Armgaard Karl Graves
{{Short description|German WWI double agent}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{more citations needed|date=January 2020}}
{{Infobox spy
| name = Armgaard Karl Graves
| nickname = Max Meincke {{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}}
| image = Graves in a picture published in the Evening Public Ledger February 4 1916 cropped.png
| caption = Graves in a picture published in the Evening Public Ledger 4 February 1916
| allegiance = {{flagcountry|United Kingdom}}
{{flagcountry|German Empire}}
| service = {{flagicon|United Kingdom}}
| serviceyears =
| rank =
| operation =
| award =
| codename1 =
| birth_name =
| birth_date = 7 May 1882
| birth_place = Berlin, German Empire
| death_date = Unknown
| death_place = Unknown
}}
Armgaard Karl Graves (born 7 May 1882 in Berlin, probably died in the US) acted as a mole for MI5, the British counterintelligence service, inside the intelligence-wing of the Imperial German Navy, both before and during the First World War. He was fired from the German Secret service and called a "double-dyed rascal."{{sfn|Richelson|1997|p=14}}
Life
Graves left the German Empire in 1898. Twice he was charged with theft in New South Wales, and in December 1910 he was charged with molesting a woman in Colombo, British Ceylon (now Sri Lanka).{{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}}
Around 1911 he returned to Germany under the title "A.K. Graves Dr Med." A few months later he was sentenced to six months in prison for fraud in Wiesbaden but fled to Stettin, where he was arrested.{{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}}
During the Agadir crisis, Graves was probably recruited directly from the prison for the Nachrichten-Abteilung at its Berlin headquarters in the presence of Arthur Tapken, Georg Stammer, and Gustav Steinhauer.{{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}} As' W. Lewis, he was to observe movements of Royal Navy warships off Scotland, especially in front of the naval bases Rosyth and Cromarty, for which he received £15 (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|15|1911|r=-0}}}} in {{CURRENTYEAR}}) a month.{{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}}
In early 1912, he reached Edinburgh and went to Glasgow soon afterwards. By post surveillance of other suspects, he was discovered and under surveillance. His return to Berlin forced the Scottish police to arrest him on 14 April 1912.
Three months later he was sentenced to 8 months in prison. On 18 December he was freed, officially on the grounds of poor health. In reality, he had agreed to work for British Intelligence (MI5) for £2 (£{{formatnum:{{Inflation|UK|2|1913|r=-0}}}} in {{CURRENTYEAR}}) a month.{{sfn|Boghardt|2004|p=60}}
Graves travelled to Berlin to get a list of spies in Britain for MI5 from Admiralty Chief Secretary Stammer. However, instead of returning to the UK he was sent to the United States by German command.
In February and March 1913 he demanded money from MI5 to return from there to the UK, which they did not provide. Instead, Graves presented himself as a "spymaster" in the US press and shared information about his two employers. On the eve of the war, his autobiography, The Secrets of the German War Office was published{{sfn|Graves|Fox|2015|p=}} and sold 100,000 copies.
In 1915, a sequel of his first book was published, The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns,{{sfn|Graves|2019|p= }}{{sfn|The New York Times, June 27,|1915|p=235}} and wrote for various newspaper columns on his predictions about WWI.
In November 1916, he tried to extort $3,000 (${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|3000|1915|r=-2}}}} in {{CURRENTYEAR}}) by blackmailing the wife of Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, the Imperial German Ambassador to the United States and Mexico, using letters "alleged to contain matters showing her infirmities and failings."{{sfn|Bisbee Daily Review|1916|p=1}} His ghostwriter Edward Lyell Fox acted as a courier. Count von Bernstorff, however, considered the material worthless and got the US State Department involved and Graves was arrested. The German Reich rejected the testimony of the embassy employee Graf von Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg in the process and he was released again. {{citation needed|date=January 2020}}
Graves was arrested in 1917 for being in a restricted zone for foreigners in Kansas City and interned as an enemy alien until the end of the war in November 1918.{{citation needed|date=December 2019}} He remained in the USA after the war. He was sentenced to 3 years in prison in 1934 for stealing $1,500 (${{formatnum:{{Inflation|US|1500|1934|r=-2}}}} in {{CURRENTYEAR}}).
