Germany’s Secret Army
“A hundred or more of their subordinates have been convicted of various criminal offenses and sent to prison. Still more were promptly interned in prison camps at the outbreak of war in 1917. The secret army included all types, from bankers to longshoremen. Many of them were conspicuous figures in American public life, and of these no small part were allowed to remain at large under certain restrictions—and under surveillance. Germany’s army in the United States was powerful in numbers; the fact that so many agents were working destruction probably hastened their discovery; the loyalty of many so-called German-Americans was always questionable. The public mind, confused as it had never been before by the news of war, was groping about for sound fundamentals, and was being tantalized with false principles by the politicians. Meanwhile Count von Bernstorff was watching Congress and the President, Dr. Albert was busy in great schemes, Captain von Papen was commanding an active army of spies, and Captain Boy-Ed was engaged in a bitter fight with the British navy.”
But long after the departure of the principals for their native land the enterprises they had inaugurated persisted.
Among the pre-war activities the German government made a contract with Dr. Karl Buenz, American head of the Hamburg-American Line, for the provisioning, during war, of German ships at sea, the contract being jealously guarded in the German Embassy at Washington. Merchant ships were to be used for the purpose. July 31, 1914, a cablegram from Berlin called on Dr. Buenz to begin filling his contract. The first ship to be loaded (with coal) was the Berwind, and the question arose as to who among the conspirators should apply for the clearance papers. Finally G. B. Kulenkampff, a banker and exporter, was directed to do so. He swore to a false manifest of the cargo and got the papers. The Berwind carried food as well as coal for the provisioning of German warships to be found at secretly designated points, and her destination was not Buenos Ayres as the clearance papers declared, so the United States was unwittingly a party to German naval operations, on the third day of the war, by German mendacity. The Berwind sailed for a little island known as Trinidad (not the British West Indian island) about 70° east of Brazil, and there her cargo was transferred to five German ships, one of which was the Kap-Trafalgar, presently sunk by the British auxiliary cruiser, the Carmania, which steamed into view while the Trafalgar, the Berwind and one other of the vessels were still at Trinidad.
It is interesting to know that most of the ships chartered for this lawless purpose did not carry out the intention. The Unita was one of them and we are told:
“Her skipper was Eno Olsen, a Canadian citizen born in Norway. Urhitzler, the German spy placed aboard, made the mistake of assuming that Olsen was friendly to Germany. He gave him his ‘orders,’ and the skipper balked. ’“Nothing doing,” I told the supercargo,’ Captain Olsen testified later, with a Norwegian twist to his pronunciation. ‘She’s booked to Cadiz, and to Cadiz she goes!’ So the supercargo offered me $500 to change my course. “Nothing doing—nothing doing for a million dollars,” I told him. The third day out he offered me $10,000. Nothing doing. So,’ announced Captain Olsen with finality, ‘I sailed the Unita to Cadiz and after we got there I sold the cargo and looked up the British consul.’”
Under the Buenz contract twelve ships were either purchased or chartered at a total cost of $1,419,394, and it is said that of their shiploads of supplies less than $30,000 worth were ever transferred to German war vessels. Buenz, after much delay in the proceedings, was sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment in the Federal penitentiary at Atlanta.