Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby Page A
Authors: Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby
Tags: Historical, Espionage, History, Politics & Social Sciences, Military, True Crime, Autobiography, Intelligence & Espionage, World War I, Memoirs, Politics & Government, Specific Topics, Naval, Engineering, Engineering & Transportation
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is to be found?’
This naive gambit immediately put the guest on his guard, and he was careful to give no information whatever. In view of Herr von Kühlmann’s reputation for diplomatic astuteness, this incident is worth putting on record.
In pre-war days the German press frequently made more or less overt attacks on members of the British diplomatic corpsin central Europe, hinting at illicit activities on their part in the domain of naval and military intelligence work. We have the best authority for declaring these charges to have been utterly baseless. Not only was the conduct of our naval and military attachés at all times scrupulously correct, but for reasons of policy they did not always take advantage of the official facilities for obtaining information that were open to them. They neither met nor corresponded with any intelligence agent, nor did they aid or abet such agents in any way whatsoever.
It would be interesting to know whether all the members of the German diplomatic suite in London during the last pre-war years had an equally impeccable record. There is, at least, strong evidence that not all of them were active in promoting good feeling between the two countries and allaying mutual suspicion. In his well-known book, The Two White Nations , Commander Georg von Hase records a conversation he had at Kiel, in July 1914, with the German naval attaché in London, Commander Erich von Müller. This gentleman took Commander von Hase aside, and said to him:
Be on your guard against the English: England is ready to fight. We are all on the brink of war. The sole object of this naval visit (of the British Second Battle Squadron) is to spy out the land. They want to get a clear picture of our fleet’s readiness for war. Above all, tell them nothing about our submarines.
Commander von Hase adds that, while this view coincided entirely with his own, he was nevertheless ‘astonished to hear it expressed so bluntly’.
It is an interesting fact, not previously divulged, that bothFrance and Russia maintained a number of naval intelligence agents in Germany. The Russians were the more numerous, and they are understood to have collected a good deal of useful information. There is more than hearsay evidence that several employees of the imperial dockyard at Danzig were Russian agents. If this be true, it would explain the copious and generally accurate data on German submarines that the Russian naval staff possessed on the outbreak of war, for up to that time Danzig was the principal centre for U-boat construction.
Russian agents are also known to have supplied minute details of the German coastal defences in the Baltic, particularly those that guarded the approaches to Königsberg and Danzig. Had the Tsarist fleet been stronger and better led, it might have made good use of this intelligence. But where the Russians really shone was at counter-espionage, some of their achievements in this sphere being noted in another chapter.
As an Irishman might say, the best Russian agents were Poles. Our own intelligence men in Germany sometimes employed Polish helpers, and, as a rule, found them useful and trustworthy. The work attracted them, less on account of the material rewards it brought than of the opportunity it gave them of doing an injury to the power that they regarded as the hereditary oppressor of their distressful country. German-born Poles were invariably the most bitter against their Prussian masters.
Photography, it need hardly be said, plays an important part in intelligence work. The camera often detects details that have escaped the keenest eye and, for this reason, our agents in Germany did their utmost to secure photographs of every new ship at the earliest possible moment. Sometimes as many as a dozen views were obtained, all taken from different angles. One of ouragents succeeded in getting snapshots of the battlecruiser Derfflinger as she lay on the building slip, and these revealed certain features
This naive gambit immediately put the guest on his guard, and he was careful to give no information whatever. In view of Herr von Kühlmann’s reputation for diplomatic astuteness, this incident is worth putting on record.
In pre-war days the German press frequently made more or less overt attacks on members of the British diplomatic corpsin central Europe, hinting at illicit activities on their part in the domain of naval and military intelligence work. We have the best authority for declaring these charges to have been utterly baseless. Not only was the conduct of our naval and military attachés at all times scrupulously correct, but for reasons of policy they did not always take advantage of the official facilities for obtaining information that were open to them. They neither met nor corresponded with any intelligence agent, nor did they aid or abet such agents in any way whatsoever.
It would be interesting to know whether all the members of the German diplomatic suite in London during the last pre-war years had an equally impeccable record. There is, at least, strong evidence that not all of them were active in promoting good feeling between the two countries and allaying mutual suspicion. In his well-known book, The Two White Nations , Commander Georg von Hase records a conversation he had at Kiel, in July 1914, with the German naval attaché in London, Commander Erich von Müller. This gentleman took Commander von Hase aside, and said to him:
Be on your guard against the English: England is ready to fight. We are all on the brink of war. The sole object of this naval visit (of the British Second Battle Squadron) is to spy out the land. They want to get a clear picture of our fleet’s readiness for war. Above all, tell them nothing about our submarines.
Commander von Hase adds that, while this view coincided entirely with his own, he was nevertheless ‘astonished to hear it expressed so bluntly’.
It is an interesting fact, not previously divulged, that bothFrance and Russia maintained a number of naval intelligence agents in Germany. The Russians were the more numerous, and they are understood to have collected a good deal of useful information. There is more than hearsay evidence that several employees of the imperial dockyard at Danzig were Russian agents. If this be true, it would explain the copious and generally accurate data on German submarines that the Russian naval staff possessed on the outbreak of war, for up to that time Danzig was the principal centre for U-boat construction.
Russian agents are also known to have supplied minute details of the German coastal defences in the Baltic, particularly those that guarded the approaches to Königsberg and Danzig. Had the Tsarist fleet been stronger and better led, it might have made good use of this intelligence. But where the Russians really shone was at counter-espionage, some of their achievements in this sphere being noted in another chapter.
As an Irishman might say, the best Russian agents were Poles. Our own intelligence men in Germany sometimes employed Polish helpers, and, as a rule, found them useful and trustworthy. The work attracted them, less on account of the material rewards it brought than of the opportunity it gave them of doing an injury to the power that they regarded as the hereditary oppressor of their distressful country. German-born Poles were invariably the most bitter against their Prussian masters.
Photography, it need hardly be said, plays an important part in intelligence work. The camera often detects details that have escaped the keenest eye and, for this reason, our agents in Germany did their utmost to secure photographs of every new ship at the earliest possible moment. Sometimes as many as a dozen views were obtained, all taken from different angles. One of ouragents succeeded in getting snapshots of the battlecruiser Derfflinger as she lay on the building slip, and these revealed certain features
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