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The Ace of Spies and Other Significant Espionage Figures

Khalid Elhassan December 20, 2019 33 min

Detective - Mystery — Throughout history, spies have aroused mixed feelings of fear, loathing, and admiration. Mixed Matches

7. When the Spy Catcher is a Spy

Alfred Redl, left, one of the twentieth century’s most fascinating spies. Amazon

Austro-Hungarian Alfred Redl (1864 – 1913) rose through that empire’s officer ranks to become chief of counterintelligence from 1900 to 1912. In that capacity, he was in charge of tracking down and rooting out traitors and spies.

In a twist no one at the time saw coming, Redl was himself a traitor and a spy. He betrayed his country and sold its secrets to its main rival and likeliest future enemy, Tsarist Russia, whose chief spy in the Austro-Hungarian Empire he became. It is suspected that he also spied for both the French and Italians in exchange for money.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.