The Old Gringo: The Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce

In the Battle of Ojinaga in December 1913 a famous American writer disappeared without a trace. Ambrose Bierce, who wrote the last known letter to his daughter Helen on December 26th 1913 from Chihuahua City, had been seen as an active participant in the Battle of Ojinaga. “He said that he had ridden four miles to mail the letter and that he had been given a sombrero as a reward for ‘picking off’ one of the enemy with a rifle at long range. He also told her that he was leaving with the army for Ojinaga, a city under siege, the following day.” After the battle he disappeared and no trace of him was ever found. Bierce’s daughter Helen became alarmed after she had not heard anything of her father by January. Most disturbing was the appearance that Bierce had arranged his affairs at home in a way that pointed to his expectation not to return. The seventy-one-year-old writer had been suffering from depression. In a letter to his cousin Laura, Bierce wrote on December 16th 1913: “Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico — ah, that is euthanasia!"

Bierce's letter to a friend saying "Good Bye"

Helen approached the U.S. government to help find her father. Apparently, and quite different from the timeline most historians offer on the efforts of the U.S. government to find Bierce, the request was not made until September 1914. General Scott related the message from Secretary of the Interior, Franklin Lane, to Felix Sommerfeld.

“The Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Franklin K. Lane, is very anxious to get news of a man by the name of Ambrose Bierce, who went to Mexico last year and his friends have heard nothing from him since last December. He is quite a poet and writer, was 71 years of age when he left Washington last fall, was feeling exceedingly strong and healthfull [sic]…He…was accredited to the Villa forces…He had a considerable sum of money with him…In this letter [dated 12-26-1913] he said that his subsequent addresses would be indefinite, that he intended to go [on] horseback and by rail, when possible, through to the West coast of Mexico and from thence to South America…The Secretary would like you to have confidential inquiry made to trace Mr. Bierce. Anything you can do in this direction will be greatly appreciated by him and by the Secretary of War.”

The German agent tracked Bierce from El Paso to Chihuahua City where the writer’s presence had been confirmed and the last letter was sent from on December 26th. In this letter Bierce claimed that he was leaving on a troop train from Chihuahua to Ojinaga. The time frame coincides exactly with the dispatch of six brigades under Generals Ortega and Natera to Ojinaga. Of course, the generally accepted story that Bierce somehow attached himself to Villa is untrue given this time frame. Very surprising is the fact that Bierce did not join the movie producers, journalists, and other foreign admirers of Pancho Villa to witness this last battle for control of Chihuahua. At least, none of those remembered Bierce after his disappearance. Tex O’Reilly, the soldier-of-fortune turned writer was one of the few people who claimed to have heard of Bierce coming through El Paso and on to Chihuahua City. “O'Reilly says that several months later, he heard that an American had been killed in a nearby mining camp of Sierra Mojada. He investigated and heard how an old American, speaking broken Spanish, was executed by Federal Troops when they found out he was searching for Villa's troops. The locals told how he kept laughing, even after the first volley of his execution.” Since not many of Tex’ stories pass the truth test, it is likely that O’Reilly simply related rumors as his own research.

The most widely accepted stories placed Bierce in Ojinaga in the beginning of January. There, the course of events separate. Some rumors had it that the “old gringo” got in a fight with Pancho Villa and was executed. “Odo B. Slade, a former member of Pancho Villa’s staff, recalled an elderly American with gray hair and an asthmatic condition who served as a military advisor to Villa. The American was called Jack Robinson, and he criticized the Mexicans’ battle strategies with the accomplished eye of a military expert.” Another claimed that Bierce got lost on the battlefield and was captured by federals that killed him. A more conservative and perhaps more realistic twist was that Bierce “…started out to fight battles and shoulder hardships as he had done when a boy, somehow believing that a tough spirit would carry him through. Wounded or stricken with disease, he probably lay down in some pesthouse [sic] of a hospital, or in some troop train filled with other stricken men. Or he may have crawled off to some waterhole and died, with nothing more articulate than the winds and the stars for witnesses.” George Weeks, a friend of Bierce, traveled to Mexico in 1919 to research the author’s disappearance. According to an officer of the Mexican army, Bierce “had collapsed during the attack on Ojinaga and had died from hardship and exposure.”

Sommerfeld’s research revealed a potentially different chain of events: Bierce probably never was in Ojinaga or survived the battle and returned to Chihuahua City right after the battle. Sommerfeld found out that the writer left Chihuahua City to the south not to the north where Ojinaga is located. “I investigated in Chihuahua, Mexico and found out that Mr. Bierce left that City some time [sic] in January 1914 for the South, and that is the last anybody [had] ever seen or heard of him. I communicated that information at that time to General Scott on my return to Washington.” Bierce leaving to the south solves several inconsistencies: Villa, who Bierce claimed to have been with, was in Chihuahua City in the beginning of January and had had no plans to come to Ojinaga. If Bierce was with Villa and stayed with him through the battle, why did neither Villa nor anyone else in the Villa camp remember seeing him? If Bierce traveled south towards Durango, he was executing his plan of trying to make it to Mexico’s west coast. If he wanted to see fighting, there was plenty of action in January of 1914 in the Laguna region. Also important was the fact that in order to go west, one had to come through Torreon, the railroad hub in central Mexico.

Carey McWilliams, a journalist and Bierce’s biographer, seemed to share Sommerfeld’s conclusion that the famous writer was alive after the Battle of Ojinaga. Through the good offices of Sherburne Hopkins, McWilliams addressed a letter to Sommerfeld in April 1930 in which he asked for any information about “an ammunition train that was supposed to have been captured by Gen. [Rudolfo L.] Gallegos in the state of Durango in February 1914? It had been rumored that Bierce was attached to this train which was destined for the Huerta forces in Torreon.” Sommerfeld could not offer McWilliams much additional information. The only leads he could provide to the journalist were to check with the Arrieta brothers who were in charge of the Constitutionalist forces in the Laguna and around Torreon in 1914.

