Fritz Joubert Duquesne

Who was Fritz Joubert Duquesne?

Frederick "Fritz" Joubert Duquesne, sometimes Du Quesne, was a South African Boer soldier, prisoner of war, big-game hunter, journalist, war correspondent, stockbroker, saboteur, spy, and adventurer whose hatred for the British caused him to volunteer to spy for Germany during both World Wars. As a Boer spy he was known as the "Black Panther", but he is also known as "the man who killed Kitchener", since he claimed to have sabotaged and sunk HMS Hampshire, on which Lord Kitchener was en route to Russia in 1916, although forensics of the ship do not support this claim.

As a German spy, he went by the code name DUNN. In 1942, he and 32 other members of the Duquesne Spy Ring were convicted in the largest espionage conviction in the history of the United States.