MI5 in the Great War

by Nigel West

  MI5

  IN THE GREAT WAR

  EDITED BY NIGEL WEST

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Abbreviations

  Organisation of MI5’s G (Investigation) Branch

  Introduction

  Preface by Dr Lucy Farrer

  I MI5 Pre-War

  II 1914

  III 1915 and 1916

  IV 1917

  V 1918

  Appendix I

  Appendix II

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THE editor is grateful for the advice of Judy Nokes of the National Archive at Kew for permission to reproduce the MI5 files KV 1/39 to KV 1/44.

  ABBREVIATIONS

  AOIC Air Officer in Command

  ARO Aliens Restriction Order

  BCI Bureau Central Interallié

  BEF British Expeditionary Force

  CGS Chief of the General Staff

  CSIS Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service

  DMI Director of Military Intelligence

  DMO Director of Military Operations

  DNI Director of Naval Intelligence

  DRR Defence of the Realm Regulations

  DSI Defence Security Intelligence

  GSO General Staff Officer

  HOW Home Office Warrant

  IGC Inspector-General Communications

  IO Intelligence Officer

  OSA Official Secrets Act

  MCO Military Control Officer

  MI-1(c) Secret Intelligence Service

  MI5 Security Service

  MI6 Cable and War Trade

  MI6(d) Munitions Intelligence Branch

  MI7 Press Censorship

  MI8 Cable Censorship

  MI9 Postal Censorship

  MO5G Security Service

  PoW Prisoner of war

  PSL Possible Suspects List

  R British double agent in Holland

  SWL Special War List

  T Tobert Tornow

  W/T Wireless Telegraphy

  WTID War Trade Intelligence Department

  ORGANISATION OF MI5’S G (INVESTIGATION) BRANCH

  MI5 underwent three significant wartime reorganisations. In August 1915 MO5A became MO5G and consisted of five sub-sections: G, G1, G2, G3 and G4. In October 1915 G was further sub-divided into five sections and two new sub-sections, with G2 acquiring G2(a) and G2(b).

  In April 1916 G2 absorbed G2(a); and G2(b) and became G6. In September 1916 G3 became D Branch. In January 1917 G2 was sub-divided into four sub-sections. G5, previously Oriental Affairs, was redesignated E Branch. Simultaneously, G2(a) became G4. Later the same year G3 became H Branch.

  – G1: Sedition and peace propaganda

  – G2: Counter-Espionage

  – G2(a): Intercepted communications

  – G2(b): Port Control

  – G2(c): References from F Branch

  – G2(d): All other sources

  – G3: Photography, chemistry and technical research [later H Branch]

  – G4: Intercepted correspondence [previously G2(a)]

  – G5: Oriental Affairs, later Translations

  – G6: Special enquiries [previously G2(b)]

  INTRODUCTION

  IN 1921 MI5’s Director-General, Colonel Vernon Kell, authorised the preparation of a comprehensive account of his organisation’s operations during the Great War. His motives for doing so were partly to do with protecting his budget, primarily concerned with a struggle then raging within Whitehall to take control of the rival Secret Intelligence Service, and everything to do with the creation of a detailed record of what had been accomplished just before, and during the conflict, in relation to the then untold story of a massive German espionage offensive. It stands, therefore, as a unique record of a hitherto unknown dimension of Great Britain’s intelligence history, and is all the more remarkable because the original author also had the benefit of post-war interrogation reports, for example of the German spy-master Hans Eils and, most helpfully, access to the roster of 136 agents compiled by the Zweigstelle staff at Antwerp, a copy of which was seized by the Belgian Sureté. Because this study would not be declassified for some ninety years, only those with a legitimate access to MI5’s famous Registry could apply to read this extraordinary history. Even a century later, the declassified version still contains a few redacted passages, usually intended to conceal the true identity of a particular agent.

  In pursuit of his various objectives, Kell commissioned an academic, Dr Lucy E. Farrer, to undertake the massive task of sifting through the records of hundreds of individual investigations, and then to create, in some ten volumes, each of more than two hundred pages of typescript, a veritable treasure trove of historical data which recorded MI5’s extraordinary role in detecting and countering the Kaiser’s efforts to construct a large spy network in Great Britain from 1905 onwards, and then to infiltrate significant numbers of agents through neutral countries, principally the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, Denmark and the United States.

  A graduate of the Sorbonne, Farrer took her PhD in literary history and in 1908 published an account of the life and times of Claude de Sainliens, a Hugenot refugee who arrived in England in about 1554, taught French in London for more than thirty years, compiled one of the first English-French dictionaries, and worked in Lewisham under the alias Claudius Hollyband, an Anglicised version of his surname.

  As a scholar, Farrer had plenty of intelligence experience, having served in MI5 during the war; she summarised MI5’s files, and the manuscript of her volumes was typed in April 1921 under the supervision of a Colonel Jervis, and then in January 1922, passed by a Major Phillips to a civilian clerk, H. M. Cubb. The entire work was then archived.

