Wednesday, November 10, 1920, was cold and foggy when Anthony and Tetta finally set eyes on New York, fourteen months after their passports had been validated for the United States. The voyage onboard the Noordam of the Holland-America Line had been pleasant but slow. The steamer had taken twelve days, a long time to cross the Atlantic from Rotterdam, where they had embarked on October 29.
Anthony and Tetta had sailed in the company of Frits and Dora Cremer and Fokker’s new engineer Robert Noorduyn and his wife. The setting indicated that the trip was not just meant for enjoyment. Noorduyn, three years Anthony’s junior, had been born in Nijmegen, near the German border. In high school he had become deeply interested in aviation and in the construction of model airplanes, with which he undertook flight trials. Noorduyn had a knack for technology and managed to find a job in the embryonic aviation business. During the war he had worked in Britain as a draftsman for the aircraft constructors Armstrong Whitworth and the British Aerial Transport Company. Now he was to become Anthony Fokker’s sales agent in the United States. Like Frits Cremer, his mother was British, and he spoke English fluently, unlike Anthony. In the past days the six young people had distinctly enjoyed the ambience of first class aboard the Noordam. Tetta in particular appeared to be in her element and used her charms on the ship’s captain to persuade him to join in fun and games on the first-class promenade deck, where Anthony’s camera recorded the passengers entertaining themselves with a game of shuffleboard. There was a lot of time for such activities, for life aboard the 550-foot ship had a calm rhythm that went from meal to copious meal, followed by time spent on the conversation deck and evening entertainments of light music and variety shows.
Now their destination was finally in sight. It gave a special feeling: America, land of unbound opportunities and new chances! Anthony was not the only one to point his film camera at the city’s skyline in the cold and fog as the ship slowly sailed past the Statue of Liberty in the direction of Ellis Island, the gateway to the United States for the less fortunate immigrants on the lower decks. From the stern of the ship, he filmed a group of new arrivals being taken off the ship by a lighter. Ellis Island was for them alone, while those traveling in first class found that the immigration formalities were limited to filling out a sizable packet of paper forms onboard. What they did not escape from were import duties, to be paid in the customs hall on the Hoboken pier opposite New York. These were levied over all goods and luggage brought into the country, including the trunks that contained them. The inspection was rigorous.1
On the pier, reporters were waiting for Anthony and Tetta. Nearly every arriving ship was met by curious journalists interested in the stateroom passengers who sought to enter the United States. Anthony was immediately surrounded by journalists. He proudly allowed himself to be photographed with Tetta at the end of the gangway, a pair of binoculars on his chest. The “wizard of airplane construction” had reckoned with such interest.2
Preparations for the trip went back to April 10, 1919. That Thursday night, two American officers in civilian attire, Major George Brett and Lieutenant Gordon Keller, had reported to the reception desk at the Hotel de l’Europe in Amsterdam for a long conversation with Anthony Fokker. They were part of a larger American effort to study Fokker aircraft for possible use in the United States.3 The subject of the meeting was to find out what his plans in aviation were since leaving Germany. Even though the communication was marred by Anthony’s poor English, he still managed to convey that he considered the prospects of developing a company in Holland to be small. Therefore he was “very desirous of going to the United States.” Moreover, he believed the two officers intended to deliver a standing invitation for him to move there.4 Although it turned out that this was not the case, the idea had stuck with him since. It had formed the background to his critique of the lack of commitment on the part of the Netherlands’ government, which he accused of indecisiveness with regard to his aircraft.