The matter of Bierce carrying “a large sum of money” has not been mentioned in the historiography of his disappearance. The Mexican countryside in the early days of 1914 was notoriously infested with rebels of any shape and form, deserted bands of federal soldiers, hapless and homeless peons, and bandits. An old “gringo” traveling with guides, or on a train that had been captured, would have been a prime target for robbery or worse. Conceivably, he was robbed and dumped somewhere along the way without any witnesses. The true story might never see the light of history. Sommerfeld explained the reason why he did not search further for Bierce in 1914. “When I received the letter from General Scott, it was impossible to make any inquiries in the South as I was with the Villa faction and the South was in the hands of the Carranza partisans.” Sommerfeld felt that he satisfied his obligations to General Scott and his superiors in the Wilson administration. Clearly, he did not obsess over the vanished poet. Sommerfeld had more important things to do in the final push against Huerta than to research the disappearance of a suicidal writer in the middle of a war. In a strange twist of history, Sommerfeld’s response to Carey McWilliams in May of 1930 from the Hotel Bristol in Berlin is the last known correspondence of the German agent. Just as is the case with Ambrose Bierce, when, where, and how Sommerfeld died remains a under a veil of secrecy that no historian has lifted to this day.

A Special Christmas Card 99 Years ago

On Christmas Eve 1914, Felix Sommerfeld and General Hugh Lenox Scott did what they could to prevent a clash between American army and Mexican revolutionary forces at the little border hamlet of Naco, Arizona. One year later, Felix Sommerfeld wished his old friend a Merry Christmas:

From left Lieutenant Colonel Robert E. Lee Mitchie, General Hugh Lenox Scott, General Francisco “Pancho” Villa. Second from right in the back row is Felix A. Sommerfeld

New York, December 24, 1914

My dear General:

About a year ago or better just a year ago (Dec. 24) we were trying to keep warm under an army tent somewhere near Osborne, Arizona, making strenuous efforts to convince Governor Maytorena that it was necessary for him to sign a peace agreement. In those trying days I learned to admire your wonderful patience, tact and ability to deal with men and your determination to stand for the “square deal” idea. I deem it my greatest pleasure and honor to have been with you at that time and to have been able to be of some assistance to you and the cause you represented. You spent Xmas eve under a water coated tent somewhere in an army camp in Arizona and I had to listen to the wonderful music of the shrieking wheels of a railroad coach between Naco and El Paso. But I know that you did not mind those inconveniences [,] neither did I. We were on a mission to preserve peace and we accomplished something worthwhile…

            I hope that this Christmas will be a very pleasant and merry one for you, Mrs. Scott and your family.

With kindest regards,

                            I beg to remain

                                            Most sincerely and gratefully

                                                            Yours,

Felix A. Sommerfeld”

Luis Terrazas and the Hoard of the Banco Minero

One of the thorns in the revolutionaries’ side from the time Porfirio Diaz left Mexico City was the power and money of General Luis Terrazas, the largest landholder in Chihuahua and one of the richest men in the history of Mexico. Terrazas had financed the Orozco uprising, allegedly assisted in the plan to assassinate Governor Abraham Gonzalez, and fed the interventionists in the U.S. Senate under Senator Fall all the misinformation they could handle. Huerta also was rumored to be a recipient of Terrazas’ financial goodwill. No one in the Constitutionalist movement irked Luis Terrazas more than Pancho Villa. While other rebels confiscated cattle and hacienda stores, Villa converted the destruction of Terrazas’ wealth into an art form. He publicly looted banks, and drove tens of thousands of Terrazas’ cattle into the U.S. for sale. The relationship between Terrazas and Villa was not just disdain, disrespect, and outright hatred: It was war! The following events, that occurred 100 years ago in December 1913, proved for the first time that Villa was winning this war, hands down.

Luis Terrazas, the cattle king of Mexico

When Villa took Chihuahua City, Luis Terrazas with the majority of his clan had to flee to safety in the U.S.  One of Villa’s first moves was to clear the Banco Minero of its deposits. When the Villistas came to rob the Terrazas bank they made a remarkable discovery. Luis Terrazas Junior, the hacendado’s son, had remained behind to safeguard the remaining family including his mother and the bank of which he was a director. For reasons of insanity or overconfidence, the young Terrazas thought that Villa would not touch him. Shortly before the Villistas could nab him, he took refuge in the British Consulate. Whether or not Villa was aware of international law, which designated diplomatic missions immune, or whether he simply did not care less about British sympathies, he ordered the billionaire’s son arrested. The British Consul protested vehemently but the Villistas removed Terrazas by force. Villa had learned from a director of the Banco Minero, that a large stash of gold had been removed from the vault and hidden. After a few hours of light torture and a mock execution Terrazas revealed that the gold was hidden in a column inside the bank. He did not know which. Raul Madero, by now a Villista general and Luis Aguirre Benavides, Villa’s secretary found the hoard: 600,000 Pesos in gold ($6.3 Million in today’s value). For a second time in the history of the revolution, the Banco Minero in Chihuahua City had taken center stage. Where the gold ended up remained Villa’s secret. Treasure hunters, including Soldier-of-Fortune Emil Holmdahl, would spend decades after the revolution searching for the famed gold to no avail.

The Banco Minero in Chihuahua City in 1909

You Think Negotiations With Iran Are Tough? Try Carranza...

The Wilson administration that had taken office literally days after the coup against and assassination of President Madero had a difficult time formulating a sensible foreign policy towards Mexico. State Department officials who consisted mainly of holdovers from the previous republican administrations as well as a hawkish group in the US Senate pleaded for military intervention as the only way to create order. Before Henry Lane Wilson had been fired in the summer of 1913, he, as well, consistently sent inflated reports of violence against Americans and businesses in Mexico.

