Josef Jakobs Josef Jakobs Josef Jakobs (30 June 1898 – 15 August 1941) was a German spy and the last person to be executed at the Tower of London. He was captured shortly after parachuting into the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Convicted of espionage under the Treachery Act 1940, Jakobs was shot by a military firing squad. He was not hanged because he was captured as an enemy combatant. Jakobs, who was a German citizen, was born in Luxembourg in 1898. During the First World War, he served in the German infantry, rising to the rank of "Leutnant", in
The Catcher Was a Spy his hosts, never contradicted by their guest, that he continued to be a spy. He wasn't. Dawidoff describes a lonely soul who could bear only infrequent intimacy-he had a few serious relationships with women, and no close male friends ... As Dawidoff tracks his elusive subject, it is easy to agree with a bookseller who described Berg as "a professional liar, a layabout who lived on his brother . . . a self-invented mystery, a charming chap, but an outright fraud. The mystery is that there is no mystery." Not all critics were complimentary of Dawidoff's treatment of Berg, who