The first Penguin books were published in July 1935 and introduced their distinctive colour coding by subject category, a scheme copied from the Albatross Books in Europe. Initially there was just orange for fiction, dark blue for biography and green for crime but gradually more categories and colours were added including the first cerise for travel and adventure in September 1936. This is that first title and tells in his own words the story of how German WWI spy and saboteur Captain Von Rintelen operated in America for a few short months in 1915 and what happened to him afterwards. It may be thought of as an odd book to be publishing so close to WWII but presumably it was seen as an object lesson for possible activity if Germany did indeed start war again.

Rintelen was chosen from the German Naval Command to go to America to try to stop munitions being shipped to the the Allies. The latest American shells were made from steel rather than the inferior iron still utilised in Europe so were far more destructive, America was still neutral in the conflict so Germany had at first tried to stop America supplying weapons at all as they were seen as taking sides but America then offered to supply Germany as well knowing full well that the British blockade of German shipping routes meant that such a trade was impossible. The only option to the Germans was therefore to stop the ships somehow and Rintelen was just the man, he spoke English fluently and apparently had no problem passing as either English or American and had proved his resourcefulness already in transferring five million marks worth of gold by train and lorry from Berlin to Constantinople to pay bills for the cruisers Goeben and Breslau as German paper money wasn’t being accepted. Rintelen travelled to America via Denmark using papers describing him as a Swiss merchant but once there found that the contact he had arranged had not turned up so he had to start from nothing in the way of a plan but at least he had three million dollars which he had managed to transfer to American banks via various circuitous routes.

Rintelen was to be in America for just four months but in that time managed to do an amazing number of things from arranging manufacture and distribution on board ships of incendiary devices timed to go off during the Atlantic crossing to gaining the contract to supply Russia with wartime supplies none of which made it due to the ships being planted with the devices but which significantly added to the his coffers due to being paid at loading. He also formed a union of dock workers which came out on strike thereby preventing further ships being loaded and ultimately discussed with the deposed president of Mexico starting an uprising with an invasion of America to regain Arizona and therefore directing munitions to an America/Mexico war rather than Europe. That he managed to do so much in so little time and caused major disruption to military supplies across the Atlantic was a tribute to his resourcefulness, that he managed to also largely deflect suspicion from himself was remarkable. However his superiors were not so careful and intercepted telegrams in a code the Allies had access to led to his downfall.

Recalled to Germany, supposedly to review progress and adjust plans Rintenlen was intercepted in his Swiss guise by the British and interned in reasonable luxury at a camp for officers before being transferred to America where he spent four years in a regular prison for actions carried out whilst America was neutral so he wasn’t recognised as a prisoner of war. All this is covered in the book with surprising insights into how well he was treated by the British as opposed to the Americans. The book finishes with him returning to Germany in 1921 as a largely forgotten man. Rintelen came back to Britain in 1933 as he despised Hitler and he lived here until his death in 1949.

This book, along with the sequel ‘The Return of the Dark Invader’ (not published by Penguin) went out of print around 1941/2 when books about the cleverness of German spies ceased to be of interest to the general public and both books stayed out of print for decades. I have found ‘The Dark Invader’ published in 1998 by Frank Cass under their Classics of Espionage series. Apart from that if you want to read this book, and I do recommend it not only for its historical interest but because it is very well written, then you need to hunt down an eighty to ninety year old copy. Fortunately it is surprisingly easy to find them and it shouldn’t cost much more than £10 for a Penguin.