TRUE TALES OF SECRET SERVICE

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 231, 29 September 1928, Page 6 (Supplement)

TRUE TALES OF SECRET SERVICE

jr.— (By DONALD CAMPBELL)™::!

fNo. 9.]

PRUSSIA'S ARCH-SPY.

All modern military espionage may be said to be based oh the vast system built up by the Prussian Stieber, whoso spies were said to have conquered France in the war of 1870-71, before the behclmeted legions of Prussia crossed the "Rhine. Stieber was born in 1818, and waa destined for one of the liberal professions. As a matter of fact he did qualify as a barrister, but that was later in his career. He first attracted official attention when he spied on the Socialists who wanted to provoke a revolution throughout the various German States in 1848. He also acted as agent provocateur. Considering the position he was eventually' to occupy, it is interesting to note that his name in German slang may be rendered into English as "searcher."

He became so useful to the unweildy police service that his name was mentioned to the King of Prussia who attached him to his own secret police as well as giving him rank in the ordinary police. In 1850, he was named "Counsellor" by the King and given a free hand to recruit a secret service which was to be totally unknown to the official police. By this time Stieber had taken advantage of the favour he enjoyed at Court, even if it was backstairs favour, to marry an heiress. In 1854, he inaugurated the Prussian Secret Service in foreign countries and was voted £12,500 for this purpose, a sum which went much further in those days than it does now. Bismarck and Von Moltke both admired his work. Prussian noblemen of the highest rank themselves and usually contemptuous of the bourgeoisie, they admitted Stieber's peculiar genius. Sowing the Dragon's Teeth. At the Czar's special request, the Prussian was lent to him in an advisory capacity. When he returned from St. Petersburg, he was sent to Bohemia to prepare for the war against Austria which Prussia was contemplating. A few days after the Prussians won the decisive battle against the Austrians in 1866, he was sent to France to bow the dragon's teeth of war there, but first of all, he was made Minister of Police, a position which gave him peculiar powers. He immediately enlisted the help at the Press, procuring positions on newspapers for some of his henchmen and spreading judicious backsheesh among needy editors and their subordinates. A fund of £53,000 was placed at his disposal for use in France. Not content to trust subordinates, however efficient, he disguised himself and set out from Berlin to visit all the frontier departments. In eight months he appointed no less than 1850 spies, all under a regular system. He then sent a small army of Prussians into France as agricultural labourers, waitresses, hotel workers, servams in the French military canteens and governesses in French military, naval and diplomatic fanf'ies. It was he who organised the attack on Czar Alexander H., of Russia, who was visiting Paris. Stieber did this to prevent a Franco-Russian alliance against Prussia. He inspired the attack, but he also prevented it ending in a murder, and this is how he did it:— Frequenting international revolutionary circles, he found a poverty-stricken young Polish enthusiast, a mere boy named Boregowski. He gave this youth some small financial aid, talked him into a state of exaltation and then had him given a loaded revolver by a subordinate. When the Czar was driving in the Sue St. Honore, near the British Embassy, Borezowski acted unexpectedly and pulled his revolver before he was due to do so. A little old gentleman with dark glasses, knocked his arm up and held him till the police came. This was our subtle friend Stieber. The Czar was very offended at what he imagined to be the carelessness of the French secret police and consequently there was no alliance. 36,000 Spies in France.

Stieber left his two trusty lieutenants, Zerniki and Kaltenbach, in Paris and roamed all over France, always organising. He then introduced his celebrated system of reports filed in alphabetical order. All foreign senior officers, diplomats, agents and public servants were investigated. Their weaknesses, vices and foibles were especially noted and this information went to the Prussian War Office. Stieber then investigated the various political parties, the various departments and agricultural and manufacturing centres, appointing agents and sub-agents everywhere till had France "covered," as a modern editor would say, from Calais to Nice, from Biarritz to Belfast. It is stated that in 1868 he had no less than 3(5,000 spies in France, many of them German subjects who were working for good salaries and not, therefore, in receipt of •ccret service funds. He became very bold and actually made an appearance m French society as the Baron Something or the other. Pi inccss AValewsk;, who was related to the French Imperial family— Napoleon 111. was then reigning—denounced him openly when he came to a soiree at her house, but he had the amazing during and impudence to visit there again, introduced by +he Prussian Minister as the "Count Von Herstall." Paris was in the grip of the German. .Newspapers, banks, business firms, restaurants, all were "controlled." Army officers and aristocrats who wanted loans could obtain them easily if they had useful information t r divulge, yet sublimely oblivious of this, France went to war with Prussia, her Prime Minister boasting that not a button on a gaiter was missing, whereas the supply services of the Army were either inefficient or corrupt. Guided the Invader. Every where in the war zone arose Cor ma n agents who guided the invading troops whose military maps were far superior,, to those of the French. Local mayors proved to be Prussians. Nothing was safe from Stieber's strangle-web. It was largely this system that causcd to spring, up the. Franc-Tireurs, civilians Wifosnu, but used to

