At the end of October 1914, a public court martial at the Westminster Guildhall sentenced Lody to death by firing squad at the Tower of London – the first execution at the Tower for one and a half centuries. ‘There was’, wrote Thomson later, ‘some difference of opinion as to whether it was sound policy to execute spies and to begin with a patriotic spy like Lody.’ According to his wife, Kell regarded him as a ‘really fine man’ and ‘felt it deeply that so brave a man should have to pay the death penalty’. The bravery with which Lody met his end strengthened his feelings of remorse. Lody wrote to the officer commanding Wellington Barracks:
Sir, I feel it my duty as a German Officer to express my sincere thanks and appreciation towards the staff of Officers and men who were in charge of my person during my confinement. Their kind and considered treatment has called my highest esteem and admiration as regards good-fellowship even towards the Enemy, and if may be permitted I would thank you for make this known to them.
I am, sir, with profound respect,
Carl Hans Lody, Senior Lieutenant, Imperial German Naval Res. II.D
On the morning of his execution, Lody said to the Assistant Provost Marshal, ‘I suppose you will not shake hands with a spy?’ The officer replied, ‘No, but I will shake hands with a brave man.’51 A German destroyer in the Second World War was named in Lody’s honour.
By comparison with counter-espionage, Kell initially regarded countersubversion as a low priority. Until 1916 pacifism and labour unrest seemed to MO5(g) to pose little threat to the British war effort. In August 1914 the Trades Union Congress announced an industrial truce for the duration of the war and Labour leaders joined their social superiors on recruiting platforms. Kell and his wife attended a public meeting in 1915 at which the veteran strike-leader Ben Tillett joined forces with the Duke of Rutland to appeal for warm clothing for the troops. ‘Never shall I forget’, wrote Constance Kell in a somewhat patronizing passage in her memoirs, ‘the picture of Ben Tillett, very short of stature, and the Duke, very long indeed, standing together side by side, one with an amused expression, the other looking down benevolently . . .’ ‘Can you picture those men’, Tillett asked his audience, ‘with nothing but their bare bodies to oppose to the guns of the enemy?’ Constance Kell found that ‘a telling phrase’.52
Though six of the forty Labour MPs (including the future prime minister Ramsay MacDonald) opposed the war, Arthur Henderson, the wartime leader of the parliamentary Party, joined the coalition government formed by Asquith in May 1915. Early opposition to the war centred instead on the small Independent Labour Party (ILP). Kell obtained an HOW to begin a ‘check’ on the correspondence of the Stop-the-War Committee, founded by C. H. Norman, one of the most militant ILP leaders. The results were reassuring. According to a report submitted to Kell in July 1915, letters to the Committee were few and declining in number:
No letter has been seen which would appear to indicate that the writer has anti-British sentiments or that the Committee is in any way inspired or assisted from enemy sources . . . It appears therefore that the members of the Committee are obtaining very small results from their propaganda and the harm they are causing at the present time is practically negligable [sic].53
The most active period for German espionage in Britain was the first winter of the war.54 German agents were no longer confined to those sent by the naval Nachrichten-Abteilung. After the outbreak of war, Sektion IIIb, German military intelligence, also began to target Britain, though its main priorities remained France and Russia. From early November 1914 Sektion IIIb’s principal base for operations against Britain was a ‘war intelligence centre’ (the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle) in occupied Antwerp, which ran a ‘spy school’ for agents despatched to France and Britain.55 Early in 1915 a Belgian refugee in Holland wrote to the War Office giving a name (Frans Leibacher) and an address in Rotterdam used by the Antwerp Kriegsnachrichtenstelle for correspondence with its agents in Britain.56 Interception of letters using the address began on 30 January, and led to three arrests within the next month. The first to be caught was the German-born Anton Küpferle, who had lived in the United States and claimed to be a naturalized American but was believed by MO5(g) to have served in the German army. Küpferle arrived in England from America in February 1915 and sent three intercepted letters to the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle Rotterdam address which, when the censorship flat iron was heated and run over them, revealed, written in secret ink (which he was the first German spy to use) what MO5(g) considered ‘information of military and naval importance’. Küpferle simplified MO5(g)’s task by including his real name in the letters and the fact that he was staying at the Wilton Hotel, London, where he was arrested on 19 February.57
Küpferle inspired none of the sympathy extended to Lody, striking his interrogators as ‘a typical German non-commissioned officer, stiff, abrupt, and uncouth’. In the middle of his trial at the Old Bailey he was found hanging by a silk handkerchief from the ventilator in his cell. By his body was a message written on a slate:
I can say that I have had a fair trial in the U. Kingdom, but I am unable to stand the strain any longer and take the law in my own hand. I fought many battles and death is only a saviour for me . . . What I done I have done for my country. I shall express my thanks, and may the Lord bless you all.