Going behind the back of his own State Department, President Wilson decided to use his trusted friend William Bayard Hale for a second time. Hale had been in Mexico in the spring on a mission to find out the truth of Madero's assassination. His mission had resulted in the verification of H. L. Wilson’s role in Madero’s downfall and led to the ambassador’s eventual firing. However, according to Sommerfeld’s testimony in 1918, the mission turned out to be harder than expected. Hale had a hard time to even get an appointment with Carranza. The First Chief refused to see Wilson’s emissary since Hale he did not have official government credentials. Always a stickler for process, Carranza wanted to force Wilson into a de-facto recognition that mandated a diplomatic representative to be dispatched to Carranza. Naturally, not lacking a measure of pigheadedness himself, Wilson did not accept. In November 1913, in order to prevent the issue from coming to a head, the Wilson administration relied on Felix Sommerfeld to intercede with Carranza.

“While in Sonora Mr. William Hale came there and we went to the border and arranged a meeting between Carranza and Hale and acted as a go-between.” It took Sommerfeld from November 2nd until November 12th to get Carranza to grant the audience. However, Sommerfeld’s job had just started. Carranza refused to discuss anything that, in his opinion, touched upon affairs of a domestic nature. At issue was President Wilson’s attempt to somehow arrive at a compromise government for Mexico that would be able to allow for and set up national elections. Of course, by November the Constitutionalists had just won several major battles and had no interest in compromise. The talks quickly stalled. According to historian Cumberland, Hale threatened U.S. intervention and Carranza retorted with the threat of war. Sommerfeld recalled, “…they [Hale and Carranza] were always sparring around and after the meetings I would go and talk to Carranza.” The efforts of the German agent came to nothing. Hale and Carranza split in a huff. The First Chief’s mode of operation, being dilatory, delegating, and insisting on written communication, directly contradicted Hale’s “go-getter” energy.

The "First Chief" with his staff.

Sommerfeld tried again to bridge the gap. At the urging of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the German agent rushed to Tucson, Arizona on November 10th 1913, where Hale waited in vain to be received by Carranza: “I came back because I heard that Dr. Hale had left Carranza in disgust or anger. I met Dr. Hale in Arizona and told him not to lose his patience because Carranza was stubborn and wouldn’t let the United States interfere in Mexican politics. He wouldn’t discuss politics with Dr. Hale. I told him ‘sit still, I am going down to see him.’…I tried to coax him to come off the high horse. He wouldn’t… The problems Hale faced in relating to the First Chief were symptomatic for many who had dealings with the stubborn politician from Coahuila. In part because of his failed attempts to broker an agreement between Hale and Carranza, Sommerfeld realized that he as well could not get along with Carranza. It is unclear whether, as Sommerfeld recounted, Carranza asked him to work with Villa, or whether Sommerfeld was fired as a result of the Hale intervention. However, around Christmas 1913, Sommerfeld switched from the Carranza to the Villa camp. From that moment on Carranza is not known to have ever again personally interacted with Sommerfeld. Historical sources after December 1913 show only Sherburne G. Hopkins officially working for Carranza. One other fact, however, became painfully apparent: The American embassy in Mexico City as well as the Latin American desk in the State Department in 1913 and beyond had lost their roles as policy advisers of the American President.

A Máquina Loca turns the tide at Tierra Blanca

The fall of 1913 produced some of the most memorable battles in the Mexican Revolution. Pancho Villa with the ever growing Division of the North steamrolled through Chihuahua cutting the lifelines of the federal army. Villa's army was not the crude, rag tag assembly of amateur fighters one would expect. It had up-to-date artillery, the soldiers wore uniforms, and had brand new German Mauser 7 mm rifles. Notable about Villa's army was also a tightly organized supply system, form the chief buyer in the US, Felix A. Sommerfeld, to the supply organization operating all along the US -Mexican border, sourcing and shipping munitions, uniforms, medicine, saddles and anything else an army needed to where ever Villa went. The money that sustained this huge army that eventually number 40,000 soldiers came from confiscated cattle, customs revenue, and "volunteer taxes" from the wealthier residents of Chihuahua (usually Spaniards) who, Villa determined, could afford it.

While Villa consolidated power and established an effective administration in Ciudad Juarez in October 1913, the battle for control over Chihuahua raged on. The rebel general decided to challenge the opposing federal army at Tierra Blanca. He preempted the mounting danger of being pinned down in Juarez by federal reinforcements, which were on their way from Chihuahua City. The little railway station some thirty miles south of the border offered multiple advantages: Moving the battleground away from Juarez, Victoriano Huerta’s forces did not get the chance to create a border incident by firing into El Paso. In addition, the sandy terrain made it harder for the federals to move their heavy artillery into place. On November 23rd the federals under General José Ines Salazar challenged the entrenched Villistas.

Typical for Villa’s crude planning he “had no reserves, no grand strategy and not even any real tactics; it later transpired that he had not coordinated the movements of his various commanders.”  By all military standards the battle should have been a rout for the federal army. For a while it looked that way. The Villistas ran short of ammunition, were outflanked, and on the brink of disaster. It was a combination of Villa’s daring charges with him leading the way against the federal positions and the unbelievable mistakes of General Salazar. Leading three hundred cavalry into the line of fire, Villa managed to push the federals back. Rudolfo Fierro, Villa's crazy-eyed executioner and fighting buddy, sent a máquina loca into the federal positions.  This crazy train consisted of a locomotive and coal tender that instead of fuel contained dynamite wrapped in shrapnel of all shapes and forms. The locomotive was set to full steam and, without an engineer, sent on its way down the tracks into enemy positions. Upon impact with the barricades it blew up. A tremendous explosion sent the unsuspecting federal soldiers racing for cover in a panic. Now Emil Holmdahl’s artillery kicked in gear and carved a breach into the enemy lines. A horrendous slaughter followed in which “more than one thousand” Orozquistas fell despite holding up white flags.  The decisive battle for Chihuahua ended in a huge fiesta on the night of November 25th. 

