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Cpt. Henry Landau
Henry Landau OBE (7 March 1892 - 20 May 1968) as a South African World War I volunteer who served with the British Army’s Royal Field Artillery when he was recruited into what is now known as the S...view moreHenry Landau OBE (7 March 1892 - 20 May 1968) as a South African World War I volunteer who served with the British Army’s Royal Field Artillery when he was recruited into what is now known as the SIS (MI6). He was notable for handling one of the most effective espionage networks of the First World War, La Dame Blanche, and later wrote a number of bestselling novels about his experiences during the war.
Landau was born to an Afrikaner mother and English father who fought on the Boer side in the Boer War. He studied at Caius College, Cambridge, graduating with first-class honours in Natural Sciences before the outbreak of WWI.
In August 1914 he went to France with a volunteer hospital unit, later gaining a commission with the Royal Field Artillery. He was then recruited and sent to the MI6 station in Rotterdam, from where all the British spy networks in Belgium, France and Germany were handled under command of Richard B. Tinsley.
Landau became head of military intelligence at the Rotterdam branch, and his main task was to connect with Belgian resistance groups. His biggest success would be the handling of La Dame Blanche, a group of more than a thousand Belgian and French agents who monitored the movement of German troop trains to and from the Western Front.
After the war Landau was sent to lead the passport control office in Berlin. He resigned the military in 1920 and took employment procuring patents and inventions for a British shipbuilding company. He later returned to South Africa, before emigrating to the United States in 1923 where he worked as a teacher. After obtaining U.S. citizenship in 1933, Landau worked as an investigator for the Federal Works Agency and the U.S. Maritime Commission.
He died in Chilapa, Mexico in 1968, aged 76.view less