Odd People

by Basil Thomson

  The code used by these men was simple enough. They would send telegrams for 10,000 Cabanas, 4,000 Rothschilds, 3,000 Coronas and so on. A message telegraphed from Portsmouth of this kind would mean that there were three battleships, four cruisers and ten destroyers in the harbour and these messages, so interpreted, corresponded with the actual facts on the dates of the telegrams. Neither man could produce any evidence that he had transacted bona fide business with his cigars. They could not produce one genuine order. They were brought to trial for espionage and were convicted. A few days later both made confessions. Janssen actually gave some useful information about the German spy organisation in Holland. He said that his sympathies were really with us and he could not understand how he had been tempted to serve the other side. It appeared that in 1913 he had actually been granted a silver medal by the Board of Trade for life-saving on the immigrant steamer Volturno, which was burnt at sea with the loss of 400 lives. Her wireless call for help was responded to by the vessel in which Janssen was serving and he, among others, was instrumental in saving 500 lives. Roos feigned insanity in prison and it was one of the pleas put forward by his counsel. There was, however, no medical support for this plea and it was arranged that on 30 July both men should be executed in the Tower. They met their end stoically. Janssen was shot first. Roos asked as a last favour to be allowed to finish his cigarette. That done, he threw it away with a gesture as though that represented all the vanities of this world and then he sat down in the chair with quiet unconcern. The news of the execution soon reached Holland and the Germans began to find it very difficult to obtain recruits from neutral countries.

  During May and June 1915, in about a fortnight, no less than seven enemy spies were arrested. The most spectacular were Reginald Roland, whose real name was Georg T. Breeckow and Mrs Lizzie Wertheim.

  Breeckow was the son of a pianoforte manufacturer in Stettin and he was himself a pianist. It is curious to reflect that professional musicians should have formed a respectable proportion of the detected spies. One would have thought that it was the last class that would be able to report intelligently on naval and military matters. Breeckow spoke English fluently and knew enough Americanisms to pose plausibly as a rich American travelling in England for his health. Before he left Holland he was furnished with the address of Lizzie Wertheim, a German woman who had married a naturalised German and had thus acquired British nationality. She was a stout and rather flashy-looking person of the boarding-house type and she had been in England for some years. She was separated from her husband, but on terms that made her independent. She was equally at home in Berlin, the Hague and London.

  Breeckow, who appeared to be possessed of a considerable sum of money, was at once accorded a warm welcome. The pair hired horses from a riding-school and rode in the Park during the mornings. They took their luncheon at expensive restaurants and Lizzie Wertheim became intoxicated with this kind of life and waxed so extravagant that Breeckow had to expostulate and report the matter to his employers. She would no longer travel without a maid.

  It was decided between the two that the best working arrangement would be for the woman to do the field work and for Breeckow to work up her reports in London and dispatch them to Holland. Mrs Wertheim went to Scotland, hired a car and drove about the country picking up gossip about the Grand Fleet. Her questions to naval officers were, however, so imprudent that special measures were taken; Breeckow’s address was discovered and in due course the two were brought to New Scotland Yard for interrogation. The artistic temperament of Breeckow was not equal to the ordeal. His pretence of being a rich American broke down immediately and he was aghast to find out how much the police knew about his secret movements. Though he made no confession, he returned to Cannon Row in a state of great nervous tension. Lizzie Wertheim, on the other hand, was tough, brazen and impudent, claiming that as a British subject she had a right to travel where she would. She declined to sit still in her chair, but walked up and down the room, flirting a large silk handkerchief as if she was practising a new dancing step. Further inquiries showed that, unlike the previous American passports carried by spies, which were genuine documents stolen by the German Foreign Office, this passport was a forgery right through. The American Eagle on the official seal had his claws turned round the wrong way and his tail lacked a feather or two. The very red paper on which the seal was impressed did not behave like the paper on genuine documents when touched with acid, nor was the texture of the passport paper itself quite the same. It also transpired that Breeckow had been in America continuously from 1908, that he had got into touch with von Papen’s organisation, which had sent him back to Germany for service in this country. For this purpose he became an inmate of the Espionage School in Antwerp, where he was taught the tricks of the trade, which were quite familiar to us. He had also a commercial code for use when telegrams had to be sent.