The interview that carried Anthony’s harsh words had been printed in the widely read Telegraaf newspaper days before he boarded the Noordam. He had a point to make: after all, the twelve D.VII fighters that he had planned to deliver to the Dutch East Indies Army (KNIL) were still awaiting delivery at his factory. Instead of ordering Fokker aircraft, KNIL had suddenly awarded the contract to the British armaments firm Vickers because its Avro and De Havilland aircraft were offered at cheaper costs. The affair had hit a raw nerve with Fokker, who felt cheated in an already parsimonious deal. Besides, he argued, he could hardly be expected to build a flourishing aircraft manufacturing industry based solely on commercial orders from the newly founded Dutch national airline, KLM. The two aircraft they had ordered did not in any way represent a real business proposition. Holland was just too small for the aircraft industry that he envisioned, and he thought he had better set his sights on the emerging market in the United States and seek his fortune there.5 Upon his arrival in New York, journalists quoted him as saying, “I am out for business all over the world. Air transport is of the greatest international importance, and its possibilities must he studied everywhere. I have my eye on transatlantic air travel as well as on transcontinental service.”6 On the latter subject, Anthony entertained a distinct vision: the next important breakthrough in aeronautical construction would be to build aircraft able to carry large enough payloads to enable profitable operations. He said he expected a future in which all-metal landplanes would cross the ocean regularly, although he did not rule out the possibility that other construction materials might also be used.
That same afternoon, Anthony and Tetta took a room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 33rd Street. The richly decorated, iconic grand hotel, with its 1,500 rooms, was the most luxurious in the world and internationally renowned among the rich and famous for its superb amenities. Even Berlin’s Hotel Bristol looked pale by comparison.
Like everybody else who arrived in America the first time, the experience of New York was overpowering for Anthony and Tetta. The high-rise buildings with their abundance of electric lighting made the streets appear narrower than they were. On Fifth Avenue, brightly lit shops lured customers. Leaning from the window of their suite at the Waldorf Astoria, Anthony filmed various street scenes. The large number of cars in the road must have been striking. Automobiles appealed to him, as did the abundance of food, American eating habits, the more liberal dress codes, and the entertainment that appeared to be on offer everywhere. Even then, Times Square, with its cinemas, theaters, and brightly lit billboards, acted as a magnet for visitors. Films showed as early as eleven in the morning. Theater shows were sold out evening after evening, and good seats required reservations. In the Hippodrome elephants danced the foxtrot while large baskets carrying flower girls adorned in tight flesh-colored bodysuits were lowered from the ceiling. Every day brought new attractions.7 Anthony and Tetta were thrilled. They thoroughly enjoyed New York’s touristic highlights. Anthony recorded the imposing Brooklyn Bridge on film. From Battery Park they watched the Noordam leave again for Holland and waved farewell to the ship.8
Nonetheless, the touristy part of the journey did not last. With Frits Cremer and Bob Noorduyn, Anthony embarked on a tour of the American aviation industry. Major Virginius Evans Clark, a leading aeronautical engineer with the U.S. Army Air Service, went with them to take care of the necessary introductions. The three Dutchmen spoke with government officials, prominent figures in aviation, and various people with a corporate background on the possibilities of forging American business interests with Fokker in some form. By train they traveled through the frozen American landscape from city to city. In a letter to the staff he and Tetta employed at their new house in Amsterdam, Anthony praised the amenities of American hotels. The central heating was so good, he wrote, that he could travel with only a small suitcase carrying a minimum of clothing. A tuxedo, two matching shirts, three to five other shirts, a dark suit and a sporting plus-four with winding cloth to cover his lower legs, black pajamas, and two underpants were all he needed. For outdoors he had brought a formal coat and his fur-lined flying jacket. The rest of his luggage had had left in the care of the Waldorf Astoria.9
