 1908, and probably made at least one trip to Russia. The latter may have been connected to the presence of Captain (later Admiral) Paul von Hintze, the Kaiser’s naval attach6 in St. Petersburg and later special naval representative-cum-intelligence agent. In 1911, von Hintze employed Reilly as a special agent in Russia, yet another element that hints at a pre-1914 Jahnke-Reilly acq~aintance.~

The first place that Jahnke can be placed with absolute certainty is Detroit, Michigan, on 10 March 1909, the day he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. On his enlistment papers he gave his birth date as 17 February 1888, probably to make himself appear younger to deflect questions about prior military service in Germany. He was soon stationed at the Mare Island naval shipyard near San Francisco.8

’National Archives (NA), Records of the Military Intelligence Division (MID), File #10541-367/57, #400, Major R. M. Campbell, Military Attache, Mexico City, to Captain Ralph Van Dernan, Chief, Military Intelligence Branch, Washington, 5 June 1918.

%ee Reinhard Doerries, Imperial Challenge: Ambassador Count Bernstorf and Germun-American Relations, 1908-191 7 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989), 177; Hsi-Huey Liang, The Sino-German Connection: Alexander von Falkenhausen between China and Germany, 1900-1941 (Amsterdam, 1978), 116 n.7; Michael Kettle, Sidney Reilly (New York, 1983) 15-16; Robin Lockhart, Reilly: Ace of Spies (New York, 1967), 39-40; Lockhart, Redly: The First Man (New York, 1987), 3; Richard Deacon [Donald McCormick], A History of the Japanese Secret Service (London, 1982), 49-50.

’Wilhelm Kosch, ed., Biographisches Staatshandbuch, I Band (Bern/Munich, 1963), 533.

“‘Kurt A. Jahnke,” Service Record, U.S. Marine Corps, File #33906, National Personnel Records Office (Military Personnel Records), Navy Reference Branch, in Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), File #62-5394, “Kurt A. Jahnke,” FOIPA #240,106; see also Landau, 34-35.

92 THE HISTORIAN

It is highly unlikely that Jahnke’s emigration to the United States and his enlistment in the Marine Corps were personal decisions. Probably he was acting, formally or informally, as an agent of German naval intelligence, the Marine Nachrichtenstelle or “N-Stelle,” which had a vital interest in American naval activities in the Pacific. From Mare Island, Jahnke was posted to Pearl Harbor and then to the Philippines. Such postings enabled him to collect data on key American naval installations. His Marine career, however, was a brief one; in November 1909 Jahnke was diagnosed with malaria and discharged on 5 February 1910. His character, for the record, was noted as “Very Good.”9 The suspicion that Jahnke was on an intelligence-gathering mission is strengthened by his immediate return to Germany following his discharge, likely for debriefing.

From 1910 to 1914 Jahnke operated a lucrative shipping and smuggling business between the west coasts of the United States and Mexico and the ports of East Asia, with San Francisco as his primary base of operations. Such an enterprise not only earned him money but also important friends among the Chinese, among them Dr. Sun Yat-sen and members of the powerful Sung family. He also was rumored to have worked for the US. Border Patrol, although there is no documentary proof. In any case, he traveled throughout the American West and Mexico and visited Cuba and the American Gulf Coast. Such activities provided valuable experience and contacts for his future adventures on both sides of the border. Jahnke employed many aliases in these ventures. Most were variants of his surname-for example, Ayenky, Yenky, Yahuke, and the like-but they also included Kurt Borden, Kurt or Albert Steffens, Jan Peter Cronje, and Jose Iturbe. A natural actor, he was also able to alter his appearance to suit his role of the moment.’O

It is not certain whether Jahnke actively served German intelligence during this time, but he doubtless maintained the connection. It is also likely that he was recruited by the British at this time. Whatever their differences elsewhere, Britain and Germany had a common bond in their resistance to American domination of Mexico. Alarmed by Mexico’s descent into revolutionary chaos in 1911, many American businessmen urged the U.S. government to intervene, a move that some

9“Kurt A. lahnke,” Service Record; Records of the U.S. Technical Mission to Europe, Mix. Studies #29, “The Setting-up of the ‘Etappe,’” Naval Historical Center, Operations Archives, Washington, D.C., and the German Militararchiv, Freiburg-im-Breisgau, Reichsmarincarnt, “ Uber die Etappentiitigkeit in den Vereinigten Stauten von Nordumerika,” 3 March 1919; FBI, File #62-1199.249, Clegg to Hoover, rnern- orandurn, 7 October 1940; Landau, 38-39.

‘“Schellenbcrg, Memoirs, 40-41; “Jahnke and the Jahnkeburo,” 2; Liang, Sino-German Connection, 116; Iloerries, Irnperiul Chullenge, 177; NA, Records of the U.S. Department of State (USDS), Confidential File #862.20212/1103, SK. of State Lansing to US. Arnb. Page, London, 11 April 1918.


Britons and Germans saw as a threat to their interests. The British ambassador to Mexico in 191 3, Sir Lionel Carden, was “aggressively anti-American.”” The British- owned Mexican Eagle Petroleum Co., a major source of fuel oil for the Royal Navy, was only one example of extensive British investment. One young Briton who sought his fortune in this realm was William Wiseman, destined to become the wartime chief of the British secret service in North America. German investors also expanded their Mexican interests, but seldom in direct competition with the British. One of Berlin’s financial agents was Franz Rintelen von Kleist (hereafter, Rintelen), later a German secret agent in the United States. Moreover, at the outbreak of the war, the Kaiser’s ambassador in Mexico City was none other than Paul von Hintze.12

Jahnke’s personal views on Anglo-German relations are especially interesting. As voiced later in the 1930s, Jahnke was a strong proponent of German-British cooperation, and this does not seem to have been a new idea. His antagonism toward the Nazis largely stemmed from their rejection of this principle. Jahnke believed that Britain and Germany should combine to restrain Russian and, to a somewhat lesser degree, American expansion. From this standpoint, he could justify his actions as a double agent not as a betrayal of Germany but rather as working in its best interest.13

Jahnke’s knowledge of the U.S.-Mexican border region enabled him to move between the two countries with ease. Such expertise made him valuable to Americans who wished to evade their government’s official policies regarding the civil war that by 1913 engulfed Mexico. The key players in this conflict were General Victoriano Huerta, whose regime President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize, and Huerta’s “Constitutionalist” rival, Venustiano Carranza. Officially, the United States was neutral and supported an arms embargo to all sides. In reality, Wilson’s animus toward Huerta led his administration to adopt a “look the other way” atti- tude regarding arms shipments to Carranza. Most of these shipments originated in San Francisco and moved through Mexico’s Pacific ports or via border towns such as Calexico, Nogales, and El Paso. This, of course, was Jahnke’s stomping ground, and smuggling was his stock and trade. Moreover, as a non-U.S. citizen, his involvement would not implicate the United States or its officials. Such work provided the

“Dan La Botz, Edward L. Doheny: Petroleum, Power, andPolitics in the United States andMexico (New York, 1991), 48-49; Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Questfor Oil, Money and Power (New York, 1991), 229-32; La Botz, Edward L. Doheny, 47-48.