After his release in 1937, he was to be deported, but claimed that Nazi Germany would certainly kill him, so "a government agency" reportedly intervened and took him off the Germany-bound ship.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}} Graves probably died in the USA.{{citation needed|date=January 2020}}
Confusion with Robert Graves
Renowned British war poet Robert von Ranke Graves was initially received with intense suspicion when a rumour was started that he was a spy. Jean Moorcroft Wilson, a British academic and writer, best known as a biographer and critic of First World War poets and poetry, stated that "it was unlucky that a notorious German spy caught in England in 1911" had used the name Armgaard Karl Graves, an alias with the same last name as the poet.{{sfn|Wilson|2018|p=}}
See also
{{Commons}}
Published books
- {{cite book|last1=Graves|first1=Armgaard Karl|last2=Fox|first2=Edward Lyell|author-link=Armgaard Karl Graves|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6948/6948-h/6948-h.htm|title=The Secrets of the German War Office|year=2015|publisher=Creative Media Partners|isbn=9781340508562|ref=none}} - Total pages: 288
- {{cite book |last=Graves|first=Armgaard Karl | author-link = Armgaard Karl Graves| title = The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns|year=2019| publisher = Creative Media Partners| isbn= 9780530575254|ref=none}} - Total pages: 266
==Bibliography==
Notes
{{reflist}}
References
- {{cite book |last=Boghardt|first=Thomas | author-link = Thomas Boghardt| title = Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain During the First World War Era|year=2004| publisher = Springer| isbn=9780230508422}} - Total pages: 224
- {{cite news |date= November 12, 1916|title= Spy Arrested Trying to Blackmail Wife of Ambassador Bernstorff|last=Bisbee Daily Review|author-link=Sierra Vista Herald|url=https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84024827/1916-11-12/ed-1/seq-1/|newspaper= Bisbee Daily Review|publisher=W.B. Kelly|location=Bisbee, Cochise, Arizona|issn=2157-3255|oclc=11363144|pages=1–16|access-date= November 12, 2019 }}
- {{cite book|last1=Graves|first1=Armgaard Karl|last2=Fox|first2=Edward Lyell|author-link=Armgaard Karl Graves|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6948/6948-h/6948-h.htm|title=The Secrets of the German War Office|year=2015|publisher=Creative Media Partners|isbn=9781340508562|location=|pages=}} - Total pages: 288
- {{cite book |last=Graves|first=Armgaard Karl | author-link = Armgaard Karl Graves| title = The Secrets of the Hohenzollerns|year=2019| publisher = Creative Media Partners| isbn= 9780530575254}} - Total pages: 266
- {{cite news |ref={{SfnRef|The New York Times, June 27,|1915}}|date= June 27, 1915|title= "GERMAN SPY" TELLS HOHENZOLLERN SECRETS; Another Book by Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves Professes to Make New Disclosures Regarding the Kaiser and His Court|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1915/06/27/archives/german-spy-tells-hohenzollern-secrets-another-book-by-dr-armgaard.html|newspaper=The New York Times|location=New York, NY|issn=1553-8095|oclc=1645522|access-date= November 18, 2019 }}
- {{cite book |last=Richelson|first=Jeffery T. | title = A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century|year=1997| publisher = Oxford University Press| isbn= 9780195113907 }} - Total pages: 534
- {{cite book |last=Wilson|first=Jean Moorcroft | author-link = Jean Moorcroft Wilson| title = Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That (1895-1929)|year=2018| publisher = Bloomsbury Publishing| isbn= 9781472929150 }} - Total pages: 480
{{DEFAULTSORT:Graves, Armgaard Karl Graves}}
Category:German people of World War I
Category:Interwar-period spies
Category:Scotland Yard informants
Category:World War I spies for the United Kingdom
Category:Year of death missing
Category:People interned during World War I
Category:Prisoners and detainees of the United States federal government