  Breeckow had maintained throughout that he knew no German, but his assurance began to break down in the loneliness of a prison cell. He had a strong imagination and no doubt the thought that his female accomplice might be betraying him worked strongly on his feelings. One morning I went over with a naval officer to see how he was. There was a question about signing for his property and he was sent into the room for the purpose. When he found himself alone with us he said suddenly, ‘Am I to be tried for my life?’

  ‘I understand that you are to be tried.’

  ‘What is the penalty for what I have done?’ (Up to this point he had made no confession.) ‘Is it death?’

  ‘I do not know,’ I said. ‘You have not yet been tried.’

  ‘I can tell from your face that it is death. I must know. I have to think of my old mother in Stettin. I want to write a full confession.’

  I told him that of course he was free to write what he pleased, but that anything he did write would almost certainly be used against him at his trial.

  ‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘I have carried the secret long enough. Now I want to tell the whole truth.’

  So paper and ink were supplied to him and he wrote his confession.

  As Mrs Wertheim was a British subject and could claim trial by civil court the two were tried together at the Old Bailey on 20 September before three Judges of the High Court and were found guilty. Breeckow was sentenced to death and Mrs Wertheim to ten years’ penal servitude, as it was considered that she had acted under the man’s influence. Breeckow appealed unsuccessfully and his execution was fixed for 26 October at the Tower. The five weeks that elapsed between the sentence and the execution were extremely trying to the persons responsible for his safety. He had broken down completely and was demented by fear. On the morning of his execution he was almost in a state of collapse. At the last moment he produced a lady’s handkerchief, probably the relic of some past love affair and asked that it might be tied over his eyes instead of the usual bandage, but it was too small. It had to be knotted to the bandage and then tied. He was shivering with agitation and just before the shots were fired there was a sudden spasm. It was believed afterwards that he had actually died of heart failure before the bullets reached him.

  Lizzie Wertheim was removed to Aylesbury Convict Prison to undergo her sentence and there she died some two years after the Armistice.

  Of all the spies that were convicted and executed the man for whom I felt most sorry was Fernando Buschman. He was a gentleman by birth, he had no need of money, for he was married to the daughter of a rich soap manufacturer in Dresden, who had kept him liberally supplied with funds for his studies in aviation. He was quite a good violinist and he had all the instincts of a cultivated musician. He was of German origin, but his father had become a naturalised Brazilian and he himself had Latin blood in his veins. He was born in Paris, but his boyhood was spent in Brazil, where he attended a German school. He had invented an aeroplane and in 1911 the French government allowed him to use the aerodrome at Issy for experimental purposes. For the three years before the war he had been travelling all
over Europe and when hostilities broke out the German Secret Service got hold of him. He had been to Spain, to Genoa and to Hamburg and in 1915 he was in Barcelona and Madrid and then in Flushing, Antwerp and Rotterdam. It speaks volumes for the stupidity of the directors of the German Espionage School in Antwerp that they should have selected as a disguise for such a man as Buschman the role of commercial traveller. The imposture was bound to be discovered at once. He was far too well dressed and well spoken and he knew nothing whatever about trade. He arrived in London with a forged passport and put up at a good hotel with his violin, not usually part of the luggage of a commercial traveller. After a few days he moved to lodgings in Loughborough Road, Brixton and thence to lodgings in South Kensington. This he thought was enough to fit him for moving about in England. He visited Portsmouth and Southampton and from certain minute notes found among his papers it became evident that his one qualification – his knowledge of aeronautics – was not to be turned to account: he was to be employed as a naval spy. Unfortunately for him he ran short of money and was compelled to write to Holland for fresh supplies. He was arrested at his lodgings in South Kensington and was found to be quite penniless. When the detective arrived he said, ‘What have you against me? I will show you everything.’ Then he reeled off his lesson. He was in England for the purpose of selling cheese, bananas, potatoes, safety razors and odds and ends and in France he had sold picric acid, cloth and rifles. He implied that his employers did a miscellaneous business almost unrivalled in commercial annals, but when he said that they were Dierks & Co., of the Hague, we pointed out that they occupied one room and were cigar merchants. Moreover, it was found that his passport was written in the well-known handwriting of Flores, who used to instruct German spies in Rotterdam. This man had been a schoolmaster and his characteristic handwriting was well known. There was also a letter from Gneist, the German Consul-General in Rotterdam, from Colonel Ostertag, the German Military Attaché in Holland and from two persons who were known to be active in recruiting for the German Secret Service. He was tried at the Westminster Guildhall on 20 September 1915, the day of the trial of Breeckow and Mrs Wertheim at the Old Bailey and was sentenced to death. I know that persons who were present at the trial were impressed by his manly bearing and his frankness. After his sentence he was not separated from his violin. It was his great solace through the long hours of waiting. He asked for it again on his removal to the Tower on the night before his execution and played till a late hour. When they came for him in the morning he picked it up and kissed it, saying, ‘Goodbye, I shall not want you anymore.’ He refused to have his eyes bandaged and faced the rifles with a courageous smile. How differently the artistic temperament works in men and women!

