Evening Star Newspaper, April 27, 1930, Page 85

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C. APRIL 27, 1930. How German Spies Helped Armistice N \ It was the first time ¢he Americans, 2d Division, were in the trenches. Sudderf- 3y a party of Germans in F rench uni- N \ \\ !‘ IR \\\ 7 7 SIS forms crying “Francais! F rancais!” came close—and then hand grenades. But they were routed. — By — Thomas M. Johnson. GERMAN PRISONERS WERE FED—AND GRILLED. Tm! was a standing order by Gen. Pershing that when prisoners arrived at a corps cage they should get a meal of bully beef, hardtack and coffee and & sack of tobac ». Two German cooks stayed at the L Corps cage throughout the Meuse-Argor e battle, cooking for each incoming . ‘ch. Despite Gen. Pershing’s order, no. all German pris- oners ate immediately. Intelligence offi- cers first called from each batch those who looked most intelligent and those who looked of weakest character. These got an immediate grilling, while the rest ate. A quick way to impress a prisoner was to ask him, “Well, how’s Col. Schmalz?" —naming the prisoner’s own commander. He would reason, “This man knows a lot about us anyway. Why refuse to answer his questions?” Another way was to offer to send through Switzerland a letter to his family saying that he was safe. Those promises were always kept. The Germans tried special ways 0 make Americans talk. The surest, one German intelligence officer said, was: “Just get a few Americans from different outfits arguing which was the best outfit. Then everything you wanted to know would come out.” In another way prisoners unintention- ally gave information—they talked among themselves. When they were brought back from the fighting, they were ques- tioned quickly about conditions on the immediate front, in their own units, then filtered rapidly through division and corps intelligence to Army intelligence. Here they were assembled in large wired stockades and winnowed carefully and expertly for every grain of news about Germany and its Army. Not even when they were alone in the cages were they safe from G-2. In German uniforms, filthy as the rest, German-speaking in- telligence officers mingled with the crowd, listening to what they said to one another. EDITOR'S NOTE.—This is one of a series of true World War spy stories. In some instances the author has used intentional inaccuracies to pro- tect American secret agents; otherwise the in- formation is authenticated by fact or by word of participation T WAS after the 1st Division had landed at St. Nazaire, after it had been announced that we would send a large army to France, after the Committee on Public Information had told the Germans a quite surprising lot about our plans, that the Germans called upon their secret service to “find out about the Ameri- cans.” And they learned so much, in fact, about our great aviation program that they got frightened, and while we talked about our thousands of airplanes, they speeded up and produced theirs, as we and the allies found $o our sorrow. The German general staff had estimated be- fore unrestricted submarine warfare was de- Best Job Agents of Germany Did in War Was to Keep Eyes on United States Forces, Otherwise They Were Outwitted at Their Own Game of Intrigue. a real American army could raised, trained and landed in Europe time to prevent allied defeat by starvation. the possibility dawned that the staff was wrong, the secret service sent its agents a questionnaire that makes ting reading. Here is a copy of part of as it came to the hands of G-2-B: “What routes are taken by American trans- ports to Europe and at which French ports have American troops been landed up to the present? “How many troops have been landed at each port? “What is the compositien of such troops? Combat units, labor battalions? “In which French ports is the American war material being landed? “Which French ports are being specially en- larged by Americans? “PFrom which French ports are railways being specially laid to the front?” (The true answer was “from none.” The same ingenious publicity had started that tale.) “What naval forces are used by the Ameri- cans for the guarding of their bases in France? “Which are the American bases in England and Ireland? : “Are American troops being landed and trained in Portugal?” (One wonders where that idea originated.) “Where are these troops stationed?” The signs warning doughboys landing in France to “keep your mouths shut” were not, therefore, so much bunk as the doughboys thought. But, anyway, the Germans found out pretty well. Their estimate of how many Amer- icans were in France from month to month was generally accurate, based as it was on secret service reports, but checked up for them by the periodic announcements of the Ameri- can chief of staff, Peyton C. March. ‘These announcements were a terrible in- fringement of some ironclad rules of military secrecy, but in practice the good they did in bucking up the morale of the allied people and depressing that of the Germans more than counterbalanced whatever they told the Ger- man staff that it hadn’'t guessed before about the growth of the young giant A, E. F. at a speed they had believed impossible. 