Horst Von Der Goltz

My Adventures as a German Secret Service Agent (Ww1) Horst Von Der Goltz

By the time the author came to write this book he had, he says, been in and out of the Kaiser's 'web' for ten years, having served him faithfully in many capacities and in many places - all over Europe, in Mexico and in the USA. Despite the title, which, presumably, he himself gave the book, he maintains he was not a spy nor was he a secret agent; he was a secret diplomatic agent. The principle countries of his concern were Mexico, which the Germans before and during the war were trying to turn against the USA (the Zimmerman telegram was the final straw as far as the USA was concerned), and the USA itself. There was a conspiracy, he reveals, already ongoing during the first month of the war, to violate the neutrality of the USA and a plot to blow up the Welland Canal in Canada whch connected L: ake Ontario with Lake Erie. The author was the man who planned it. There were plans to suborn German-American citizens and one of the key players was Captain Franz von Papen who would be Chancellor of Germany in 1932 and later Hitler's Vice-Chancellor. At one time von der Goltz was a major in the Mexican army, sentenced to death more than once, and in October 1914 he was arrested in the UK and held in prison for fifteen months, expecting to be shot. In March 1916 he was taken to the USA where he had agreed to testify for the Government against one of the German agents and to spill the beans on German activity in the USA.