I2Franz Rintelen, The Dark Invader: Wartime Reminiscences of a German Naval Intelligence Officer (New York, 1933).

”Cave Brown, Secret Life, 210-11,344; Aaron and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 161-63.

94 THE HISTORIAN

opportunity to cultivate American contacts that would prove doubly useful in his later wartime activities. From this vantage, Jahnke could barter valuable information to other interested parties, be they German, British, Mexican, or even Japanese.I4

By the time war erupted in Europe, Jahnke had entered into the somewhat more settled profession of private detective. By early 1916 he had worked for the Pinkerton, Cleary, and Morse detective agencies in San Francisco and also carried a badge from the Wade Detective Bureau in San Diego. Much of his work, particularly for the Morse Agency, involved guarding ships, docks, and warehouses. Such employment could assist more clandestine activities and, once again, provide him with useful contacts. For instance, his entry into the Pinkerton ranks probably was arranged by his old Marine sergeant, Martin Swanson, with whom, as we will see, he likely had subsequent dea1ings.l5

Jahnke regarded himself in the service of the Fatherland from the onset of hos- tilities and was at that point already linked to German intelligence, most likely the naval branch. “From August 1914,” he later reported to Berlin, “I was in California and based in San Francisco, the Central Office for [German] secret military operations.”16

At this point two figures emerge-or re-emerge-in Jahnke’s affairs, Admiral von Hintze and Sidney Reilly. Soon after the outbreak of war, von Hintze left Mexico to take up a new diplomatic post in China. However, rather than going directly to Shanghai, he took a roundabout route through New York. There, in the autumn of 1914, he encountered Reilly, who had arrived in Manhattan as a purchasing agent for the Russian government. Von Hintze also met with another

I4Ifavid S. Foglesong, “America’s Secret War against Bolshevism: United States Intervention in the Russian Civil, War, 19 17- 1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1991), 652-53, quoting Bryan to O’Shaughnessy, 1 November 1913, Woodrow Wilson Papers (WWP), Princeton Univ., 28:482-83; Hale to Wilson, 31 December 1913, WWP 29:90-1; Hale to Wilson, 13 January 1914, WWP 29:130; Lind to Wilson, 10 January 1914, WWP 29:118-27. See also Kenneth J. Grieb, The United States and Huerta (Lincoln, Neb., 1969), 61-64; Frederich Katz, The Serret War in Mexico: Europe, The United States and the Mexican Revolution (Chicago, 1981), 203-49, passim; and Michael C. Meyer, Huerta: A Political Portrait (Lincoln, Neb., 1972), 211-14.

15USDS, File #862.20212/730, Lansing to American Embassy, Mexico City, 30 October 1917.

“Germany, Politisches Archiv des Auswsrtigen Amt (PAAA), Rechtswesen 6, Sabotage Claims, v. 3, Jahnke to Reichswehrministeriurn Marineleitung, 29 January 1925. See also Jahnke’s report on German naval intelligence operations in Mexico, 1917- 19, Germany, Bundesarchiv, Potsdam (former Deutsches Zentralarchiv, Merseburg); “Wolfgang Kapp Nachlass,” Rep. 92, EI.#13, cited in Katz, Serret War,128.


German officer, Colonel Alexander von Falkenhausen, who had prior connections to China and Jahnke. In November von Hintze and Reilly shared a train to San Francisco where they almost certainly contacted Jahnke. Von Hintze, an experienced spymaster, was most likely the chief of the “Central Office for secret military operations” to which Jahnke referred. If so, von Hintze logically would have sought out some experienced agents to assist him.17

Von Hintze’s new mission to the Far East was much more than a routine diplomatic re-assignment. His main goal was to contact pro-German circles in Japan, which had recently declared war against Germany, with the aim of forging a Japanese-Mexican-German effort to contain and distract the United States. Von Hintze was not overly concerned with America’s influence on the war itself; rather he looked to the postwar world where an aggressive United States might seek to take advantage of Europe’s distraction and the expected German victory over the Entente powers-Britain, France, and Russia-to expand its influence. This, of course, was a concern that Jahnke might have shared. Moreover, given his contacts in China and Japan, Jahnke would have been helpful to von Hintze’s scheme.

Besides his other talents, Jahnke had expert knowledge of explosives, a critical proficiency for a saboteur. Through Redly, von Hintze knew that American business was eager to cash in on war contracts, but American production would benefit the Allied powers alone. Thus, the diversion or destruction of American-produced munitions was important. The chief American agent for Allied war purchasing, J. P. Morgan and Co., sought to eliminate independent contractors like Reilly, who acted as a purchasing agent for various Russian entities. Reilly therefore had a personal incentive to frustrate their efforts. Also, through his influence among Russian officials in the United States, many of them open to bribery, Reilly provided his German friends with important information as well as a Russian cover for many of their actions.”

While the exact dimensions of von Hintze’s network are vague, the available evidence suggests that Jahnke and Reilly operated as special agents of the German Admiralty Staffs section for intelligence and sabotage (firr N. und S. Angelegenheiten).

I7See Richard B. Spence, “Sidney Reilly in America, 1914- 191 7,” Intelligence and Nutional Security 10, no. 1 (January 1995): 92-121; Liang, Sino-German Connection,l15-18.

‘%ee van Brincken’s statements in the San Francisco Bulletin between 30 August and 26 October 1920, as quoted in Curt Gentry, Frame-up: The Incredible Case of Tom Mooney and Warren Billings (New York, 1967), 465. On Reilly’s influence, see BIIONI, Reports of 12 September and 11 October 1918; Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford, P. N. Vrangel’ Collection, Box #I 10, File #22, “Rossiiskii voennyi agent v Konstantinopel,’ Report #7” (n.d.), 1.

96 THE HISTORIAN

As such they operated independently from, although sometimes in concert with, other branches of Germany’s secret apparat in the United States, chiefly the General Staff’s Abteilung JIIb (Section Illb). But unknown (presumably) to von Hintze, Reilly also was an agent for British intelligence, specifically Commander Mansfield Cumrning’s “naval” section of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MIlc. If, despite his prior activities in Mexico, Jahnke was not already in British employ, it is probable that Reilly brought him into the fold at this time. In any case, Jahnke’s enlistment in His Majesty’s Service was a logical step from his mercenary outlook. The simplest motivation of the double agent is that it is always more prof- itable to be paid by more than one patron at the same time-provided, of course, that their various interests can be juggled successfully. Based on his prior adventures in Mexico and the Far East, Jahnke no doubt thought himself uniquely qualified for the task.I9

The Jahnke-Reilly duo carried out their first job in early February 1915. Returning to Seattle from a brief visit to Vladivostok, Reilly passed Jahnke information about a shipment of powder waiting in Tacoma harbor for transport to Russia. The powder promptly exploded and subsequent investigation revealed sabotage. In a later report to Berlin, Jahnke took credit for the explosion. The incident established a pattern for subsequent Jahnke-Reilly collaborations, mostly under British direction: the target munitions were always Russian and usually the product of Morgan-related contracts. Russian munitions exploded with as big a bang as any other, but their destruction, unlike the much larger British and French purchases, had a negligible impact on the Allied cause.*’

During 1915, Jahnke and Reilly also facilitated the secret shipment of arms and munitions to Mexico in support of the partisans of deposed pro-German dictator Huerta. Reilly operated various front companies in New York, disguising the German-financed purchases as part of his Russian contracts. Jahnke supervised the shipments on the Mexican end, perhaps combining this work with his parallel anti- Huerta gunrunning efforts for the Americans.*’

”Mllc would later become Mlh; see Nicholas Hiley, “The Failure of British Espionage against Germany, 1907-1914,” The Historical Iournal26, no. 4 (1983): 877-88.

