GERMAN SPY SCHEME.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18613, 8 July 1930, Page 6

GERMAN SPY SCHEME.

PLANS FOR SECRET FLEET. DEATH OF ORIGINATOR. A German scheme to cover Europe with a vast systom of espionage centres. camouflaged as commercial undertakings, is revealed in connection with the sudden death at Rome of the naval officer Captain Lohmann. It was Lohmann who, with funds of varied origin and under the official disguise of a “Naval Transport Department,” got into his hands a number of business concerns, ranging from banks to film companies and bacon factories. The ultimate motive of his activities, which cost Germany about £1,000,000, has hitherto been witheld from public knowledge, says the Berlin correspondent of the “Daily Telegraph,” though the affair has been investigated by a Reichstag Committee. It seems clear that one of his aims was to create “a black,” or secret fleet of small but efficient craft, which was intended to be a naval counterpart to the notorious “Black Reichswehr.” Otherwise, his operations looked like the result of over-confidence in his commercial gifts. The newspaper “Vorwarts,” however, now reveals that “the whole concern had a naive purpose of spreading over Europe an espionage organisation on a commercial basis.” Moreover, it is indicated both in this and other papers that Lohmann did not, as was stated at the time, abuse the confidence of his superiors and misuse the authority devolving upon him, but at the time was working with the full knowledge and approval of those above him. The son of a former director of the Norddeutscher Lloyd, Lohmann was apparently belived in naval circles to have business in his blood, and for that reason at the end of the war “he was given what were called commercial functions, because in that way he could get into foreign countries which then were still in practice closed to the German military.” He had already long worked In the Intelligence Department and is said to have actually been in Moscow at the time of the Russian Revolution. , . . Eventually Lohmann’s plans led to stupendous losses, which could not be concealed by juggling with the naval estimates, and the whole affair gradually leaked out. The Minister of War repeatedly and emphatically denied that anything was known in his department about the captains curious The time came, however, when oven he was compelled to take the only other alternative and resign his place in the Government. Meanwhile, Lohmann had departed into the desert as a scapegoat, but it is said that, if he had UvedT little longer, he would have been fully rehabilitated, as he was mot the person really responsible. He is stated to have been connected with the scheme for aerial communication between Italy and South America by means of Schutte-Lanz airships.