WLászló Ede Almásy de Zsadány et Törökszentmiklós was a Hungarian aristocrat, motorist, desert explorer, aviator, Scout-leader and sportsman who served as the basis for the protagonist in both Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient (1992) and the movie adaptation of the same name (1996).
WElyesa Bazna, sometimes known as Ilyaz and Iliaz Bazna, was a secret agent for Nazi Germany during World War II, operating under the code name Cicero.
WOtto Albrecht Alfred von Bolschwing was a German SS-Hauptsturmführer in the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst (SD), Hitler's SS intelligence agency. After World War II von Bolschwing became a spy and worked for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Europe and later in California.
WJan Willem Ter Braak was a Dutch espionage agent working for Germany who operated for five months in the United Kingdom. Ter Braak is believed to have been the German agent who was at large for the longest time in Britain during the Second World War, despite his short period of activity. When he ran out of money, Ter Braak committed suicide in a public air raid shelter.
WWilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and chief of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944. He was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler but by 1939 had turned against the regime.
WHelmut Clissman was a German spy during World War II.
WSavitri Devi Mukherji was a French-born Greek fascist, Nazi sympathizer, and spy who served the Axis powers by committing acts of espionage against the Allied forces in India. She was later a leading member of the Neo-Nazi underground during the 1960s.
WThe Duquesne Spy Ring is the largest espionage case in the United States history that ended in convictions. A total of 33 members of a German espionage network headed by Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne were convicted after a lengthy investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Of those indicted, 19 pleaded guilty. The remaining 14 were brought to jury trial in Federal District Court, Brooklyn, New York, on September 3, 1941; all were found guilty on December 13, 1941. On January 2, 1942, the group members were sentenced to serve a total of over 300 years in prison.
WFrederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne was a South African Boer and German soldier, big-game hunter, journalist, and spy.
WReinhard Gehlen was a German lieutenant-general and intelligence officer. He was chief of the Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East military intelligence service on the eastern front during World War II, spymaster of the CIA-affiliated anticommunist Gehlen Organisation (1946–56) and the founding president of the Federal Intelligence Service of West Germany (1956–68) during the Cold War.
WErich Gimpel was a German spy during World War II. Together with William Colepaugh, he took part in Operation Elster ("Magpie") an espionage mission to the United States in 1944, but was subsequently captured by the FBI in New York City.
WAbwehr Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Joseph Giskes was a wartime intelligence operative primarily stationed in the occupied Netherlands, and head of Abwehr Section IIIF. He is best known as one of the leading lights behind the Englandspiel operation. Giskes' activities were responsible for supplying a great deal of disinformation to British intelligence services for much of World War II, and for the arrest of more than 50 Allied agents. Giskes first succeeded in gaining the partial cooperation of captured British agent Hubertus Lauwers, who sent encrypted messages back to British SOE at Giskes' direction, under duress. Then dozens of agents parachuted in succession, and were captured by the Germans, along with tons of equipment.
WHermann Görtz was a German spy in Britain and Ireland before and during World War II, liaising with the Irish Republican Army (IRA). After the war, he committed suicide rather than be deported from Ireland to Germany.
WStephanie Julianne von Hohenlohe, born Stephany Julienne Richter was an Austrian princess by her marriage to the diplomat Prince Friedrich Franz von Hohenlohe-Waldenburg-Schillingsfürst, a member of the princely Hohenlohe family. She was born a commoner, allegedly of Jewish family background.
W"Jane" Ebba Charlotta Horney, was a Swedish woman, believed to have spied in Denmark for the benefit of Nazi Germany, and to have been killed by the Danish resistance movement on a fishing boat at Øresund, but it has never been confirmed for which nation she actually worked. The Gestapo in Denmark believed that she was an agent for the British or Soviet Union, and after World War II it was denied that she had been a Gestapo agent. Abwehr officers likewise denied, when asked by Säpo, that she had been their agent.
WKurt Albert Jahnke (1882–1945) was a German-American intelligence agent and saboteur active both during World War I and World War II.
WJosef Jakobs was a German spy and the last person to be executed at the Tower of London. He was captured shortly after parachuting into the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Convicted of espionage under the Treachery Act 1940, Jakobs was shot by a military firing squad. He was not hanged because he was captured as an enemy combatant.
WWerner Alfred Waldemar von Janowski,, was a captured German Second World War Nazi spy and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's first double agent. He is believed to have been a triple agent by some, underscoring the RCMP's inexperience in espionage. Due to power struggles between the Canadian and British intelligence agencies during the Second World War and the RCMP's inexperience, Operation Watchdog was a failure. Janowski provided little significant intelligence to the Allies: no Abwehr agents were arrested and no U-boats were captured, despite his apparent cooperation. Within a year the operation was shut down and Janowski was sent to a prison in Britain.
