Spy | History
Fritz Duquesne — A Spy and Saboteur in World War I
The Tale of A South African, who Turned Into a German Spy in World War I
Fritz Duquesne was born on 21 September 1877 to a South African Boer family. His parents, Abraham Duquesne and Minna Joubert were farmers and hunters. Abraham made his living as a hunter who also frequently traveled to sell skins, tusks, and horns. He had also hired local natives to work at the farm. He had two younger siblings — sister Elsbeth and brother Pedro.
But a tragedy happened when Fritz Duquesne was only 12 years old. His mother was attacked by a person. He witnessed the whole situation — he came forward and took out the man’s spear and stabbed into his stomach.
The man died.
Because of this death, his parents decided that this place wouldn’t be a suitable place for him, so they chose to send him to school in England. In England, he completed his schooling and also went to Oxford university, and later attended the Royal Military Academy.
On a ship, he met an embezzler named Christian de Vries and the two decided to go on a world tour together.
On the ship, he overheard some of the Boers and how they had found diamonds. Britishers declared war to get the diamonds.
Fritz couldn’t resist himself and came back to his home in South Africa, and enlisted in the Army. Because of his studies in England, he had a good British Accent.
His British accent was highly appreciated by colleagues and senior officers.
Many soldiers who fought the war bravely for their homeland, got wounded. During the same time, Fritz adopted a pan name for himself “black panther”.
He was also charged with the mission to get all the gold out of the country before the British can come and steal it. During this fight, Fritz needed some help from local people so that he can transport all of it by himself.
He ordered his men to hide the treasure and they buried it so that this couldn't be found by anyone else. It is a claim that people are still looking for the same.
Unfortunately, Fritz was captured and sent to the Lisbon detention center — where the real fun began.
He conspired his escape from the cell bar at midnight. For this, he went for the tunnel, and he planned that a woman would catch him, he was stopped by a woman named Donna Joanna. It was her father’s jail. They both used to make love in his cell all night. The next morning he escaped in borrowed clothes.
After this escape, he signed up for the British Army, and due to his excellent skills in Afrikaans, he was promoted to officer.
He became now double agent, first in South Africa and then for the British Army.
He was sent back to Africa where he found that his sister was killed and his mother is dying in a British concentration camp. And the person responsible for all this was: Lord Kitchener.
He had implemented a scorching earth strategy for civilians in concentration camps under British surveillance. Thus, Fritz and the guerrilla forces could not help the prisoners.
At this point, Fritz swore to take revenge on the Britishers.
He organized d 20 people to place a bomb on a railway track which can cause chaos. In the chaotic atmosphere, whenever he gets the time, he approaches Kitchener but was unable to kill him.
He and his team were arrested and sentenced to death. Fritz negotiated with British officers that he will reveal some secret codes in exchange for his life.
Who knew if those secret codes were really secrets or were made up by him to bamboozle the British?
The death penalty was exchanged for life imprisonment. Then he started to tunnel out of prison. After continuous digging for months, he was finally able to make way his escape attempt.
When he was in the tunnel and was about to reach the exit, a heavy rock fell and his exit was closed. He stayed there overnight and the next morning, the guards found him halfway out of his cell.
Then he was sent to Bermuda, as it was an impregnable prison of sand beaches and sunlit waters from which no prisoner could escape.
But he climbed over the barbed wire fence, got wounded by wire cuts, jumped into the water, and he bloodied swam 1.5 miles through shark-infested water to the main island, where he got refuge.
He then with the help of a prostitute sailed all the way to Baltimore. Till this time war was over. But the British wanted him dead or alive at any cost. So he decided that he would enjoy America for awhile.
To make money he launched a $250,000 scheme to raise hippos in Louisiana. The hope was to raise hippopotamuses for meat in Southern Swamps. Predictably, the crackpot scheme failed.
Then he became then-President Theodore Roosevelt’s (R-New York) personal shooting instructor. It is strange but true — a known spy who broke the prison several times and now made his way to the White House.