In Washington, Anthony exerted himself in compliments. The Navy building was the biggest he had seen in his life, he claimed, and the Library of Congress the most beautiful, “far superior to any building I have ever seen in Europe.” The occasion required optimism: “I am more than ever convinced that in five or ten years we shall cross the ocean in less than a day as safely in giant airplanes as we do now in liners, and more comfortably.”10 He was introduced to the Secretaries of War, of the Navy, and of Agriculture, with whom he vainly pleaded for special privileges to deliver aircraft.11 He also visited various aircraft factories and research establishments: in Buffalo, Dayton, and Detroit. On the basis of these visits, Anthony concluded that America actually did not have any commercial transport aircraft and that the industry had come to a standstill after the war. Such circumstances had to present business opportunities for Fokker. In his conversations he sketched the advantages of the very large transport aircraft that his men were working on in Holland, the F.IV. Before the month of December was out he managed to sign a contract for the delivery of two such aircraft to the Army Air Service. In classic Fokker style, the basic design excelled in its simplicity: it was to be a substantially enlarged version of the F.III airliner that had just become ready in Schwerin. The contract furthermore specified the construction of two armored aircraft suited for attacks against ground targets (later identified as PW-5). Making these sales was encouraging, and Anthony began to anticipate a bright future for himself in the United States. On December 9 he took care to have several military aeronautical inventions patented in America. Toward the end of his visit, it appeared that it would be feasible to raise enough local capital to found an American Fokker company.12
As a result, Bob Noorduyn received instructions to prepare the grounds for an American sales organization in New York, the Netherlands Aircraft Manufacturing Company. Initially this was a rather informal venture, although Anthony had helped select the corporate location with great care: Noorduyn rented office space at 286 Fifth Avenue, a prestigious venue. The plan was that Noorduyn would work on the development of ideas for an American future for Fokker. Frits Cremer also was to stay behind. He would act as Fokker’s confidential representative and build on political and business contacts that his father Jacob, the former Netherlands envoy in Washington, had left behind when he returned to Holland in May 1920.13 Frits’s task was not an easy one. He was very much bent on proving himself in business, partly to impress his father that he had now shed his daredevil pilot’s image and had finally acquired what it took to be successful by himself.14 Yet he and Noorduyn did not get along, and before long they were fighting over pecking order in the American Fokker organization.
Frits and Bob finally chose to maintain separate offices in New York. It was a development Anthony preferred to ignore. Thus he could pretend not to notice how life was now becoming a struggle for Frits, both within the small Fokker outfit and beyond. His private investments in various American aeronautical ventures all went wrong. It put a further strain on relations with the more cautious Bob Noorduyn, who soon had some successes to show for his efforts.15 Anthony let his friend Frits fend for himself. On January 8, 1921, he, Tetta, and Dora Cremer (who later rejoined Frits in New York in June 1921), boarded the steamer Rijndam bound for Holland. In the booked-up environment of first class, a mixed international company of seventy-nine passengers, they met the Dutch oil trader George Gleichman, with whom Anthony struck up a lifelong friendship.16
For Anthony and Tetta, the American trip formed the close of a busy year. On January 3, 1920, the paperwork for the purchase of a detached house in Roemer Visscherstraat, prominently located next to the entrance to Amsterdam’s Vondel Park, had been approved by a city notary. The house, built in 1894, was Tetta’s project. Long discussions had preceded the acquisition, because Anthony had already bought a house at the Valeriusplein. But a house in a row, even if it was a luxurious one and had twelve rooms, was not at all to Tetta’s liking. As a result, the house on Valeriusplein was put back on the market in March 1920 to be sold, without the Fokkers’ even spending a day in it.17 Tetta paid for the new villa with her own money. The daily view of the park from the upstairs windows was to her worth 100,000 Dutch guilders, a hefty sum for its time. But the costs went up higher still: Tetta had modern heaters, fixed washbasins with running water, and a special water heater for the bath installed. She also made sure the house was decorated with new carpets, linoleum, new runners on the stairs, curtains, and marquisettes.18 It must have been a relief to her to be able to close the hotel door behind her. On January 19 she moved in to supervise the workmen she had hired to prepare the place. Anthony did not follow until three weeks later, on February 10. According to the Dutch custom of the day, the city administration recorded that he was the main proprietor.19
Roemer Visscherstraat 47 was a stately villa, clad with white plaster. It may have reminded Tetta of her parents’ home in Lübeck, Germany. The house had a large basement, a first and second floor, and an attic with bedrooms for the house staff under a black tiled roof. Visitors entered the house through a small elevated entryway decorated with floral designs on stained glass-paneled doors. Beyond the doors, a staircase curved up to the bedrooms on the floor above and to the kitchen and the servants’ quarters downstairs. Anthony and Tetta had a spacious living room with a wooden porch and a large balcony at the back of the house, overlooking the park. The corner that was left was just big enough for Anthony to use as a modest home office. Anthony was very particular about his privacy and had the garden at the back and at the sides of the house surrounded by a high wrought-iron fence. His mother, Anna, took charge of hiring the house staff, but for head of the household Tetta was adamant that she would make her own choice. She had her personal companion, Christine Döppler, come over from Germany with the cook, Frieda.20
