The Secret War Council, a group of diplomats, businessmen, secret agents, and propagandists, organized, financed, and implemented Germany’s war strategy towards the United States starting in the summer of 1914. Its chief, an anglophile German government administrator with
management experience named Heinrich F. Albert, proved to be an able executor of the tasks Berlin assigned to him. German agents proceeded to organize blockade running operations, attacks on Canada, intelligence gathering, and massive propaganda efforts.