Fierro "the butcher" and Pancho Villa, "Centaur of the North"

Catherine M. Mayo's Translation of the Spiritist Manual

Contemporary observers as well as historians have long grappled with open questions concerning the convictions, political beliefs, decision making processes, and motivations of the revolutionary government led by Francisco I. Madero between 1911 and 1913 in Mexico. A hopeless idealist, said most, an inept leader, indecisive, clueless, proposed others. Madero fought the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz on principle, deposed him without much violence, but in the process unleashed a social revolution so powerful that one out of seventeen Mexicans succumbed to violent ends. When he took power in 1911, he deferred taking it and gave the presidency to Francisco Leon de la Barra instead. Nine months later, in the fall of 1911 and in the first democratic election in her history, Mexico overwhelmingly elected Madero to the presidency. However, almost immediately his government is threatened from both, the reactionary old power structure and members of his own revolutionary circle. Violent uprisings plagued political and social progress until finally, in the Decena Tragica, both the president and his vice president are deposed and murdered in a bloody coup d'etat. Why did Madero not fight harder against his enemies? Why did he not immediately institute fundamental social and economic reform? And, above all, why did he not listen to those around him who predicted his tragic demise? In a secret book, Madero wrote under the pen name "Bhirma," called the Spiritist Manual, many of the answers can be found.

Catherine M. Mayo does a brilliant job combining the known facts of the Mexican Revolution and Madero's role within it, and creates an intellectual bridge to the president's spiritist belief structure. He was not the hopeless idealist so many historians have proclaimed him to be. Neither was he inept or indecisive. Rather, his personality was deeply rooted in a sharply defined vision for a future Mexico. His inclusion of friend and foe in a revolutionary cadre of leaders, that ultimately proved his downfall, set the stage for real governance: The inclusion of all, the agreement of a whole people on a new social contract guided by justice, democracy, due process, and law. His belief in a cosmic energy that can be summoned and called upon to help overcome the past and pave the way to the future guided his decisions. The Spiritist Manual is the document in which he put into words what guided him in his quest to save Mexico from herself. He never lived to see the final signature under the new social contract that was not completed until many years later, in the 1940s. But his spirit, his unselfish, uncompromising, deeply rooted beliefs, remained... With her translation of the Spiritist Manual, Catherine Mayo opened this incredible window into the metaphysical side of the Mexican Revolution that might otherwise have been forgotten.

William Bayard Hale - Icon or Traitor?

In November of 1913 Felix Sommerfeld made the acquaintance of a special envoy and friend of President Woodrow Wilson: William Bayard Hale. Born in 1869, Hale studied at Boston and Harvard universities. He graduated from Episcopal Seminary College in Cambridge. He began his career as an ordained priest in Boston in 1893. In 1900 the then thirty-one-year-old Hale decided to become a journalist. As a first job, the retired clergyman signed on as managing editor of the Cosmopolitan Magazine. After three years he switched to the Philadelphia Public Ledger and ran the editorial board until 1906, when the New York Times hired him as foreign correspondent for Paris, France. In 1908, Hale also wrote for the New York American, a Hearst paper, as its Berlin correspondent. Widely acclaimed for his thoughtful political analysis, the journalist and author interviewed the German Kaiser, Wilhelm II. This interview was according to some the most insightful ever with the German monarch. The following year, 1909, Hale married Olga Unger, a German-American in London. As a personal friend and adviser of then governor of New Jersey, Hale wrote and published Woodrow Wilson’s biography in 1911. He played a major role in the highly contested presidential election campaign of 1912. As Wilson’s friend and confidante Hale went on sensitive diplomatic missions in 1913 and 1914 concerning the Mexican Revolution and upheavals in Central America. The first such mission resulted in the dismissal of the notorious American ambassador to Mexico, Henry Lane Wilson. Sommerfeld had organized meetings between Hale and the First Chief of the Constitutionalists in Mexico, Venustiano Carranza. 

According to Sommerfeld’s testimony in 1918, Dr. Hale had a hard time negotiating with Carranza in the fall of 1913. To begin with the First Chief refused to see Wilson’s emissary since Hale did not have official government credentials. Always a stickler for process, Carranza wanted to force Wilson into a de-facto recognition that mandated a diplomatic representative to be dispatched to him. Naturally, not lacking a measure of pigheadedness himself, Wilson did not accept. To prevent the issue from coming to a head, the Wilson administration relied on Felix Sommerfeld in November 1913 to intercede with Carranza. “While in Sonora Mr. William Hale came there and we went to the border and arranged a meeting between Carranza and Hale and acted as a go-between.”

It took Sommerfeld from November 2 until November 12, 1913 to get Carranza to grant the audience. However, Sommerfeld’s job had just started. Carranza refused to discuss anything that, in his opinion, touched upon affairs of a domestic nature. At issue was President Wilson’s attempt to somehow arrive at a compromise government for Mexico that would be able to allow for and set up national elections. Of course, by November the Constitutionalists had just won several major battles and had no interest in compromise. The talks quickly stalled. According to historian Cumberland, Hale threatened U.S. intervention and Carranza retorted with the threat of war. Sommerfeld recalled, “…they [Hale and Carranza] were always sparring around and after the meetings I would go and talk to Carranza.”

The efforts of the German agent came to nothing. Hale and Carranza split in a huff. The First Chief’s mode of operation, being dilatory, delegating, and insisting on written communication, directly contradicted Hale’s “go-getter” energy. Sommerfeld tried again to bridge the gap. At the urging of Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, the German agent rushed to Tucson, Arizona on November 10th 1913, where Hale waited in vain to be received by Carranza. “I came back because I heard that Dr. Hale had left Carranza in disgust or anger. I met Dr. Hale in Arizona and told him not to lose his patience because Carranza was stubborn and wouldn't let the United States interfere in Mexican politics. He wouldn't discuss politics with Dr. Hale. I told him ‘sit still, I am going down to see him.’…I tried to coax him to come off the high horse. He wouldn't …

The problems Hale faced in relating to the First Chief were symptomatic for many who had dealings with the stubborn politician from Coahuila. In part because of his failed attempts to broker an agreement between Hale and Carranza, Sommerfeld realized that he as well could not get along with Carranza. It is unclear whether, as Sommerfeld recounted, Carranza asked him to work with Pancho Villa, or whether Sommerfeld was fired as a result of the Hale intervention. However, around Christmas 1913, Sommerfeld switched from the Carranza to the Villa camp. From that moment on Carranza is not known to have ever again personally interacted with Sommerfeld. Historical sources after December 1913 show only lawyer and lobbyist Sherburne G. Hopkins officially working for Carranza. One other fact, however, became painfully apparent: The American embassy in Mexico City as well as the Latin American desk in the State Department in 1913 and beyond had lost their roles as policy advisers of the American President.