World War I
When WWI broke out, Fritz wasn't about to miss any opportunity of taking revenge on the British Empire. Hence, he volunteered for service as a German spy.
The German intelligence officers sent Duquesne to Brazil, where he masqueraded as Frederick, a scientist, and they believed him.
He sunk 22 merchant ships with time bombs disguised as mineral samples.
But he took American insurance on all those 22 ships, so he cashed out over two million dollars. When he was about to be exposed, he faked his own death and took residence in Buenos Aires (the Capital City of Argentina).
Finally, the Germans assigned him his dream job to kill Lord Herbert Kitchener, the British Secretary of War. He moved to his next mission.
However, Kitchener died when the ship he was riding on the HMS Hampshire struck a mine near the Orkney Islands. Whether Duquesne was involved in the sinking is unknown. Kitchner was on his way to Russia to negotiate with Tsar Nicholas II and evaluate the Russian war effort.
After his dream mission, he returned back to Germany, where he was facilitated with an iron cross.
Later he returned to Washington DC to take out some advantage of his connection, which he made because of the Louisiana hippo deal.
The war was over, and he got nothing out of it.
Fritz Duquesne became the center of attraction, which he enjoyed too. He dipped many people with his transforming image.
He was even involved in the Aussie-British war too. Where he was against the British.
He was stuck many times but found a way to exit at any cost.
Americans had no issue against him, but when a raid was conducted in his New York apartment, they found some suspicious amount of information on ship bombing, insurance paper, and a German letter.
It was the biggest insurance fraud till that time, for this crime, he was arrested two more times, and he faked as paralyzed and again successfully got escaped.
But when one more time, he was caught, he was beaten by the police, so he pretended that his leg is broken.
So after two years of prison in New York, Duquesne faced extradition to the United Kingdom. Mere days before his final departure to the UK, he cuts the bars of his cell and disguised himself as a woman. He climbs over the wall and runs off into the night.
He then fled to Mexico, and five years later he returned to New York again with a different identity. And then he started working in the movie industry.
Simultaneously he started working to write his biography with a writer. When he was arrested later, the writer tried to defend him by saying he is no Fritz Duquesne, he is my good friend Major Craven.
World War II
Duquesne returned to spying for Germany in 1937 after the Nazis came to power. Once again his target was the United States.
Duquesne organized an enormous spy ring to help the new German government steal American secrets. The ring was soon detected by the FBI. When federal agents finally moved against the Duquesne ring. It was one of the most famous espionage cases in American history.
But when some double agent working with him found out, that he is planning something bigger, the FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover told then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-New York) about him.
When Duquesne was arrested, there were 33 spies working under him. His spy ring stole military and technological secrets.
On 2 January 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan, and Germany declared war on America, the 33 members of the Duquesne Spy Ring were sentenced to serve a total of more than 300 years in prison.
They were found guilty in what historian Peter Duffy said in 2014 is “still to this day the largest espionage case in the history of the United States.”
One German spymaster later commented that the ring’s roundup delivered ‘the death blow’ to their espionage efforts in the United States. J. Edgar Hoover called the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) operation against Duquesne’s ring the greatest spy roundup in U.S. history.
The result was, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison, and at the age of 64, he couldn’t attempt any more escapes. So after 14 years, In 1954 on the account of his health, he was released.
Fritz Duquesne took his last breath at City Hospital on Welfare Island (now Roosevelt Island), in New York City on 24 May 1956 at the age of 78. Case. He was cremated in New York Potter Field on May 29, 1956.
In a 1942 memo to his superiors, German intelligence chief Admiral Canaris wrote about the valued contribution of captured spies by noting their valued Duquesne had — “delivered valuable reports and important technical material in the original, including U.S. gas masks, radio-controlled apparatus, leak-proof fuel tanks, television instruments, small bombs for airplanes versus airplanes, air separator, and propeller-driving mechanisms. Items delivered were labeled ‘valuable’, and several ‘good’ and ‘very good.”
Duquesne’s last known lecture was in 1954 at the Adventurers’ Club of New York, titled “My Life — in and out of Prison”.