  CHAPTER 12

  THE HIRELING SPY

  HAVING FAILED WITH Germans, the enemy now turned to South America for their spies. The large German colony in Central and South America was an excellent recruiting-ground. In June 1915, a few days after the capture of Fernando Buschman, two postcards addressed to Rotterdam attracted the attention of the Postal Censor. They announced merely that the writer had arrived in England and was ready to begin work. The postmark was Edinburgh. The police in Scotland were set to work and a few days later they detained at Loch Lomond a native of Uruguay, who gave his name as Agusto Alfredo Roggin. He was a neat, dark little man, not at all like a German, though he admitted that his father was a German naturalised in Uruguay in 1885 and that he himself was married to a German woman. Unlike many of the spies, he did not pretend that his sympathies were with the Allies. His account of himself was that he had come to England to buy agricultural implements and stock; that his health was not very good and that Loch Lomond had been recommended to him as a health resort. He spoke English fluently. According to his admissions, he had been in Hamburg as lately as March 1914 and was in Switzerland just before war broke out. In May he was sent to Amsterdam and Rotterdam, probably to receive instructions in the School of Espionage. He arrived at Tilbury from Holland on 30 May and after staying for five days in London, where he asked quotations for horses and cattle, he went north. So far he had transacted no business.

  As a spy he was one of the most inept that could have been chosen. Even on the journey north from King’s Cross he asked so many questions of casual acquaintances that they became suspicious and took upon themselves to warn him not to go anywhere near the coast. In fact, they were so hostile that he left the compartment at Lincoln and spent the night there. Nor was his reception in Edinburgh any more auspicious. When he came to register with the police he was put through a searching inquiry. He was very careful to tell everyone at Loch Lomond that he had come for the fishing, but it chanced at that moment that certain torpedo experiments were being carried out in the loch and the presence of foreigners at once gave rise to suspicion. The sending of the two postcards was quite in accordance with ordinary German espionage practice. In order to divert suspicion the spies were instructed to send harmless postcards in English addressed to different places. Moreover, a bottle of a certain chemical secret ink was found in his luggage. He was tried on 20 August, found guilty and executed at the Tower on 17 September. He went to his death with admirable courage and declined to have his eyes bandaged when he faced the firing-party. Some time after his execution a Dr Emilio Roggin was removed from a steamer bound from Holland to South America. He turned out to be the brother of the dead spy and was greatly distressed at the news of what had befallen him. It transpired that he was in Germany on the outbreak of war and had been compelled by the German government to serve as a medical officer with the troops in the field. It had taken nearly two years for him to obtain his release and he was now on his way back to Uruguay.

  Roggin was at large in England only for eleven days and therefore he was unable to send any information of value to his employers. Nevertheless, he was a hired spy and it was at that time most necessary to make the business of espionage so dangerous that recruits would be difficult to get.