Sommerfeld would again work with the American journalist in 1914. After a disagreement with the President, Hale was looking for a job. Sommerfeld, always a keen observer and strategist recommended his friend to Bernhard Dernburg who was then heading the German propaganda effort in the US. Hale was hired to "fix" the dilettantism of German efforts. In 1917, William Randolph Hearst sent him to Europe as a war correspondent. Largely discredited and shunned as a traitor, Hale spent most of the time after the war until his death in 1924 in Europe.

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William Bayard Hale in 1914

A Trojan Horse - Made in Mexico

100 years ago, after Pancho Villa had defeated the federal troops at Torreon he headed to Chihuahua. The capital of this important northern state remained a federal stronghold. The federal troops under General Mercado prepared for the worst as news of Villa's approaching rebel army trickled in. On November 5, 1913 Villa ordered a frontal attack against the numerically inferior defenders. Like in Torreon wave after wave of cavalry challenged the entrenched defensive lines of General Salvador Mercado’s federal force and Pascual Orozco’s irregulars. Emil Holmdahl’s artillery was charged with “softening” defensive lines. However, Mercado was ready. He had studied Villa’s crude method of attack. Owing to the federals’ superior artillery, which Mercado had strategically placed for maximum effect and the deadly machine gun implements along the defensive line, the frontal assaults turned into bloodbaths for the attackers. After three days of heavy losses Villa stood to lose the battle. He ordered a pullback which caused General Mercado to report to Mexico City: “I have the honor to report to you that yesterday [November 8th] at 6 p.m., the enemy was expelled from his last positions and thrown back by our courageous troops…” Villa seemed to waver as to what to do next. To the defenders of Chihuahua he seemed to have broken off the attacks.

However, on November 11, 1913 small skirmishes resumed leading Mercado to anticipate a renewed assault on the city. Faking a new attack, Villa divided his forces and in the night of November 13 captured two coal trains at the Terrazas Station between Chihuahua and Juarez. He had the rail cars emptied and loaded an elite corps he called Dorados onto the trains. Further cavalry regiments followed at some distance as the Villistas moved north towards Ciudad Juarez. At each train station on the way, the rebels arrested the telegraph operators. Under the threat of death, they had to send fake messages to the garrison in Juarez. The telegrams pretended that Villa had cut the rail lines to the south and that the operators needed urgent instructions on where to direct the threatened trains. As expected the officials at Juarez ordered the operators to retreat north, thus clearing the way for the Villistas to approach Juarez without arousing suspicion.

In the early morning hours of November 16 the trains pulled into the downtown of Ciudad Juarez. When the rail car doors flew open at 2:30 in the morning and Villa’s cavalry charged the unsuspecting federal garrison the battle ended almost before it had started. Disoriented by attacking forces from inside the city as well as from the outskirts, the federals did not stand a chance. With only a few stray bullets pitting some walls and breaking some windows in El Paso without serious bloodshed, and by complete surprise Villa took Juarez, the jewel customs station for badly needed supplies from the United States. By 8:00am mop-up operations in the city were replaced by summary executions of federal officers, which lasted for the better part of a week. To the disgust of the national media in the U.S. and to the horror of the State Department Villa openly rounded up approximately 125 military prisoners, many of them Orozquistas, and had them shot without mercy. Not all El Pasoans joined in the abhorred outcry for humanity on the part of Villa’s troops. “Great numbers of morbidly curious El Pasoans, including some well-dressed women, flocked to Juarez to gawk at the dead bodies, and if lucky they got to witness an execution or two.” One high-ranking officer was allowed to flee to safety in the United States: The federal commander, General Francisco Castro. Villa had not forgotten that this officer interceded on his behalf when he himself faced a firing squad ordered by Victoriano Huerta to execute him. The caudillo general had overnight become a sensation in the American psyche. 

Pancho Villa as depicted in the El Paso newspapers the next day, well dressed, shaven, cultured ... American.

Free Masonry and the Mexican Revolution

Conspiracy theories about the role of Freemasons in our history are abound. To this day, no real facts have supported the theory that somehow a global secret order with members in virtually every layer of society indeed influenced or changed the actions of its individual members. Maybe that is the function of freemasonry being secret. Did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson execute orders from this secret society? Would Simon Bolivar, the independence hero of most of South America, have changed anything if he had not been a mason? Was there some kind of a code or ideology that influenced the political decisions that made our modern world? Freemasons were blamed for causing World War I (although Kaiser Wilhelm II was not a member) and World War II (according to Hitler together with international Jewry). After the Catholic Church excommunicated the secret order in 1738, Freemasons faced periodic persecution in countries all around the world. This in turn gave rise to allegations of subversiveness and undue influence on world events.

Freemasons also played an important role in the Mexican Revolution. Arnold Krumm-Heller, a German-born doctor, spy, and occultist headed the freemasonry in Mexico, while President Madero, himself a Spiritist, led the country. On a fact finding trip to Parral, Chihuahua, I discovered that another German agent, Frederico Stallforth (Felix A. Sommerfeld's infamous colleague-agent) also was a mason. His uncle had founded the lodge in Parral. The entire male Stallforth family has chairs in the lodge.

