Carl Hans Lody
Carl Hans Lody, alias Charles A. Inglis, was a reserve officer of the Imperial German Navy who spied in the United Kingdom in the first few months of the First World War.
In May 1914, two months before the start of World War I, Lody was approached by German naval intelligence officials. He agreed to be a peacetime spy in southern France, but after war broke out, in late August he was sent to the United Kingdom with orders to spy on the Royal Navy. Lody had been given no training in espionage, and within only a few days of arriving he was detected by the British authorities. The British counter-espionage agency MI5, then known as, allowed him to continue his activities in the hope of learning more about the German spy network. His first two messages were allowed to reach the Germans, but later messages were stopped, as they contained sensitive military information. At the start of October 1914, concern over the increasingly sensitive nature of his messages prompted to order his arrest.
Lody was put on public trial – the only one held for a German spy captured in the UK in either world war – before a military court in London. He was convicted and sentenced to death after a three-day hearing. Four days later, on 6 November 1914, Lody was shot at dawn by a firing squad at the Tower of London in the first execution there in 167 years.
When the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933, it declared him a national hero. Lody became the subject of memorials, eulogies and commemorations in Germany before and during the Second World War. A destroyer bore his name.
Early life and career
Carl Hans Lody was born in Berlin on 20 January 1877. His father was a lawyer in government service who served as mayor of Oderberg in 1881. The Lody family subsequently moved to Nordhausen, where they lived at 8 Sedanstrasse. Lody's father served as deputy mayor there in 1882 but died in June 1883 after a short illness and his mother died in 1885. He was fostered for a time by a couple in Leipzig before entering the orphanage of the Francke Foundations in nearby Halle.Lody began an apprenticeship at a grocery store in Halle in 1891, before moving to Hamburg two years later to join the crew of the sailing ship Sirius as a cabin boy. He studied at the maritime academy in Geestemünde, qualifying as a helmsman, and immediately afterwards served with the Imperial German Navy for a year between 1900 and 1901. Subsequently joining the First Naval Reserve, he enlisted as an officer on German merchant ships. In 1904 he returned to Geestemünde, where he successfully obtained a captain's licence. He fell seriously ill with what he later said was a stomach abscess, "caused from a very badly cured typhoid attack of fever from which I suffered in Italy on account of the bad water at Genoa." An operation was required, which weakened his left arm and his eyesight. As Lody put it, "Consequently, my career as a seaman was closed as soon as I discovered that, and my doctor told me that I could not go any further."
Lody found alternative employment with the Hamburg America Line, which had inaugurated a personally guided tour service for wealthy travellers going from Europe to America. Lody became a tour guide responsible for looking after these clients, and in this capacity visited European countries, including Britain. During one such tour he met a German-American woman named Louise Storz, the 23-year-old adoptive daughter of a wealthy beer brewer, Gottlieb Storz of Omaha, Nebraska. Louise's tour included several European countries, including Germany; by its conclusion she and Lody were engaged. After visiting Lody's family in Berlin, the couple travelled to the United States. They were married on 29 October 1912 in what the Omaha Daily Bee described as "a 'society' wedding":
Despite the high profile of the wedding the couple lived together for only two months. Lody sought to obtain a position in the Storz Brewing Company but he lacked expertise in brewing. As the local Omaha Daily Bee newspaper put it, "Here he was in the United States with a wife to support and no position in sight." He found a job working as a clerk for the Union Pacific Railroad for under $100 a month. Two months after they were married, Louise brought suit for divorce, charging that Lody had "beat her, inflicting serious wounds to her body." Lody left for Berlin shortly thereafter; over six months later, he unexpectedly returned with a German lawyer to contest the suit in the Douglas County courts. The suit was withdrawn without explanation a few days later; Lody returned to Berlin. The two sides apparently reached an amicable settlement; in February 1914 the divorce suit was reinstated and Lody agreed not to contest it. The divorce was granted the following month.
The military historian Thomas Boghardt suggests that the Storz family did not approve of the match, and may have pressured the couple to separate. Lody said later that his former father-in-law gave him $10,000, possibly as compensation. The failed marriage had a lasting effect on Lody. He wrote in 1914: "My feelings run riot when I can permit myself to review the dramatic events of the last three years and what is to be the probable climax of it all."