  About the same time a well-educated and well-connected Swede of between fifty and sixty years of age named Ernst Waldemar Melin arrived in this country. He had been a rolling-stone all his life. At one time he had managed a Steamship Company at Gothenburg, in Sweden and then on the breakdown of his health he began to travel all over the world. He had found casual employment in London, Paris and Copenhagen and at the beginning of the war he found himself in Hamburg without any means of subsistence. He applied, without success, to his relations and then, hearing that there was plenty of remunerative work to be had in Antwerp, he went to Belgium with the genuine desire to obtain honest employment. There at a café he came into touch with one of the espionage recruiting agents, who were always on the look-out for English-speaking neutrals. At first, according to his own account, he resisted the temptation, but at last, being utterly penniless, he succumbed and was sent to the Espionage Schools in Wesel and Antwerp. At Rotterdam he received his passport and the addresses to which he was to send his communications. He put up in a boarding-house in Hampstead as a Dutchman whose business had been ruined by the German submarine campaign and who was anxious to obtain employment a shipping office. He made himself agreeable to his fellow lodgers, who fully accepted his story. He was under police suspicion from the first, but there could be no confirmation until he began to write. His first communications were written on the margin of newspapers, a method which the Germans had then begun to adopt. He took his arrest quite philosophically. Fortune had dealt him so many adverse strokes that she could not take him unaware. A search of his room brought to light the usual stock-in-trade at that time – the materials for secret writing and a number of foreign dictionaries used as codes, as well as a Baedeker. He made a clean breast of his business, protesting that he had no real intention of supplying the Germans with useful information. All he meant to do was to send some quite valueless messages that would procure for him a regular supply of funds. He was tried by court-martial on 20 and 21 August. His counsel urged that he ha
d sent nothing to the enemy which could not have been obtained from newspapers, but he could not, of course, put forward the plea that he was not a spy. Melin took this last stroke of fortune like a gentleman. He gave no trouble and when the time came he shook hands with the guard, thanking them for their many kindnesses and died without any attempt at heroics.

  One German agent was discovered through the purest accident. It was apparently the practice at that time for the Germans to make use of ex-criminals on condition that they undertook espionage in an enemy country. It chanced that some postal official in Denmark had mis-sorted a letter addressed from Copenhagen to Berlin and slipped it by mistake into the bag intended for London and this letter was written in German by a man who said he was about to start for England under the disguise of a traveller in patent gas-lighters, in order to collect military and naval information. The letter was already some weeks old and there was no clue beyond the fact that some person might be in the country attempting to sell gas-lighters. A search of the landing records was at once instituted and it was found that at Newcastle at that very moment a young man named Rosenthal was on board a steamer about to sail for Copenhagen, after making a tour with his gas-lighters in Scotland. In another hour he would have been outside the three-mile limit and out of reach of the law. He proved to be a young man of excitable temperament and a Jew. He was very glib in his denials: he had never lived in Copenhagen, he was not a German, he knew nothing about the hotel from which the letter had been written. It was growing dusk and so far the letter had not been read to him, but he had given me a specimen of his handwriting, which corresponded exactly with that of the letter. Then I produced it and read it to him. While I was reading there was a sharp movement from the chair and a click of the heels. I looked up and there was Rosenthal standing to attention like a soldier. ‘I confess everything. I am a German soldier.’ But the remarkable part of this story was that he was never a soldier at all. On a sudden impulse he had tried to wrap his mean existence in a cloak of patriotic respectability. Subsequent inquiry showed that his full name was Robert Rosenthal, a German born in Magdeburg in 1892. As a boy he had been apprenticed to a baker in Cassel. He disliked the work, returned to Magdeburg and at a quite early age was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment for forgery. After his discharge he became a rolling-stone and went to sea, but he was in Hamburg on the outbreak of war and was engaged for a time by the American Relief Commission. It is not clear whether he was actually liberated from prison for the purpose of espionage, but espionage was the kind of work for which undoubtedly he was most suited. It was not surprising that such a man should try to save his life by offering to disclose the methods of his employers.