While working on my current book, I discovered that another influential force in the Mexican revolution were masons: Dictator and usurper of the Madero presidency Victoriano Huerta, co-conspirator in the counter revolution against Madero, Felix Diaz (nephew of the Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz), Manuel Mondragon (former Secretary of War under Huerta) as well as an unnamed eighty followers of Huerta. When American authorities arrested him for a second time in El Paso in July 1915, he was allowed to keep his "mason charm" attached to his watch (New York Times, July 4, 1915). While Huerta never lost his "charm", newspapers had reported a month earlier that Huerta, Diaz and all his followers have been expelled from the freemasonry (The Washington Times, May 2, 1915). The group was then mounting a filibustering expedition into Mexico to depose both Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. The freemasons of Mexico were then headed by Arnold Krumm-Heller, who at that time had joined the forces of Venustiano Carranza. It is a curious detail that the rivalry between Huerta and Carranza spilled into the secret order. What if not trying to influence the conspirators to give up their political activities was the purpose of expelling the whole reactionary lot? 

From left Manuel Mondragon, Victoriano Huerta, Felix Diaz, and Aureliano Blanquet

Removal of all semblance of Democracy

Exactly 100 years ago, Victoriano Huerta, the Mexican general who had usurped power in February 1913, removed the last vestiges of democracy in war-torn  Mexico. Ongoing pressure from Mexican parliamentarians to explain the details of the murder of President Francisco Madero led to the arrest of the entire liberal wing of delegates.  

President Wilson who had fired the US ambassador to Mexico Henry Lane Wilson in July remained aghast at the role of the United States in the removal and murder of the democratically elected president of Mexico.  He sent his friend and biographer William Bayard Hale to Mexico to investigate the facts of the coup. Hale's report, although devastating for Ambassador Wilson did not solve the murder of Madero. President Huerta of course never admitted to having given the order. The actual assassin Francisco Cardenas had fled to Guatemala. Pancho Villa did send a group of his personal guard to apprehend him but did not succeed. 

Did General Huerta order the assassination of President Madero and his Vice-President Jose Maria Pino Suarez?  The only indication we have that he indeed ordered the murders comes from Francisco Madero's widow, Sara Perez de Madero. When she visited Ambassador Wilson two days before her husbands assassination to plead for her husband's life, Wilson alluded to having been asked for permission. In a 1916 interview with the American journalist Robert Hammond Murray, Sara recalled the conversation: "He said that General Huerta had asked what should be done with the prisoners. 'What did you answer?' I [Sara] asked. 'I told him what was best for the interests of the country,' said the ambassador. My sister-in-law, who accompanied me, could not help but interrupt saying, 'How could you say that? You know very well what kind of man Huerta and his people are, and [he] will kill them all.'"  

Henry Lane Wilson

Henry Lane Wilson

Generals Mondragon, Huerta, Felix Diaz and Blanquet

Generals Mondragon, Huerta, Felix Diaz and Blanquet

Assassin Francisco Cardenas

Assassin Francisco Cardenas

Burning Questions About the Mexican Revolution: Mexico in World War I

What was Mexico's participation during the World War I? How were German-Mexican relations at the time?

Mexico became a battleground for Germany and the Allies in the World War. In the beginning of the war Germany had the strategy of buying up as many arms and munitions in the US as possible to slow down the material support for the Entente powers. Mexico being engulfed in the revolution was an obvious choice for diverting the arms to. Felix A. Sommerfeld and Hans Tauscher were in charge of the execution of this strategy. By the way, the shipments Sommerfeld made were initially not free of charge as some have speculated. The US wanted Mexico to calm down and regenerate pre-revolutionary trade. The Entente saw Mexico as a crucial base for oil supplies. Mexico had the largest deposits in the world at that time. The British fleet in particular needed Mexican oil for its operations in the Atlantic.

So Germany bought domestically produced weapons and sent them to Mexico? Did that really disrupt government acquisition?

The intention was to slow purchases by the Allies in the US. That indeed worked to a certain degree until the US munitions industry expanded capacity from 1915 on.

Any suggested further reading on this?

A good book to check out is Reinhard Doerries "Imperial Challenge," a biography of the German ambassador Johann Count von Bernstorff. A great read is Price and Hollister (free download) "The German Secret Service in America." Also a standard is Barbara Tuchman "The Zimmermann Telegram." If you can wait another few months I will have a scholarly book out called "The Secret War Council" that will detail all German intelligence activities in the US in World War I with the most up-to-date sources.

Burning Questions about the Mexican Revolution: Pancho Villa

Here are some excerpts from an "Ask Me Anything" session at Reddit.com. 

I'll ask something of an obvious question: Pancho Villa. I've heard him romanticized and vilified, labeled a rotten bandit and a near folk hero. What are your own thoughts on Villa and his campaigns? Did they have significant political/social ramifications for Mexico?

The most elaborate biography of Villa written by Friedrich Katz (highly recommended!!!) finally tried to put this to rest. He was all of the above. He was an impressive military leader, fearless, motivating, sensitive, decisive, but also cruel, stubborn, unscrupulous. He was a social reformer in Chihuahua (established schools, broke apart large haciendas), but also a thief (he favorite sport was to round up cattle of large haciendas and sell them to the US market, he also took ransom for captives etc.). In my personal opinion, he was the product of his time, upbringing, and political/economic circumstances. Felix A. Sommerfeld liked him to a degree but was also quite fearful of him (like most who worked with him). However, he was one of the most important driving forces of the Mexican Revolution. Without his constant pressure (and that of Emiliano Zapata) Mexico would have sunk back into dictatorship whether with a revolutionary leader or a reactionary.

The Battle of Torreon, September 29 to October 1, 1913

In September 1913 Constitutionalist leaders charged Francisco Pancho Villa, the daring commander of the Division of the North, with taking Torreon. The central Mexican railrod hub was the gateway to Mexico City where the usurper Victoriano Huerta occupied the blood stained presidential chair. 

