MI5 in the Great War

by Nigel West

  With all these irregularities on the part of the authorities there could be no case for prosecution; but MI5G applied for a restriction order under DRR 14. The grounds adduced were Eisner’s frequent visits to Germany before the war and his known connections with other suspects and alien enemies on the grounds which might have been adduced in 1914. The order was served on 4 May 1918 and it was rescinded after many petitions and much debate on 9 May 1919. In this connection Inspector Ford distinguished himself by telling Mr Myers, Eisner’s father-in-law, that he must apply to Colonel Kell, head of the Secret Service. The next month Lieutenant-Colonel de Watteville, reporting on the Portsmouth Intelligence Service, records that the garrison intelligence officer complains of the apathy of the Chief Constable of Portsmouth in questions affecting the relations of the naval, military and civil population, does not trust him, and does not credit him with sufficient authority to enforce the application of intelligence precautions by his men. The case of Abraham Eisner illustrates the difficulty of dealing with a suspect ally, but it cannot be said to reflect credit on the investigators. The complete facts of the case seem never to have been grasped. Let it be said at once that there was no proof against Abraham Eisner: there was also no serious attempt to get to the bottom of the facts. That MI5 were unconscious of the evidence contained in their own files until 1917 may be due to initial defective registration or training in May 1914 when Eisner first came under suspicion; that the lies and evasions of himself and his family passed unnoticed in October 1914 may be due to pressure of business and to there being apparently no Special Branch to deal with a suspect ally; and that when the intelligence officer at Portsmouth had collected a good deal of evidence from the neighbours, no attempt was made to sift it and obtain something definite from them, from the family, and from the police is less to easy to explain. It may be that as all these cases depend upon mastery of detail and that detail lies buried in a confused mass of documents when fresh evidence comes in, the officer in charge adjusts it to his last minutes rather than refresh his memory by referring to facts previously set forth.

  The case also shows vagueness and laxity if nothing worse, on the part of the borough police. There seems to have been friction with the intelligence officer but even in June 1914, MO5 had to represent to the Chief Constable that he was supplying as regards the possible suspects merely those details which were required for the General Register of Aliens.

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  Heinrich Schmidt (or Henry Smith), of 43 St Aubyn Street, Devonport, arrived in that town on 24 February 1913, and it was not his first mission to England as a spy. He may have been engaged at Kiel by Herr Paul, alias Passarge, and had been sent to Rotterdam on 20 February, there to receive further instructions from Hanaan and his salary which came from Hamburg and amounted to £10 a month.

  Schmidt has dealings with Hanaan and Passarge. From the circumstances that he wrote to the governor of the prison at Gluksstadt and that no references could be given to Schmidt for his ‘work at G’, it may be imagined that Schmidt had been an inmate of the prison. His correspondence with his mother at Hamburg and with a friend named Mosbach at Kiel shows that both these persons ‘knew the nature of work here’. In writing to Schmidt, Hanaan used paper stamped (in German); International Journal for European Marine published by Dr J. Morrow and a staff of permanent collaborators at all the more important harbours at home and abroad, but based at White Brothers, a printers in Berlin.

  Hanaan wrote from Rotterdam, and Passarge’s letters were posted there. Schmidt, who was supposed to report twice a week, wrote once a week only, and sent his reports at first by channels unknown to us but he kept a record of his letters, and it was one of failure. He failed to get into the dockyard or to get the right employment, or the right friends. He arrived in England just after the arrest of William Klare and from his subsequent reference to this case, it seems probable that he was too scared to make any determined effort. He declined to become a commercial traveller and applied instead for a clerkship on the Western Morning Herald. Hanaan then prepared faked references with dates and particulars to suit Schmidt’s fancy.

  Schmidt was summoned to Brussels on 20 April, he there saw Passarge and was given the character prepared by Hanaan. No use was ever made of this. Schmidt found work for himself as a scullery-man in a hotel and returned the false character in July 1913. On 14 April Schmidt had been instructed to write via Hugo Marscheid at 206 Boomgardstraat in Antwerp, instructions which he obeyed with some reluctance. Then his reports were intercepted, but there was nothing in them. The last remittance noted in the files was sent on 26 May 1913 and the last report to Rotterdam, one showing great prudence and hesitation, was dated 9 July 1913, it is possible the correspondence continued until October.

  Schmidt’s actions aroused the suspicions of his landlady’s son, Mr Wakeham, who informed the borough police, and they reported to the Chief Constable of Devonport. He, however, delayed communicating with MO5 who meanwhile had got on to Schmidt’s track owing to a remittance of £10 sent via August Klunder at the end of February. MO5 got the dockyard police to make enquiries and they then discovered that the borough police had the case in hand. However, the dockyard police took up the work and carried it through. They reported Schmidt’s friendship with a waiter at 29 Marlborough Street, a restaurant frequented by naval ratings. They telegraphed Schmidt’s departure to London and his intended absence of three weeks, and while he was away they procured a copy of his photograph which Captain Drake saw and identified as that of a spy whom he had previously noted.

