GERMANS AS SPIES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 149, 27 June 1938, Page 10

GERMANS AS SPIES

THEY LACK FINESSE BAD FAILURE IN BRITAIN WAR-TIME MEMORIES (By "Senex.") The extraordinary revelations made by the American Government last week, with the launching of a prose* cution of prominent members of the Gasman Intelligence Service for the part they have played in espionage in the United States might have seemed incredible had we not evidence of this sort of thing happening before. The more cynical Englishmen have long felt that in the years remaining before Germany again faces battle she can be relied upon to alienate neutral opinion, as she did previously. The uncovering of the spy ring in the United States is one more proof of the fact that the Germans are not exactly expert at managing their international relations with subtlety,. and that the results of their actions arS likely to be permanent and damaging. The spy hunt has been on for some time past. Last July Representative Dickstein, of New York, read into the "Congressional Record" the names of 46 persons whom he claimed were acting as German agents; on the list was that of Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, first lieutenant in the Medical Reserve of the American Army and sometime leader of the American Nazis, who vanished early last month, a few days after the Federal grand jury began hearing evidence on the existence of a spy ring. The list was adversely criticised by the German-American Bund, the 20,000strong successor to the Friends of New Germany, but subsequent events have shown that the Government was convinced and moved in the matter. The grand jury hearing was the result WORLD WAR EXPERIENCE. The Americans are naturally likely to give serious attention to German activities in their midst because of what happened during the World War. The record of Franz von Papen with his habit of leaving incriminating documents behind him, and the recent litigation surrounding the Black Tom explosion (a war-time munitions works which was destroyed and in compensation for which the German Government paid over £5,500,000) are sufficient reminders of these. The United States is also concerned over, the problem offered by the presence to its midst of some 400,000 Germans of Nazi sympathies. There have been vigorous representations to the Reich about the work of the German-American Bund, led by Fritz Kuhn, and three months ago the State Department succeeded in persuading Herr Hitler to issue an order to all German citizens resident in the United. States to leave this Nazi body. This was the third order of the kind, however, one issued by Henr Hess in 1935 having carried the threat of loss of German citizenship if it was not obeyed. This order, though, ii issued at the same time that the Nazis claim blood ties with all Germahs abroad, insist on them regarding themselves as Germans first, and demand that they shall preach the gospel of the Third Reich. The difficulties whicli arise from such a dual policy are easy to realise. •;* CLUMSY METHODS. The almost incredible thing about the present espionage trial, the fact that highly-placed officers in the German Intelligence Service should have been so clumsy as to allow themselves to be implicated by name and the proofs to fall into the hands of a foreign Government is, really, the most credible thing of all. It is an axiom of the intelligence officer (or spy) that he must act on his own, that he must send his information to a secret address which has no connection with his Government, that he must be prepared to be disowned by his, Government if he i» caught. But the Germans are notoriously clumsy in their efforts at spying. The story of their work in Britain before the war is most illuminating and little known. Sir George Aston, who was connected with the British Secret Service for many years, and Sir Basil Thomson, head of the Special Department of Scotland Yard, have revealed the means by which the German spy system in Britain was discovered and broken up. Before the war there were twenty-two German spies in Britain who were in regular communication with the German Intelligence Service. They had all been known to the British Secret Service for years, every letter they sent to Germany and every letter of instructions they received from their superiors was read in the post. The ring could have been broken up at any time,'but it was considered wise to allow it to continue to operate, rather than make the Germans create a new system, which would have had the disadvantage of not being known to the British police.

And the manner by which this spy ring was found was a revelation of German carelessness. The whole of the German agents sent their correspondence through a hairdresser named Karl Gustav Ernst, who had a shop in the Caledonian Road, London. Letters to them were forwarded through him, and all he received for this risky work was £1 a month. When the Kaiser visited Britain and stayed as guest at Buckingham Palace he took with him a military officer of high rank who one morning visited the barber's shop in the Caledonian Road. Following him was a British secret agent. The notion of a German officer of high rank travelling all the way from the Palace to the Caledonian Road for a haircut was provocative. Ernst's letters were opened, a watch wa3 set on his movements, and the whole spy ring was discovered. Within twenty-four hours ol the outbreak of war it was wiped out Twenty-one men were arrested; one man escaped by boarding a vessel at Hull. There were other instances of the same lack of imagination. Forged passports, for instance, were always made out in the same handwriting, and finally the British merely had to learn this handwriting in order to detect faked documents. German spies emi ployed during the war were of a very unsuitable type, adventurers who betrayed their employers as often as not. Codes used were penetrated easily, and were, some of them, highly suspicious. The Ipdging of telegrams by tobacconists at naval ports calling for huge orders of cigars from a Dutch Arm occupying only a back room in Rotterdam was one example. Furthermore, the orders were not even filled.

lu short, the German Intelligence Service lacks finesse. When that fact is realised the clumsiness which has led to the discoveries in the United States becomes readily understandable.