*“Tacomu Daily News, 3 February 1915, 1; USDS, File #862.20212/1101, secret telegram from Harrison to American Embassy, Mexico City, citing intercepted German messages, 1 1 April 1918.

”Katz, Secret War, 203-49,333-37; Meyer, Huerta, 21 1-14; U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Hearing on Brewery and Liquor Interests and German and Bolshevik Propaganda 11, no, 62 (Washington, L)C, 19201, 2168; BI/ONI, “Synopsis of Names Involved in the Weinstein-Reilly Case,” 4-6.


For example, in the spring of 1915 Reilly took a keen interest in the purchase of 300,000 Krag-Jorgenson rifles discarded by the United States. These weapons were the same type that Jahnke had smuggled to the Carranzistas in 1914. Franz Rintelen, posing as a Russian contractor, sought to buy the rifles using Reilly as his interme- diary. In early 19 15,4,500 of these rifles arrived in San Diego from San Francisco to join another 4,000 weapons and ammunition from Texas. These arms were to be picked up by the German schooner Annie Larson, also out of San Francisco. The Annie Larson never loaded the cargo, however, for American officials learned of the shipment through an anonymous tip and seized the weapons. While there is no direct evidence to link Jahnke to the incident, his involvement in similar schemes and his presence in San Francisco and San Diego in this period suggests the link. The point is that well-laid German plans suddenly went awry, as they did in most cases where Jahnke was involved.22

It may have been his role in arms smuggling that brought Jahnke to the attention of the American Customs agent in San Francisco. In February 1915 Inspector E. E. Enlow reported to the local U.S. Secret Service office that Jahnke not only was associated with opium and Chinese smuggling but also had violated American neutrality laws. His reports elicited no response, however. Was Jahnke’s prior assistance to American designs in Mexico reaping its reward? In the absence of any action by the Secret Service, Enlow repeated his charges a year later to the local office of the Bureau of Investigation, adding that Jahnke appeared to be working “under the direction of the German Consul at San Francisco,” Franz von B ~ p p . ~ ~ Enlow again pushed for a formal investigation, but again nothing happened.

In effect Jahnke was operating as a triple agent (German, British, and American) in prewar Mexico, although his formal links to U.S. agencies, if such existed, are uncertain. It is likely that any connections were through the Treasury Department’s Secret Service, which would explain the rumors of Jahnke’s connection to U.S. Customs or the Border Patrol as well as the curious reluctance of the Secret Service to investigate Enlow’s allegations. It is certain that soon after the war Jahnke became a confidential informant to the US. Military Mission in Berlin, although the officers

22BI/ONI, “In Re: Sidney Reilly, Neutrality Matter,” Agent L. S. Perkins to BI, 3 April 1917; John P. Jones and Paul M. Hollister, The German Secret Service in America, 1914-1918 (Boston, 1918), 149-50; Great Britain, Public Record Office, Kew (PRO), Foreign Office (FO), 371/2584, #18117, Healion to Upton, 16 February 1915, #18589, 17 February 1915, and #29366, Ross to FO, 13 March 1915.

23MIU, File #10541-367/59, “Memo for Lt. Van Dusen,” 21 June 1918, reproducing Enlow to Special Agent Tidwell, 10 March 1916.

98 THE HISTOFUN

involved were fully aware of his wartime career as a saboteur. Their confidence probably was based on his earlier service to American interests.24

From about March 1915, Jahnke indeed operated under von Bopp’s nominal direction, mainly communicating through the consul’s secretary, Wilhelm von Brincken. However, Jahnke insisted that he was not under the direct authority of the consul, an indication that he saw himself as responsible to another authority, almost certainly von Hintze (not to mention, of course, the British).Von Bopp and his lieu- tenants were illustrative of those German diplomats in the United States who eagerly, but rather ineptly, engaged in clandestine warfare, flagrantly violating American neutrality. By instigating ill-planned and disastrously unsuccessful sabotage, von Bopp and his superiors in Washington (Ambassador Count J. H. von Bernstorff and his commercial, military, and naval attaches) were expelled from the United States or arrested by 1916.25

Although a later American report credited Jahnke with being a “former adviser and aide to von Bernstorff,” he wisely maintained a discreet distance from the diplomatic plotters.26 Regardless, he avoided their downfall, and perhaps even had a hand in causing it. As a British agent, Jahnke’s job was not so much to prevent German sabotage as to manipulate it in such a way as to do the least harm to the Allied cause and, if possible, to do the greatest damage to German interests.

Pressed by an impatient von Bopp, in November 1915 Jahnke arranged the bombing of a foundry in San Francisco supposedly involved in British war contracts. However, it was later discovered that the factory made nothing but common sash weights. Resulting rumors that von Bopp’s agents were behind the blast attracted unwelcome attention from American authorities. Besides this embarrass- ing fiasco, Jahnke seems to have done little to assist von Bopp, and their relationship grew strained. The collective ineptitude of von Bopp and his associates may have helped push Jahnke into the arms of the British. Simply put, British clandestine operations in the United States, at least those managed by Reilly and MIlc, were more effective and certainly much less obvious. In particular, British activities

“MIL), File #10541-3671183, LtCol. Edward Davis (Berlin) to Col. Sherman Miles (Washington), 24 February 1921.

ZSDoerries, Imperial Challenge, 52-57,175-85, and passim; Jones and Hollister, German Secret Service, 149-51; E. E. Sperry, German Plots and Intrigues in the United Stares during the Period of Our Neutrality (Washington, D.C., 1918).

z6MID, File #10541-367,“Summary, Third Edition,” 17 July 1918, 1.


attracted little attention or interference from the Americans, a factor that could on occasion facilitate German or pseudo-German operation^.^^

In February 1916, about the time Enlow was preparing his second denunciation, Jahnke did a most unusual thing. He walked into the San Francisco office of the Bureau of Investigation and told agents that he recently had been approached by a mysterious man who wanted him to undertake some special “work at the U.S. naval facility at Mare Island. Jahnke, while declaring himself a loyal German, suggested that this person might be connected to the recent theft of a naval code from an American warship docked there. The agents were intrigued, as the theft was not public knowledge. However, to the utter mystification of subsequent American investigators, the San Francisco office recorded no follow-up investigation of Jahnke or the incident itself.28 Here again is the strong suggestion that certain American agents or agencies may have taken Jahnke into their confidence or utilized him as an informant.

