Fritz (Frederick) Joubert Duchenne (also Fritz Joubert Ducane ; September 21, 1877 - May 24, 1956) - a Transvaal and subsequently German soldier, hunter, journalist, war correspondent, stockbroker, spy, saboteur, adventurer. A veteran of the Second Boer War , was a consistent Anglophobe. Out of hatred of the British in both world wars he became a German spy. Among the Boers, he was known by the nickname Black Leopard, also known as “The Man Who Killed Kitchener ”, because he claimed that in 1916 it was because of the diversion that he arranged that the ship HMS Hampshire sank, on which Lord Henry Kitchener traveled to the Russian Empire. In the German secret services was known by the nickname Dunn. In 1941, he was convicted together with 32 other spies in the United States of espionage in favor of Germany in the so-called case of the espionage syndicate Dukein, which became the largest espionage case in US history.
Biography
Duchenne was born in East London, Cape Colony , into an Anglo-Boer Protestant family; from a young age he hunted big game. He received his secondary education in the UK, later, possibly, studied at Oxford or at the military academy, but no evidence was found for this; Duken himself subsequently claimed that after graduation he had to go to continental Europe to study as an engineer, but instead decided to go wandering around the world. He returned to South Africa in 1899 when the Second Boer War broke out, joining the rank of lieutenant in the detachment of Boer commandos; participated in several battles, was wounded, was captured several times by the British, but successfully fled, and during the second escape through Paris secretly made his way to the UK, enlisted in the British Army and went to South Africa in 1901, planning to arrange sabotage. By this time, his mother and sister had died in a British concentration camp, and it was this event that caused his fanatical hatred of the British in general and Lord Kitchener in particular. He was soon discovered and sent to prison in Bermuda, from where he fled to the United States. Before World War I, he was engaged in journalism and hunting (he was a personal hunting consultant with US President Theodore Roosevelt), participated in various adventurous projects (in particular, he proposed to bring hippos from Africa to the Louisiana rivers to breed them for meat).
During the First World War, he voluntarily became a spy in the service of the German Empire: he operated in the neutral ports of South America, where he planted bombs on British merchant ships, while he tried to acquire and insure part of the cargo on the ships he exploded in order to subsequently make money on his sabotage; in 1916 he spied for some time in Bolivia. At the end of 1917, he was calculated and captured by agents of the American FBI, but in order not to be extradited to the British, where he was waiting for the death penalty, he simulated paralysis, successfully playing this role for a year and a half.
In May 1919 he was (still playing the part of the paralyzed) transferred to the New York Prison Hospital, from where he ran away a few days later, having changed into a woman’s dress. From the USA he went first to Mexico, then to Europe, but in 1926 he returned to New York, where he lived under an assumed name and was engaged in film journalism. In 1932 he was recognized and arrested, but then released, since the British government did not demand his extradition for the limitation of his crimes.
In 1934, he joined Order 76, an American pro-Nazi organization; since 1937, collaborated with the intelligence of the Third Reich, being personally acquainted with Wilhelm Canaris since 1931. Together with other German agents, he launched powerful and diverse espionage activities in the United States, but the FBI, after a two-year investigation in the summer of 1941, arrested all members of its "syndicate." In 1942 he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. He was pardoned for health reasons in 1954, spent the last two years of his life in New York, giving lectures on his life.
Links
- Evans, Leslie Fritz Joubert Duquesne: Boer Avenger, German Spy, Munchausen Fantasist (April 1, 2014). Date of treatment April 6, 2014.