Biography
Franz von Rintelen Captain Franz von Rintelen was a German Imperial Navy officer who ran German covert operations in the United States from April to August 1915, before U.S. entry into World War I. From his Manhattan headquarters he organized cigar-shaped incendiary bombs (the so-called pencil bombs designed by Walther Scheele) for placement in the holds of Allied munitions ships, financed Labor's National Peace Council to foment strikes in U.S. munitions plants supplying the Allies, and tried to draw Mexico into a war with the United States. The Bureau of Investigation broke his cipher; he was recalled by Berlin, captured by the British on his return voyage, interned, and after the U.S. entered the war was extradited to the United States, tried in federal court in New York, and convicted of conspiracy. He was imprisoned for three years at the Atlanta federal penitentiary. His mug shot was published in Butterick's Delineator (July 1918) in the Huns, Spies and Traitors gallery. After the war he settled in Britain, where he wrote his 1933 memoir The Dark Invader and lived until his death in 1949.