We may gain some understanding of Jahnke’s motives by comparing this incident with a similar case a few years later. In 1920 Jahnke approached the U.S. Military Observer in Berlin and offered to become a confidential informant on German political and military affairs. Jahnke proved such a valuable source of information that MID officers thereafter shielded him, and their collaboration with him, from other U.S. agencies, most notably the Mixed Claim Commission agents prob- ing wartime sabotage. Jahnke could similarly have manipulated the San Francisco SS and BI offices by passing information that directly or indirectly compromised the activities of von Bopp and his agents, thus protecting himself from any reper- cussions when they were exposed.29

In March 1916 the German Admiralty named Jahnke chief for N. und S. Angelegenheiten for the western United States. To assist him, Berlin dispatched Lothar Witzke, a young naval officer, who reached San Francisco in May. Witzke was

27FBI, File #62-5394-2, “Memorandum for Mr. Hoover,” 30 April 1923; see also U.S. Department of Justice, “Alien Enemy Index, 1917-19” Case File #9-16-12-687, W. von Brincken.

28MID, File #10541-367/34, “Jahnke, C. A. alias Yenky, A.,” Dept. of State, Office of the Counselor, 19 March 1918; #10541-367/79, Lt. Utley to Dept. Intelligence Officer, So. Dept., 8 August 1918; #10541-367/81, “A. Jahnke, German Spy,” 10 August 1918; USDS, File #862.20212/1101, Lansing to American Embassy, London, 11 April 1918.

29MID, File #10541-367/183, Lt. Col. Davis, Office of the U.S. Military Observer, Berlin, to Col. Miles, GUMID, Washington, D.C., 24 February 1921; #10541-367/149, Davis to DMI, 30 July 1920; USDS, U-H 812-653/862-558, Miles to U.S. Military Attache, Mexico City, 4 September 1920; MID, File #2778-B-1, “Memorandum for the Chief of Staff,”6 March 1925; File #10541-268/286, H. H. Martin (MCC Counsel) to LtCol. C . K. Nulsen, 10 October 1935.

100 THE HISTORLAN

a former crewmember of the cruiser SMS Dresden, sunk by British guns off the coast of Chile in 1915. One of Witzke’s comrades on that vessel was Wilhelm Canaris, future chief of the Abwehr and later collaborator with Jahnke in anti-Nazi intrigue^.^"

With Witzke’s arrival, Jahnke’s association with von Bopp ended, although there was still some limited cooperation with von Bopp’s apparatus. In July 1916 several British ships sat in the docks near the San Francisco ferry terminal waiting to load war supplies. Perhaps on his own initiative, perhaps on prodding from von Bopp, Jahnke planned to plant a bomb aboard one of the vessels. On the morning of 22 July two men stood near the intersection of Stuart and Market Streets across from the ferry terminal. Their further progress was blocked by a massive Preparedness Day parade and its attendant throngs. One of the men carried a suitcase containing a time bomb. Either by design or necessity, the men abandoned the case at the spot and slipped away. Minutes later a powerful explosion ripped through the crowd, killing ten persons and maiming dozens.

To compound this tragedy, two local labor organizers, Tom Mooney and Warren Billings, subsequently were convicted of the crime. Both were innocent victims of a devious frame-up by political enemies, chief of whom was Jahnke’s former sergeant and his probable associate in detective work, ex-Pinkerton agent Martin Swanson. Whether Jahnke arranged the bombing to further Swanson’s scheme or was merely an accomplice is uncertain, but there can be little doubt that Jahnke was the man behind the blast.31 Later, two men closely associated with the German Consulate, von Bopp’s secretary von Brincken and C. C. Crowley, separately identified Jahnke as the bomber, as did others. Unfortunately for Mooney and Billings, this information was never introduced in their cases.32

At the very least the withholding of this evidence was a criminal oversight that helped keep the unfortunate Mooney and Billings in prison for 22 years. Most probably, the evidence was deliberately suppressed with just that end in mind. Beyond this, there may have been a desire among certain American authorities to suppress

”Aarons and Loftus, Unholy Trinity, 161, 170. 214; Cave Brown, Secret Life, 212; Heinz Hohne, Canaris (New York, 1979), 15-47; Andre Brissaud, Canaris (New York, 1974), 6-10.

3‘Gentry, Frame-Up, 25, and 29-75. passim; see also Richard H. Frost, The Mooney Case (Stanford, 1968); Ethan Ward, l h e Gentle Dynamiter: A Biography of Tom Mooney (Palo Alto, 1983); Wickersham Commission, Mooney-Billings Report (Montclair, N.J., 1968); FBI, File #62-1199.249, transcript of radio address by Hon. James E. Murray (Montana),“Torn Mooney and American Justice,” 10 May 1938.

jZAgent H. H. Clegg to 7. Edgar Hoover, memorandum, 7 October 1940, FBI, File #62-1199-249; File #62-5394-2, “Memorandum for Mr. Hoover,” 30 April 1923; Ward, 107,203; Gentry, 461-65.


evidence incriminating Jahnke in order to protect their past and present dealings with him. Throughout the 1920s, the U.S. Military Intelligence Division refused to supply the American investigators of the MCC with information pertaining to Jahnke, although they showed no such reluctance in the cases of other German saboteurs.

One result of the Preparedness Day bomb, accidental or intentional, was to increase official interest in the German Consulate, culminating in the arrest of von Bopp and his associates for violations of American neutrality-all of them, that is, except for Jahnke and Witzke. Another result was that the British munitions ships moved their berths to a more secure location across the bay.

In the Preparedness Day bomb incident, Jahnke may have been experimenting with devices in preparation for a far larger operation on the other side of the United States, an operation that would reunite him with Reilly. This was the Black Tom Island, New Jersey explosion of 30 July 1916, one of the largest blasts in American history.33

In the spring of 1915 German sabotage operations on the East Coast had come under the direction of Franz Rintelen, who was dispatched by the German General Staff’s Abteilung ZUb. Rintelen recruited agents, mostly German military reservists or merchant seamen, and between May and July 1915 successfully planted incendi- ary devices aboard several Europe-bound munitions ships. He also continued to collaborate with Reilly. In July, Rintelen was mysteriously recalled to Germany and arrested by the British en route. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Reilly betrayed him, thus eliminating the most effective authentic German agent in America.34

In early 1916 Reilly came under the direction of Sir William Wiseman, the new chief of MIlc in New York. Wiseman’s primary mission in the United States was to bring the country into the war against Germany. To this end he encouraged, or at least tolerated, acts initiated by Reilly designed to provoke maximum outrage from the American government and public. Black Tom was an ideal choice, as Reilly’s business dealings provided him with detailed knowledge of the site and its contents.

”Landau, Enemy Within, 77-84 and passim; Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1987).

34See Spence, “Sidney Reilly,” 99- 100; Rintelen, Dark Invader, pt. 2 , “Sabotage”; Landau, Enemy Within, 42-49.

