US demands recall of Boy-Ed and Papen

On 4 December 1915 the US Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, sent the German ambassador in Washington, Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, a note demanding the immediate recall of two members of the embassy: the naval attaché Karl Boy-Ed and the military attaché, Captain Franz von Papen. The note confirmed in writing what Lansing had already told Bernstorff orally on 1 December. The British chronology of the war records the demand under 4 December, but the State Department had announced it publicly the day before, and on 4 December the affair made the front pages of American newspapers. Three months earlier Washington had demanded the recall of the Austro-Hungarian ambassador Konstantin Dumba; now for the first time it struck at the German mission.

Who the attachés were

Boy-Ed had worked in Washington since 1913. His duties included gathering information on the navies of the North American states and, after the outbreak of war, also supplying the German cruisers in the Atlantic. Papen, an officer of the Prussian General Staff, was military attaché in the United States and Mexico. From New York the two ran a network of people who bought arms and raw materials, recruited reservists and, as later emerged, prepared acts of sabotage aimed at munitions shipments to the Allies. According to later accounts, British intelligence kept track of their activities and shared information with the Americans.

Throughout 1915 the attachés’ names kept surfacing in one affair after another. At the beginning of the year men who had obtained false American passports for German reservists and agents stood trial. In the summer the British authorities at Falmouth took from the American journalist James Archibald the mail of the Central Powers’ embassies, including a letter from Papen to his wife about “idiotic Yankees”. In the autumn Karl Buenz, director of the New York office of the HAPAG shipping line, and several associates stood trial before a federal court in New York. They were accused of using false papers to send ships with supplies for German warships out of American ports. In the first days of December they were convicted, with sentences of up to eighteen months in prison. It was the naval attaché who was responsible for supplying the cruisers.

Without giving reasons

Lansing received Bernstorff on the morning of 1 December. He told him that President Woodrow Wilson had found both officers unacceptable because of their military and naval activities. The ambassador asked whether the charges concerned him as well. Lansing firmly denied it and added that this was not a political matter in which the embassy as such was involved. That same day Bernstorff passed the news to Berlin and asked Lansing, when announcing the demand, to state clearly that the ambassador was not implicated in it. Otherwise, he wrote, the attacks of Germany’s enemies on him personally would not cease and would make his work impossible. Lansing also promised to seek safe conduct from the Allies for the two attachés’ passage to Germany.

The note of 4 December was brief. It stated that facts and circumstances had come to the knowledge of the US government connecting both officers with “illegal and questionable acts of certain persons within the United States”, and that the president had therefore become convinced that their continued presence at the embassy no longer served the purposes of their mission. Boy-Ed and Papen were no longer acceptable to the government of the United States, and Berlin was to recall them at once. The US government expressed deep regret but stressed that it had no alternative. No details were given. When Boy-Ed, who had arrived in Washington that day, asked for an interview to learn the reasons, Lansing refused. He wrote to Bernstorff that he could discuss the matter only with him, and that the decision had been taken after long and careful consideration.

The demand did not break off relations with Germany, but it showed that Washington’s patience was running out. The dispute over the sinking of the Lusitania was still unresolved, the State Department was preparing a sharp note to Vienna over the sinking of the Ancona, and American public opinion increasingly linked fires and explosions in factories and ports with German agents. Berlin did not reply at once. Before recalling the attachés it demanded an explanation of what facts had led the Americans to take this step.