Felix A. Sommerfeld
Felix A. Sommerfeld (May 28, 1879 – ?) was a German secret service agent in Mexico and the United States between 1908 and 1919. He was chief of the Mexican secret service under President Francisco I. Madero, worked as a diplomat and arms buyer for Venustiano Carranza and Francisco "Pancho" Villa, and ran the Mexican portion of Germany's war strategy in North America between 1914 and 1917.
Biography
Born on May 28, 1879, in
In 1908, he suddenly showed up in
When forces supporting Madero succeeded in overthrowing the Diaz in May 1911, Sommerfeld joined the new president's entourage, first as a personal assistant, then as Mexico's chief of the secret service. Working under the direction of the president's brother, Gustavo A. Madero, Sommerfeld led the Mexican secret service.[9] He helped put down the Orozco uprising in the spring of 1912, in the course of which he led the largest foreign secret service organization ever operating on U.S. soil.[10] The secret service organization Sommerfeld built included Mexican-Americans, Mexican expatriates, other German agents such as Horst von der Goltz and Arnold Krumm-Heller, as well as two of the most notorious soldiers of fortune of the decade, Sam Dreben and Emil Lewis Holmdahl.
In 1913, after Madero's overthrow and murder by
In the spring of 1914, Sommerfeld began working closer with successful
When World War I broke out in August 1914, Sommerfeld moved to New York ostensibly to represent Pancho Villa's interests but actually worked for German Naval Attache Karl Boy-Ed.[16] In his function as a specialist on Mexican affairs, Sommerfeld helped the German government sell arms and ammunition they had bought to keep them out of enemy Entente hands. Sommerfeld also had great knowledge of U.S. munitions factories, their capacities, order status, etc. His intelligence reports had a great influence on the formulation of Germany's war strategy vis-a-vis the United States. In 1915, Sommerfeld funneled large numbers of arms to Pancho Villa, the value being estimated to about $340,000 (About $7 million in today's value).[17] Despite having large numbers of arms, Villa was decisively defeated by Constitutionalist Army General Álvaro Obregón in a series of battles in the Bajio, the most famous of which is the Battle of Celaya in 1915. Villa's huge army of movement, largely using massed cavalry charges, fell before Obregón's superior strategy and tactics of trenches improvised from agricultural irrigation ditches and machine guns. Villa's División del Norte ceased to exist, and Villa became a guerrilla leader rather than the general of a major army of movement.
In March 1916, Villa and a small group of men attacked the city of
In June 1918, Sommerfeld was interned in Fort Oglethorpe, GA as an enemy alien.[19] He was released in 1919. A few trips back and forth to Mexico have been recorded in the 1920s and 30s. However, the German agent disappeared in the 1930s, though he does show up in 1942 at age 63 residing at 117 West 17th Street in New York City,[20] after which his whereabouts remain unknown.
References
- ^ "Ancestry - anmelden".
- ^ Staatsarchiv Hamburg, Bestand: 373-7 I, VIII (Auswanderungsamt I), Seite 353 (Mikrofilm Nr. K_1754)
- ^ New York in the Spanish–American War, 1898: part of the report of the adjutant-general of the state for 1900. Volume II, Registers of organizations, p. 319
- ^ Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums, Heft 34, August 24, 1900
- ^ Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 373-7 I, VIII A 1 Band 135, Seite 2251 (Mikrofilm Nr. K_177)
- ^ City Directory, Chicago, Illinois, 1905, page 1477
- ^ Heribert von Feilitzsch, In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908 to 1914, p. 68
- ^ a b Katz, p. 335.
- ^ Heribert von Feilitzsch, In Plain Sight: Felix A. Sommerfeld, Spymaster in Mexico, 1908 to 1914, p. 155
- ^ Charles H. Harris, III and Louis R. Sadler, The Underside of the Mexican Revolution: El Paso, 1912, The Americas, Vol. 39, No. 1 (July, 1982), p. 72
- ^ National Archives RG 65 M1085 Roll 853 file 232, William Offley to Department, May 23, 1913
- ^ Cumberland, The Constitutionalist Years, 279
- ^ Lazaro De La Garza Collection, University of Texas, Benson Library, Austin, TX, Box 1, Folder C, Villa to De La Garza, 4-14-1914
- ^ For example in the case of Emil Holmdahl, Papers of Hugh Lenox Scott, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Box 15, General Correspondence, F.A. Sommerfeld to L.M. Garrison, July 10, 1914
- ^ Friedrich Katz, The Life and Times of Pancho Villa. Stanford: Stanford University Press 1998, p. 865.
- ^ Katz, p. 412.
- ^ Katz, p. 336.
- ^ Katz, p. 333.
- ^ The Washington Post, June 21, 1918, "Held as Enemy Alien."
- ^ Ancestry.com. U.S., World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010
Sources
- Katz, Friedrich (1981). The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revolution. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. OCLC 6942429.
- von Feilitzsch, Heribert (2012). Felix A. Sommerfeld: Spymaster in Mexico, 1908 to 1914. Amissville, Virginia: Henselstone Verlag LLC. ISBN 9780985031701.
- von Feilitzsch, Heribert (2015). Felix A. Sommerfeld and the Mexican Front in the Great War. Amissville, Virginia: Henselstone Verlag LLC. ISBN 9780985031749.