2 FER3R5E M MORE and more proof comes to light of the influence this knowledge had on the Ger- man final demand for peace. The latest such proof is in the memoirs of Philip Scheidemann, one of the leaders in the German revolution and the republic that followed. He reports a meeting of the ministry of Prince Max of Baden in' mid-October, 1918, to decide what course t0 pursue in the armistice negotiations with President Wilson. To find out what chance, if any, Germany had still to win the war, the ministers called in Col. Heye of the military intelligence, now commander of the German army. This conversation took place: Prince Max—How many Americans land monthly in France? Col. Heye—An average of 250,000. Gen. Ludendorfl—In April, May and June it was 350,000. (An over-statement. were giving way.) Prince Max—How strong will the American Army be next Spring? Col. Heye—The American military leaders count on having 2,300,000 men by Spring. (It would have been more than that.) Prince Max—And have they the correspond- ing equipment? Col. Heye.—If they continue at the present rate, they will have. The Americans have always been accurate in their estimates. (Flattery, if truth be told.) Gen. Ludendorfl—Before we accept these armistice conditions, we ought to say to the enemy, “Fight for them.” Prince Max—But when they have won them by fighting, won’t they impose worse terms? Gen. Ludendorff—There are no worse terms! Prince Max—Oh, yes! They would break through into Germany and devastate the country. The ministers decided to tell President Wil- son that his conditions for commencing armi- stice negotiations had been met. So we can be glad that German intelligence, helped by Gen. March’s propaganda, knew how our war effort was succeeding. Ludendorff’s nerves THAT was the only success that amounted to anything that the Germans won in their secret war with the Americans; they did keep close tabs on the A. E. F.'s growth. But, con- sidering that for propaganda purposes Washing- ton was figuratively getting out extras to tell them and the rest of the world about that very thing, was that such a great success after all? For all its reputation, the German secret service lost the secret war. Col. Nicolai says so. So does Field Marshal, now President, von Hindenburg in his memoirs: Our spy service produced only miserable results. In this sphere even German gold succumbed in the struggle between our ene- mies and ourselves. No little “gold” spent in that victory, espe- cially in 1918, was American, financing allied secret operations. When they came to the Americans with a chance to make a coup if only they had the money, ususlly they .got. it. Americans may be surprised. now to hear that the allied secret service seemed to its enemies far more aggressive after we entered the wear. But so say Col. Nicolai and others. ‘The appointment of Marshal Foch as com- mander in chief unified the allies not only in the war in the open, whereof he was master, but in the secret war upon whose forces he relied in making important decisions and plans. Under Foch an expert clearing house for infor- mation about the enemy worked secretly in Paris. It had members from each of the allied nations, whose intelligence services sent them daily data—military. political, economic. This information was pooled and interchanged among the allies. Il' our organization gave assistance in counter espionage valuable to the allies, their as- sistance in creating that organization was im- dispensable to us. British ideas and experience helped especially, though French helped, too, in creating the American military secret service of the World War. Its sponsors in the United States were Gen. Van Deman, Col Mason and Col. Dansey of the British army, who crossed the ocean to assist. The crowning achievement of Gen. Van De- man, almost unknown to the general public, yet known to the Regular Army as “the father of American military intelligence,” was the forg- ing in 1917 and early 1918 of the American principal weapons that beat the German secret service. For some 30 years he had been ac- quiring knowledge and experience that enabled him to answer the call that found him and Lieut. Col. Alexander B. Coxe the entire intele ligence general staff of the American Army. The training of the man some might call (though not in his hearing) our super counter< spy was varied. EN. VAN DEMAN and Col. Coxe, influe enced party by their English assistant, Col.- Dansey, stamped upon American secret servic® a character it never lost. They said, “Spying and counter-spying are and always have been necessary in war. The spy who gets informae tion that enables his army to capture a city serves his country as truly as the soldiers who scale the walls. Properly conducted, there is nothing disgraceful about secret service. There are temptations, hazards to character as well as to life. The greater the honor to those who can endure.” Whereas in the German service the corps d'elite was a minority, in the American it was a majority. Like the British, they tried to obey the rule, “People of low morals and character are unreliable, undesirable secret agents. Do not employ them if you can help it.” Here and there, now and then, both may have broken the rule, but usually reluctantly. Today Americans and Englishmen who were “in that work” or “the service” are proud of it. Many are listed by Who's Who or Dun and Bradstreet, or in the Social Register; college professors, musicians, bankers, brokers, law- yers, newspaper men. Members of very old New York families were in it, one heartbroken because they kept him in New York instead of sending him as spy to Germany. He could easily pass for a German. An unusual group gathers around the table at one of their occa« sional dinners in New York, If, as Gen. Nolan once said, “It is sometimes necessary to have Continued on Mfl-fi“ Page ‘;