Carl Hans Lody

Carl Hans Lody, alias Charles A. Inglis (20 January 1877 – 6 November 1914; name occasionally given as Karl Hans Lody), 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 (today Rudolf-Breitscheid-Strasse). 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." 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 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.

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. 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." 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. 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.

Scotland

Lody embarked on his mission "so hastily that he did not even have time to learn a code that might have assisted him to get his messages through", according to Steinhauer. Posing as an American tourist, Lody left Berlin on 14 August, travelling via Denmark to the Norwegian port of Bergen.

The Secret Service Bureau's counter-espionage section had by now become part of the War Office's Directorate of Military Operations and was known as . At the outbreak of war it instituted widespread censorship of letters and telegrams sent abroad. Fatally for Lody, was already aware that the Stockholm address was that of a German agent, and was watching for correspondence using the "Johnson" formula employed in Lody's telegram. One of censors later described the scene at Salisbury House in London, where the Letter Interception Unit was based:

The "Johnson" telegram reached its destination and was only identified retrospectively by the British authorities. It was said to have indicated the presence of four British battleships, A post-war report by MI5, the successor organisation to , explains that it was treated this way "in the hope of learning more." Lody had heard the widespread rumour that thousands of Russian troops with "snow on their boots" had passed through Scotland en route to the Western Front, and relayed it to his controllers in Berlin:

Lody returned to Edinburgh on 17 September, taking the train from King's Cross to Edinburgh. He met a young Scottish woman, Ida McClyment, gave her his card and talked with her a while before going into another carriage to smoke. There he overheard a conversation between two men, one apparently a submariner travelling to the naval base at Rosyth and the other a sailor who talked about Harwich. Lody later professed his surprise at how the two men were "talking in a rather free way, considering the present times". One of the men talked about the difficulties of serving on a submarine, while the other asked Lody: "What country are you? Are you from the other side?" Lody replied, "Yes, I am an American."

The British Guard Fleet anchored in the Firth of Forth. Lody sought to gather information on Royal Navy ships in the Firth during his stay in Edinburgh. Lody went back to his lodgings at Drumsheugh Gardens and continued to walk and cycle around the area. He made the acquaintance of two girls he met on Princes Street and went out with them on a couple of evenings. He gave up cycling after an accident on 25 September, in which he collided with a bicycle being ridden by one of his landlady's friends while riding from Peebles to Edinburgh, causing her "some little injury". He returned his damaged bicycle to the shop where he had rented it. It was clear by now to Lody that his mission was not going successfully. The decisive naval battle that the German Admiralty had anticipated had not happened, and Lody was becoming increasingly fearful for his personal security. He said later:

The RIC made the investigation a top priority and replied to London at 7.23 pm on 2 October:

At 9.45 pm, District Inspector Cheeseman of the RIC arrived at the Great Southern Hotel in Killarney with a group of constables. He found Lody's name in the visitors' book and went to his room, but did not find him there. Returning to the foyer, Cheeseman saw Lody entering the hotel. He said: "Mr. Inglis, I presume?" to which Lody replied, "Yes, what do you want?" Cheeseman asked him to come to his hotel room and noted that Lody looked upset and frightened. He arrested Lody under the provisions of the Defence of the Realm Act 1914 (DORA) as a suspected German agent, prompting Lody to exclaim, "What is this? Me, a German agent? Take care now; I am an American citizen." When he was searched, his American identity documents were found along with £14 in German gold, 705 Norwegian krone and a small notebook. The latter listed British ships that had been sunk in the North Sea, names and addresses in Hamburg and Berlin and a possible cypher key. It also included copies of the four letters that he had sent to Stockholm. His bag contained a jacket that contained a tailor's ticket reading "J. Steinberg, Berlin, C.H. Lody, 8.5.14".

Lee was also arrested but was released without charge after two days when the investigation cleared him of any involvement in Lody's espionage. He complained about his treatment and the British authorities' refusal to let him see an American consul, and promised to take the matter up with the US State Department on his return. An officer named R.H. Price smoothed things over with him on his release on 4 October, explaining what had prompted his arrest and paying his fare back to his hotel. Price reported, "I think he was quite soothed and he shook hands with me on parting." A meeting of the Cabinet on 8 October decided to try him for "war treason", a decision that has been described as "legally, very curious" by the legal historian A. W. B. Simpson. He was not charged with espionage under either of the two relevant statutes, the Official Secrets Act 1911 or DORA. The principal reason lay in the wording of the Hague Convention of 1907, which states: "A person can only be considered a spy when, acting clandestinely or on false pretences, he obtains or endeavours to obtain information in the zone of operations of a belligerent, with the intention of communicating it to the hostile party." He wrote:

Sir Archibald Bodkin, the Director of Public Prosecutions, set out the case for the prosecution. The evidence was overwhelming; the prosecution case highlighted the contents of Lody's notebook and the luggage that he had left at the Roxburgh Hotel, and called a series of witnesses, including the elderly Scottish woman who ran the boarding-house in which he had stayed in Edinburgh and the fashionably dressed Ida McClyment, who caused a stir when she described her meeting with Lody aboard the London to Edinburgh train. Bodkin did not read the incriminating letters aloud, due to the sensitivity of their content, but described them in general terms. The witnesses testified about their interactions with Lody and identified him as the man who had posed as "Charles A. Inglis", though the proprietress of the Edinburgh boarding-house experienced some difficulty. When she "was asked if she could see 'Charles A. Inglis' in court, [she] looked everywhere except at the dock. Lody, who was sitting, stood up and gently waved his hands to attract her attention, while he smiled broadly and almost broke into laughter at the absurdity of the situation."

