Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponentsGrant, Hamil
History
Spies and Secret Service: The story of espionage, its main systems and chief exponents
Grant, Hamil
Secret service; Spies
We propose in this present chapter, which concludes our account of
Germany's system, to show how complete is the training of agents for
the work of military and naval espionage. The German military spy,
it must be premised, is rarely an officer on the active or retired
list, but almost always a civilian who has, of course, had military
training. Turr and Windell had both been military officers who had
practically been cashiered, while Lody had been a minor officer in
the German merchant service. The German military agent must know all
units of foreign armies at sight and must also be able to memorise the
code words by which such units are indicated in the Berlin bureau.
In respect of code words, indeed, his memory must, in all military
matters, be of a Napoleonic capacity, and when corresponding with his
head office as to the work of any particular pattern of gun on which he
is instructed to report, it will go badly with him if he fails to quote
his code accurately. Since, by the regulations, he is not permitted to
carry documents, his task is obviously not an easy one. And so, again,
with classes of explosives and types of shell. Furthermore, he must
be so intimate with the science of fortification as to be competent
to produce a map of any required fortified place, its maximum content
and capacity for resistance. No Woolwich cadet of two years' standing
is expected to know half as much as your German military spy, while
his periodical examinations are conducted on a scale which would be
sufficient to make studious officers of the Staff College doubtful
as to their ability to "floor" the papers. Any error transmitted in
the way of information as to guns, man-capacity of fortresses, new
ideas in strategy and tactics, ballistics, plans and military maps,
are dealt with in Berlin on the American plan—that is to say, the
offender is never given a chance to offend twice. Nor is the art of
generalisation, so common in journalism, ever permitted to pass muster
at Number Seventy. Particularisation is insisted upon, for Berlin
wants facts first, last, always and everywhere. To ensure complete
accuracy, the General Staff will employ, if necessary, a dozen spies
on the same mission; they operate unknown to each other, their reports
are compared and discrepancies mean the sending out of supplementary
agents on the same mission, until by a process of exhaustion, and
perhaps after several years of observation, the mathematical truth is
finally arrived at. In the meantime, perhaps, the structure of any
given fortress has been radically or partly altered; still the process
goes on, for Berlin's General Staff never sleeps, is eternally vigilant
and alert and possesses the only financial stocking in the Empire which
knows no end. All this is in accordance with a rule laid down by the
Bismarck-Stieber combination—namely, that the German Intelligence Staff
shall know as much about any country in Europe as that country's own
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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