The prototype: The first Fokker F.II airliner, model for all subsequent Fokker transport aircraft, at Schwerin’s Görries airfield. On March 25, 1920, Fokker’s friend and confidant Bernard de Waal flew the aircraft from Schwerin to Holland. Near Drachten, however, the motor gave out, and he had to make an emergency landing. DEUTSCHES MUSEUM, MUNICH, GERMANY
At the beginning of 1920, Anthony himself was chiefly occupied with getting his new factory equipped and running. He had bought the former ELTA halls from the exhibition organization for 800,000 guilders (then about $294,000).21 The ground below the buildings was rented. The halls themselves, rather big initially for the small Fokker workforce, were used to store the aircraft brought from Schwerin until assembly for the Dutch Air Corps, the Navy, and prospective foreign buyers. This way the new staff could gain experience in aircraft construction. Meanwhile, Anthony conducted talks with the city of Vlissingen in the southwest of the country, which tried to interest him in empty factory space they had available in the vicinity of the Souburg airstrip.22 But his first concern was the delivery of twenty D.VII fighters for the Dutch Navy. Not before April 1920 was he able to announce that he was ready to start assembly of the aircraft that had been ordered for the Air Corps, although the government’s reduction of the order continued to bother him.23
Along with these military assignments, Anthony entertained plans to start a flying school. With prewar Görries as an example, he approached the incumbent administrator of KLM, Albert Plesman, in December 1919 to find out whether they might cooperate in this. Plesman and his board of directors were not enthusiastic. They told him that KLM preferred to charter aircraft from Fokker for taxi flights when needed. This idea, too, came to nothing; Fokker’s aircraft were built in Germany, and the KLM board feared political repercussions if one of the machines were to land at a foreign airport.24 For the same reason, Fokker did not receive a contract from the Dutch postal authorities for his projected international airmail service to London.25
Nonetheless, the future possibilities for international air services beckoned. This was the very idea that Anthony had embraced when he decided to go with Reinhold Platz’s plan to develop an airplane that would be suited to carry several passengers. Platz’s initial idea provided for passengers to be seated in open cockpits as was the custom in military observation aircraft, but the concept was soon traded in for a design with an enclosed cabin.26 This became the V.45 (V=Versuchsflugzeug, or trial aircraft), ready for its first flight in October 1919. With its thick cantilever wing and enclosed passenger cabin, the V.45 was a revolutionary machine. At a time when most aircraft were biplanes and airplanes with passenger accommodation needed several engines to fly, a single 185-hp engine sufficed for the V.45. Its design blended the concepts of Forssman and Junkers. The only feature of the plane that was perhaps less deviant from the usual construction standards was the fuselage, which was made of welded steel tubes covered with aircraft linen and wood. Behind an open cockpit for the pilot and a navigator, or occasionally an extra passenger, the machine seated four people crammed together.27
Fokker had good reason to believe that KLM would be the ideal launching customer for the F.II, as the production version of the V.45 became known. If he managed to sell the aircraft to the new Dutch national airline, it would emphasize the solid Dutch character of his enterprise in Amsterdam. The Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij voor Nederland en Koloniën (KLM: Royal Airline Company for the Netherlands and Its Colonies) had been founded on October 7, 1919, by a conglomerate of large trading banks, financiers, and shipping lines. The new company possessed no aircraft of its own. Competitors were plentiful from the start, although in that day and age it was impossible to make money in commercial aviation. With the support of national governments, airline companies were founded in several European countries as (expensive) expressions of national prestige. Evidently, this development presaged the possibilities of a new market that might extend beyond Holland itself. Fokker’s main problem was now how to get the airplane from Schwerin to Amsterdam and warm KLM to the concept. Since he himself could not enter Germany because of the ongoing dispute with the German authorities over his tax debts, Anthony sent his trusted friend Bernard de Waal to Schwerin on a reconnaissance mission in March 1920.