102 THE HISI’ORIAN

However, the operation required someone skilled with explosives-someone like J a h r ~ k e . ~ ~

lmmediately after the Preparedness Day explosion, Jahnke and Witzke caught a fast train for the East Coast. There they met Reilly and some of Rintelen’s veterans, including Karl (Charles) Wunnenberg and Friedrich (Fred) Hinsch. According to Witzke’s later confession, confirmed by other evidence, he and Jahnke planted bombs among some 13,000 tons of explosives with the help of Hinsch and his men. The day after the explosion, Jahnke and Witzke rushed back to San Francisco. Jahnke went to some effort to conceal his brief absence from San Francisco; evidence later submitted to the German-American Mixed Claims Commission (MCC) included a time sheet for the Morse Agency showing Jahnke had worked on the night of 28 July, thus making it impossible for him to have been in New Jersey at the time of the explosion. However, other testimony revealed that someone else had worked for Jahnke on the night in question. In addition, more than 20 witnesses clearly identified Jahnke in the New York area on the night of 29 July.36

It should be noted that while Germany’s later MCC representatives could not deny that self-identified German agents had been involved in Black Tom and related explosions, they did deny that such acts had been conducted with the encourage- ment or prior knowledge of the German government or its representatives. American agents could show the involvement of Jahnke, Witzke, and others, but were never able to prove conclusively that such bombings were ordered or sanc- tioned by Berlin. The chief reason for this failure was that Berlin, while not disap-

35Papers of Sir William Wiseman (PWW), Sterling Library, Yale University, Folder #175, undated memo outlining Wiseman’s mission in New York; W. B. Fowler, British-Amerirun Relations, 191 7-19 18: 7 h e Role o f s i r William Wisetnan (Princeton, 1969), 14; Arthur Willert, The Roud to Safety: A Study in Anglo-American Relutions, (New York, 1953), 19-20; M. L. Saunders and P. M. Taylor, British Propaganda during the First World War, 1914-1918 (London, 1982), 180.82; Landau, Enemy Within, 150. On Wiseman’s contact with Reilly see I.ockhart, Reilly, 68-69; Norman Thwaites (Wiseman’s wartime assistant), Velvet and Vinegar (London, 19321, 141, 173, 181-87.

36MID, File #2778-8-1, H. H. Martin, Asst. to the US. Agent, Mixed Claims Commission (MCC) to Sec. of State, 2 March 1925; Asst. Sec. of State Robert E. Olds to Sec. of War Dwight Davis, 26 February 1926; Robert Bonynge, Chief U.S. Agent, MCC to Sec. of War Dwight Davis, 19 January 1927; MID, File #10541-268, H. H. Martin, US . Counsel, MCC to Lt. Col. C. K. Nulsen, War Dept., 10 October 1935; USDS File #862-20212/1101, Telegram #9412, Page to Sec. of State, 9 April 1918; FBI, File #62-5394-2, “Memorandum for Mr. Hoover” and #62-1199-227, Deposition of Fred Hadler, 2 September 1939, 4; United States-Germany Mixed Claims Commission, H. H. Martin to Attorney General, 15 January 1930; MID, File #2801 943- I , Officc of Naval Intelligence report of 9 October 1940,“List B,”Statements of Kurt Thumrnel, alias Charles Thorne; United States-Germany Mixed Claim Commission, U.S. Claims: Exhibit 977, Examination of Charles F,. Thornr, 25-26 September 1933; “Finds Black Tom Suspect,” New York Tirnes, 24 August 1920, 15.


proving of such acts, had not explicitly ordered the destruction of Black Tom or other sites. Given the dismal results of most other attempts at sabotage, Jahnke achieved dramatic, if ultimately insignificant, results, proving himself a most adroit double agent. The Germans could be counted on to facilitate and approve the sabotage, even if on a broader scale it actually worked against their best interests. Likewise, Wiseman or other British officials probably did not specifically order or sanction the explosions, but at most encouraged Reilly and others in such efforts. More to the point, they ensured that no Allied agents interfered with the sabotage and that the Germans were held fully responsible in American eyes.37

Jahnke and Witzke remained on the West Coast through the fall of 1916, with Jahnke ostensibly concentrating his energies on forging links to anti-British Irish and Indian groups. More than likely, he also fed information to American and British officials about von Bopp’s illegal support of Indian seditionists, a major factor in the consul’s subsequent downfall. This task complete, about September, Jahnke and his assistant headed back East where they joined forces with the acting head of the local German upparut, Charles Wur~nenberg.~~

In October 1916, Jahnke may have assisted Reilly by arranging a destructive fire at the Eddystone munitions plant near Philadelphia. The facility was engaged exclu- sively in Russian munition contracts, and Reilly was in the midst of a bitter commission dispute over these contracts with the plant’s owners, the Baldwin Locomotive Co. Again with the help of Reilly and Wunnenberg, on 11 January 1917, Jahnke engineered the destruction the Kingsland, New Jersey plant of the Canadian Car & Foundry Co., also engaged in the assembly of Russian artillery shells. Soon after, Wunnenberg was arrested by the Americans. His elimination left Jahnke the dominant figure among the surviving German operatives in North America.39

37Russel D. Van Wyk, “Enduring Myths: Accusations of Unrestrained German Sabotage in the United States,” paper presented at the Moscow (Russia) Conference on the First World War and Its Effects on the Modern World, May 1994; “New German Evidence Damages American Case,” New York Times, 28 September 1929, 7; “May Save Lehigh Valley,” New York Times, 26 August 1919, 18; “New Evidence in Kingsland Case,” New York Times, 1 February 1930,35; see also Spence, “Sidney Reilly,” 107-9.

38MID, File #9771-72, “Hindus in Mexico,” U.S. Military Attache, Mexico City; Lt. Col. R. M. Campbell to MID, Washington, DC, 22 November 1918.

”Landau, Enemy Within, 69, 307; The History of the Eddystone Ammunition Corporation, 1915-191 7 (n.p., n.d.), 7; MID, Files 2778-B-1 and 10541-268; FBI, File #62-9006-159, “Memorandum for the Director of the FBI,” from 0. Luhring, Dept. of Justice, 15 January 1930. On the role of Reilly’s Russian associates see MID, File #2778-B-5, H. H. Martin to Miss Carrick, War Dept., 13 December 1929, and Martin to Carrick, 5 March 1930. On Kingsland see Landau, Enemy Within, 92-93; Witcover, Sabotage, 189-91; see also Spence, “Sidney Reilly,” 103-5, 11 1.