  In the early days Kell’s entry into the counter-espionage field was supported by a tiny staff, and undertook various duties, including liaising with the Home Office and military authorities, and acting as an interrogator of especially recalcitrant suspects. His outside investigations were conducted by two retired detectives, Superintendent William Melville and Inspector Regan, both formerly of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. For enquires further afield, Kell relied upon local constabularies, with very mixed results as all too often the German spies spotted the somewhat inept, supposedly clandestine, surveillance. As will be seen, Kell was also dependent on cooperation from the GPO, and the interception of the mail and telegrams, on warrants issued by the Home Office, was a crucial instrument in countering foreign espionage.

  As for the German spies, they were undoubtedly well-briefed, professionally managed and often quite colourful. Take, for example, Mrs Emily Riley of Sheerness and her four beautiful daughters, Nellie, Patricia, Edith and Emily, all of whom became romantically involved with German agents. Patricia married Karl Hentschel who embezzled a huge sum of money from the Germans and decamped with his wife to Australia, taking her sister Edith too. Emily, a shop assistant, would marry George Pelling, an artificer in the Royal Navy. Edith would be courted by Captain Friedel Fels, the German intelligence officer sent to find the absconding Hentschel. Connected to them were Edith’s fiancé Philip Penrose, who taught at the Royal Navy’s Mechanical Training Establishment at Chatham and later worked at the Woolwich Arsenal, and another Royal Navy non-commissioned officer, George C. Parrott, who was Patricia’s lover. Parrott’s son-in-law, Gunner Francis Deacon, and his son Charles, were also serving in the Royal Navy and were implicated. This network, encompassing the strategically important naval bases at Chatham and Sheerness, was but one of several spy-rings never previously documented which monitored the movements of British warships, reported on naval exercises and researched the performance of new weapons and tactics adopted by the Royal Navy.


  Although in recent years some historians have disparaged both a supposedly amateurish German effort to collect intelligence in England, and Whitehall’s bungling response, it would seem that the Kaiser’s spy-masters, led by the very energetic Gustav Steinhauer, took a highly professional approach to building networks and even attempted in 1915 and 1916, through the use of Josef Marks and the double agents John de Heer, Marius Hoogendyk and Charles van Ekeren, to learn more about his adversary. Operating from Wesel, and later from various bases in neutral Holland, Steinhauer and his Naval Intelligence counterparts recruited a series of agents to travel to Great Britain under various covers to collect and transmit valuable intelligence. After the war MI5 received from the Belgian Sureté a list of German agents enrolled in Antwerp, and the list is impressive, proving not only the guilt of suspects against whom there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution, but also demonstrated how the Germans adopted the ingenious method of selecting pairs of American journalists to travel to London and Amsterdam, having them exchange ostensibly innocuous telegrams as a means of conveying information about the movements of warships. MI5 probably would never have uncovered this particular scheme if it had not been for a British correspondent in New York who was approached and pretended, having taken advice from MI-1(c), to play along and participate.

  Such stratagems were thought to have originated in World War II, but it is clear from the pages that follow that, by 1915, MI5’s security apparatus covered the globe and enjoyed access to all letters entrusted to the Royal Mail, all overseas telegrams, and to a group of experienced detectives who could conduct discreet enquiries about suspects in Spain, Holland, Norway and Sweden.

  Although censorship provided plenty of leads to enemy espionage, MI5 also took full advantage of two other useful sources in Rotterdam, a port which would become something akin to a front-line in the intelligence war. There the enterprising British consul-general, Ernest Maxse, incurred the disapproval of the Foreign Office by indulging in some very undiplomatic conduct, of the kind that enabled him to give advance notice of the impending departure on missions to England of some German spies, such as Haicke Janssen, the Dutch cigar salesman arrested in London in June 1915 and executed on 30 July. Another profitable source was Richard Tinsley, an extremely energetic and effective British Secret Intelligence Service officer who genuinely ran his own shipping business in Rotterdam while simultaneously managing a network of agents who kept suspects under surveillance and occasionally succeeded in penetrating some of the local German spy-rings. By using the very considerable leverage of the commercial Black List maintained by the Ministry of Blockade, which could ruin a foreign trader, Tinsley proved highly successful in recruiting valuable informants, among them Frederick Graff who compromised numerous putative German spies. The redoubtable Tinsley is credited with tipping off MI5 to the departure of Leopoldo Vieyra in 1916 and directing the investigation in Amsterdam of all those associated with George Bacon, the American journalist MI5 considered its best, most impressive adversary of the war.

  The German strategy of recruiting agents who could operate under plausible journalistic cover proved effective, and a ring involving Rutledge Rutherford and Charles Hastings was uncovered. The investigation eventually identified the organisers in New York responsible for their recruitment, and they were imprisoned.

  Tinsley also acquired the evidence that ensured the conviction in 1917 of August Patrocinio, and undertook the dogged detective work that led to Albertine Stanaway’s internment in December 1916. A French dress-maker living in London, she turned out to be a key figure in a very extensive network involving numerous other German agents.

