The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel: Genius, Power, and Deception on the Eve of World War I

“Throughout history, the world has often adopted technological advances in ways the inventor never imagined, and certainly never intended. [...] As empires, both political and corporate, applied revolutionary technologies to accelerate their advance, the unintended consequences of an inventor’s brainchild could wreak havoc and terror.”

The complicated historical context of Diesel’s life is central to Brunt’s argument about his death or disappearance. Here, we see the important role that industrial, political, and monetary interests have on the direction and uses of industrial innovation; often, those interests have the final say, not the inventor.

“Four people are key to understanding the quarter century leading up to the Great War: John D. Rockefeller, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Winston Churchill, and—overlooked until now—Rudolf Diesel. By walking the paths of these men in the decades before the war and connecting facts previously thought to be unrelated, a shroud of mystery dissolves to reveal the truth about Rudolf Diesel’s fate.”

The final two sentences of the Prologue create suspense, drawing on the tropes of the mystery or thriller genre. By opening his book with the end of Diesel’s life, Brunt shows readers the lens through which he will be reviewing historical facts—he is interested primarily in drawing conclusions about Rudolf Diesel’s death or disappearance.

“The excitement surrounding this acceleration in human knowledge and achievement was reflected in the advent of the Exposition Universelle—also known as the World’s Fair—the first of which was held in Paris in 1855. The very idea that society could undergo such rapid change was a change in itself, and something to celebrate.”

Brunt spends much of the book Connecting Art, Science, and Progress, a key theme that offers important insights into Rudolf Diesel’s life. The World’s Fair is a motif closely tied to that theme; Brunt uses it to illustrate the ways that the work of previous inventors, artisans, and thinkers affected Diesel’s personal ambitions and spurred his career.

“The German seizure of these French assets in 1871 created a long-standing political enmity between the two nations that would come to have a profound effect on Rudolf Diesel’s life.”

The geopolitical tensions that changed the course of Diesel’s entire life are a significant factor in Brunt’s telling of his story. Here, Brunt sows the seeds of future conflict by demonstrating how the eventual crisis of WWI was the result of many previous smaller-scale conflicts and animosities between European nations.

“Theodor did his best to protect their few possessions from the desperate people around them. They took a spot on the deck near the rail as the children became violently ill from the ship's motion. Rudolf was old enough to register the raw fear that came with their new circumstances.”

Brunt explains the harsh circumstances of Diesel’s childhood, which explain the inventor’s future idealism and desire to work for social uplift. Despite his father’s best attempts to shield his children from the hardships they were facing, Rudolf Diesel was aware of how unstable their lives were.

“But the prevailing and indelible lesson, learned through traumatic personal experience, was his understanding of the fragility of a family’s security. War and industrial innovation could destroy the life a family had made for itself.”

Brunt introduces two of his key themes in this quotation: Militarism and Industrial Innovation, and the Influence of Wealth on Industrialization. Diesel understood from an early age how little power his family had over their lives; he would spend the rest of his life trying to find a way to improve the conditions of others in a similar situation.

“Rockefeller dispatched Flagler to negotiate secret agreements with the heads of the railroads for better transportation pricing for his product over the rail lines. Once he secured an advantageous deal with the railroads, he could drive his competition out of business.”

Brunt explains Rockefeller’s vicious business practices in support of Standard Oil, illustrating the way the tycoon handled competition. This background sets up Rockefeller’s pattern of using aggressive tactics to maintain power and control—a tendency that would later cause speculation about Rockefeller’s possible involvement in Diesel’s death.

“Rudolf’s ambition expanded beyond merely the scientific achievement of engine efficiency [...] Success would mean that not only would he personally avoid a return to tenement housing but that he would break the mold of tenement housing altogether.”

Diesel had two passions throughout his life: advancing engineering progress and doing social good. His hope was that his engine could be a way to address both dreams at once.

“Looking back from the perspective of 1913, he wrote, “How is an idea created? Maybe sometimes it strikes like lightning, but mostly it will develop slowly through intensive search under numerous mistakes.”

Brunt offers readers insight into Diesel’s process of inventing his engine. Diesel viewed the development process as one of trial and error, instead of sudden genius. This makes sense, given that Diesel’s work built on the previous inventions of others, incrementally improving the engine invented by Nicolaus Otto, and then slowly improving the innovations he developed. Diesel spent years carefully tweaking his design.

“Rudolf wanted companies to pay high wages because it was the good and sensible thing to do. But he specifically wanted the high wages driven by the employer’s common sense, rather than by a trade union that would then be in the position to force a raft of additional, insensible conditions. This merger of opposing philosophies in Diesel defies all description except utopian capitalist.”

Brunt describes Diesel’s complex perspective on labor rights and the role of the employer. In comparison to businessmen like John D. Rockefeller, Diesel’s perspective seems charitable, kind, and a little naive. Brunt uses this contrast to illustrate the complicated world of industry that Diesel had to navigate and how ill-suited he may have been.

“Arson was never proved, although it was clear that Pinkerton (and similar agencies such as Baldwin-Felts) was acting as the paramilitary wing of Big Business, and because Rockefeller had been villainized as the very public face of American oil trusts, the court of public opinion was ready to convict.”

Brunt hints that Rockefeller may have been behind the suspicious fire that burned down Henry Ford and Thomas Edison’s workshop, where they were developing an electric battery to power cars, potentially replacing the need for fossil fuels. Despite a lack of proof, the public believed Rockefeller was responsible based on the reputation he had garnered through years of shady business practices.