In three days, between September 29 and October 1, 1913, the Constitutionalists under Villa’s command smashed the defenses of Torreon. Never before had Villa led these many men into battle. His army consisted of eight thousand men, cavalry, and two cannon. Torreon became the largest battle of the Mexican Revolution to date. Wave after wave of cavalry charges pounded the three thousand defenders under General Murguía. Finally, after Villa contemplated breaking off the attacks, his charges leapt into the city through a breach in the defense lines. Murguía ordered a hasty retreat and left the city to the rebels. To Villa’s credit he had effectively commanded a rebel army that lacked training, discipline, and heavy weaponry. The overwhelming force allowed Villa to charge straight at the enemy. This strategy would gain the self-educated general many victories but would eventually become the main cause for his most disastrous defeats. A well-entrenched defending force with superior weapons and training should have been able to repel Villa’s attack. The federal commander and his officers lacked imagination and resolve, its conscripted foot soldiers the motivation to fight. The Battle of Torreon offered a glimpse into the future for the Usurper President Huerta and his forces. Within two weeks of the loss of Torreon, Huerta had fired his Minister of War, General Manuel Mondragon.

The Battle of Torreon became the single most important prize, which propelled Villa to the height of his career. His men captured heavy artillery, half-a-million rounds of ammunition, armored rail cars, eleven cannon including the future division mascot, the three inch "El Niño" (the little one), hundreds of rail cars, and an estimated forty locomotives.  From this time on the División del Norte would travel by rail to the battlefields of Chihuahua City and Ciudad Juarez. Villa also forced loans on Torreon’s business elite and the local banks. The “contributions” amounted to three million Pesos (approximately $31.5 million in today’s money). With 100,000 Pesos in cash ($ 1 million in today’s value) Villa dispatched his brother Hipolito and Lazaro De La Garza, the son of a well-known merchant and industrialist in Torreon, to take over the arms procurement for the División Del Norte in El Paso. 

Pancho Villa entering the city of Torreon

De La Garza would handle the finances of the Villa army and its illustrious general until the end of 1915. He also would become Sommerfeld’s smokescreen that succeeded in hiding German financial support for Villa from the American authorities in 1915. As a result of the victory, the largest insurgent army of its time in Mexico quickly swelled to over 10,000 strong and moved along with a fully equipped hospital train, railcars loaded with kitchen supplies, soldaderas, soldier families, and cooks traveling alongside. The cavalry mounts with loads of alfalfa hay and grain recovered their energy in between engagements riding in the captured cattle cars. The train also included several water cars for the soldiers and the animals. Ammunition and artillery, some of which mounted firmly on the rail stock and heavily guarded formed the rear of this hitherto unseen modern, mobile army.

Not so Secret After All...

I am floating on a cloud in seventh heaven: Another picture of Felix A. Sommerfeld surfaced. The grandson of Sommerfeld's secret service handler in Mexico City in 1912 found it! Thank you! The picture with Sommerfeld (second from stage left) was taken in May 1911, just after the forces of Mexican revolutionary leader and future president Francisco I. Madero had won the battle of Ciudad Juarez. It was taken at the house of German Consul Max Weber. Although no other pictures of the German Consul of Chihuahua  have surfaced, I venture to bet that the balding man on stage right is him: Sommerfeld's secret service boss Otto Kueck.

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From left unknown man, Felix A. Sommerfeld, Mrs. Elena Arizmendi, Francisco I. Madero, Max Weber, Sara Perez de Madero, Mrs. Max Weber, unknown woman (maybe one of the Ketelsen daughters), unknown man (likely Consul Otto Kueck), unknown woman (likely Emilie Kueck)  

His wife, Emilile, was the daughter of the wealthy merchant and former German consul Emil Ketelson. When her father died, she and her two siblings inherited a whopping one million pesos ($11 million in today's value).

Why am I so excited? I wrote in "In Plain Sight" that Sommerfeld worked for the German government in 1911 while at the same time serving as Francisco Madero's secret service chief and bodyguard. Sommerfeld denied this vehemently, claiming that he barely knew the German consuls of the era. Suddenly we find a photo with all of them in it: Sommerfeld, Kueck, Weber, and Madero. More puzzle pieces falling into place....  

The Murder of William S. Benton

Villa’s secretary Luis Aguirre Benavides, an eyewitness, told the New York Times in 1915 that when Benton called Villa a bandit he “…did not finish the sentence. General Villa quick as lightning, threw himself, pistol in hand, on the Englishman with the intention of instantly killing him. The woman [Villa’s wife Maria Luz Corral] placed herself between th[e] two, thus preventing Villa from firing. The officers of the guard threw themselves on Benton, and, disarming him, led him off immediately to an adjoining room, where he was handcuffed and detained…”

Exactly how Benton died is not known. Villa and his secretary Aguirre Benavides maintained that Fierro took Benton in a caboose to nearby Samalayuca and smashed his scull thereby killing him. According to Villa and many historians who have researched the incident, Benton was an abusive hacendado who had lived and worked in Chihuahua under the protection of Terrazas and Creel. Understandably, Villa and the revolutionary propaganda machine would use these charges to somehow justify the murder. However, the alleged abuses seemed to have transferred into the historiography unchecked. Whether or not the Scottish hothead was more abusive than the American hacendados who were fortunate enough to keep their lands and cattle is unclear. According to historian Katz, Villa and Benton had had an earlier run-in, which had resulted in Villa taking horses and supplies from Benton’s ranch. Benton also had been overheard in the Foreign Club in Chihuahua as supporting the military dictatorship of Huerta. Clearly, the altercation had very personal roots that had little to do with Benton’s treatment of Mexican villagers or the supposed confiscation of his ranch.

An added fact that could have exacerbated Villa’s hatred for Benton exists in the curious timing of the altercation at Villa’s office. As Felix Sommerfeld hunted down the fugitive General Pascual Orozco in the months before, one specific lead pointed to Benton who allegedly knew where Villa’s nemesis was hiding. Agent Blanford of the BI asked Sommerfeld to verify the rumor. “Sommerfeld stated that he knows Benton so I requested him to interview him.” The BI agent reported to his superiors on January 19th 1914, “Sommerfeld told me later that he had found Benton and that he had been informed that the friend of young [William S.] Benton is a Mexican and that this Mexican talked with Orozco in Shafter on the 15th instant. The present whereabouts of Orozco was not known to Benton, although he was certain Orozco had left Shafter." The implication was that Benton somehow had been involved in hiding Villa’s most hated opponent. It might never be known what Sommerfeld had reported to Villa with respect to his investigation. However, if Benton indeed had been in any way implicated in the disappearance of Orozco, Villa’s wrath would have been boundless.