On Thursday afternoon, March 25, De Waal started with the F.II from Görries for what was to be an extensive test flight with the new aircraft. But once airborne, he set course for the Netherlands and soon disappeared beyond the horizon, as he had done a year before with the C.I reconnaissance plane. He again failed to reach his destination. As evening fell, the engine quit over the town of Drachten in the north of Holland. An emergency landing in a meadow was the inevitable consequence. The aircraft came to a standstill in a ditch, from which a recovery crew from the Fokker factory in Amsterdam had to rescue it. To transport the machine, it had to be disassembled on the spot. That Saturday Anthony and Tetta drove all the way from Amsterdam to supervise the work.28 In the end the airplane arrived in Amsterdam on a barge.29 In the months that followed, Anthony made numerous test flights with the F.II, which resulted in various improvements on the aircraft.
Meanwhile, Fokker did all he could to convince KLM to buy the plane. Not only did he boast of the technical characteristics of the machine, but he also exhausted himself on patriotic arguments to entice KLM to do business with his Netherlands Aircraft Factory. To lure Plesman in, he offered the F.II for the rock-bottom price of 27,500 Dutch guilders (about $9,500).30 The comparable British De Havilland DH-18, a single engine biplane with a cabin that also fit four passengers, cost two and a half times that amount.31 Plesman was bound to accept such a generous offer, especially after KLM’s pilot, Walter Hinchcliffe, made a trial flight with the machine from the Soesterberg airfield on June 17 and came back much impressed with the aircraft’s handling characteristics. KLM soon placed an order with Fokker for two F.II aircraft.
However, what Anthony had carefully avoided mentioning was that the F.II had not been developed in Holland, but in Schwerin, and that it was also going to be built in Germany. In his discussions with Plesman, he had referred to the aircraft as the first achievement in commercial aviation of his Netherlands Aircraft Factory. At the small KLM office in The Hague, nobody had any knowledge of the arrangements between Amsterdam and Schwerin. The perspective of the KLM board did not yet extend beyond the border. Only after the signing of the sales contract did word reach Plesman that the two aircraft he had ordered would not be constructed in Amsterdam but in Germany. For him and his board members, this was a serious blow. They accused Fokker of deceiving them on purpose. After all, operating German aircraft could have big repercussions for the airline. What if Belgium, France, and Britain would refuse to issue landing rights because KLM used former enemy aircraft? It appeared entirely possible that the aircraft could be confiscated in Brussels, Paris, or London. But the sales papers were signed.32 Anthony, for his part, decided that the anxiety would probably blow over and kept his distance in the meantime.
