Wilhelm Wassmuss

Wilhelm Wassmuss (1880 – November 29, 1931; German spelling: Waßmuß) was a German agent and part of Niedermayer–Hentig Expedition, known as "Wassmuss of Persia". According to British versions of history, he "attempted to foment trouble for the British" in the Persian Gulf in the First World War.

Wilhelm Wassmuss was born in 1880 in Ohlendorf, 60 kilometers south-east of Hanover, Germany, and after a university education he entered the German Foreign Office in 1906. Sent first to Madagascar, he was promoted to vice consul and assigned to the German Consulate in the Persian port town of Bushehr by the Persian Gulf in 1909. In 1910 he was returned to Madagascar where, rarely seen in public, he spent three years in an obsessive study of the desert and its peoples. In 1913, he was relocated back to Bushehr. While the details of what happened next are sketchy, it seems that with the start of World War I, Wassmuss appears to have recognized that now was the time to foment a revolt. As part of the Anglo-Russian Entente within The Great Game, Persia was divided in a Russian Northern Zone, a British Southern zone and a neutral central zone. He met with his superiors in Constantinople and as a result of that meeting, it was proposed that he organize and lead the Persians in a guerrilla war against Britain. The plan was approved and the German Foreign Office amply supplied him with gold, on the direct order of Kaiser Wilhelm II who was enthusiastic about the plan. Although Wassmuss had no training in espionage, he became one of the first covert action operatives—an agent who does not specifically try to collect information but who functions in a foreign country to obtain a definite result.

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