WJohann-Nielsen Jebsen, nicknamed "Johnny", was an anti-Nazi German intelligence officer and British double agent during the Second World War. Jebsen recruited Dušan Popov to the Abwehr and through him later joined the Allied cause. Kidnapped from Lisbon by the Germans shortly before the Normandy landings, Jebsen was tortured in prison and spent time in a concentration camp before disappearing; he was presumed killed at the end of the war.
WJessie Jordan was a Scottish hairdresser who was found guilty of spying for the German Abwehr on the eve of World War II. She had married again after her German husband died fighting for Germany, before she became a spy in Scotland. She was imprisoned and deported to Germany after the war ended.
WEdward John Kerling was a spy and saboteur for Nazi Germany and leader of Operation Pastorius during World War II.
WBernard Julius Otto Kuehn and his family were spies in the employ of the Abwehr for Nazi Germany who had close ties to Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In 1935, Goebbels offered Kuehn a job working for Japanese intelligence in Hawaii; he accepted and moved his family to Honolulu on August 15, 1935. The family included Dr. Kuhn, 41 years old; his wife, Friedel; a daughter, Susie Ruth ; and he half-brothers, Hans Joachim. Since all four members of the family were involved in the espionage they were dubbed the "8 eyed spy".
WChristiaan Antonius Lindemans was a Dutch double agent during the Second World War, working under Soviet control. Otherwise known as Freddi Desmet, a Belgian army officer and SOE agent with security clearance at the Dutch Military Intelligence Division of the SOE (MID/SOE). He is better known under his nickname "King Kong" or in some circles as "le Tueur" as he undertook missions to kill and was ready to shoot at the slightest provocation. There is speculation that Lindemans was a member of Colonel Claude Dansey's Z organisation.
WKurt Frederick Ludwig was a German spy and the head of the "Joe K" spy ring in the United States in 1940-41.
WHorst Gustav Friedrich von Pflugk-Harttung (1889–1967) was a German intelligence officer and spy.
WDušan "Duško" Popov was a Serbian double agent who served as part of the MI6 and Abwehr during World War II. He passed off disinformation to Germany as part of the Double-Cross System while working as an agent for the Yugoslav government-in-exile in London.
WAugustin Přeučil was a Czechoslovakian military pilot, who during World War II worked as an intelligence agent for Nazi Germany. In 1941, whilst serving with the British Royal Air Force, he stole a fighter aircraft from England, and flew it to Occupied Europe where he surrendered it to the German authorities. He later worked in Occupied Central Europe with the Gestapo. Shortly after the war he was executed in Prague by the Czechoslovakian authorities for High Treason.
WJuan Pujol Garcia, also known as Joan Pujol Garcia, was a Spanish spy who acted as a double agent loyal to Great Britain against Nazi Germany during World War II, when he relocated to Britain to carry out fictitious spying activities for the Germans. He was given the codename Garbo by the British; their German counterparts codenamed him Alaric and referred to his non-existent spy network as "Arabal".
WNikolaus Ritter is best known as the Chief of Air Intelligence in the Abwehr who led spyrings in the United States and Great Britain from 1936 to 1941.
WWalter Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He rose through the ranks of the SS, becoming one of the highest ranking men in the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and eventually assumed the position as head of foreign intelligence for Nazi Germany following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.
WWulf Dietrich Christian Schmidt, later known as Harry Williamson was a Danish citizen who became a double agent working for Britain against Nazi Germany during the Second World War under the codename Tate. He was part of the Double Cross System, under which all German agents in Britain were controlled by MI5 and used to deceive Germany. Nigel West singled him out as "one of the seven spies who changed the world."
WWilliam G. Sebold was a United States citizen who was coerced into becoming a spy when he visited Germany after being pressured by several high-ranking Nazi members. He informed the American Consul General in Cologne before leaving Germany and became a double agent for the FBI. With the assistance of another German agent, Fritz Duquesne, he recruited 33 agents that became known as the Duquesne Spy Ring. In June 1941, the Federal Bureau of Investigation arrested all of the agents. They were convicted and sentenced to a total of 300 years in prison.
WPaul Thümmel, aka Agent A-54, was a German double agent who spied for Czechoslovakia during World War II. He was a high-ranking member of the German military intelligence organisation, the Abwehr, and was also a highly decorated member of the National Socialist German Workers Party.
WAnna Nikolayevna Wolkova, sometimes known as Anna de Wolkoff, was a White Russian émigrée, and secretary of The Right Club, which was opposed to Britain's involvement in World War II.