Spy network meme8/2/2023 Duquesne was later convicted in the largest espionage conviction in the history of the United States.īetween wars, Duquesne served as an adviser on big game hunting to U.S. Sebold, a double agent with the FBI and spying for the Germans. The last time he was captured and imprisoned was in 1941 when he and 32 other members of the Duquesne Spy Ring working for Nazi Germany were caught by William G. In 1932, he was again captured in New York by federal agents and charged with both homicide and for being an escaped prisoner, only this time he was set free after Britain declined to pursue the wartime crimes. He became known as "the man who killed Kitchener" since he claimed to have guided a German U-boat to sink HMS Hampshire on which Lord Kitchener was en route to Russia in 1916, although forensics of the ship do not support this claim.Īfter he was caught by federal agents in New York in 1917, he feigned paralysis for two years and cut the bars of his cell to make his escape, thereby avoiding deportation to England where he faced execution for the deaths of British sailors. He sometimes purchased insurance on merchandise he shipped on the vessels he sabotaged and then filed claims for damages. In World War I, he became a spy and ring leader for Germany and during this time he sabotaged British merchant ships in South America with concealed bombs and destroyed several. After a failed attempt to escape prison in Cape Town, he was sent to prison in Bermuda, but he escaped to the United States and became an American citizen. His team was given up by an informant and all were captured and sentenced to death. On one occasion he infiltrated the British army, became a British officer, and led an attempt to sabotage Cape Town and to assassinate the commander-in-chief Lord Kitchener. He was captured, convicted, and escaped several prisons.ĭuring the Second Boer War, from 1899 to 1902, Duquesne was captured and imprisoned three times by the British and once by the Portuguese, and each time he escaped. As a Boer spy he was known as the "Black Panther", in World War II he operated under the code name DUNN, and in FBI files he is frequently referred to as "The Duke". He went by many aliases, fictionalized his identity and background on multiple occasions, and operated as a con man. He gathered human intelligence, led spy rings and carried out sabotage missions as a covert field asset in South Africa, Great Britain, Central and South America, and the United States. He fought on the side of the Boers in the Second Boer War and as a secret agent for Germany during both World Wars. Many of the claims Duquesne made about himself are in dispute over his lifetime he used multiple identities, reinvented his past at will, claimed family ties to aristocratic clans and famous people, and even asserted the right to military titles and medals with no third-party verification. Assassination of Lord Kitchener (disputed) Ĭommando war correspondent journalist con manįrederick " Fritz" Joubert Duquesne ( / dj uː ˈ k eɪ n/ dew- KAYN sometimes Du Quesne 21 September 1877 – ) was a South African Boer and German soldier, big-game hunter, journalist, and spy. Sinking of 22 British merchant ships in South America, including: the Tennyson, the Salvador, and the Pembrokeshire South African Republic, German Empire, Nazi Germanyġ899–1901 (Boer) 1901 (British) c. 30 known): Captain Claude Stoughton Frederick Fredericks Boris Zakrevsky (assumed the identity of the real-life Russian Duke) Major Frederick Craven George Fordham Piet Niacud Colonel Beza
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