José Iturbide. U.S. Military Intelligence described him as a “charm-
ing, cultured gentleman.”
In the course of World War I, Jahnke offered his services to the
intelligence and sabotage sections of German naval intelligence
(“N”). His job, as he later stated, was “to collect information about
the American munitions production and send it on to Germany.”
In the United States and Mexico, one of his primary contacts was
the radical labor organization Industrial Workers of the World. A
postwar investigation by the U.S. and German Mixed Claims Com-
mission found Germany responsible for the enormous explosion at
Black Tom Island on 30 July 1916, although Jahnke’s involvement
was never definitively established. According to the testimony given
to his Russian captors at the end of World War II, the diversionary
acts he organized in 1917 resulted in the sinking of 14 American
steamers.
Following a short period in Mexico, Jahnke returned to Germany
in January 1921. Two years later, he undertook acts of sabotage
against the French during their occupation of the Ruhr. Jahnke’s
undercover involvement also aided the secret military contacts that
developed between the Reichswehr and the Red Army in the course
of the 1920s. With the advent of the Third Reich, the intelligence
service that he had established—the Jahnke-Büro (Jahnke Office)—
became housed in the Nazi Party Chancellory under the aegis of
Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess. The intermediary involved was SA
leader Franz Pfeffer von Salomon, whose protection helped keep
the sub rosa activities of the Jahnke-Büro out of the realm of open
controversy. Because of Jahnke’s wide circle of important contacts,
many leading Nazis relied on his semiofficial intelligence for pieces
of information.
Jahnke’s opposition to the war with England as well as his disdain
for Hitler and SS Chief Heinrich Himmler put him clearly out of fa-
vor, especially with Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicher-
heitshauptamt. Although his intelligence operation was dismantled
by Heydrich, Jahnke found a position in 1941 working under Walter
Schellenberg, head of the foreign intelligence branch of the Sicher-
heitsdienst. Schellenberg relied on this ‘remarkable” man especially
for intelligence about East Asia and Russia. Jahnke also told him
that the full value of a secret service depended on the number and208 • JAHNKE, KURT