The originals of Küpferle’s correspondence do not survive, but, according to Basil Thomson, an intercepted letter written by him to another German agent showed less charity towards his captors. In it he welcomed the use of poison gas against British soldiers and the ‘stupefying death’ it would cause. This letter, Thomson believed, showed that Küpferle, unlike Lody, was a typical Hun with ‘the true Prussian mentality’.58 Most subsequent captured spies, whether or not they were of German nationality, also inspired little sympathy. Kell regarded most of these later spies as ‘men ready to do any dirty work merely for gain’ rather than patriots like Lody.59
While the Küpferle correspondence was being investigated by MO5(g) in February 1915, four other letters were intercepted en route to the same Rotterdam address used by the Antwerp Kriegsnachrichtenstelle, also containing military and naval intelligence reports written in invisible ink between the lines of the letters. Inquiries identified the writer of one of the letters, posted in Deptford and signed ‘Hahn’ in secret ink, as John Hahn, a naturalized German-born baker living in Deptford High Street, who was arrested on 24 February. Next day his wife told Scotland Yard that she believed that a Russian named Karl Müller was involved in her husband’s activities, and provided his address. Müller was arrested on 25 February, six weeks after his arrival in England. Though he had a Russian passport, MO5(g) concluded, correctly, that he was German.60
The Antwerp Kriegsnachrichtenstelle was unaware of Müller’s arrest and carried on sending messages to him, thus giving MO5(g)’s head of counter-espionage, Reginald Drake, the opportunity to attempt a variant of the deception which the publicity given to Lody’s trial and execution had prevented in the previous year. With the help of the bilingual Hinchley Cooke, Drake sent fabricated reports from Müller, usually written in secret ink, to the Antwerp Kriegsnachrichtenstelle, which responded by sending money and requests for further information.61 Until the end of May 1915 the fabrications were taken seriously by the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle. During April 1915 reports on a steamer allegedly leaving Bristol loaded with twenty heavy guns, the stationing of eight divisions of volunteers at Aldershot and large-scale embarkations of soldiers from Dartmouth were all rated ‘credible’. An entirely fictitious report of 30 April on British preparations for an amphibious attack on Schleswig was, remarkably, rated ‘reliable, confirmed by other reports’. The Kriegsnachrichtenstelle was particularly impressed by Müller’s claim to have a reliable source in the Admiralty. It regarded as ‘credible’ a fabricated report from Müller received on 10 May, which it believed was probably based on the Admiralty source, that large numbers of troops had been assembled on the Humber and Firth of Forth which might be inte
nded for the (non-existent) Schleswig operation or another theatre away from the Western Front. Three days later another fabricated report that Müller had personally travelled to Hull and Leith and seen large numbers of soldiers ready for embarkation was assessed as ‘reliable’. On 30 May however, the Antwerp Kriegsnachrichtenstelle showed the first signs of suspicion, classifying Müller’s most recent reports as ‘less credible of late’, probably because his claim that 80,000 additional British troops had just been sent to France was contradicted by other intelligence.62
German intelligence had failed to notice articles which had been appearing in The Times since 10 April, following the lifting of an earlier press embargo, on Müller’s arrest and forthcoming trial. MO5(g)’s deception, however, began to unravel on 5 June when the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle noticed a Times report that Müller had been sentenced to death and his accomplice John Hahn to seven years’ penal servitude.63 Before his execution at the Tower on 22 June, Müller is reported to have shaken hands with the firing squad.64 Drake and Hinchley Cooke, however, continued to send fabricated communications in Müller’s name to Antwerp. According to a later account by the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle:
