The Baltimore Sabotage Cell: German Agents, American Traitors, and the U-boat Deutschland During World War I

by Dwight R. Messimer

By the summer of 1915, Germany was faced with two related, but somewhat dissimilar problems; how to break the British blockade and how to stop or seriously disrupt the British supply line across the Atlantic. The solution to breaking the blockade was to find a way over it, through it, or under it. Aircraft in those days were too primitive, underpowered, and short range to accomplish the first and Germany lacked the naval strength to force a passage through the blockade. But if a fleet of cargo U-boats could be built that were large enough to carry meaningful loads and had the range to make a round trip between Germany and the United States without having to refuel, the blockade might be successfully broken. Responsibility for implementing this solution rested with a section of German Navy Intelligence known as the "Etappendienst."

The Germans also lacked the naval strength to effect the solution to the other problem; cutting Britain's supply line to America. The German Navy could not defeat the Royal Navy in a slug-fest and there were not enough U-boats to effectively block Britain's cross-Atlantic sea trade. The answer lay in sabotage--blowing up the munitions factories, the depots, and the ships, and infecting the remounts--horses and mules--with Anthrax and Glanders at the western end of the supply line.


Responsibility for carrying out sabotage of all types in the United States rested with a newly established subsection of the German Army Intelligence called the "Sektion Politik" that sent trained saboteurs to the United States beginning in 1915. German agents, together with American sympathizers, carried out more than fifty successful attacks involving fire and explosion before America's entry into the war on 6 April 1917, in addition to spreading Anthrax and Glanders on the East Coast.


Of the two solutions to those problems, sabotage was incompatible with Germany's primary diplomatic goal to keep the United States out of the war, while the other, breaking the blockade with a fleet of cargo U-boats, provided the least danger of bringing the United States into the war. The two solutions were widely dissimilar, but the fact that the cargo U-boat project and the sabotage campaign were run by intelligence agencies--the "Etappendienst" (Navy) and the "Geheimdienst" (Army), through the agency of one man--Paul Hilken, in one US city--Baltimore, make them inseparable. Those separate solutions created the dichotomy that produced the U-Boat Deutschland and the Baltimore Sabotage Cell.

Genres: Nautical, History, Nonfiction

280 pages, Hardcover

First published March 15, 2015

Reviews

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

As others have pointed out, the title of this book is somewhat misleading -- the author's focus, interest, and command of material clearly lies with the U-Boat Deutschland, referenced in the subtitle. I picked this up because I was curious to learn about the cell of German agents based in Baltimore, and the extent to which they were connected to and involved in the same kind of plots as the New York group. And while the author does provide a decent amount of information on the Baltimore-based Germans, he's really mostly interested in how they supported the efforts to bring the Deutschland over to Baltimore as a prototype blockade-running cargo submarine.

For the submarine enthusiast, there is a wealth of detail, both with regards to personnel and matters technical. The author has done quite a job mining the various archives and sources for an astonishing amount of details on the workings of this unwieldy submersible. Indeed, given the various known design flaws, it's remarkable anyone agreed to set foot in it, much less traverse the Atlantic and back again. Those with an interest in World War I-era submarines, or in German espionage in America may find this worth a read, but it's too freighted in extraneous information to read smoothly or flow as a work of popular history. (As a side note, there's a novel called "A Sailor for Austria" about a submarine officer in the Austro-Hungarian Navy during World War I that is hugely entertaining.)

Note: For all the author's evident attention to detail, I did catch a small error in an area I do know about -- the Washington DC neighborhood I grew up in. On page 16, he writes that German agents set up a lab to manufacture biological weapons "in Maryland at the corner of Lexington and 33rd Streets in Chevy Chase." However, there is no such intersection in Chevy Chase, Maryland -- rather, this likely refers to 33rd & Livingston Streets in the adjacent Chevy Chase neighborhood of Washington, DC.

[Bill Sleeman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting but uneven book. It seemed as if the author had two stories he wanted to tell but not enough content for two books. It was uneven at best and unfortunately there really wasn’t enough of the spy side to fully appreciate that story while the submarine side of the book was sufficiently developed that it could have stood on its own. A greater effort at the editorial stage to focus on just one piece would have resulted in a better and more fully realized work.

[Brian OCONNOR · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very technical print size and countued use of german language ranks made it tedious and confusing at times. As a former submariner I found some of the descriptions of the sub on patrol and the engineering space were extremely well done and brought me back to thise days

[Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a little dry, but interesting at times. The font was not really the best and should have been different and probably should have been double spaced as opposed to single spaced. It made it harder to read.