The second day of the trial was interrupted when a young man whom The Times described as being "of foreign appearance" was arrested and removed from the court on the orders of Captain Reginald "Blinker" Hall, the Director of Naval Intelligence. The interloper was one Charles Stuart Nairne, an Irishman and former Royal Navy lieutenant whom Hall spotted in the public gallery and considered to be "either a lunatic or a very dangerous person".

Little of this was true, but at the time the British had no way of knowing this. The files of the Admiralstab in Berlin show that he was approached by N, rather than volunteering for intelligence service, entered their employment as early as May 1914 (rather than in August as he claimed), received regular pay rather than being unpaid, and intended to return to Berlin on completing his mission. After hearing Lody's evidence the court martial was adjourned until the following Monday. As one newspaper report put it,

Her father refused to comment, saying that his interest in the Lody case was "only a passing one".

In Germany, Lody's home town of Nordhausen planted an oak tree in his memory. Newspaper commentary was limited; the first article about the case that The Times noted was only published around 19 November, in the Frankfurter Zeitung, in which a pseudonymous columnist suggested that the British might have been tempted to show Lody mercy: "I myself am convinced that the noble manliness with which this strong German composure bore itself before the Court touched the heart of the Judge, that the Judge said "If only we English had many such Hans Lodys!" and that Hans Lody lives ... We shall not forget him, for he staked his country more than his life – his name and his honour." A death notice was published in early December in the Stuttgarter Neues Tagblatt, stating that he had "died the hero's death for the Fatherland in England, November 6".

Lody's death produced a low-key response from the German government. The Admiralstab recommended at the end of 1914 that he should be awarded a posthumous Iron Cross, Second Class, and argued that the recruitment of naval agents would be assisted if espionage could be rewarded with such a prestigious medal. The Kaiser agreed, though not without some reluctance.

The bravery Lody exhibited during his trial and execution was praised by many post-war British writers. Sir George Aston, writing in his 1930 book Secret Service, called on his readers to "pay a tribute to a real German spy of the highest type ... Karl Lody",

Lody may have had more complex motives than simple patriotism. Thomas Boghardt notes the "exceptional" way in which Lody bore himself at his trial, pointing out that "virtually all other German agents accused of espionage understandably tried to deny or minimise their involvement with N". Boghardt had the advantage of being able to review the Admiralstab's files on the case and highlights "small but important changes", or rather discrepancies, between Lody's statements in court and the facts preserved in the case files. After World War II, when Lübeck was part of the British Zone of Occupation, the statue was taken down and the niche in which it stood was bricked up, though the inscription was allowed to remain and is still visible today.

Lody was further memorialised in 1937 when the newly launched destroyer Z10 was christened Hans Lody. Other ships in the same class were also given the names of German officers who had died in action. The ship served throughout the Second World War in the Baltic and North Sea theatres, survived the war and was captured by the British in 1945. After a few years in Royal Navy service she was scrapped in Sunderland in 1949.

Lody was also the subject of literary and stage works; a hagiographic biographical account, Lody – Ein Weg um Ehre (Lody – One Way to Honour), was published by Hans Fuchs in 1936 and a play called Lody: vom Leben und Sterben eines deutschen Offiziers (Lody: the life and death of a German officer), by Walter Heuer, premiered on Germany's National Heroes' Day in 1937. It depicts Lody as brave and patriotic but clumsy, leaving a trail of clues behind him as he travels in the UK: wearing clothes marked "Made in Germany", writing naval secrets on the back of a bus ticket which he loses and a Scotland Yard detective finds, coming to attention when an orchestra in London plays the German naval anthem, arousing suspicion when he calls for German wine while writing secret reports to Berlin, and leaving incriminating letters in the pockets of suits which he sends to be pressed. Lody is arrested in London and sentenced to death. Offered a chance to escape, he refuses and drinks a glass of wine with the firing squad, toasting Anglo-German friendship. He is led out to his execution, saying his final words: "I shall see Germany once more – from the stars." The Dundee Evening Telegraph described the storyline as "quaint".

The Lodystraße in Berlin was named in his honour.

Burial

The 17-year-old Bertolt Brecht wrote a eulogy to Lody in 1915 in which he imagined the purpose behind the spy's death:

The reality was very different. Lody's body was buried in an unmarked common grave in the East London Cemetery in Plaistow, along with seventeen other men – ten executed spies and seven prisoners who died of ill-health or accidents. It was not until 1924 that the grave received a marker, at the instigation of the German Embassy. Lody's relatives were visiting it once a year and enquired whether his body could be exhumed and buried in a private grave. The War Office agreed, providing that the body could be identified, but the Foreign Office was more reluctant and pointed out that a licence for exhumation would have to be authorised by the Home Office. The Lody family placed a white headstone and kerb on the grave some time around 1934.

In September 1937 the German government again requested that Lody's body be exhumed and moved to a separate grave. This proved impractical for several reasons; he had been buried with seven other men, each coffin had been cemented down and the lapse of time would make identification very difficult. Instead, the British Imperial War Graves Commission suggested that a memorial should be constructed in another part of the cemetery to bear the names of all the German civilians who were buried there. The proposal met with German agreement and the memorial was duly installed. During the Second World War, Lody's original headstone was destroyed by misaimed Luftwaffe bombs. It was replaced in 1974.

Footnotes