The Codebreakers: The True Story of the Secret Intelligence Team That Changed the Course of the First World War by James Wyllie, Michael McKinley

was good, but that it could also be a trap, and so von Papen, with the same kind of shrewd thoroughness that would later see him rise to vice chancellor of Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, had the letter-writer investigated.
    In the meantime, the duo hatched a scheme to use German reservists in the United States to invade British Columbia via Washington State, with support from German warships in the Pacific. That plan was rejected too, partly because of the lack of artillery backup, but mainly because Ambassador von Bernstorff thought it the kind of ‘wild-cat scheme’ that would inflame Germanophobia and ultimately fail.
    After next making serious plans to attack the British Empire by invading the soft target of Jamaica, which would soon send men and supplies to Europe once the appalling Allied casualties on the Western Front overcame British military prejudices of giving black men guns, von der Goltz and von Papen decided instead to blow up the Welland Canal, a major Canadian shipping route between Lakes Ontario and Erie that bypasses Niagara Falls. A successful attack on the Welland Canal system would cripple Canadian shipping and food supplies and create panic among the public, who would demand that troops destined for the war in Europe be stationed at home to prevent invasion by the German horde to the south.
    Von der Goltz was promoted to captain and acquired a US passport in the name of Bridgeman Taylor as well as 300 pounds of dynamite and 45 feet of fuse. He purchased the explosives package through the offices of Captain Hans Tauscher, an agent of Krupp, the German steel and armament juggernaut, via the DuPont Powder Company, for $534.37.
    After picking up the dynamite and fuse himself by motorboat from a DuPont company barge in the Hudson River, von der Goltz transported it in suitcases in a careening New York taxi first to the German Club on the south side of Central Park, where Karl Boy-Ed lived, and which became such a centre for German diplomats, sympathisers and saboteurs that the US government finally seized the building in 1918. From there he went to the safe house run by Martha Held, a buxom, blue-eyed opera singer who had emigrated from Germany in 1912. With her raven hair, diamond earrings and the elaborate Victorian costumes that camouflaged her middle-age spread, Held trilled arias into the Manhattan night from her rented brownstone at 123 West 15th Street, an easy address to remember for the German sailors, officers and spies – and even von Bernstorff – who were regular visitors.
    Once the explosive was safely stowed, von der Goltz and his hand-picked team of German sailors whom he had liberated from their involuntary residence in American ports headed north to strike a blow for Germany. However, not only had the Canadians figured out that such an important shipping lane might be a target for saboteurs and guarded it accordingly, by the time von der Goltz and his fellow conspirators arrived in Niagara Falls, New York, they learned that Canadian troops had left their base at Valcartier for England. So instead, they exchanged impotent telegrams with Mr Steffens (von Papen’s code name) and talked loudly about their German patriotism for all and sundry to hear. Von der Goltz claimed that it was to distract their American surveillance team from the other unit of German saboteurs heading into Canada, but the truth was that the Germans were going to have to come up with a better plan than this if they hoped to win the war on the North American front.
    On 3 January 1915, an enciphered telegram arrived at Ambassador von Bernstorff’s Washington office, with orders from Berlin:
    Secret. The General Staff is anxious that vigorous measures should be taken to destroy the Canadian Pacific in several places for the purpose of causing a lengthy interruption of traffic. Captain Boehm who is well known in America and who will shortly return to that country is furnished with expert information on that subject.