Beginning of espionage career
On his return to Germany, Lody settled in Berlin, living in what he described as "well to do circumstances". He stayed in the Adlon, the city's most fashionable luxury hotel, while his sister Hanna lived with her doctor husband in the prosperous suburb of Westend in Charlottenburg. As tensions grew across Europe in the first half of 1914, German naval intelligence – the Nachrichten-Abteilung, or "N" – set out to recruit potential agents. Lody already had links with the service. During his time with the Imperial German Navy, Lody had served under Arthur Tapken, who later became N's first director. The German Imperial Admiralty Staff, or Admiralstab, listed Lody as a possible recruitment target before the outbreak of war. The naval authorities regarded Hamburg America Line employees such as Lody as ideal recruits because of their expertise in naval matters and presence in ports worldwide. The HAL had collaborated with the Admiralstab since the 1890s. The relationship became so close that in July 1914, just before the outbreak of the war, the HAL's director Albert Ballin told the Admiralstab that he would "place myself and the organisation subordinate to me at your Excellency's disposal as best as possible."On 8 May 1914, Fritz Prieger, the director of N, contacted Lody to ask whether he was willing to serve as a naval agent. Lody replied that he was "honoured" by Prieger's trust and would serve at Prieger's disposal. Within three weeks Lody had signed a formal agreement to operate as a "tension traveller" in southern France – an agent who would report back to Berlin in times of heightened international tensions. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria on 28 June and the subsequent July Crisis precipitated the outbreak of World War I on 28 July.
With the United Kingdom declaring war in support of France and Belgium, Prieger sent Lody to Britain as a war agent. Lody was ordered to base himself in the Edinburgh–Leith area and monitor British naval movements. He was to travel along the Scottish coast and report on the warships stationed there; "If or when Mr. Lody comes to know that a naval battle has taken place, he will enquire as much and unobtrusively as possible regarding losses, damage etc." His orders reflected the Admiralstab's belief that the war would be decided by a single major naval battle.
To communicate with his handlers, Lody was instructed to write to certain addresses in Christiania, Stockholm, New York City and Rome. He acquired an American emergency passport in the name of Charles A. Inglis, a genuine document obtained from the US Embassy in Berlin. When Germany declared war on Russia on 1 August, newly imposed restrictions prevented foreigners from leaving Germany without travel documents. Embassies and consulates throughout the country experienced a rush of visitors as foreigners sought emergency passports; these had to be submitted to the German Foreign Ministry to obtain exit permits for neutral Denmark or the Netherlands. One such applicant was the real Charles A. Inglis, whose passport went missing – lost, it was claimed, although in fact the Foreign Ministry had appropriated it for Lody's use. As the passport lacked security features such as the holder's photograph or fingerprints, being merely a single-sheet document, it was well-suited for use by a spy. Lody said later that he had received it in the post from his superiors at N. He was also given £250 in British banknotes, 1,000 Danish krone and 1,000 Norwegian krone to finance his mission to the UK, where he would travel via Denmark and Norway.
Gustav Steinhauer, the head of N's British section, later wrote that he had met Lody shortly before the latter's departure, and spoken with him on a couple of occasions. Steinhauer had been active in Britain shortly before the outbreak of war, and was keen to give Lody advice on the difficulties he would face:
To Steinhauer's apparent surprise, Lody appeared nonchalant about the danger that he was about to go into. "Well, after all, one might as well die that way as any other," Lody said, according to Steinhauer; "I shall be rendering the Fatherland a service and no other German can do more than that." At a final meeting at the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, Steinhauer repeated his warnings, but Lody "only laughed at me and told me my fears were groundless." Steinhauer regarded Lody's ability to carry out his mission as "practically nil" and warned the Chief of Naval Intelligence not to send him to the UK, but the warning went unheeded. He recalled that "as he had specially volunteered for the task – and I must admit there were very few people in Berlin just then anxious to accompany him – they allowed him to go."
As Steinhauer noted in his autobiography, the UK was a dangerous environment for a foreign agent. Only five years previously, the country had not had a dedicated counter-espionage organisation. In 1909 a series of spy scares fanned by the press led to the establishment of the Secret Service Bureau, jointly headed by Captain Vernon Kell and Lieutenant-Commander Mansfield Cumming. They soon split their responsibilities; Kell took charge of counter-espionage, while Cumming focused on foreign intelligence. These two divisions of the Secret Service Bureau eventually became two independent intelligence agencies, MI5 and MI6. The bureau quickly identified a list of possible German agents in the UK. Just before the outbreak of war on 4 August 1914, chief constables across Britain and Ireland were instructed to arrest suspects in their areas. This was done quickly and a number of German agents were caught, crippling German intelligence operations in the UK at a crucial moment in the war. Steinhauer himself had been lucky to escape arrest; he was known by name to the British authorities and he had been spying on the Royal Navy in Scotland as recently as late June 1914.