  When Schmidt was making arrangements for his journey, he was said to have packed a portmanteau and to have left it at the station, but the police failed to discover it. During Schmidt‘s absence (he was away three weeks and spent nearly all that time in London), the police got in touch with Mr Edwards, owner of the restaurant in Marlborough Street, and found Schmidt’s effects there. Meanwhile MO5, having learned through Schmidt’s correspondence that he had left behind incriminating documents, caused his luggage to be searched. The records of his letters were found as well as his letters from Hanaan and Passarge. Captain Drake went to examine them and decided that although there was clear proof of Schmidt’s intention, there was not sufficient evidence to secure conviction. Schmidt was therefore merely kept under observation.

  In July the police reported that Schmidt was in touch with a Leading Signalman, and a private in the Marines named Palmer, and that he had obtained a situation as storekeeper at the Duke of Cornwall Hotel, Plymouth. Schmidt’s friends were warned by their commanding officers to be careful in having dealings with a foreigner and a special enquiry was made about Palmer, who was believed to communicate information to the Western Morning News, but his commanding officer had no reason to suspect leakage.

  In December MO5’s enquiry brought the report that Schmidt had not been seen lately at Plymouth; but he was there, still acting as waiter on 20 February 1914. No entry of registered letters could be traced since October 1913, hence it seemed certain that the German Secret Service had cast him off. He left Plymouth on 2 May and went to Deyshart, Sark. The police noticed his absence but made no enquiries until requested to trace him just before the war. A wire was sent to the GOC Channel Islands to arrest and hand Schmidt over to the military authorities for detention pending deportation. He was arrested at Guernsey on 12 August and held as a PoW.

  All through this investigation MO5 and the dockyard police exercised the greatest caution, preferring to forego certainty about the spy’s movements rather than risk giving him the alarm. The overlapping of sources of information, being the private informant and the Home Office Warrant on Klunder, involved two police departments, local and Metropolitan. It is to be noted that in such special investigations the action of the Metropolitan Police was greatly to be preferred to that of the local police, because of Special Branch’s greater speed and precision. No report concerning Schmidt seems ever to have been received from the local police, who were no doubt sufficiently
engaged.

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  In April 1913, through the correspondence of Heinrich Schmidt of Devonport, the address of Hugo Murscheid at 206 Boomgardstraat in Antwerp, became suspect. The check placed on it brought to light in May the existence at Barrow of a German agent, who had been recruited at Copenhagen. By means of details contained in his letters abroad, he was soon identified as Fredrik Wilhelm Henrik Apel.

  Apel had come to England apparently destitute at the beginning of May and had called on the German consul who sent him to the Sailors’ Institute. Subsequently, he received money from Germany addressed to him c/o the German consul at Barrow. His ostensible reason for coming was to look for a married sister who had eloped with a British ship’s engineer. He explained the remittances from abroad as coming from an uncle who was interested in his quest. He stuck to these stories consistently, with the exception that having first given the uncle’s name as Hugo Munscheid, he afterwards degraded Hugo Munscheid to the position of confidential clerk, and substituted as to his uncle a man named Carl Cornelson.

  Apel drifted from house to house and lived to a considerable extent upon the charity of Mr Conway Milne, a port missionary and head of the Sailors’ Institute. After several vicissitudes, Milne found him work with a German pork butcher named Osterlein, whom the police believed to have become naturalised as a Briton. In March 1914, he left this employment for work as a labourer at the Barrow Hematite Steel Company’s Wire Works, and in July he was at the Kellner Partington Paper Pulp Company.

  As an agent Apel was untrustworthy and a failure. He had been sent to get work at Vickers and to report on the constructions in progress for the British Navy. Having tried but failed to get employment at Vickers, owing to his German nationality, he complained of English patriotism and of the absurd precautions taken. To save face with his employers he invented the story that he had found work as a casual labourer at the dock, that he had made friends with the Chief Pilot of Vickers, and had at his invitation gone for a trip on the Congo when she was on her trials and that a night-watchman of the ‘Technical Bureau’ had admitted him to that office and shown him plans.

  In his first report, Apel announced the forthcoming laying-down of a British cruiser, and afterwards sent what purported to be her dimensions. He declared he had discovered a secret for hardening steel applied in work on foreign orders, and that he would discover other secrets later. Also he had been on board a Japanese warship. He used code in his letters, referring to information generally as ‘health’ or a ‘lawsuit’, to ironclads as ‘Horse Hector’, to plans as ‘Hypothsken’ (mortgages).

  In June 1913 he went to Manchester and thence to Hamburg to meet his employers. He took with him plans which were photographed. On 1 July ‘C’ wrote from Rotterdam absolutely refusing to send any more money until value had been received, and in August ‘W. Klein’, Poste Restante, Berlin, informed him of the failure of the photographs and asked for news. It may be worth noting that this was one of the methods of obtaining information recommended by George Parrott.