104 THE HISTORIAN

Jahnke and Witzke returned to the West Coast, once again avoiding the dragnet with curious ease, but returned to Philadelphia in April for one more job with Redly. The target again was the Eddystone plant. On 11 April an explosion and fire, later proved sabotage, destroyed much of the plant and took more that 130 lives. For the next few weeks the two saboteurs remained in the East, although their activities are obscure. Reilly departed the United States for Russia in the immediate aftermath of the Eddystone explosion and did not return to North America until the end of the year. Likewise, von Hintze was on his way from China to Germany and a new diplomatic-intelligence post in Norway. Jahnke’s double game was entering a new phase.40

By late June, Jahnke and Witzke were in Mexico City, a move likely stimulated by the Wilson Administration’s severance of diplomatic relations with Germany the previous spring. There Jahnke established himself as the right-hand man of the German ambassador, Heinrich von Eckhardt. It is almost certainly no coincidence that Eckhardt was a protege of von Hintze, and he proved a staunch champion of Jahnke in his quarrels with other German agents. Later assumptions that Eckhardt restrained Jahnke’s activities are not supported by wartime observations. Rather, it was Jahnke who exercised a strong influence over Eckhardt. According to the Austrian ambassador in Mexico, Jahnke was every bit “as big a man” as Eckhardt, and American officials in Mexico regarded Jahnke as the most dangerous and influ- ential of the German agents there.4l

During the summer of 1917, Jahnke’s position came under attack from Fred Hinsch, recently arrived from the United States. Hinsch insisted that he and Fred Hermann (also in Mexico) were the real masterminds of Black Tom and Kingsland and the rightful leaders of Germany’s clandestine apparatus in Mexico. Hinsch’s secretary, Fred Hadler, later recalled “very animated” meetings where Hinsch and Jahnke argued their relative merits and traded accusations of fraud.42 Hinsch saw

““MID, File #10541-367/55, “In Re: Kurt lahnke-German Matter,” Report of BI agent Rathbun including statement of Dr. Veckie, 6 May 1918; Eddystone, 14; Landau, Enemy Within, 113; Supreme Court, New York County, #4768: 1920, “Sidney Reilly vs. the Baldwin Locomotive Works, Eddystone Ammunition Cory. and Samuel Vauclain; “At It Again . . .:editorial, New York Times, 18 April 1917, 12; NFW York Time,, 28 June 1917, 3.

“G. J. A. O’Toole. Honorable Treachery: A History of U.S. Intelligence, Espionage, and Covert Action from the Amencan Revolution to the CIA (New York, 1991), 265; MID, File 10541-367/9, “Summary. A Yenky-Jancke . . .,” 1 March 1918, and 7548. “In Re: One Janke, Supposed Merchant-Suspected German Spy,” 23 August 1917.

42USDS, File #862-20212/730, Lansing to American Embassy, Mexico City, 30 October 1917, and FBI File #62-1199-227, Deposition5 of Hadler, 2 September 1930 and 21 April 1938.


himself as the legitimate successor to Rintelen and thus as the personal representative of the General Staff.

In mid-September Hinsch‘s cause was strengthened by the arrival of Anton Delmar (alias Dilger), who presented himself as the emissary of Abteilung Illb. He and Hinsch advocated an aggressive campaign of provocation and sabotage aimed at pushing the United States into war with Mexico. This scheme included destruction of the Tampico oil fields and other American and British property. Jahnke argued that Mexico could not fight the United States, and a war would result in American occupation of the country. Instead, he countered, Mexico should be preserved as a safe haven for German covert warfare against America. Jahnke was supported by Ambassador E ~ k h a r d t . ~ ~

The nature of Jahnke’s relationships with Mexican officials, principally President Carranza and Generals Plutarco Eliis Calles, Esteban Cantu, and Manuel Pelaez, is uncertain. Jahnke boasted that he “dominated” Carranza and declared that the President, “Unser alter Munn” (“Our old man”), was “in full sympathy with [Germany] .”44 However, Jahnke once told a prospective recruit that Carranza was not a reliable ally, but other Mexican officials were. According to Jahnke, Carranza “did not count for m u c h and, if necessary, could be overthrown, while General Cantu, the governor of Baja California, had “very close and friendly relations” with Jahnke and assisted his movements to and from the United States. In his travels throughout Mexico and across its frontiers, Jahnke utilized a special pass signed by the Mexican minister of the interior that allowed him unmolested transit and authorized Mexican officials to lend him assistance when asked.45

Perhaps to seize the initiative from Hinsch, in August Jahnke ordered Witzke back to San Francisco, while Jahnke himself met with anti-British Irish in Monterrey, Mexico. Witzke’s mission resulted in a munitions explosion near Richmond, California, where he narrowly avoided capture, but he was back in Mexico by September. Jahnke then undertook his own mission in California. At the end of September he destroyed the American tanker J. A. Moffett near San Francisco, and in December the steam schooner 0. M. Clark in San Pedro. Overall,

43See O’Toole, Honorable Treachery, 265; Katz, Secret War, 414-415.430-432; Landau, Enemy Within, 171-174; and USDS, File #862-20212/730, Lansing to American Embassy, Mexico City, 30 October 1917.

44MID, File #10541-367, “Summary, Third Edition,” 17 July 1918,2; “Insists Carranza Aided German Plot,” New York Times, 3 September 1919, 5; MID, File #10541-707, C. L. Keep, “German Activities in Mexico,” 30 July 1918, 7; MID, File #10541-367, British vice-consul, Douglas, Arizona to A. J. Balfour, #272,3 June 1918.

45MID, File #10541-367, “Summary . . .,” and #10541-707, “German Activities in Mexico,” 30 July 1918, 7.

106 THE HISTORIAN

these were minor accomplishments, but they demonstrated to Berlin that Jahnke could strike American targets almost at will.46

In the meantime, Hinsch and Delmar submitted their case to the General Staff. In December, that body acknowledged Hinsch as overall chief of sabotage in the Americas, but kept Jahnke in charge of an autonomous naval section. Jahnke refused to accept this arrangement and appealed to Berlin. He emphasized his suc- cesses in the United States and argued that Hinsch possessed “no organization, is personally impossible to work with, and . . . ineffi~ient.”~’ He went on to claim that he had agents in Argentina, Panama, Hawaii, the Philippines, China, Japan, and Alaska, and that since May 1917 he had destroyed a Japanese vessel in Ecuador as well as the two American ships and a British schooner. To steal Hinsch’s thunder, he outlined an ambitious plan of operations against the United States. He advocated the construction of a secret submarine base near Tampico that would allow U-boats to strike oil tankers and American troop ships departing Pensacola. He also claimed to be fomenting “strikes and mutinies” in the U.S. Army.48 To carry out this plan, he asked for more money and more officers from the Dresden and other ships. Eckhardt voiced firm support for Jahnke and asked permission to dismiss Hinsch and Delmar because of “grave disc~veries.”~~

Such innuendo, suggestive of dishonesty and disloyalty, was repaid in kind by Hinsch and Delmar. The German military attache in Madrid, sympathetic to Hinsch, reported to Berlin that Eckhardt was completely under Jahnke’s spell. However, the acting German naval intelligence chief in Spain, Wilhelm Canaris, expressed absolute confidence in Jahnke and his organization. Was the Canaris- Jahnke axis that would be evident in WWII already in place in 1918? Delmar admitted that Jahnke was a clever agent, but argued that he lacked organizational ability and had an unreliable

46USDS, File #862.20212/730, Lansing to American Embassy, Mexico City, 30 October 1917; MID, File #10541-367/55, Statement of Dr. Veckie, San Francisco Examiner, 27 September 1917, 5:7; San Francisco Chronicle, 8 December 1917, 8:3.

