Heinz Lüning

Heinz August Adolf Sirich Lüning (March 28, 1911 - November 10, 1942) was an espionage agent who spied for the Abwehr in Cuba during World War II and was later executed by Cuba. It is unclear whether Lüning was incompetent or if he was on a personal mission to sabotage the Nazi war effort in the Caribbean and Latin America, but the result is that his work as an Abwehr intelligence officer was described by the British Secret Services (MI6) as mediocre and subpar. The Cuban government at the time maintained that his incompetence was a ruse, and that the Cuban intelligence apparatus had captured a genuine master spy.

After his discovery by the government of Fulgencio Batista, Lüning was publicly executed. His decision to join the Abwehr was motivated primarily by his desire to avoid dying on the frontline in Europe as a soldier, and the fact that he was an avowed anti-Nazi, and came from a family of anti-Nazis. Ultimately, this decision led to him becoming the only German spy executed on espionage charges in all of Latin America during World War II.