J firearms, and these wrought havoc, especially among the Geripan cavalry patrols. Stieber was always in close consultation with the Army chiefs, who treated him with the greatest respect and gave him credit for his diabolically clever work. The French Government crumbled. The Emperor constituted himself a prisoner of war. He was then a doomed man, suffering agonies from an incurable illness. The Empress had to fly for her life from Paris, and a provisional Republican Government was] formed, which certainly managed tp get rid of some of the German informants in high places. But Stieber never under-estimated the French. After 1871, when everybody thought they had been beaten to their knees, he observed that the French were most dangerous after they had lost, and he even intrigued so as to provokej another war. In 1884 he conspired so as to cause a sabotage of the French railway systems, so as to prevent mobilisation in case of war. This remarkable man died in 1892. He was the most capable of his own agents, owipg to his extraordinary faculty of "playing a part" and of disguise. One of his favourite poses was that of a little, old gentleman in spectacles, but he had many "characters," and played them all well. He never seemed to make mistakes in choosing his subordinates, in spite of their numbers. It is

said that he was in Paris during the siege of 1871 and, in order to take attention away from one of his own agents, pointed out an entirely innocent tradesman as a Prussian spy to the mob, who forthwith hanged the unhappy man to a lamp-post. "Peaceful Penetration." His personal life was that of a good citizen, nor did he abuse his powerful position in order to obtain undue reward or advancement for himself. It has been said that he was a Jew, but this is doubtful. Anyway, he professed the Lutheran faith. To him may be traced the Government influence over the German Press, the system of peaceful penetration by Germans into other countries, whereby they were helped into good positions on the understanding that they would send information to the Fatherland. This ensured a regular news service without much cost to the secret funds.

It is not on record that he had anything to do with England. At that time, there was very little, if any, question of trouble between the two countries. That was to .come later, with the advent of young Wilhelm 11. and the fall of Bismarck, who enjoyed gibing at the British, but had a very wholesome respect for them.,

The French, themselves were the first to give credit to Stieber for his extraordinary spy system, and set to work to counteract it as soon, as they recovered from the first shock of a lost war. How they did this, -I propose to show in another instalment of this series. Curiously, the very provinces which the Germans took from the French, were to supply some of the men who caused the Teutonic Empire the most trouble in after years.

To show how thoroughly Stieber had "penetrated"-prance before 1870, one merely has to read the list of agents he managed to put into places where they had unrivalled opportunities for procuring information. The chief coachman of the Emperor and of the Minister of War were Prussian officers ( the assistant .chief of police was a servant of the Fatherland, and more than one lady in attendance on the Empress. Stieber did not neglect the female side. On the contrary, he handled it very wisely, never letting it obscure purely military intelligence, but employing it as a coordinating branch of his vast web.

Business Invasion.

He was the first man to use big business firms as the forerunners of military invasion. Through these firms backed by German or neutral capital, he introduced his spies as travellers, canvassers, clerks, even labourers. This system was carried on by the Germans after the war and very much overdone, giving the French ample opportunity of raiding these firms in 1914, and of procuring valuable information concerning certain branches of German espionage.

Stieber was a striking example of the "power behind the throne," of the little-known man who yet controls destinies and wins wars. Bismarck, Von Moltke, the King of Prussia —these names are in all history books, but where would you read of Stieber except in a few staff manuals and obscure books on certain phases of military history.

Redl in Austria might have been another such man if he had not been a traitor and sold his country to Russia. Fouche was as great as Stieber but he also was treacherous and even vicious in his old age, too ambitious and too disappointed with the Great Napoleon for whom he had a friendly contempt.

Whatever we may think of the political morality of the Prussian Stieber, we must respect his extraordinary ability and his entire honesty of purpose. He served Prussia, until he made her master of an United Germany, a Germany proclaimed in the classic halls of the former court of Germany's greatest enen^y. History ever repeats itself. Stieber's prompting of a fanatical young Pole to shoot at a neutral monarch may have inspired the secret agents of a later Germany to prompt fanatical Slavs to shoot at an Austrian Grand-duke in 1914.