“Tirpitz knew that Britain would recognize the threat of this committed naval expansion. [...] He concluded that if Germany built ships according to the Fleet Acts, then Germany would emerge from the Danger Zone in 1905 with a fleet strong enough to challenge the Royal Navy. The German fleet wouldn’t be stronger than the Royal Navy but would be strong enough that the British would choose to avoid confrontation.”

The Kaiser and his military were willing to risk much to rival Britain’s influence and control on the global stage. This is important to understand: Brunt uses the Kaiser’s obsession to show why Diesel’s insistence on international cooperation and his decision to consult for British engineering firms were a threat to Germany’s ambitions.

“To conclude his speech, Rudolf reflected on the geopolitical implications of his discussion, and made the point that was also then top of mind for Churchill, Rockefeller, and Wilhelm II—that fuel is the decider of the fate of nations.”

Brunt summarizes a noteworthy speech that Diesel gave in London in 1912. It is important because it is evidence that Diesel was aware of being caught in the middle of global tensions and felt a responsibility to speak about his work's role in world events.

“According to these reports, the sailors of the Dutch steamer Coertzen took the curious action of returning the body to the water during an age when the custom was for sailors to go to staggering lengths to recover bodies lost at sea and bring them home for proper burial.”

This strange behavior of the sailors is one piece of the circumstantial evidence Brunt uses to prove his theory that Diesel did not die at sea but instead defected to Canada to work for the side of the Allies in WWI. By showing that the Dutch seamen diverged from the common practice of the time, Brunt raises questions about the legitimacy of their story, wondering if Diesel’s body really was ever found. However, his later conclusion—that Britain staged an operation that used a fake corpse of Diesel—relies on the idea that there was indeed a body discovered. Inconsistencies like this, as well as Brunt’s decision not to pursue any counterpoints to his preferred explanation for Diesel’s disappearance, make the book’s speculations less convincing.

“The event of Rudolf Diesel’s unnatural death on September 29–30, 1913, allows for three possible causes: accident, suicide, or murder. There are sufficient facts from his life and the circumstance of his disappearance to make a determination on each.”

In his analysis of the potential theories explaining Diesel’s disappearance, Brunt makes it clear that he believes all existing theories can be easily disproved—an overly definitive statement that marks the book’s departure from historical biography drawn from facts, and its turn to the genre of speculative or alternative historical fiction.

“The idea that Rudolf Diesel’s death was accidental never warranted serious consideration or press coverage.”

Brunt’s main argument as to why an accidental death cannot be considered a legitimate theory is the idea that this term was primarily used as a euphemism for death by suicide—an act seen as taboo at the time. While Blunt uses this idea to discount the theory, he does not use the same idea to explain why Diesel’s family might have quickly and quietly accepted the ruling of suicide: At a time when death by suicide was so stigmatized that polite fictions like “accidental drowning” were commonplace, families tended to downplay such deaths, hoping for a minimum of attention or public interest.

“But the facts don’t support a murder theory. First, there is Rudolf’s odd behavior in the weeks prior to his disappearance. Premeditation in murder is not on the part of the victim. Yet Rudolf seemed to know something in the days leading up to his disappearance.”

Brunt uses Diesel’s odd behavior in the weeks before his disappearance as evidence that murder is not a reasonable explanation for what happened. Brunt argues that Diesel was aware that something was going to happen to him, and that he would likely never return home—though why this “something” couldn’t be suicidal ideation Brunt doesn’t make clear.

“The story of the corpse is a fiction. Rudolf Diesel didn’t die on September 29, 1913.”

Brunt’s conclusion, after he discounts accident, murder, and suicide, is that Diesel faked his own death. Brunt, eager for this sensational ending, offers as proof the fact that British Intelligence would much later stage similarly elaborate ruses.

“Mann concluded, ‘The absence of reporting about Diesel in March 1914 is resounding confirmation that there was an intelligence operation to extract Rudolf Diesel.’”

Brunt offers testimony from an expert on British practices of media suppression to add credibility to the circumstantial evidence—a lack of media coverage—he uses for his theory.

“The mysterious band of engineers in Canada miraculously completed the first five of these submarines by May and was busily fulfilling the rest of the order[...] Acquiring the raw material was a diplomatic feat that required the great determination of Schwab, Churchill, and Fisher, as well as the assistance of members of the US Department of State to finesse the neutrality laws. A more remarkable feat was the mysterious engineering.”

Part of Brunt’s argument that Diesel was still alive after his disappearance is the sudden British and American advancements in diesel engineering. After years of faltering, the US was suddenly able to produce diesel submarines when only a few months prior, their understanding of the required engineering was primitive.

“Winston Churchill advised, ‘In wartime truth is so precious that she must always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.’ More than a century later, the bodyguards are gone and the truth laid bare. Rudolf Diesel can have his due.”

In the Epilogue, after offering his alternative theory for Diesel’s disappearance, Brunt illustrates why telling Diesel’s story is important: Diesel’s impact on the world was enormous, whether he defected before WWI or died at sea—inventors like him should be better known and their work credited.

“The uncertain application of advancing science, for good or for bad, was a great struggle of Diesel’s age, as it is today.”

Brunt points out the moral quandaries that scientists and inventors must contend with as they work toward scientific advancement, imagining the way Diesel must have viewed his creation as he watched the engine being co-opted for big business and military use.

“Among all forms of life on earth, humans have a unique quality: the conscious ambition to evolve. Is this a quality of our better angels? This question sets the stage for the sad paradox of Diesel’s life and work.”

The Epilogue takes on a melancholic tone, and Brunt acknowledges that progress often comes with casualties and that Diesel was one of them, literally and figuratively.