We knew without any doubt whatsoever that one of our agents [Müller] in the UK had been arrested and shot. A short time later we received a request from this ‘dead agent’ asking for money as he was absolutely skint. A week later he wrote again complaining bitterly that we had left him in the lurch and also sent a report that didn’t contain very much. The report was a good copy of the agent’s style but we immediately became suspicious that the British intelligence service should take the trouble to write reports to us in compensation for the fact that our man had suffered the ultimate fate. We gave the appearance of going along with the wishes of our dead colleague and sent him money whilst urging him on to be diligent in his work. The British were truly diligent in supplying us with the information they wanted us to have.65
German intelligence seems not to have realized, however, that all Müller’s reports since the end of February had been bogus. Hinchley Cooke later recalled that MO5(g)’s attempt to continue the deception was finally abandoned when the Kriegsnachrichtenstelle summoned Müller back to Rotterdam to receive further instructions. The money sent from Antwerp to Müller enabled MO5(g) to buy a much needed second car, a two-seater Morris which was promptly christened the ‘Müller’.66 Maurice (later Lord) Hankey, secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, who in December 1916 became Britain’s first (and so far longest-serving) cabinet secretary, later recalled, while carrying out a review of British intelligence in 1940: ‘During the last war I myself was driving an automobile bought by the MI5 and lived on a salary paid by the Germans for . . . imaginary services.’ He also recalled that MO5(g) had ‘troubles with the Treasury’ over its unauthorized expenditure of German money.67 According to Hinchley Cooke, ‘the Treasury sent a full-dress letter to the Army Council pointing out the irregular use of funds which should have been paid into the Exchequer.’68
The Müller deception anticipated in some respects the Double-Cross System, MI5’s greatest success in the Second World War. Kell’s inability to keep the arrest and trial of German spies secret, however, meant that the deception was bound to be short lived. The government was too anxious to prove to a sometimes sceptical public that it was catching German spies to suppress news of its triumphs. Even had the Müller deception continued for longer, however, its success would have been limited. Unlike the turned German agents of the Second World War, Müller was executed and therefore unable to add personal credibility to the disinformation sent to German intelligence in his name. The Double-Cross System also depended not on one individual but on a series of turned German agents as well as on the co-operation of the whole intelligence community to provide a mixture of information and disinformation capable of both impressing and deceiving the enemy for the remainder of the war. Unlike MI5 in the Second World War, MO5(g) lacked the regular flow of SIGINT (signals intelligence) which enabled it to monitor the impact of the deception.69
The discovery by German intelligence of the Müller deception made it difficult for MO5(g) to attempt a similar deception without arousing German suspicions. In the summer of 1915, however, before it realized that its deception had been detected, Kell had one further opportunity. Early in May the postal censors had discovered in a mailbag from Denmark a letter addressed to Berlin which had been wrongly included in the London post. The letter was from one Robert Rosenthal in Copenhagen to ‘Franz Kulbe’ at an address in Berlin which MO5(g) knew to be used by German naval intelligence. It also knew that ‘Franz Kulbe’ was an alias employed by Captain von Prieger of the German Admiralty. Though the letter purported to be a business communication, the Censorship flat-iron revealed writing in secret ink which disclosed that he was about to leave for England disguised as a travelling salesman of cigar lighters. When Rosenthal was arrested in Newcastle, travelling on a US passport, no incriminating evidence was found on him. But when confronted with his intercepted letter to Berlin, he admitted he was German and had been sent by Prieger to spy on the Royal Navy. Though he denied he had sent Prieger information of any value, he also admitted that he had been on two previous wartime espionage missions. Like some of the German spies sent to Britain before the war, Rosenthal had a criminal record, having been imprisoned for forgery in Germany and subsequently spending five years in the United States.70
