Life and Death of Fernando Buschmann
As the First World War raged on the Western Front, another, more secretive, war was developing on the Home Front. German agents and British intelligence played cat and mouse as spies were hunted and imprisoned at the Tower of London. One such spy was Fernando Buschmann - a businessman who found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. This is Buschmann's story, the 7th of 11 spies to be executed during the First World War.
8 minute read
Caught Between Worlds
Fernando Buschmann arrived in London at the wrong time. The year was 1915. The First World War raged across Europe and Britain was gripped by anti-German sentiment. Businesses with German sounding names were targeted by mobs and authorities hunted spies for the Central Powers . Imagine that your country turned on you because of your name. For a foreign businessman with a German name, Buschmann would have been watched very carefully.
Despite his Germanic surname, Fernando Buschmann was not actually German. He was Brazilian by birth, with a German father and a Danish mother, but he was educated in both Austria and Switzerland. After leaving school, he embarked on a career in the aviation industry. When this failed to take off, Buschmann decided to return to Brazil to explore other opportunities. In 1912, Buschmann established an import-export firm with fellow businessman Marcelino Bello; this time with more success.
Under the name Buschmann and Bello, their company imported food from Germany and England and exported Brazilian potatoes and bananas. The following year, business was good enough for the pair to open a office in Hamburg and Fernando regularly moved between Brazil and Europe to expand their trading interests.
Events would soon overtake this flourishing enterprise. As the clouds of war gathered over Europe, the German office of Buschmann & Bello was closed in September 1914. Soon after, several British firms stopped trading with their company due to Buschmann’s German ties. Buschmann’s name was removed from the firm’s title, and it was while he was concluding business on the Continent that he became entangled in the world of espionage.
First World War Spies
Carl Hans Lody
Carl Hans Lody was a junior lieutenant in the German Naval Reserve who volunteered with German Naval Intelligence in May 1914. In August 1914, he was assigned to collect information in Britain, specifically shipping in Scotland. Lody was ill-trained and ill-equipped for life as a spy. He would frequently communicate with addresses well known to MI5 as fronts for German spies via public telegrams. These messages were intercepted by British intelligence and Lody was arrested 2nd October 1914. On 6th November 1914, Lody was executed.
Carl Frederick Muller
Before the war, Carl Frederick Muller was a German businessman in Antwerp, Belgium. When the war arrived, Muller’s business failed and he was arrested by the German military authorities. It is thought that during this brief term of imprisonment, Muller was recruited as a spy. When he arrived in England, Muller recruited a baker called John Hahn. Unfortunately, Hahn did not have Muller’s caution and signed his own name on a message sent to his intelligence contact. This led police to Hahn and then to Muller. Muller was arrested on 25th February 1915 and executed at 6am, 23rd June 1915.
Janssen and Roos
Haicke Petrus Marinus Janssen and Willem Johannes Roos were Dutch nationals who posed as cigar salesmen. In late April to early May, the two men arrived in the UK and began visiting prominent ports such as Leith in Scotland and Southampton in England. They repeatedly sent messages to a company they allegedly worked for called Dierks – a company suspected of being a front for German intelligence. In these messages, the pair asked for quantities of cigars which British intelligence suspected as being code for ship and troop movements. For example, a request for 10,000 Sumatra S.S. cigars meant 10 "Schlaht Schiffe", or battleships. The pair were convicted and executed on 30th July 1915.
Ernst Waldemar Melin
Ernst Waldemar Melin came from a prominent Swedish family with trading links to England. His early life was marked with drug and alcohol abuse. By 1915, thanks to the war and his father’s exasperation, Melin found himself looking for work in Hamburg. Here, he was introduced to German military officers who hired him to spy on Britain. Under the direction of Dierks, Melin was a reluctant spy who refused to travel around the ports and instead remained in London to feed occasional, largely nonsense, information back to Berlin. On capture, he almost immediately confessed but this did little to save him. Melin was found guilty and executed on 10th September 1915.