  Accordingly, the Farrer Historical Report, even in this edited version, represents the British counter-espionage experience during the Great War, and is unique in being the only account of its kind of the Kaiser’s pre-war and wartime intelligence offensive.

  Nigel West

  PREFACE BY DR LUCY FARRER

  THE experience of MI5 between 1909 and 1914 allowed that there was only really one active enemy, the Germans, and that their conception of espionage embraced the whole life of the state: naval, military, economic, political and social information, and often details of the conduct and fortune of private citizens were of interest to them. There are signs that their agents stirred up discontent and strikes, but the commercial penetration of this country was partly due to our own legislation (the Patents Act).

  During the later years of the war, owing partly to the disruptive and deterrent impact of MI5 acting in England, and Ml-I(a) acting abroad, partly to the progress of hostilities ashore and afloat, the Germans seem to have laid even greater stress upon sabotage and the fomenting of discontent and revolutions. Fewer agents were sent into the country for espionage proper since our armies were, for the most part, abroad, and naval espionage was carried on chiefly by seamen and travellers on board neutral merchant vessels.

  Throughout the war, the Germans attached considerable importance to the voyages of their agents who were cross-examined by competent persons as to the ships, mines, etc. which they had seen at sea. The results achieved by air-raids, the effects upon the popular morale of such terrorist acts and of the stress of submarine warfare, the question as to whether hospital ships carried munitions of war, the anti-recruiting and peace propaganda campaign, were questions and methods peculiar to the state of war.

  But speaking generally, the difference between the methods and aims of German espionage in peace and war is one of degree and emphasis rather than of quality. Its elements are so various and inclusive that in legislation the wider term, ‘German agent’ is now substituted for that of spy, and similarly the expression ‘Defence Security Intelligence’, of larger connotation than ‘counter-espionage’, has been adopted to express more adequately the work done by MI5.

  The unity of the attack is demonstrated in the long line of spy cases from 1911 to 1917; these cases are related to one another by one or more common factors, such as a spy address, or a knowledge of new developments and often the relation is so close that one case will throw a flood of light upon another. This is so true that even though the Special Intelligence Bureau broke up the German organisation at the outbreak of war, it is possible to discern at least one of the links between the pre-war and wartime organisations. That link is Miss Brandes, once secretary to Baron Bruno von Schroeder and his agent in charitable work. As such she must have been, almost inevitably, in constant touch with Adolf Evers, a prominent member of several outstanding German charitable institutions and associations including Libury Hall, and with various German pastors of suspect attitude. The case of Charles Wunnenburg, who combined the organisation of sabotage with that of espionage proper, illustrates this unity from another point of view. Each spy case is indeed an entity, the details of which require mastering for itself; but each spy case is also only one link in a long chain and its details must be mastered and called to mind in dealing with all other cases.

  From these considerations one law emerges: success in investigation depends upon mastery of detail and the corollary of this is that no one can foretell what detail will not prove to be of primary importance either in the case itself or in some later one. Of chief importance are contacts: the best instance of this is the contact between Charles Wagener, William Klare and Abraham Eisner at Portsmouth; the police failed to establish contact between Klare and Wagener – the man who betrayed Klare had been ready to act as a postbox to Wagener. Again the tedious enquiry about Eisner would have been shortened if his contact with Klare had been realised sooner. Hence, tedious though it may become, all contacts should invariably be noted.

  From the considerations set forth in the preceding paragraphs, it follows that both in peace and war, espionage proper should be dealt with by one counter-organisation, the repository of continuous records, traditions and methods. Further it would seem to be of advantage to the State that there should be at all times free interchange of information between the
department dealing with counter-espionage (the Defence Security Service) and that dealing with the preservation of peace and order (the Public Security Service).

  Investigations

  The qualities required of the investigator are mental alertness, elasticity, knowledge of men, intuitions, an accurate and powerful memory combined with imagination, judgement to choose the right method of handling a case and the moment to strike, besides the special knowledge of counter-espionage legislation and preventive measures, some knowledge of law, legal procedure and the laws of evidence. He should also know one or two languages thoroughly.

  Whether in peace or war, the investigator works under cover and uses both methods, ordinary and special machinery. The ordinary machinery consists of other government departments working in their ordinary routine but set in motion at the request of the investigator. The special machinery consists of methods peculiar to counter-espionage but carried out by ordinary government departments specially conceived and constituted in time of war.

  The aim of the investigator is:

  1. To discover enemy agents.

  2. To collect evidence against such persons.

  3. To bring them to justice or to nullify their efforts.

  Two main classes of spy exist: the foreigner, whether resident or on a mission, and the traitor, whether of British or alien origin. Detection comes either through the action of the bureau or it may follow on information received from some outside source. The sources vary in peace and in war.

  Sources of detection in peace

  Inside:

  1. The Precautionary Index.

  2. Home Office Warrant.

  3. Spy contacts established in pursuing an investigation.