The Puzzling Life and Uncertain Death of Heinrich Feldmann, A Spy in the First World War

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The Great War—what we now call World War I—was fought on such a massive never-before-seen scale that it stretched the governments, systems, and civilizations of every nation caught up within its swirling vortex in unprecedented ways. It forced them to think and act in ways they’d never before imagined. Their intelligence gathering services were no exception.

One unique factor which played into the war was the geographical location of the Netherlands, who managed to remain neutral through the entire conflict. Perched across the North Sea from Britain, bordering Germany and German-occupied Belgium, and but a few days march from the Western Front, it sat at a strategic junction of the conflict. This made it a vital site for intelligence work. All the major belligerents had a presence in Holland during the war, but by far the most active proved to be Britain and Germany. The British needed a practical base from which to coordinate the gathering of intelligence inside German-occupied Belgium, northern France, and even Germany itself, and the Germans needed a location from which to recruit informants and potentially slip enemy agents onto ships to reach Britain undetected. For both, Holland was the ideal place.

Both Britain and Germany quickly set up shop in Holland, both in the government enclave of The Hague and to a larger extent the city of Rotterdam. Rotterdam was a major shipping port, with traffic moving to and from Britain and elsewhere, and also an easy base from which to reach the border with Belgium. While German Intelligence (Nachrichtendienst) had its headquarters in Wesel and occupied Antwerp, it also established a branch within the consulate inside Rotterdam. Meanwhile, C—the Chief of the British Secret Service—already had an agent at work in Rotterdam. Richard Tinsley, known as T, was the director of a successful shipping company who had lived in Holland for some years and had cultivated useful connections among the Dutch government and police. This made him the ideal man to head British Intelligence within the country once war broke out.

Given the nature of their close proximity and the close contact they were forced to maintain with Dutch Intelligence and police, there was no way for the Brits and Germans to keep all knowledge of their operations from one another. Most of the top officials from both organizations were known to each other, as well as their headquarters, and they were often engaged in competition with each other to secure the best sources. They also employed spy games, trying to fool one another with false agents and faulty information.

One source of information that the British had to take particular care in vetting was that of German deserters. As the war dragged on, and the situation at the Western Front and within Germany steadily deteriorated due to the British blockade, more and more German soldiers began to abandon their posts and make their way across the border into Holland. If discovered by the Dutch authorities, who were ever conscious not to do anything to endanger their country’s neutrality, these deserters were either placed in an internment camp or sent back to Germany. Likewise for the German authorities. So, the British began seeking out these deserters and, with the bribe of a few guilders to give them a fighting chance at survival, extracting information about the regiments and divisions they’d left and their placement on the front, as well as any other intel they could provide.

However, not all of these deserters or their intelligence were legitimate. Sometimes deserters would deliberately give false information, or on occasion German Intelligence would send them fake deserters. According to Captain Henry Landau, head of military intelligence at Rotterdam and the man in charge of interviewing many of these men, he was usually already armed with enough data to be able to either corroborate their claims or suss out any lies. Though, upon occasion, he and others were fooled. As in the instance when a supposed Turkish soldier in partial uniform appeared in Landau’s office. His story and every detail seemed correct, and the British were aware that a great deal of regrouping had taken place during that time among the Central Powers, but they didn’t have enough intel on the Turkish Army to be certain. Unable to catch him in any lies and out of an abundance of caution for their cause, they paid the Turkish soldier and transmitted his information on to London. When they later learned that no Turkish divisions were ever transported to the Western Front, Landau suspected the Germans had a good laugh at their expense.

British Intelligence also had its triumphs. Such as the deserter who brought them the latest edition of the German field post directory, which he’d removed from a Düsseldorf post office. The directory listed every unit in the German Army—their regiments, batteries, flights, and even field posts, which could tell them from intercepted mail where each unit was located. Obtaining such a guide was a major coup.

But it was Landau’s tale about his interaction with a deserter named Heinrich Feldmann that sparked the idea for the plot of my fifth Verity Kent novel, Murder Most Fair. Landau believed that when Feldmann appeared in his office he wasn’t simply offering up information to obtain a few gulden, but because he nursed a sincere grievance with the German government. He’d been dismayed at the state he’d found his wife and three children in on his last leave to Berlin, as they’d been living on nothing but turnips and watery potatoes for some time, and conditions were worsening to near starvation levels. He’d decided he had a greater responsibility to his family than the Kaiser, and so had resolved to desert to Holland in order to find work to send money to them.

It turned out that Landau had need of a man for a job which would take him into Germany, and he chose to offer the work to Feldmann. He proposed to pay him well, but warned him the assignment was dangerous, even with the necessary forged papers the service could provide Feldmann to assert he was unfit for military service and the pass allowing him to travel on German railways. Accepting the risks, Feldmann agreed and was soon smuggled over the border into Germany where he was then on his own. Three weeks later, Feldmann returned and contacted Landau by the secretive means they’d prearranged. He had brought back all the information the British had sought and more, including intel on the sturmtruppen being trained for the German’s next big offensive, and knowledge of the deteriorating economic conditions within the country.

Landau then offered Feldmann an even more difficult assignment—developing a train-watching post at Trier. A post which was greatly needed, but thus far had been impossible to establish. While nervous, Feldmann agreed to attempt it and returned to Germany. But Landau never saw him again. He speculated on whether Feldmann had been caught and killed, or whether the large sum of money he’d given him to help him complete the task had become too great a temptation and knowing that the forged documents worked, he’d decided to abandon the mission and return to his family. If it was the latter, Landau decided he understood, given the difficulty of the mission Feldmann faced and the fact his family was his highest priority. As Landau put it, “as he had refused to sacrifice them for his Kaiser, we could not expect him to sacrifice them for us.”

I found myself wondering about Feldmann, about what had really happened to him, about what had happened to his family. Had he returned to his family, or had he been killed? I found myself in agreement with Landau, hoping for his family’s sake that he’d returned to Berlin. But what was the truth?

It’s these sorts of open-ended questions which are the natural driving force for stories, especially when there is humanity at stake and the possibility of great calamity. It compelled me to invent possible scenarios for his fate. I decided having my Secret Service agent Verity encounter Feldmann was too great a temptation to resist. And making it intertwine with Verity’s beloved German great-aunt, who had already been established as living near the border with Belgium and Holland, even more so.

It also allowed me to confront the virulent anti-German sentiments felt by many in Britain after the war, and to engage with it in a very personal way. Verity often finds herself in the unique position of being able to empathize with both sides of an issue, and this struggle is no different. She appreciates the deep grief, disillusionment, and anger of the British population over the loss of so many of their loved ones and their desire to direct their animosity at someone. But she also recognizes that the Germans have also suffered, not only the loss of their loved ones, but also from extreme deprivation and starvation, and the instability of their government. That they had been caught up in the maelstrom of the war as well.

Encountering the enemy in such close proximity, witnessing their humanity—their faults, their triumphs, and their frailties—and engaging them in a battle of wits offered Landau and other intelligence agents, including my fictional Verity, perhaps a more balanced perspective. They weren’t the goliath in the distance, but rather the adversary at the door, or perhaps even seated across the table. Still potentially deadly, but also capable of reason and compassion. As perilous or forbearing of us as we were of them.

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