Augusto Alfredo Roggen
Augusto Alfredo Roggen was a Uruguayan national born to German parents. In March 1914, Augusto travelled to Europe and toured the continent before returning to Germany in May 1914. On 30 May 1915, Roggen travelled to London and attempted to buy some horses with the cover story of exporting them to Montevideo in Uruguay. When asked where the money would be coming from, Roggen gave the address of Mr. Flores - a well-known German spymaster. Roggen spent the next two weeks travelling around Britain and announced his intention to visit an area known for torpedo experiments. On 9th June, Roggen was arrested. At his hasty trial, Roggen was found guilty and sentenced to death. Roggen was executed on 17th September 1915.
George Traugott Breeckow
George Breeckow was born in Stettin in modern day Poland. Despite his German roots, Breeckow travelled to America where he arranged the export of pianos until 1914. He moved back to Germany just in time for the outbreak of war. He arrived in London on 11th May 1915 and formed a relationship with another spy, Louise Emily Wertheim. Breeckow spent his time sending troop movements in invisible ink to his handler, the well-known Flores in Rotterdam! One of these messages led to his arrest, as he included his contact details on the back of the envelope. Both Wertheim and Breeckow were traced and arrested. Breeckow was sentenced to death and executed on 26th October 1915.
A Businessman in Trouble
Short of money and in the company of a lady (who, scandalously, was not his wife), Buschmann was introduced by letter to a Dutch contact called Heinrich Flores. Unfortunately for the young entrepreneur, Flores was actually a German spymaster posing as a language teacher in Rotterdam.
He would later claim that he had no idea Flores was spying for Imperial Germany, but this connection brought him to the attention of British counterintelligence. When Buschmann came to London in April 1915 on business, his trading activities and letters were placed under close observation.
Buschmann sent telegrams requesting money from Flores as he attempted to set up business ventures across the UK. He even intended to travel across Britain, visiting merchants as he went. Alarmed by his frequent communications and travel plans, British intelligence arrested Buschmann in June 1915.
He was not the first person to have been arrested on suspicion of spying during the First World War. A number of German spies had posed as tobacco salesmen. Their letters had requested cigars and cigarettes which, to an untrained eye, could be explained as a simple business order. British intelligence however suspected these were code words, identifying war assets on their way to Europe.
When questioned, Buschmann claimed his business in England was to sell an acid used in explosives, rifles, and cloth. He admitted to formerly selling flour and potatoes but made a specific point of saying he did not sell cigars. This may seem to clear Buschmann of any wrongdoing. However, as he had been involved in food import and export before the war, it was believed that the word 'banana' was used instead as code for shipping.
...should we be far out in suggesting that bananas and battleships are interchangeable terms?
Major Reginald John Drake, British War Office
The Death of Fernando Buschmann
Buschmann was charged with four offenses under Section 48 of the Defence of the Realm (Consolidation) Regulations 1914 . This meant he was accused of spying, a capital crime . Buschmann was not able to easily explain his connection to known German agents or his trips to important naval dockyards. Invisible ink was also found in his record books, which was a common spying device for German agents.
Buschmann’s defence was that he was simply a bad businessman.
I was never a soldier or a sailor, and I am absolutely ignorant of all military matters. I am not a good businessman as I am more wrapped up in my music than business.
Fernando Buschmann, on hearing the court's verdict
This defence was not sufficient for the British authorities. Fernando Buschmann was found guilty in September 1915 and sentenced to death.
He was transferred to the Tower of London on the 18th October 1915, where he was to be executed by firing squad. He was allowed to have his violin which he played throughout the night. The sentence was carried out at 7:00am on the 19th of October at the Tower Rifle Range. Buschmann was the seventh of eleven convicted spies shot between November 1914 and April 1916. Tragically, he was the second youngest at just 25 years old.
Arms of the First World War
The First World War was a period of great innovation in arms as the major powers attempted to break the deadlock of trench warfare. Yet as weapons grew increasingly efficient, tactics failed to keep pace. As a result, millions of men from around the world would lose their lives in the fields of Flanders, the plains of Russia, or the cliffs of Gallipoli. The Royal Armouries has many of these arms in our online collection, allowing visitors to learn more about how they revolutionised warfare.
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