Huerta at the border crossing at El Paso, Texas. Huerta’s appeals to
the German ambassador, Johann Heinrich Count von Bernstorff,
were of no avail.
Meanwhile Rintelen, after spending only four months in the
United States, received instructions to return to Germany, probably
because of complaints lodged against him by two other conspirators
and rivals, Franz von Papen, the military attaché, and Karl Boy-Ed,
the naval attaché. Yet the British had kept a close watch on Rintelen’s
movements and arrested him when his commercial liner underwent a
routine naval inspection off Ramsgate on 13 August 1915. Although
the Americans sought to have him extradited the following year, the
British continued to hold him in a prisoner of war facility outside
Derby. With the entry of the United States into the war, however,
Rintelen had to face charges in New York of “perjury... conspiring
in restraint of foreign commerce, conspiring to secrete bombs on ves-
sels, and conspiring to attack vessels.” Given a 20-month sentence in
November 1918, he was released from the federal prison in Atlanta,
Georgia, at the end of the war and obligated to return to Germany
immediately.
In February 1921, he was promoted to lieutenant commander and
awarded the Iron Cross, but the new Weimar government showed no
interest in honoring his request for the reimbursement of personal
funds and salary lost during his assignment in the United States. As
his feelings toward Germany became increasingly embittered, a new
attitude toward Britain began to take shape, seen most dramatically
in the surprising friendship he formed with Reginald “Blinker” Hall,
the wartime director of British naval intelligence who had agreed to
Rintelen’s extradition to the United States.
Rintelen’s decision to release his memoirs only intensified this
situation. Rejected by the Ullstein publishing house in 1931 upon
the strong recommendation of the Foreign Office, The Dark Invader
(1933) and The Return of the Dark Invader (1935) appeared instead
in English versions. Particularly after the Nazi regime attempted to
block their publication in German, he sensed the danger of remaining
in the country and moved to Great Britain. In 1940, despite his desire
to become a naturalized citizen and even don the uniform of a British
naval officer, officials placed Rintelen in an internment camp near
Liverpool for the duration of the war. After returning to civilian life370 • RINTELEN, FRANZ