As it turns out, Sommerfeld not only knew Benton, but the English-born cattle rancher who had meanwhile become a Mexican citizen was his friend. See the drawing... 

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William S. Benton drawn by Felix A. Sommerfeld

Albert Ballin and Alfred von Tirpitz - Two Naval Giants of Imperial Germany

The German Empire went through a period of tremendous commercial growth between the 1880s and 1914. A crucial ingredient to this growth for both, the sourcing of raw materials and the exportation of finished goods, was Germany's merchant fleet. Two corporations dominated that market, HAPAG and North German Lloyd. From 1886 up to 1914 HAPAG grew from twenty-six ocean vessels to one-hundred-and-eighty with a gross tonnage of 1.5 million,  about half of the total German merchant marine.  In 1911, HAPAG liners carried 403,000 passengers and eight million tons of freight.  In 1911, the North German Lloyd moved 514,000 passengers and 3.6 million tons of freight.  By 1913, it had a fleet of 133 vessels with 821,000 registered tons. In short, together with forty-one smaller lines, the German merchant marine was second only to that of Great Britain at the outbreak of the Great War.

In the German Empire Albert Ballin was the civilian alter ego of Alfred von Tirpitz. Both men had realized their visions of a strong naval fleet for Germany. The pride of the second empire was split between the proud battle cruisers of the High Seas Fleet and the commercial liners, the largest of which, the “Vaterland,” Ballin had put into service in 1913. She not only represented the might of German engineering and ship construction, she was the largest ocean liner in the world, larger than the “Lusitania,” “Mauretania,” or “Titanic.” The “Vaterland” not only eclipsed the British liners in terms of size and power, but also in terms of design and luxury. While larger and wider, she approximately matched “Lusitania” and “Mauretania’s” speed.  German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann von Bernstorff commented after traveling on the mighty ship in 1914, “Germans who live at home can hardly imagine with what love and what pride we foreign ambassadors and exiled Germans regarded the German shipping-lines.”  To Count von Bernstorff and many others, the “Vaterland” was an ambassador in itself.

Von Tirpitz’ navy and Ballin’s merchant marine were linked together as the symbols of German ambitions for being a naval super power. However, these links were not just symbolic. The two organizations, HAPAG’s merchant marine and the German navy, cooperated all along, but when the war started, they virtually operated as one. Almost every officer of the merchant marine had served actively in the German navy or was listed a reserve officer. Most sailors on Ballin’s ocean liners were reservists. HAPAG’s second man in command was Director Arndt von Holtzendorff. His older brother, Henning von Holtzendorff, a commander of the High Seas Fleet between 1908 and 1913, had risen to the rank of Admiral. At the outbreak of the war, Emperor Wilhelm II called him up to become chief of staff of the navy. He was a fervent supporter of unrestricted submarine warfare in the war years. While Ballin and von Tirpitz both had the ear of the Kaiser and counseled him on naval strategy, the von Holtzendorff brothers represented but one of many other links between military and civilian authorities that reached deep into the German government.

Supplying the Constitutionalists in the Mexican Revolution

In the summer of 1913, exactly one hundred years ago, Sommerfeld and his people along the border were busy organizing the supply for the Constitutionalist armies now in excess of fifteen thousand men. Just as he had in the Orozco uprising, Sommerfeld remained a key source for intervention with the Mexican revolutionaries on behalf of American citizens. On June 20th 1913, Agent Breniman wrote to his superior in San Antonio: “Am just informed from the American Consul Nuevo Laredo that C.M. Rippeteau and Henry Crumpler, two American citizens and the bearers of messages for Consul Garrett, were arrested yesterday by Carranzistas in vicinity of Nuevo Laredo and have been taken to Hidalgo enroute to Piedras Negras where it is feared that they will be summarily dealt with. We [the Bureau of Investigation] are requested to use our influence to protect these citizens. Suggest you see Sommerfeld.”

Sommerfeld's organization and he personally channeled important intelligence to the Justice Department agents. On July 5th 1913 Sommerfeld informed BI agent Breniman via the San Antonio BI chief H. A. Thompson “Evaristo Guajardo left here yesterday from Eagle Pass with six men. Guajardo and his brothers intend to immediately start a movement against Carranza from just below or above Eagle Pass.” The German agent asked the BI to investigate the rumor and “ascertain, if possible, the movements of these people, and…to take steps to anticipate them.” The report alludes to the fact that the Sommerfeld organization, again, told the BI what to do and how to do it. Sommerfeld dispatched Agent Jack Noonan from Nogales to Tucson with a companion to scour the desert for federal munitions dumps. “Noonan and Clark intend going out on a still hunt for these deposits of ammunition which they believed to exist.” Of course Noonan also was a well-known smuggler for the Constitutionalist army.

On October 7th, BI Chief Bielaski directed Agent H. A. Thompson to “…close the bridge at Eagle Pass from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m….it is hoped that a special agent can be stationed permanently at Eagle Pass and that the matter of the closing of the bridge at Eagle Pass will be taken up by you.” Although on the surface one can interpret these instructions as hostile to the resupply efforts of the Constitutionalists, the opposite was the case. Thompson, who left the Department of Justice shortly thereafter to work for Sommerfeld, had allowed Eagle Pass to be virtually open for Constitutionalist supplies to pass through. The State Department wanted to arrange for superficial action to maintain the neutrality laws. In the same telegram Bielaski wrote that the “…Secretary of State has been advised that arrangements are being made to add to the force of special agents now working in Texas and Arizona on neutrality matters.” Of course, adding one man to the main border crossing through which the Villistas received their supplies for the upcoming battles was a joke. The fact that by October 1913 there was not a single agent watching Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras illustrates the U.S. government’s tacit support for Pancho Villa’s fall campaign. The situation at other critical crossings was no different. While the government went after several arms merchants in Nogales and Douglas, Arizona in October, the courts acquitted all of them and the smuggling continued unabated.