KLM took delivery of the first F.II on August 25, 1920. A little over a month later, Walter Hinchcliffe dared take it on a trial flight to London. It was to be a memorable adventure. Five times Hinchcliffe had to turn back to Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airfield because of various mechanical malfunctions. It took him more than two days to reach London. To the relief of Plesman and his fellow board members, the aircraft was not seized as war booty, and Hinchcliffe touched down again with the F.II at Schiphol on October 5.33
And yet there was a peculiar smell to the whole affair. In the small Dutch aviation world, Anthony Fokker and Albert Plesman were stuck with each other. They understood this only too well. Neither felt comfortable with the situation. The eccentric war-tainted millionaire Fokker and the authoritarian former Air Corps lieutenant did not get along. Possibly their very different backgrounds played a role too. Plesman, the seventh child of small shopkeepers from The Hague, had been chosen as “administrator” of the new airline venture because of his exceptional drive to make the ELTA into a success. He was a bully who got excited easily and liked to use strong language. Plesman almost couldn’t help feeling personal resentment against Fokker, his privileged family background, and his slick ways of conducting business.34 On his side, Fokker failed to appreciate what Plesman stood for. While pleased with the publicity that the “Dutch” combine Fokker-KLM produced, he did not fully recognize the chauvinistic nature of the association. He knew that KLM, which was dependent on government subsidies for its survival, had no realistic alternative but to buy Fokker aircraft. Yet he did not take in that KLM expected more than just value for money from his company. This caused constant friction. Anthony was often fickle in his contacts and was given to wriggling out of deals that appeared done to the observer. Along with that, quality control was a constant issue at the Netherlands Aircraft Factory, and this created numerous problems in itself.
The issues surrounding the sale of the F.II were still fresh when the next conflict announced itself. Early in October 1920, Fokker told Plesman that he was working on a hugely improved version of the F.II. The new plane, designated F.III, was to have more or less the same takeoff weight and the same engine, but it would have a longer wing span for increased lift. By widening the fuselage, the cabin could provide for five seats instead of four while also offering marginally more leg room. It was an idea that Anthony had recently passed on to Reinhold Platz. The pilot was moved farther up the nose of the aircraft to be seated right next to the engine. This improved the downward view from the cockpit, which translated into better safety upon landing.35 These changes increased the attractiveness of the aircraft.
Plesman was immediately interested in the new design and announced that he wanted to buy as many as eight of these machines. He also hoped to trade in the F.II aircraft, which KLM had thus far hardly used, for the new F.III type. With the new equipment KLM wanted to start scheduled operations in the spring of 1921. Anthony Fokker considered the latter proposition risky. The new machine was then only in its first stages of development, and it was questionable whether it would even be ready in time for the planned opening of KLM services in March. Nonetheless, he urged Plesman to place an advance order for the new F.III so that KLM would be certain to be the first to fly this new, more economical type. He put pressure on his business partner: only if he had a signed order before leaving for New York could he guarantee KLM the coveted status of “launching customer.” To lure Plesman, Fokker told him that he would offer him the F.III at a special discount and even suggested he might be willing to buy back the F.II aircraft that had already been delivered to KLM.36
Under considerable pressure from the government to cover at least one-third of KLM’s annual losses from the company’s reserves, Plesman received instruction from his board to buy the more economical F.III as soon as possible. Together with the tension exercised by Fokker’s pending departure to the United States, the order gave rise to misunderstandings. Fixed on drawing KLM across the threshold and thus reducing his own financial risks in developing the F.III, Fokker again suggested he might be willing to buy back the two F.II aircraft from KLM at the price Plesman had paid for them. He attached great value to strengthening the groundwork for his new enterprise, especially now that the expected orders from the Dutch armed services were not forthcoming. The latter presented Fokker with a big problem. In June 1920 he wrote to the Dutch War Ministry, “We wish to appeal to Your Excellency for support, be it not in the form of a subsidy, but in the form of a commitment, that Your department will place aircraft orders, if at all possible, with us, and will also procure the necessary test aircraft, to be built by us, if these are acceptable to the State.”37