47MID, File #10541-367/36, “Memorandum: Sabotage Campaign in the United States By German Agents in Mexico,” n.d.; USDS, File #862.2012/1101, telegram #9412, Page to Sec. of State, 9 April 1918, and File #862.20214/33, Thurston to Sec. of State, 20 November 1918.

48Mll), File #10541-367, R. L. Barnes to Military Intell. Section, Washington, DC, 12 February 1918; USI>S, telegram #753, Page to Sec. of State, 31 July 1918; FBI, File #62-5394-2,“Albert Kurt Jahnke” [sic], 28 April 1923; Katz, 425-27 and OToole, 265.

49MID, File #10541-367/36, Sabotage Campaign; USDS #862.2012/1101, Page to Sec. of State, 9 April 1918.


“American mentality.” He cautioned that it would not be wise to dismiss Jahnke out- right because “he might turn against Germany.”5o Whatever Delmar knew or suspected about Jahnke’s loyalties, his statement reveals a frequent dilemma in dealing with double agents. Their knowledge and contacts often made them too valuable to get rid of, even if they were clearly untrustworthy. Inside the apparatus, he could be monitored and employed to some benefit. Interestingly, Jahnke’s Nazi superiors reached a similar conclusion about him during World War IL51

Berlin’s revised judgment in the dispute came in February. Jahnke became the chief secret agent (der bevollmachtige Geheimagent) for Mexico, Central America, the United States, and Canada but was to limit his activities to those areas. His opponents, however, refused to admit defeat. In the summer of 1918 Delmar decided to take his case to Berlin in person and sailed for Spain, where he met a mysterious-and most ~onvenient-death.~~

By the spring of 1918 Jahnke controlled a group of 15 to 20 agents in Mexico and an undetermined number elsewhere. Most of these were Germans, but there also was a Russian, two Spaniards, and a Black Anglo-Canadian. The last was William Gleaves, who handled liaison with the International Workers of the World (IWW, or “Wobblies”) and other American dissident groups. In reality, Gleaves was a British undercover agent who reported to Captain A. E. W. Mason, the chief British intelligence officer in the U.S.-Mexican border region. Jahnke probably used Gleaves as a conduit to Mason, who in turn passed information to Wiseman and/or British naval intelligence. Mason’s reports to his American colleagues reveal him to have been well-versed in Jahnke’s activities. In later years Mason hinted about his agents within the German apparatus, one of whom, Mr. “Y,” bears a striking resem- blance to Jahnke in many respects.53

The activities of Mason and other British operatives in Mexico did raise doubts among their American counterparts. In late 1918, the US. Military Attache in Mexico City, Lt. Colonel R. M. Campbell, questioned the reliability of British information regarding Jahnke and other German agents and hinted that such reports

SOMID, File #10541-367/36, Sabotage Campaign; Landau, Enemy Within, 172.

51Schellenberg, Memoirs, 304-5; “Jahnke and the Jahnkebiiro,” 1-2.

52USDS, File #862.20212/1621, Harrison to American Embassy, London, 23 October 1918, and telegram #9412; PAAA, Jahnke to Reichswehrministerium Marine Leitung, 29 January 1925.

53William R. Corson, The Armies oflgnorance: The Rise ofthe American Intelligence Empire (New York, 1977), 60-61; MID, File #10541-367, “Summary for Capt. Keppel,” 3 June 1918, and 367/53, “Memorandum Notes Furnished by Major Mason,” 8 June 1918; Roger L. Greene, A. E. W Mason: The Adventures o fa Story Teller (London, 1952), 139, 155-57.

108 THE HISTORIAN

were deliberately misleading. Campbell and others noted that while the British provided information regarding German activities in Mexico (mostly via cable inter- cepts), the data seemed highly selective, largely aimed at proving that the Germans maintained a large and dangerous organization without offering much practical help in combating it. Most likely, the British aim was not so much to influence and mislead the Americans as the Germans. The more convinced the Americans were that Jahnke and his organization presented a genuine threat, the more convinced Berlin would be that he was doing his job properly. From the British standpoint it was essential that their man stay at the helm; thus, the last thing to be desired was for the Americans to apprehend him.54

Jahnke’s circle also contained an American undercover agent, Paul Bernard0 Altendorff. A former podiatrist in the Mexican Army, Altendorff was American military intelligence’s agent “A- l .” Jahnke probably knew that Altendorff was an American spy; Gleaves certainly did. Altendorff, however, seems to have taken Jahnke at face value-“a loyal German.”55 This, of course, is exactly what Jahnke and his British associates wanted; there could be no hint of a connection between Jahnke and British intelligence. Jahnke used Altendorff to feed carefully selected information to the Americans, mainly evidence that supported his prowess as a German agent.

The Americans were suitably impressed. They regarded Jahnke as the most dangerous man in Mexico, meriting the closest scrutiny. However, despite their dogged efforts, he was able to elude observation whenever he wished, often for weeks at a time. He continued to move back and forth across the Rio Grande without detec- tion, an ability that strongly suggested assistance-probably British-on the American side, but U.S. agents never were able to determine who helped him.56

In February 1918 Washington received alarming news that Jahnke’s agents were preparing U-Boat bases near Mazatlan and Manzanillo on Mexico’s Pacific coast and south of Tampico on the Gulf Coast. However, no harm came from these bases, at least in part through Jahnke’s efforts. In early 1918 he ordered Witzke, Gleaves,

54MID, File #9771-72, Campbell to DMI, 22 November 1918, and P7.3326, “Henry Bode”; MID, File #I0541 -367/53, “Memorandum Notes Furnished by Major Mason.”

55“lnsists Carranza . . .,” New York 7imes. 3 September 1919, S.

”MID, File #10541-367, “In Re: One lanke (sic) Supposed Merchant, Suspected German Spy,” 1 September 1917, and #lo54 1-367137, U.S. Military Attache, Mexico to Military Intelligence Branch, Washington, “Revolutionary Group,” 18 March 19 18, “Yanky and Group,” 23 March 1918, and “Calle de Mcrida 49,” 28 March 1918. See also: #10541-367/31, U.S. MA, Mexico City to MID, 18 March 1918, and ‘< ~ Summary . , .*’’ 2 .


and Altendorff to undertake a new mission in America-the organization of IWW radicals in a campaign of strikes and sabotage. Jahnke entrusted Witzke with a message in the same code as the German Embassy’s secret communications. Moreover, Witzke carried another, uncoded, letter that stated this fact and handily provided a key! No sooner did the trio cross the border at Nogales than Altendorff denounced Witzke to American authorities, as Jahnke doubtless had anticipated. As a result, German plans were compromised and Jahnke had a legitimate excuse for his inabil- ity to produce significant results. His reputation as a loyal German was also enhanced in the process; as one American report stated, the message found on Witzke “proves absolutely that Janke (or Yenki) is an important German agent.”57

