Wilhelm Wassmuss - Birth and Schooling

Birth and Schooling

Wilhelm Wassmuss was born in 1880 in Ohlendorf, 60 kilometers south-east of Hanover, Germany, and after a university education he entered the German Foreign Office in 1906. Sent first to Madagascar, he was promoted to Vice Consul and assigned to the German Consulate in the Persian Gulf port town of Bushehr in 1909. In 1910 he was returned to Madagascar where, rarely seen in public, he spent three years in an obsessive study of the desert and its peoples. In 1913, he was relocated back to Bushehr. While the details of what happened next are sketchy, it seems that with the start of World War I, Wassmuss appears to have recognized that now was the time—his time—to foment a revolt. He met with his superiors in Constantinople and as a result of that meeting, it was proposed that he organize and lead the Persians in a guerilla war against Britain. The plan was approved and the German Foreign Office amply supplied him with gold, this on the direct order of Kaiser Wilhelm II who was enthusiastic about the plan. Although Wassmuss had absolutely no training in espionage, he became one of the world’s first covert action operatives—an agent who does not specifically try to collect information but who functions in a foreign country to obtain a definite result.