Oswald John Job, branded Britain’s Forgotten Traitor, was the oldest spy to be executed in the UK during the Second World War.
Aged 58, he was born in London of German parents, but emigrated to Paris before the First World War. When the Germans occupied Paris in 1940, he was interned. Three years later he cut a deal with them whereby he’d be freed if he agreed to return to Britain to spy for them.
Job was taught a secret code to hear messages on a German radio station, and was given invisible ink and valuable jewellery intended for another German agent (a double agent actually working for the British). On arriving in Britain on 1 November 1943, he claimed to have escaped internment and made his way to freedom, but was swiftly identified as a suspected spy. Arrested three weeks later, he was hanged for treachery.
