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Text originally published in 1935 under the same title.
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Although in most cases we have retained the Authors original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern readers benefit.
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THE RETURN OF THE DARK INVADER
BY
CAPTAIN VON RINTELEN
Ein seiner Geschichte und seiner vierjhrigen Kriegsleistung nach so starkes Volk wie das deutsche hat ein Anrecht darauf, vllig klar zu sehen, wie die Ereignisse sich in Wirklichkeit abgespielt haben.
Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg vor dem Reichstag-Untersuchungs-Ausschuss in Berlin, am 18. November 1919.
Their history, and their achievements during four years of War, have proved the German People to be courageous and strong enough to be allowed to hear the truth.
Field-Marshal von Hindenburg, before the Reichstag Investigation Committee in Berlin, 18 November, 1919.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE
CAPTAIN VON RINTELEN comes unwillingly on to the stage for a second time.
In January 1933 we published The Dark Invader , an autobiographical account of his experiences as a sabotage agent in the United States of America during the War. Rintelen had been the chief figure in that work, which had ramifications and results far beyond the knowledge of the general public, and which had been as dangerous a task as any entrusted to a man during the War.
Rintelen left Germany early in 1915. At that time he was a young naval officer; a man coming from one of the oldest and most distinguished families in Germany, of wide social experience in England, France and the United States, and of not inconsiderable wealth. He entered the United States on a false passport, posing as a Swiss citizen, and using the name of Emile V. Gach.
Entrusted with huge funds, he quickly rallied round him sympathisers to the German cause and secret agents of his Government. He fomented the plan for inciting Mexico to war against the United States; he blew up munition stocks; manufactured cigar bombs with delayed fuses and placed them in the holds of ships carrying munitions across the Atlantic to the Allies. His was a work of destruction; its justification was that it hampered the hostile acts, as Rintelen and his Government saw them, of a neutral country.
Finally he was caught by the British. His capture was a testimony to the acuteness and daring of our Naval Intelligence Service. A series of cable messages, imprudently, if not recklessly, sent by the German Military Attach in New York, had been promptly intercepted and deciphered in London, as the secret code that was designed for use between Berlin and the German Embassy in Washington, had somehow or other become available to our Admiralty. The Dutch ship on which he was returning was stopped by a British naval vessel in the North Sea, was escorted to Ramsgate, where, on British soil, Rintelen was arrested. After interrogation in London he was taken to Donington Hall.
Then the Americans, themselves now at war with Germany, and realising, on the evidence produced in London, what had been done on their shores, demanded Rintelen; and the British, by an act that can be defended only on the ground that in war anything is fair, delivered Rintelen over to the American Government. He was tried before an American Civil Court, and sentenced to five years hard labour.
The War ended in 1918, but it was not until 1921 that Rintelen was freed. He returned to Germany to find his country, which, when he had left it, had been in the full pride of its nationhood, rapidly dissolving into the chaos that reached its height in 1932.
In such a Germany there was no room for this naval officer, or for any representative of the rgime that had fallen from public grace. The story of Rintelens return is one of the dramatic episodes of the post-war period. It forms a part of the manuscript that makes this book.
But the manuscript has a greater interest than this personal one. Much of the secret history of the growth of the new Germany is here told for the first time. It is a story of intrigue and treachery on the one hand, and on the other, of an amazing loyalty and implicit patriotism.
The story of The Dark Invader ended when he left the grey walls of the Atlanta Penitentiary behind him. The account of his return begins with the sight of the deserted docks and shipyards of Bremerhaven. How it ends Captain von Rintelen himself tells.
THE PUBLISHERS.
LIST OF FACSIMILES
President Wilsons Order for the Release of Captain von Rintelen
Admiral Behnckes Letter accompanied by the Iron Cross
First and Second Class
The Separatists proposed Rhenish buffer-state
Letter from Herr Alfred Rosenberg
Letter and Telegram from Herr Rudolf Hess
CHAPTER I
THE presidential decree of pardon that prefaces this book marked the beginning of my new life. Now back from gloom to radiance!
When the grey gates of the Atlanta Penitentiary swung open on that winter morning in 1921, and I stepped into the world again, a free man, one part of my life, though I did not realise it then, was ended. But it was not an end of my activity, not a fading away into a quiet and peaceful middle age.
The days of the old glory were gone; the War was over, and my part in it finished on this dull winters morning. The days of the new Germany, torn by strife and revolution, were just dawning. My own life, had I but known it, was beginning afresh, and like a microcosm of my countrys struggle for recognition, my fight for right and vindication was to follow a stormy and eventful course.
That in itself would not be justification for another book, were it not for the fact that what on my return began as a private war with German Governments took on the aspects of an open, and on occasions even an international, contention. The weapons of peace are often more treacherous than those of war. Calumny and vilification, perjury and international trickery, secret attempts at bribery, and political plotting come into the story.