  In September, ‘Leon’ wrote from Brussels to confirm receipt of Apel’s letter to ‘Herr. C’ who was away. In December, ‘A.S.’ wrote from Petersburg that he had given up expecting any good result and bidding him to be careful in the use of addresses, but if he could get the things wanted they would fetch a high price ‘here’. This was followed by another letter to the effect that the gentlemen in Petersburg had become impatient and had obtained the information through another man who was in direct communication with them, but that if Apel had the goods they could he brought to the next meeting. The writer enclosed four questions about the Emperor of India and said the answer was to be sent to A. Sampler at the Brussels Poste Restante, Bureau Central, as he had ceased connection with the other gentleman (Hugo Munscheid). Apel replied to this letter and sent his communication as directed, but it was returned from Brussels as undeliverable. This letter of Apel’s reflects the nervousness caused by the arrest of Frederick Gould: ‘One must go slow’, he says, and he begs that no more letters should be sent from Brussels.

  In April 1914, Apel wrote again urgently demanding an answer and money. He gave some account of shipbuilding on the Clyde by Vickers and directed this letter to Hugo Munscheid and left it with the Port Missionary who was to enclose a note confirming Apel’s statements. Mr Milne, the port missionary, wrote a note and despatched it with Apel’s to Antwerp, after having had a translation made of Apel’s letter. Mr Milne had appealed to Hugo Munscheid to pay his nephew’s debt of £2. A resume of Apel’s letter was supplied apparently by Mr Mine himself to Vickers who forwarded it to MO5. The reply to Mr Milne came on the 15th casting off nephew ‘Fred’ forever, and enclosing the £2 due to Mr Milne. The illegible signature began with ‘M’.

  Apel disappeared in May 1914 but in July a letter showed that he was in Barrow, and still in communication with his employers. He proposed to take two plans to Hamburg that week, and wanted money for ‘his man’ whom he would bring with him. There is no record of any reply to this letter. Enquiry regarding the unknown German agent began on 26 May and on 8 June the Chief Constable of Barrow supplied details which left no doubt that the agent wanted was Apel and that he was a liar. Police observation was asked for, and at the same time Vickers were informed of the facts. The police acted intelligently and recorded the following payments: soon after arrival a post office order for £7.10s; on 27 May 1914 a £5 banknote (number and date of issue) from Rotterdam; on 30 May 1914 another £5 banknote from Copenhagen sent by an aunt named ‘Thora’; on 11 June 1914 two £5 banknotes (number and date of issue of one of them), from Berlin, previous to Apel’s going to Hamburg.

  In the whole course of the investigation no further remittances are recorded, but it is possible some money was sent. Simultaneously with reporting about Apel, the police had sent information about Bernard Schenk, a German who had been engaged as one of the crew on the Ying Swei. This was a cruiser built by Vickers for the Chinese government. Schenk had sailed with the ship to Falmouth and returned with her to Barrow as some alteration was required. He had then obtained work in the Riggers Yard. As he was reported to be a Naval Reservist of the Submarine Department, the police kept him under observation but before reporting to MO5 they had been in communication with Vickers and had learned that Schenk had entered Vickers’ employ on 17 December 1913, and had left them of his own accord. He had gone to work on the dredgers on 12 February, supposedly to earn more money. The police from time to time supplied information as to Apel’s movements and correspondence. Regarding letters, it had been found impossible to put a check on at Barrow, as Apel was at first receiving communications through the German consul and the opening of such letters could only be done by a skilled official, but a check was of course placed on the addresses of Apel’s correspondents. This, however, was concealed from the police at Barrow. They worked with great zeal and in July reported the arrival of a telegram addressed to Apel which was then traced and found to contain the word: ‘Gratuliere’ (I congratulate). This Apel explained as code, meaning ‘the goods were coming’. Apel was being kept under special observation at this time, for he was talking of plans for a fresh start in life – but these did not materialise.

  In September 1913 Conway Milne had written to Hugo Munscheid about Apel asking that Munscheid should communicate with his nephew on the subject of paying a debt of £2. Unknown to the police, the letter was intercepted and enquiry made as to the identity of Mr Milne and it was then learned that Milne had been helpful in giving information about Apel to the police, but Major Kell was afraid the enquiry might have let the Chief Constable of Barrow into the secret of the Home Office Warrant on Munscheid.

  In November 1913 a British agent in Brussels wired to England to stop a letter from Sampler to Apel, but the letter being unimportant was allowed to proceed. It is almost certain that this was a communication inciting Apel to fresh exertions. In February 1914 special warnings were issued to Vickers and to the police at Barrow that Apel wo
uld be trying to obtain information about the Emperor of India, but the Chief Constable reported that Apel was quietly at work and gave no sign of seeking such information. In March however, the Chief Constable at Barrow reported his change of employment from driving a cart for a pork butcher, to working as a labourer in the steel company’s wire works, at the same time forwarding Munscheid’s reply to Milne discarding Fred. MO5 concluded that Apel could be disregarded.