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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

35. Infiltrating the Kaiser’s War Machine

The Krupp arms factory in Essen. Pintrest

Kaiser Wilhelm II’s expansion of Germany’s war machine in the early twentieth century – especially his naval buildup – alarmed the British. However, British intelligence knew precious little about what was going on inside Germany’s war plants. So in 1909, Sidney Reilly was sent to Essen to gather intelligence.

Under the cover name Karl Hahn, he got a job as welder in the Krupp Gun Works, hoping to photograph the plant and the sensitive plans and information in its drawing office. However, the office was too heavily guarded during the day, so he volunteered for the fire brigade during the night shift. Then he strangled the head of the night security detail, knocked out another guard, and got into the drawing room. Seizing the plans before the alarm was raised, he caught a train, then a boat, and made it back to Britain with his valuable intelligence haul.

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.