Despite this setback to German clandestine efforts, in April 1918 Jahnke received messages from Berlin ordering him to accelerate his efforts to foment unrest in the American Army and to prepare strikes against the Panama Canal and other strate- gic targets. American officials took the threat seriously. A concerned U.S. military attache in Mexico reported that Jahnke planned a general attack on oil facilities at the end of May. Jahnke’s affirmation of his objectives was sent to Berlin not via the wireless station at Chapultepec but by cable, using the San Francisco-Vladivostok route. This discovery further alarmed American officials, who demanded close scrutiny of foreign cable traffic passing through the United States to Russia. Interestingly, Jahnke’s old collaborator Reilly had just arrived in Russia on a mission for British intelligence. Moreover, Jahnke’s message was passed to the Americans by the British, who supposedly intercepted it on the European end.58

In apparent obedience to Berlin’s orders, Jahnke again headed for the U.S. East Coast. American officials as far away as Baltimore were warned to be on the look- out for him. Nevertheless, he visited New York and other eastern cities without dif- ficulty. His exact business is obscure, but it involved meetings with members of the anti-British “Irish Secret Lodge.” After a brief return to Mexico, Jahnke again went north. In July American agents spotted him in Escondido, California, where he met with another of his Irish contacts. He also tried to recruit Mexican-Americans to assist German covert operations on both sides of the border. He was supposed to be putting the finishing touches on his sabotage offensive. However, it is more likely

”MID, File #10541-367, R. L. Barnes to Capt. Van Dernan, 12 February 1918, and Memorandum for Capt. Van Deman, 25 May 1918; Corson, 62-63.

58MID, File #10541-367/42, Campbell to Milstaff, Washington, #182, 24 May 1918; USDS, File #862,20212/1101, Page to Lansing, #9412,9 April 1918,2.

110 THE HISTORIAN

that he was engaged in empty plotting. The war in Europe had definitely gone against Germany, and an end to the struggle was only a matter of time.59

As the war neared its close, American interest in Jahnke intensified. In September Henry (Heinrich) Bode, a German operative earlier linked to both Hinsch and Jahnke in Mexico, was in American custody. Bode offered to tell “everything he knew” about Jahnke, which may have been substantial, considering that he and Jahnke shared an address for some months in Mexico City.“ However, Bode’s statement was not preserved, at least not in Jahnke’s file. In November, after the Armistice, an American Naval intelligence agent was in Guatemala seeking Jahnke’s capture and extradition to the United States, presumably to face charges. In light of Jahnke’s wartime activities on the U.S. West Coast, it is significant that this agent, Ernest Forbes, worked out of the San Francisco office.61

Despite his reputation and his obvious talents in the field, Jahnke’s performance as a saboteur in the last year of the war was decidedly 1acMuster. Not a single American soldier failed to reach France through his efforts, nor were any British oil wells harmed by him or any other German agent. Jahnke justified this failure to Berlin as the result of limited resources, unreliable accomplices, and bad luck. London, of course, had no reason to be unhappy with his performance. If he was not a British agent, he certainly should have been.

With the war’s end in November 1918, Jahnke did not return to Germany, perhaps because he was not certain of his reception in the new Republican regime. He remained in Mexico through 1919 where he subsequently acted as an unofficial diplomat for the new Weimar regime and engaged in secret negotiations with Mexicans and Americans. He returned to Germany in early 1920 and played an obscure role in the abortive Kapp Putsch (March). In 1922 he joined a German military mission to China, and early the following year he organized a sabotage campaign against French forces in the Ruhr. From 1925 to 1933, he served as a deputy in the Saxon and Prussian Landtugs and later the German Reichstag. He also operated a private intelligence service, the so-called Juhnkebiiro, which under the Nazi

59MlD, File 10541-367/77, “In Re: J.H. (sic) Jahnke-Alleged German Agent,” 29 July 1918; #lo541 -367, Report, District Intell. Officer, Laredo Dist., 4 June 1918; #10541-707, “Kurt Jahnke: German Activities,” Weymouth to APL Los Angeles Office, 25 July 1918 and “In Re: German Activities in Mexico,” L. Keep to Los Angeles Office, 30 July 1918; USDS, File #862.20212/1408, Page to Lansing, #764, 1 August 1918.

“MID, File #10541-367, “Memorandum for Captain Keppel, Subject: Henry Bode,” 24 September 1918.

h’USDS. File #862.20214/33, Thurston to Sec. of State, 20 November 1918.


regime was utilized by Rudolf Hess, the German Foreign Ministry, and Canaris’ Abwehr. Despite his outspoken anti-Nazi views and definite evidence that he was a British double agent, Jahnke survived because of his value as a liaison with the Japanese and Chinese and, perhaps, as a secret conduit to the British. He vanished in 1945, but in 1954 he was back in Berlin, living in the British sector but also on very good terms with the Soviets. He was, after all, a very useful fellow.62

In the larger context of twentieth-century espionage, Jahnke, like Reilly, was something of an anomaly or, perhaps more accurately, a survivor of an earlier, less structured style of skullduggery. One result of the First World War was the expansion and consolidation of national intelligence organizations. Such bureaucratized agencies, usually operating under strict political and ideological control, were incompatible with the freelance or “rogue” agent epitomized by Jahnke. However, as the more recent cases of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames demonstrate, deception and betrayal, Jahnke’s stock in trade as a double agent, are by no means a lost art.

In a smaller context, Jahnke’s actions as a clandestine British agent in both the neutral and belligerent United States belies the “special relationship” and “Anglo- Saxon solidarity” before the German menace. But such notions were never much more than convenient fantasies. Britain (and the other Allies) needed the United States in the war for the same reason they earlier had sought to secure American financial and industrial aid: practical necessity in a desperate struggle. The terrible butcher’s bill already paid by Britain, France, and others left little room for quib- bling about abstract ethical questions in dealing with friend or foe. Thus, to employ a renegade German agent to help bring the Americans into the war against Germany was not only practical, it even had a perverse logic. It was also conve- niently deniable, in part because it seemed so improbable.

Even aside from those Americans who may have been privy to some of Jahnke’s activities, the United States was not completely taken in. The belief that British intelligence operatives had behaved dishonestly and had engaged in activities against the interests of the United States was openly voiced in the U.S. MID and the State Department after the war. A confidential MID memorandum from late 1920 expressed special concern about the actions of Sir William Wiseman and Col. Thwaites, the two officers most closely linked to Reilly and, at least indirectly, to Jahnke. A 1924 special agent report to the State Department’s Counsellors Office con-

6ZKatz, Secret War, 618,n.48; 621 11.141; 636, n.46 and n.48, citing unsigned, undated memorandum in PAAA, Vereinigte Staaten von Nordamerika, 16 Secr., and U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command (USISC), File #34013,66th Counter-Intelligence Corps Group (Germany), Report on Hans Klein, 9 February 1954.

112 THE HISTORIAN

tained even darker suspicions about these men, but there was no proof. Suspicions aside, however, with the cooperation of certain American interests Jahnke’s double game remained secret, which is what he, most of all, desired. After all, the most successful secret agents are indeed those who remain secret.63

‘’MID, File #9771-745/45, “Memorandum on British Secret Service Activities in This Country:’ 2 November 1920; USDS, CSA File #215, Special Agent Sharp to Chief Special Agent Bannerman, 13 December 1924.

Documents

K. A. Jahnke and the German Sabotage Campaign in the United States and Mexico, 1914–1918