7 of the Greatest Spies Who Ever Lived: List of Famous Spies of All Time

3. Fritz Jouber Duquesne

Started working as a spy in 1899

Duquesne was a soldier, adventurer, journalist,  and a writer, who became famous for his spy activities during the First and the Second World war, for Germans.  When he was young, he fought in his native South Africa during the Second Boer War, against England, where he actually joined the British army, and managed to sabotage their actions, and send information regarding the movement of the British troops. After the beginning of the First World War, Fritz became a German spy, and managed to set several bombs on British ships.  He even got captured in 1917, but after spending two years in a jail in New York, but he managed to he escape. Between the two World Wars, he pursued his spying career and had many different identities and fictional stories regarding his history and origin. His stories allowed him to actually become an adviser on big game hunting to U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, also to become a publicist in the movie industry, a journalist, and to be at the head of the New Food Society in New York. His spying days were finished in 1942, when he and 32 other German spies were  arrested and convicted in the largest American spy trial. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison, from which he didn’t escape.