Ilse Stöbe

Ilse Frieda Gertrud Stöbe (17 May 1911 – 22 December 1942) was a German left-wing journalist, Soviet GRU agent and anti-Nazi resistance fighter. As a young woman, Stöbe was exposed to communist ideology through her parents. After her parents split up, she had to leave the Rathaus grammar school she was attending and trained as a typist.

In 1929, wanting to become a journalist, she was employed as a secretary at the Berliner Tageblatt newspaper. There she made deep impression on the editor Theodor Wolff, who wrote a novel about her, "Die Schwimmerin". While there she met the journalist Rudolf Herrnstadt who shared the same communist ideology. In 1931, Herrnstadt recruited Stöbe into the Soviet GRU as a spy. As her career progressed at the newspaper during the early 1930s she visited several countries in Europe to write articles, all the while conducting spying operations for the GRU. Forced to leave Germany in 1933 after losing her job due to the worsening political situation and the rise of Nazism, she first moved to Czechoslovakia. However her face became known after being seen with a Gestapo officer. The GRU then moved her to Warsaw in late 1935. There she worked as the foreign correspondent for the Swiss ''Neue Zürcher Zeitung'' newspaper and through them, met a group of left-leaning, liberal anti-nazis who worked at the German embassy. Amongst them was legation councillor Rudolf von Scheliha who supplied intelligence to Stöbe.

In 1939, when the German embassy closed in Warsaw due to the impending German invasion, she moved back to Berlin. There she commanded a Soviet espionage network, while working in the Foreign Office, receiving material from von Scheliha that was delivered to Soviet embassy. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, she lost contact with Soviet intelligence. Several attempts were made by the GRU to contact her but these failed. Her network was discovered after a Soviet blunder led them to expose her details in a radio message. She was arrested and executed in 1942. Provided by Wikipedia