Several famous spies were executed, most notably Mata Hari, the Dutch exotic dancer executed by firing squad in France for German espionage in WWI, and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, an American couple executed for providing atomic secrets to the Soviets in 1953. Another notable figure is Josef Jakobs, a German spy shot at the Tower of London in WWII.
The couple maintained their innocence until the end, and their sons, Robert and Michael Meeropol, have worked for decades to establish that their mother was falsely implicated in spying.
5 of History's Most Famous Spies
After a trial lasting less than 90 minutes that was based on his confession, Lord Goddard sentenced Fuchs to 14 years' imprisonment, the maximum for espionage. The judge argued that his crime could not have been considered treason (which was a capital crime), because the Soviet Union was classed as an ally at the time.
Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist and part of the British Mission at Los Alamos, was a spy for the Soviet Union, passing on critical information on the atomic bomb. He was born in 1911 in Rüsselsheim, Germany, to a Lutheran minister with socialist political leanings.
Russia and the United States together possess nearly 90% of the world's nuclear weapons, with Russia holding the largest total stockpile and the U.S. having a substantial number of deployed strategic warheads, making them the dominant nuclear powers by far, despite other nations like China, the UK, France, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea also having nuclear arsenals.
Audrey Hepburn: Spy for the Resistance. By 1944, Hepburn was working for Dr. Hendrik Visser 't Hooft, an anti-German leader, where she solidified her ties to the underground Resistance and doctors who helped forge identity papers.
An Unlikely Hero: How Virginia Hall Became the Most Feared Allied Spy in Occupied France, and Why You've Never Heard of Her.
Margaretha Zelle, known by the stage name Mata Hari is the epitome of femme fatale or as the French authorities hailed her “the greatest woman spy of the century”. She was a Dutch exotic dancer who was revered for her beauty and sensuality. In 1916, Zelle gave up on dancing and started working as a spy for France.
World War Two's Most Glamorous Spy: Christine Granville, Winston Churchill's favorite agent, inspiration for the character Vesper in the James Bond novels. Christine Granville was a Polish beauty queen who became one of Britain's most valuable spies.
Use of the guillotine continued in France in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the last execution by guillotine occurred in 1977. In September 1981, France outlawed capital punishment altogether, thus abandoning the guillotine forever. There is a museum dedicated to the guillotine in Liden, Sweden.
Proclaimed “The Most Beautiful Man in Hollywood,” Sterling Hayden left acting to fight in WWII. The OSS recruited Hayden, an expert seaman to spy under the pseudonym name John Hamilton. He set up secret shipping operations in Italy and parachuted in Croatia.
After one year with Sophie, the boys were sent to Toms River, New Jersey to live with the Bach family, friends of the Rosenbergs. They were eventually adopted by the writer and songwriter Abel Meeropol and his wife Anne and took their last name.
Julius Rosenberg (May 12, 1918 – June 19, 1953) and Ethel Rosenberg (born Greenglass; September 28, 1915 – June 19, 1953) were an American married couple who were convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing top-secret information about American radar, sonar, jet propulsion engines, and nuclear weapon ...
Why were the Rosenbergs executed? Communist party members Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were found guilty of conspiracy to commit espionage and executed in 1953 for passing intelligence about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union during WWII.
It was the rival Weltanschauung, Marxism (which for him embraced social democracy as well as communism), with its insistence on internationalism and economic conflict. Beyond Marxism he believed the greatest enemy of all to be the Jew, who was for Hitler the incarnation of evil.
William J. Donovan, future founding father of the CIA, pictured as a 35-year-old Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Battalion, 165th Regiment, 42nd Division in Hazavant, France, on September 6, 1918.
Hedy Lamarr, the famous actress and inventor, is widely reported to have a genius-level IQ, with estimates often cited around 140 or 154, showcasing her exceptional intellect beyond her movie roles. She was a brilliant mind who co-patented a "secret communication system," laying groundwork for modern Wi-Fi, GPS, and Bluetooth, despite putting aside early engineering studies for acting.
Not only did Julia contribute to the efforts of the OSS, but during her time of service, she met her husband. Paul Child was also an OSS officer. He was well traveled, and it was he who opened Julia's eyes to appreciate fine French cuisine. The two married in September 1946.
Hedy Lamarr died from congestive heart failure (heart disease) on January 19, 2000, at her home in Casselberry, Florida, at the age of 85, having lived a reclusive life in her later years.
Tsar Bomba (in Russian, Царь-бомба) is the Western nickname for the Soviet RDS-220 (РДС-220) hydrogen bomb (code name Vanya). Detonated by the Soviet Union on October 30, 1961, Tsar Bomba is the largest nuclear device ever detonated and the most powerful man-made explosion in history.
Who has the most nuclear weapons? Russia has the most confirmed nuclear weapons, with over 5,500 nuclear warheads.