Convinced that Fokker’s buyback suggestion constituted a real promise, a very satisfied Albert Plesman made a verbal agreement with Fokker to buy two F.III aircraft straight off the drawing board. The whole transaction therefore appeared to be a done deal, and Anthony left for New York according to plan. But in his absence a difference of opinion soon arose. In December, Fokker’s Dutch sales manager, Hendrik Nieuwenhuis, told Plesman—to the customer’s dismay—that he knew nothing of the agreement to exchange the F.II for F.III aircraft. Plesman was perplexed.38 When Anthony Fokker returned to Holland on January 18, 1921, he too pretended to have no recollection of the deal. He took the position that the agreement between him and KLM did not extend beyond the airline’s firm commitment to buy two F.III aircraft. He denied ever having suggested that he would take back the older machines and insisted on delivering the F.III machines as agreed before his American trip. After an exchange of angry letters and a screaming row between the two men at Fokker’s house in Amsterdam’s Roemer Visscherstraat, Plesman was left with no option but to keep the two F.II aircraft and the two F.III machines on top of this. It did not, however, resolve their differences. After the new aircraft had actually been delivered, a most irritated Plesman reported to his board that “the Netherlands Aircraft Factory tries, to deliver bad materials, like old tires, bad airscrews, bad windows etc. The Administrator [Plesman] has already complained repeatedly to the factory about this.”39
For Fokker it was not easy to address such complaints. In Schwerin the construction of the aircraft was done with the limited means that were still available or could be bought. SIW chronically lacked all sorts of materials. Incorporating improvements that were suggested in Amsterdam was no easy matter. It was typical of the unstructured work routine at Fokker’s factory. While he was in America, the various changes that Anthony had suggested earlier were first put on paper in provisional construction drawings. Afterward, a full-scale mock-up of the redesigned fuselage was built in Amsterdam. This formed the basis for a more precise blueprint of the new aircraft, which was sent to Schwerin. There it was Platz’s responsibility to build the actual prototype, a process that took place beyond view, or interference, from Amsterdam. After the new airplane was ready and had been test-flown in Schwerin, it was disassembled, crated, and sent to Holland by rail for reassembly in Fokker’s flight hangar at Schiphol Airfield. The whole development process had taken less than a month. On November 20, 1920, one of KLM’s pilots made a test flight with the new machine and reported that it behaved satisfactorily in the air. But because Fokker was still the ultimate test pilot of the machines that carried his name, further flight testing was postponed until his return from New York.
After he arrived back in Holland on January 18, 1921, a single test flight sufficed for him to reject various parts of the construction of the fuselage, engine installment, and the aircraft’s rudder, ailerons, and elevator. This showed Fokker at his best: suggesting changes on the basis of his vast practical flight experience. When the Dutch Bureau of Aeronautics (Rijksstudiedienst voor de Luchtvaart), which was responsible for the aircraft’s airworthiness papers, later examined the F.III, it found that the changes that Fokker had proposed resulted in a machine that was safer and easier to fly for less experienced pilots. After the changes had been incorporated, Anthony made another series of test flights, which resulted in further modifications. Finally, new blueprints were produced and sent to Schwerin, where the series production was planned.40
Anthony held high expectations for the future of the F.III and had a series of commercials filmed for the aircraft. In some of them he featured himself as the aircraft’s pilot in a flight suit. Before production of the F.III had to be stopped at SIW because of an Allied ban on German aircraft production, Fokker shipped some twenty aircraft from Schwerin. The German government approved of this in writing. In the end, production had to be discontinued, and the remaining machines were transported to Holland by train to be completed by staff that had traveled with them from Germany. There was a price to be paid by SIW for this expensive arrangement, since labor costs proved substantially higher in the Netherlands. SIW found it was left to pay 15 million marks, which was duly paid from the company’s ever-dwindling reserves.41
