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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

34. WWI Exploits

Photo from a fake 1918 German passport used by Sidney Reilly, with the alias George Bermann. Wikimedia

Early in World War I, Sidney Reilly was sent to the then-neutral United States – an important source of weapons and munitions for the Entente – and got involved in the lucrative arms business. During 1914 – 1915, he arranged weapons purchase deals for both the Imperial German Army and its enemy, the Imperial Russian Army. While in the US, he might also have conducted some false flag “German sabotage” operations on behalf of the British, to arouse the American government and public against Germany.

In 1917 – 1918, Reilly returned to Europe, and frequently got behind German lines to carry out intelligence gathering missions in occupied Belgium or Germany. Using a variety of disguises and forged identity papers, he sometimes presented himself as a peasant, and other times as a wounded German soldier or officer on sick leave from the front.

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.