Go Undercover With This History of Spies Quiz

Orchestrated by the British, Operation Mincemeat involved dressing a corpse as a Royal Marines Major and planting on the body false intelligence about an invasion of Greece and Sardinia. The body was found off the coast of Spain, and Nazi sympathizers passed the intelligence to Germany. While the Germans fortified Greece and Sardinia, the Allies invaded Sicily, their intended target, on July 9, 1943.

The “dead” drop spike was made to resemble a cemetery spike, but it had a hollow center where agents could conceal messages, film, or documents inside. Because of its unassuming appearance, the device could be easily dropped or pushed into the ground and picked up by another agent without drawing attention.

In the 1940s, jazz sensation Josephine Baker was one of the most photographed women in the world, which made her an unlikely agent of espionage. She used her talent as a performer to infiltrate Nazi-occupied territory, where she gathered information and photographs for Allied forces. To honor her service, in 2021 France inducted Baker into the French Panthéon, a mausoleum for eminent French figures.

In 1573, Francis Walsingham became Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State, the modern-day equivalent of heading MI5 and 6. He expanded England’s network of spies, placing agents in the courts across Europe, including France and Spain. He is best-known for foiling Mary, Queen of Scots’ plot to have Elizabeth I murdered. He served as the queen’s spymaster for 22 years, and she knighted him in 1577.

In 1778, George Washington, then a general in the Continental Army, formed the Culper Spy Ring along with Colonel Benjamin Tallmadge. Its operatives infiltrated British forces and supplied Washington with British military secrets and naval codes. The spy ring was so successful that none of its agents were discovered, and much of its activities remained a secret until Culper correspondence was discovered in 1929.

Mata Hari was the alias and stage name of Margaretha Geertruida Zelle, a Dutch woman who built a career as an exotic dancer. At the beginning of World War I, Berlin’s Chief of Police recruited her to the German Secret Service. During performances in Allied countries, she gathered intelligence for Germany. She was caught by the French and executed for espionage and treason in 1917.

In 1863, Harriet Tubman snuck across Confederate lines to gather intelligence from enslaved Black people about the location of torpedoes along the Combahee River in South Carolina. Tubman then led Union troops up the river, avoiding the torpedoes, to raid Confederate outposts and free enslaved people. She became the first woman to plan and lead a successful military operation during the Civil War.

Before writing the “James Bond” series, author Ian Fleming worked as a British intelligence officer during World War I to crack the German diplomatic code 007.4. He was also interested in Britain’s “Master Spy” Sidney Reilly, who attempted and failed to topple Vladimir Lenin’s Soviet government. Inspired by Reilly, Fleming created the fictional James Bond with the codename 007.

During the Revolutionary War, Benedict Arnold gained notoriety as an American officer, by slowing the British advance from Canada at the Battle of Lake Champlain. But Arnold felt he didn’t receive the recognition he deserved. In his spite, he conspired to surrender an American fort at West Point to the British. The Americans learned of the plot, and Arnold fled to England to serve the British army.

While Ernest Hemingway was reporting on the Spanish Civil War for an American newspaper, he became sympathetic to the rebels fighting a fascist regime. He believed the Soviet Union was the only country helping the rebels. To fight fascism in Spain, he joined the Soviet Intelligence Agency in 1940. What specific duties Hemingway performed for the Soviet Union remains a mystery.