Even without such solutions, Anthony’s relation with his German past was problematical. In December 1921 matters became more complicated. That month Fokker received notice from the German military tax authorities (Reichsmilitärfiskus) charging him with embezzlement of some four million marks between 1916 and the end of 1918. What was the case? Like most warring countries, the German government had issued special war bonds, or Kriegsanleihen, to raise capital for the war effort. To encourage the acquisition of bonds, a special arrangement had been made by which both companies and private individuals could ask for a cash advance for the payment of bonds. This advance came in the shape of a loan, which remained interest-free in its first month. After that period, the loan was to be converted into war bonds and altered into a regular loan that carried between 4 and 5 percent interest. Because the bonds were also issued at a 5 percent interest rate, investing in them was promoted as a patriotic act, not as a guaranteed safe investment. In September 1916 Anthony Fokker had therefore asked the military authorities for a cash advance of 1 million marks. A second advance, 3 million marks, had been made available to him in 1918. But when the military tax inspectors reviewed the case in December 1920, they found that Fokker had never used the 4 million in advances to acquire war bonds. So where had the money gone, and why had Fokker never paid a penny of the 252,000 marks in interest that was due?42
The case had first come to light shortly after Fokker had left Germany. It was now necessary to arrive at some settlement. On May 31, 1919, Wilhelm Horter, then still in Berlin, sent the assistant sales manager of the Fokker Central Office, Otto Borde, with 4,047,000 marks’ worth of war bonds to the military tax inspector with instructions to pay off the 4 million that had gone missing between 1916 and 1918. But since there was no file that documented that Fokker had transferred the cash advances into war bonds—something that was probably only done at the end of 1918 in the process of liquidating Fokker’s bank accounts—Borde’s visit gave rise to all sorts of difficult questions, among them where these bonds had come from. There was another catch: the tax inspectors explained Borde that the value of the bonds had plummeted. After all, the war had been lost. It meant that the real value of the papers that Borde carried was no more than 3,966,060 marks. Borde countered that not all of the bonds’ interest coupons had been cashed. At a value of 33,725 marks, this reduced the difference to a mere 215 marks.
Not quite knowing how to handle such a case, the tax inspectors had in the end accepted the bonds as payment. Their superiors, however, took an entirely different position: because there were no official documents stating that Fokker had acted timely in transferring the cash advances into war bonds, they maintained that the bonds could not be accepted as payment for the loans. The advances had been made available to Fokker in cash, and for this reason they demanded that they be returned in cash. Besides, it had been established that the total value of the bonds was less than the sum of the cash advances and that the government had never received any of the 252,000 marks Fokker owed in interest. On the contrary, the military tax inspector concluded that Fokker had evidently cashed part of the dividends on the bonds. Such an act was deemed “to constitute contempt for any sense of patriotism.”43
Finding out what had actually happened took time, and it was June 1922 before Fokker’s legal and fiscal advisers had their defense ready. They held that the cash advances to Fokker had never been intended to be converted into war bonds. By September 1916 the administrative system of the German armed forces had become so slow that it was no longer possible to pay Fokker for aircraft delivered within a reasonable time period. This had caused cash flow problems for the company, which Fokker had tried to resolve with the cash-advances-for-war-bonds scheme. When these cash advances materialized, all parties concerned agreed that they in fact referred to back payments and were not actually intended to be converted into war bonds. In fact, a verbal agreement had been reached that the cash advances would, for this reason, remain without interest, although the official documentation stated that interest would be charged. Claiming overdue interest was therefore not justified, Fokker’s legal counsel argued. To fortify their case, the lawyers produced a witness, a former clerk of the military payments office, who was prepared to make a statement under oath to this effect before the court. Accepting the bonds by way of repayment of the cash advances had already been a mistake, the lawyers held, but the consequences of such an error were to be borne by the authorities, who were not supposed to propose such arrangements in the first place.
Around this nucleus of arguments, Anthony’s Berlin lawyers arranged a thick smokescreen to divert attention from the heart of the matter: had the cash advances really been interest-free, and did Fokker have the right to keep his hands on the money for such a long time?44 The lawyers next produced an unpaid bill of 350,000 marks for aircraft and company supplies that had been destroyed in 1919 by order of the Weimar government as part of Germany’s enforced disarmament.45 This complicated matters even further. The military tax inspector therefore proposed to dismiss the case, provided that the Schwerin Industrial Works agreed to drop the claim for 350,000 marks. The state even offered to pay 91 percent of the legal costs that Fokker and SIW had been forced to make to defend themselves. This would have put an end to the case, had the German mark not crashed, which necessitated conversion of all fees and dues into the new Reichsmark currency. Not until September 1926 was the matter finally settled.46