After Rosenthal’s confession he quickly offered to become a double agent and, to prove his willingness to do so, provided information on secret inks, secret codes and the methods of passport forgery employed by German intelligence.71 Kell rejected the offer, probably influenced by memories of the pre-war Graves case, when his first double agent (who, like Rosenthal, had a criminal record) had successfully deceived him. As the Müller deception shows, Kell thought it safer for MO5(g) to impersonate a dead German agent than to turn a living one. Rosenthal tried desperately to save his life by claiming that his loyalties were to the United States, not to Germany: ‘I indeed have never cared for any German, never liked Germans, always wanted to be a real Yankee.’72 He went to the scaffold at Wandsworth military prison on 15 July, pleading for his life and, according to an officially authorized account, ‘gave unutterable disgust to the authorities by his lack of common courage’. The commandant called him a ‘cur’.73
The use of invisible ink by German spies prompted Kell to make his first move into forensic science by seeking the assistance in 1915 of Henry Vincent Aird Briscoe, an inorganic chemist at Imperial College, London. He and his laboratory devised a series of techniques for the detection of invisible ink in letters and the increasingly sophisticated chemicals used in secret writing.74
During interrogation Rosenthal had revealed that, instead of recruiting German nationals as spies, German intelligence intended to make more use of agents from neutral countries disguised, like himself, as commercial travellers. Kell responded by ordering detailed censorship of letters and cables from Britain to neutral countries. This ‘super-censorship’, as it was known in MO5(g), revealed a telegram dated 25 May sent from Southampton by a Dutchman Haicke Janssen, posing as a travelling cigar salesman, to Dierks & Co. in The Hague (an address already known to be used by German intelligence), ordering 4,000 Sumatra cigars ‘mark A.G.K.’, which MO5(g)’s existing knowledge of German codes enabled it to identify as a reference to four Alte Grosse Kreuzer (old-model large cruisers), which inquiry showed were indeed docked at Southampton. A further reference to 4,000 of a brand of Sumatra Havanas was thought to refer to four torpedo boats, also present in Southampton Harbour. A request from Kell to the Chief Censor for copies of all other cables sent to Dierks & Co. revealed two more sent from Edinburgh by another purported Dutch cigar salesman, Willem Roos.75
Though later to become essential to Security Service operations, intelligence liaison during the First World War was limited by the determination of the French and British armed forces to prevent intrusion by their alli
es into their own spheres of operations. French intelligence, however, made a major contribution to the Janssen case.76 On 15 June Colonel Cartier, the head of French military SIGINT, handed to Major (later Major General Sir) Walter Kirke, an intelligence officer at British GHQ in France, decrypted German telegrams giving some details of agents in British ports. One of the decrypts clearly identified Janssen, then – like Roos – under arrest, and Kirke noted with satisfaction that ‘it should ensure his being shot’. Cartier travelled to London soon afterwards for discussions with Kell.77
After Janssen and Roos had been sentenced to death on 16 July, both tried, like Rosenthal, to save their lives by offering to change sides. Janssen claimed that his sympathies had really been with Britain all the time and provided intelligence on the German espionage network in Holland which assisted the discovery of subsequent German agents. Roos feigned madness in a further attempt to avoid execution. Both were shot by firing squad in the Tower of London on 30 July. Kell seems never to have contemplated using either as a double agent. His wife’s judgement probably reflected his own: ‘It was all done for money and therefore Janssen and Roos were despicable men ready to do any dirty work merely for gain.’78
While Janssen and Roos were awaiting trial, the head of Cumming’s Rotterdam station, Richard Tinsley (codenamed ‘T’), a tough former naval officer and shipping manager described by one of his staff as ‘a combination of sea captain and prize fighter’,79 reported that Josef Marks, a German agent travelling on a US passport, was shortly to leave for England. Marks was arrested on his arrival at Tilbury on 18 July, admitted he had been sent to gather intelligence on munitions production and revealed the codes he had been told to use, but claimed that he had been put under heavy pressure to undertake the mission. On 28 September he was sentenced by court martial to five years’ penal servitude.80 Intelligence from ‘T’ led to the detection of four other German agents in 191581 and one in 1916.82
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